How to Spot Good Girl Conditioning in Business with Michelle Knight {podcast}

How Good Girl Conditioning in Business Keeps You Over Functioning

The Woman Everyone Counts On

Good girl conditioning in business rarely looks like a problem from the outside, because the women who carry it tend to be the ones running everything beautifully. They got the straight A’s, they were great at sports, they took care of their stuff, and nobody ever had to worry about them, which is exactly how my friend Michelle Knight describes her own version of it. Michelle would never have called herself a good girl, and I suspect a lot of you would say the same thing about yourselves. For her it showed up as responsibility, layer after layer of it, till asking for help felt like a sign of failure and admitting she was struggling felt impossible. Then she started a business, and as she put it, entrepreneurship shines a big old light in your face and makes you confront all of it – we talk all about it in today’s podcast.

When Doing More Feels Safer

Michelle is a storyteller, a personal branding coach, and the founder of Brandmerry, where she has spent nearly a decade helping women build brands rooted in their real stories. Early in our conversation she said something I have not stopped thinking about, which is that sometimes over functioning is safety. When you stay busy, you never have to sit in silence or ask yourself the hard questions, and since high achievers are very good at staying busy, we default to it without noticing. Michelle did exactly that after losing her brother when she was 22, again during postpartum, and again when she decided to start a business instead of dealing with any of it. That is good girl conditioning in business at its sneakiest, because from the outside the busyness reads as ambition, and nobody thinks to ask what it is protecting you from.

Tripling Revenue While Hating the Work

By the end of 2021, Michelle had tripled her revenue teaching SEO and Pinterest, which people had started asking her about during COVID. She was very good at it, and she hated what she was teaching. She also felt like she could not tell anyone, because that work was making all of her money and she was the one providing for her family. Being the sole income provider without a salary, she told me, carries a level of anxiety that people do not talk about, and she found the opposite of the freedom she had started her business for. It took a full stop in 2022, when her husband got very sick and everything in her life came to a halt, for her to finally get still enough to hear what she actually wanted.

Therapy, Fiction, and a Garden Witch

What Michelle did next surprised me, and I think it will surprise a lot of you too. She went to therapy to save her business, and it turned into a two-year healing journey, with one of the biggest gifts being someone finally asking her what she wanted with nobody else’s opinion in the room. Then she cut off all personal development, every podcast and every coach outside of therapy, because all that outside advice had diminished her own voice so much. She started reading fiction again, took up gardening (her husband calls her a garden witch), and gave herself a hobby she has zero plans to monetize. As an OG personal development girl myself, I felt that one in my bones, because I stopped reading fiction for years in entrepreneurship and never noticed what it was costing me, which is a pretty good picture of how good girl conditioning in business keeps us consuming and doing long after it stops helping.

What Intuition Feels Like in Your Body

Breaking good girl conditioning in business does not happen with one big decision, and Michelle was very clear about that. You keep choosing over and over, and every choice is a chance to ask whether this thing gives you the feeling you are after or just checks another box. One of the most useful parts of our conversation was how she recognizes her intuition now, as someone who describes her natural state as anxious and always moving. A friend once told her that her intuition is locked in when she can feel calm and safety in her body, and Michelle said anyone who has lived in chaos knows what safety feels like when they truly experience it. As an NLP practitioner and hypnotherapist, I spend a lot of time on the difference between that calm knowing and the unconscious programming that pulls you back to keep you safe, and if the voice in your head is imposing fear, that is your programming talking.

The Beautiful Climb

Michelle poured all of this into her first book, The Beautiful Climb, which started life as a branding book before she hit a wall five chapters in. We talk about how she let it become the book it wanted to be, how she used full moons, new moons, and equinoxes to journal her way toward it, and how the bulk of the writing happened in about 45 days. We also get into her Projector design, her 3/5 profile, and the time she gave Claude her birth chart and Human Design without telling it a single thing about herself, then got the permission slip she needed to take her next step. If you have been over functioning your way through another season, this conversation might be the one that lets you put something down. Michelle is living proof that you get to keep choosing, and that the life you choose does not have to match the one everyone expected of you.

FAQ

What is good girl conditioning in business? Good girl conditioning in business is the pattern of being the responsible, reliable one who never needs help, carried from childhood into the way you run your company. It often shows up as over functioning, perfectionism, and trouble admitting when something is not working. Michelle Knight describes it as layers of responsibility that made asking for help feel like failure.

Why do eldest daughters struggle with over functioning? Many eldest daughters grow up as the responsible one who makes sure everyone else is okay. That role can turn into a habit of putting their own needs on the back burner, which carries straight into relationships and business ownership. Recognizing the pattern is the first step toward letting other people carry their own weight.

Why does slowing down feel so scary for high achievers? Staying busy keeps you from sitting in silence with hard questions, grief, or work you secretly dislike. High achievers default to doing because they are very good at it, so stopping can feel terrifying at first. That fear is often a sign that the busyness was protecting you from something worth looking at.

How do I start trusting my intuition again? Michelle Knight started by cutting out outside advice for a season, including podcasts and coaching, so she could hear her own voice. Reading fiction and gardening helped her get out of her overthinking brain. She now recognizes her intuition as a feeling of calm and safety in her body.

Is personal development bad for entrepreneurs? Personal development can be wonderful, and there is also a time and a season for it. For over functioners, a constant stream of podcasts and courses can reinforce the pressure to be better and do more. Taking a break can make room to hear what you actually want.

What is The Beautiful Climb by Michelle Knight about? The Beautiful Climb is Michelle Knight’s first book, an honest look at her journey through grief, childbirth, postpartum, marriage, and business. It is about choosing the life you want again and again, instead of the life that was expected of you. You can buy it on Amazon at https://link.amazon/B0hODcFFa, and Michelle has a free gift for readers at thebeautifulclimb.com.