# Monique Allen
## [00:00:00] Opening
**Kavita Ahuja:** Welcome, everyone, to the Midlife Reinvention Podcast, a podcast for women in transition in their careers and life. I'm your host, Kavita Ahuja, and I'm a career and life transition coach for women and and founder of It's My Time Now. My goal with this podcast is to inspire you to realize your true inner power and potential and to help you unleash all that resides within you and bring it out into the world with confidence. Regardless of your age or your circumstances, if you may be going through transitions in your career or life and wondering what's next, I'm here to tell you that you can do this.
And I want you to believe and say with confidence, it's my time now. To this end, I interview incredible women for this podcast who share their stories of reinvention and who will give you their advice on how to overcome the obstacles in your way to reach your vision for yourself in your next stage of life. This week is absolutely no exception, is that I'm pleased to have on the show Monique Allen. With a background as a founder and creative director of the Garden Continuum, monique has utilized her knowledge as a lifelong gardener, business developer, and educator to bring the gap between landscaping and business building.
With that experience, she launched her coaching career as the LifeScape Coach. Monique created the LifeScape Method, a strategy developed to guide people towards improving their land, lives and professional satisfaction. Her first book, Stop Landscaping Start Lifescaping, further explores these concepts, and her coaching specializes in branding, team building, curating a positive company culture, and succeeding as a woman in the male dominated landscaping industry. When Monique isn't Lifescaping, she can be found spending time with her family, cooking up new creations, practicing yoga, or stand up paddleboarding. Thank you so much for being here Monique. How are you doing today?
**Monique Allen:** I'm doing wonderful.
**Kavita Ahuja:** Thank you so much.
**Monique Allen:** I love the introduction. I love every time you say you talk about the what's next? And it's my time. Just it's just so well put. So thank you for having me.
**Kavita Ahuja:** Thank you. Oh, you're welcome. And I know you were talking a little bit earlier, not only are you do like your adventure, you do stand up paddleboarding, but apparently you have a motorcycle as well, and you're going to be here right before the long weekend, so you're going to be out.
**Monique Allen:** Out on the bike this weekend, so that'll be great.
**Kavita Ahuja:** Awesome. I have to admit I don't have the courage to do that, but maybe one day. Maybe one day you never know. So, I'm really pleased to have you on the show. We had met previously to get to know one another. And when we met, you had mentioned told me about your reinvention story, and I'd asked you about that, and you had said that you had started gardening at age 18, and you started your business at the young age of 20. And then you mentioned that you have been kind of reinventing yourselves every decade since then.
## [00:03:28] From Gardener to Business Developer: A Journey of Reinvention
**Kavita Ahuja:** So tell us about that. And you went from a gardener to a business developer and an educator, and now you are a LifeScape coach. So tell us about your journey, I guess.
**Monique Allen:** Well, thank you for asking. And it's so interesting to look back and to realize that when you look back, you see the reinvention more clearly with that hindsight, whereas when you're in the middle of it, there's that soup of instability, insecurity, fear, maybe a little nausea through the whole thing. And it seems so clear when you're looking backward. But I look at my so I'm rounding out 38 years in the industry, so 40 years almost, right, so four decades. And then I look at it and kind of look at it in these decade chunks.
Of course it's not perfectly aligned. I started as a freelance gardener in the mid 80s, and I was a teenager and absolutely had no idea what I wanted to do. So I was in not knowing. I was fully in not knowing, and literally just doing really very much in my body and just following what made my body happy, what made my nervous system happy. I had a lot of kind of trauma energy, angst, anger, and so gardening was great because it's really calming, and plus you work physically hard up to that point that I was dancing.
I danced into my early 20s, but then in my late teens into my 30s, I was bodybuilding, so I always needed something.
**Kavita Ahuja:** Right?
**Monique Allen:** And so gardening was perfect. It kept me stable and calm. It worked my nervous system, of course, way back then, I don't think we realize now there's all this study about how when you put your hands in the soil, it has all these amazing properties of antidepressant and nervous system regulation, and we know a lot about that now. We didn't know about it then, but clearly that's what I was going for, not to mention the healing power of the sun. Yeah, but what happened is I started to do well. My father was self employed, his family was self employed, my grandmother on my mother's side was self employed, so it was a lot there.
And so I moved into sort of the 90s decade, was sole proprietorship, so owning my own business never felt like that big of a leap. I mean, it was certainly a leap, but because I had grown up in that world, it also seemed reasonable. I didn't own anything. I wasn't married to anybody, I didn't have any of those tethers. I was actually done with college at that point, and so it just made sense, and I ran that way for a while. And then that reinvention, that evolution of being a woman, being an owner, I got married, I bought a property, and then I had children and running a business with all of those things is very different than running a business as a single woman, living in apartment with another single woman.
So I had to reinvent.
**Kavita Ahuja:** Of course, you think?
**Monique Allen:** Yeah, just a little. Everything changed, right? And then once I had my first, I have a stepdaughter and then I have two children of my own. And all three of my children are very close. I have amazing relationships with them. And I asked my husband to join my company once I became a mother because it was really hard and he's in the same industry. And so that reinvention was incredible because now it was working in partnership, division of labor, division of responsibility, both at home and at work. And we did that for about a decade, we did that and it did not end well in the sense that I'm still married and when my kids got to and for anyone listening who has children, they're going to know exactly what I'm talking about.
Right? Like your kids get to a certain age and they kind of don't need mama around every 5 seconds. And so I ended up with more time and I wanted to focus back into the business and it sort of just started to rock the boat. So it was easier for my husband to just exit and me to take back over and him to kind of take over at the home. And that was a huge reinvention because now I was the primary breadwinner. My husband was taking care of home and heart and really becoming the primary caregiver.
And it was a little bit of a mental mind play, but ultimately unbeknownst to either one of us, it ended up being amazing. My children have such a remarkable relationship with their father that they couldn't have had. So I look back and I think how brilliant it was. But in the moment, there were moments of like, oh my gosh, I'm going to die, I don't even know if I can do this. And while I was doing that, I was heavily creating a corporation. I was really moving from this idea of having a job, to owning a job, to owning a business, to building something that is actually creating employment opportunities for other people and also providing a service.
So there was that mental shift through the whole trajectory. And honestly the way I started coaching simply is that some other people in the business, they were noticing the changes I was making and noticing that I was looking better, I was feeling better, I was clearly having more fun and wanted to know how I was doing it. And so coaching found me and now this is my, I'm wrapping up my 8th year of coaching.
**Kavita Ahuja:** Wow. So thank you for sharing that. I mean, what a journey. And I think it's so interesting, like you said, to see kind of look back at your life and look at it in these different chunks, I guess, or periods. And I like when you said in the beginning that when you were young and you're a teenager, you were so busy doing and doing things. And that's what I think many listeners can relate to. When you're younger, you're just doing, doing, trying to get ahead, you're doing whatever. And then as you go through these phases in your life, it becomes more about being like who do you want to be?
And it sounds like you've gone from building this amazing corporation, successful corporation, and you've realized that giving back to people by coaching through coaching and giving back to what you learned. And that's exactly ironically, what I'm doing because there comes a point where you stop kind of you're still doing, obviously, but it's more about what really makes me happy, how can I serve others? And so it's really interesting and I think a lot of people, a lot of women that I've interviewed and for this podcast, it feels like that's kind of the trajectory of life as we go through, it's become more about not more about myself, but it's about how can I give back? So that's fantastic.
## [00:10:46] Embracing Imperfection: Letting the Light Shine Through the Cracks
**Kavita Ahuja:** Thanks for sharing that. Yeah. And so you mentioned a few times what's not always easy when you're in it. And I had noted something you'd said to me when we talked is that you said that cracks are where the light shines through. And so I'm sure that we all have experienced obstacles and detours along the way. And one of the things is a lot of the questions I ask is about that is tell us about some of these obstacles and detours and how would you advise women who are looking to do the next thing to kind of let the light shine through despite some obstacles that may be in their way.
**Monique Allen:** So that idea of the light shining through the cracks, there's this Japanese pottery. I don't know if I'm going to say it right. I think it's kintsugi or kinsugi. And it's like when the pottery cracks and then they put it back together and they use gold filaments and then if it's a jar or whatever, light will shine through those. So the idea really of it is that kind of that alchemy of being is that the thing that comes out of the fire isn't what was in the fire. The thing that comes out of the brokenness isn't what was before.It's mended or transformed. And that really is where that light of you shines through.
And I think we resist. I can just say for me, I know I resisted so much. I resisted being wrong. I resisted showing up and not having the answer. And on some level it created a blockage, just kind of fear. And I know we had talked about sort of me being in the introduction, about it being in a male dominated industry. If you come in as a woman and you're kind of concerned, well, I'm a woman and you're a guy, and I need to know.
So you're trying so hard to be perfect, to have it right, that you actually won't fall because you won't do anything risky enough to allow yourself to fall. And it is in the fall that the crack happens. And it's in the cracking that we crack open emotionally, spiritually, mentally, existentially. And then I think that's where the amazing potential for transformation happens. Because we can't think it like we can't we don't have the capacity to think those transformations into being. We actually have to feel those transformations into being. And so that, for me, has been a long journey of learning.
I will say there was a bit of therapy, maybe there was also a little EMDR trauma therapy. Like there was some therapy in there to release it. But I think ultimately, when we know that, we become a little less terrified of being wrong and embrace a little more of that not getting it right or doing a little bit of a faceplant, actually being the gift, like, that's the gift. And becoming a little bolder and being like, okay, damn, that was a faceplant. Brush myself off. What did I learn? And kind of having a little bit of humor about it.
For me, it was like, embrace your awkwardness, because, girl, you're awkward sometimes. And it just is whether I'm in a room with men or women. But definitely there was this whole don't screw up in front of the guys. Yeah, I'm just kind of over that now. Really over it.
## [00:14:27] The Feminine Superpower: Feeling Your Way to Transformation
**Kavita Ahuja:** It's funny, right? It's kind of like we take these risks and we become bolder, and it's almost like, who cares? I'm going to just do this. And I love it when you said send a ball that the crack happens. And it's true. And I love what you also said about we can't think it, we feel it. Because, for example, when I decided to change my life, change what I was doing, it was that feeling inside. It wasn't like I was thinking, oh, I'm going to do this and then I'm going to do this next, and I'm going to do this next.
It's like I just had that inner voice, that inner feeling that said that something needs to change. And I often talk about listening to that inner voice. And when you listen to it, it tells you something. And it doesn't have to mean that you kind of know exactly where you're going. You just kind of listen to it and do one thing at a time and take a little risk at a time, one step at a time, and then the path will unfold.
**Monique Allen:** Yeah, it'll begin to illuminate in front of you because you took the risk to take the step. And I will say that given that you are working mindfully and focused in a focused way with women who are working through this transition, this is one of our superpowers. The ability to feel your way through is a superpower. It's a feminine superpower. It doesn't mean that men don't have access to it. They do because they have access to their feminine, too. But we live in a patriarchy, which literally diminishes that superpower. It says that that superpower is not a superpower, first off, and that it is the thing that makes women weak, but it is not.
It is actually the thing that makes women super powerful. And it also is the thing that allows them to guide the men in their lives, if possible. Like, I have a husband, I have a son, and part of my job is to help demystify the access that they would have to their feeling so that they, too, would be able to feel their way through the parts that are most confusing, most painful, most terrifying. Because in that state, we're generally hung out in our limbic brain, which is all about survival.
**Kavita Ahuja:** Yes.
**Monique Allen:** You don't really even have access to the prefrontal cortex and the ability to think. So if they could go from that lizard brain down into their heart and into their gut and let their gut do the thinking and their heart do the feeling, they're going to do so much better. And I think that's now getting off track, but that's kind of how the world's going to get better. I think we could just do that.
## [00:17:14] LifeScape: Unleashing Your Vital Energy in Every Aspect of Life
**Kavita Ahuja:** Is that what you mean by Lifescaping? Or maybe is that yeah, well, maybe connected. Tell me a little bit about that.
**Monique Allen:** Okay, yeah, it's definitely connected. The short story about lifescaping is I am a professional landscaper. I am an industry landscape professional. And so what I do is landscape. And then I go and write a book saying, stop landscaping, start lifescaping. The tongue in cheek reason for that title is because what I was seeing is this industry got enormously popular as we moved from the 90s up into the 2000s, like, just so, so popular and so commoditized that I was seeing two things. I was seeing on the one side, I was seeing something called dead scaping, which is when we're literally just shoving plants into the ground like this applique, and they have no chance to survive or thrive.
And on the other side, I was seeing feature scaping, so enormous amounts of money that were thrown around all over the place and just adding stuff. And we know this from a consumerist society. So I was so disillusioned with both at being somebody who's very ecologically minded, very interested in sustainability, triple bottom line, just really taking care of our Earth. And so the answer to me was Lifescaping. And that was that our job is to work with through the design process, the insulation process, and the maintenance process, creating these life filled environments. And we are biological life, and landscapes are biological life.
And so there's resonance, vibratory resonance between them. If I'm in a deadscape, ain't no vibration happening. And if I'm in a featurescape, I'm just overwhelmed with too many choices and clutter, basically. So I decided to write the book so that I could codify this, so that I could figure it out and teach it in my own company and then teach it in the coaching. And so a LifeScape is organized, it's healthy, and it has what I call wow factor. This is that vital energy that gives rise to aesthetic pleasure. Like beauty, right? Just awe struck beauty.
And when I first came upon it, I did it for landscaping. I literally did it to build, like, a yard. And as I was doing it, I realized, wow, this is actually a whole lot bigger than just what's going on in the yard. This is actually the same structure for a business. It's the same structure for a marriage. It's the same structure for one person's life that we need to work our organization strategy. We need to invest in our health, like, really invest in our health through diet, exercise, sleep, hydration, hard work, right? Like, really hard work.
And then through those two, we start to have access to our vital energy, that special sauce that makes us the only me that there is, even as I am a part of a greater community. And we have access to that when the organization and health are being tended. And so this LifeScape has become a through line in everything I do. I mean, absolutely everything. I can always bring it back to those three tenets organization, health, and wow factor.
**Kavita Ahuja:** The life factor. I love that because especially the vital energy part, because I'm trained in core energy coaching, right, which is really about unleashing that positive anabolic energy that's within us, right? There's catabolic negative energy, and that's breaking down energy, and then there's building up energy. And when we're surrounded, like you said, with health, organization, beauty, then that releases this positive energy in our life, which we can cultivate in any part of our life, whether it's in our like you said, whether it's in our gardens, or whether it's in our marriages or in our health or in our children or our relationships.
## [00:21:38] Cultivating the Garden of Humanity: Becoming a Gardener of People
**Kavita Ahuja:** So I think I completely relate to that. And I love that you were able to, I guess, identify the connection there between really landscaping and your life and how we can apply that. Is that the same as when you say that you're the gardener of people or to be a gardener of people? Is that kind of what related to that?
**Monique Allen:** Yeah, it's all related, ultimately, with the idea of becoming a gardener of people. It, again, was just sort of a little kind of play, because most gardeners are gardening plants, right? And plants don't talk back and they don't get up and move. There's sort of this joke in the whole gardening community that it's like such an awesome industry because of the plants like if we could just get rid of the people, right? Because it's so hard to deal with the people and the plants are so yummy and lovely. But what happened is that trajectory of me going from freelance to sole proprietor, corporation to coach was that I understood and even in writing the book was that I understood that if I kept doing what I was doing and I kept doing it in a singular way.
And you made mention to this before about the giving back. My impact can only stay to one garden, right? Or one person or whatever. And so what I realized is in writing the book I had people say to me like, gosh, why are you giving away your method? Like people are just going to copy you. And I'm like, okay, it's not easy, but go for it. Because if more people were to approach the land the way I mentioned in this book, then we would have much better success and much better vitality in our land. So when it comes to gardening people, it's the same thing.
It's like we don't go to the land and well, we do. I'm trying to break this, trying to beat the land into submission to get nature to do what we want it to do. But nature is an entity that we are not going to force into any semblance of conformity. We've got a partner. And it really is the same with humans and it's the same we don't raise our children. We cultivate our children through the stages of their lives so that they can become beautiful, well adjusted, functional adults that are really good participants in society. We do the same with our employees.
And one of the big mistakes or one of the big things that I do as a business coach is work with that team development aspect that I can't do it alone. I need people. But the laments are very often I don't want to deal with employees or they never do what you say or they're this or they're that. And this is so much consternation about these people. But ultimately all people come with their own stories that they need to work through. All humans come with the trials and tribulations of what they went through to grow up that they're still navigating as an adult.
And if you're an employer or a manager, you are a stand in for a parent. And so you have to understand what is that person seeing in me when I'm critiquing them? What's the parental reprimand that's getting triggered? Because most people haven't worked through all of the past stuff, right? So to be a gardener of people really means that everybody who stands in front of you is unique, must be seen, valued and heard. And then your job, even if you are a landscape designer, the minute you open a company and decide to be an employer, you are a landscape designer second.
And it was a hard one. I got there with a lot of tears, with a lot of fight energy and crying and just wishing and I had gentleman I've told this story on podcasts before in my office one day. He was a fencing contractor that I'd worked with for years and so gotten to know we were working on a project and kind of dealing with the schematic and I just at one point I just did one of these forehead plants in my hands and he's like what's going on? And I'm like I just don't understand why I can't get the help I need or whatever.
And his response to me was he used to call me Mo and he said Mo, nobody's going to rescue you, you need to figure this out. There's nobody that you're going to hire or is going to walk through that door and rescue you. All I wanted to do was punch him in the face basically. He was so right but that was all I wanted to do and I think up until that point I was thinking that if I could just hire that right person, yes, I would solve everything. And that was the day that I learned that I had to look for the seeds of what would grow into the beautiful manager, leader gardener that I wanted.
And then I had to cultivate that seed. I had to look for the raw material. And everything changed after that. And it's not like it's hunky dory beautiful all the time. I still struggle with it because working with humans is hard but now my perspective is different and I have a much deeper well of energy to work with people and I'm also a bit more gentle to myself.
**Kavita Ahuja:** Yeah, so much in what you just said that resonate with me is one thing is we always think oh, if we had this or if we had that, then everything will be great, right? If this happens or if I get this then I'll be happy or whatever and we often don't think about what we actually do have where we are right now and how grateful we should be for what we have. And in your case you had the people there that you just had to cultivate to do whatever right. And then the other thing you said a couple of things.
You said everybody's unique, seen, valued and heard. And that's why I do this podcast, is because everybody has a story, like you said. And that's why I love sharing incredible stories like yours that we can learn from. And it could be from different people in different doing different things in their life or different industries. But how can we learn from them?
## [00:27:56] The Generosity of Sharing: Leveling Up Through Openness
**Kavita Ahuja:** And then the other thing that really hit me was often people think that they have to keep whatever they've learnt or their skills or their processes or whatever to themselves, rather than sharing them. Which is such, I think, in a backwards way of thinking.
Because if you share, the more you share what you've learned and what you know, the more other people will gain. And then it's just about, again, like you said, giving back. So why do we keep these things to ourselves? It's about sharing. So I don't know. I just went off on a tangent there.
**Monique Allen:** But no, it's great. And what it reminds me of is just that grasping energy really is fear of fear of losing it yourself, fear of somebody taking it from you. And look at if you're generous, there are going to be moments where you're taken advantage of. It's going to happen, but it's going to be rare as you build this authentic energy around open sharing. I've been writing a newsletter and now blog since again, since the early 90s, back when you typed it and sent it in the mail. And I give so much information that sometimes I don't even remember what I gave out.
But what I know is that a simple example would be like writing a blog on watering your garden. How do we use water, the importance of water in a garden every year in the summer, at some point, that pops in my head again, like, I've got to tell people how important watering is. And I've done it like so many other times. And so initially it feels repetitive, but what ends up happening is the more you share out, the more you release it from yourself. Now you have this opening for another layer of learning to come in so I don't have to teach that thing over again. I can link to that blog.
**Kavita Ahuja:** I never thought of it that way. That's a really interesting way of looking at it.
**Monique Allen:** Yeah. So it's like you level up when you share.
## [00:30:04] Thriving in Male-Dominated Fields: Cultivating Balance and Perspective
**Kavita Ahuja:** Great way of looking at it. Yeah, fantastic. So maybe a little shift in this next question is that we talked a little bit about the male dominated industry that you're in and how you've managed to be extremely successful. I think times have changed a little bit and I think we're seeing more women in male dominated industries. What would you advise women who are maybe in the similar industry or in a different maybe if it's in financial world or other industries or even maybe even on in careers, but in society, what would you advise them? How to break through that?
**Monique Allen:** Well, let me just start by saying I agree with you. It's a different world now because again, I started in the 80s and it was pretty different back then. But I remember when it came time to think about college, my mother said to me, I'd really like you to consider an all women's school. And I just screwed up my face at her and I'm like, Why would I do that? And she says, well, there's women's issues and I think you would be a great advocate. And I'm like, oh God. Mom. Come on. Y'all already did all that. Like, no idea that there was still more work to do.
Sort of the naive element of youth, right? And I think that basically what I did. And this is probably connected to being Middle Eastern, like the first born female of an immigrant dad. So my father's a Syrian Armenian, and I'm sure he would have preferred to have a boy first, but my dad treated me like a very capable individual, and he expected me to do what any male child would do. And so I think he was quite progressive for his age. And my mother was an intellectual and an academic and also expected quite a bit. So I had these good seeds, even though there's a lot of rockiness.
My parents were divorced and a lot of rockiness. There were some good seeds there. Right. But the thing that I did wrong, that I well, looking back, I did it wrong. It clearly made me who I am, so I don't regret it. But what I wouldn't recommend anybody do is morphing into a man, right? Like cutting off the feminine and trying to be manly and whatever. I learned some really cool things. I know how to ride a motorcycle because I was like, don't ever tell me I can't do something because I'm a woman. Don't ever. So I had that energy.
And the cool thing is both my daughter and my son ride nice, so it's cool. But the negative part was I think I woke up one day and realized that I was extremely cut off from my femininity. I didn't have access pain. You never cried? There's no crying. I didn't have access to my own cleansing of emotion because I didn't cry for a decade or more. And so I would recommend that anyone that is thinking that that's the way in, probably not. You're going to lose time.
**Kavita Ahuja:** Right?
**Monique Allen:** It'll get you in, maybe, but you'll lose time instead. I think it's more being very mindful that if the construct of where you're going to work is highly informed by the patriarchy or highly informed by masculinity, that you need to have access to those things. So you do need to cultivate that energy because it's necessary. And that's fine. You just cultivate it without cutting off the femininity, right. Because you have all that amazing feeling energy and all of that creative energy. And women actually are really good at seeing very big picture. And so in a good example of that was I did a big project for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts where we were cleaning up a dump site on a river, and I ended up in the room with almost all men, and there were like 18 of them and maybe two other women.
One was a secretary, one was an engineer. And I could see the what's this broad doing in the room? Kind of looks. And it's there is no offense, do not take offense that is probably one of the worst things that women do, is get themselves offended. Instead, we cultivate our agency, our sovereignty, our power, our intellect, what we know. Ask intelligent questions, get more curious, don't get offended. Guys will be really stupid. They don't mean to be. Sometimes they do, but sometimes they don't. So don't get offended. Instead, rise up to educate in kindness and compassion.
I had a contractor say to me once, if a business doesn't work twelve months out of the year, they're not a business in my book. Well, I was working nine months out of the year and I was making all the money I needed and I was offended. But I sat with my offense because I couldn't answer him at that point. And I waited until the end and I said, hey, I wanted to bring up something you said. And initially when you said it, I was kind of offended. But then I realized I'm really smart. And he looked at me kind of funny and I said, it takes you twelve months to do what I can do in nine.
**Kavita Ahuja:** Awesome. Fantastic.
**Monique Allen:** Right. And he have been friends ever, just great colleagues, right.
**Kavita Ahuja:** It's about perspective, it seems, right? Yeah. It's about understanding their perspective and not being offended by it, but kind of turning it around so that you can teach them your perspective. And it's kind of the yin and the yang, I guess, the energy, the female and male energy, it has to be present, I think, in both. And if you can create a kind of a balance in the two, I think that's where the sweet spot is.
**Monique Allen:** Right, absolutely. And when we're offended, we also can't learn because you get blocked, right. You box in. So if we can drop the offense and get curious instead, we can teach, but we can also receive. And I think the minute you create that reciprocity the allies that you develop within the industry, it's just so great. And then gender goes away. That's the cool thing. Then gender goes away.
**Kavita Ahuja:** And then you get that vital energy that you were talking about earlier
**Monique Allen:** Right. Then you're getting the job done and everybody's so stoked about that.
## [00:36:59] Embracing the Badass Crone: Rediscovering Passions in Midlife and Beyond
**Kavita Ahuja:** Yeah. Fantastic. That's really great advice. Yeah. Excellent. Wonderful. So I also wanted to you're talking about your stages in life, and so now what are you rediscovering now? And I think this is a very unique stage, especially as women in midlife 40s, 50s or greater, in that we are at the stage where we can explore more about ourselves and so we can also understand more about what we are capable of doing, right. And so you had told me before that you wanted to be a badass crone.
**Monique Allen:** Yes.
**Kavita Ahuja:** Tell me a little bit about that and kind of, I guess, what's next for you?
**Monique Allen:** Oh, I love that you remember that. Yeah. Well, so I will be 57 in September. Me too.
**Kavita Ahuja:** I'll be 57 in August.
**Monique Allen:** Oh, look at us. Yeah, here we go. So it's like a cool time. You sort of pass through that 55 and you're scratching at 60 and going, what is that exactly? And I'm kind of at this edge of empty nest. So my son is a rising junior in college, just this realization and I'm actually feeling I just have more time. I have more time than I've had before. So the big things that I've been doing is with my flagship company, the Garden Continuum, I am effectively working three days in the middle of the week. So Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, I work three pretty long, intense days.
And I am not really working much on Mondays and Fridays, if at all, with the company, I poke in when I have to because sometimes there's just things to be done. Like, I'll work some today because I'm taking all next week off. But that was a huge move, was just taking a little bit of a step out, really doing the work to build a self managing team that can do a lot of the work. And that was really big and that gives me room to do the LifeScape coaching more, which is really important to me. I will be running another group.
I have the Regenerative Business Community group, which I really like, and that's going to reopen and I'm very excited about it and I really want to give it my energy. And that runs for a year. And then I have a program called what's next? It's the What's Next program, which is really about looking at our businesses because our businesses go through stages. There's the emergence stage, the evolving stage, and the entrenched stage. And we need to move through these stages and it can get really hard, you can get stuck. So doing the What's Next work is really important.
So that allows me to have time for that. And my real love right now is yoga. So I'm doing a lot of yoga, but I'm also actively working with the school that I go to to redevelop their website, redevelop their teacher training, and to really help evolve this company to its next level. So I'm there as a coach, but I'm also there as a student and a yoga teacher. So it's really cool because it feeds a spiritual element of what is really important that I am able to tap into and use as I move into the elder years.
I don't know if I'll be a grandmother. I've always wanted to be a grandmother. I wanted to be a grandmother more than I wanted to be a mother. I was like, being a grandma would be so cool. So when I think about the badass crone energy when I'm working with the other teachers in yoga, which mostly women, though, I would love to get some men in there, they're younger than me. And when they see me come in on a motorcycle, and I run my own company and I'm doing these things, they're like, wait a second, how are you still doing that?
And you're that age. It's like, well, you don't have to be limited by your age. So if I can teach that, that feels like a really great gift to young people.
**Kavita Ahuja:** Yeah, that's wonderful. When a client comes to me and we're asking you what's next, I think what you've said is that from what I can see, is that you've not only looked at your strengths in your business, but you've also looked at your passions. That's what I always is like, what did you always want to do? What was your kind of buried passion in your life? And can you bring that out now? Do you want to bring it out now? What are you valuing now that you maybe didn't value so much before that you really want to bring out in what you're doing?
So it's trends, values, and passions that are important to kind of in our next stage, I think, really cultivate, and it sounds like you have. So that's fantastic.
**Monique Allen:** Yeah, it's a work in progress. Like, you know, it's not like we're ever done right. As long as we're learning and open and curious, we're living the minute we stop and we can be alive but dead because we're not doing anything. So that seeking energy that comes through curiosity and just believing that it's not too late.
**Kavita Ahuja:** Yes.
**Monique Allen:** I think that's been really helpful to me is to believe that it's not too late. It's really about just stepping into that curiosity.
## [00:42:30] The Embodied Entrepreneur: From Rage to Realization
**Kavita Ahuja:** Yes. That's wonderful. Well, that's great. I mean, is there anything else you'd like to share? I think you mentioned a little bit about your book. We talked about that a little bit. Is there another book coming?
**Monique Allen:** Yes, there is. I've outlined my new book. It's probably a little more memoirish in the sense that it's more my story of entrepreneurship called The Embodied Entrepreneur is my working title, from Rage to Realization. And it's really that the trauma journey and how trauma can often attract people into entrepreneurship and how we work the alchemical process to evolve through that so that we really can become embodied entrepreneurs and feel that sense of vital energy. Where I loved what you said about catabolic was it catabolic and anabolic energy and understanding that there is a necessity, right? There's a necessity for destruction.
So we have to embrace it. We can't shove it down and say, no, I just need to create. So it's how do we embrace them both? So that you have a really good balance. You probably, as a core energy coaching, know more about that than me. But I'm looking at that experience and how it can really help to amplify and in some senses speed up entrepreneurial success so that we're not weighted down in that stuckness.
**Kavita Ahuja:** Sounds like a really interesting topic. Maybe when you publish that you can come back and tell us.
**Monique Allen:** Yeah, for sure.
## [00:44:02] Closing
**Kavita Ahuja:** Well, thank you so much, Monique. It's been a fascinating conversation. Really appreciate it. And good luck with everything that's coming up for you. And thanks for all the great advice. And maybe I don't know if you have any last words
**Monique Allen:** Just thank you. I love what you're doing. I love watching the transformation that you've shared with me of how your business is evolving. I think this conversation is really important, and I'm really honored just to be a part of it.
**Kavita Ahuja:** Well, thank you. Thank you. And it was a wonderful conversation. And thank you for everything, and good luck, and enjoy your motorcycle and your kids and maybe your grandkids.
**Monique Allen:** Thank you.
**Kavita Ahuja:** All right, take care.
**Monique Allen:** You too.