A Personal Note From Orion
Welcome, my dear Stellar Life listeners! This is another power-packed episode where we delve into the transformative art of “leading like a woman” with the incredible Susanne Goldstein.
Susanne Goldstein is the Founder and CEO of DAREHuman. She’s a business coach, consultant, and strategist who has disrupted industries as a social entrepreneur, filmmaker, author, and creative visionary. Her extensive, purpose-driven career revolves around using storytelling, business, and technology to shape a fairer and more just world, guided by the values of People, Planet, and Profit (in that order).
This episode explores the heart of authentic leadership and how to break down barriers and redefine success. Susanne’s wisdom is a beacon guiding us toward a new paradigm of leadership that fosters collaboration, compassion, and positive impact. So, without further ado, let’s dive into the show!
In This Episode
- [01:44] – Susanne Goldstein highlights her passion for elevating humanity through purpose-driven entrepreneurship
- [10:21] – Susanne talks about the moment she realized the divide in the US was a deeper cultural issue and how it urged her to establish DAREHuman.
- [12:13] – Orion asks Susanne to provide more information about DAREHuman, prompting Susanne to explain the four archetypes of The Tao of DAREHuman.
- [23:40] – Susanne discusses the importance of balancing feminine and masculine energies and how wounded aspects of both can manifest in neediness and toxicity.
- [29:08] – Susanne describes what it’s like to lead like a woman.
- [33:31] – Susanne explains her observations on gender dynamics in the workplace, highlighting the challenges women face in leadership positions.
- [41:08] – Susanne defines the quantum leap and suggests how we can apply it to our personal growth and development.
- [49:36] – Susanne provides three tips for living a stellar life.
- [51:28] – Susanne shares information about the programs and training she offers, as well as how to get in touch with her.
About Today’s Show
Hey, Susanne. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here.
I’m so happy to be here. It was so fun to meet you recently. I’m so glad we’re having a chance to chat now.
Yeah. We met at a mastermind in North Carolina, and it was a delight. Every time I heard you speak, I was like, “Oh, I love listening to her. She’s so nice.” I’m very honored that you’re here, and I think this will be a beautiful conversation.
Before we dive in, please share a little bit about your background and how you discovered your passion.
I love this question. I have a crazy background, so I’m going to give you the two-minute version. My parents wanted me to be an engineer, so I trained as a mechanical engineer, but I wanted to be in the arts because I believe we can use the arts to change hearts and minds and make the world a better place. I’ve always been that kind of person.
We can use the arts to change hearts and minds and make the world a better place.
My family was very focused on my having a career where I knew I would be successful and there would always be jobs for me. But I am not that kind of person at all. I do not seek certainty. I’m an entrepreneur at heart.
I have had a very multi-passionate career that started at the National Theatre of Great Britain. I rejected going into engineering, my parents’ wish. I got a job by basically sitting in the lobby of the National Theater backstage in London for eight days until someone spoke to me. I was nice to everybody, kind, and curious. I just kept saying, “Will anybody talk to me? I really want to work here.” There were no jobs. This is pre-internet and pre-email.
I befriended some of the women behind the desk in the backstage area. On the eighth day, what I call my Hanukkah miracle, she said there was someone excited to talk to me. I met with this gentleman. He ran one of the three stages of the National Theatre and needed someone who knew engineering and theater. It was like my life suddenly came together because I had gotten a second degree in theater and film while I was at university, and that’s where I wanted my life to go.
My life has been this beautiful, meandering path of creating opportunities. I call it carrying a paintbrush. Imagine everywhere you want to go, anybody you want to talk to or meet, or a door you want to open. You take out this imaginary bucket of paint and a paintbrush. You paint a door, then you open that door, and you create opportunities for lucky things to happen.
I have been manifesting this way throughout my entire life and career. It took me into the film industry. I produced my first movie for Disney when I was 27 years old. I then left the film industry because I felt like the people I was around didn’t have the heart-centered, save-the-world way I was living my life.
I got involved in the dot-com industry very early on as an architect, thank you for my engineering degree, and ended up architecting first-version websites and web products for some of the biggest companies in the world. I did that for a while, then got into social entrepreneurship and taught at Harvard for a couple of years.
To lead like a woman is all about power, not competition—it’s about helping others rise. Share on XIt’s just been this amazing career of following my bliss and following the ignition switch of my passion. My passion has always been, “How can I help humanity make the world a better place?” Everything about my career, including what I’m doing now, has been based on that beginning.
Amazing. How and why did you paint a new door for what you’re doing now?
Since I left the film industry when I was 27, I have been a coach and a consultant. I was asked by a friend—it was many years ago now—if I could consult her diversity, equity, and inclusion consulting business. I said, “Sure.” I ended up going in and doing some work with her, and then she asked me if I would be her CEO. I agreed to come inside for a while and to build this practice. It was at the beginning when people were starting to talk about diversity and inclusion.
I was building this company for her, and then we had the 2016 election. At that time, I was running this D&I company. There was a president coming in who said all of these horrible things about people who were from diverse backgrounds. I thought, “How could this man get elected? This didn’t make sense to me.”
I asked her, “I’m this Ivy League educated, white, Jewish CEO of a D&I firm, and I know nothing about white rural Americans. I feel like to understand this country and to be in D&I, I need to understand everybody, not just the people that we like. How do you feel about me going and exploring some red states?”
Find your true north and deeply commit to your why.
She thought it was a great idea, so I crowdfunded about $45,000, hired a film crew, and went to the reddest county in all of Alabama, the reddest state in the US, the reddest county in the US.
I went there and brought this film crew with me with the idea of just getting to know this population and doing a listening tour. That was what I was there for. But what I found was so incredibly different from the world I had been living in. It was part of my job and responsibility at that time to show other people and give a voice to a group of people in this country who have been voiceless.
I ended up quitting my job and embedding in this county on and off for almost three years. I started hosting adult exchange programs, where people from Alabama would come to Boston and learn to walk in someone else’s shoes, and people from Boston would go to Alabama to learn to walk in someone else’s shoes. There were parts of it that were amazing, and parts of it were a complete disaster.
People did not get along. Everybody says, “Oh, we’re 80% the same.” We’re not. And it’s not that I dislike people. I had to go into pure radical acceptance and non-judgment to be able to be in a place where I was called every name on the planet. People asked if they could touch my horns because they had never met a Jewish person before. It was an incredible experience.
It is in the giving that we truly receive and in the service to others that we have our biggest success.
After I finished doing this, I went back to Hollywood, where my roots had started. I tried to set up this whole series I had shot as a documentary series. I met with all the studios, got an agent, and went to Netflix. Netflix loved what we had done. They thought it was beautiful, the stories were interesting, and the character development was great. But they said something that changed my life.
They said, “You know, Susanne, this is great stuff, but we only want stuff on our platform that’s going to be relevant in 10 years.” I literally burst out laughing. They’re like, “Why are you laughing?” I said, “Well, I really like your hopefulness, but this is the beginning of an even worse divide in our country than we’ve ever seen before. This is not the end. This isn’t going to end anytime soon. This is getting worse and worse.”
It’s not that one group is right and one group is wrong; it’s that the division is so huge on what we believe in. What I realized at that time is that the people on the Democratic side (the blue side) were so entrenched in their belief that you can just Kumbaya and, “Everything will be okay, we just can all get along, and the world’s going to be better everybody,” that I actually resigned.
Everyone who does not suffer from discrimination or hasn’t felt racism or anti-Semitism they’re still in this, “Oh, Kumbaya, let’s make peace.” As you said, this is a deeper issue. It’s not very new; it’s only a few thousand years old.
Exactly. I’ve always lived in coastal cities, and what I realized is that they tend to be more progressive. They tend to lean very far blue. Even though I am a blue-leaning person, I’m much more of a centrist than leaning far left.
At the time, I realized that many of my friends from these coastal cities were completely clueless about what was happening in the world. There was this entire middle and southern part of the country that they didn’t know existed, including Hollywood. I realized that I had a different job to do.
So I let the project go. It was called ExchangeNation. I dropped the project and started this new company called DAREHuman, which is about waking up humanity. It is about showing people all of the ins, outs, and crevices that they don’t know about inside themselves so that they can heal emotionally. We can then create more inclusion, peace, and getting along and hopefully rewrite the ship of humanity because we’re complacent.
The world is falling apart, and most people aren’t watching. So, I teach programs and help people see what’s happening in the world. That’s how I got to do what I’m doing now.
It’s really powerful, and we need more people like you. Most of us live in a bubble, including me. I’m sure there are a lot of things that I don’t even know. What is DAREHuman?
DAREHuman is my company. It’s a philosophy, honestly. It’s a movement. It’s also coaching, training, and programs to help people elevate. I focus a lot on women because I believe when women are empowered, the world changes. God knows that we’ve lived in a society for so long where women have been disempowered.
I believe that as part of DAREHuman, it’s our job to break open the matrix, to break open the patriarchy, to break open the hustle culture that we all ascribed to, and start living from a more collaborative, compassionate place, which is what feminine energetics is all about. It doesn’t mean that it’s lame and too soft. It means that it’s fierce and feminine.
The company is based around a philosophy we call The Tao of DAREHuman because the Tao Te Ching influenced my life so greatly, understanding that it is in the giving that we truly receive. It is in the service to others that we have our biggest success.
DAREHuman is about waking up humanity, showing people all of the ins, outs, and crevices they don’t know about inside themselves to heal emotionally.
We call the model of change that we work on The Tao of DAREHuman. It’s based on four archetypes: The Alchemist, The Artist, The Accelerator, and The Advocate.
The alchemist is basically know yourself. It’s about emotional intelligence and personal power. It’s learning how to set boundaries—when to say no, how to stand up for yourself, and how to decide what’s good for you instead of what the world tells you is good for you.
The artist is the one who lives their passion. It’s about finding your true north and committing so deeply to your why that everybody sees what’s possible for them by watching you live in your why.
The accelerator is the getting-sh*t-done of life. You got to make money, you got to get sh*t done, and you got to learn how to be in that masculine energy.
Most of humanity needs to go through alchemy. They’re not aware of their own emotions. They’re still in the reactive stage of life instead of the responsive stage of life. This is about personal power. It’s about learning to set boundaries, feeling the empowered voice, and balancing masculine-feminine energetics. All of that happens in the alchemist part of our model of change. If you don’t do that, you can’t be a force for good.
All of DAREHuman is about our true belief that every one of the eight billion people on the planet can be a force for good, but first, they need to be a force for good in their own lives. This model teaches you how to do that. This first piece of it, the alchemy, is the most crucial.
Once you know yourself or at least at various levels of knowing yourself, the next archetype is called the artist. The artist is all about living your purpose and your passion. It’s about finding your true north. The thing that lights you up and bounces you out of bed every day, that passion that will drive you through the days when things are hard, but you know you can handle it.
That piece of it is so critical because if people tap into the one thing they really care about, we can change the world. They just need to tap into their one thing. You don’t need to care about the thing I care about.
Every person on the planet can be a force for good, but first, they need to be a force for good in their own life.
If you want to build a bench in your local neighborhood because there’s no place to rest for the older adults walking around all the time, that can be one thing. But if you want to save every manatee on the planet, that can also be your one thing. Everybody gets to have one.
I like both goals.
You can have as many as you want. We’re trying to activate people to care. How you care is to find the thing you’re passionate about. You don’t have to care about everything. You just need to care about the things that matter to you.
The next piece of it is learning how to get sh*t done and make money because all of us need money to live. Until we get to a post-money society, we still need that energetic exchange that money allows us to do. It is the energy of commitment. We make that money by learning how to get sh*t done in our purpose-driven life. If you can live on purpose and make money at the same time, we stop having the conflict between “what I do for life” and “what I do for a living.”
The last archetype, we call the advocate, is the one about being the change you want to see in the world. If you can really know yourself, you can really live your purpose, if you can get sh*t done and make money, and you can go out and be that change, the ripple effect you can create just by being you is enormous.
That’s what we teach. It’s a really powerful model. It’s a really powerful method, and we’re hoping to create a movement out of it.
I recognize myself within all the archetypes. The get sh*t done one, though, is a big block of mine. Sometimes I don’t. Do you have any advice for me?
I have five programs for you, and I have plenty of advice. You feel like, to me, a woman I’ve met in person, a woman who’s very much in her feminine, very much in her power, but also has a wounded feminine part as we all do, and probably has a wounded masculine part as we all do. We all have masculine-feminine energetics inside us. There’s the healthy side of all energy and the lack of the healthy side of all energy.
The thing about getting sh*t done that’s so hard for people who it’s not natural to is that it’s not knowing the next step to take. I never recommend doing things in order. I always recommend planning things backward. You determine where you want to be.
We all have masculine-feminine energetics inside us. There’s the healthy side of all energy and the lack of the healthy side of all energy.
You say, “This is who I want to be next, this is what I want to do, this is something I want to create, or this is a book I want to write,” and you put in your vision the end product. And then you ask yourself, “What’s the thing I have to do right before it’s an end product?” If it’s a book, you have to get it printed.
Now, one of my big rocks for ensuring I get this book done, maybe rock number 20, is to get the book printed. That rock has lots of small, medium, and teeny-tiny rocks that are part of completing that big rock. What’s the step before getting it printed? Maybe big rock 19, approving of the manuscript.
There are lots of little pieces that go with approving the manuscript. It might be having someone copy-edit it for you, making sure the layout is okay, picking the cover, and all of the things you have to do to make the manuscript ready to go to print. That could be big rock 19.
And then you take a step further back. “What has to happen? What’s big rock 18? Oh, I need to finish writing it. What does it take to finish writing it?” So, there are lots of parts of writing the book that need to be planned out.
When you work from the end result to the current moment, which is “I want to write a book, now what?” Instead of going, “What’s my first step?” I better figure all of the steps out at once. We only take one step at a time, and we plan it backward so that we can just follow the breadcrumbs that we left for ourselves on how to get things done.
I’m still stuck on the wounded feminine and wounded masculine. I’m like, “I have a wounded feminine and a wounded masculine,” which is probably true.
This is the only time I don’t want to be unique. I don’t want to be a hurt person that has problems like all of us. If I have all the steps 1–20, and I’m still run by wounded feminine or wounded masculine, then I’ll get to the cover, and it will take me a year to decide on what to put on it. How do we get to the root cause?
Especially with myself, I’m a genius at planning things, telling people how to plan things, and breaking things down into steps. I’m great at organizing parties, for example. But when it comes to things that are about fulfilling my passion and self-fulfillment, I guess I’m still run by that wounded feminine, masculine, or wounded child. How do we address that? How do we boost that or heal that?
The first part is starting to recognize the different parts of us and which parts have bought into the myth that is modern society. In our modern society, women have had to act like men to be successful. There was a long period when women couldn’t even get a credit card without their husbands co-signing. There was a time when women couldn’t even get mortgages. There was a time when women didn’t have the right to vote.
Life and work should be harmonious rather than merely balanced.
When we finally were led into the workforce in this country during World War II, they needed us to work as part of the war effort. As soon as the war was over and the soldiers came back, we were kicked back into the households. Our power and potency in the working world were taken away, and we had to become housemakers again. Fine, but eventually, women were like, “Hey, you know what, I can do more and be more.”
They started applying to law school, medical school, getting into industry, or getting into corporate businesses, finances, and stuff like that. But to do that, they had to act like a guy. Men wore ties to work, so women started wearing a Betty business bow.
“If a guy needs to wear something around his neck, I need to wear something around my neck. If a guy gets stuff done through competition, I will start being competitive.” If the way that you work in that you can be successful in our current paradigm of work is to drive really hard, hustle really hard, sell really hard, promote yourself really hard, and do all this stuff, it is antithetical to who women are.
Every woman and man have naturally masculine and feminine dynamics inside us. Women tend to be more feminine and less masculine. Men tend to be more masculine and less feminine, but we all need both. It’s why the yin and yang symbols fit together beautifully. We need both to make a whole.
It’s one of my favorite symbols of all. Remember, at Maverick1000, that’s the card they pulled. That’s why I stood up and spoke, because they were asking about the card, and there was a Yin-Yang symbol. I spoke about it, and it said, “Out of the mess comes elegant order,” which was perfect for me at that moment. I loved it. I do a lot of work actually around balancing femininity and masculinity. I did a lot of work on myself, so I know it firsthand. You say that you still saw wounded feminine and wounded masculine. Can you elaborate on that?
If the strong feminine is not allowed to flourish in contemporary society, parts of us are still trying to be seen.
If the strong feminine is not allowed to flourish in contemporary society, there are parts of us that are still trying to be seen. I’m not saying this about you. I’m saying this about women or humans in general. A wounded part of the feminine is the needy part. A strong, fierce femme is not needy. In fact, she’s leaned back in her power, and she’s like, “You want this? You got to come after me.”
Many of us have been brought up in a society where we don’t necessarily know how it runs. We’re like, “Hey, wait, that guy didn’t call me back. Let me grab it, let me try to force it and control it,” because that’s the behavior we’ve learned. But it doesn’t fit with us, so there are all these wounded parts that get left out.
The same happens with the wounded masculine. The wounded masculine shows up in toxicity, in nastiness, and in being inappropriate in how we speak to each other.
The powerful feminine has high self-worth and high self-confidence. Self-worth is knowing you’re lovable, even though there’s no one telling you there that you’re loved. Self-confidence is, “I can figure it out, even though I’ve never done it before.”
I have those traits, too. I just feel like, as human beings, depending on what we’re going through in life, some days we can show up powerful and some days we can show up less. Is there a way to make it more consistent, where you connect to power more, either your feminine or masculine power?
Yeah, you heal. You have to do the healing work. One of the biggest teachers in my life was some of the work that Tony Robbins called The Six Human Needs. Whether you like Tony or not, it doesn’t matter. It’s such brilliant teaching.
It’s the work that he did based on Maslow’s work. It’s really about whether we’re driven by our needs for certainty and significance or our needs for uncertainty, love and connection, growth, or contribution. Those are the six.
What happens is when we are in a position where we need to get sh*t done, and we’re not, it may be the wounded maiden, the wounded feminine saying, “Gosh, I just want someone else to do this for me. I don’t have to do it myself. I shouldn’t have to. I’m so brilliant. I’m so amazing. I shouldn’t have to sit down and do the work.” That’s wounded feminine. I’m not saying that’s you; that’s just wounded. We all need to figure out how to step into our masculinity and get sh*t done.
I like that. I’ve done so many programs from Tony Robbins. I did all his programs. I really love his teaching.
Sometimes, you know things, but then life hits, and you keep forgetting. You need more reminders. This podcast is a really good reminder for a lot of listeners to remember that we do need to heal and that no matter what happens in our lives, we take responsibility. We own it. We heal. Heal yourself, love yourself, and take care of yourself.
It needs to be an everyday mantra: “Love yourself. Heal yourself. You’re safe. You’re good enough.” If we brainwash ourselves every day that we are loved, we belong, and we’re safe, nobody will have to feel the need to fight with anybody else, be less than, or be more than.
Women must break the matrix—the patriarchy and the hustle culture—and start living from a more collaborative, compassionate place. It is what feminine energetics is all about. Share on XJust be, be loved, and connect to the spirit and expansion. Give your all because, like you said, when you give, you receive so much. Give your all without giving up on yourself.
That’s a good boundary. The challenge is that most people don’t stop to ask themselves what they’re feeling because their feelings are too painful. It’s very easy for people to just go with the flow. The reason so many women are leaving corporate America is that they are burned out from playing the masculine-energy hustle game.
Meanwhile, all of this brain drain is happening at these big companies, and women are starting their own businesses in droves because they’re like, “I don’t want to work that way anymore. I want to work in a way that’s much more natural for me, that I can be in my creativity, compassion, big heart, and desire to make this world better.”
I’m going to have to step into my masculine now and again, get some sh*t done, and make some money, but the rest of the DAREHuman movement is all feminine energy. Knowing yourself and living your purpose is feminine energy. Getting sh*t done is masculine energy. Making money is masculine energy, but receiving the money is feminine energy. You are being the change you want to see in the world; that’s feminine energy. It’s a lot of feminine energy, but we live in a very masculine energy world.
What does it look like to lead like a woman?
It’s very different. It’s about power, not force. It’s about collaboration, not competition. It’s about reaching back and helping others rise, as opposed to when someone’s getting close to where you are, smacking them on the top of the head so they’ll fall. It’s about understanding that life and work are meant to be in harmony, not balance.
Knowing yourself and living your purpose is feminine energy.
There’s no such thing as balance. Balance means you have different things you’re trying to trade off time and attention for. Harmony is when they work together. There are so many ways we can be in our influence and impact as opposed to our demandingness, in our striving for money being the only thing that matters. We get to rewrite all the rules.
That’s amazing. Can you give me an example of a client who changed and switched from being more masculine-driven to feminine-driven?
Let me give an example a lot of people can relate to. I’ll give one that’s not work, and then if you want, I can give one that is work. Many women I work with have the same full-on, bad-ass, control-oriented way of working that they do everything in life. Many of them are single, either divorced or never married.
What happens is they go on a date with a guy. In their heads, they’re going through their mental checklist and like, “He fits this.” They haven’t even decided if they like the guy. They’ve just decided that he fits all the things. When the guy dropped her off at the house, and the exhaust was still in the air, they picked up their phone and said, “I had a really good time. When can I see you again?”
That is pure masculine energy. They’re driving the situation. They’re trying to control it. They’re saying, “I like you. When can I see you again?” They haven’t thought about, “Do I like this person? Did they make me feel good? Did I feel sexy and beautiful?” They didn’t ask any of those questions. They just saw someone who, on paper, makes sense.
They’re trying to force it to work as opposed to going on a date, being present, not worrying about if this is the one, the one you’re going to marry, or the one you’re going to have five more dates with. It’s being present at the moment and asking yourself the question, “Am I having fun? Am I enjoying this conversation? Am I being present? Is this making me feel like, ‘Oh, I can’t wait to do this again?’” And then getting home that night, and being in the joy of the, “I can’t wait to do this again,” and being okay if the guy calls again and if he doesn’t call again.
Yes, I totally agree with you. Most women are driven by their masculinity, and this is exactly why they don’t have relationships. But if somebody is listening, this is what you do, and you’re willing to open up and take it in, maybe rewind and listen to what Susanne just said a few more times on repeat, and then implement that, then your relationship life will change. I promise you.
Service to others is where we’ll find our greatest success.
This is why, honestly, I have a side hustle business as a dating coach. So many women who come through my world cannot find the guy because they’re looking for perfection, and they come at it with the same judgment and discernment they bring to work. “Should I do this deal at work?” It gets translated as, “Should I do this deal with this guide, and how can I make it happen?”
Dating is not a business deal; it’s a matter of the heart. If you’re not present and not in your heart, it won’t work. It might work if both of you are very left-brained. This will just be a business deal, but I don’t see it as long-lasting or loving and beautiful.
Right. That’s an example of a change many of my clients have gone through on a personal level, but I have so many other stories. I can tell billions of them.
Yeah, I’m sure. What does it look like in the workforce when a woman leads compared to a man?
I’ll give you an example that happens a lot. Women are often held to different standards than men, even though men don’t believe that’s true. The reason is that what got a woman here will not get her here. What she did to get from where she started her career to the level of success she now is to act like a guy.
She competed, scrambled, clawed, and did everything she needed to do to work her way up to a certain level of success. But once she gets to that level, it’s not that women aren’t allowed up above; it’s that the rules for getting up above are different.
Here’s what most of my clients hear. “We think you’re really capable and an amazing individual contributor, but the problem is that you’re not that likable. People don’t like working for you.” I would say 90% of my clients hear this. They hear it because what they’ve had to embody to get to a certain level of success is now being held against them, whereas guys who have used the same techniques to get there are now invited to the golf game where many decisions are made.
Making a positive difference in the world comes from feminine energy. However, we live in a world that is dominated by masculine energy, so it's important that we understand ourselves better to harness that energy. Share on XThey’re invited to a sporting event, where many decisions are made. They are included, whereas women are now excluded because “We don’t like you that much. Do you know why? Because you don’t act like the nice women who are just willing to do whatever we want.”
How do you solve that?
It’s tough. What I do with my clients is that I work with women who are at or just below that cusp to learn how to lead like a woman within your organization. Many of them have gotten to the point where they don’t even like people that much because they’ve had so much negative feedback from people that they’re just like, “Screw it, I’m just going to do my job.”
It’s helping them fall in love with humanity again. Once they do, they can start leading themselves and the people around them differently, and then people will love them. This is such a huge transformation.
Sometimes, they need to leave the company to reestablish themselves as a new person at a different company, but there are times when they can work their way back into a leadership position, and then we get to start to change the organization from the inside out. It’s super hard to do from the outside.
That woman had this internal shift in understanding she needed to lead like a woman. I still don’t understand what leading like a woman means or what she did completely differently. Is she just kinder and more loving?
Her leadership style is not about command and control. Her leadership style is about collaboration, compromise, and compassion. Her leadership style isn’t like, “Hey, I had to work this hard to get here, so you should have to work this hard to get here.” She starts leading differently.
She leads by example. She shows what it’s like to have a life and work at the same time. She leads meetings differently from a more collaborative standpoint, as opposed to a command and control standpoint. She does reviews differently,
Whereas a lot of men will say, “I’m doing a 360 review.” They’ll make a few phone calls, like, “What do you think of so and so?” And then they’ll take that feedback, put it through their own filter, and bring it back to the woman and say, “This person doesn’t like you. That person doesn’t like you. They think you’re good at your job but hard to get along with.”
That’s not a real review, whereas women will do the work to learn the challenges of the people who work for them. When you lead like a woman, you’re trying to help someone rise up instead of figuring out every reason not to allow them to rise up.
When you lead like a woman, you try to help someone rise up instead of finding every reason not to allow them to rise up.
I think the world should be led by women, for real.
I do, too.
There will be less war and more love, care, and kindness. I know that men are capable of that, but in our world, they don’t demonstrate it, especially because many of the people who get into the highest positions have some degree of narcissism or are very selfish.
Power is corrupting.
Yeah, power is corrupting for sure. You see people that get into positions of power, and they change. Some say that power or money is like a magnifying glass to who you are. If you were mean when you didn’t have much money but didn’t show at the moment you had a lot of it, it magnified. But I also understand that it corrupts even good people.
How do we not corrupt ourselves? We need to know who we are, connect to love and light, be conscious, and be on our tippy toes because the ego is very deceiving.
They say that doing emotional growth, personal growth work, asking yourself these hard questions, and facing the parts of your personality you’re not very proud of, that work is ten times more energy-consuming than physical labor. We also need a group of people who are willing to go through the pain.
I had a client once. Every day in our audio program, where we connect in between calls, saying, “It’s so hard.” I said, “If you keep telling yourself it’s hard, the only thing you’ll receive back is it’s hard.” I believe in the zero-balanced body. I teach a lot of tools because I believe if people have them, they can install them in their preconscious layer of mind and pull them out when needed.
For those who can’t see me, I’ve got my hands together like in a prayer position. One of these hands represents a negative charge, and one represents a positive charge. We know what happens when negative and positive charges come together. They connect, and they stick together because it’s like magnets.
But if one of these is your positive-charged hand, and you give away positive energy, meaning I’m pushing out towards other people’s positive energy, the only thing my body currently has a void for that it can draw in to bring me back to zero is positive energy.
The opposite is also true. If I give out negative energy by putting my right hand forward that I’m giving you—I’m being mean, I’m being demanding, I’m doing all this stuff—the only thing I have a void for to draw back into me, to bring back to zero balance is negative energy.
What we give out is what we receive, which is absolutely true. It’s true in the quantum, it’s true in the 3D, it’s true everywhere. But people don’t realize this. They don’t realize that they get what they give. If you’re constantly saying to the universe, to yourself, “It’s hard,” all you’re going to get back is hard.
That’s powerful. Thank you for sharing that. On your website, you mention a quantum leap. What is a quantum leap, and how can we make one?
The powerful feminine has high self-worth and self-confidence. Self-worth is knowing you're lovable, even if no one tells you you're loved. Self-confidence is the ability to figure things out, even though you've never done it before. Share on XA quantum leap in physics is when an electron goes around the nucleus and literally jumps from one energetic state to the next. If there are different potential fields that an electron can exist in, and it’s in n=1, it can literally, anytime it wants, jump to n=2. It doesn’t go from n=1 to n=1.1, 1.2, 1.3. It doesn’t travel to a new state. It literally leaps to a new state. That’s what a quantum leap means.
What it means for us is that when we decide in our journey that there’s a new state we want to reach, and we decide what that is, we visualize it, and we say to ourselves, “That’s who I’m going to be next,” because it’s about who you are, not what you do that matters. If you decide you’re going up-level to be a new ‘who,’ it can happen as soon as the decision is made if you know how to transform yourself.
I actually teach a methodology. I’ve been upgrading myself like software since I was 27 years old. You upgrade your phone; you download new upgrades. I upgraded my mind and have been doing this for decades, giving myself themes.
My theme this month—I make myself wallpaper on my phone—says, “Expansion is present in every moment.” My reminder this whole month is this could be a moment to expand. While I’m on this podcast interview with Orion, this is a moment for me to expand. That’s my theme.
If I’m not living the theme, I’m closing myself down and imagining, “Oh, God, I’ve got this podcast to do, and I don’t know if it’s going to do anything for me.” If I had that attitude, that’s not an expansion.
The expansion is, “What is the possibility? Who can I become at the end of this interview? What growth am I looking to have? What amazing change can I invoke in a month or a year?” It’s about deciding who you want to be and living as if it’s true.
That’s amazing. When I did Date with Destiny, I wrote my relationship vision. We had to write, “Who do I want?” But the most important question was, “Who do I need to become to attract that person?” That was a very difficult day for me because I figured out that I needed to be kinder, more loving, and more feminine. “What type of person am I going to be?”
I never thought about those things. “Who do I need to become for that dream person of mine?” I wrote it down, prayed, and had a breakdown. A breakthrough in a very cathartic experience at 1 AM in front of a little waterfall at the hotel; 48 hours later, I met Stephan. He proposed to me nine days later in a hot air balloon in Vegas, and I said no.
What?
Yes. That was, for sure a quantum leap. I want to do it again. Also, there’s some more to this equation. Surrendering to your higher self or higher power is a big deal. It’s a big part of it.
Or even connecting to your higher self, which most people don’t even know what that is.
I’m a true believer that we’re spiritual beings having a human experience. I call this the ‘meat suit’ because we’re just embodying it for a while. Many people are very attached to this lifetime. Therefore, they feel like the things that happened to them in this lifetime are extremely meaningful. For me, this journey in this lifetime in this body is just the expansion of whatever I’m supposed to know for whatever’s next.
“We’re citizens of eternity, not citizens of time.” – Michael Bernard Beckwith
If we can constantly have a learner’s mind and open mind way of thinking about our life as a long experience as opposed to a short journey, we can think of ourselves. Michael Bernard Beckwith is one of my favorites. He always says, “We’re citizens of eternity, not citizens of time.” We step into this lifetime in what he calls the parentheses in time. That’s the 70, 80, 90 years you’re in this vessel.
It’s so funny. This morning, I woke up really irritated. Everything irritated me. Even the way that the hot chocolate was, every little thing was irritating. And then I stopped. I was like, “Orion, take yourself ten years from now and look back at this moment. How significant is this irritation?” I was like, “Okay, it’s not significant. Calm down.” Then I got irritated again, and I had to remind myself, “Orion, ten years from now, look back at this moment.” I was like, “Okay, Orion, I got it.”
I have a lot of conversations with myself, as you can see. In meditation, sometimes I hear a voice that says, “Love yourself.” I hear that, almost like my guides or my higher self. It’s just a reminder.
We keep forgetting who we are, how huge we are, and that we are a part of eternity. We get caught up in this moment in 3D reality, which is great. Our soul came here to experience 3D realities, have a soul correction, and expand.
I like that expansion because expansion is wonderful. Tony Robbins says, “You don’t grow, you die.” Every day, we want to expand, ask tough questions, and get a little bit better. Sometimes, it’s two steps forward and one step backward. That’s totally fine as long as we keep going forward and never give up on ourselves.
Most people would meet me and have no idea what my life has been like. I tried to take my life twice. I had PTSD for 35 years from some really horrible experiences that happened to me. I’ve dealt with chronic pain since I was 16. I like to show people that you can completely change who you are. You can do it. It’s a choice. To go on a journey is not for the light-hearted. Waking up, in general, is the hardest thing you’ll ever do in your life.
It’s terrible.
And the most worthwhile.
It’s like Neo in The Matrix. When he gets disconnected, and everything is so terrible and gray, he’s in this spaceship. It’s not as beautiful as the matrix. Sometimes I think, “Oh, my God, I wish I was just ignorant and just live my life very oblivious to everything,” but I don’t. I like knowing more, and I like being more. Sometimes, it’s hard because it’s hard to find people that get you. It’s still okay because you will find the people that get you.
You expand, and you elevate. Sometimes, there is a gap between reaching out to more expanded and elevated people who did the work. It’s not that I’m better than anybody else, but I did and do the work religiously every day.
And that’s what it takes.
Yeah, that’s what it takes. It’s incredible that you overcame what you overcame. I don’t know the situation, but I’m sure it was excruciating. You got the diamond out of the melting pot—that’s not the right analogy. But you know what? You’re out of the coal. Now you’re shining your light as a diamond.
Yeah. Pressure definitely made a diamond out of me.
That’s gorgeous. I guess that’s why I was so gravitated toward you because I felt your energy, and I felt your light. Usually, the people who suffer a lot and overcome a lot have this very magnetic personality. It’s because they worked on themselves. It’s because they are holding on to their light; it’s because they never gave up. We all can do it if we just want to. We just have the desire. If you don’t have the desire, you can pray for the desire.
That’s right.
What are your three top tips for living a stellar life?
I guess it’s deciding what stellar means to you. That’s a really important thing. People constantly crave success that they haven’t defined, like, “I’ll be happy when,” but they haven’t defined what ‘happy when’ means, deciding what success looks like, what living that way is for you. For me, it was inner peace.
I had it on my list-of-things-I-wanted-to-do-before-I-died list. I have had this list since I was a kid, like jumping out of a plane, etc. One of them was to get inner peace. It took decades, but I knew for myself that setting that as an intention of something I wanted to achieve was the thing that would get me there. You don’t achieve the things you don’t go for.
Celebrate and have gratitude every step of the way.
Step one is knowing what you want your life to look like: stellar. Become the person who could live that life. Become that person, the who. And maybe the third is to celebrate and have gratitude every step of the way, as opposed to just saying, “I’ll be grateful when I’m there.”
Nice. Yeah, that’s so beautiful. That’s amazing. How can people get to work with you, participate in your five programs, learn from you, and hire you as a speaker?
I’m speaking a lot now, so that’s super fun. The best way to find me is on Instagram, which is @followsusanne. That’s probably the best way to find me.
It’s a perfect embedded command for a title.
I wished I had done it purposefully. When Twitter first started, my name had 16 characters, and you can only have 15, so I had to come up with something besides my full name. Now, you can have longer names, but that’s how it started. And now I’m @followsusanne everywhere—Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter.
That’s the best way. From there, you can always get to my Linktree and learn about different programs I run or join my community. I have an online community for entrepreneurs and an online community for changemakers, so I have two different spaces. I have lots of free programs. I do free training every Monday in my community called PowHER. It’s a community for women. I do free training there every Monday.
If you’re an executive woman looking for the transformation of a lifetime so that you can have the life, the job, and the career you want and not give up your career aspirations for all of the other stuff, find me about my Lead Like a Woman program. It is literally the piece of work that is going to change my life and the world around me. I’m so proud of this work. That will be a good way too.
If you’re looking for a speaker, I speak on a lot of different topics, specifically around what I call inconvenient leadership, which is how you lead yourself to be inconvenienced in this lifetime so we can make the world better, and also a lot about masculine and feminine dynamics and energetics so that men can become allies for the work that we do.
Beautiful. Thank you, Susanne, for leading like a woman and for teaching us what it means to lead like a woman.
Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure.
You’re just awesome. I really like you. You’re amazing. It was wonderful meeting you in person. Thank you for taking the time to have this conversation with me and with our listeners. I highly appreciate it. You rock. Thanks.
Thank you. So much love.
And thank you, listeners. Remember to decide what stellar means to you. You have to find your success. Become the person who can leave that life that you really dream of. Celebrate and have gratitude for everything you are, everywhere you are, and everything you have or don’t have; just have gratitude and have a stellar life. This is Orion. Till next time.
Your Checklist of Actions to Take
{✓}Embrace a meandering path. Do not hesitate to pursue various opportunities and chart your own distinct path.
{✓}Create opportunities. Visualize where you want to go and who you want to meet, and open doors by taking proactive steps towards your goals.
{✓}Manifest your goals through kindness, curiosity, and persistence. Practice radical acceptance to foster understanding and connection in challenging situations.
{✓}Acknowledge the societal pressure on women to adopt masculine traits for success. Understand the historical context and how it has shaped expectations for women in various fields.
{✓}Be open to both feminine and masculine energies. Embrace the balance between these energies, recognize their strengths, and leverage them in different situations.
{✓}Heal feminine and masculine wounds. Identify and address wounded aspects of the feminine and masculine within yourself. Recognize behaviors that stem from societal conditioning and work toward healing. This allows authentic, empowered expressions of both energies.
{✓}Cultivate consistent connections with both feminine and masculine powers. Explore healing practices to maintain a balanced and empowered state.
{✓}Establish boundaries that allow you to give your all without compromising your well-being. Recognize when to step into masculine energy for productivity and when to embrace feminine energy to receive and create positive change.
{✓}Practice regular self-reflection to explore feelings and address emotional challenges. Embrace healing practices to navigate painful emotions and promote personal growth.
{✓}Connect with Susanne Goldstein through her website, susannegoldstein.com, and explore her programs, communities, and free training sessions. Follow Susanne on Instagram (@followsusanne) for updates and insights.
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About Susanne Goldstein
Susanne Goldstein is a changemaker on a mission to elevate humanity.
She is the Founder and CEO of DAREHuman, a highly sought-after business coach, consultant and strategist, an industry-disrupting social entrepreneur, filmmaker, author, and creative visionary.
Susanne has built an expansive, purpose-driven portfolio career, finding creative ways to use storytelling, business and technology to help humans build a fairer and more just world. She lives by the values of people, planet, and profit, in that order.
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