Discover the key to a more abundant, loving, and aligned life with April Roberts, founder of the Vixen Gathering. Join us as we explore the transformative power of embracing your feminine energy, revealing how it can revolutionize your relationships, career, and self-worth. Find out how to embrace your Vixen energy to elevate all aspects of your life.
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Show Notes | Transcript“So many of us are missing out because we’re blocking the receiving. I was guilty of this. I had this huge a-ha a few years ago and I would do a daily meditation to imagine receiving so that I could retrain myself.” – April Roberts
April Roberts shares the value of tapping into your feminine wisdom in today’s episode. She is intimately familiar with this topic because she helps Gen X women do just that in her transformative coaching practice. A former high-achieving attorney and financial advisor, April developed the five pillars of Vixen to help her clients harness their unique energies for work-life harmony.
In this episode, you will learn:
- The significance of aligning with one’s true passions and desires for a fulfilling life
- The five pillars of Vixen and their role in achieving balance
- Practical advice for transitioning energy between professional and personal roles
- The importance of self-awareness and intentional breaks for energy management
- The necessity of playing within one’s business to foster creativity and prevent burnout
- Emphasizing the balance of giving and receiving in feminine energy
Resources:
Join the Soulful Women’s Network
Connect with April Roberts:
Website: VixenGathering.com
YouTube: @VixenGathering
Facebook group: Abundant Business Women
Connect with Live Love Engage:
Send Gloria Grace a message
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LinkedIn: Gloria Grace Rand
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YouTube: Gloria Grace Rand
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TRANSCRIPT
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Namaste, so glad to have you with us today. And if you are one of my wonderful women viewer woman women viewers yeah sorry. You may feel a lot of pressure to succeed, you know, both in your personal life and your professional life and that often leads to a lot of stress, anxiety and burnout. And today’s guest understands that because she has. She’s lived that. She’s been a high achieving former attorney and financial advisor and now she helps Gen X women achieve more abundance, love, spirituality and alignment by connecting with their femininity femininity.
I hope I can speak today. I apologize, I’m tripping up on my words today, but before we bring on the lovely April Roberts, I do want to officially welcome you to the podcast, especially if this is your first time. I am Gloria “Grace and I do a little bit of a similar work to April and that I help female entrepreneurs really strengthen the connection to their inner wisdom so that you can create a life and business that is prosperous and deeply gratifying. And since I know we have sort of similar, similar mission, shall we say, I’m looking forward to having this discussion and I hope you are too. So, without further ado, I’m going to bring April Roberts on to the show. Welcome, April.
April Roberts
Hi, I’m so excited to be here and I agree I loved when I was, when I was reading about you checking out the work you do. I feel we’re very aligned, so I’m super excited for today.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I I love finding out about our guests and about their story, and I’ve done a little research on you and I know that you’ve been you’ve been doing this work for this type of work for a few years, but you’ve got, of course, this rich background. I mentioned that you’ve been an attorney and a financial financial advisor, so I’d love to have you share with our audience a little bit about you know what, what got you into doing the work that you’re doing today?
April Roberts
Awesome. I like to joke that I’m on my fourth career, which is the truth. I mean potentially fifth. I’ll share that with you. But yeah, I remember, you know I. I think a lot of us can relate.
I’m 47 and you know I’m I’m a Gen Xer and so many of us had parents that worked really hard to get where they were. Many of us were among one of the first generations in our family to go to college. In fact, you know my dad was the first person in our family to graduate from college. My mom went with him but she didn’t actually graduate. And so you know, when I was going off to college, I was always a high achiever, like I was the nerdy kid who was like studying for the SAT on Saturday and the ACT. I thought it was fun to take practice exams, which, interestingly, I was extremely social as well. So I’ll share that with you when we get get along.
But you know, I really just thought, oh, you go to the best college you can. And so you know, I made it my job applying for colleges and then I went to Vanderbilt University and I got there. My parents are like, where do you get a major in? And I was like oh, english, you know, I think it’d be fun to be an English teacher or a writer. And my parents were like we’re not paying $50,000 a year for you to go to college. You can come home to Mississippi and go to college, you know, if that’s what you want to do. So I and my parents had my best interest at heart. They weren’t trying to do anything bad to me, but that was the way they thought. Right, you come out with a good job that pays you well. And even though my parents were entrepreneurs and my grand parents, I mean it was still in very practical professions. And so I really kind of decided oh well, what do I want to do? Well, with my degree, I can go to law school, which made my parents very happy.
And because I was a really good at test taker, I got into Notre Dame Law School and you know I thought, well, I’ll be a litigator, because I love talking, whatever they were top 10 litigation. They had a program in London. Honestly, that’s why I went there, because I wanted to go live in London for a year, if truth be told, and I was like, oh, that’s cool. Um, and so, you know, I kind of found myself in law school and Grace, I actually remember the end of the first year going, oh my gosh, if I crammed all this in my head like I’m going to do something with it right.
So I don’t even want to say that I chose my path into the legal career. It kind of it wasn’t the path chosen for me, but it was like the practical choice and I don’t think I would have made the practical choice left to my own devices. So you know, fast forward, I get out, I end up working somehow for the most prestigious firm in Atlanta. Like I make a lot of jokes about how I got that job because I was not law review. You know I very much enjoyed my time in law school as I meant it was very social. So I ended up at the law firm and again, I love the social aspect of working there. We were very connected.
I got to go to the Braves games, I got to go to the Hawks games, I got to go to events and so I thought, oh, my life is cool, forgetting that I was working 80 hours a week right and grinding it out when I wasn’t doing these fun things which, by the way, at 25, you can do all of that Today, at 47, I don’t think I could.
So it’s kind of a long story. Hop in any time you want and interrupt me. But what happened for me is I fell in love and I fell in love with my ex-husband, who was Italian, and he moved to the United States to be with me and suddenly, when there’s someone else being affected by your 80 hour weeks and although life is great and I’m getting to, you know, flit around and I’m making lots of money. it really changes your perspective and I realized that that wasn’t a sustainable life I wanted for the future and I feel very blessed that that occurred to me at age 27, because I think a lot of people don’t have that moment until late 30s, 40s or 50s.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Would you matter? Oh yeah, yeah, for sure. You’re very well blessed to be able to have that awareness at such a young age, especially and I’m not sure if you are a parent or not, but especially if you had it before you have any children.
April Roberts
So yeah, Well, at that point I planned to be a parent, and so that was very much in my thinking as well. Right, like, how do I manage all of this? Because you know, I grew up in South Mississippi, so the deep South, where families very engrossed and involved and so and not that it’s only there, but you know that was kind of top priority and so that was in my thinking. So, anyway, what happened was we were in the midst of getting his green card after we got married and his grandfather got sick, and his grandfather was the closest person in the world to him and he wasn’t allowed to leave the country because of that process, and so I just remember being at the lawyer’s office going. You know, at this point I’m 27, 28. Well, I guess we’re moving to Italy, because I just saw this person I love, you know, whole face fall, and so he was on a plane the next day and I came a month later. So that was, that was a crazy time, trying to wrap up my job, sell everything we own. He’s in Italy looking for us a place to live.
And, you know, in my first year of marriage, I arrived in Italy under these circumstances, which it’s funny because I teach the five pillars of Vixen, and I’m like gosh, if only my like 27, 28 year old self had had these five pillars when I was dealing with all of this, it would have been so much better. Because what happened for me is I went to Italy. My law degree wasn’t good, I didn’t think about that ahead of time, I couldn’t get a job in a law firm doing anything else, because they told me I was over qualified because I was a lawyer. And so I suddenly you know this kid that had taken AT ACT exams on the weekend and always planned the future I suddenly found myself in this position where I was a housewife with no children, which I think had there been children, it would have been different and so I really struggled and what I ended up doing was teaching English to professionals and lawyers, and I got paid a whopping 12 euros an hour. Now when I left at Atlanta, I was making at 25, I was making six figures, right. So suddenly I’m making 12 euros an hour.
It does a number on your self worth and that’s a big thing that I coached women on. Is our inherent self worth. And then you know, I’m in a whole nother country without my support system. And then it turned out that my husband had an addiction problem that I didn’t know about, so he had stopped when he met me. But of course, when we moved back to Italy as many people do when they’re in their comfort zone they start the problem again. So I spent five years working on that with him until I was mentally, emotionally and physically depleted and, just you know, had to leave. And so I found myself back in the US going, what the heck do I do now? I’ve sold everything I owned, we’ve spent all our savings. I’m like 32. I mean at 25, when I was making six figures. This is not at all what I imagined would be going on at 32.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
And why your parents didn’t want you teaching English, which you wound up doing, though, right.
April Roberts
Yes, isn’t it funny, and I don’t mean that I can laugh now at it. Obviously it was a very painful time, but you know I share my story because I know so many women find themselves, maybe not in that extreme of a situation, but in the situation where they’re just like, okay, what do I do next? I’m not feeling fulfilled, I’m not feeling myself, I’m not, you know, owning my worth, which is incredibly important. Women and that’s I know you’re very spiritual, but standing in your dignity as a woman is extremely important, so we have to learn to do that. So, again, I was kind of blessed that this all happened to me at 32 instead of in my late 40s and early 50s, like I see it happening with a lot of women getting divorced these days, and so I kind of joke. That’s why I call myself the fairy godmother. I’m not the expert, but I’m ahead of the curve on learning some of this stuff only because it happened to be at a younger age, right. So anytime I can help a woman and guide through transitions in life, I really love it.
So I found myself back at my parents’ house and I got a good job practicing law, making money started filling my savings back up and then I realized my dad was helping people with finances and I didn’t know he did retirement planning. I thought he was a stockbroker, right, and so I didn’t know the difference because I wasn’t that financially savvy. And then when I learned what my dad did and helping them plan for the future versus what I did as a law firm, what I did as a litigator, inheriting problems and trying to work them out, it was very appealing to me. So I kind of jumped in with both feet, got licensed and I was my dad’s intern for a year and a half, I’d say, after which I moved to Houston I’ll shorten this now at this point Opened my own practice, ended up opening up three offices around the Houston area, growing that practice to multiple seven figures.
And I think this is important too, Grace is I did it myself. I never had funding, because women only get 2% of funding and a lot of times they feel that’s holding you back. But in business I mean, treat it like your household, you’re not spending on things that you can’t afford, right? I would literally make money, use a portion of that money to market and make the next money. And then I’d use a portion to market and make the next money. And you know, I had a little bit of savings to start, so I had been lucky to quickly save money to do this and so yeah, that was 2010. I moved to Houston, started as a financial advisor in 2008. And I sold that practice last year actually a year ago because I was feeling called to make impact on a different level.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Now you mentioned earlier and I want to kind of get into it because I love your story that you’ve been able to do this, and you said you mentioned earlier that you wish you had known, then, like at 27, about Vixen energy, so, where I kind of just slid that in there. So for those of us who are listening and watching, they’re going like, huh, wait, what is that? So can you take us through what is that and how has that been able to help you and help your clients as well?
April Roberts
Yeah, so I coach. So all my clients are female entrepreneurs. We now have a program for startup, which a lot of women in the program are still working corporate. They have a side hustle and they’re trying to replace their corporate or their full-time job with their side hustle. The next program is a mastermind for women doing six figures to seven, and then we have a third program for women doing seven figures plus, and the reason I do that is I feel so many of us make the mistake of taking advice from someone that’s at a different level than us.
If that makes sense, I think it’s important to surround yourself with people going through the same challenges and having the same wins as you, especially as a business owner. But Vixen energy, anyway, my point is at all levels, when the client comes on with me, the first 90 days we’re going through the five pillars of Vixen, which number one is what I call time leveraging, energy management and confidence building, so really understanding the interplay of these three elements and setting yourself up for success all the time. The second step is knowing yourself. So part of that is knowing your personal core values, what’s important to you. So, for example, for me right now, I’m very head down working on a launch, something we’re about to launch with the business. But adventure is one of my core values, so I already have a trip to Italy and Dubai planned for the first week of May after this launch is finished. So I have that light at the end of the tunnel that’s going to fill my bucket back up.
So I think knowing what really helps you move and part of this is also understanding masculine and feminine energy, and I think, Grace, that’s what you want to talk about a lot. And so, as a lawyer and then a financial advisor, is in male dominated industries. And if we talk about the financial industry, 12 years ago 30% of the industry was female. Today, 30% is female. So you’re not going to tell me that there are no women growing up and saying I want to be a financial advisor, right. What I feel is happening is women are getting into their 40s, 50s, 60s. Like most of us, we’re taking care of parents you know I don’t have children, but most of my clients do and there’s all these competing interests and at work, you’re having to go into your masculine energy and it leads to burnout. Hold on, Grace.
And you know because I’m very familiar with the financial industry, I can talk to it your appointment base. So for me, if you’re a mom with kids at home, great, you meet with your clients from 9 o’clock in the morning till 2 30 in the afternoon. If it’s important for you to take your kids to school and pick them up, other women may have that handled right and they’re fine working 9 to 5. But this is if you have control of your own schedule. If you work for one of the large corporate entities or one of the big banks, it is still a very masculine industry where this isn’t necessarily accepted. When I think back to my law firm, when women came of a certain age you were either encouraged to go out counsel or quit because they thought you were gonna have kids and as a litigator it wouldn’t be sustainable and you wouldn’t make partner. And in fact we had one female partner out of 50 on my team and so One. It’s not just that the the schedule isn’t conducive, it’s that it’s a masculine energy environment, meaning GSD, get stuff done as the PG version of that right, and we women operate a little differently. Now we do have to go into our masculine energy to get stuff done and in fact it’s funny Grace.
I was talking to a friend the other day and she’s like I never thought I was feminine Because, like I’m very direct, I’m very get stuff done, all this and I go. Because she joined I had, I was doing a class on using your feminine energy and sales, so they don’t feel icky. And and she goes, I’m not feminine at all and I was like you teach people to grow community through Facebook groups, to get more clients and Nurture that group. You’re nurturing and building community. That sounds very feminine to me and she was like, oh my gosh, you’re right.
She was like I always thought like I just had to get in the flow and it was easy and it came to me and I mean, you know, I think we can agree. Nothing comes easy, right, you can’t sit on the sofa, eat bonbons and say, hey, I’m in my feminine energy, I’m receiving. You know you have to do the work and trust that the results will come. But there’s definitely a difference between your masculine and your feminine energy and knowing when to use each and how to transition I think for women is very critical to survival and avoiding burn. Hmm.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Can you give an example of you know, like, when you need to transition and then how you would go about doing that?
April Roberts
Yeah, so this came up, so I started helping clients with this. I was kind of coaching on the side when I still had my financial business and a lot of times it’s because I was part of masterminds run by a man and so when women wanted advice, they would be referred to me a lot of times if it was more female Specific, and so I was kind of coaching for free and then I started getting clients and charging for it. It’s that was like wow, I keep getting asked to do this. You know, let’s, let’s, let’s do this as a business. And and then I got called to do that.
But you know, in 2020 you can imagine a lot of women were working from home, right, and if you had a demanding job, there’s your family right on the other side of that door, and so you’re in here, boom, boom, boom, on a heavy schedule If you don’t have control of it, and then suddenly you have to walk through that door and be a mom and a significant other. And so a lot of my clients were struggling with that. They were feeling very guilty about the energy they were bringing into their household and their family. They didn’t understand it was energy Like they just didn’t. They were feeling guilty about how they were showing up with their family, right, because they were carrying that GSD energy into the household, and and so what I did with one client, for example, I said, hey, what’s that behind you? And she was like, oh, it’s a balcony.
She was in her guest bedroom working and I said, could you go sit out there? Like what do you like, do you know? I knew she liked tea, I knew she did yoga. I was like could you do a couple of yoga stretches? And like, go out there and have a cup of tea, maybe light a candle, do something before you walk through the door. So, if you think about it, men are very good at this, right, they normally come home. I mean, this is a very stereotypical, traditional view, but they come home, kiss the family and then they disappear for 10 to 15 minutes, right? Or they turn on the TV and veg, and this is men transitioning their energy to be home. And so we women think we’re superheroes and we can be all things to all people at all times.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
I’ve loved that. I never really thought about it that way, but you’re right, they actually they really do need to transition and yeah, I know, during, during, during 2020 it was. It was. It was lovely because my husband was working from home. Suddenly, you know, I work been working from home by myself. It was nice. You know, now, all of a sudden, I got somebody else in In the household and so having to try to, you know, navigate that and was was definitely challenging and I had it easy, I mean, compared to a lot of other Millions of women, frankly. So I love that you were able to, to, to suggest and and offer that way of being able to do it. I wanna play I don’t know necessarily devil’s advocate a little bit, but I wanna ask you, like, why should someone do what you’re suggesting? Or maybe how could they get it wrong, even?
April Roberts
I don’t think you can get it wrong. I think that awareness is 50% of the battle in all things right. So just becoming aware. It’s like when I coach on time leveraging, I mean the first thing I do is tell my client okay, open up your calendar so I can see what your architecture looks like. In fact, I was doing small group coaching right before I hopped on here and one new member to the group. I was like, how much time do you spend architecting your calendar? And she’s like, what are you talking about? And so you know I explain that to her like what’s your ideal calendar? How do things fit in? Where do you plan things? So anyway, that’s first step.
Second step is I tell them hey, for the next week, I want you to take note of two things. Number one, every time you get annoyed, irritated or resentful, and what activity you’re doing or what happened. And number two, when you really feel in the flow, your energy is good and you’re doing an activity that gives you energy. So basically, I want them to understand the activities that suck their energy or irritate them and the activities that give them energy, because for me that’s time leveraging right, I’m not going to do an activity that sucks my energy right before I do a really important activity that should give me energy or needs a good result. And so to me, this is a very feminine way of managing your calendar, right. The flow of energy so there’s no getting it wrong and so the other challenges. We women have this perfectionist, complex right, and so we want to get everything right out the gate. And you’re not going to get it right out the gate, like think about it, like playing with your calendar or testing your calendar.
I had this aha in the last year. Like gosh, I don’t play enough, because, you know, I sold a business where I was running a team and had hundreds of clients. And then I have a startup company that you know we’re working with and I coach all my clients, and so it’s like this, this veil of responsibility always on you, and I think we women feel it very strongly and I was like, when did I stop playing? I need to play in my business. So now I take two hours on Saturday. I’ll go into Canva and play and do something creative, I’ll try to write something. I’ll play with my calendar, you know, if I don’t have time during the week, and so I’m really just playing to see how things feel. Does that make sense?
Gloria “Grace” Rand
It does, and because at first I was thinking you’re talking about just, you know, sort of playing in general. But I like that concept of actually playing in your business because I do like to fool around you know time. I love Canva as well, you know, and so they have a great time creating new engines and things like that. But to actually, I think, even just to set up the time to do that, I think that’s really good, because sometimes you may wind up you know maybe you’re doing that but it’s taking you away from other stuff, because maybe you just wind up going down a rabbit hole or something.
April Roberts
It becomes a distraction instead of something positive. So now we’ve all like slapped ourselves on the hand and said don’t do that right, but it actually is necessary.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Yeah, I love that. What are you curious about right now?
April Roberts
Oh goodness, oh so, a friend of mine, this is actually funny so well. My number one curiosity is spiritually based. I feel, at this point in my life, the way I have adventure. I mean, yes, I get to go to Dubai for the first time. That’s going to be cool.
But my true adventure is self discovery and you know, for me, I believe in God, other people believe in other things, but just discovering, like deepening that relationship, and what I’m very curious about is how it then shows up in my life and also I’m doing a podcast this week on it how other people react, because we’re at this interesting time where I think it’s important for us to be having these conversations. But having these conversations are very challenging, right? So, like, my biggest curiosity and I have three spiritual coaches coming on to have this conversation is how can you have a loving, compassionate conversation when you have different belief systems? Because I feel a lot of the things we disagree on are often immaterial. I know I might get blow up and blow back from that, but if you think about it, like if we all showed up and love and compassion all the time, I mean, who would disagree with that? And the world would be a much better place.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Yeah, I agree with that 100% and I love that, and thank you for mentioning that you are host of your own podcast as well, so can you share with the audience what that is, in case they want to check it out?
April Roberts
Awesome. It’s called the Vixen Voice and we’re on all the podcast channels. Plus we’re at Vixen Gathering on YouTube, so we actually put all episodes on YouTube as well. Excellent.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
As do I as well. So this will be there Once I do my little, you know a little bit of creative magic. I don’t do a lot of editing, but I do add a tease to it now, so I will have that. Is there anything else that I should have asked you that I didn’t? Are there any other last points you’d like to leave our audience with today?
April Roberts
Well, I think a lot of times, sometimes women are confused at this concept of feminine and masculine energy to begin with, and you know you can look up what are feminine energy traits and, like we talked about, you know it’s connection, it’s community. Creativity is a feminine energy, playfulness is a feminine energy, and so receiving is a feminine energy, which I find really interesting because most women have a hard time receiving right. So when you start learning to receive which doesn’t mean you can’t give it, just means again, we’re receiving, we’re accepting that energy and we’re giving our energy. So many of us blocked the receiving.
I was guilty of this right. I had this huge aha a few years ago and I would do a daily meditation to imagine receiving so that I could retrain myself and I just got chills thinking about it. Because when you understand the beauty of giving and receiving, the full cycle it is just so amazing. And so many of us are missing out because we’re blocking the receiving right. We’re like, no, but I’m good, I don’t need help, or I don’t need that, oh, don’t worry about it, thank you.
And so I just think if you practice receiving and when you’re just happy and in the flow, you know when you’re in feminine energy, you feel softer, like your wrinkles kind of smooth out. We all know that moment where we’re like, wow, I’m kind of glowing right, and that usually you’ve tapped into your feminine energy and look, all of us have masculine, feminine energy. It doesn’t matter, you know what your gender is, what your sex is. We all have masculine and feminine. We women are very good at adapting. That’s a feminine trait adaptability. So what I like to warn us don’t let your superpower of adaptability become your kryptonite, meaning that you’re adapting into masculine energy all the time or that you’re adapting to give all the time. If you just start receiving, having these soft moments and you know I love your mission, because self love, I really think self love and self forgiveness on a daily basis, and also forgiving everyone else, get you there very quickly.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Oh, yeah, absolutely. But I love that. You, one of the pillars of my program is about opening your heart to receive. So because, yeah, we’re so quick to, you know, brush off even even something as simple as a compliment. You know someone says, oh, your hair looks good today and you’re like, oh, I really need a haircut. You know, I mean it’s like no, just say thank you, just be open to that, because that’s how you’re going to get more. You’ve got to be. You’ve got to, as you said, have that give and receive. That has to be in balance. So, thank you so much for being here. How can someone connect with you if they want to know more about the work that you’re doing in the world?
April Roberts
Awesome. Well, you can follow us on YouTube at Vixen Gathering, or website is Vixengathering dot com, where you can check out our coaching programs, and I have a Facebook group Abundant Business Women where I actually go live every Friday and do free coaching, and so that’s. That’s a true community. There are many Facebook groups where they’re just promoting. We have a true community where we’re having conversations and sharing. So if that sounds good to you, I’d love to see you there.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
All right, awesome. I will be sure and have all of that information in the show notes. So for those of you who are listening or watching wherever you’re watching this make sure you go to liveloveengagepodcastcom and then you’ll find this episode and you’ll be able to get all that information. So thank you so much for spending a little part of your day with us today. I know you shared some great information really to help us all with that balancing that feminine and masculine. It’s so important. So thank you so much.
Thank you for having me. It was so lovely, and I do want to thank all of you as well for being here today, for listening, and if you love the show, I hope you will make sure that you, number one, are subscribed on either your favorite podcast platform or on YouTube, and you know I love reviews as well. So if you want to give us a rating, that would be great, and I hope you will join us. Next week, we are going to have a wonderful woman named Gina Cavalier on, and she’s going to be talking about healing self love and also a very important topic about how to surviving suicidal ideation. So it’s going to be an interesting conversation, and I’m looking forward to it. So until next time, though, I encourage you all to go out and live fully, love deeply and engage authentically.