The Sheila Botelho Show: Business Strategy and the Inner Work of Leadership
The Sheila Botelho Show is a business and leadership podcast for founders, CEOs, and women leading at the highest level of their work, who are ready to build the next decade of their business with more clarity, more profit, and more of themselves in the room.
You’ve already done the hard part. You’ve built something that works. You’ve hit the goals that looked impressive from the outside. And somewhere along the way, you started wondering what it would feel like to grow without trading pieces of yourself for the next milestone.
That’s the conversation happening on this show.
Every week, Sheila pulls up a chair for the kind of conversations you’d have with a trusted friend who’s spent decades growing businesses through wave after wave of change, reading rooms, and helping people come home to themselves no matter how fast the landscape moves.
You’ll hear about business strategy, leadership, profit, scaling, identity, creativity, and the shifting landscape of entrepreneurship in a season where everything is changing at once. Solo chats, minisodes, and conversations with founders and leaders building businesses with depth and integrity. Real talk for the woman who’s done the surface-level work and is ready for something with more substance.
So come on in. Get comfortable. This is the place to think bigger, lead steadier, and trust yourself more fully every time you press play.
New episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays.
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The Sheila Botelho Show: Business Strategy and the Inner Work of Leadership
The Third Way: How I Live It and Why It Changes Everything in Business | EP 600
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The third way isn't a business strategy. It's a way of moving through life that I've been living for decades without having a name for it, and it's the lens the book I'm writing is built around. This minisode is the introduction.
Full show notes, transcript, and chapters at sheilabotelho.com/600
✍️ Sheila's Notes - The reflections I write only here. For your Expansion Season.
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When Frameworks Work Against You
SheilaIf you've ever tried to apply someone else's framework to your business and felt it working against you rather than for you, you're probably not doing it wrong. You might just be someone who needs a different path entirely. This mini sode introduces an idea I've been living for decades, and I'm now writing a book around. I'm calling it the third way, and I want to give you the core of it here first. I've built multiple businesses across multiple seasons of my life, and every time something has lasted, it's been because I was following my own knowing rather than borrowing someone else's blueprint. This mini sewed is talking about the concept, the why, and what it opens up when you apply it to how you build.
Meet Sheila And The Third Way
SheilaHi, welcome to the podcast. I'm Sheila Botelho, and I believe true success is built from the inside out. This mini sode is designed to help you live into what lights you up this week. Today I'd like to share something that I've been living my whole life without really having a name for it until recently. I've been calling it the third way.
The Traditional Path Versus Rebel Path
SheilaAnd most people get presented with two options when they're building their business or their career, frankly, building their life, the traditional path, the do what's expected, follow the model, hit the milestones in the right order. Or there's also the rebel path, break the rules, go against the grain, define yourself by doing the opposite of what everyone else does. And here's what I've noticed: both of those paths are still organized around the same center of gravity. One conforms to the default and the other reacts to it. But both of them are still looking outward to decide what to do next.
Building From Your Inner Knowing
SheilaThe third way is different. The third way is the path that comes entirely from inside you. It's built from your own knowing, your own season, your own body of experience that nobody else has access to. It's the path that you're on when you stop asking what the playbook says, and when you start asking what's actually true for you right
Real Examples Across Life Seasons
Sheilanow. And I've been living this my entire life without realizing it. I was home educating my kids and running a business at the same time. And that was a third way. When I held a multi-million dollar direct sales business in an industry that gets dismissed while also doing one-to-one work in an industry that gets idealized, that was a third way. When I grew through deep relationships and referral instead of chasing volume, that was a third way. When I dialed my visibility back to be fully present for my family through the seasons that asked for that and then rebuilt again from that place, that was a third way. I truly wasn't trying to be different. I was just following what my own knowing said yes to and honoring the no when something didn't fit, even when the no looked costly in the short term.
A Lens For Building To Last
SheilaNow, here's why I'm telling you this. I'm writing a book around this concept, the working subtitle I can give you, which is A New Lens for Founders Who Build to Last. And what I keep coming back to as I write it is that the third way is not a business strategy per se. It's actually a life orientation that when you apply it to how you lead and how you build, it changes everything about the sustainability of what you're creating. The founders who recognize what I'm describing have usually been living some version of it too, without realizing that that's what they were
The Question To Leave With
Sheiladoing. So here's what I want to leave you with today. If your path has looked different from everyone else's, if the model that works for someone else keeps feeling like a poor fit, no matter how well you apply it, that is worth paying attention to.