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JOY Unfiltered: Joy is the strategy
Joy Unfiltered is the podcast where joy gets real, grounded, and useful.
Hosted by Rachel Bents, author of Joy Is the Strategy, this show explores joy not as a reward you earn, but as a practical strategy for living, leading, and feeling better in real life.
Each week, you’ll hear honest conversations, solo reflections, and guest episodes that unpack how joy impacts leadership, wellbeing, resilience, mindset, and connection without bypassing hard things or pretending life is perfect.
This podcast is also the heartbeat of two growing movements:
📘 Joy Is the Strategy (the book)
A deeper exploration of how joy works, why it matters, and how choosing it can change your life and leadership.
✨ The Joy Project
A global, joy-first community built on connection, conversation, and collective momentum.
If you’re tired of hustle culture, burned out on forced positivity, or curious what changes when joy becomes the way forward, you’re in the right place.
Joy isn’t the reward.
It’s the strategy.
JOY Unfiltered: Joy is the strategy
Stop Chasing the Checklist. Start Building Community.
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In this episode of Joy Unfiltered, Rachel sits down with Brenda Rigney, business coach and founder of Aligned AF Community, to talk about what happens when the midlife “rule book” stops working.
Brenda shares why the question “How am I supposed to be?” can feel so triggering, how to rebuild trust with your body when life gets loud, and why community (not hustle) is the fastest path to clarity and momentum.
You’ll also hear Brenda’s practical advice for women who want to start something on the side without overthinking: start a Skool community first, then let your brand and offers evolve from real conversations.
If you’re navigating reinvention, burnout, divorce, a breakup, shifting identity, or simply that feeling of “there has to be more”… this episode is your permission slip to take one grounded step at a time.
Connect with Brenda
- Aligned AF Community
- The AI-Driven Business Summit
- Skool Scale Camp
Connect with Rachel
