Ep 15: Stop Working Like A Man: Cycle Mapping For Female CEOs

Vanessa Carling breaks down the science and strategy of cycle syncing for ambitious women in business. This is not a wellness episode. This is a business strategy episode — one that happens to live in your body.

You'll learn why the modern working world was built around a 24-hour male hormonal cycle and what that has done to women's health, hormones, and businesses. Vanessa maps out the four phases of your menstrual cycle — Winter, Spring, Summer, and Autumn — and shows you exactly which business tasks belong in each season, so you can stop white-knuckling your way through weeks that were never designed for high output.

In this episode:

— Why women running businesses 'like men' are paying for it in their hormones

— The connection between chronic overriding of your cycle and PMS, PCOS, and burnout

— Your four hormonal seasons and the business tasks that match each one

— Why ovulation is your peak sales and visibility window (and how to use it)

— How to protect your luteal phase without burning your business down

— How to start cycle syncing even with a full client calendar

This episode is for the woman who is done running herself into the ground — and ready to run her business like the 28-day being she actually is.

Connect with Vanessa on Instagram: @vanessacarling 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the High Ticket Portal, where we guide women into financial overflow with a multidimensional touch. I'm Vanessa Storm, a high-ticket sales coach and subconscious reprogrammer for the new era of feminine wealth. Here we merge high-level sales strategy with energetic mastery for ultimate fulfillment and joy in business. This is where women succeed with integrity and class. So let's dive in. When was the last time you rescheduled calls, pulled back from content, chose rest over result, and didn't spiral into a story about being lazy or behind or not doing enough? For most women listening to this, the answer is not recently, maybe even never. That is not a character flaw. It's conditioning, it's deep systemic, generational conditioning. And today we are talking about all of it. Welcome to the High Ticket Portal podcast. I'm Vanessa Carling, and this might be one of my favorite episodes I have recorded so far, because this topic has genuinely changed the way I run my business, and it's changed the way I relate to my body. And I think it's going to do the same for you. Today we are talking about your menstrual cycle. Specifically, we're talking about what happens when you stop fighting it and you start building your business around it instead. We're going to cover how women have been conditioned to work on a 24-hour cycle like men and what that has actually done to our hormones, our health, and our businesses. Then we're going to map out the four phases of your cycle, which I'm going to call your four seasons. And I'm going to show you exactly which tasks belong in which season so you can start doing this immediately. This is for the woman who's exhausted, who pushes through every single day, regardless of how she feels, who has PMS that wrecks her for a week every single month, and wonders why she can't just get it together. Who runs a highly successful business and has achieved big goals, but by running herself into the ground doing it. It's time to do this differently, and it's time to run your business like a woman. So let's start with the big picture. And I want you to stay with me here because this context matters. The modern working world, every structure you operate within was built around the male body. Men operate on a 24-hour hormonal cycle. Testosterone peaks in the morning, drops in the afternoon, and resets overnight. It's predictable, it's linear, and it's the basis on which the entire concept of the working day was designed. Women, on the other hand, we operate on a 28-day cycle. Our hormones do not reset every 24 hours. They move through four distinct phases over the course of a month, each one with its own hormonal signature, its own strengths, and its own needs. But nobody built a working world around that. So we were handed a 24-hour template and told essentially, perform consistently every single day, same output, same energy, same face, push through it if you feel off, because the market doesn't care about your cycle. And for generations, women believed that. We internalized it, we pushed through, we showed up, we performed, and we paid for it in ways that we only now are beginning to understand. Because here's what happens when a woman chronically ignores her body's signals. She overrides the need for rest during menstruation when she keeps the same relentless pace through her luteal phase as she does in the follicular phase. When she treats her cycle as an inconvenience rather than intelligence, her nervous system stays in chronic stress. Her cortisol stays elevated, and chronically elevated cortisol, it disrupts the very hormonal balance that keeps her cycle healthy. This is part of why PMS is so severe for so many women. Not because your body's broken, not because you're weak, but because you've been running a sprint every single day as a part of a marathon. Your body is screaming at you in the only language that it has left. PCOS, endometriosis, fibroids, burnout, hormonal crashes. These are not random. They are, in many cases, the downstream consequence of a body that's been working against itself for too long. I'm not saying that all hormonal conditions are caused by overwork. Please hear me clearly. These are complex, multifactorial health conditions, and every woman's experience is her own. And what I'm saying, and what a growing body of research is saying, is that how we work matters. When we work matters. And for women specifically, working in alignment with our biology rather than against it changes everything. So here's the shift I want to introduce. And once you hear it, you can't unhear it. What if your cycle wasn't an obstacle to your productivity? What if it was actually a built-in business strategy? What if the reason you feel magnetic, clear, and unstoppable some weeks and completely done with people, detail obsessed and wanting to hide the other weeks, wasn't randomness or weakness. It's your body literally giving you different tools for different jobs. That is what cycle syncing is. It is the practice of matching your tasks, your energy, and your schedule to the natural hormonal rhythm of your body, working with your biology instead of fighting it. And when you do this, when you actually start honoring each phase of your cycle it's naturally designed for, you will do more and less time. You will have more creative breakthroughs. You will have better sales conversations, you'll have sharper decision-making skills, and you'll stop white-knuckling your way through days where your body is never meant to perform the way that you're asking it to. Let me map it out for you. I want you to think of your cycle as four seasons because that is generally what it is. Your body moves through a complete cycle of renewal, expansion, expression, and release every single month. And just like you would not plant seeds in the winter or try to harvest in spring, your cycle has a wisdom to it. Tasks that feel effortless in one season will feel like pulling teeth in another. And that is not you being inconsistent, that is biology. Let me walk through each one. Okay, the first one. This is days one to five, roughly. The first day of your period is day one of your cycle. This is winter. Hormonally, this is the point where estrogen and progesterone are at their lowest. Your body has just done something miraculous. It has shed its lining and begun again. It's not a small thing. It deserves a little bit of acknowledgement. What winter feels like. You want to go inward. You might feel quieter than usual, slower, more reflective. And some days you might feel surprisingly clear. Like the noise has dropped, and you can suddenly see things that you couldn't see before. Your intuition in this phase is really, really sharp. So pay attention to it. What winter is not designed for high energy output, back-to-back calls, pitching, launching, showing up on camera, trying to perform. Honestly, large group interactions in general as well. What winter is designed for? Rest, real rest, reflection, journaling, reviewing your business, not trying to fix everything. Just to see clearly, visioning, letting the next idea to form without forcing it. If you're someone who keeps your period as sacred, who actually blocks those days out and you slow down and you protect your energy, you will notice that the next phase hits completely different. You come out of winter like ready, regenerated, renewed. But if you power through winter like it's another week, you come out still depleted, dragging, and you wonder why you feel so behind. Rest is not laziness, it's winter, and rest is real strategy. Okay, days six to 13, roughly. This is spring, and you will feel it. Estrogen begins to rise, testosterone rises with it, your brain has elevated levels of dopamine, you feel, and this is the only word for it, alive again. What does spring feel like? Spring feels like ideas, so many ideas, optimism, the feeling of I can do this, I want to do this. Why did I never do this before? Why did I think that it was so hard? You get creative energy that almost feels electric. You want to try new things, you want to start new projects, you're sociable, curious, and you're excited about your business. What is spring designed for in business? Brainstorming, planning new offers, starting content, learning new things, courses, podcasts, researching, drafting things out, idea sessions, beginning projects, and onboarding new clients. The energy of spring is generative. You're building momentum, things feel possible, and you use it to plant seeds, not to harvest them. That's coming soon. One thing to be aware of during spring is that you might say yes to too many things. In there, the optimism of this phase is really beautiful, and it can also have you overcommit to a lot of things. Your inner autumn self will have thoughts about that. So this future version of yourself will have some thoughts about all the plans that you made when you were in spring. So take note of all the ideas, but hold off sending the enthusiastic email until you've slept on it. Okay, days 14 through 16 or 17-ish. This is summer and it is peak everything. Estrogen reaches its peak, testosterone surges, lutinizing hormone spikes. This is what triggers ovulation. And in this window, your brain is running at a different level. Your verbal fluency is in this highest. You can articulate things you normally struggle to find words for. Your empathy is elevated, which means you can read people and rooms more easily than you can during other times of the month. Your confidence is natural and it's not performed. Your presence is magnetic. People are literally drawn towards you. There's research on this because you are radiating something real. This is the phase where you want to be visible and unapologetically visible. Okay, what summer is designed for in business? Sales calls, all of your sales calls, launches, podcast recordings, live videos, webinars, networking events, podcasting, podcast guesting, important negotiations, client facing anything, pitching, speaking, you get the idea. If you've ever wondered why some calls feel completely effortless and others feel like you're dragging yourself to the finish line, I want to invite you to go back and look at where you were in your cycle. Because I would bet the ones that flowed, they were in summer. Now, summer is short, which means it's precious. When you know it's coming, you plan around it. You front load your visible client-facing high-stake work into this window. And then you protect it like the resource that it is. Now, day 17 through 28, roughly, is your longest phase, and it has two distinct chapters. Early autumn, the first half of the luteal phase, is actually incredibly productive, just in a different way. Pogesterone is rising, your body becomes detail-oriented, analytical. You can see what is not working. You're drawn to finishing things rather than starting them. This is the phase where you want to do the things your spring self started, and your summer self was too busy being magnetic to finish. Early autumn is designed for editing, auditing your business, metrics, clients' results, what's working, refining your offers, writing detailed content, emails, course material, systems work, spreadsheets, anything that requires you to go deep rather than wide. Now you're not going to be the most sparkling magnetic version of yourself in early autumn. And you don't need to be. This phase is for depth, not for dazzle. Now, late autumn. These are days 21 through 28, roughly. And this is the phase that most women are at war with. Progesterone starts to decline, oestrogen drops. And if your hormones are not in a good place, if you've been chronically stressed, if you've been ignoring what your body needed in previous phases, this is when it shows up. PMS, irritability, low mood, heightened sensitivity, brain fog, the feeling that everything is terrible and your business is a disaster and you should probably quit. Here's what I need you to know about late autumn. The feelings you feel in this phase, they're not lies, but they're amplified. Your inner critic is really loud. Your nervous system is a little more sensitive. The things that usually don't work so much in your business feel really enormous right now. Not because they suddenly got worse, but because your filter has changed. Late autumn is not the time to make big decisions. It's not the time to overhaul your offers or fire clients or quit your program or send a confrontational email that you've been sitting on. Late autumn is designed for gentle completion, wrapping up things, saying no to things, canceling non-essential calls if you need to, nourishing your body earlier nights, moving gentle, processing things, and honestly, just letting yourself be a little bit more tender without it meaning anything. If you honor late autumn, if you actually protect yourself in this window, your PMS gets better. Not because you fixed your hormones with a supplement, but because your nervous system is no longer in a crisis. And when your nervous system is not in crisis, your hormones finally have a chance to do what they're designed to do. I know that some of you might be thinking, ah, this sounds beautiful and how nice. And I wish I could just take all this time off when I'm in late autumn and early winter. Wonderful. I know some of you might be thinking, wow, this sounds really great. And I wish I could just cancel all of my calls and lay around in bed all day and do nothing. And this is not about being lazy or doing nothing. It's about teaching society how you need to run your business as a woman. I run a business, I have clients, I have commitments, I have things that I need to do. And yeah, I don't just throw everything out of the window when it's winter. So I hear you. And I'm not saying that you have to get this perfectly and now suddenly your cycle is just another schedule that you have to follow militantly. I'm not saying that you can just rip up your calendar and rebuild from scratch. What I am saying is start with awareness. Just start by knowing where you are at in your cycle. Track it. You can use an app like Clue or Flow or Natural Cycles, or just keep a note in your notes app. Get familiar with your own rhythm because every woman's cycle is a little bit different. And then as you become more familiar with your cycle, you can start making some small shifts. Stop booking sales call the week before your period, if you can. Move your content batching into your spring and early autumn phases. Plan your biggest launches when summer is coming. Walk one or two days at the start of your cycle for slower, more inward work. And over time, and I'm speaking from experience, you will restructure more than you think. Because once you feel what it's like to do sales calls in the summer versus doing sales calls in late autumn, you will do what you can to never repeat the second one. And I want to say something to you, something that feels important to close with. You are not built to perform in the same way every single day. You were not built for the linear, constant output, relentless model that the working world gave to you. And the fact that you've been doing it doesn't mean that it's right for you. It means that you are really, really, really good at adapting, even when the adaptation is costing you. So running your business like a woman is not a compromise, it's an upgrade. It means you harness your most magnetic, powerful, verbal, charismatic energy for the work that requires it. It means you use your analytical, detail-oriented, discerning energy for the work that deserves it. It means that you rest when your body needs to rest. Not out of weakness, but because you know that rest is gonna make the next month even more powerful. This is not about doing less. This is about doing the right thing at the right time. And in doing so, you do far more with less effort, with more ease, with more pleasure. The world was built on a 24-hour cycle. You are a 28-day being, and it's time, it's about time, to start honoring that. If this episode opened something up in you, and I hope it did, I want you to do one thing this week. Just one. Find out where you are in your cycle right now. Look at your calendar and notice whether the tasks you have scheduled align with the phase that you're in. You don't have to fix everything immediately. Just notice. Because awareness is always where the shift starts. Come and find me on Instagram and share with me where you are in your cycle right now. I genuinely want to know. And I want to celebrate you for listening to this. Thank you for being here today. Thank you for being open to this. Go gently with yourself this week. And whatever season you're in, may you give yourself exactly what it needs. I'll see you in the next episode. Bye for now.