In this episode of Leadership is Feminine, Kris Plachy kicks off 2025 with a powerful reminder: You are the asset. Through a heartfelt and insightful walk-and-talk, Kris unpacks what it truly means to prioritize yourself as the cornerstone of your life and business.

She explores why being “tactic-hungry” isn’t the answer and challenges us to stop outsourcing our wisdom to books, strategies, or others’ advice. Instead, Kris emphasizes the liberating—and sometimes terrifying—truth: the answers you seek are already within you.

Drawing from her own journey and decades of working with clients, Kris shares the difference between tactics and wisdom, why chaos can feel oddly comforting, and how recognizing yourself as the foundation can lead to radical clarity and transformation.

She also announces her focus for the year ahead: helping women embrace their role as the asset in their lives while exploring the Sage’s journey of subtraction, creativity, and reinvention. It’s a call to action for anyone ready to stop spinning and start living with purpose.

This episode is your permission slip to see yourself, believe yourself, and finally act on what you already know to be true. Are you ready to stake your claim in 2025? Tune in for an empowering start to the year

Key Takeaways From This Episode

1. You’re the Asset: Focusing on the importance of focusing on what you need, in order to be at your best.

2. Concept of Wisdom over Tactics: The answers are out there and easy to find. But it’s not the answers that are holding you back.

3. Addressing Unfulfilled Desires: The role of wisdom in achieving objectives.

4. Recognizing Personal Responsibility and Power: The importance of recognizing one's inherent power to create change.

5. Connecting to Inner Wisdom: The importance of identifying and not avoiding personal truths.

Contact Information and Recommended Resources

Discover the power of belief to achieve your biggest goals with TheVisionary.CEO's transformative 5-week group coaching experience starting January 2, 2025—visit www.thevisionary.ceo/believe to join now!

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Transcript

Kris Plachy:
Good morning, team, or afternoon, or whatever it is where you are. How you doing? Kris Plachy here, host of the Leadership Is Feminine podcast. And I'm on a walk once again. And so you are probably hearing some weird noises and I apologize for that. But maybe even the context of this podcast will help you also give me some permission for how I'm doing my podcast recording. So I have talked about this before. It's a phrase that I love. It's a phrase that came naturally out of my mouth in a conversation actually with a girlfriend several years ago.

Kris Plachy:
She was hemming and hawing a little bit about a decision in her business. She was feeling guilty about some things that she wanted to do and not do and I said, "You know what though? You're the asset. Like if this, if you don't go, this doesn't go. And so how about we just take care of the asset first, instead of always trying to take care of everybody else?" That's what I say to my clients all the time. And this has been sort of one of my personal mantras. I have a few of them and this is one of them. And so if I'm staying true to that for myself being the asset, if I don't go, this doesn't go. The truth is that making time sometimes to get my podcast done, especially over the holiday season and with all the other stuff I'm working on and getting my belief course built, and I'm doing a lot of thinking about that.

Kris Plachy:
I want to maximize my energy and also maximize my time and also capture what I want to say when I want to say it. And the truth is when I'm on a walk, it's quite, quite an, quite an elixir for me for the way that my ideas and insights flow. And so I figure, why not? I've done it before and do it now. And I suppose if it doesn't bring you joy, you don't have to listen. Right? That's fine.But what I want to talk to you about today is some core truths that have been at the surface for me for a long time. I've just- there's Kris and then there's Kris who has her business,. We've had a lot of arguments, she and I, about how to lead with the messaging around you being the asset.

Kris Plachy:
So the other day as I was writing that, I, as you all know, I do that pretty much every day in the early morning. I Woke up at 4:15 today. That's a little bit too early, to be honest, but I was on the east coast and I'm still having some adjustment issues, not to mention I just don't sleep very well anymore. So there's that. And I wrote down, I don't know if you're familiar with, there's a quote out there - I think it was Peter Drucker, culture ate your strategy for breakfast. I hope that's self explanatory.

Kris Plachy:
But basically, right, like any ideas you might have for strategy, if you don't have the culture too, your culture is always going to be stronger than your strategy. So if you're not getting what you want down in a, especially in a big business, you gotta, you gotta evaluate culture. And culture starts from the top. But in that vein, I was thinking about wisdom and I was thinking about how so many people are so tactic-hungry they just want the answers, right? "Just tell me what to do," right? And never in our lifetimes, my love, have the answers been more readily available. Right? I used ChatGPT last week on my vacation to tell us, like I said. We got to New York City, I said, "Hey, we're in New York City for a few hours. We want to shop on fifth Avenue. We want to go to Central park. We want to see the Rockefeller tree. We want to go to St. Patrick's Cathedral and we want to go see a visit with my family.

Kris Plachy:
"Can you make me a quick itinerary for how to, how to squeeze that all in and how to get there? Like what order?" And of course in less than 4 seconds it's spit it out. First go here, then go here, then go here. Walk, right, like, in order so that we maximize our walking. Four seconds. That has just. That alone has pretty much eliminated professions. Remember MapQuest? Do you guys remember Triptych? AAA used to make triptychs for you.

Kris Plachy:
Like, how to get from- if you were going on a trip, you could contact AAA and they would make you a triptych and tell you how to bike, drive, and see all the places you wanted to see. I mean, four seconds. Four seconds. You can also, I know you've probably seen these things, these prompts right now. You can ask Chat GPT to tell you how to live your best life. How to, you can tell Chat GPT to define your future self and all the steps required to achieve that goal.

Kris Plachy:
You can ask Chat GPT to tell you what your inherent limitations are based on your website or your podcast or your writing or things. You tell it, like, if you say, this is who I am and where I live and what I do and why I don't do what I have, dreams I've had, I haven't fulfilled, it will tell you what your self imposed limitations are and it will tell you how to solve them, what to do. Tactics.So if you find yourself tactic hungry, which I think a lot of people are, this is good news. Every answer you want right now honestly exists between artificial intelligence and human intelligence. Just on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Googling, you can find out any answer you want. How to save money. How to financially invest. How to buy real estate. How to sell real estate. How to have a family. How to leave a family. How to what? I don't know. You got it.

Kris Plachy:
So why don't you have the team you want? Why don't you have the business that you want? Why don't you have the marriage that you want? Why don't you have the life that you want? Why don't you have the body that you want? Why don't you have the money that you want? Listen, it's not because there's not tactics everywhere. In fact, I would argue that most of us who are mature adults, and I use that relatively loosely, but you know what I mean, where theoretically we should be adults by now, you actually know what to do. All the people I talk to, either new clients or existing clients, they'll all say, "I know what I probably should do is that. But I just haven't." Or, "I keep not..." Or I just, Right? So why, what are you gonna do about that? Because the tactic's not gonna solve it and you know that. And so I was writing this, you know, I was thinking about this Drucker quote, right? Culture ate your strategy for breakfast.

Kris Plachy:
And I thought, and I wrote, wisdom ate your tactics for lunch. And to me it's the same thing. Now if you're a podcast listener and you've been here a little minute, and even if you haven't, even if you just sort of got here, I do think that there's a reason, and I believe this about the people that I work with the longest, whether I ever meet you or not. Here's what I think I know about you. I think I know that you know a lot more than you let yourself know. And I think that part of the reason you experience consistent frustrating cycles and patterns that no tactic seems to solve, it's not that you haven't found the best tactic. It's that you're defying and hiding from your own wisdom.

Kris Plachy:
And wisdom will win. She will continue to show you that until you accept what she has to offer you to inform you to lead you to become, she will continue to show you that your tactic hunger won't work. The answer does not exist outside of you until you accept the answer that is the truth for you. And that, my friend, is why you are the asset. And nothing will change that. And I think that is the most liberating thing to know. Because if there is one person on this planet that you should be able to rely on, it's you.

Kris Plachy:
And when we accept that kind of outrageous, radical, disquieting responsibility for everything in our lives, for every person in our lives, for every experience in our lives, for every everything in our lives, when we accept that kind of responsibility and we stop gaslighting ourselves or blaming other people or being a constant search mode for an answer because other people know better than we do, we have so much more agency, we have so much more power. We have so much more ability to achieve the thing, the whisper, the thing that I know, that you know, that your inner person knows is yours. You just don't have it yet. But there's an honesty here. There's a wisdom that you are not listening to, accepting, maybe arguing with, maybe mad about. You know, the truth will set you free. I'm sorry. So cliche. And yet as soon as we get to the truth, then we can start with a solution.

Kris Plachy:
But otherwise we're building on top of something that is foundationless. And that's why you continue to spin in chaos. Now, chaos can actually be comforting, especially for someone who's always had it. We like chaos. Chaos keeps us busy. It keeps us from really paying attention to ourselves. It keeps us from having to account for what we are not manifesting or creating in our lives because we're so busy. We just have too many things going on, right? You can, you can busy yourself all day long and self importantize yourself all day long with how busy you are.

Kris Plachy:
Get it? Is it working? Is it helping you feel sated? Joy? Is it helping you do what you really, really, really want to do more than anything? Or is it actually part of the narrative that makes excuses for why you're not doing what it is you really, really, really want to do? And why is that? What is so terrifying about what it is that you really, really, really want to do? What is the bridge you have to cross that you just are afraid of? Because that's all this has to be, right? It's just some fear. Look at you. You've created everything in your life. Look at how powerful you are. Look at how capable you are. What's, what's with this thing that you keep circling the drain on. Why? What is, you know, the monster in the closet, the bugaboo, the thing that says, "No, no, no, no, no, no. Let's just download another book instead of listening to ourselves."

Kris Plachy:
So this podcast, the very first one of 2025, is sort of a flag in the ground, stake in the ground. I have this vision of my actually, as I said that my, I have some really old family members who, my family was in the Northeast from a long time ago or late 1600s and during the Revolutionary War when the land rights were released. One of my great, great, great, great - I don't know how many great - uncles wrote to his wife in upstate New York and said, "They've released the land rights. Please go on horseback and put our family flag all around to stake our land claim."I think about that in my own mind, like, where do I stake my claim? Where do I put my flag? And I think every year, just by the nature of what I do, because I am a consummate Socratic questioner of everything, I ask myself the same thing. Is this the, is this the flag I want to put my name on? Is this where I want to stake it? And I have spent 30 plus years of my life helping people lead better, be better leaders and managers. And that is like a part of my fabric of who I am. It never goes away.

Kris Plachy:
And yet it isn't where my best work is. Gay Hendricks in the Big Leap talks about the difference between your zone of excellence and your zone of genius. Helping people learn how to lead and manage is my zone of excellence. But there's nothing you're going to ask me to help you with that I can't help you fix. I really know that. That doesn't mean I know the answer. I just know I can help you solve it. But really, where my zone of genius is, is connecting you to your own wisdom through a process that I have where I can hear it for you and I give it to you.

Kris Plachy:
I help you know what your self knowing has been trying to help you hear for years. Now that might sound a little woo-ey and weird, but it really isn't. I mean, I've just, I've just experienced this enough between all of the conversations I've had with my clients and the retreats I've done in Hawaii and the gatherings I do with my sage clients now, like, when I am with you, I hear and know things that I'm able to say to you that gets the response of, "Wait, were you just listening to my conversation with my husband last night? Are you in my office? Did you just read my journal entry? Are you in my head? The heck is happening? How do you know that?" And I'm not talking about being a psychic, yo. Okay, listen to me. That is not what I'm talking about.

Kris Plachy:
But I do believe that as an empath, and I've always said that that's true - and I know that a lot of you are as well - there is this whole other cluster of senses that we have access to that the world doesn't teach us how to use. And so then there's this constant battle between is this real or is this just me and my wacky doodle brain? Right? That's what I meant when I said that from most of the people who are attracted to what I talk about and stay and listen to the podcast and eventually work with me. It's because you have known things for a very long time. And in many cases, what you have known hasn't felt like freedom because you argue with it. And it also frustrates the heck out of you because other people don't know it like you do. So you feel unheard and unseen and unnoticed and unlistened to and unattended to, and you feel, feel this gap between who you are and who the rest of the world is. And that's why you say things like, my expectations are too high.

Kris Plachy:
I'm just never going to find someone who can do things like I do. I'm never going to find someone who can take care of me like I take care of other people. This is your wisdom talking to you. There is something in you that you have had for a very long time and you've never learned how to believe it, how to listen to it, how to believe it, and how to then take action. And that's what I help my clients do. And I think it's so interesting because I've had so many clients who've been, especially in my Sage program, who I've worked with for years. Right? Just, just, just a couple months ago, I had a client say to me in Hawaii, I know she knows, she's listening because she listens to my podcast. And she said, "I come here because you see me. You see me unlike anywhere else I can go."

Kris Plachy:
And while I took that so deeply and it still brings tears to my eyes, I do not believe that it's because I see her. I believe it's because I help her see her. And that is so life changing, to have permission to see yourself and believe yourself and then build from there. And that's so liberating. And then it's scary because it probably means doing things that people wouldn't expect you to do. Changing the course. Moving the flag. While I will always have programs and offerings to the world about how to lead better, I will be emphasizing my attention on the work of a Sage.

Kris Plachy:
I just met another woman yesterday who's a podcast listener. Shout out to you in the Northeast. You know who you are. And, you know, she has done all the things. She's in her late 50s. She is a connoisseur in her industry. She is a teacher, she is a speaker, she is a writer. She has created a world, a gorgeous and beautiful world in the work that she does. And now it's drowning her.

Kris Plachy:
It's beautiful and she loves it, but it's time to pick up the flag and let some things go. And letting go, it's kind of like children, right? When we, we raise these people, but eventually they leave. But that is not our failure. That is our role. It is to nurture and love and develop and grow and leave. Leave them prepared for whatever is next for them. And I think the same of your body of work, your business, never, that is.

Kris Plachy:
But you can't continue to carry all of it. The Sage's journey is as much about release and subtraction as it is exploration and creativity. And so in the coming months, that's what you'll be hearing from me more is how do you as a woman, position yourself as a leader? First for herself, as the asset in her life. You are the asset, and I believe 2025 is the year you live that out. So you coming? Talk to you next time.