Summary:
In this deeply reflective solo episode, I explore the often-overlooked space between what was and what’s next—the transition gap. I share what it was like to leave a significant brand and spend three years in what I now call the “runway,” a season that felt quiet, disorienting, and deeply uncomfortable at times—but also essential to who I’ve become as a leader.

This episode is an invitation to slow down, release old identities, and trust the timing of your evolution. Instead of rushing toward the next title, business, or role, I talk about why honoring the gap matters, how joy can become a leadership compass, and what it really takes to prepare for a powerful takeoff. If you’re in a season of change and wondering when things will finally click—this conversation is for you.

🔑 Key Takeaways:

The Transition Gap Isn’t Failure—It’s a Runway
I reframe the space between leaving a known identity and stepping into what’s next as preparation, not lost time. The runway is where alignment happens.
Audience follow-up → Where are you pressuring yourself to “take off” before you’re ready?

The Brand Hangover Is Real
After leaving a big role or brand, I noticed how many habits, expectations, and validation loops I was still carrying. I call this the brand hangover—and it can quietly keep us stuck.
Audience follow-up → What titles, systems, or external validation are you still holding onto that no longer fit who you’re becoming?

Joy Is a Leadership Strategy, Not a Reward
I share why joy isn’t something we earn after success—it’s something we must cultivate during uncertainty to guide better decisions and healthier leadership.
Audience follow-up → What genuinely brings you joy right now—and are you letting it lead?

The Quiet Is Where Identity Gets Rebuilt
The gap is quieter. There’s less recognition and fewer external markers of success—but that silence helped me hear myself again.
Audience follow-up → How comfortable are you being unseen while you grow?

Momentum Comes After Release
Momentum didn’t come for me until I started shedding old patterns, timelines, and expectations that no longer served me. Preparation happens long before the lift-off.
Audience follow-up → What do you need to release before your next chapter can begin?

🔎 Mentioned in the Episode:

• The “Runway” Metaphor – How I think about transition as preparation, not stagnation
• Brand Hangover – The lingering identity and expectations after leaving a major role
• My Three-Year Reset – A season of rebuilding, reflection, and recommitting to joy
• Fire Horse Energy – A preview of what’s coming next: momentum, takeoff, and bold leadership
  
  

✨ Reflection Prompts:

• What season of transition am I in right now?
• What parts of my old identity feel heavy instead of helpful?
• If I trusted my timing completely, what would change?
• How could joy guide my leadership decisions this week?
  
  

🧠 Who This Episode Is For:

• Leaders stepping away from corporate or legacy roles
• Entrepreneurs rebuilding after burnout or identity shifts
• Women redefining success and leadership on their own terms
• Anyone who feels “in between” and is learning to trust the gap

📩 Want to Go Deeper?

Follow Lori on LinkedIn to continue the conversation

• Book a Leadership Strategy Call with Lori: loripine.com

🎧 Subscribe to The Joy CEO Podcast

⭐️ Leave a review to help other heart-centered leaders find the show

📲 Share this episode with someone who’s navigating pressure and wants to do it with more grace

Transcript

Hi, I'm Lori Pine, the joy, CEO, and I'm so glad to be here with you today. If you are new, welcome. I am so glad to be here with you. This is a podcast all about leadership and the kind that invites you to have joy while you are leading. You know, joy actually strengthens your career. It strengthens who you are as a leader, and I have data to prove it.

We do not do any sort of toxic positivity around here. We are all about authenticity and alignment, but the real thing that helps you show up and build a life you want is you and your decisions and your mindset, and we cannot. Solve a problem with the same mind that created it, said Einstein. So we have to find ways to think differently and solve those problems.[00:01:00]

So if you've been around here for a while, you know that last week. We talked about the year of 2025 being the year of the snake, and as a snake grows, it naturally sheds its skin. Otherwise it would die. And so much like a snake. You too were growing last year and as a natural consequence, you were shedding the things that no longer served you, the habits, the people, the roles, the attitudes, the mindsets, it all needed to go or at least be adjusted.

And so if you think about that. In last week's episode, I asked if maybe you would do an inventory of what you shed, because some of it was gonna be really obvious to you and some of it was going to take you by [00:02:00] surprise. And if you actually did that work, you might be standing there right now feeling a little bit.

Naked, a little bit exposed, if you will, because sometimes when we're standing at a precipice where we've actually shed the skin, it's exposing. It's a little raw. It's one of those moments where we're not really sure what might be coming next. So today we're talking about what happens. After the shedding, it can be a weird gap between who you were and who you are becoming.

And so we're kind of in a middle, and here are three things that you are gonna take away from this episode. One, why the quiet, calm space is so necessary. It [00:03:00] actually forms a runway. That you need to take flight number two, the story of my own three year runway. That didn't mean my engine was broken because let me tell you, there were moments when I thought maybe my engine was broken, but it was an, it was necessary for the runway to be that long because the flight was going to require that of me.

And then three, what you can stop carrying so that you're not dragging old baggage onto your new flight. If you had Walmart luggage before, you did not wanna mix it with your brand new set that you just got for Christmas from away. Or to me, you, you don't wanna mix that. You wanna leave the Walmart baggage with the broken wheel and the broken zipper [00:04:00] behind, and you want to rise to the occasion to enjoy your beautiful new luggage and all the energy that comes with it.

Okay, so here we go. I wanna talk about. The brand hangover. This is when your business card did all the talking, and this is part of being in a gap. So for years, I mean years, I walked around with this invisible armor. I worked for these really big companies. My business card gave me access to places to people.

To conversations because of the brand that was on my business card and it meant something and therefore I meant something people would [00:05:00] light up when they saw it. Heck, my dad would light up when he saw my business card. He would brag about it, you know, to his friends back in my little hometown in Maine, and I didn't have to explain.

You know who I was or who I worked for, or why I mattered, or why I deserved a seat at the table. It was automatically given to me because of the brand that I worked for. So the logo did it for me. It was like wearing a fancy designer label on my forehead. It gave me instant credibility and then I left.

And that instant credibility. Was gone, Lori, who? Sorry, we don't know her Click. And that really meant that I had to do, introduce myself without the safety net [00:06:00] of this really big, shiny brand behind me. And let me tell you, I was like a young deer with really wobbly legs in the beginning. How to do that, what to say about myself.

Who was I? What was I doing? What did I have to contribute? Why should somebody gimme their time, let alone their money? And it was really like kind of like standing in my nightgown, kind of exposing myself, trying to convince people that I was legitimate. And so this is really what I call the brand hangover.

So you wake up without this institutional armor that protects you and gives you credibility and you're like, holy smokes. I'm on my own now and I have to carry my own weight. And here's the thing, it doesn't really change who you are. You are [00:07:00] still you. You've got to show up in a different way where you can't hide behind this really big brand, this big engine.

That's not who or what makes you special. What makes you special is on the inside, and you forget that when you are hiding behind a big brand or a big logo. So when you stand on your own two feet. It does take a minute to be reminded of the intrinsics within you that have value. The company has the power, but when you are building something on your own, you actually get to own that.

No matter where you go with that, if you go to another big company or a small company, or you start something on your own, when you own your own brand, that is forever yours. So [00:08:00] my journey ended up taking me to this gap, and many of you know my story, but if you're new here, I resigned from my corporate job in 2021.

My youngest son was 17 at the time, and he was. Struggling during the pandemic, like so many people were, especially our young people, were struggling then. And I felt like I was at a crossroads and I became a stay-at-home mom at that time. And it became this gap of what was I leaving behind? Big, shiny brand, big title, big paycheck, all of those things.

And who was I becoming? And it was really kind of a naive ish, possibly arrogant ish part of myself, somewhere in the middle between those two that thought it was gonna be a lot easier than it was to kind of [00:09:00] put out a shingle, start a business, do what I knew I was naturally talented at. But let me tell you, it was a lot harder than it.

Was than I thought it would be. Then I imagined it to be, and it took me much longer, twice as long as I anticipated, at the very least. And so. This runway wasn't just a quick jaunt, it wasn't just like, ah, a weekend retreat or a three month sabbatical, and hey, I'll be right with you when I, you know, appear and I'm all successful and running my own thing and I'm, you know, like a seven figure earner, Uhuh.

That's not how it went. This was like three years in the trenches, second guessing myself, almost every step along the way and. In that time I was watching other people really flourish. [00:10:00] I was on LinkedIn and you know, seeing people that I'd worked with get promoted and there was a lot of second guessing.

And when you're someone who is so used to being the rock star and the high performer, and. The number nine in the nine box, if you know what that means. You know, the gap, the runway felt like it was taking an eternity to the point where I, I confided in my husband. I'm like, I, I'm planting these seeds in this garden.

I don't know if there's ever going to be any flowers. And that's when he shared with me the whole bamboo tree. And, and many of you know that story. I've shared it before. He looked at me and said, you're not a garden. You're a bamboo tree. And I didn't know what that meant. And then he explained to me how a bamboo tree is planted underground, and it takes so long for [00:11:00] the bamboo tree to actually break through the soil and the surface that the farmer forgets.

That they planted the bamboo tree, it's like three to five years before it actually breaks through the surface. And, but once it does that bamboo tree, it is everywhere. It is like wildfire. It is. It just takes over. And he said to me in that moment, he said, babe, you're not a garden. You're a bamboo tree.

And you just keep doing what you're doing. You just keep watering what you need to water. Just keep sewing what you need to sew because when that bamboo tree breaks through, watch out world, you're gonna be everywhere. And something really shifted in me, you know, that he, that that's what he saw and that that's what he believed.

And, and, and I believed that it resonated with me. It, it hit me. And so I, I wasn't this, you know, broken engine in a plane who was like. [00:12:00] Sputtering and about to crash into the side of a mountain that, that wasn't me. I was really on a runway ramping up for takeoff, said another way. I was the bamboo tree who was gaining all of her strength, planting all of her roots to break through the surface and just grow like wildfire.

So here's what I figured out. You know, if you are a plane, you need two miles of runway. If you are a bamboo tree, you need three to five years to really establish your root system. If you're a human, you need time to assess, to reassess, to sort yourself out. It's not cut and dry, and it's not the same for every single individual.

And if your runway is [00:13:00] taking longer than you planned, it's not because you're broken. It's not because you've lost your edge. It's just because you are in the middle of something that's requiring more of you than maybe you even expected. And so. That takes time and it takes energy. So I happened to have spent three years on the runway.

I stayed really grounded. There were miracles that happened in that three years. My son is a miracle. My relationship with him better than I could have ever dreamed my family, my home life out of this world a, a blessing upon blessing. Then the work I did to kind of clear my, my corporate energy and to really get clear on my why.

[00:14:00] Who did I wanna serve? Why did I wanna serve them? What problem could I help with? What was I uniquely qualified for? All of that kind of got sorted out in these three years so that I could really show up in an authentic way. Where one of my business values is that I give more than I receive. I want that value exchange to be.

In my favor, where I give more than I receive generosity is a core value of mine. So I just share all of that with you to say that if you are in the gap, if you're on a runway feeling like, what is wrong with me? The answer is likely nothing is wrong with you. You are sorting yourself out so that you too can take flight.[00:15:00]

All right. Here's what actually happens on the runway, and I know this from personal experience. What you're supposed to do on the runway is not just sit there and meditate. Monks might do that, but us humans who are ambitious, who have this desire to do more, be more help contribute, give back, break, glass ceilings.

You are not just meditating, you're actually building thrust. So in this metaphor of a runway and a plane, you need thrust. And in the Connect my group coaching program, the women in there, this looks like getting clear on what you actually want, building relationships with people who get it, letting go of old habits that don't fit anymore.

You have to prepare your engine. Otherwise, you're gonna take old baggage [00:16:00] with you. You're gonna go in the wrong direction, you're gonna have the wrong flight map. It's gonna be a mess. So what are you trying to drag onto your new plane? That actually shouldn't be anywhere, even near the the hangar. It, it shouldn't even be coming with you.

Is it that you need a fancy title? Is it the habit of overworking so that you can prove your worth? Is it the idea that you have to look busy to be valuable? All of that creates drag on the plane and then you just stay on the ground. You can't take flight, you can't lift off. So because 2026 is the year of the fire horse.

It is going to require a very lean, powerful aircraft. And if you don't lighten the load, now you are gonna stall out. You're not gonna experience the power of this year of [00:17:00] the fire horse. It might be more like the year of a pony for you, and you don't want that because when February 17th hits up, this year becomes energetically powerful if you can lean into it.

Okay, so where do you start this week? Like right now, because we're in the middle, we're between the snake and we're, we're ending the snake and we're heading towards the fire horse. Here's what you can try first practice introducing yourself without using a company name or a past title. Might be hard it, you might, you might like stutter all over yourself.

I know I did the first few times. If you can't sell yourself without a logo, you are just not done doing some work on the runway. Really identifying who you are. Second, stop cluttering your runway with busy work just to feel [00:18:00] productive. Your productivity does not equal your self-worth. That is one of the hardest things I had to learn on the runway.

So if a project doesn't fuel the 2026 version of you, it's gotta be a no. It's just debris and it, it needs to go because this year of the fire horse, we are looking for hell yes, energy. So if it's not that, then it is a no. Okay. Third, stop asking, how far did I go today? What did I accomplish? How much more clear am I on?

Where am I going? Just give yourself permission to be just permission to be, can you be curious? And I always love to think about who's done what I'm trying to do so that I can actually see it. Role modeled. There's something about. The neuroplasticity of my brain that [00:19:00] when I actually see it in action, I lock in and say, okay, it's possible.

And so I seek out those people. The coaches who have built a a group community, the coaches who did the programming, I wanna do, I go to them, I hire them, I wanna know more. I wanna ask some questions. What did you do? How'd you do it? And so I seek that out. I want to know, I want to be better so I can do better.

Okay. So that's your work. Three parts. Now in closing, if you are on the runway right now. It's okay, and it's okay if it feels quiet. It's okay if it even feels lonely in moments. I know I did. There's a reason why the quiet happens because think about being on a runway. You're on a plane, you're on a runway.

It gets really quiet before [00:20:00] that pilot pushes the throttle down and revs that engine and that. That thrust happens so that that huge hunk of metal can actually lift off and go into the air. That is what is happening with you. You are going to lift off, so you are not stalling by being on the runway. You are just gaining your energy so that you can get that thrust momentum and then trust your timeline.

All of us wanna do it faster, easier, quicker, so that we can be all the things that we hope and dream to be. But sometimes it just takes what it takes and there's a reason for it. There's a lesson for it. I mean, I wouldn't get to have this podcast today and tell you this episode if I didn't have a three year runway.

So just trust your timeline, even if it's longer than you'd like. [00:21:00] Here's something exciting I have for you. Next week we are gonna talk about part three, where we actually hit takeoff and we're gonna talk about visibility. We're gonna talk about passionate harnessed focus and what it actually looks like to lead with that fire horse energy.

I'm gonna tell you some real life stories about some women just like you, who might've thought that they had a broken engine, but they did not. No, no, no. Their engine was not broken. They just needed some time on the runway to gain their momentum, to gain their speed, to get ready. To push that throttle all the way down so that they too could take flight.

And I'm gonna tell you their stories. One of them spent two years thinking she'd missed her window. Another one almost went back to a corporate role because the gap [00:22:00] felt too risky. But guess. They both have different stories to tell today and what they did instead, we are going to talk about on next week's podcast episode because when the runway ends, that's when we really hit go.

Full throttle. I can't wait to tell you all about it. I'm so glad to be doing it with you. Until next time, I'm Lori Pine, the joy, CEO. It's a pleasure. Thanks for listening to the joy CEO. I hope today's conversation left you feeling seen. Stretched and a little more grounded in your own joy, if something resonated, be sure to hit subscribe.

Leave a five star review and share this episode with someone walking a similar path. And if you're ready to take this work deeper, connect with me on LinkedIn or Instagram at Lori Pine, or head over to my website, lori pine.com to learn more about coaching retreats and how we can work together. Because joy isn't just personal, it's powerful.

And when [00:23:00] you lead with joy, you don't just rise, you bring others with you. Until next time, keep leading with heart and don't forget to claim your joy.