Low Work Libido and Redefining Success (with best selling author Randi Braun)

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In this week’s episode of the podcast, I’m joined by the brilliant Randi Braun, Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Something Major and mom of three - for a real and energizing conversation about ambition, burnout, and redefining success.

We dig into what she calls “low work libido” (yes, it’s a thing!), how motherhood shifts our drive, why the to-do list never ends (and why that’s not a problem), and what it actually looks like to go all-in on your career without burning out. This is the pep talk/truth bomb you didn’t know you needed. 

Topics in this episode:

  • What “low work libido” really means—and why so many ambitious moms feel it 

  • How to redefine success on your own terms (and celebrate before the feedback comes) 

  • The myth of productivity and how delegation and joy create real impact 

  • Why being “self-devotional” matters more than being self-disciplined 

  • Real-life rituals to stay ambitious and balanced (without burning out)

Show Notes & References:

Connect with Randi:

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Transcript

Intro

Oh, my gosh. I have such a treat for you today. On the podcast today, I am interviewing Randi Braun, who wrote the most amazing book. Here it is. It's called Something Major, the New Playbook for Women at Work. She's a Wall Street Journal best selling author. She is a mom of three, and she has so much wisdom to share with us. It was just such a delight to have her in this conversation. 

We start out by talking about something that she calls low work libido, which is essentially that disconnection that so many women experience from their work and what they do after becoming moms. 

We also talk about how important it is to define success on your terms and how to do that in really simple, everyday ways. And lastly, we talk about how to stop focusing so much on getting things done and checking more things off of our list and instead focus on allowing more joy, more rest, more non work time. 

Randi is a quintessential ambitious working mom who is all in to her career. She calls it beast mode, but she doesn't have any of the burnout that often comes along with that. 

You're go going want to listen to this quick interview that I did with her on LinkedIn and that I'm bringing you here today on the podcast. Are you ready? Let's get to it. 

Welcome to the Ambitious and Balanced Working Moms podcast, your go to resource for integrating your career ambitions with life as a mom, I'm distilling down thousands of coaching conversations I've had with working moms just like you, along with my own personal experience as a mom of two and sharing the most effective tools and strategies to help you quickly feel calm, confident, and in control of your ambitious working mom life. You ready? Let's get to it.

Rebecca: We're live. Hello.

Randi: Hello.

Rebecca: I know technology worked for us today. Isn't that great? Oh, I'm so excited to be with y'all here today on this weekly edition, if you will, of executive moms behind the scenes. 

And I have a very special guest. I have Randi Braun with me here today. I'm going to have Randi introduce herself. She kind of doesn't need introduction. 

I'm just so thrilled to have her here to be chatting about some really important topics that we all experience as working mom. So thanks for being here, Randi.

Meet Randi Braun, CEO and Author of Something Major

Randi: Oh, my pleasure, Rebecca. It's so great to be here.

For those of you who don't know me, my name is Randi Braun. I am a coach. I am the CEO of the women's leadership firm Something Major. And I'm the proud author of Something Major: The New Playbook for Women at Work.

Which, Rebecca, as you know, is a book that I wrote because I felt like there was so much out there about what women needed to do to thrive.

I felt like there was so much out there about what women needed to do when they were burnt out. But no one had written a book about what happens in the middle—when you have this case of low work libido.

And so really, really looking forward to this conversation with you.

The Shift in Ambition After Motherhood: Understanding Low Work Libido

Rebecca: Yeah. And I—you're teeing it up, right? I definitely want to talk about this idea of low work libido. I talk about this a lot with women.

It kind of comes with this—there’s something about what I would kind of call ambitious, very kind of focused, goal-focused women. And this shift that happens after motherhood, and it's so confusing for us as women.

And it's happening on a physiological level, it's happening on an identity level, it's happening on a physical level. It's happening all across, across the board, right? For us as women, as we become moms.

And so I'd love to just hear around this concept and what some of your thoughts are to kind of kick us off.

Navigating Motherhood in Multiple Phases

Randi: Yeah. And that resonates with me, Rebecca.

I think you know this, but our listeners might not. I'm a mom of three. They are gonna be nine, seven, and one this summer. So I feel like I'm in so many different phases all at the same time. I have, like, the preteen vibes over here and, like, the postpartum vibes over here, and I'm like, oh my God.

What Low Work Libido Really Feels Like

Yeah. And so, you know, when I think of low work libido, Rebecca, it comes back to this conversation I had with a woman I know in deep, deep COVID. And even though she was sitting alone in her house, she was, Rebecca, on the precipice of this new job she had worked so hard for.

And she'd done all the right things. And she just whispered into the phone this confession of, “I just have no desire. I don't even remember the last time I was in the mood.”

And she wasn't talking about that thing—she was talking about work, right?

She was talking about, like, losing that passion for work. And, you know, I joke, there's no little blue pill for that.

And so I think that so many of us, we get bogged down. And what my book and my coaching are all about, Rebecca, is: how can high-performing women crush it at work without feeling so crushed in the process?

And I think that too many of us have low work libido, and I want us to figure out, like, how we can kind of get our mojo back.

Rebecca: Yeah, yeah. In your experience and all the conversations you have about this, do you feel like there's, like, a through line to why this happens to us? I'm just curious your thoughts.

Randi: Yeah, I think there's like, just a lightning round, like, how much time do you have? Cause I wrote 267 pages on it.

Rebecca: I know. You did.

Boundaries, Perfectionism, and the Pressure to Be Effortless

Randi: A lightning round. A few things. Like, number one, boundaries and the cost of setting boundaries. I think that we overestimate the cost of disappointing others, and we underestimate the cost of disappointing ourselves.

Number two, perfectionism. I think that we spend a lot of time minimizing failure instead of maximizing success. And I get that, Rebecca. Like, I'm a recovering perfectionist. I'm a recovering risk avoider. I totally, totally get that.

And then thirdly, I think we live in this weird world where we're supposed to be, like, optimized but effortless at the same time. And so, like, even if we're doing all the right things, it's this feeling of, like, are we performing and signaling all the right things?

And if you look at the performance, the perfectionism, and the boundaries—or lack thereof—it is insane that we're functioning at all.

The Invisible Rules We’re Living By

Rebecca: Yeah, yeah. For sure. The optimization of performance—like, I love that. The way that you kind of frame that. You frame that up.

I think we don't even realize that we are living by a lot of these things, I think. And that's where I think a lot of the confusion happens for us and why we get to this point after kids, and we just kind of go, what the hell am I doing with my life?

And what really matters to me? I know it was for me—right after my first kid, I literally went through this crisis, what I now call, like, the motherhood identity crisis, and was like, what? What am I supposed to want?

I don't know what I want anymore, 'cause it just feels like it's utterly changed.

And my version of that was very—was almost cultural, right? It was almost like what was expected of me. And I think that that's so true for us as women in particular.

The Generational Myth of “Having It All”

Randi: Yeah. And I think it's extremely generational. Right? I think, like, elder Millennials to younger Gen X. And in that, like, we were raised on, do it all, have it all. And then we got it all, and we were like, but the world isn't designed for it all.

So we take on those structural failures. Insert affordable childcare. Insert a school day—once your kids go to regular school—that goes from nine to three.

When the workday goes from—I'll call it nine to five. Who listening to this podcast actually works nine to five? Honestly?

Rebecca: Yeah, yeah, totally.

A Different Kind of Motherhood Identity Crisis

Randi: I will say, Rebecca, the motherhood identity crisis that you talk about in your work—it played out actually a little bit differently for me.

So I had my oldest a little bit on the younger side. Like, now that my youngest is turning one, I'm, like, just now at the quote-unquote normal age that all of the other parents around me are at. Like, I started this thing, like, a decade ago, right? Everyone told me my career was over.

Becoming a Mom Made Me More Ambitious

And the thing was, when I had my first, it actually made me, like, so ruthlessly, ambitiously hungry—and unapologetically hungry—because I was like, whoa, I love her.

But it's like, I didn't have the luxury of the other women in my mom's group, Rebecca, who had climbed the ranks to VP or had climbed the ranks to partner before they had a kid, and they checked all those things off.

I was, like, literally—I was the mom version of building the plane as we fly it.

And I will say that I feel like my kids propelled me. They made me hungry to make it worth it.

And, you know, there is a Jewish idea, Rebecca, that every child brings down its own mazel—brings down its own luck.

And at a time when I felt like the world was saying to me, your career is over, I feel like the universe was saying to me, she’s just getting started.

Rebecca: Yeah, just getting started.

Writing Your Own Rules as a Working Mom

Randi: But I think I got judgment for that. But that's my path, Rebecca.

And it's not your path. It's not every woman who's listening today.

Which is why I wrote Not Randi's Rules. My book, The New Playbook, is all about empowering you to write your own rules.

And I think that's really important because I know every woman listening has a totally different family structure, lived experience, origin story, etc.

Rebecca: All the things. All the things. And you talk a lot about kind of defining success on your terms, if you will. And, I mean, it's kind of like we're leading into that point. at what point should we as women be stopping to redefine success, do you think?

Redefining Success After a Toxic Work Experience

Randi: Yeah, I mean, I write about this in the book—that I was someone who really, really defined her success for a long time by what other people thought of me.

And when I had a boss who just didn't understand me at all and was, in a lot of ways, very personally cruel to me—like, when we crossed the line from professional feedback to just personal kind of cruelty and callousness—that actually, to me, was a little bit of a wake-up call.

Like, it actually was so hard. But I was like, oh, okay, well, like, I actually can't depend on other people to see me.

And I think it is so important. One of the things that I often say to my clients—I'm sure, Rebecca, something you work with your clients on as well—is, like, when they're going for an interview, for a big leap, for some other great thing in their life, I always ask them, how can we make this a success and celebrate the success before other people's feedback comes into the equation?

Celebrate Yourself Before the Results Come In

And I can tell you—you know, Rebecca, before we hit play, we were talking about my background. For those of you who can see, I'm sitting with a sticky note board behind me. It's actually the storyboard of my book.

And above that, you'll see—on this side, the week I hit the Wall Street Journal bestseller list. And on that side, the week I went to the LA Times Festival of Books.

And Rebecca, I bring this up because my book tour was such an amazing example of this. Like, I try and tell everybody that the most successful I felt, the most excited I felt, was the night before my book came out in 2023.

I got together with a few of my girlfriends, we sat around, literally popped champagne in our sweatpants. And I was—

Rebecca: I love it.

It was so important to me, Rebecca, to celebrate that moment. Before the Wall Street Journal bestseller list.

Rebecca: Yeah, before you knew was going to be successful or not ultimately, right.

What True Success Feels Like

Randi: It was on my terms. And to this day, when I get a DM in my inbox from somebody being like, “Oh my God, your book helped me…”—insert: advocate for a new salary, start my own business, change my job, have a tough conversation in my life—I try to explain this to people:

It feels so much better than any award that this book has received.

And I share that not to talk about me, but, like, I think a lot of times, Rebecca, in the coaching world, we have this dynamic where coaches are talking about things that leave people feeling like people like you and me have it all figured out and they don't.

And the truth is—we're all in it together. Like, I am walking this path with you, Rebecca is walking this path with you. This is my experience. And I want for you whatever your version of that is.

Redefining Success Starts in the Small Moments

Rebecca: Yeah, I love the idea that—I mean, we're talking about redefining success—and if you want to start practicing redefining success in a big way, you actually start in the little ways.

You start in, like—what's success at the end of the day today? Like, what do you get? You just get to decide that ultimately. Right?

I mean, it can be the number of things you checked off your list. It doesn’t have to be that, right? It could be all sorts of things.

Define Success By What You Can Control

And I always coach my clients—like, we’ve got to make sure that whatever you decide success is, it’s something that you can own entirely.

Right? It’s not going to be: somebody else has to do something, or some behavior of another person, or the way they think.

You know, a lot of times it's like, “Well, I just want... it would be successful if they just felt or they thought X, Y, or Z.” And it's like, well, you don’t ever get to control that—because they’re their own person.

So let’s talk about what you actually get to control. And really making sure that your definition of success is something that’s on you—right? That you can be 100% in the driver’s seat of.

A Mindset Shift for Working Moms

Randi: Yeah. And it's like, what are you feeling good about? What are you proud of? Like, you know, this is something that I’ve written about extensively—in the book, in Forbes—but I am just fascinated by the way that moms are so obsessed with productivity.

And I totally get it. Like, we live in this culture that is all about optimization. All about optimization.

And so, like, I totally get why we all feel this way. We're all going to work in a workplace that wasn’t designed for our success. There’s a lot of proving and performance that we have to do.

But years ago, what changed the game for me was—I was like, wait, what would happen if I stopped trying to be productive and focused more on being impactful?

And what I found was, like, there are days where I get, quote-unquote, nothing on my to-do list done, but I walk away feeling so accomplished. That’s number one.

The Fallacy of the To-Do List

Number two is, like, we have this fallacy of the to-do list—that when we check it all off, it’s going to be done.

Rebecca, like, I did laundry this morning, okay? Because I’m a working mom, right?

So, like, obviously… we’re recording this at 1:45 on a Monday afternoon, and obviously I’ve already done a load of laundry today, right?

Rebecca: Yeah, I did too this morning.

Productivity Myths

Randi: I love my partner. Like, he's amazing. He couldn't be more helpful.

But it's like—okay, like, I did laundry this morning. I would never say, “I did laundry. I’m done doing laundry for the rest of my life.”

I also made an Instacart order this morning—this is not a paid promotion—and I thought to myself, groceries, right? But I would never say, “Oh, because I did the grocery shopping, now my groceries are done in perpetuity.”

For some reason, we just think that if we just check off our to-do list, it’s all going to be done. And that’s a mistake. Like, we have to remember that there’s always more stuff. So let’s not do things for the sake of getting them done.

Delegation

Last thing, Rebecca, is I am such a fan of delegation. Delegation, delegation, delegation.

Everything from the fact that I want my kids wiping down the table and bringing small baskets down to the basement—because that’s their job as much as my job—as much as, when it comes to productivity, Rebecca, like, one of my quote-unquote hacks is that at the end of every single day, I make my to-do list for the next day.

But when I come down at my computer the next morning and I cross reference it with my email, I spend the first 20 minutes of my day looking at what I could delegate. What can I delegate to my chief of staff, what can I delegate to my assistant? 

I know not everyone has that support set, but there has to be someone in your life you can delegate things to. 

Rebecca, I literally delegated returns to my mother, who lives 250 miles away. She is retired. She came and visited this weekend. I had a dress to go back to a department store. I had shoes that needed to go back to a different store. 

And I literally saved it, sent her all the receipts. She has all the time in the world. Okay. So it took two extra weeks for her to get returned, but she's happy to help. So I'm just always like trying to get creative on where I can delegate.

The To-Do List Never Ends—So What Really Matters?

Rebecca: Yeah, yeah, I love that. I love that. I think I remember a particular client conversation I had once where I was like, just imagine you checked five things off the list and five more things magically appeared—as if you never checked them off the list. Like, literally, the list never goes—it never goes shorter.

 Let’s just assume it never goes shorter. And let’s have that in your mind as we start talking about what actually matters to you. Because it’s not the checkbox, right?

Your Worth Isn’t Defined by the Checkbox

And I think it’s not just about the productivity for us as women. Like, we identify so much with it. It’s like our identity is somehow wrapped up in the checkbox—and needing the checkbox—as if we’re somehow a better human being or somehow more impactful or more valuable if we have a shorter to-do list. 

And there’s so much fallacy in that belief, and yet we’ve internalized it in some strange way.

And of course, we both would say—I mean, you're talking about delegation—I mean, let’s talk about all the productivity hacks, for sure. Because there are lots of things on your to-do list that are important, and I want you to do as many of them as possible if they matter to you. But let’s un-marble this kind of identity piece from it as well. 

Because at the end of the day, it’s not that you really wanted to get ten things or twenty things done. It was that you wanted to get to the end of the day and feel like your day mattered, and feel like you mattered, and feel like you're a good human. Right? It’s about how you feel at the end of the day—not about what you’ve actually done.

Randi: Yeah. And I don't know if you've ever seen that old iconic episode of I Love Lucy where she and Ethel are working on the factory line with the chocolates.

Rebecca: Oh, yes.

Micro Moments

Randi: The chocolates are falling off the conveyor belt. Like, I feel like that is the film that is playing for too many of us at the end of the day.

I'm a huge fan, also, of just really structuring my day and taking micro moments. Like, I just put up a post before we went into this LinkedIn Live—this podcast recording live, Rebecca—which was like: I know for a fact that Whitney Houston’s "Didn’t We Almost Have It All" is exactly five minutes. Because sometimes I just play that music while I lay down on the floor between calls instead of trying to beat the clock on emails.

I love to start my day with unstructured time and go for a walk. I'm recovering from a huge knee surgery, and I haven’t been able to do that—and that’s really been hard for me. Because people are like, “Oh, that sounds so indulgent,” and I’m like, no, no. That is the unlock to my whole day—having that unstructured time.

Feeling Satisfied All Day Long

Rebecca: Yeah, I love that. I love that. You're right—like, we tend to have this idea that we can rest or we can feel satisfied, right, or whatever it is, after we've checked X, Y, or Z or done X, Y, or Z.

But you could actually—you get to practice that all day long. If you could practice feeling satisfied and good about what you've done and what you've accomplished and your value and all the things all day long...

And actually, when you do that, it perpetuates more of it. Right? It builds momentum and it builds joy and it builds, you know, all of the internal things that we're actually chasing in our life too. I love that.

The Myth of Self-Discipline

Randi: Yeah. And in the book, I talk about these five myths of self-care. And I won't go into all of them, but one of them is the myth of self-discipline.

And these myths—like, obviously, Rebecca, there are so many structural reasons why women feel like they can't rest, why mothers feel like they can't rest, and especially women who come from marginalized communities—100%. Like, there are structural reasons why we cannot rest.

And I do believe that there are these stories that we tell ourselves that just keep us so entrapped in that exhaustion.

When High-Performing Women Start to Bully Themselves

One of the things I talk about in my book is this idea of the myth of self-discipline. And it usually shows up for me with a coaching client when they come and they vent about how stressed out they are, and then they start to almost bully themselves.

Like, “Oh, you know what the issue is? I should be more productive. I should be more disciplined. And if I was just better with…”—insert: my time, my calendar, my work, my planning, my inbox—“then no big deal. I wouldn't be as stressed and I would have more time for myself.”

And that’s just not true.

Like, Rebecca, I don’t know about you, but I spend my time with high-performing women. My guess, Rebecca, is that anyone who is listening to this podcast today—on your commute, with one AirPod in, while you're on the sideline of someone’s swim meet, wherever we find you today—you are not a mom who needs to be more productive and disciplined.

You are a mom who needs to give yourself the gift of grace.

Replacing Discipline with Self-Devotion

And Rebecca, one of the things I was talking about with my own coach the other day was—she was asking me what I would need to do to bring something across the finish line.

And I was like, “I feel like I would need to be more disciplined. But I hate saying that. I don’t feel like I need more discipline—I can’t find the word.”

And she said, “Well, Randi, what if we tried being more self-devotional? Like, what would it look like to be devoted to yourself instead of disciplined with yourself?”

And I was like—that just blew my mind. Because being disciplined has never resonated with me.

Rebecca: It doesn’t feel good. Like, I don't really want to grow in my self discipline. Like, that just sounds rigid and kind of…

Randi: I'm too impulsive. I got like, the little creator spirit. Like, I didn't realize I was a creative until I wrote a book. And I was like, oh, my God, like, I'm creative. I'm a romantic for the creative process. 

And so, like, that's like a push that my coach gave to me and that I'll give to you, Rebecca, and all our listeners, which is like, what would it look like to be more self devotional instead of more self discipline? So, Jamie, if you're listening to this pod, thank you for the wisdom.

Rebecca: I love that. And I would imagine there's a good subset of listeners that go, ooh, am I allowed to be self devotional? Like, am I really? What if, hmm...If we start to break apart that word a little bit. Right. 

We feel a little unworthy, if you will, of that, of our own devotion to ourselves. And that says a lot about where maybe a starting point is for you if that little bit of ugh, comes up for you as you even hear that word.

What Are We Modeling to Our Children

Randi: And Rebecca, I don't know about you—about whether you have sons or whether you have daughters—but I can tell you that I have both.

And one of the things I think about a lot is, like, what am I modeling, especially to my daughter? Like, how would I feel if I saw that she grew up and she was feeling the way I feel sometimes at the end of a bad day?

Rebecca: Or the way I talk to myself. If her inner critic is like, mine, no way.

Modeling a Life You Love—For Your Kids to See

Randi: If her inner critic sounds like my inner critic—then I'm gonna feel like I failed her.

And so that's just, like, something that I—like, I really, really love my life. And that is something that I want her to see.

I also work really hard, and I really hope that my spouse and I are modeling what it’s like to be like that. Like, we don’t usually work on the weekends, Rebecca.

I’ll give you an example. There was a Jewish holiday coming up, and so we were gonna be out Monday and Tuesday. And so, like, it was just one of those weeks where it was like—they had a birthday party, and so we’re like, “Oh, well, we’ll just get ahead of the holiday week.”

And my daughter was like, “Oh, but why do you guys have your computers?”—because they were going out to the birthday party.

“You guys never work on the weekends.”

Which I’m so glad that she picked up on.

Rebecca: So cool. Yeah for sure.

Randi: And my husband without missing a beat, he goes, because mommy and daddy are beast mode in their careers and we want to be able to fully enjoy the holiday. And I was just like, yeah, we sure are.

Rebecca: Yes we are.

Randi: We're totally in beast mode. So it's like I am in beast mode, but I also don't feel burnt out and I feel like, you know, my energy is something that I think of really seriously. Like I cannot do good work when I am exhausted.

You Can Be All In Without Burning Out

Rebecca: Yeah—no, never. Never can do that. And I love, I love just the idea that you can be in beast mode, you can go all in, and you don’t have to burn out. Like, we’ve got to start with debunking the myth that going all in and burnout are somehow interconnected.

They’re not. You get to—you can have the all-in, beast-mode kind of version of life for you.

You know, I’ve kind of just coined that ambition here in this particular podcastition—yeah, we’re also inventing words in the same thing, right?

You can have that. And it doesn’t have to lead to burnout. That isn’t the way it goes.

In fact, I would argue that if burnout is happening, you’re actually not going all in as much as you think. Like, you’ve actually limited your capacity.

Because joy and excitement and motivation and feeling valuable and all those things—those things actually create more in your life and create more of an all-in experience than burnout ever does.

A Wake-Up Call: Falling Asleep at the Wheel

Randi: And Rebecca, like, I’ve been on the other side of this. You know, again, I’ve shared this in the book, and CNBC has written about this.

But you know—I literally fell asleep driving my car in broad daylight, and I crossed not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, but six lanes of traffic. And nobody died. Like, no one got hurt. Which is actually kind of a miracle.

And it’s like—for all of the deadlines and the stakeholders that we think are life or death—I have literally sat in my car shaking, hysterically crying, because I drove through six lanes of traffic and stopped short right in front of a pedestrian.

And it was a real reminder: the only thing that is truly life and death in this world is our health.

If You Wouldn’t Parent Drunk, Don’t Work Exhausted

And according to Harvard Medical School, showing up to work chronically exhausted is the equivalent of showing up chronically drunk.

Like—if you wouldn’t do something important with or for your kids after ripping three shots of tequila… if you wouldn’t crush a six-pack of beer and then get on the Zoom or work on the report…

Then like, why? Why are we comfortable showing up chronically exhausted?

Rebecca: Yeah, of course, of course. It is a sign that something changes. And it changes right now. Changes as you listen to this conversation and let that be, you know, a spark that takes you somewhere.

Is It Guilt—or Do You Feel Undeserving?

Randi: Yeah, yeah. And I'll just say this. I know we have to wrap up, but like, the thing is, is like the next time that you tell me you feel too guilty to take the time for yourself, do you really feel guilty or do you feel undeserving? Because those are very, very different things.

How Randi Braun Stays Grounded in Ambition and Balance

Rebecca: Yes, 100%. And differentiating those two is really important, for sure. So just real last question—just to make it one more kind of personal note from you—I’d love to hear kind of one boundary or ritual or something that has helped you stay very connected to your version of ambition and balance and rest and peace and all the things that we’ve talked about.

Randi: Very quickly, I'm going to lightning round a few because I think it’s helpful to have daily, weekly, longer-form.

Daily—I love taking a walk in the morning without doing multitasking with my phone or electricity. That’s so head-clearing for me.

Rebecca: Let your mind wander.

Randi: Yeah. Weekly—I turn my phone off 25 hours a week to observe Shabbat, which is the Jewish Sabbath. It is so hard to turn my phone off on Friday, but it’s even harder to turn it back on on Saturday night. Once you’re in it, you’re in it.

And then finally, I try and take vacation time once a quarter. Like, I try to make sure that’s really proactively on my calendar.

So I’m a huge mix of—like, you know, in fashion or home decor, you can have the high-low mix? I’m a huge fan of the self-care high-low mix.

I’ve got my daily mixed in with my vacation. Like, if it was just daily, it wouldn’t be enough. If it was just vacation, it wouldn’t be enough.

For me, that’s the magic cocktail. And to me, that unlocks my creativity. It unlocks my productivity.

It just also makes me happy. And to me—like, how can I be ambitious if I’m not happy?

Time Off Is a Success Strategy

Rebecca: I mean, why are we doing anything if there isn’t joy connected to it, right? So 100%.And what I’m hearing, like very generally, is you actually take off work time. You take it on a daily basis, you take it on a weekly basis, you take it on a quarterly basis.

Like, you literally allow your brain to rest. And that—it does everything for us, as we know from research and all the things, but obviously from just your life experience. My life experience too. So I love it. Randi, thank you so much for being here.

Randi: I take time off so I can be in beast mode. Thank you so much for having me.

Wrapping Up

Rebecca: Oh my—absolutely. And we could just keep talking. I know! So good.

It’s so wonderful to have you here, Randi, and for sharing your wisdom. I definitely recommend your book.

If you guys haven’t read it, by all means, please. I will also drop some links for that as well.

Randi: Yeah. Thank you, Rebecca. This has been so wonderful. I invite any of your listeners to connect with me on any of the socials. You can always find me—Randi with an “i.”

And my last name is Braun. B-R-A-U-N. Like the electric coffee maker, toothbrush... except I’m not the heiress to the fortune.

Rebecca: I love it. I love it. So good. All right—thanks so much.

Randi: Thank you.

Rebecca Olson