Why Do Productivity Hacks Work for Men but Not Women?

Are you forcing productivity… when your body is asking for something different?

What if your “inconsistent” energy is actually your biggest advantage?

And what if working with your body—not against it—could make everything easier?

If this episode changes how you think about productivity and business, be sure to follow the show and share it with someone who needs to hear this.

Most business advice tells you to stay consistent, push through, and keep going—no matter how you feel. But what if that approach is exactly what’s holding you back?

In this episode, we dive into a completely different way of working—one that aligns your business with your natural energy cycles instead of fighting against them. Renae shares how understanding hormonal rhythms can transform how women approach content creation, decision-making, and productivity.

This isn’t about doing less—it’s about doing the right things at the right time. When you start aligning your work with your body, everything shifts. You gain clarity, confidence, and a more sustainable way to grow your business without burnout. 

This episode will show you:

• How to work with your energy instead of constantly pushing through
•  A simple framework for aligning your business with your cycle
•  The best times to create content, plan, and execute
•  Why traditional productivity advice often fails women
•  How to feel more confident and effective in your work

If you’ve ever felt like you’re doing everything “right” but still not getting the results you want, this approach offers a smarter, more aligned way forward.

About our guest

Renae Fieck is a coach and entrepreneur who helps women align their businesses with their natural hormonal rhythms. After experiencing burnout while trying to do it all, she discovered a more sustainable way to work—one that honors how women’s bodies actually function. Today, she teaches women how to use their cycles as a powerful tool for productivity, clarity, and success

Website: https://renaefieck.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/risingmoms
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/renaefieck

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Transcript

A Crisis That Sparked The Pivot

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Hi, I'm Kendra Corman. If you're a coach, consultant, or marketer, you know marketing is far from a perfect science. And that's why this show is called Imperfect Marketing. Join me and my guests as we explore how to grow your business with marketing tips and, of course, lessons learned along the way. Hello and welcome back to another episode of Imperfect Marketing. I'm your host, Kendra Corman, and I am super excited that Renee has joined me today because we are going to be talking about how women can build success in a way that feels aligned with our bodies, not fighting against them, which I've heard a lot of things about this recently. So I'm super interested to get into this. So thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate you coming on the show. Ah, thank you so much for having me. It's an honor to be here. So, how did you get into this? And what is this that like deals with the cycles of the body?

Why Hustle Advice Fails Women

SPEAKER_01 1:26

The body. Well, I if you had told me like 10 years ago that this is where I would be and this is what I would be talking about, I would not have believed you. It I got into it out of pure necessity, honestly. About nine years ago, I was newly pregnant with my third baby, and my husband had been diagnosed with a brain tumor. And so we spent that next year kind of in a whirlwind of ER visits, bringing home a new baby, all of the different things. He had brain surgery. We had just these opportunities for us to really realize and examine our life of is this really how we want to be living our life? Is this really the way we want our life to be? Where both of us are going to work, our kids are at home with a nanny or babysitter. And I did not. Like there in that season, I wanted to be able to be home with them and I wanted to be able to raise them. But I also very much, one, wanted to be able to contribute financially to my family. But also, I have I come from a long line of entrepreneurs and like ambition. And so I had such ambition to want something. So I started a network marketing business, like a lot of women I think do. And a couple of years in found that I was hustling my ass off and actually trading the thing that I wanted in the first place. I wanted more time with my family and I wanted more income to do the things I wanted. And I was spending so much money trying to build a business. And I was spending every waking hour that I had in between, you know, putting the kids to bed and getting them up. I was, I remember at one point being at work at the I worked at the children's hospital at the time. And I can remember being at work in my little pumping room with my computer. And I was busy charting and patients at the hospital while I was pumping and eating and trying to build, you know, message people at the same time. It was like multitasking up the wazoo. And there came a point where I realized I was like, I don't know if I can do this. Like maybe entrepreneurship isn't for me. Maybe there's something that somebody else has, some magic secret sauce that they've figured out that I just don't have, and got to kind of that crossroads of either I'm gonna let go and not keep building my business, like this isn't gonna work for me, or I have to figure something else out. This is not sustainable. I'm burning the candle at both ends and sacrificing so much. And went on a journey of looking at every productivity hack. I, you know, dove into all the neural research. I looked at habit formation. I used every system you could possibly think of out there. I probably tried it in that season and found that like one of the things I discovered was how men and women are so different in our hormones and how our bodies function and how it runs. And I started using it just for myself in how I was building stuff on the back end. And then once I started sharing it with some of my clients at the time, they were like, this is what we need. Like, this is what we need to know more of. And so I shut down everything that I was doing before and kind of made a pivot. I think it was in 2021, and have been going all in on really helping women learn how their hormones and their body functions different than men, and how that really impacts literally everything we do. It's how we communicate, how we show up, how we create, our brain fog, our literally everything in business and in life, and how most of us just have never really been taught it and how much it makes such a huge difference.

SPEAKER_00 4:51

No, and I know I try to listen to my body often like, I'm tired. I need to take a nap. All right. Um, and yeah, it's just it's different because my husband is totally different. He runs on an entirely different schedule. And I'm like, no, I can't, I can't, no, I can't write tired. Now, granted, AI has helped me a little bit with that, and I don't have to be quite as awake. But if I'm tired and exhausted and mentally drained, I can't write. Like I, and 90% of my job is writing.

SPEAKER_01 5:22

I think, especially as like business owners, we most of the business systems out there, most of the stuff that we've been taught is really built in with more of that male sort of mentality. There's a lot of just push past the excuses. There's a lot of just keep doing it, even when you're tired, right? Like there's this messaging out there. And I think for men, it probably does work because there is this element of consistency every day. Men have just to kind of go give a little insight, but like men have testosterone. And testosterone is a hormone that functions in more of this 24-hour rhythm. So I remember my husband would come home from work and he would, but you know, when we had five, three little kids at home that were all under five, and he would come home from work, he would sit in the car for a little bit. And meanwhile, I'm in here pulling out my hair, trying to keep life afloat with three little kids. And he would sit in the car and for 20 minutes, 30 minutes before he'd come inside. And I can remember being so pissed. I'm like, dude, I am in here drowning, and you're just taking a breather break in the in the driveway, or he'd come in and sit on the toilet for an hour. And I'm like, I know it doesn't take you an hour to go to the bathroom. Like, what is going on? You know? But that's how for men, testosterone has this like up and down dip. Like they have a lull. They have that, just like you said, the tired sort of state. Like when we as women go through a menstrual week or a luteal phase week, when we have this like down week, they do too. It's just a shorter window in a day. So in that day, they still have those lulls and those moments when they need a little bit of a rest and a little bit of a recoup. It's just not over the whole course of a week. So for men, pushing past the excuses, just keep going and do all the things every single day works, but women are very different. Like our hormones function in a monthly rhythm where estrogen is more dominant in the first half and progesterone is more dominant in the second half, and they feel very different. And no single day in that entire month do we have the same cocktail of hormones. And so it really does make a huge difference when we understand how those are impacting our brains, how those are impacting our energy, how it's impacting the way you write, like you said, how it's impacting when you get on a podcast and you communicate and you speak. There are definitely, if you're in thick in that luteal phase and you're so full of self-doubt and wondering if we know what we're even doing, and like, why am I doing this anymore? This isn't working. And you get on a podcast, you're gonna feel like you stumble over your words. You're not gonna say what you really wanted to say, you're gonna get off and be like, well, that was crap. Versus when you're high in life and you're on your glowing, radiant, ovulatory self and you feel freaking amazing. It's gonna be sharp, it's gonna be magnetic, it's gonna attract the people you want. It's like, it's a very different energy for sure.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

Well, that explains a lot of things when I'm like, oh my God, that was total crap. Okay, I've done that numerous times, numerous times. I'm like, I have two solo episodes I need to record, and I have not done them because I didn't feel up to it. So that makes a lot of sense. I would have had to record them like 17 times. So I just sort of waited.

The Four Phases For Business Tasks

SPEAKER_01 8:32

Yeah. So you think about that. Like, how many times as women do we sit there and think, one, there's something wrong with you, right? Or B, I just gotta push through and do it. But then it's like, man, I had to do that 55 times. Why didn't why does that look so bad? Or why did I say that? Or I even did that a few weeks ago. I was like, I'm feeling really great. I'm gonna do these couple episodes. And then I was like, no, I didn't like any of those. Like, what am I doing? Like, stop. Just record it when you know you're gonna be good, you know? It makes a huge difference.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

So let's capitalize on that direction and let's talk about when is the best phase to create content and to send or schedule emails. Because I mean, sometimes we don't have a lot of choices to stop, right? Um, because we're doing it all. Totally.

SPEAKER_01 9:19

Yeah. And managing life and the dog groomer and all the things, right? So yeah, well, let's break down the four phases because I think that'll be really helpful to kind of pick out where would be. So the first one would be that menstrual phase. That's I mean, everybody usually knows that phase. That's when you're bleeding. And that used to be my least favorite phase of the month. But as time has gone on, I've really started to see it one, as your most intuitive time, right? So it's the time when we create space from all of the world. We cut out the noise. It's the time I usually like to take off social media. I encourage all my clients to do the same to really tap into what is it that I need and where am I going? What am I creating? What is the vision? What's the goal? I think, especially as solopreneurs, it's really easy for us to get caught in the weeds of just the doing and the going every single day. There's a list of a hundred things that we have to get done, and we just focus in and we just get behind, go, go, go, go, go. And it always feels like we're maybe 10 steps behind where we need to be. And so we just keep hustling through. This is the week when we want to set all that aside and actually get back into that CEO mind, like get back into the vision of what is the biggest priority this month? What are we focusing on? What is going to actually move the needle? Where do we need to be placing our attention? What actually matters the most and really kind of reorienting to that bigger vision and that bigger star, the where we're going. A lot of times, you know, we're just in the hustle and the bustle and we we miss we misguide on that. And we're just getting stuff done. When I look at my business and I look at all the things, I'm like, this year, this last year has been all about cutting. What can I continue to cut? What can I continue to cut? Because it's really easy as entrepreneurs to see what everybody's doing and think we need to add in all of those things. And I got to a place where I was like, wow, I am spending so much time doing all of these things that's not actually moving the needle in my business. So this is that time when you kind of just read back and reorient to that.

SPEAKER_00 11:24

My word of the year is no.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

Yes, I love that. That's so I'm owning it.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

I'm owning it. It's gonna post it on my monitor so I remember because I've forgotten a few times already.

SPEAKER_01 11:35

It is yeah, yes. It's it's so easy, I think, especially when we're first building and getting started, to want to do all the things, like to want to, you know, expand. And we think we need to have 55 offers and we have to be on every platform and we have to be everywhere. And this year, it's like, no, simplify, simplify, simplify, simplify. But that's a whole other conversation you and I could probably have. But that menstrual phase is also what I call like our slingshot week. So if we look at, you know, a slingshot, my dad took my kids to this park and he bought them all the boys' slingshots, right? So they're pulling on these slingshots. And at first, they're pulling the rubber band just a little bit, and the rock is falling maybe a foot or two in front of them, and then they got more brave and they start pulling that slingshot back farther and farther, and then the rock starts shooting shooting farther and farther. What happens for women is that we've been told we got to keep going, we got to keep pushing through. We've told that we can't, you know, the menstrual week, we can't rest. We just got to keep pludging through. And so what happens is that that's like us not like hardly pulling the rubber band back. We're just shooting a little bit. But what happens is that after that menstrual week, we hit into our next phase where estrogen starts to pick up. That's when we have the most energy to take action on our stuff. We have the most momentum, the most confidence, the most everything. And so if we start that next phase with half a tank of gas or no tank of gas, we're not gonna get very far. So when we think about that menstrual week of like taking a nap, taking a rest, going for a walk, like really nourishing and recharging yourself, what that does is set you up for that next phase to really go farther, faster, and harder, if you like to, right? Like we don't always have to do harder, faster, whatever. But if you want to, you're gonna get so much more done when you start with that rest first. So then that really is like if you like looking at business, like planning. It's your planning phase, it's your rest phase, it's your visionary phase, it's your CEO time. And then you move into that next phase, which is your follicular phase. So estrogen really starts to take off. So it's a great time to, you know, get a lot of those projects moving, getting a lot of big ideas going, getting a lot of newness off the ground. If you have a training you're putting together, it's a great time to put the slides together and map everything out and like really look at it. It's a great time to organize a new launch or put a new offer out or any of those big things that require you to need a lot of momentum and need a lot of energy and focus and also feeling really primed to move it forward. You're feeling really great. And then at the top of that is when estrogen's at its peak. That's when we ovulate and our bodies are literally signaling to the world to make a baby with you. Even if you're not wanting to make a baby, that's like our bodies are radiant, radiant, they're magnetic. They're, you know, the research and science has shown that like our skin changes, our smell changes. Like if you've ever had somebody come up to you and be like, wow, you look really beautiful today, chances are you were ovulating because you just do. You look more beautiful. You you feel the most confident, you feel the most sexy, you feel the most beautiful, you communicate the most articulately, you feel the most confident, like all of those things. So it's a really great time. Like you were asking about content. It's a really great time to record content. If you're gonna do anything that requires your face to be on camera, social media content, like this is the like if I'm gonna record content where I'm talking face to face with the camera, this is the time that's best to do that. Like you're going to feel the most connected, the most radiant, the most beautiful, the most magnetic, like all of those types of things. And then after you ovulate, estrogen starts to dip off and progesterone kicks in. And progesterone can be amazing if we know what to do with it. But for a lot of people, it can be filled with self-doubt. It can be filled with feeling not good enough. We're maybe feeling like our energy is going through the bottom barrel. We're like bottoming out on energy. We don't want to talk to anybody. We want to like stay in our sweatpants and not get dressed and just work behind our computer. Like, if there's a call on your schedule in your alluteal phase, you're like, oh, do I really have to get dressed to talk to this person today? Right. I even though a couple of weeks ago I told my clients, I was like, you guys are getting me in full workout clothes and just where I'm at because I'm not getting dressed today. And you're gonna get me not dressed today. So that's where we're at. We're like, we don't wanna, we don't wanna be on camera, we wanna be doing all the things. However, progesterone has oftentimes gotten a bad rack because that luteal phase can be pretty low energy. It can be intense emotions, it can be intense feelings, but that also means that those are the those are the things we want to focus on. So, you know, as a writer and like writing content, what do we know about writing content? Is that like we want to be able to tap into the feelings of our people the best, right? We want to write content that makes, that speaks to them, that makes them feel something, that helps move them, that helps them see the world in a different way and helps r resonate with them. What better way to do that than to actually be able to feel those feelings and to be able to tap into where your people are actually at and write in that way? So when we look at the ovulation phase, that's a great time to record content. This is a great time to write content, to be able to really be in those feelings and really sit with that. It's also a really great time for admin and organization. If, you know, if you've ever been pregnant and at the end of pregnancy, they call it the nesting phase when progress, you know, you're like cleaning everything else and preparing. It's kind of the same energy in this luteal phase. Like you might clean out your entire downloads folder. Like, I don't know about you, but my downloads folder just gets everything. And then, like, one time a month, I go through and I'm like, okay, clean out the downloads folder, like clean out the email inbox, clean out my refrigerator, clean out my closet, like massively clean things out because we're getting ourselves nested and prepared for that rest phase when we're gonna actually take a break. So it's like a preparatory phase for that. Really great time for looking at, you know, any detail-oriented stuff, like dotting your I's, crossing your T's, like, you know, analyzing your funnels, analyzing your numbers, like really looking at things and getting into the nitty-gritty of what's working and what's not, what needs to go, what's not. And so when we look at all of the different phases, they all play different parts of our business. Like they all, we need all of those elements. And it's a matter of rather than trying to force all those things maybe in a week or in a day or things, it's like looking at the energies in the more month and creating that consistency in the monthly rhythm instead of that daily rhythm.

Scheduling Around Real Life Constraints

SPEAKER_00 18:20

Yes. So, all right. My first question related to this might be my only question. I don't know. But I can't always control all the things. So, like I just put on future dates for my podcast recording day because I record one day a month. I batch as much as I can. Yeah, there's some things I can control and move around, and trust me, I do, especially when I'm like, eh, I don't feel like doing anything today. Like this past Friday was a really good day for me. I got a lot done. The Friday before, not so much. Uh so you know, again, I definitely feel those, those, those cycles, but I can't always control when I need to do some of these things. So, how are you scheduling them to be able to do some of that in advance?

SPEAKER_01 19:05

Great question. Because life is going to happen, right? There is always going to be things that are happening. And I will even admit, like being somebody that talks about this and speaks about this all the time, there are things that are scheduled outside of where they're optimized for me. And I think that it's really important for us to put that out there too, is because I don't want any woman to walk away from this conversation feeling like she's limited or negatively impacted by her cycle. I want you to walk away from this conversation feeling empowered and feeling motivated and like your cycle is a tool and a gift for you rather than something that's a weakness. I see it all the time, people saying, Well, I can't do this because I'm on my period, or I can't do this because of my cycle. And I really don't want you walking away from that with this, that, that energy, because you can do anything, anything you want, right? Like you probably do. You're like, wow, it's a low energy day, but this is on my calendar. And you and you do it. You are able to make it happen and you're and you get it through. So women can do anything, regardless of where your cycle's at. You're just going to be more effective if you do it with where you're at or where your body's at. So for me, my cycle's on my Google Calendar. It has its own Google or its own, you know, calendar. I toggle it on and off if I want to. My assistant has access to that so she can see. She will never schedule me something in that luteal or menstrual phase without confirming it with me ahead of time. She just knows, without a doubt. My scheduling system, like for booking podcasts or client calls or anything like that, all of it is filtered through those weeks are blocked out as busy. So they can only be automatically scheduled in those weeks when I'm prime. And then the other ones are a manual override, essentially, if they do go in those ones. So for me, that's step number one is like understanding where your cycle's at, making sure it's on your calendar and that you know where it's at. And you can manually override, right? You can put things in there. And what happens, I think, even just that awareness. So say for you, like maybe last week, Friday, you were ovulating and this week you're thick into the luteal phase and you're like, ugh, I have no energy, right? But now I've got five calls on my schedule. What do I do? But just knowing that you're in that luteal phase is going to help you be able to adapt what you need. Maybe in between each one of those calls, if you have a five-minute break, you're being very intentional about getting up and going for a walk, going outside and doing something that's going to help restore and build back up that energy rather than in between those calls, like those five minutes you're just still plugging away at the computer, right? That five minute window of going outside and going for a walk may be a huge and have a huge impact on the energy that you show up for for that next call. Maybe it's, you know, making sure that like when somebody asks you, hey, let's go out tonight, after that full day, you're like, I know I'm not gonna have any energy. I'm gonna say no. Like we're not going out tonight, you know? So just the awareness of this is where my capacity's at. These are the demands that I have on my schedule and the things I have to be at. How do I modify or adapt? Maybe there's things in that schedule that can be changed. Maybe they're not. Maybe they're like set schedule solid. Like I'm one of those people, if I set something on my schedule and my cycle changes, I hold true to the integrity of like, I've scheduled this, I'm gonna stay committed to it. So then it's up to me then to say, okay, what do I need in order to show up at my best for this? Whether it's going for a walk, getting some exercise, maybe doing some meditation, doing some breathing, maybe not working in between calls, whatever it might be, to really make sure that I have the optimum amount of energy and and show upness for those things that are already there and committed to. Does that help? Yes, that does.

Messaging As Play And Experiment

SPEAKER_00 22:53

Because I think we can't control it all. We can pretend, we can try the best we can. We can't control it all. So I think it's really important to acknowledge that and to figure out okay, how can I adjust now that I know, right, where my energy level is going to be, or I can predict where I think my energy level is going to be based upon where I am at my cycle. And I think that that's just so powerful. And I think any woman, and even the men with the shorter cycles, right, can relate to this, right? Because you want to make sure that you're listening to yourself and to your body. And I again, I think it's just so important, especially when it comes to content creation, right? I mean, filming on days that you feel like you look better, writing on days that you're feeling all the feelings. I I think all of that is just so powerful. So thank you very much for that. I I really appreciate it. So before I get you, I let you go, and before we tell everybody how to get in touch in contact with you and things like that, I do need to ask you the question that I ask all of my guests. And that is that this show is called Imperfect Marketing, because marketing is anything but a perfect science. What has been your biggest marketing lesson learned?

SPEAKER_01 24:09

Biggest marketing lesson. I I mean, I feel like I've learned so many, but I think, especially in the beginning, I would work with coaches and things, and it was always about the messaging. And I thought that there was gonna be this point in my journey that I was gonna have perfect messaging and that I could like set it and forget it. And what I've realized is that it's always evolving, it's always growing. And I wish back then I would have had that idea that ideology, like that mentality of it of I, it's always expanding, it's always growing, it's always evolving, it's always changing. Like there's never gonna be a place where I just get like once I've got this sweet perfect message, like that's gonna be the deal. Like that's gonna be the kicker. It's it's I'm always changing. They're always my people are always changing, the industry's changing, the the society and the culture, and like everything is changing. And if I had approached it from that place of this is just the journey that I'm on, like this is the experiment I get to play every single day. I think it would have reduced a lot of heartache for me, in the sense of like trying to get it perfect and trying to figure it out. Uh, so I think that was one. And then I think the second one would be just that same kind of energy of like playfulness. Like I play and experiment with my messaging so much now. Like I put, I would say I put more content out with the with the ideology of like, is this how's this gonna land? How is this gonna feel for people? Is this gonna do anything? Nope. Okay, move on to the next one. Rather than that, I put so many eggs in one cart for a very long time. I put all of my energy into one thing and like hoping and praying that it would solidify and like it would go where it wanted to go. And I just didn't. And so now I'm on, like I said, on this journey of how can I experiment the fastest? How can I play around the fastest? How can I make it fun? How can I just enjoy what I'm doing? If creating content on social media is not bringing you joy and you are not enjoying it, then it your people are gonna feel that and it's not gonna work no matter how much you put out there, how many times you post. So, whatever it is, whether it's podcasting or YouTubing or Instagram or blog writing or Substack or who knows, whatever anything comes, if you're not having fun with it, then it's probably not gonna work. So just have fun and play and experiment and test things out and see where it goes from there.

Free Book Offer And Wrap-Up

SPEAKER_00 26:41

I really, really like that. So there's a lot there. Progress, not perfection, testing, experimentation, all key things in marketing. So so glad that you're following that. And yes, you don't have to be all the places all the time. Very important to remember. All right. So if somebody wanted to work with you or get more information about you, where should they go?

SPEAKER_01 27:01

Well, first off, I have my book, which is called Cycle Sync Your Business. I would be happy to give away a free copy to anybody that's listening. If you're in the United States, all you have to do is just cover shipping and handling. So if you go to renefic.com forward slash free book, you can submit that and I will send that over to you. If you're outside the United States, you can go to Renee.com forward slash chapter. And I've got a couple of the chapters on audio version that you can grab for free that way. If you are on Instagram, that is my favorite place. So I hang out mostly on Instagram, same thing, just Renee Fick over there. And then my website is ReneFick.com. So any of those places would be great.

SPEAKER_00 27:40

We'll make sure to have those links in the show notes and the description below. So wherever you're listening or watching, you can get access and don't have to have written that down if you're out walking the dog or anything else while you're listening. And so we do appreciate you tuning in. If you learned anything today, and I am sure you did because I know I learned a ton today. It would really help me out if you would rate and subscribe wherever you're listening and watching. Thank you so much again for tuning in to another episode of Imperfect Marketing. Have a great rest of your day.