Do the Work: rest is not laziness
Leslie Venetz ran a $750M budget and still had a boss counting her bathroom breaks. We get into hustle culture, a 100-day sober-curious reset, and rest.
Leslie managed a $750 million budget early in her career and still had someone counting her bathroom breaks. Three in a day was apparently a problem. She spent years as the only woman in the room, in sales management and then senior revenue leadership, mostly finance and energy, and built her confidence the only way those rooms let you: by performing.
Her reset started with a hangover. A 100-day sober-curious experiment (credit to Quit Like a Woman) dug up a belief she'd been carrying since corporate: rest equals laziness. Hustle culture installs that one for free, and it keeps running your calendar long after you've quit the job that planted it.
Now she works four days a week and keeps Mondays for meditation, yoga, and journaling, the stuff that doesn't make money. And her verdict on the laziness thing is my favorite line in the episode: there has never, not once, been a time she was lazy.
“There has never, not once, been a time that I was lazy.”
Notes
- Early in her career, a manager tallied her bathroom breaks. Three in a day was a problem.
- She was the only woman in sales management, then the only woman in senior revenue leadership.
- A 100-day sober-curious reset (via Quit Like a Woman) exposed the belief that rest equals laziness.
- She now works a four-day week and spends Mondays on self-work, not revenue.