Play Big Queen Podcast with Kate Bailey
Episode 1: From Corporate Cube to Play Big Queen CEO
Welcome. You are listening to the PlayBigQueen podcast. This is for you if you are a woman who is an entrepreneur, business owner, professional, leader, or someone who is deeply committed to personal growth, self-improvement, transformation, and living authentically
This is especially for you if you have an invisible disability whether you are diagnosed, undiagnosed, self diagnosed or late diagnosed and you are working on reclaiming your neurodivergent identity, rebuilding confidence, learning what works for your unique brilliance while breaking free from small people pleasing conditioning.
If you are a visionary change maker interested in advancing your leadership and creating success on your terms and you want to leave a legacy…
If you are navigating disability or neurodiversity as an individual or as an ally, and you are looking for a supportive and inclusive environment to thrive…
then this is for you.
I am your hostess, Kate Bailey.
I am the Play Big Queen.
My name is my title and a command for all women, Play Big Queen.
I invite you to claim this title for yourself and coronate your Play Big Self too, if it serves you.
I am a business and embodiment mentor working with women who are ready to rise the fuck up and be your bold, beautiful, sexy-ass self, start and grow your big bold vision and claim that you too get to have your boldest desires.
I am the creatrix of Kate Bailey LLC which provides coaching services, educational courses, products and experiences that promote success in neurodiversity advocacy, women's empowerment, embodiment, entrepreneurship and business to serve women on their transformational journey.
To learn more about my company offerings and to get on my email list, go to xxxkatebailey.com.
If you would like to learn more about my work, my personal values, my mission and my community, make sure you catch the last five minutes of this episode to go deeper and learn so much more.
On this podcast, sometimes we will have guests.
Sometimes I'll do solo episodes.
But every single time you listen, you will expand.
So get ready.
It's a new era for women on the Play Big Path.
Long may we reign.
Welcome Queens to a brand new era of the Play Big Queen podcast.
We are starting fresh in 2025. I deleted a bunch of old episodes because this year in particular, I feel like for a lot of people and myself, it has been about a massive clearing out, so we can make space for the more authentic things we want to call in.
Typically I would keep old episodes because growing in community is important to remind us that it takes work to get where we are today.
But sometimes, you just need a fresh start, and I felt like it was time, so here we are.
If you have been with me for years, thank you for being here. If you are new, welcome, you are in for a treat.
Today we're diving into a journey many of us have dreamed about, leaving the corporate grind behind and stepping into your power as the CEO of your own life and business.
For me, this was not a simple or straightforward path. It was full of reinvention, lessons learned, and moments when I thought I wouldn't make it.
But stepping out of the corporate world and into my role as Play Big Queen CEO was the most liberating and empowering decision of my life.
If you're feeling stuck in a job that doesn't see your brilliance, or if you're wondering how to take the leap into entrepreneurship, this episode is for you.
Like many driven women with ADHD, my career path was not linear. It was a series of pivots and reinventions. I had multiple jobs. I had pivoted full-on career paths often. And my resume looked unbelievable as I reinvented myself multiple times.
I fluctuated between working jobs that required a lot of intensity like working in television production and casting for MTV Networks, and later working at the New York City Fire Department as a Hazmat EMT and Instructor.
I had a lot of self-limiting beliefs and misconceptions along the way: that in order to have a grownup job, I needed to wear a suit and get a corporate office and have health insurance.
So there were times where I told myself to grow up and get a job with less risk and then I would pivot again and go back to work in corporate.
But let me tell you about one of the hardest experiences of my career, working at Progressive Insurance.
Now, my husband Tony, my stepson Jy’air, and I decided to move from New York to Florida. My stepdaughter Korie, she was living at school in Buffalo, New York.
But we wanted a big change. We wanted to be near the ocean and be in a place with palm trees where it was sunny all year long.
My rationale was - a stable job as an insurance adjuster would help me build my coaching business on the side while we set up our new home in Florida.
I thought it would be an easy transition from the medical field because I spoke medical and I had medical knowledge and experience.
What I didn't expect as an insurance adjuster, was the massive amount of reading involved and the high volume of claims that we were expected to process in such a short amount of time. (If that is your job right now, insurance adjuster, just know I have a lot of respect for you and what you do. It is not easy.)
I have multiple learning disabilities. I have combined type ADHD, when I was younger many doctors said Aspergers but Aspergers is no longer a thing now, it just all falls under the umbrella of Autism Spectrum, I have a deficit in my visual memory and my story memory, and I really struggle with reading comprehension and sometimes auditory comprehension.
While I was at Progressive, I was still undiagnosed, but I was trying to get accommodations from Human Resources for the reading comprehension learning disability so I could get more time to review claims.
Human Resources told me in these exact words, “you say you have this learning disability Kathryn, but we don't know that you officially do or how to help you.”
I told HR, “ I’ve been like this my whole life, I know I need one-to-one training so I can learn my job properly in a controlled environment. I need a time accommodation and I know I need assisted technology like an audio reader to read text. And HR said, “well, you don't have a formal diagnosis. So it would really help us help you if you went to a doctor and got diagnosed.”
I didn't know my rights at the time, but it was highly unethical for HR to say this.
But I needed to keep my job, so I went through tons of testing, thousands of dollars in costs, humiliation from different people in HR knowing too much about my private medical information and having to re-explain invisible learning disabilities over and over.
I was put in a position where I had to pay $3,000 in out of pocket costs to get a formal diagnosis if I wanted to keep my job.
And in the end, I got a note from a doctor that said I needed exactly what I was requesting before I got a formal diagnosis.
Here's the thing, self-diagnosis is valid. I know from working in medical that just because a doctor says you have a diagnosis doesn't mean the symptoms magically appear. You are symptomatic whether they put that label and diagnosis down on paper or not. and further, there is no guarantee that they have the RIGHT diagnosis.
and you could apply this logic to any other diagnosis, right? Say if you have asthma, now depending on the severity of the asthma, we know you're going to have trouble breathing in certain environmental conditions like when it’s cold out or there is pollen. Whether or not the doctor says it's asthma is irrelevant.
Sure you could go to the doctor for necessary treatments if it is severe, but the fact remains whether the doctor says you have asthma or not, you are struggling to breathe, and if you know certain things work for you, like removing yourself from certain environments that are cold or have high pollen counts so you can breathe better, you should be able to access those environments without resistance.
It was like that with my reading comprehension at work. No matter the cause, whether it was ADHD, Autism or a sensory processing or information processing disorder, I still struggled to read and needed accommodations and certain environments. But I went through the hoops, I went through the formal process, and after the diagnosis, I was treated like someone they had to respond to for legal reasons, but they had no real desire to actually help me.
They gave me a person to train me one-to-one, but they didn't set them or me up for success. They were someone who was in the same position as I was. They weren't even someone who was qualified to train. They required the person training me to still do their daily workload on top of training me.
Again, the person training me wasn't a trained teacher. And when I was training with them, it was like I was just a shadow in the room with them where they talked loudly on their phone as they worked on their own claim workload in a tiny office with me. I mean, they had a job to keep and a family to take care of too, but they worked their job while I was supposed to review this printed training book on my own and essentially teach myself.
The sensory environment was overwhelming. I wasn't retaining anything.
This went on for six months.
They wouldn't reduce the workload of the person who was supposed to be teaching me, and I never got the environment that I needed to learn.
I started questioning my sanity. I kept asking for help, and in response, I was told I was getting help when I wasn't getting the help that I needed. I was being gaslit out of my disability. It got to the point where I cried every day in the bathroom.
I couldn't quit because we agreed I was going to carry my family financially until my husband could join us and move down to Florida and secure his own employment. I just bought a house and my husband was working to find work. He had a 22 year career as a paramedic, so we thought he would get work easy, but when he moved down to Florida, we discovered that his identity had been stolen by someone in Florida and it really prevented him from getting hired at places when they did a background check until we figured out that his identity had been stolen.
But the accommodations that I received at Progressive were inadequate. And they never got better. No matter how much I asked for help or who I asked for help, they never got better.
And that experience ignited something in me. The realization that corporate environments weren't built for neurodivergent brilliance and that I could do better.
I want to talk about the moment I knew I had to leave because I think this is a hard thing for a lot of neurodivergent people to figure out, right? I'll never forget the moment I knew I had to leave. I was crying in the bathroom for the fifth day of my work week. I hated my job and there was zero inclusion or real accommodations. They preached inclusion for different races and abilities, but in the end, it was all performative with no real accountability for inclusion.
I thought to myself, this is insane. I could run a better company than this. I could build a business that is truly inclusive and accommodating. I could be a better CEO. I could structure a company and programs that actually gave accommodations. I could empower myself and others to claim their brilliance and know that there is value, even monetary value, in being both driven and different.
I called my husband Tony from crying in the bathroom at work, and I said, “I don't know what we're gonna do, but I can't do this anymore.”
On the other end of the phone, my husband took a big breath and in an incredible act of courage, faith, and love, and without us having anything to fall back on, Tony said, “Quit, we'll figure it out.”
And from that moment on, I knew that he was my Play Big King and that I would have to be his Play Big Queen. I would have to be successful at this. That was the moment I decided to step into my Play Big Self.
I wasn't just quitting. I was going first into the unknown. I was willing to walk a path trusting it would appear. I was willing to make a way where there was none. I was stepping into my power as a leader.
There were many challenges transitioning. Some of the biggest challenges of transitioning to CEO was I had hardly any startup capital. I was socially awkward with hyperactive combined type ADHD. My network wasn't reliable. I didn't fully understand the operations of a coaching business. And this happened in the middle of the pandemic - a time of uncertainty, but also incredible grace. And I was just figuring it out as I went.
But I really want my hindsight to be your foresight. If you are listening and you are considering this leap, don't quit without a plan. Build a stable foundation first. Find a job that provides enough stability and flexibility to invest in yourself and your future business.
And here's what I've learned as a neurodivergent CEO: I have a very high tolerance for risk. And while that has sometimes hurt me, it has also been one of my greatest assets. I've gambled on myself and learned that I can survive anything. More than that, I've learned that I can thrive. My neurodivergence gives me a unique perspective, an ability to think creatively and pivot when needed.
Stepping into my role as a leader required a massive mindset shift.
The single biggest thing that helped me step into both my role as a leader in my business and into my brilliance is having a growth mindset instead of a fixed mindset.
A fixed mindset says, “I can't learn new things. It will be this way forever. It will be hard forever. Brilliance is innate and it cannot be learned.”
A growth mindset, on the other hand says, “I can figure this out. This is temporary, because I will grow. Brilliance can be developed over time.”
This mindset helped me stay grounded and focused on growth even when things were hard. I adopted a mantra early on in my Play Big journey that still guides me today.
The mantra is, “there is no such thing as failure in my reality. I only win or learn. If I win, great. If I learn, I also win because I evolve and grow into the Play Big Queen I am becoming.”
If you are listening to this and you are in a corporate role right now and you feel unhappy with your job, like your authentic self and your authentic voice feel suffocated, you feel like you've lost your vitality and you're like leaking precious life force energy and you feel like your job is just sucking at your soul and not aligned with your true purpose… Here is my advice:
Use your current situation as a stepping stone. Find a role that gives you the stability to grow your knowledge, grow your network and your resources, and start building your business slowly and sustainably on the side.
If you grow too fast, your business won't have staying power or longevity anyways.
And if you are not looking to build a business, but you want to make major professional business or leadership moves, start to get ready for them. Start to get ready for those moves because it is one thing to want something different and it is another thing entirely to be ready to take advantage of new opportunities to reclaim your life and business.
And remember boo-boo, this isn't forever. A traditional path can totally lead you to your non-traditional dream life filled with purpose-driven work, freedom of time, and health, wealth, happiness, and success on YOUR terms.
Queen, if today's episode resonated with you, I have a free resource to help you embody more confidence as you build the big vision for your life and business and to help you boldly claim your unique brilliance.
Head to PlayBigQueen.com and grab your free confidence and embodiment exercises today.
Until next week, keep showing up, keep playing big, and keep claiming your brilliance.
Okay, that's it for this episode of the Play Big Queen podcast.
Thank you for sharing your time with me. As always, eat the fruit, spit out the seeds, take what nourished you, keep what resonated for you, and leave the rest because ultimately, you know best.
This episode is over until next time, but we can keep this thing going.
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That's xxxkatebailey.com.
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Also, I want you to know that my door is always open and I will always make space for you to be heard and to honor your experience.
The views expressed in this podcast are through the lens of my personal identity and my own lived experience.
I am a European mix Mediterranean mutt who is an Italian, Sicilian, Cis, Heterosexual woman born in New York, experiencing the world in a white body as a multiply neurodivergent who lives in a neurodiverse and racially blended family.
And like everyone else, my one single perspective comes with its own limitations.
I have done personal and professional work around anti-racism, diversity, equity, equality, and inclusion.
I am not a therapist or doctor, and any coaching or advice cannot take the place of professional medical, mental health or healing help.
However, that being said, what happens in my work is often a very powerful additional, supplemental or alternative way to heal around identity work, mindset and emotional wellness.
Although I am not a licensed therapist, it is worth noting that in addition to being a mentor, I am trained and certified in emergency medicine and response.
I have rendered care to over 20,000 patients in the course of my career, I have taught over 15,000 students, many of which had learning disabilities that were undiagnosed and came from diverse cultural backgrounds.
I was also a private health college adjunct professor who was responsible for training medical professionals on how to respond to trauma and behavioral emergencies.
If you approach me with any concern, you will be met with professionalism, compassion, tact, understanding, support, and a readiness and a willingness to advocate for your needs.
That being said, sometimes I just get it wrong. I am a human being on my own growth journey, after all.
When I mess up, I am always available for courageous and crucial conversation that makes a way for growth and healing.
Your experience and voice matters to me.
I sincerely welcome any feedback you feel called to share.
You can email your comments or concerns to [email protected], knowing that I am open to having any and all crucial conversations needed.
Okay, remember, you are brilliant.
Celebrate yourself.
Value your own unique way and honor your own timing.
Because you can totally create a life and business that feels good and is successful on your terms.
Remember to release expectations of what you think your play big process should look like and be willing to do the work that needs to be done to play big.
But most of all, when you come face to face with your boldest desires, remember to trust yourself and Play Big Queen.
Hi, Queen. I see you're in it for the long game.
If you reached this part of the podcast episode, it means you are interested in learning more about my work, my values, my mission and my community. So let's go deeper together.
I am here to activate neurodivergent women to play bigger and to show you that you are so capable of doing big things and that if you value your own unique way and honor your own timing, you will learn to receive your boldest desires and so much more.
In my world, what makes you different, is valued, celebrated, honored, and welcome.
I welcome all who identify as female and non-binary folk in my Play Big Queens community.
We believe in and support LGBTQIA+2S, Black Lives Matter, Women’s and Pro-choice Rights, and obviously intersectional identities including disabilities, neurodivergence, and religious beliefs.
Personally, I am pro-sex worker rights, pro-palestinian liberation, against islamaphobia, and against antisemitism and I am also against any cult-like religions that use beliefs as an excuse to indoctrinate people into abusive autocratic systems.
Like many neurodivergent people, we have big hearts and a strong sense of social justice around here.
You are encouraged to stay and play in our Play Big Queen community if you share these values.
For those who find the word “queen” does not resonate, perhaps because of imperial associations, the Play Big Self archetype can take any form and the invitation and activation remains the same -
to learn to embody your Play Big Self, to operate from love instead of fear, to go on a Play Big Journey in community because you *know* that no Play Big Queen can truly play big alone, to decide to cultivate the courage to use your voice, unmask, reclaim, embrace, and embody your brilliance and create a life and business that works with the unique way that you work.
Through this work, you will come to know the truth of your brilliance deeply. And as you come to know your authentic self, more and more begin to will open up for you.
Knowing your unique brilliance will lead to great success and true belonging.
In this world, we take pressure off and learn to step off the traditional path so you can blaze your own trail.
My mission is to get you motivated, inspired, and equipped to get into Massive Action and go on your very own Play Big Journey.
My mission is to empower at least 10,000 women to fully step into their Play Big self by offering healing, transformative, inclusive, and neurodiverse affirming coaching and content.
Through innovative coaching programs, courses and masterclasses, we provide the tools, support, sustainability, and community needed to help each woman embrace her unique path to confidence, success, and meaningful impact.
If just 10,000 women with invisible disabilities and their allies were empowered with neurodiverse-affirming and inclusive communication to express their unique brilliance, step into their authority and autonomy and lead, the world would experience a profound shift towards inclusivity, innovation, and empathy.
These women would break through societal limitations, modeling resilience, creativity, and the strength of diversity.
Their voices and perspectives, often shaped by unique experiences with challenges and perseverance, would redefine business leadership, inspire systemic change, and create spaces where diverse ways of thinking are not just accepted, but celebrated.
Industries and communities would become more accessible and inclusive, with practices that honor varied ways of working, communicating, and achieving.
This change would ripple into every area of life and society.
Workplaces would become more adaptable, offering a culture of respect for individual strengths.
Healthcare and education systems would improve, centering accessibility and compassion in their approaches, and policies would evolve to better support those with invisible challenges benefiting society as a whole.
So many women with so much potential are shrinking in the face of their own brilliance, just sitting on the sidelines waiting for permission instead of getting in the game.
The activation of the latent potential in these women, their empowerment, making them visible, would inspire others, reduce stigma around invisible disabilities, and encourage everyone to lead authentically.
Their successes, will light the way for countless more women to rise, creating a culture of true diversity where every person feels valued, included, and emboldened to contribute their brilliance and lead with it.
If you know you are ready for more clarity, confidence, and you want to embody your Play Big self and be supported around creating the big vision for your life and business, send me an email at [email protected] telling me why this work is important for you and we can explore opportunities to work together and make your Play Big Dreams a reality.
