Return to Radiance with Danielle Venables
Return to Radiance is a podcast for the woman who’s here to lead, mother, and build with purpose — without abandoning herself in the process.
Hosted by Danielle Venables — spiritual business mentor, oracle deck author, and guide for entrepreneur moms — this space explores what it means to build soul-aligned wealth, lead with feminine power, and live in deep integrity with your values… even in a world that pulls you in every direction.
Through grounded conversations, solo transmissions, and real-life stories from the path, you’ll be reminded that you’re not just building a business — you’re pioneering a new paradigm.
Come home to your truth. Return to your radiance.
Return to Radiance with Danielle Venables
105. The 18-Month Void That Changed Everything
Have you ever felt the call to burn your business to the ground and start fresh, even when everything seemed to be working? That terrifying space where you know something needs to change but have no idea what will replace it? Welcome to what I call "the void" – and my recent 18-month journey through it transformed everything.
Two years ago, I discovered I was pregnant with my third child just as my coaching business was finally hitting its stride. I had the clients, the masterminds, the group programs – conventional success by all metrics. Yet deep in my soul, I knew these structures wouldn't work with a newborn, especially as someone committed to being present for my children rather than outsourcing their care. What followed was the most challenging business transition I've ever experienced: letting everything go without knowing what would replace it.
My income dropped to zero. Not temporarily, but for 18 months. I questioned everything – my purpose, my business model, whether I should just close shop entirely. The business world constantly demands growth, bigger numbers, and never being satisfied with where you are. We create a culture where coaches brag about income during good months and disappear during inevitable downturns. Some even begin manipulating numbers to maintain the illusion of constant success. But what happens when your deepest values call you to step away from that hamster wheel?
When clarity finally arrived this spring, it came in two forms: a renewed vision for supporting freedom-minded mothers in creating businesses that honor their desire to be present for their families, and an unexpected opportunity for passive residual income. After initially dismissing it as "too good to be true," I discovered a business model that allows me to earn consistently without sacrificing presence with my children. Combined with forthcoming royalty payments from my Oracle deck, I've built a foundation that supports my family regardless of how actively I'm working.
The void taught me that sometimes we must release everything to make room for what's truly aligned. If you're feeling called to let something go but terrified of the uncertainty, trust the whispers of your soul. Whatever emerges on the other side will be more abundantly perfect than you could possibly imagine.
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If you have ever felt like burning your entire business down and starting over, but also wrestling with the fear of what if I let things go that are working, or what if there isn't income right? What if I'm wrong? What if I let go of certain pieces and nothing comes in to replace it? Nothing comes in to replace it. I want to start off by saying all of those fears are 100% normal, natural human reactions, and in this episode today, I am going to share with you my experience of a two year void that I have been going through and hopefully help you to see that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and that things do work out in your favor when you follow those calls to alignment and when you follow those whispers of your soul, right? So I want to start off by talking about this concept of like letting things go In a world that has become so focused on progress and growth and expansion. And you know, each month in business, we want to make more money and do better and build on the foundations that we already have. Right, it's, it's a constant game of. It's never good enough. I always need to like one up myself. I always need to beat myself. I, you know, I'm never satisfied at the level that I'm at, and so I need to keep going and keep pushing. And this mentality is prevalent through the entire business world. Right, it doesn't seem to matter if it's a big corporation, if it's a personal business. We see this all the time in the coaching space, where it's like, oh, I made this much this month and I doubled my income in the next month, and blah, blah, blah, and it's like people get really loud when they are winning and then, behind the scenes, they're feeling like imposters when their income drops off the next month. Right, and I just want to call that forward because, plain and simple, if you watch and observe these businesses, especially these business coaches who are bragging about their money, notice when they get really quiet or when they start to talk about results that they've had in the past as opposed to celebrating their current wins. This is all part of that worthiness thing and that need to always one up and always prove yourself and always strive for more and bigger and better and sexier results so you can call in more clients. And then that either leads to, like I said, silence when things aren't going as well or when you haven't at least maintained your previous month's income, or worse, it leads to fudging and manipulating numbers and or, straight up, lying about results. Right, and so that's something I want you to be really aware of when you are watching the theatrics of money, wins and business. And it's also something, even if you're not in the coaching space, that I want you to be really mindful of in your own life.
Speaker 1:If you're not in the coaching space that I want you to be really mindful of in your own life, where are you putting pressure on yourself to constantly do better? And I want to preface this by saying like it's not that wanting to improve continuously is a bad thing, but where the real issue starts to come in is when the only measure of success and growth and expansion is financial right. That's the trap. That is where we get stuck, that is where we feel like we can't put things down, that is where we start to burn ourselves out, is when the only metrics of success is am I doubling my income? Am I expanding my income? When you get tunnel visioned on that money, you're losing sight of the bigger picture, and so I'm going to share a little bit about my story, and if you're like brand new in my world. You've probably never heard pieces of this, or you've definitely never heard pieces of this. If you are in my world, you may have heard me talk about different pieces, but I don't think I've ever presented it in this context, like through this lens, but basically in 2023, in June of 2023.
Speaker 1:So, like literally two years ago, at the time of recording this, um, I found out I was pregnant with my third child. I was right at the end of my daughter, like starting kindergarten that fall, and you know, I was like, oh, I can really like focus on my business right, like she'll be gone all day and I can, you know, double down and focus and I'm not saying that our son was like necessarily an accident, but he also wasn't planned and um. So when we found out that we were expecting, we were excited, of course, but a part of me was like, how am I going to run a business with three kids? And like a newborn, like how am I going to do that again? How am I going to start over? And you know, I was feeling like I I was going to have to let go of some of the structures, right, being on calls all day, every day and being really really available to clients and things like that.
Speaker 1:Working with the sheer number of clients that I had been working with and the frequency of the calls and everything, I knew that there were going to be things that were going to have to shift in my business, and so I actually had to go through a bit of a period of grief because I had felt like I was just getting to a point where I was kind of happy where I was. It was like I was finally, you know, getting the clients that I wanted to be getting and running the masterminds and running the group programs and starting to see, like the conventional coaching world, success for the first time, or at least for the first time, like consistently. And so I was like, well, how am I going to do that? And realistically, I mean, some families have, you know, family around or childcare or whatever, but that's not something that I have and it's not something that I want to access. I'm at home because I want to raise my babies, and so the reality was that I was going to need to find a solution to this and the beginning of that solution it didn't present itself right away, right Like the actual answer to my problems did not present itself right away.
Speaker 1:In fact, I knew exactly what needed to be released, what I needed to let go of, but I had no idea what was coming in to replace it, what was coming in to sustain me financially, what that was going to look like this new iteration of my business. Again, I felt like I had just locked in all these foundational pieces and I was like hitting my stride. And then I'm like wait, but I can't do that anymore. So I wrote it out, because I'm not a stranger to the void. I have been in the void many times throughout my business and I know that it's like if you just let yourself be there, you don't distract yourself. You let yourself sit in the discomfort, you kind of navigate your way through it Right, um, within you know, a couple months, usually the clarity starts to come through, everything clicks into place, it all starts to make sense, and so that's what I did.
Speaker 1:I went into void mode and I just kind of let myself exist in the void. I trusted that the answers were coming and I didn't put too much pressure on anything. Right, I just took a step back during my pregnancy. The thing is, this freaking void was over a year long. So at first I was stepping back, I was playing it cool. I was like we've got this.
Speaker 1:And as it dragged on and on and on and the answers still weren't coming and the clarity still wasn't coming, I was like, oh my gosh, now what Like? And I started to like low key, freak out a little bit right. It was like what, what's happening? Why aren't my answers here, like, why hasn't the magical, you know the magic of the void, come and like, saved me from myself? Yet Like, where where's my business going? Am I even meant to run a business Like?
Speaker 1:It started to bring up a lot more questions and an even deeper layer of uncertainty and fear and you know, it really pushed me and stretched me to a point where I had to be willing to let everything go, like everything, my entire business income back down to zero. You don't hear very many people sharing about that, but I knew that some of these structures were not going to be sustained after I had the baby and energetically I just was not available for anything that was not aligned with the version of me after birthing this baby. So I started to let everything go and I watched my income drop to zero, and I was trying not to freak out. I was trying not to feel like an imposter. I was trying not to like look at other people online and be like they're doing it. Why can't I do it? Why couldn't I have just pushed through Right? Because, deep down, that conviction that I had about it was that I knew all of this had to die, I had to let it go, and I had no choice. And so I sat for months at zero.
Speaker 1:In fact, I sat for probably about 18 months at zero, not bringing in anything in my business, and it got to a point where I was almost wondering if I should just close my business and move on with my life and do something different. And move on with my life and do something different, because it just felt like it was so far gone and I wasn't getting any inspiration, I wasn't getting any intuitive hits, I had no clarity still Right, and so that was like through the end of my pregnancy and through the first year of my son's life, I really didn't have anything to go off of, and that created a lot of tension, a lot of fear, a lot of questions about what am I meant to be doing? Why is the clarity not coming through, like what is going on so fast forward to April of this year, going on so fast forward to April of this year? And that is really when actually, yeah, probably April, probably beginning of April was when I started to finally get some pieces coming back right.
Speaker 1:Just a one-on-one program Okay, you're going to work with freedom-minded moms, you're going to help them create businesses and systems that work for their lifestyles. I mean, that's stuff I've been doing for years, but it just came back in a new way in service to moms, in service to women who don't want to be burning out and don't have massive teams and don't want to be like a full-time CEO. Right, this is abundance for women who just want to raise their babies and maybe have some chickens or some goats, right, and they just want to live a life of peace and they want some abundance on the side. Right, it's not their primary focus, it's not their primary mission, but it gives them an outlet to feel inspired and to make an impact in the world, because they are soul led and they do feel that calling, but they also feel a calling to be wildly present for their kids, and so that's where that started to come back out and it took a slightly different form than what I was doing before and it was very grounded.
Speaker 1:It was very like tangible it wasn't, and if you've been in my world for a while, you know that like a lot of it was like Akashic records and it was super spiritual and it was, um, you know, at times almost like, well, what's the relevance? Like it was a lot of healing, but it's like, well, how does that actually play out in the physical Right? Cause I didn't just want to be a spiritual healer and so when it came back through, it was very grounded, it was very supportive, it was very structured of like, yes, we're going to do the spiritual healing, yes, we're going to work through the karmic relationships with your business and money and your husband and your kids and all of that. Like we're going to make space for you, the woman, but we're also going to support that now with the tangible business structures to give you that freedom that you want, right, so that you can hold both without burning out and without feeling like caught in between or like you have to choose. So that was like a nice thing to see coming through right. It was like, finally, after like a year and a half of waiting, a year and a half of like holding the tension, holding the uncertainty, I finally came back to a place where I was like, okay, there's some clarity, that's amazing.
Speaker 1:And then at the end of April so like all within the span of like four weeks I came across an opportunity to earn passive residual income and at first, like I literally saw it and I wanted, like my logical mind wanted to be closed off to it and I wanted to be like no, that's a scam, that doesn't make sense, it's too easy. How do you just get paid on repeat? Like it just sounded like a scam. But there was a deeper part of me that was like, yes, lean in, do it, do the work to get your logical mind on board. Right, like, dig into this and check into it and make sure it's not actually a scam. But the answer is yes and do it. And it helped that it was coming from somebody who was equally heart-centered, equally spiritual, somebody that I trusted and whose energy I knew I could trust, and she's not somebody that would have stepped into something stupid. Like she's a very discerning person. And so that was kind of. I was like, okay, I'm going to trust it. I'm going to trust her because I know what she's about. And so I stepped in. I said yes, spent the next week digging this opportunity apart, going to the Reddit threads and the YouTube videos and anything that said the word scam beside it.
Speaker 1:I was like looking, I was, I was turning over rocks and I was like nothing I was finding was like, oh, that's a deal breaker or oh, that's, that's a scam. Right, thank you, youtube for the clickbait titles. But there was nothing. I was like it checks out. And then I got to know the company and how they make their money and I started to like analyze with my business brain and be like, oh wait, this actually does make sense and this is actually real and it's actually sustainable and it's actually fucking brilliant. Are you kidding me? And once I saw that, I couldn't unsee it, right. So that opportunity I'm now presenting to you as Sovereign Wealth and you've heard me talk about it it's in the YouTube show notes, it's in the podcast show notes, right, like, you have heard me talk about it. But what that did is that unlocked an extra piece of the puzzle for me of exactly how I was going to guide my freedom-minded mamas just like me, into a business model that was supportive of them, that was growing even when they were offline, that didn't rely on them constantly launching and being on client calls and creating all of their own money and trading that time for money.
Speaker 1:And I don't care what anybody says, I'm just going to set the record straight here. I know that business coaches will say, oh, once you scale your business, like you're not trading time for money anymore and it's like, well, actually, unless you're not offering any live calls, you still are. You may be trading less time for money, but you are still putting energy into the launches, you are putting energy into the content, you are putting energy into the calls that you do show up for, which, by the way, take 10 times more energy when you have more people on there. Um, it takes some serious facilitation skills, which I mean I I would know, cause I've done it and I've invested into those skills so that I could get my clients the results I wanted in big group containers. But all of that to say you're still trading time for money, like it's still relying on you being available for launches being available, for client calls being available to support your people, being available in Voxer or Telegram or whatever support email, right? It still requires you, and so you're still trading time for money. Like I said, you may be scaling back how much time it's taking to bring in the money, but you're still trading time for money. That is still linear income and you are still trading your time for money. So I had found a model.
Speaker 1:Finally, after years at this point, I mean 18 months, but even before then, like, probably years of like wishing I could find a structure like this I had finally found it and I was like this is so in integrity, this is so in alignment. This is everything I have been praying for, this is everything I've been asking for. I only wish I had found it sooner. Funny story about that I actually had a friend reach out in November of last year who was trying to tell me about this, and I was just like so in my own void that I never responded to her and I found this message like later on Um, but yeah, I was like, my only regret is that I didn't find it sooner. But yeah, I was like my only regret is that I didn't find it sooner, and it has been absolutely changing the game right, and so it's all part of the divine timing, it's all part of that rebirth, it's all part of that clarity. When you sit in the void it is inevitably.
Speaker 1:I could have gone back to my old structures and what was working for me. I could have gone back to selling one-off Akashic Records sessions for $4.44. I could have gone back to launching my mastermind again and running that for six months to a year. I could have gone back to the hustle and the grind and all of that, and I still could. But the reality is I'm not available for it right now, and I know that.
Speaker 1:And so I can't be in integrity with myself and launch something like that and expect it to sell, because I don't want to. I don't want to show up for the clients right now. I don't want to make myself available in that way, because my priority is my baby. My priority is being able to go to a retirement party at my kid's school last night because two of the most amazing teachers on the face of the planet were retiring and I spent the entire day baking sourdough and spinach dip and stuff to bring to that party to celebrate these incredible humans. Those types of things are where I'm at right now. Those are where I want to be able to spend my time. That's the freedom that I'm craving, the spaciousness that I'm craving in my life right now, which means that the traditional coaching structure was not working for me right now, and so, yes, I could have picked it back up. I could have faked my way through it and I could have delivered half decent results to my clients still, and I could have brought in money that way.
Speaker 1:And the reality is I didn't want to. In my heart, in my soul, I knew that that is not what this season of my life is meant to work or meant to look like, right, and that's why this passive, residual income opportunity is such a huge deal to me, because it is building a foundation, not only for myself. By the way, my kids are earning passively off of this opportunity every single month, okay. So not only am I building something up that I can hand off to them in the future and that's actually encouraged is to like hand it off to them in the future, and that's actually encouraged is to like hand it off to them in the future but I am also building something that is going to support and sustain me in the seasons of life and my family in the seasons of life that I don't feel like being active in my business. Now, this is also something right with the royalty payments that'll be coming through from the Seeds of Light Oracle that's also going to be a passive income stream, right. So the royalty payments that'll be coming through from the Seeds of Light Oracle that's also going to be a passive income stream, right. So that's where I'm at right now.
Speaker 1:That is what has come from my 18-month void. That was freaking painful to sit through, but that's the clarity that came through, and it feels so good for God, the universe, to have put these things in my path. Right. The opportunity to traditionally publish my Oracle deck and being invited to do that, um, and then this sovereign wealth business opportunity. It's like these types of things are exactly what I was needing to build a sustainable passive income foundation so that if I never feel like working with a client again, that's okay, because my bills are paid and I'm supported.
Speaker 1:Now, don't get me wrong, my husband also works, so right now my bills are paid anyway, but that's a story for another time because we might not be staying in Canada where he's working. I'm not going to get into that right now, but it will guarantee that location independently. Our bills are all paid, we are covered, and I've got that coming in on repeat every month and it does not matter what I'm doing or what I'm not doing, or how far I'm pushing myself or if I'm not showing up hardly at all. Right, I get to set the pace of my own life. I get control and sovereignty over my time, and I get to set the pace of my own life. I get control and sovereignty over my time and I get to get paid anyway. And so those are the structures right now that I'm building out.
Speaker 1:That's the season that I'm in. That's where I find myself gravitating towards. When I'm like, okay, like I have an hour to spend on my business, what do I want to do? It's like that's that's it. That's like my obsession, that is my like relentless pursuit right now is to be in that space and to build those things out, because I see the long-term vision. So, yes, I could be chasing 20K months, I could be chasing 50K months and I could be chasing like the champagne celebrations to sell you on a lifestyle of oh, look at me. To sell you on a lifestyle of oh, look at me. Look how much money I'm making. But I don't want to, I'm not available for it, plain and simple. I want something relaxed, I want something that lets me be present, that lets me not miss a second of my kids' lives. And that's what I've got here, that's what I'm building. And so it's insane to me that anybody is not pounding down the doors, being like, hey, what are you up to? Can you show me which? By the way, it's only $50 to get in the door and it includes mentorship with it. So if you're curious about sovereign wealth, dm me the word sovereign, I will get in touch with you and I will hook you up. But all of that to say.
Speaker 1:As mothers, especially as conscious mothers in business, it is so critical for us to think about the long-term vision and for us to not work our kids' childhoods away and be present for them so that they know that we are always in their corner right. We're not distracted by the phone in front of our face. We're not distracted by the laptop in front of our face. I'm recording this as my son's napping. It's all good. So that's what I've got for you today. I'm going to leave you with that.
Speaker 1:So if you've ever gone through an insane void. Just know you're not alone. If you feel like you're in it right now, just know you're not alone. If you feel like you're in it right now, just know you're not alone. Trust the process, let it go. Let the old structures go. You have to to make room for what's coming and I promise you that whatever God has in his plans for you, that's going to be more abundant than you could ever possibly imagine. If you're curious about sovereign wealth, dm me the word sovereign and I will talk to you in the next podcast. Bye for now.