Wendy Paige Sterling is the founder of The New EI™ — Energetic Intelligence — and an Intuitive Leadership Mentor and Oracle for high-achieving women CEOs, founders, and business owners who are ready to stop overriding their intuition and start trusting themselves again.
After two decades leading in corporate sales, Wendy walked away from everything she thought success was supposed to look like. What she discovered on the other side changed everything – that beneath every woman who has achieved so much but still feels like something is missing, there is a generational story running the show. A limiting belief inherited long before she ever built her first business or sat in her first boardroom.
Today, Wendy works at the intersection of ancient wisdom and modern wealth. Drawing on Kabbalistic principles and her proprietary DISCERN Method, she guides women through the deep healing of generational stories and limiting beliefs that have silenced their intuition by restoring their faith in themselves and their trust in the signal that has always been there.
Her clients have built impressive careers and companies, yet sense there is a deeper level of leadership available to them and are ready to let go of their old stories and make new decisions.
Wendy is host of The Decisive Edge interview series and author of the forthcoming book, The New EI™: The Intelligence AI Cannot Replace. Her work has been featured across hundreds of podcast appearances, dozens of stages, and media outlets nationwide.
She is based in Los Angeles and believes that when a woman heals the story, she reclaims her power and that creates legacy impact and wealth.
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendy-paige-sterling/
Website: http://www.wendypaigesterling.com
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Houston, Texas. It’s time for Houston Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.
Trisha Stetzel: Hello, Houston. Trisha Stetzel here bringing you another episode of Houston Business Radio. I am so excited to introduce you to my guest today, Wendy Paige Sterling, founder of the new E Energetic Intelligence. Yes, we’re going to talk more about that and an intuitive leadership mentor who helps high achieving women CEOs, founders and business owners reconnect with their intuition and lead with deeper alignment, clarity, and confidence. After spending more than two decades in corporate sales leadership, Wendy walked away from the version of success she thought was supposed that she was supposed to want and began exploring a different path. One rooted intuition, healing, and what she now calls energetic intelligence. Today, her work blends ancient wisdom, energetic practices, and leadership development to help women break through limiting beliefs, overcome burnout, and trust themselves in both business and life. Through her proprietary Discerned Method, Wendy guides women in healing generational stories and reconnecting to the inner signal that may have spent years overriding in pursuit of achievement. She is also the host of the Decisive Edge interview series and author of the forthcoming book, The New AI The intelligence A.I. Cannot Replace Wendy. Welcome to the show.
Wendy Paige Sterling: Thank you Trisha. I’m so excited to be here with you today. Thank you for inviting me on the show.
Trisha Stetzel: Absolutely. I’m so excited. My new friend. So Wendy and I met, funny enough, at the no summit at the elevator, and maybe we could tell that story later because it was so much fun and I have had the opportunity to sit and chat with you in person, as well as connect with you online. And I can’t wait to hear more about the work that you’re doing. So before we get started, tell us a little bit more about Wendy Paige.
Wendy Paige Sterling: Sure. Well thank you Trisha. Um, you know, I always love to start my story by saying that I, as a little girl, I was a disrupter. I have been that type of a person since I was pretty much born. Um, and it’s somewhat ironic when you hear a little bit more about my story, because I grew up as a first generation American here, born in this country. Uh, my grandparents on both sides are Holocaust survivors. And so when I was being brought up, I was essentially molded to fit into what they saw as the American image, the American dream. And I was anything but that. I sure was that little girl that loved wearing dresses. But she also spoke her mind. She climbed trees. She rode bikes. She played in the dirt. She played in the sand and build sandcastles. Um, and it got to a point where I started realizing that I was getting a lot of criticism around who it was that I had become and who I, who I was being as a little girl. And it got to the point where I started feeling like I was going to be alienated by my family if I didn’t start getting with the program. And so I really shut down, uh, that disrupter piece of me, which also included my intuition because I did have as a little girl, I did have encounters with my spirit guides. My mother called it that I had a very active imagination.
Wendy Paige Sterling: And so I shut it down up until about a decade ago when it came back online, and the reason it came back online was because I had realized that my now ex-husband had been having an affair. And from that moment on, I have not stopped listening to my intuition because it came in so strong, so powerful, and undeniably, uh, familiar. I’ll say, uh, it was familiar because it was that voice that I remembered paying attention to when I was a little girl. And so from that point forward, you know, imagine that I had built this 20 year career at this point, you know, two kids, you know, married for 16 years. And suddenly the rug in the foundation of my life was pretty much pulled out from underneath me while simultaneously also having my mom be diagnosed with cancer. And so it was this really powerful moment. I’ll say that the universe was really trying to wake me up, and I believe that it was intended for me to start standing in my power to bring my voice back, which is what I did. So in that moment, I decided that it was going to be about rediscovering who I was, reconnecting with my intuition, and to stop negotiating with it. And the minute that I started that commitment to myself and to, I will say, God, whoever’s listening, universe, source, spirit, whatever word works for you. And from that moment forward, I really started diving deeper into my connection with God.
Wendy Paige Sterling: Um, you know, I very much dove very deeply into, um, I’m Jewish and I found Kabbalah during this time. I also found life coaching during this time and really started reconnecting in a much deeper way to my connection to spirit, which to me is really about the energetics that we feel in our bodies, but that our minds don’t necessarily understand. And so I really became an expert in doing that work. And it propelled me into deciding that I wanted to not only end my marriage, I also wanted to end my 20 year corporate leadership career and to start helping women like me to stand in the power of their voice, which at the time I said was their voice. But really what I was doing behind the scenes was helping them to reconnect with their own intuition and to lead from that place and to see that the things that were happening for them were in their highest and best. And so about a decade ago, I launched my business, and I was very successful in replacing my corporate paycheck in about 15 months. And then I hit seven figures in four years. And it was one of those trajectories that I didn’t necessarily, um, it was my vision and that’s where I kept leading from. And I just, I kept feeling this pull to keep expanding my mission, expanding my purpose. And ultimately, when my mom did pass away about four and a half years ago, I felt an even deeper connection, not just into my intuition, but really into my connection to Spirit and God.
Wendy Paige Sterling: And so from that place, what I’ve really started leaning into is what I now call the new AI, which is all about energetic intelligence. And it is the type of intelligence that those of us women have had our whole lives, but we think that we’re missing something. And what I help them to do, and what I do very successfully, is to help them to reconnect back in with that intelligence, to help them remember that it was never gone. It was something that they’ve just been conditioned to tune out. And in that, intelligence is what I believe is where feminine leadership is going to accelerate. And that’s what I support my clients in doing, is essentially helping them to envision the life and the wealth and the abundance that they desire, and helping them to essentially collapse the timeline by which they are living that reality. And so I teach them how to embody that now by working with their energetics. And it’s just something that I’ve always done. It’s something that I’ve always had the gift of doing. And I just feel very, very fortunate that this is the work I get to wake up and do every day. So that’s how I kind of got here and how my story unfolded.
Trisha Stetzel: Oh, I just I love everything about your journey and where you were. You were pushed into a box. Many of us have felt that, that we needed to behave or act or do or dress a certain way, because that’s what was expected of us. I how did you know? Wendy Paige how did you know that there was something else inside of you? I’m just going to call it intuition, because I think that’s a word that we can all relate to. How did you know that there was something else inside of you?
Wendy Paige Sterling: Yeah, that’s a great question and I’ll answer it this way. So how did I know was because, um, you know, we all are familiar with what, you know, EQ is right. Emotional intelligence. Right. We all know what that is. And man, I mean, I, I feel like I got a doctorate in EQ, you know, with how I, with how I worked through corporate, right. Um, and so I, I had mastered the art of emotional intelligence, which for me is really about how is it that you read a room and then you fit yourself into the box of the room so that you don’t stand out too much, right? Sound familiar? Wendy’s a disruptor, but yet this is what I mastered. Okay. You can see the why I was in such a conundrum at the time. Um, so I, I kept, I kept pushing myself to, you know, what is it that I’m missing about, you know, reading rooms and why is it that, my results are just. Why are they not the same? And why am I coming up against this ceiling? And why all of a sudden is what used to work not working anymore. And it was in that moment that I started realizing that I had sort of stepped into the game of the hustle.
Wendy Paige Sterling: Right, bro culture, dare I say. And the hustle works until a certain point. But what had ended up happening was I had gotten myself so burned out and I gotten myself. So, um, I started, uh, working or I should say my confidence started decreasing. You know, I, I was the person in corporate that they would bring in to build these multi-million dollar regions. And I’ll never forget, like my last corporate position, it was the hardest one that I had had. And it was I couldn’t figure it out. I’m like, what the heck is going on? Like, why can I not pull the same results that I was pulling before, and it was really because I had started my awakening process. I had started realizing that the way that I used to function as a businesswoman was no longer the way that I could really accelerate and excel in the world. And while I was an expert at sort of calculating and fitting into rooms, what was required of me was to actually start leading from my own energy, trusting who it was that I be, and to then walk into rooms and allow the rooms to start calibrating around me.
Wendy Paige Sterling: And when I say that, I don’t mean that you walk into a room and it’s like all of a sudden everybody’s mesmerized. But what I mean by that is essentially when you walk into a room, you I mean, Trisha, you know, like it’s, it’s why you and I connected like you walk into a room and you just feel your people and you feel you’re not people. And so what it has taught me and how it’s enabled me to really, um, you know, not only bring this wisdom into the world, but also to instill my clients in learning how to figure out this wisdom for themselves is it helps you to connect with and become a magnet for those that you are intended to connect with, collaborate, serve, work with, hire, whatever it is. And that’s the big differentiator. And what I see a lot of my clients butting up against is they, they don’t understand that there’s an energetic recalibration that is required of them in order for them to break through the, the ceiling that they’re hitting. And it’s why they’re not getting the results that they’re, that they’re so used to getting, but it’s taking so much longer. If, if not, not even showing up.
Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. And, and so what I mean, you’re, you’ve been through this. You watched yourself go through it, and now you’re working with other women who are going through that. And I think that’s such an amazing, um, piece to your expertise. You’ve lived it and you know what it feels like. Um, you so now you’re helping women reconnect with their bodies, their emotions, their intuition. Why do these leaders that you’re talking about become disconnected from those signals in the first place?
Wendy Paige Sterling: Well, it’s because we have been preconditioned to function the way the world wants us to function. You know, I, I was in corporate for 20 years and I, you know, I remember, you know, I did have a lot of female bosses, but I had a lot of male bosses above my female bosses. And I feel like there is a, I’ll call it a stigma around women’s intuition. And a lot of times, and I’ve heard my clients say this all the time where they’re like, oh, they think I’m being emotional. And when I’m standing my ground in a room, everyone is telling me how emotional I’m being when I’m standing firm in what my decision is. Um, because a lot of times I feel like we live in a world that is so dependent on us, on data looking a certain way. And what I am here to help the world change is that intuition is also data. It works backwards. So we live in this world where it’s like, let’s do the research, let’s find the numbers. Let’s look at the tactics and the strategy. And based on that, we make a decision. Well, I don’t know about you, but I’ve done that before. And sure, it’s gotten me results. And as we were, you know, talking about, I think before we jumped on, I was like, or I know somebody I was talking to yesterday, I was like, man, if I knew what I knew now when I was in corporate, I probably would have made three times as much money as I made when I was there, right? But now I’m doing it for myself.
Wendy Paige Sterling: Um, but nonetheless, you know, it’s, it is something now that when you understand that the way that intuition works, it’s the inverse. So when you lead with your intuition, you get that first gut instinct, you get that nudge. And where you feel that gut nudge is very different from where fear starts rearing its ugly head. And so when you understand and start paying attention to that, and you listen to it and you start taking action from that place, then the evidence appears. So it’s the other way around. And I think that in the culture that we live in, everybody’s so afraid to make moves ahead of the data showing up, that what we’re grasping onto is past evidence that actually has nothing to do with your current situation or current decision that you’re making. And so what I’m hoping and what I’ve learned, and it’s how I’ve built all of my businesses, is leading from that intuitive place. And then watching, you know, the way I describe it is like, I see then the stones appear on my pathway and they’re not always in the direction that I necessarily anticipate.
Wendy Paige Sterling: They sometimes may zig zag, they may make an arc. They sometimes may be a straight line. Who knows? But I trust it because I always know that that next step is going to appear in front of me, and the data is going to show up in real time. Now, sometimes the data may be this was a mistake. Great. I had to make the mistake in order for me to know what that next step was. But I do believe that we function in so much fear of messing up, losing our jobs, not, you know, scarcity, mindset, fear, doubt, name all the negative emotions that we’ve learned to silence our own intuition. And the thing that I always tell everybody is you are all born with intuition. Every single one of us, men and women, we are all born with it. It’s just that you have turned the volume down so low that you have forgotten what it sounds like. And with the energy training that I’ve been able to do and the work that I do on myself, what I’m able to help my clients do is to turn that volume back up and to turn down the volume on the fear and the doubt so that you can start recognizing the difference and leading from your intuition instead of from a place of fear.
Trisha Stetzel: I don’t. So I know people already want to connect with you, Wendy. So I’m going to ask you for your contact information. But before I do that, I just want to say or ask the question not of you, but of the audience. When was the last time you hired someone where you didn’t have a really good gut feeling about it. I think that comes from intuition, and we’re turning it down and we’re hiring these people anyway, and then we end up 2 or 3 years down the road having to let that person go. Gosh, that feels awful.
Wendy Paige Sterling: It does. And I’ll tell you, I’ve done the opposite. I mean, last year, I literally I did not renew any of my coaches. And I hired one person because my intuition just said, time to clean house. It’s too much noise for you. One person. This is who it is. And since making that decision, I have doubled my income year over year already. That’s the power. But that’s the power, right? And and at the time, sure, everyone was like, what are you doing? I’m like, I, this is what the message is. It’s how I’m feeling. It’s, I can always go back, right? People act like it’s like, you know, but and it was so strong and yeah, but and there’s also been times where I’ve hired people and I’m like, why did I just waste all this money? And in that expenditure, in that investment, I’ll call it, it found me the next person. Right? So you just have to trust, like the work I do is all about deepening your faith and your trust in yourself so that the evidence will start appearing. And you can start seeing how the breadcrumbs start appearing in a different pattern than what it is that you’ve been used to before.
Trisha Stetzel: Oh my gosh, I knew this was going to be such a fun conversation. Okay. Uh, real quick, if people are already wanting to reach out, learn more, connect with you, what’s the best way for them to do that?
Wendy Paige Sterling: Yeah, I would love for everybody to connect with me. Uh, you can do. So my social media handle is at Wendy Paige Sterling. And then you guys can also, you’re welcome to I, if it’s okay to extend to your audience, I always extend a call for you guys, a 30 minute connection call where we can have a really intuitive type conversation where I’d love to hear what it is that you think is keeping you stuck. And you can reach me at. It’s w w w dot contact Wendy wendy.com.
Trisha Stetzel: I love that. Thank you so much. That’s amazing. Okay, I want to dive back into this energetic intelligence. I think we’ve we’ve talked about it, but I want to talk about it a little bit more for the audience to really understand what is the work that you’re doing. So we’ve talked about the challenges that people are having and you apply your work to that, but what is the work? Tell me more about that.
Wendy Paige Sterling: Yeah, I mean, I think the easiest way to explain that is essentially sharing what my methodology is, right? So the I, I’m, I’m a marketing background. So I love, I love jingles and I love acronyms. And I, well, I don’t have a jingle quite yet for my business, although you never know. Um, I love acronyms because for me, that is the easiest way for me to be able to understand, you know, listen, we’re all humans, we’re souls having human experiences. And our humans sometimes do need some, you know, tactical information. And so I always like to create steps that my clients can recognize their own actions and have words for it. Because I find that when you increase your awareness around what’s happening, that’s the fastest and the easiest way to start shifting your habits. And so, um, I’ll go over them briefly. This is actually something that I teach every 30 days in an experience that I have clients coming into on a monthly basis. And that is what you mentioned at the top of the hour when you introduced me, was all about the discern method. That is what my methodology is and discern is DISCERN. So without going into too much detail, I’ll let you guys kind of know what what the steps are in relation to what happens within your bodies, right? So the first step of discern is all about decoding the signal.
Wendy Paige Sterling: When you feel that first initial hit in your body, um, and figuring out if that is truth or if it is fear. And then once we decode and know where the signal is, we get into the I, which is all about interrupting whatever that narrative is, because typically the first signal that comes in, you ignore, and then the second signal comes in, which is all fear based, saying red flags don’t do this. Remember last time, right? So when that narrative comes in, we need to interrupt it. And essentially what the interruption is, is it’s about interrupting the preconditioned mental loops that you are comfortable spinning in. The next step after that is the S. And then after, you know, you recognize that you’re in the loop. Um, then what we, what I teach is all about stabilizing your nervous system because at that point you’re very activated. So how is it that we can create calm for you in that moment for you to recognize that that is actually not you speaking? Your fear is actually not you. And so when we recognize that, we move into the C, which is all about then calibrating to what your actual truth is.
Wendy Paige Sterling: So this is where you choose to respond instead of React. And then when you choose to respond, we move into the E, which is then you get to execute from a place of certainty, right? So that’s when you feel the calmness of what your new, let’s call it a decision or thought is, and you move from that calm certain place. And then once you take that step, that’s where I, I do the R, which is all about. Then you refine with the evidence that comes after the fact, right? Because as you start listening to those, those nudges, you start listening to your intuition. What ends up happening is your intuition is going to get louder. It’s going to get sharper, it’s going to get really clear for you, and it’s going to be what you’re going to start using as your compass. And from that point, guess what happens? The N you start normalizing your intuition and you start leading from that place as your standard instead of it being a risk. And so ultimately that is the those are the steps by which I help my clients to recognize what it is that’s happening, so that they can interrupt the signal, recalibrate and shift, and actually make a decision that aligns with what feels best for them.
Trisha Stetzel: Mhm. The discern method. Thank you. I took all kinds of notes over here. Wendy Paige, you’re going to have to come back because we have to have way more conversation.
Wendy Paige Sterling: We so much.
Trisha Stetzel: I know there’s so much. So we’re at the back end of our conversation. And I’ve got one more topic. And I know that we can go days on this, but just in summary, I’d love to hear your thoughts around AI and the work that you do in this energetic intelligence space. Because I, in my opinion, I don’t think AI can replace the work that you’re doing with human beings. So tell me your thoughts around that as we close today.
Wendy Paige Sterling: Yeah. You know, it’s funny, I listen, I’m not going to sit here and say that I don’t use AI. I absolutely use AI. Um, I actually, I love Claude. Claude is like my, my new favorite AI tool. However, my issue with AI is when people allow AI to be their voice, when they allow AI to put what they think is their frequency out into the world. And what I have, I mean, anytime I read anything, I’m like, oh God, this is AI. And I skip over it, right? And the reason that my upcoming book is going to be talking about is your emotional intelligence has its own coding. It has a blueprint. Think of it as your own fingerprint. And there is never, I mean, I, I’m sorry, but you will no one will ever convince me of this otherwise. There is no AI tool that is ever, ever, ever going to replace your own fingerprint. Anywhere. It’s just not possible. And so when you’re engaging with AI, what is so incredibly important is, sure, sometimes I go to it because I’m like, you know, can you help me figure out like, I can’t make sense of these things? Like, can you help me see what I’m not? And then it’ll show something and then it’ll be like, oh, okay, now I know how to put this into my own voice. Or, you know, I’ve got these ingredients in my fridge, make me a meal, right? So I use it across the board, guys. Um, but the whole thing about AI is that people have become so dependent on it as a time saver. And here’s the problem, and this is how I think about a lot of things.
Wendy Paige Sterling: It is an illusion that it is a time saver, because here’s what those of you who are using AI to replace your voice is happening. This is what’s happening is you may be saving time on the front end, but what you are actually creating is a lot more work because your ideal client is going to take a lot longer to find you, because you are not putting out your own energetic fingerprint on all the content that you are using AI to create for you. And so what you’re doing is you’re creating a gap between where you are and you attracting what it is that you desire. And so I’m here to say, stop using AI because you don’t, you know, you want to save time or it’s easier. What you’re actually doing is you are pushing what you desire further away, and you’re basically telling the universe that you’re outsourcing your intelligence, that you don’t know how to do this, and you’re relying on something else and you’re basically telling God, universe, spirit, I don’t need you. This is my opinion. It is a strong one. And it is exactly how I feel about AI. So that’s why it’s so important for me. Like even when I work with my clients, I always try to re, I try to reiterate over and over again that no matter how much you are using it, you’ve always got to go back in. You’ve got to put your energetic footprint on it. You’ve got to put your voice in it. Otherwise people are not going to connect with your magnetism and, and you’re not going to bring in what it is that you desire if you outsource to AI.
Trisha Stetzel: So what I hear you saying is it’s okay to use it, but you need to put your own fingerprint on it. You can’t just copy and paste what’s coming out of the bot or the agent that you’re using, and show it to everyone else as your own work, because it’s not correct. Oh oh my gosh. Okay. Wendy Paige, this has been so much fun. I’m so glad that you accepted my invitation to come on the show and have this conversation. I cannot wait to have you back. I want to hear more about your progress on this beautiful book that you’re going to be writing, and even more about the work that you’re doing with all of these amazing people that you’ve been able to touch their lives and help them grow and even realize something that they have inside of them, that they’ve been pressing down for a long time. And I can’t wait to have my session with you.
Speaker 4: Thank you. Me too, I can’t wait.
Wendy Paige Sterling: Thank you so much for having me, Trisha. This was such a such a joy.
Trisha Stetzel: Absolutely, absolutely. So, Paige, one more time. Tell, uh, tell the audience where they can find you or the best way to connect.
Wendy Paige Sterling: Yeah. So I’d love to connect with everybody here. You can reach me across all social media, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. My handle is at Wendy Paige, PAIGEA Sterling. And then you guys can also sign up to jump on my calendar for a complimentary session with me. You can go to www.contact.com.
Trisha Stetzel: Oh, so much fun. Okay. Can’t wait to have you back. Thank you so much.
Wendy Paige Sterling: Thank you.
Trisha Stetzel: All right, you guys, that’s all the time we have for today. If you found value in this conversation that Wendy Paige and I had today, please share it with a fellow entrepreneur, veteran or Houston leader ready to grow. And be sure to follow, rate and review the show. Of course, it helps us reach more bold business minds just like yours and your business. Your leadership and your legacy are built one intentional step at a time. So stay inspired, stay focused, and keep building the business and the life you deserve.
