This one's been gnawing at me for a while. I believe we're living through one of the most significant shifts in history for women, and against the backdrop of everything happening in the world right now, I'm convinced that women are the ones who are going to shape what comes next. But to do that, we have to stop apologising for who we are and what we're being called to do.

We have to stop building lighter, safer, watered-down versions of the work we're really here to do, and start treating our soul's calling not as something indulgent, but as the most strategically intelligent business decision we can make.

If you've been keeping the truest version of your work tucked away for later, waiting until you feel more ready, more established, more sure, this episode is for you...

We Are Living Through a Shift

Against everything that's happening in the world, something is moving beneath our feet. Women are being called to lead, to create meaning, to shape what comes next. And that starts with each of us getting honest about what we're here to do, and refusing to compromise on it any longer.

Your Calling Is Not Indulgent

We've been sold this idea that following your soul's calling is unrealistic... some soft, ethereal concept that doesn't belong in a business conversation. I think it's the exact opposite. Your calling is real. It's the thing that won't leave you alone. And pursuing it isn't the opposite of strategy, it is the strategy.

The Reframe: Soul-Led Work Is Commercially Intelligent

Here's the paradigm shift: you don't choose your calling in spite of wanting to make money. You choose your calling and making money is the side effect. When you do the work that's genuinely aligned with who you are, you bring a depth to your business that simply doesn't exist when you're running the lighter version. That depth becomes magnetic. It's what makes people seek you out, invest at higher levels, and become ambassadors for your work.

Stop Keeping the Real Work for Later

So many women are keeping the truest version of their business hidden away in a Google doc - waiting until they're more established, until the timing's better, until they feel more ready. And later never comes. Or worse, it does, and with it comes the grief for all the time spent on the diluted version.

The Ceiling of Effort-Only Growth

You can build a business on best practices and hard work alone, but there's a ceiling to it. Growth built purely on effort without alignment is innately unsustainable. Real exponential growth, the kind that creates legacy and impact, is built on resonance, on how deep you're willing to go.

A Question to Sit With

If you weren't afraid of failing, and if you weren't afraid of what people would think, what would you build?

Free Resource

I’ve created a free workbook filled with prompts and questions to help you unearth what’s true for you. It’s deep work (I’m not apologising for it, but prepare to confront some demons) and it’s designed to help you take the first step towards doing the work that’s the fullest expression of what you’re here to do…

If you’d like a copy just message me the word 'Workbook' on Substack or Instagram, or email me gill@gillmoakes.com and I’ll send you a copy.

If you know something in your life or business has run its course but for some reason you can't quite explain, you're still showing up to it like nothing's changed... this one's for you.

I'm talking about the in-between: that uncomfortable space where you're no longer who you were, but not yet fully who you're becoming. And what happens when you keep pouring your energy into what you're leaving instead of redirecting it towards what's next.

In this episode:

~ Why the in-between is an identity shift, not a time management problem

~ My story of leaving corporate and the quiet rebellion of doing less

~ What "minimum viable presence" looks like in practice

~ How to stop marketing offers you no longer want to deliver

~ Giving yourself permission to pull back without calling it failure

~ Rituals for redirecting your energy towards who you're becoming

~ Three journaling prompts to sit with after you listen

Plus:

The Legacy & Leadership collaboration series with Deb D has kicked off. Watch the replay of the first livestream here: https://open.substack.com/pub/gillmoakes/p/legacy-and-leadership-part-one?r=1q9m3k&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Connect with Gill:

Substack

Instagram

LinkedIn

Website

Resouces

So, we just wrapped up part one of our Legacy & Leadership series - a conversation that will span the next four months via posts, notes, podcasts, and 4 livestreams where Deb D | The Intuitive HERoine and I will come together like we did this afternoon to talk about how we see legacy and what it means for us and the women in our respective worlds.

Deb and I share a vision of the world where women, to use Deb’s words, “remember who the f*ck they are and reclaim their heroine status”. It matters to us deeply that women understand that they’re part of a new age where we have crucial work to step up to.

I’m loving the timing of kicking off this series today, following Monday’s episode of ReWild Your Business - #201 - Who’s In Your Corner (The Truth About Successful Collaborations).

Enjoy this conversation - part two to follow next month, but in the meantime let’s open the conversation.

Fresh off the 200 episode milestone and I'm still glowing from all your gorgeous messages - thank you, you wonderful humans!

This week I'm talking about something that is genuinely close to my heart: collaboration. I don't mean the surface-level let's-swap-email-lists kind that gets bandied about online. I mean the kind that expands who you both are and what you're capable of doing.

What I Cover in This Episode

~ Why most collaboration advice misses the point

~ The four collaborations I'm currently involved in:

~ Collaboration as a creative accelerant

~ Where to actually find your collaborators

~ The green lights to look for

~ The red flags to watch for

~ How to make it work in practice

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Lauren Jones: Brand By Boudica, and our joint venture, Unapologetic Retreats

The Institute of Coaching Studies

Rebecca Gunter: Stoned Fruit, and our upcoming joint venture, Brandtherapy

Deb Driscoll, founder of the Be HER Collective, and our upcoming live series, Legacy & Leadership

Alicia Rodriguez

Becky Benfield-Humberstone

This podcast now lives on Substack - if you're not already subscribed, come and find me. All podcast episodes and long-form articles are free. If you'd like to join me live for hot seat coaching and co-working sessions a couple of times a month, The Wild Work membership is just £15/month.

👉 https://gillmoakes.substack.com/subscribe

In this raw and honest episode, I'm sharing why I've been quieter than usual lately and what's really been happening behind the scenes.

I've been going through a profound identity evolution over the past year - one that felt too big, too spiritual, too mystical to share while I was in the middle of it. If you've ever felt caught between who you're becoming and what you think you "should" be doing in your business, this episode is for you.

• 
  
• Why I chose silence over diluting my experience during this profound transformation
• 
  
• The internal battle between strategy and soul-led work (and why it felt like a wrestling match)
• 
  
• How trying to diminish your truth creates friction that stops you from moving forward
• 
  
• Why that friction isn't a problem to solve - it's information your system is giving you
• 
  
• What happens when you choose to honor the evolution of who you're becoming
• 
  
• The unexpected doors that open when you trust yourself more than you trust what others expect
• 
  

Journaling Prompts:

Where in your life and business are you showing up as a diminished version of yourself?
Where are you diluting your truth?
What friction are you experiencing that might actually be information about what you've outgrown?

Work With Gill
Ready to explore what's next for you? Book a Next Best Move call to get clarity on what you need to be focusing on.
https://www.gillmoakes.com/next-best-move

Connect with Gill:

Instagram: @gillmoakes
Substack: It's A People Thing: https://gillmoakes.substack.com/
Website: https://www.gillmoakes.com/

About the Podcast:
ReWild Your Business is the podcast for women doing the work their soul intended. It's about cutting away what doesn't belong to allow what does to thrive, finding simplicity in your work, and bringing the whole of who you are to the table.

If you've ever felt like you're drowning in systems, strategies, and 47-step funnels while the actual work you love takes a backseat, this one's for you...

The online business world has sold us a version of entrepreneurship that's unnecessarily complicated. The complex funnels, intricate launch sequences, social media strategies that require a degree in digital marketing, business models you can't explain without a flow chart. None of this is an accident.

The complexity isn't a bug in the system. It's an entire business model. Someone sells you a complicated system, it doesn't work (or it kind of works but feels exhausting), so you think you're doing it wrong. You must need the advanced training, the next level, the missing piece. And they've got you for another course, another certification, another mastermind.

Building a coaching business comes down to one sentence: Be visible where your people are, talk about what you do in a way that makes sense, have conversations with potential clients, make offers, deliver excellent work, and ask for testimonials and referrals.
That's it. Everything else is optimization for a business that's already working.

The Essentials

• 
  
• Clarity on who you serve and the transformation you create
• 
  
• A simple way to reach those people (ideally your own platform)
• 
  
• Consistent visibility and content that adds value
• 
  
• Actual conversations with potential clients (we're in a trust desert thanks to AI)
• 
  
• A clear offer that solves a real problem, priced appropriately for the value you create
• 
  
• Brilliant delivery so you can ask for referrals and testimonials
• 
  

Everything outside of these six things is optional.

This connects to identity work. Complexity sells because most people are operating from an identity that doesn't trust the simple path. If you fundamentally don't believe you're the kind of person who can build a successful business through straightforward means, through your actual talent, real relationships, and genuine value, then complexity feels necessary. It becomes armour, proof that you're a serious business person.

But the minute you step into the identity of someone who creates value, builds relationships, and makes offers from genuine authority, that complexity starts feeling like a chain around your neck.

Everyone who's built a successful coaching business did it through relationships first and systems later. Not the other way around.

Your Rewilding Move This Week:

Look at your business. All of it. The tools, systems, strategies, platforms, frameworks, social media channels. Ask yourself: what here is actually serving me versus what am I serving?
If you're spending more time managing your business infrastructure than actually building relationships, having conversations, making offers, and creating value, you've probably been sold complexity and now you're hiding behind it.

The antidote isn't another solution. It's subtraction.

Ready to Strip Back the Complexity?
If you're ready to build your business from a place of genuine authority and do the identity work around becoming the coach who trusts that it can be this simple, apply for a Next Best Move call with me. It's an hour of one-to-one time where we'll figure out what you actually need and what the simple version of your business could look like.
Apply Now: https://www.gillmoakes.com/next-best-move