Ep 41. How Inner Alignment Fuels Business Evolution with Sloane
You’ve built the business, achieved the goals, checked every box, but something still feels missing.
In this episode, we explore the invisible burnout that often hides behind high achievement and the journey to rediscover who you are beyond your title, your company, and your success story.
Through real, grounded conversation, we unpack what happens when your outer success no longer matches your inner truth, and how aligning from within changes everything: your energy, your clarity, your leadership, and your legacy.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
Redefine your identity beyond your professional role
Why overworking signals disconnection, not discipline.
The surprising truth about self-judgment and why most of it starts within.
How to realign when your professional identity no longer fits.
“The way you feel on the journey is how you’ll feel at the destination”, why no external win can fix an inner misalignment.
What “True Pleasure” really means, the calm, alive energy that comes when you’re fully connected to yourself
Because real success isn’t about doing more, it’s about feeling whole again.
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Sloane guides powerful women in creating their unique version of success through her peak performance path designed especially for women. This path has a foundation of true pleasure and feeling good on the inside first and then creating and connecting in the world at the highest levels.
With a certification in Women’s Neuropsychophysiology, Sloane combines spirituality and personal growth with the latest science on women’s neurobiology and has worked with hundreds of entrepreneurs worldwide through transformational peak experiences, retreats, courses and private coaching.
Sloane is also a former business attorney with over a decade experience advising entrepreneurs and companies ranging from startups to multi-billion dollar enterprises. She scaled and sold her boutique law firm in 2018.
In addition to her life mission to elevate women, Sloane is passionate about exploring the pleasures of life, connecting with great humans, and adventuring with her daughter.
Connect with Sloane:
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00:00 – Focus on Feeling Good First
03:15 – Who Am I Without My Business?
06:40 – When Success Stops Feeling Good
09:55 – The Hidden Burnout of High Achievers
13:20 – Alignment Over Achievement
17:05 – The Mirror Effect: Self-Judgment Starts Within
20:45 – Redefining Identity After Success
24:10 – The Way You Feel on the Journey
27:00 – True Pleasure: A New Definition of Fulfillment
30:15 – Living Your Legacy in Alignment
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Focus on feeling good on the inside first, creates much more success, better health. It shifts everything, but it can be really hard to see because that's not how our world is set up. That's definitely not what most people are taught. I wasn't taught that.
Welcome to the Legacy Branding Podcast. I'm your host, Laura Beauparlant, here to guide you through the journey of selling your business, and building a personal brand that leaves a lasting impact. On the show, we'll explore real life founder stories, expert insights, and actionable strategies to help you navigate the transition, avoid post sale crisis, and create your impact driven legacy brand. Whether you're thinking of selling, building to sell, or already on the other side, this podcast is your go to resource for making your next evolution, your best one yet. Let's dive in.
Today on the Legacy Branding Podcast, I'm joined by Sloane, a woman who's lived both the structured world of law and the wild transformational path of soul aligned entrepreneurship. Sloane spent over a decade as a business attorney advising companies from scrappy startups to multi-billion dollar giants. She built and scaled her own law firm, then made the bold decision to sell it in 2018, stepping away from the business she'd built to pursue something entirely different. Now she's a transformational coach and peak performance guide for powerful women blending neurobiology, personal growth and spiritual embodiment to help them redefine success from the inside out. Her story is one of deep reinvention, radical alignment, and choosing pleasure and purpose over prestige and pressure. Sloane, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much. I'm really happy to be here and very excited for our conversation.
I know. Me too. I remember when we reconnected back a few months ago and it was because you were in the M&A space years ago, and I don't think I realized that because I've only known this version of Sloane. So it was so interesting to learn that you were in that space before. So I'd love for you to talk a bit about that journey. So you spent years helping founders sell their companies. So you've seen that side of it structuring deals and navigating selling, buying. So I'd love for you to talk about that experience of why you decided to sell your business and what the experience was like for you, especially somebody who was in that industry.
Well, I was so excited to hear what you're focused on now because I know there's so much to navigate in this journey. Selling of my business wasn't something that at first I was even open to. I used to have a coach years ago, and he's the one who had started me in my law firm.
I was doing all kinds of corporate deals, M&A financing, and then I also started offering my clients this monthly package where they could do unlimited phone and email access to me for $99 a month. And I was billing $450 an hour. But it was only for business advice and strategy and mindset.
So I had started that in my law firm and at some point this coach I was working with says, Hey, would you ever be a coach like me? And when he first asked me that, I was like, absolutely not. I'm a lawyer. And I just, it wasn't even a consideration. And over time I really started to acknowledge that my passion was in this advising, coaching, serving people on a much deeper level than I really could as an attorney.
And so first I had to face the ego situation of going from an attorney to even thinking about being a coach. And I really did have to go within and like, could I do that? What does that mean? And also I had dedicated myself to building this law firm. We were created this whole other model for corporate law where we were doing a lot of flat fee work and also teaching entrepreneurs about how the law affected their business so that their legal understanding and mastery could grow as their companies grew.
And I just poured my heart and soul in it, and I was really defined by it. And this is something that I think is really big for us as founders, as company owners, CEOs, we can become really wrapped up in that identity. And I certainly had. I at first started just a second company doing the coaching, and I created a program and I was selling things online, and what started to happen was I got really busy. I was waking up at 4:00 AM working on the coaching company and then in my law firm during the day, and we did have a full team, and the law firm was operating on its own, but still I was working overtime. And this is one of the things that I really started to learn, especially at that time about alignment, which is when you're in alignment with your truth, life doesn't have to be overwhelming and hard and grinding.
And when you're not, sometimes we use those things to cover up the fact that we're not in alignment. And I was doing that, so I was like, well, I could just be a coach and do this other business and, enjoy that. And then I like what I'm doing in my firm. I love the advising clients. I love my clients, I love the team I'm working with, so I'm just gonna make it all work.
And eventually it just became untenable and I, it wasn't really working well. So that's when I decided to sell my firm and I really wanted to sell it quickly by the time I did sell it. So I was working with a business broker and I basically told her I wanna go spend the summer in Europe. So I would like to sell the firm no matter what we need to do within the next nine months.
And we really focused on it. And I did. Yeah. It was fast. It was fast. This journey of selling the business was so interesting for me to then go through after I've been advising so many people on it themselves, and it's a really a transformational journey, no matter how you cut it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
that's definitely what I hear from everybody who's gone through it. And it's interesting the fact that you had worked in that space. Was it different from what you expected being on the other side of the table?
No, I think I had the gift of really understanding a lot about what comes up during the transaction, what it takes to come to a compromise and a final result of a deal. That in some ways it's uncomfortable. It's not gonna be exactly what you wanted. I had the gift of seeing all that and understanding it so that I think I could maneuver through the process with a lot of ease, because I've seen where founders ruin a deal.
I've seen where they get fixed on something that in the end, end, end, does that really matter? I've kind of seen it all. I think that helped me a lot. Then also it was a gift to be able to experience the tenderness of the other side of it being my business and turning over this thing that I had poured so much of my life energy into over to someone else.
your identity was wrapped up in, as you mentioned.
Yes. And thankfully I had already started another business because I've seen for a lot of people who don't have something waiting to pick up with that can be even more of a jolt. But it still was, the prestige of being a lawyer. And I was in Los Angeles at the time, and all the hundreds of people who I knew who I was networking with and doing business with. To tell people and see their reactions of, I'm selling my law firm and I'm gonna be a coach now. I had to really be centered with who I am and what my vision was before other people could see what I saw.
It is so interesting that ego piece and that judgment from others, and everyone's going to have an opinion on what they think you should be doing, or why would you go from being this, high powered attorney with this prestige to a business coach. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I've been in that place where I've had people place judgment on me because of a choice I made in my career. You're like, wow. It really is quite jarring to have that judgment from others come at you when they think that it, almost beneath you or it's beneath them.
Yeah, I think too, I came to see that there were elements of me judging myself. Which is what made that jarring and also actually what even made that feedback be coming in, and I spent the next, I'm gonna say year and a half, it might've been two years, where I would always talk about, in an initial conversation about who I am, what I do, who I serve, always mention, oh, and I was a corporate lawyer, and just talk about it.
And it's funny because I actually had the same experience when I went. I used to work at what's now the fourth largest law firm in the world. I was there for five years before I left to start my own law firm. And I remember that transition. I did a similar thing. Oh, I used to work at this firm and I would talk about it, and I finally saw with this transition that I have the opportunity here to find a whole new level of my own worth, regardless of what I've done, who I used to be, where I used to work. And I really use this awareness and opportunity at that time to shift some things inside. And then interestingly, I have never since then experienced anything from anyone about me being a coach. I don't have that experience of people judging or looking down on me, it just, it shifted completely when I shifted completely.
Interesting. When we first met a number of years ago, like I said, up until a few months ago, I didn't even know that you used to be a lawyer and work in this space. So clearly this was after you had stopped. Oh, and I was also an attorney and had my own business. So that is an interesting shift because as I said, this is the only version of Sloane that I've known, and I love that you that.
And sometimes I wonder if the judgment that we feel or see or think we feel and see from others is actually our own internal judgment on ourselves. And really, it's not even that person. Or maybe they're just reflecting it Back to us because we're feeling it.
Yes, a hundred percent. It's like the interpretation that I'm making of what they said is as if there's judgment when maybe there isn't. Then also how much of, even if they do have judgment, how much of it is coming from my energy and my beliefs? And that's being reflected back and it's really interesting.
I've seen a lot of people. Go from selling their companies, especially when they have this all encompassed identity wrapped up within the work that they were doing and who they were. In that context, have the opportunity to rediscover on a whole new level. Who am I? And sometimes that's an amazing process and there are these great things that come out of it.
And sometimes I know you've seen also. It's a really challenging process of people's lives fall apart and they thought they were working towards this ultimate happiness that was gonna come one day when I finally saw my company and have this exit event. And then in the end, you're actually left with you and the energy that you've been bringing all along.
And then you may have the opportunity to face that when you're not so wrapped up in the business.
Yeah, and I think that is the challenge when you wait until after to do the deeper work that I do with my clients or that you do with your clients, is that you end up having that existential crisis of who am I? Because your whole identity was wrapped up in that and you've been waiting for this big event and now it's here you're left feeling many things, maybe flat, empty, sadness, grief. There's a lot of emotions that can be wrapped up in that, even though you think that's the thing. The goal is the sale, but then really when you sell and you're back to, inbox zero and an open calendar, you have a lot of time to sit with yourself. And if you haven't done any of the work before that, that's when I think things can often come crashing down around you.
It's so true. I always like to say the way you feel on the journey is the way you feel when you reach the destination. We have this default track in our world. Where we kind of get into this loop of thinking, okay, I don't feel good now, so I'm gonna set a goal to make myself feel better, which will be, I'm gonna sell my company for a hundred million dollars and then I grind and overextend and ignore how I feel to reach this goal.
And I get there and reach it and I don't feel any better. And so what a lot of people do is think, oh, okay, well I actually need to set a new goal. It wasn't that it was, I need to have a new marriage, or I need to go travel the world or start a new company or whatever and get back into this loop that just is never ending unless and until we decide, you know what, actually the truth of how I'm feeling and what I'm actually experiencing in my day-to-day life is more important than these outer things that I think are gonna change how I feel, and that we focus on that.
And the work you're talking about. And then I shift who I am on the inside. And actually there's a lot of research that shows that focus on feeling good on the inside first, creates much more success, better health, deeper relationships. It shifts everything, but it can be really hard to see because that's not how our world is set up. And that's definitely not what most people are taught. I wasn't taught that.
Yeah, I don't think, I mean, I think it would be amazing if that was done, but.
I am working on it.
that it is.
Yes.
You're working on it. Okay, so let's dive in. I want to hear more and I want you to share more with people listening the work you do now, because I think everything we've just been talking to really leads into that. It is that deeper inner work and that inner landscape.
So I would love for you to talk about your coaching and the work that you're doing and how that to shift people.
My work has evolved after those first couple years was focused on business, supporting people and creating success in their companies. I realized that I really wanted to focus on women, so my work has evolved into supporting women in creating success in all areas of their lives, beginning with creating this inner state that I refer to as true pleasure.
And this is a redefinition of the word pleasure, which we usually think of as like an outside experience or something you experience with or through someone else. And so true pleasure is the felt experience of your inner brilliance when you're aligned, alive, and deeply connected to yourself. It's a feeling that's peaceful, sensual, loving. I support women in reorienting their lives because that's what it's really about. This is in a different mindset. It's not just positive thinking. It's a reorientation of how you're living, how you're seeing yourself, how you're interacting in your world so that you can experience this true pleasure.
And it's from this place that I see how in my own life, and then the clients I work with, we create success with ease. It doesn't have to be so hard. It's just that what we've been taught is not only the hard way for humans, it's actually not a way that serves women. The current path to success really wasn't set up for women and what I'm saying isn't against men, it's not making men wrong. They're suffering from all of this as much as we are in my experience. And there is a different way for us as women to operate and actually create success, that honors our natural ways and who we actually are and when we live from this place.
That's where we can be joyful and also have the success we envision. We can be feeling connected on the levels we really want to with the people in our lives, and we can feel like, wow, I'm fulfilling my highest potential in this life, truly right now, even though I know more is possible in this moment. I know I am fulfilled and I'm fulfilling my highest potential.
I am like, I don't even know how to follow that up with a question because I mean, that is such a beautiful explanation of what you do and. I think what is needed in so many ways that there is a different way to operate. I love that idea of true pleasure. Like I think the way you describe that is so true and it really does come from inside.
So are you working with entrepreneurs? Like where are these women in their journey that you're supporting now?
Yeah, they're entrepreneurs, successful professional women. Some have, almost all of them have their own companies. Some are executive level women, and they're consistently women who have it all on the outside. To anybody else, it seems like you've made it. You did it. Look at your amazing life, and then behind the scenes, things aren't actually going that way. A lot of women are crying often behind the scenes. The way their lives look financially isn't really what's happening in the background. Just something in their lives they're saying, I know more is possible for me, or this can't be all there is for me, even though I'm so grateful, even though things are so amazing and this, this, and that, is exactly what I want.
So they usually come to me in a deep need for a shift. And whether that's a deep need because things are not going well in their world or on the inside is like I have to make a change. That's who I typically work with.
Yeah. Do you find there's like a common thread, a pattern or something that is like that? The straw that breaks the camel's back, that like makes them actually decide to go into action.
Some things become untenable is usually why they'll reach out. The crying in the background, that's. A symptom of burnout. It's not always, but these are women who would never say they have burnout and don't even identify with that word. But the, I can't stop crying is a symptom of burnout or of overwhelm and overload.
So that could be one. Another one is I love my husband. My marriage looks amazing. We're this great couple in a lot of ways, but we haven't had sex in over a year or things really aren't going well between us at all, and I feel so worn down, or I have to take care of everything myself and I feel like if I let the balls drop, everything's gonna fall apart.
There's something that's like, I'm not gonna go on like this anymore. And. I could share one of the places where I usually start with people. So you mentioned beliefs. The framework that I guide women through is five core beliefs that when you walk the path of living these core beliefs, that is when you actually live the, I feel fulfilled.
My life is fulfilling me. I'm fulfilling my highest potential, even though I know more as possible because we're humans and we always know more as possible. One of the first places I like to look with women is in how they talk to themselves. And the women I work with are confident women doing great things in the world.
These are not people who are suffering from being in the gutter with their self-esteem or would even identify with having a self-talk issue, but when we go down deep. I can tell you that if you ever experience people treating you in a way you don't enjoy, it's actually not about the people. It doesn't matter if it's your husband, your team person on the street or at the grocery store.
The place to look is how you treat yourself, because it's always a mirror. We start to look at where you're hard on yourself. Like you have to be amazing and perfect, where if you mess something up, maybe you berate yourself or you're just really hard on yourself. And there are a hundred different varieties of this that I'm sure you're familiar with, and that's a really easy place to look.
And I have a little practice you could do, which is if you had to pick one word that describes the tone of the voice in your head, what would it be? Is it greatest supporter, cheerleader, amazing, best friend, sister, or is it strict, harsh, unforgiving, mean? When you have to narrow it down to one word and get honest with yourself, especially that first word that comes to mind, then you're starting to get closer to the truth of what's actually going on in there.
Even if it's not tearing you down and making you feel awful, there's still some work to do because the other side is actually having someone on the inside, which is you be your greatest supporter. Be your best friend. Always be there for you. Always be lifting you up. And this isn't about becoming, I keep wanting to say delirious.
Not being naive and just like, yeah, I support you no matter what. But it's seeing the truth of where you make a mistake and also being like, oh, that hurt. I see how that hard that was for you. That really sucked. I love you. You're awesome. Look what you're doing. That's so amazing.
Let's pick back up and we're gonna do this. And when that truly is the narrative that's going on inside of you, that's a huge shift, not only in your life experience, but also in how other people treat you.
Yeah, I love that kind of gave me goosebumps when you said that. Like what is the tone of the voice in your head? And I think that one thing to identify for everybody, for me it's, that's a key piece because if you can identify it, then you can shift it.
And you can also be more honest with yourself because a lot of us women especially who have done a bunch of personal growth work, it can be easy to be like, of course I love myself and I treat myself well. But when you have to get honest about that one word that describes the tone, what you see is you may have intellectually learned a lot about you should treat yourself well and you love yourself, and it's cool in our circles to be a self lover, but what's the truth of the work you've done in there? And it's not just healing, actually, you can do a lot of healing and that hasn't changed the tone of the voice in your head.
You have to proactively work on shifting that, that's a different path and piece of your uplift.
Yeah, I love that. Can you imagine if this was actually taught like
In school. I know. Don't get me started. My daughter we have this joke that I do these rants on things. She already knows I'm a little more out there than most of the parents, and one of the rants is like. I need to be in there in the schools and working on what we're teaching the kids.
And I just, it's a rant from the heart because yes, I cannot imagine, and I can, how different our world would be if we were teaching about. How to communicate honestly, how to treat yourself with love, how to think about your purpose and your purpose path and what that looks like in your life day to day.
And then in your big picture and on and on. So I'm holding the intention that this is coming into the schools as we all become more aware and more understanding of how powerful it would be.
Well, and I feel like, I'm knowing more and more people that are talking this language and doing the inner work and also sharing it with their kids. I have two kids two boys. I know you have a daughter, and these are conversations we have at the dinner table. We've incorporated them into things like they've done meditation and breath work and gone to sound bowl experiences and maybe they think some of it's weird, but they enjoy it. And that understanding that I'm like, these are tools that in many ways our kids are getting that probably the average, a huge percentage of the population is not, and the more people like us that can be doing that, the better. And then that's how it goes out and gets into schools and gets spread around.
So true. Yes.
that's the ripple effect that, you are creating. By what, you're calling it a rant, but you
A rant from the heart. Yes.
from the heart. I know. Yeah. I like that description. I'm gonna steal that one. I think a rant from the
Yeah.
I feel like I have a lot of those Oh, Sloane. So I always love our conversations. I feel like we could talk. For hours, but it's like, how do you condense all of this into this like short, digestible podcast. So I think what I would love to know for you, which I have a couple more questions, I wanna know what legacy means to you.
This is called the Legacy Branding podcast. I ask everybody that. Would love to know what does the word mean to you, but also is the legacy that you wanna create.
I love that question. Legacy for me has really like shored up into the present moment because I've come to understand that my greatest power is in right now. And what you're talking about, the ripples. I really have seen that a lot of the plans that I've made for what my life is gonna stand for and maybe what my legacy would ultimately be.
The more I co-create with life and the more I allow what comes in to be part of my path and potentially move my path and guide me the less that my life looks like, my 10 year plan and that when I'm fully present in right now, that's where all my power is present, feeling good, focused on what I'm doing, letting that be exactly what I wanna be doing in this moment.
And so I would say that my focus has really become about this knowing in my heart of I am here to make the biggest impact that I possibly can. I see every interaction that I have, and whether that's us talking on a podcast conversation or me interacting with the person who takes care of my lawn, all of the above is part of my legacy.
And that there's this ripple that's happening like you were referring to that is so much greater than I think any of us could possibly comprehend with our tiny human brain that I don't even know how it could turn out, but I like to believe in my heart that every single interaction I have has the potential to actually literally change the world.
And so if I hold that knowing in every interaction, the other day I went into the pharmacy and we went in and I was talking to my daughter, Colette, about the prescription medication and the whole thing. We walk up and I was sort of absorbed in what we were talking about and then the person who, the pharmacist who was checking me out was like very dull and very sad seeming and I almost let it go.
I was a little at first put off by his energy and just. I wasn't enjoying it. And I remembered in that moment, thankfully of, wait a minute, I have overflow of energy, of feeling good. So I refocused myself and I said, how's your day going? And he's like, oh, really bad. And he started telling us about how he basically is stuck being a pharmacist because of his mortgage and his kids.
And I just said. You know, you could always change your life. And he's like, no, I can't. And he wasn't really open to hearing it. But the point I'm making is that my initial reaction was to want to kind of get away from this person and instead I refocused into how could I give in this moment?
And whether or not he wanted to receive that or it supported him even, I just was like, oh, what's one thing I could do to uplift this person a little bit? The more I remember that and that becomes part of my lifestyle, the more that I see my life has impact. And there are so many examples of that when we get onto a conversation, I wanna think, how could I contribute to this person?
And maybe it's to share something of my story, maybe it's to connect them, maybe it's, you know, a million different things. But that for me is what my legacy is about, is who can I actually touch? And I like to imagine at the end of my life if we did a review. And I got some, God perspective about who I've been.
I wanna see that as, as much as possible, I use my life for other people's uplift and also including my own, not from a state of depletion, but that we're all uplifting. And that, for me is really the most important part of my legacy.
Oh, I love that. And that's why you and I are so aligned 'cause as you were talking, I was like, yes, yes, yes, yes.
I love that about you too.
Thank you.
So.
Sloane, how can people find out about you? What have you got coming up this fall? We'd love for you to share how people can connect with you.
We have a amazing virtual retreat coming up that I'm so excited about. It's called The Initiation: A Modern Return to Powerful Womanhood. And this is a five day experience. It's only 30 minutes a day. And it is an experience designed to give you what most of us never received from our mothers. It would be, imagine your mother sat you down at the time you were coming of age and taught you about what it is to be an empowered, powerful in your femininity kind of woman. And then you also had a group of other women. Who were elders, who were younger. You had this community of women who came together to not only explore and learn this, but also to evolve and grow and in womanhood together. So I just have the most extraordinary community of women. Many of the women come again and again and again to my virtual retreats, which I've been doing for years.
But this is the first time I'm offering this virtual retreat called The Initiation. So it's gonna be really special and you can find out more on my website, which we'll post in the notes. And then also, I'd love to connect on social on Instagram. I'm heartandsloane with an E on the end.
Amazing. We will absolutely make sure to have all of those links in that retreat. Sounds amazing. I'm looking forward to checking out myself. Thank you again, Sloane, for being here and sharing your stories and all of your amazing wisdom.
Thank you for having me.
📍 📍 Thanks for tuning into the Legacy Branding podcast. I hope today's episode has inspired and empowered you on your journey to building a brand that truly matters. If you enjoyed today's show, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with other founders who you think would benefit from listening.
And if you're ready to take the next step in building your legacy brand, visit our website, labcreative.ca to learn more and book a call. Don't forget to join us next time for more conversations that will help you navigate your transition and create your legacy. Until then, I'm Laura Beauparlant.