Season 1: The Evolution
Women in the business arena podcast
For women in business and leadership who have spent years adapting to the demands of the arena and are ready to question what that has cost them. This podcast is about reclaiming voice, agency, and a way of working that does not require leaving ourselves behind.
Season 1: The Evolution is a deeper conversation about women and business, what has shaped us, what it has cost us, and how we recover our power within the arena.
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Season 1: The Evolution
The conversation has evolved.
We have spent decades being taught how to succeed in an arena that was never designed for us.
So we adapted, and we worked harder. We became more resilient and learned to perform confidence, override exhaustion, distrust our instincts, and make ourselves more acceptable.
And when it still did not work, we assumed the problem was us.
This season, we are dismantling that story.
We are naming what it actually costs us to strive for success. Not because wanting success is the problem, but because of the way we have been convinced we have to achieve it.
We are unpacking the invisible labour, the self-doubt, the chronic stress, the pressure to perform, the desires we learned to silence, and the parts of ourselves we buried so we could survive in the system.
But this isn’t just a conversation about what is wrong with the system. We are asking the harder question: where does our agency live within the system?
Across 12 conversations, we explore what it looks like to stop adapting ourselves to fit the arena and begin recovering what was already ours: our voice, instincts, desires, authority and natural rhythms.
Not so we can become better versions of ourselves, but so we can finally stop abandoning who we already are.
12 conversations. One evolution.
Season 1 Episodes
A 12-part conversation about what we have been carrying, what we have internalised, and what becomes possible when we stop abandoning ourselves.
01 WE’RE BACK
And We Have Nothing to Lose
02 BURIED ALIVE
And Ready to Come Up For Air
03 MIND GAMES
And Shining a Light on Self-Trust
04 SELFISH
And Reclaiming What Is Rightfully Ours
05 INVISIBLE LABOUR
And Finally Counting What You Carry
06 STILL PERFORMING
And How to Get Off the Stage
07 UNBURYING OURSELVES
And Remembering Who We Are
08 CHRONICALLY STRESSED
And Learning to Regulate in Real Life
09 BREAKING THE CYCLE
And Honouring Our Natural Rhythm
10 REDEFINING BOUNDARIES
And Finding Agency in a Flawed System
11 SILENCED DESIRES
And Reclaiming Your Source of Power
12 UNDER CONSTRUCTION
And Living Within the Renovation
Two women. Decades of experience. One very honest conversation.
Sonya Stattmann and Laura Shook-Guzman have been having these conversations for 20 years.
As friends, founders, practitioners, and women who have each built, dismantled, and rebuilt different parts of their lives and work, they bring more than professional expertise to Women in the Business Arena. They bring lived experience.
The original podcast grew from the conversations they were already having behind the scenes. Five years after the microphones went quiet, those conversations continued. They just got deeper.
Season 1: The Evolution brings you back into the room.
Sonya stattmann
For almost three decades, Sonya has worked with women, founders and leaders at the intersection of business, nervous system regulation and human transformation.
Across more than 10,000 hours of coaching and facilitation and more than 500 workshops, keynotes and facilitated experiences, she has spent her career studying what helps people function, lead and live more truthfully. She has built businesses, designed transformational spaces, co-founded one of Austin’s early wellness-focused coworking communities, and worked with thousands of women, founders and leaders across different stages of business and leadership.
Her work centres on a question she has been asking for years: what happens when women stop adapting themselves to fit the arena and begin operating from who they actually are?
She is committed to helping women recover their authority and build from who they are, not who the arena has required them to be.
Laura Shook-Guzman
For almost three decades, Laura has worked at the intersection of mental health, entrepreneurship and human transformation.
A licensed psychotherapist, founder mental health advocate and longtime community builder, Laura brings deep experience in trauma, attachment, body-based psychotherapy, self-compassion and the psychological realities of building and leading. She has worked extensively with founders and entrepreneurs and has spent years advocating for a more honest conversation about mental health inside the startup ecosystem.
Her work explores what becomes possible when founders and leaders stop treating stress, burnout and self-doubt as personal failures and begin understanding the systems, patterns and nervous-system responses underneath them.
She brings compassion, curiosity and a deeply relational lens to every conversation.
STAY IN THE LOOP
New Women in the Business Arena episodes, upcoming events, and the occasional note from Sonya. One email a month. Nothing more than that.
The Story Behind
Women in the business arena
Women in the Business Arena first launched in 2016 and ran for 223 episodes through 2021.
What made the show work then is still what makes it work now: two women having real conversations about business, identity, growth, and the things most business spaces were not talking about.
The microphones went quiet for five years, but the conversations did not. And neither did the audience. The original series continued to be downloaded, shared, and discovered.
Season 1: The Evolution is not a restart. It is what happens when the conversation has had five more years to evolve.
223 episodes • Top 2% globally at its height • Still being downloaded five years later
Four conversations that still matter
From the archive:
(click the picture to listen)
What listeners have said
For years, women have told us this podcast made them feel seen, understood, and less alone in the business arena. These are a few of the words that stayed with us.
Best Podcast I have Ever Listened To
Sonya and Laura are so great in this podcast. I feel like I’m curled up on the couch with a cup of tea talking with them. I always feel like they meet me exactly where I am at with each episode. Totally down to earth, no hype, no fluffy BS – just introspective and smart conversation to make us think and continually become better versions of ourselves. Thank you, Sonya and Laura!
~ elizabethw3
Highly Recommend for Women in Business
This podcast makes me feel uncomfortably seen at times as if the hosts are speaking directly to me. (LOL) I really enjoy the segments that are split into different episodes covering a specific topic. The segments give me a chance to digest and think on then come back to and refine in the continuations. Go listen!
~ LBlei
Finally a podcast that women can truly relate too!
I love that there is finally a podcast that integrates the business world into the well being of women! The conversations they have are so raw and vulnerable and it’s allowed me to open up about how I feel internally whilst running a business! Sonya and Laura – Thank you for starting a conversation that most women are too afraid to start!
~ Mandykota92
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