From Overwhelmed to Empowered: Women Stepping Into Leadership
From Stuck to Empowered: A Conversation with Michele Margolin on Leadership and Authenticity
In the latest episode of The Amanda Kaufman Show, I had the pleasure of speaking with Michele Margolin, a remarkable leadership coach for women. Michele helps her clients find their authentic voices and take bold steps toward the lives they truly want to lead. Her journey from a successful attorney to an entrepreneur and coach is not only inspiring but packed with insights we can all learn from.
From Successful but Stuck to Leading with Purpose
One of the things that struck me most about Michele’s story was her honesty about feeling stuck, even after years of success. Michele spent her career excelling in multiple roles: attorney, facilitator, team leader, and mom. But in her mid-forties, she found herself yearning for more.
“I wanted to contribute in a new way, but I didn’t know where to start,” Michele shared. She described how doubts began creeping in, the way they so often do for many of us: Am I too old? Am I good enough?
As Michele worked through those questions—and the limiting beliefs they represented—she realized she wasn’t alone. So many women, especially those in midlife, feel a similar pull to reinvent themselves but don’t know how to begin. This realization became her mission: helping women reconnect with their purpose, embrace their leadership potential, and take meaningful action.
The Importance of Asking “What Do You Really Want?”
Michele explained that the work always starts with one key question: “What do you really want?”
It sounds so simple, but as coaches, we know how difficult that question can be to answer. Society, family, and even our own internal dialogue can make it hard to untangle what we truly want from what we think we should want.
“When you can get so clear on what you want and give yourself permission to pursue it with enthusiasm, your entire life changes,” Michele said.
I couldn’t agree more. I see it time and time again with my clients—and I’ve lived it myself. Letting go of external expectations and aligning with your deeper purpose is the first step toward authentic leadership.
Embracing Discomfort as Part of Growth
One of my favorite parts of our conversation was when Michele shared how she changed her relationship with discomfort. “Being stuck is uncomfortable, but so is growth,” she explained. “The difference is that now I see discomfort as part of doing the things that are most important to me.”
I loved this perspective because it’s something so many of us need to hear. Whether you’re building a business, navigating a career pivot, or stepping into leadership, discomfort is inevitable. But when you reframe it as part of the growth process, it becomes empowering rather than paralyzing.
Michele also described how she built what she calls her “tool belt” of strategies to manage self-doubt and limiting beliefs. “The more I use these tools, the faster I can move through challenges,” she said.
This is such a powerful reminder for all of us: the work never stops, but the more we practice, the easier it gets.
Michele’s Daily Practice
Michele shared a simple yet transformational practice that has become a cornerstone of her personal and professional growth. She calls it “The Daily.”
Every morning, Michele takes time to reflect on her thoughts—particularly the unintentional, automatic ones that pop up. She writes them down and then asks herself: What thoughts are useful? What is true? What will support me today?
This daily ritual allows Michele to intentionally replace negative or unproductive thoughts with ones that align with her goals and values. It’s like a mental warmup that helps her show up fully and authentically for her clients and her work.
Hearing Michele describe this practice reminded me how important it is to create space for intentionality in our daily lives. It’s not about perfection; it’s about consistency and growth.
Authenticity and Service
We also talked about authenticity in leadership—a topic I’m incredibly passionate about. Michele reframed authenticity as a form of service, which I found so powerful.
“When I feel overwhelmed or stuck, I remind myself that this isn’t about me,” Michele said. “It’s about helping someone else. It’s about servant leadership.”
This mindset shift is something I think all of us can benefit from, whether we’re coaches, entrepreneurs, or leaders in any capacity. When we focus on the people we’re here to serve, it becomes easier to quiet the noise of self-doubt and step into our roles with confidence.
Michele’s Advice for Coaches
As someone who’s been in the coaching world for years, Michele shared three pieces of advice for anyone building a coaching business:
Do the Inner Work: Whether it’s through self-coaching, peer coaching, or working with your own coach, continuously invest in your own growth so you can serve others more effectively.
Focus on Service: Keep your attention on the people you’re here to help. It’s not about you—it’s about the impact you can make in someone else’s life.
Have Fun: Coaching is important work, but that doesn’t mean it has to feel heavy. Bringing joy and playfulness into the process benefits both you and your clients.
These tips are gold, especially for those of us who take our work seriously (sometimes too seriously!). Fun is such an underrated but essential part of growth.
Final Thoughts
Michele’s journey from stuck to empowered is a powerful reminder that leadership begins within. Whether you’re navigating a career pivot, stepping into a new role, or simply trying to figure out what’s next, her story offers a roadmap for finding clarity, embracing growth, and leading authentically.
I’m so grateful to Michele for joining me on the podcast and sharing her wisdom. If you haven’t already, you can listen to the full episode of The Amanda Kaufman Show on Apple Podcasts or watch it on YouTube.
And if Michele’s story inspired you, don’t keep it to yourself—share this episode with three friends who need to hear it. Together, we can help more women step into their leadership and make the impact they’re meant to create.
Chapter
00:00 Introduction to Coaching and Empowerment
03:33 The Journey of Self-Discovery
06:15 Embracing Discomfort and Growth
09:08 Authenticity in Leadership
11:44 Overcoming Self-Doubt
14:34 Keys to Successful Coaching
17:22 Conclusion and Call to Action
Full Transcript
Michele Margolin (00:00)
it starts from within, figure out what works for you, what supports you, what tamps down those voices and fires up the others. And for me,
what I did was I kind of developed my own daily practice.
Amanda Kaufman (00:39)
Well, hello and welcome back to the Amanda Kaufman show. I am so excited to continue our series on the coaches that don't suck. So today we have Michelle Margolin here to regale us with her energy and her coaching experience and to have an impact. So hello, Michelle. Welcome to the show.
Michele Margolin (00:49)
Woo!
Hello, Amanda. I am so happy to be here with you. I appreciate the opportunity. I'm really looking forward to the conversation and really happy to share whatever I can to support your audience and their journeys.
Amanda Kaufman (01:19)
love it. So so if Michelle and I were getting to know each other better, we discovered we were both IPEC coaches. So if you know, you know. So Michelle, I'm so curious, like just take 30 seconds and share with us, you know, what who is it that you serve? What is it that you do for them?
Michele Margolin (01:34)
Thank you so much for asking. I am a leadership coach for women. I really think of my business as a disguised mission. My mission being really to support women, to tune into their voices, turn up their voices and to go after the things that they really can't stop thinking about, whether that's in their current role or making some bold move or a pivot.
towards something new and I love it. I love just getting into the messy, meaningful work and supporting women to make the impact that they really want.
Amanda Kaufman (02:11)
I love that. I love that so much. know, I think a lot of a lot of we coaches we get into this because we just see that the world could be a whole lot better place if we just brought our coaching skills to to bear. so I'm so curious, like why why work with women? What is it for you that inspired you that you wanted to build a business like a whole business and to to leap into entrepreneurship with with this as your mission?
By the way, the secret's out. You said it on the Amanda Kaufman show.
Michele Margolin (02:41)
Yes.
So it's, it's a really great question. And it's really important for me to share because I think I had an experience in my mid forties that I think is not uncommon for women in that age and stage of life, which is, felt a sort of, even though I had been a practicing attorney and a facilitator and a team leader and a mom and
wore a lot of different hats and felt proud and successful at them. Starting in my mid forties, I did feel a growing sense of sort of wanting to, I just had this feeling that I wanted to contribute in a different way in the world. And I couldn't, I think the problem for me was I couldn't figure out how to start or where to start.
and I felt really stuck. I was sort of overwhelmed with, this is who I've been. This is who I'm, what I've done. And I was stuck in thinking about, sort of how to go about it, what the path towards something more impactful in the larger world, what the path would be. and I came up against a lot of things that we learn in coaching, kind of limiting beliefs.
Am I too young? Am I too old? And I'm good enough to do this. All the things that we do as humans, and I think as women particularly, that hold us back. And so having worked my way through that, it took me a long time, a lot of blood, sweat and tears. Now that I'm kind of on the other side of it, I think...
That's really what has driven me to say this is what I want to do for other women in the world. I think women have so much to share and we're natural born leaders. And really the essence of my experience and what I work on with clients is leadership starting with ourselves, always figuring out what you want, who you are first and then moving that into action mode.
Amanda Kaufman (04:44)
what you want and who you are. I mean, I tell you what, after coaching for several years, asking a person, what do you want is, I would say, one of the more challenging conundrums that a lot of my clients come up against because they think they know what they want. On a surface level, they know what they want. But when it comes to that truth of your deeper alignment of, what is it that you really, really want? And forcing that articulation,
I would say is probably one of the most challenging things that there is, but it's also the most rewarding. Like when you can get so clear on what you want and get this permission to pursue that with abandon and enthusiasm, it's a completely different life experience than when you keep hanging on to society's expectations, your parents' expectations, your spouse's expectations, your freaking kid's expectations, like OMG. Like everybody's ready to...
share what their expectations are. And I feel like as women especially, we have a lot of conditioning to try to make everyone around us happy.
Michele Margolin (05:49)
Yes, it's true. And I would say this, yes, a hundred percent on all of that. think that women who are professional women, all women, wear, as I've said, so many different hats. And I think that what happens, you know, is that sometimes your self-concept can get a little bit lost in the titles or the hats that you wear. And
In my experience and the experience of my clients that I work with, there is that point wherever it is on your timeline that comes where you think, maybe I'm far afield, or you want to take a look at where you are and who you really are. That's the self-concept. And that was the hardest part for me. That was the biggest bridge for me to kind of travel across was.
I was very much in the, I'm a lawyer, I'm a facilitator, I'm a mom, I'm a school leader. That was my very deeply baked into my identity, except underneath it all, I was a lot of other things. And that was the bridge that I had to kind of, I had to kind of dig underneath all those other labels to, what's the word, excavate?
Amanda Kaufman (07:11)
Mm-hmm.
Michele Margolin (07:11)
some really
important central things about me that I felt hadn't been really expressed. And that was the work. And it's not easy. It's very much worth it. And it does start with the question, what is it you really want?
Amanda Kaufman (07:26)
Well
that was actually one of my questions is you've clearly done a lot of work and that's benefited your clients for sure, but for you personally, what's life like now? now that you are, like if we were to take a little snapshot of a before and after, what if anything is a lot better than your previous experience before you did the work?
Michele Margolin (07:48)
I, again, great question. You're, you're, we, we know you have a coaching background because you're asking amazing, probing, insightful questions. I think that the major difference, between then and now before and after, number one is I think that in learning, and becoming a professional, you know, trained coach.
I feel like I have the world's biggest tool belt around me at all times. And so it's not that I'm still a human. The same things still come up for me, whether it's self doubt or limiting beliefs or assumptions. And yet I have this tool belt to call up things that will help me work through those. And the more I use those tools, the more
quickly I can work through them. That's number one. Number two, I would say the biggest, biggest, biggest change is that I have a very different relationship with being uncomfortable. I was very uncomfortable previously because I think I had this sense, this conflict within having been successful in many ways and wanting something else. That was very uncomfortable and being stuck is very uncomfortable.
Now, I've traded it for the uncomfortable discomfort of building a business and changing or redefining myself concept and taking it out into world. That's also uncomfortable, except my relationship to that is very different. I see it as part and parcel of growth and...
and doing the things that are really important to me include being uncomfortable. So that's a big one.
Amanda Kaufman (09:40)
I love that.
That's so huge, you know, I, I remember making the leap myself, you know, there was that formative year where I was like, OK, I am I'm leaving corporate America, going all in on entrepreneurship and TBH when I very first started that journey, I was like still thinking maybe I might create a product like a physical product, maybe I might pursue creating like a store or a venue of some kind. Like I was still
in a very exploratory phase with my entrepreneurial journey. And it was coaching that just was such a radical, a radical experience. I'm trying to think of like another way to put it. like, it was just, it was radical. And I don't mean like in the 1980s version of it. I mean, it was like that before and after. Like I still remember the very first weekend that I did my very first coaching.
experience and I walked in, you know, I wasn't a lawyer. I was a strategy consultant. But, you know, I think a lot of those roles demand of us a certain amount of like posture, a certain amount of, you know, no BS cut to the point, you know, like there was just sort of there's a lot of masculinity in it, actually, like if I was to just sort of characterize it. And I realized in that coaching session just how pissed off I was, you know, because that
that conflict that I was feeling in, it was showing up in my body and my emotions, but I was so conditioned into like a suppression habit around that and not fully, I loved what you just said, fully and authentically expressing. In fact, I'm looking up at my mission. Like our vision is that we believe the world is better through diverse leadership.
AKA, you know, 50 % of the room really should have women in it if you're anyway, that's like a whole thing, right? But I think the diversity of leadership to represent the population and it's achieved through the risky business of authentic expression of self for the purpose, the risky business of authentic expression of self with the purpose of service to others.
Michele Margolin (11:34)
Absolutely.
Risky business.
Amanda Kaufman (11:52)
And I think what a lot of people in our current society and paradigm, they're looking for that authenticity. But is it authenticity in the direction of service to others?
Michele Margolin (12:04)
Yes. And it's a great segue in a sense that I would say that another answer or piece of the question before about what's different builds on that, is I think previously, of course we do, we as coaches ourselves do a lot of the internal work and I
with my clients all the time on the thinking and the beliefs and the self-concept and the excavation and really bringing out what they want and who they are. And then the forward motion, right? Cause we're always about action steps forward. I think that's a critical piece, not just the authenticity and tuning into yourself underneath all the conditioning and the baked in assumptions and expectations.
I think the service to other is that's a big, that was a big change for me and still is in the moments where I feel weighted down by either overwhelm or confusion or any of the things that come along with coaching and building a business. I, the way I quickly ground myself and write myself.
is to think this is for somebody else. this is servant leadership. This isn't about me. It really is about somebody else and the impact on them. Helping one person, one person at a time. And so that helps to quiet any things that bubble up in us as human beings when you think it's really, it's not about me. It's about somebody else.
Amanda Kaufman (13:42)
You know, I really, really love that. And when I think about the struggles that a lot of, you know, a lot of people that go and get coaching certifications happen to be, you know, a female or minority persuasion, right? And it's because they, or, you know, best I can tell it seems to be because we benefit, we benefited from it. Like we benefited from the experience of coaching, from the tool belt, like you talked about. But then when it comes to like that next step for coaches to be fully and authentically,
expressed and to share the journey and to invite people along. That's where most coaches end up like falling apart, you know, like where they're they're not they're giving priority to the thoughts and the limiting beliefs around what social media is and what it is to market and what it is to sell and what it is to be entrepreneurial, like
Michele Margolin (14:20)
Mm.
Amanda Kaufman (14:34)
all of those thoughts that feel like kind of coming and kind of stop the progress. And so, Michelle, I'm really curious, like, what did you do to activate your confidence or your courage to do things like jump onto podcasts and do things like you do just like, hey, I'm I'm I'm proud of my past and here I am now in this new role. I'm here to serve. It is about you.
How did you get past like the, I'm assuming you had some noisy self-talk in the beginning, because I feel like everybody does, but how did you move past it?
Michele Margolin (15:08)
Of course, of course.
Absolutely. I had a heaping portion of self doubt for sure. And no doubt, I think at every stage of building a coaching business, you will have self doubt creep in. And so it is an ongoing practice, right? To kind of ground yourself.
in those moments. And so what I think for everyone, I work on this with my clients all the time. It's a really, I would say it's a great opportunity to figure out, again, it starts from within, figure out what works for you, what supports you, what tamps down those voices and fires up the others. And for me,
what I did was I kind of developed my own daily practice.
I have a folder it's called the daily. I have it right next to me. And starting from the very beginning and including today, I sort of take a look at what my thoughts are, what's popping up. What are my human thoughts popping up? The unintentional automatic ones. I write them down.
And then I say, okay, Michelle, what is it I want to, what thoughts are useful, what are true, what are supportive for me? I write them down and I literally say them to myself. put them on my computer. I refer to them though. That's a daily habit. It's like feeding myself better feeling more productive, more useful thoughts. So that's become a really important practice for me. I think of it as like a warmup in the morning.
And that helps me to, and it's strengthening that muscle of, go ahead. More, more useful, productive thinking and beliefs that then allow me to do the things I come on a podcast, speak at a workshop, write an article, all the things that if you asked me five years ago, or even a year ago, I would have said, I don't know, but
bit by bit, I fed myself this daily diet of intentional thoughts and beliefs. And that's a practice that I do for myself. And as I said, with clients, we always make in the moment, custom tools. It's not what works for me, it's what works for my clients. So we figure out what works for them. And the invitation always is for them to do it consistently, little by little, by little, by little.
And I think that's something that has really been helpful for me and for the clients that I work with.
Amanda Kaufman (17:56)
I love it. Now, and you have been in this space for several years now. Like, what would you say are three things that help a coach not to suck?
Michele Margolin (18:05)
Okay. One is I would say do the work on yourself, whether you can, whether it's self coaching or peer coaching or barter coaching or a higher coach have to do, keep doing the work on yourself to be able to serve other people. Number two is always think about the people you want to serve, support and impact it really.
Take your ego out of it. Take all of that. It's about somebody else, what you can do for another human being. And lastly, have fun. I think a lot of coaches, understandably so, me included, we can get weighted down. It feels serious. It feels important. It feels significant. It is, and yet I think
Having fun is such a motivating vibe and activates so much for us and for and with our clients. Have fun.
Amanda Kaufman (19:08)
I really love that. I think you're right. I think people do take life very seriously. And I think one of the things that really changed mine was learning. There's plenty of studies that support this, but your productivity actually increases by 30 to 40 % based on having a more cheerful disposition, basically. you know, it's like whether you're happier, more fulfilled, more satisfied. But I think a lot of people are walking around with a lot of consternation, a lot of
fear, lot of loneliness, a lot of seriousness. And it's like, OK, your health, your mental health as you do this is so critically important. it's like when you're building a coaching business, especially in a personal brand, you know, there are going to be days where you're going to have to just show up and it's serious, you know. And so whatever you can do for the for the rest of the time to elevate.
your general standard and to keep that performance high, do it, do it. It's worth it. It's honestly one of your highest paid priorities is to do that. So yeah, love it.
Michele Margolin (20:15)
Absolutely, and it is the world
is full of a lot of reasons to be upset and angry and conflict and all of that. And there's a place for that. And yet I feel like that can shut us down. And that's the opposite of what we want to do as coaches is we're really opening up space where, you know, our job is to give some spaciousness to our clients and fun does that.
Amanda Kaufman (20:24)
Totally.
Totally.
Yeah, exactly, love it. Michelle, what's the best way for people to follow you?
Michele Margolin (20:46)
Thank you for asking. can follow me on LinkedIn. under, I'm LinkedIn, Michelle Margolin. My website is Michelle with one L I C H E L E A R G O L I N.com on Instagram. I am the Michelle Margolin. Sign up for my emails through my website. You can email me. I love interacting with people, hearing from them, talking with them, doing great things.
Thank you again. really appreciate the opportunity and the conversation.
Amanda Kaufman (21:15)
I love it.
My pleasure and dear listener, know, Michelle has done a wonderful job. Be sure to share this episode with three of your friends. I'm sure you've got female leaders in your life who are looking for that next level of activation and they need to meet someone like Michelle. And go ahead and subscribe if you haven't already. We don't want you to miss another episode and leave a five star review. It helps other coaches to be able to find the episode and to tune in. They're gonna pick us when they go for their walkies outside.
when they see that it's a highly reviewed podcast. And we'll also continue to attract amazing guests, just like Michelle, when you do that. Well, thank you so much, everyone. Thank you for being here, Michelle. I appreciate you.
Michele Margolin (22:00)
Thank you, thank you, you're the best, I appreciate you, I appreciate your audience.
Amanda Kaufman (22:05)
Of course, of course. And we'll see you all next time on the Amanda Kaufman Show.
Michele Margolin (22:10)
Bye, everyone.
