EVOLVE BLOG
Prefer to listen? You can hear the original podcast episode here.
After the Grind, Before Retirement: The crucial business phase no one is talking about
I remember as a kid playing business owner in my periwinkle colored bedroom in the suburbs of Philly. I had a Trapper Keeper that I would pretend was a clipboard, and my stuffed animals were employees who would rush into my office so I could sign off on important documents. I would put on cherry chapstick and pretend it was lipstick, and play "She Works Hard for the Money" by Donna Summer on my little tape player over and over while I practiced my business owner signature.
According to the movies of the 80s, successful women wore power suits, pantyhose, shoulder pads, and lots of AquaNet. As far as I could tell at 8 years old, being a business owner meant you were busy, made tough decisions, and had lots of people working for you. You were featured in the newspaper for receiving awards from the Chamber of Commerce. And you said things like, "It's not personal, it's business."
The Moment Everything Changed
Decades later, after I had built coaching programs, restaurants, real estate investment companies, and a high ticket wellness program, I looked at all the businesses I had built. People ran into my office to have me sign off on important documents on actual clipboards. I had the money. I had the teams. I had the clients. I even had the awards and the newspaper articles. I had done everything that 8-year-old me had set out to do.
But when I was a kid imagining all this, I imagined I would feel powerful, energized, and happy once I made it.
There was this moment one afternoon where I looked around my office. Papers everywhere, my phone had a bunch of unanswered notifications on the screen, a bunch of people were waiting in my Zoom room. And I thought, "Wow, is this it?"
It hit me all at once. I was done with the hustle. I was tired of working hard for my money. I was done with this level of work so that someday I could enjoy my life because the someday was here and I wasn't enjoying it.
When Someday Becomes Now
When you're 20, 30, even 40, the grind makes sense. You're moving towards something. But once you're 45 or 50, the someday becomes now. Today.
I swear the day I turned 50, I started seeing the world very differently. I was no longer moving towards something. I was there. And I wanted to reap the rewards of all that hustle I had done for decades.
I realized that the way I learned to build business, the way I learned to scale, the way I learned to support my team and my clients, none of it was serving me in this phase of life.
I wasn't ready for retirement. I wasn't burned out. I wasn't willing to just walk away. But I was no longer willing to continue with that level of effort and hustle. I was ready to receive the living part, the enjoying part, the experience. I wanted to experience all the things that the work had gotten me.
It took me about two years to wrap my head around how I wanted to do it, to readjust, to redesign how my business operated so that it supported who I was now, not who I was in my 30s.
What I discovered is that there's a phase of life no one has named yet. And if you're 45 to 60, you're living in it right now.
The Traditional Three Phases
Traditionally, when people talk about women's life phases, there are three: maiden, mother, crone. I'm not in love with the name of that last one, but that's what it's been called for a long time, so we're going to roll with it.
The maiden phase is discovery. Becoming. Exploring. Opening yourself up to the world. It's the phase I was in when I was imagining what it would be like to be a business owner and work hard for my money.
The mother phase is creation, expansion, nurturing, building. Whether you have literal children or not, this is the phase where you're creating, growing, making things happen. This is typically the grinding for the future phase.
The crone phase is wisdom, distilling, releasing, knowing. This is the elder, the wise woman phase.
For generations, that's how it worked. You moved from maiden to mother to crone. There wasn't anything in between. They essentially followed the bleeding phases in a woman's life: prepubescent, fertile, and menopausal stages.
Why GenX Is Different
But those of us born in the 70s and 80s, the ones who grew up with hair bands and Madonna and hip hop—we're Gen Xers (with some late boomers and older millennials in the mix). We have a whole different world available to us that was never available to the women before us.
We're the first generation of women who could own property without a male co-signer. The first to have our own bank accounts. The first to build businesses we could legally control. We're some of the very first women to ever play organized sports. We were some of the first women to purposely push off having children until later in life so we could have careers, or to consciously not have children at all.
The healthcare system is finally studying women and illness as it relates to us specifically. Most of the studies before were done on men only. And we are currently the generation that has the longest life expectancy of any generation.
Many of us are the major breadwinners in our households, caring for generations both older and younger while also having careers.
All of these shifts and freedoms have created a new phase that did not exist before.
Welcome to the Matriarch Phase
There's a fourth phase that's emerged between the mother phase and the crone phase. I'm calling it the matriarch phase.
This is the phase for those of us who aren't done yet. We still have so much more to offer. We're just no longer willing to give it at the level we did to get to where we are now.
We're not ready for retirement. We're not ready to step back and just dispense wisdom from the sidelines. We're not ready to wind down. But we're also not willing to keep grinding the way we did in our 30s and 40s.
I'm 52. The idea of being a senior citizen is laughable to me. When I drive past those communities with signs that say "55 plus," my mental image of what a 55 plus person is does not match how I feel.
I'm out of the mother phase. I'm done with building things from scratch, proving myself, taking care of everyone else, and hustling for someday. I'm done.
But I'm not ready for the crone phase. I'm not ready to retire. I'm not ready to be the wise elder shriveling up in the corner, mixing my potions and becoming invisible.
I'm somewhere in between, and I have another good 20 or 30 years of creating, leading, and impacting. I just don't want to mentally, emotionally, or physically give at the levels I've given to this point. I want to receive, enjoy, flow.
I'm not ready to shut the company down and live on a beach somewhere. I mean, there are moments that sounds lovely, but I also know who I am. After a week or two, I'd be bored out of my mind.
What the Matriarch Phase Looks Like
This is the matriarch phase. This is authority, governing, deciding, reorganizing, refining, leading.
You're not building your queendom anymore. You're ruling it.
You're not proving yourself. You're wielding the power you've earned.
You're not establishing yourself. You're operating from your established authority.
If we look at this from the bleeding phases, this is the most transformative stage physically. Our bodies are weaning off the hormones created by our ovaries and learning how to find balance with just the hormones produced by our adrenal glands. Doing this successfully without crashing, hot flashing, or murdering your husband for chewing too loudly takes intentional focus on our needs, our bodies, our purpose.
And most of us weren't trained to do that. Gen Xers pride ourselves on being hyperindependent and handling all of the things. We are superpower level good at that. But taking care of ourselves? That's a new skill we need to accept and learn because we were so focused on everyone else for so long.
Why This Matters for Your Business
Here's the thing: a lot of women are waffling and really struggling in this phase right now. They can feel something has shifted. They know they don't want to keep operating the way they have been, but they don't know what to do about it.
They're being told they're burned out. They're being told to scale back, slow down, maybe it's time to retire.
That's bullshit.
We're not burned out. We're in a different phase. A phase that needs a different strategy.
If you keep grinding the way you did in your mother phase—overfunctioning, trying to prove yourself, moving at breakneck speed—your body will become overloaded.
You're changing hormonally, metabolically, chemically. You're changing in ways that no other phase goes through quite the same way.
Women who aren't intentionally recalibrating for this phase are experiencing chaos, burnout, illness, business collapse. And it can happen quickly.
Not because you're not capable. Not because you're doing something wrong. Not because you can't handle it.
Because you're using a mother phase strategy in a matriarch phase body. And it doesn't work.
I had a high ticket program for 15 years focusing on helping women reverse autoimmune diseases like diabetes, Hashimoto's, celiac disease, and chronic fatigue. Perimenopause was often the last straw before autoimmune or a chronic illness would hit. Crawling your way back from that is a heck of a lot harder than simply stopping it in the first place. And most women have had years of warning signs before the actual diagnosis.
The first step in all of that is deciding that something needs to change.
And this matriarch stage is the perfect time for women to make that change.
You're not ready to retire. You have genius, purpose, and so much more to give. But the way you built your business doesn't serve who you are now.
Intentionally stepping into the matriarch phase is a crucial business decision.
Those who just get swept up in it, who don't recalibrate, who keep trying to push through using old strategies—they struggle. They feel stuck. They suffer physically, emotionally, and financially.
And from my experience, the women who step into this phase with precision, purpose, and support? They thrive.
Creating a New Path
This phase did not exist for the women before us. My grandmother didn't have this. My mother didn't have this. They went from mother to crone. There was no in between.
But we have it. We're living it.
We're doing what Gen X has always done. We're creating a new path, a new way that looks different than the paths of the women who came before us and different from the women coming behind us.
This matriarch phase is new, and we're figuring it out in real time.
I've spent the last several years helping women move through this transition intentionally—physically and strategically.
Because here's what I know with 100% certainty: You don't have to figure this out alone.
In fact, you can't, or you would have done it by now.
This doesn't work in a vacuum inside your head. You need to get out of your head and out of your own way.
This isn't a "throw some HRT at it and do some yoga and it'll fix itself" kind of situation.
You can't keep pushing through old strategies hoping they'll eventually feel right again.
There's a reason they feel wrong. It's because they don't fit you now, in this phase. You're a different woman than the woman you were that got you to this point.
You no longer have to choose between success and yourself.
There is a way to redesign how your business operates so it can support who you are now. So you can receive, enjoy, and flow while still creating, leading, and impacting.
That's what the matriarch phase makes possible.
Where to Start
This phase didn't exist for our mothers and grandmothers. We're creating it in real time. And that means you get to decide what it looks like for you.
You don't have to figure this out alone. You don't have to keep pushing through strategies that don't fit anymore, hoping they'll eventually feel right again.
If you're in this phase and you can feel something needs to shift but you're not sure what, I created the Richly Resourced programs for this.
If you don't know where to start, start with the Richly Resourced Audit.
It shows you exactly where you are in your business, where it's out of alignment with who you are now, where you're wasting energy, where the gold is, and if you're digging in the wrong direction.
Because here's the thing: you're probably a lot closer than you think. You just need to dig in a slightly different direction.
The Audit is a 20-page personalized assessment that covers your business, your body, your nervous system, your finances, your priorities—all of it. Plus, you get two sessions with me where we walk through it and build your specific strategic plan.
Learn more about the Richly Resourced Audit →
Welcome to the Matriarch Phase. I'm glad you're here.
Want support growing your aligned business so you remain energized and fully resourced?
Legal
Privacy Policy
Terms & Conditions
Connect
