The Leonie Dawson Show

Leonie's recording from outside, and there's a reason. Operation De-SADify is underway after a week of crying at random, including weeping twice in one day about Cathy Freeman winning gold in 2000. Tam has found the Slavic shamanic teacher she's been hunting for years and is running a literary festival. We're both reading fabulous books that we want to tell you about. Also: the autistic Olympics. Census night, baby.
WHO THIS IS FOR
If you're a neurodivergent creative running a business while also holding kids, ageing parents and your own wobbly nervous system through the last month of winter, this one's for you. Especially if you can't tell whether you need a strategy or just more sunshine and a nap. Two women talking honestly about widening to hold it all.
TOPICS COVERED
Seasonal affective disorder, micro-depresso and Operation De-SADify
A Laufey concert with a teenager, and discovering there's room for all of us
How healing primitive reflexes changed Leonie's capacity for big overwhelming cities
Tam's Slavic shamanic training and coming home to your own lineage
Emotion as a pathway to the divine, instead of sitting still and being decorous
Parenting your kids as they are, not as your ancestors assigned them
Sandwich generation life and the tragedy-comedy of caring responsibilities
Census night as competitive sport

KEY INSIGHTS
Random crying is a useful depression indicator if you're not ordinarily a weepy soul. If you're welling up at nothing at the end of winter, up your light, your vitamin D and your outdoor hours.
Nervous system work has profound effects.. Leonie went from wanting to hide in a bush in Sydney to happily sitting through an arena concert.
The way you see your child can be an inherited story rather than a true one.
Keep people around you who'll aren't afraid to tell you you're wrong. Leonie's husband told her she was misreading one of their kids, and he was right.
Don't break under the pressure. Widen. That's what every grandmother before you did.
Making money and keeping money are two different skills. A leaky container drains a great income.

NOTABLE QUOTES
"I don't want to be the mother that just gets all her feathers ruffled just because she's gotten some feedback." — Leonie
"Instead of feeling like I'm going to break under that pressure, I just keep thinking that I need to widen so I can hold it all." — Leonie
LINKS & RESOURCES
Unicorn Biz & Life Academy, $99/year: https://www.leoniedawson.com/academy
Join Leonie's mailing list for the illustrated book notes: https://www.leoniedawson.com
Dandenong Ranges Litfest, programme launch 27 August, tickets 28 August: https://dandyrangeslitfest.net/
Tam's Slavic shamanic teacher, Vlasta: https://www.tiktok.com/@thevlasta
Iris Meyer, shamanic practitioner: https://brightshaman.com/

BOOKS MENTIONED:
Indistractable by Nir Eyal
The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel
Unnatural Habits (Phryne Fisher) by Kerry Greenwood

If this one resonated... make sure you hit subscribe pretty pls! A review takes 40 seconds and helps other gorgeous souls find us. And if you want the whole toolkit, the Academy is $99 a year for 100+ programs, monthly coaching, and the Make Your Money Back Challenge that pays for your membership before you've finished your cup of chai!

ABOUT YOUR HOSTS!

Leonie Dawson is a multi award-winning entrepreneur who has created over $16 million in revenue in part-time hours. She is the founder of the Unicorn Biz & Life Academy which helps 3,000 people build unique, joyful & abundant businesses.

https://www.leoniedawson.com

Tamara Protassow is a non-fiction writing mentor + creativity coach. She’s developed books with 55+ authors over 16 years, both for self-published authors as well as for Hay House UK.
https://www.tamaraprotassow.com

#WomenInBusiness #NeurodivergentEntrepreneur #AuDHD #CreativeBusiness #SpiritualBusiness #MidlifeWomen #SandwichGeneration #PersonalGrowth #SoulfulBusiness

At 8pm one night I got that look in my eyes. The one my husband knows means I'm about to ride the wild donkey.
By 4am I'd sent an email every hour, illustrated cartoons to go inside them, invented offers I'd never sold before, and slapped a 24-hour expiry on every single one. I also let people email me their OWN offers at their own price. Total made in that 24 hours: just over $42,000.
This episode is the full blow-by-blow. What I offered, what sold, what broke, and why I'd absolutely do it again.
Who this is for:
If you're a creative, neurodivergent business owner with twelve half-planned launches in your notebook and a nagging feeling that you need a proper strategy before you're allowed to sell anything, this one's for you. You don't need a funnel. You don't need a launch runway. You need permission to act on the wild idea while it's still hot.
Topics covered:
What "riding the wild donkey" actually means, and why people still talk about it 15 years on
The full list of offers I made (encouragograms, business audits, VIP days, 60% off Take Action Club)
Letting my audience make ME offers, and how I decided yes or no
Doing it all on PayPal links because setting up Kajabi properly would have killed the momentum
The Kajabi outage that hit in the final hours, and how we handled it
Why I don't track unsubscribes
Decision fatigue, an inbox stuck at 86 emails, and needing a team who can run with chaos
The full revenue breakdown
The one offer that surprised me enough that I'm making it permanent
Key insights
Speed is a feature. The idea arrived at 8pm and was live within the hour. Waiting would have flattened it.
"Basic bitch" your systems when the alternative is not launching. I lost the Kajabi analytics and gained $42,000.
A ticking 24-hour expiry does the persuading for you. No convincing required.
Inviting people to name their own offer and their own price removed the ick from both sides. Some got a yes, some got a counter-offer, some got a no, and everyone stayed friends.
Say no to discounting the thing that's already radically generous. The Academy stayed at full price all day.
Things break in every launch. The checkout went down. I laughed, extended the deadline, and gave anyone who emailed us a 24-hour extension.
Your team's tolerance for wild ideas is a hiring criteria, not a personality quirk. I've had assistants get cranky about unplanned launches. I need people who wake up delighted.
Watch what people get unreasonably excited about. The annual Take Action Club option lit people up so much it's becoming a permanent offer.
Fun is a business metric. Encouragograms recorded in the backyard and down by the river. Cat photos in the inbox. Offers to walk around an art gallery. That's the actual return.

Links and resources
Get on the mailing list so you don't miss the next party: leoniedawson.com/love-letters
Free illustrated Ride The Wild Donkey ebook
Unicorn Biz & Life Academy: 100+ programs for $99 a year
Take Action Club: weekly Productivity Power Hours and monthly Biz Planning workshops
Courses mentioned: Sales Star, Money Manifesting & Multiple Streams of Income, Work Less Earn More, Midas Touch
2026 My Brilliant Year goal workbooks
Still keen on offering more in-person VIP days in Canberra. Email support@leoniedawson.com if you're interested!

If this made you want to go do something ridiculous, do it. Then come tell me about it. And if you're not on the mailing list yet, that's where the actual chaos happens: leoniedawson.com/love-letters
#WomenInBusiness #NeurodivergentEntrepreneur #ADHDBusinessOwner #CreativeBusiness #OnlineBusiness #MarketingExperiment #IntuitiveBusiness #SoulfulBusiness #WomenSupportingWomen #MoneyMindset

Ever been told the only way to "fly at the pointy end of the plane" is to hustle 24/7, live away from home 340 days a year, and barely see your kids? Leonie's response: are you fu**ing stupid?
This week she pulls back the red velvet curtain on her quarterly planning retreat — the rituals, the lake ceremonies, the non-alcoholic botanical wine, and the exact process she runs to help women plan a whole quarter in a single day. And Tam shares what it was like for her to be in the receiving seat for it... and what changed for her business from doing it.
Who this is for: If you're a creative, healer, or coach who's so deep in the to-do list you can't see your own business clearly anymore — and you're craving strategy that doesn't smell like bro-marketing — this one's for you. Especially if you're neurodivergent, sensitive, and done with hustle culture telling you to JUST DO MORE! WORK MORE HOURS! HUSTLE HUSTLE!
Topics covered:
How Leonie structures a full-day quarterly planning retreat
Why reviewing last quarter matters more than vision-setting
Letting-go rituals, lake ceremonies, and celebration circles
Hot-seating: why other people see your business clearer than you do
The anti-patriarchal case against hustle culture
Choosing a venue by energy, nature, and grounding (not corporate boardrooms)
Introducing Content Blast — a month of content done in one day
Key insights:
There's gold to mine in what just happened — review before you plan, every time
Celebration shifts your identity: you plan the next quarter as someone who's already made miracles
Brainstorming for OTHER people's businesses builds the muscle to see your own clearly
Hustle's only answer is "more" — but we live in a finite world, and the "more" gets stolen from your kids, your body, your relationships
Most hustle bros have someone (usually a woman) holding everything else together
You can fly business class without burning your life to the ground
You don't have to use everything in the Academy — one thing makes your money back
The easiest business model on earth: serve, over-deliver, and people stay for decades
Notable quotes:
"I can fly at the pointy end of the plane, and I am away from my children zero days of the year." — Leonie
"Does he think that's a flex? Let me show you a fuc*ing flex." — Tam
"I just serve and over-deliver and make it so exceptional that people stay for years, decades. It's the easiest business model on earth." — Leonie
Links & resources:
Content Blast (free inside the Academy, sign up in the next week): leoniedawson.com/blast
Unicorn Biz & Life Academy — 150+ programs, under $100/year
Grow Mastermind — next quarterly retreat is in September
New member? Email support@leoniedawson.com for your handmade "start here" list
Subscribe and review: If this episode lit you up, hit subscribe and leave a quick review — it helps more glorious humans find their way here. And if you want to actually get your content DONE with us in the room together, come to Content Blast!
#WomenInBusiness #NeurodivergentEntrepreneur #AntiHustle #CreativeBusiness #SpiritualBusiness #ADHDinBusiness #SmallBusinessOwner #ContentCreation #WomenSupportingWomen #ConsciousBusiness

Leonie took 12 of her biz besties on retreat, had a full-blown past-life vision in the winter ocean (stone cold sober), hired an actual horse off Facebook for a unicorn photoshoot, got her t*ts out to make someone feel less vulnerable, and discovered that every single woman in the room had lost her phone at least three times that day.
Tam gets the full debrief — plus how Leonie built this peer mastermind from scratch, why she removed a $100M business owner for lurking, and what happened when she cold-DM'd 50 strangers to find entrepreneur friends in Canberra.

Topics Covered:
How Leonie built her peer mastermind from scratch starting in 2012
Setting boundaries and removing members who don't fit (even famous ones)
What the retreat week actually looks like — structure, food, spa days, midnight chats
The power of post-it note round-table brainstorming vs rigid hot seats
Denise Duffield-Thomas leading a money mistakes ritual
Leonie's full-blown Atlantis/Lemuria vision on the beach (100% sober)
Hiring a real horse for unicorn brand photos — and the chaos of coordinating horse people on Facebook
The Grow Mastermind quarterly planning retreat in Canberra (16 June)
Key Insights:
Don't wait for someone to invite you — create the mastermind, the circle, the dinner. Leonie cold-DM'd 50 strangers on Instagram to build her Canberra entrepreneur network.
Curating a mastermind is gardening work: you plant, you tend, you weed. If you don't weed, the space becomes something it was never supposed to be.
Selection isn't about finding the biggest business — it's about ethics, values, spirit, and alignment. Vibes over revenue.
Having hard conversations (like removing someone) is part of leading leaders. It's painful, but it protects the group's safety and energy.
Normalise the mess. Every woman at this retreat forgot things, booked wrong dates, lost their phones. Multi-six and seven-figure businesses, run by ADHD humans who eat car biscuits. You don't need to have it together to be successful.
Retreats don't need rigid schedules. The best conversations happen when you let things flow — dinners in hotel rooms, post-it note walls, and spontaneous rituals.
Jealousy is a signpost, not a stop sign. If you feel envious of someone's mastermind, that's your sign to create your own.
When your kids get older and need less of your physical-plane energy, spiritual gifts can come flooding back.
Notable Quotes:
"We're not fucking wallflowers, we're the fucking belles of the ball. And if we're not the belles of the ball, we'll make our own fucking ball." — Leonie
"You can eat car biscuits and have an amazing multi-six, seven figure business. It's fine. You don't have to have it all together." — Tam
"I am not a damsel that just sits around waiting for something to come find her." — Leonie
"You are the fucking knight in shining armour. You can literally hire your own white horse and be your own goddess." — Leonie
If you're a creative business owner who's been craving real connection with other women who get it — the ADHD chaos, the spiritual side, the six-figure goals alongside the sensory overwhelm — this one's for you. Whether you've got a thriving business or you're still finding your people, this episode is your permission slip to stop waiting and start building your own circle.
If this episode lit a fire under you, go grab Leonie's free Mastermind Planner at leoniedawson.com/mastermind and start dreaming up your own circle. And if you want to be IN the room with Leonie and Tam, the Grow Mastermind quarterly planning retreat is happening 16 June in Canberra — join the Grow Mastermind to get your spot.
#WomenInBusiness #Mastermind #NeurodivergentEntrepreneur #ADHDBusiness #BusinessRetreat #WomenSupportingWomen #SpiritualBusiness #CreativeEntrepreneur #PeerMastermind #MakeYourOwnBall

Tam and I got WILDLY into it this week. We're talking energy hygiene — how to clear your energy, protect your space, shield your biz, and yes, even your bloody phone. Because that thing is an actual energy portal that can zap ya!
We share the actual daily rituals we use (salt scrubs! crystal grids! hands in the dirt at 6am!), Tam debuts her new favourite concept — Resting Bitch Energy (RBE) — and I tell the story of the enormous black obsidian dildo I placed on my property boundary to deal with a dic*head neighbour. As you do.
If you're a sensitive, spiritual creative who absorbs everyone's feelings like a human sponge, feels fuzzy and anxious for no good reason, or suspects your phone might be energetically fuc*ing with your sleep… this one's for you, possum.
What we get into:
How to call your soul back into your body (and the signs it's wandered off — hello clumsiness, brain fog + random anxiety)
Why you literally cannot process another person's feelings for them, and how to return their energy to sender
Salt scrubs, salt bowls, black salt, and keeping salt next to your bed
Tam's RBE — Resting Bitch Energy — aka the BEST protection upgrade
Working with angels, guides + well ancestors (and why you do NOT want to call in your batshit crazy recent ancestors)
Crystal gridding your property with black tourmaline, obsidian, rose quartz + more
Sigils for protection (ancient practice, dead easy to do)
Smoking herbs, resins, essential oils + DIY mist sprays
Your phone as an energy portal — why it doesn't belong in your bedroom
Using your ancestry DNA to find YOUR ancestral spiritual traditions (I took mine to Claude and it was FASCINATING)
Outsourcing to energy healers + body workers when the DIY isn't enough
Boundaries as energy protection. Full stop.
Nurturing your energy through joy, creativity, nature + community
Gems from this episode:
Your soul can drift just a couple of inches out of your body — and it shows up as anxiety, clumsiness, feeling not-quite-yourself. A 30-second practice of calling it home can shift everything.
You can't heal someone else's energy for them. That's their job. When you're holding their stuff, your body gets confused because it can't DO anything with it. Give it to the earth. Even shit turns into gold in the ecosystem.
Kids under seven will naturally show up in your energy field. That's normal + healthy — they're building their systems off yours.
The strongest protection isn't an elaborate ritual that makes you late for everything. It's being SO full of your own energy there's no room for anyone else's.
Your phone is an energy portal to the world. Remove it from the bedroom. Place crystals near your computer. Write a prayer in your notes app. It sounds woo and it WORKS.
Quotes we loved:
"I actually think I have RBE — Resting Bitch Energy. Stuff doesn't stick to that." — Tam
"You can't process another person's feelings for them. You can't heal their energy for them. That is their job and theirs alone." — Leonie
"Your imagination is for seeing what's really there." — Tam
Links + resources mentioned:
Midas Touch — 11-day meditation program inside the Academy. People keep telling us there was a before Midas Touch and an after. It's some of the biggest soul lessons I've ever learned, turned into minutes. leoniedawson.com/midas
Creative Goddess Embodied 2.0 — inside the Academy leoniedawson.com/creative
Protective Magic by Stacey DiMarco — gorgeous book on protection techniques
Andrea Rae — Crystal Academy
Hiro Boga — intuitive healer
Kerry Rowett — kinesiologist + intuitive
Renee Longworth — energy clearing for properties
If this episode gave you something good, we would love a five-star review. It genuinely helps people find us — especially when we talk about topics that ruffle a few feathers.
Big love,Leonie + Tam ✨
#EnergyProtection #ClearYourEnergy #SpiritualBusiness #WomenEntrepreneurs #CrystalGrid #NeurodivergentLife #WooAndBusiness #EnergyHygiene #SpiritualPractice