2. The Heroine's Journey pt. 2 (exposing the hidden org chart)

I'm Edi Oduraa, and this is the Holistic Home Service Podcast. Hello. Hello. Hello. And welcome back to the Holistic Home Service Podcast.

I am Edi Oduraa founder and CEO of Via di Oduraa where we help home service business owners with your operations and with talent placement. More in the links if you're interested. So we are on a journey talking about your journey, the heroine's journey. Please listen to episode one if you have not heard that already. But to recap, the industry talks a lot about the out of the truck, off the tools journey, which is absolutely, which absolutely includes women, but is a very male centric journey.

Meanwhile, the conversation around the woman running the back office, AKA the COO, AKA head bitch in charge is often absent. And so what we're doing here in this series is illuminating that journey and giving you the tools you need to navigate that journey. The tools I wish I had when I was running a tree service business for five years with my then husband. So today we are talking about exposing the hidden org chart. So, let's dive right in.

You've done the work. Tell me if this resonates. Okay? You've done the work, the books, the podcast, maybe even a coach. You've optimized, you've tried to get clear, try to figure out what you want.

And something is still tight. You have a low grade friction you can't locate. What I'm going to propose to you today, my little thesis if you will, is that you may be fixing everything except the one thing that needs fixing. You may be trying to navigate the heroine's journey by handling everything but this key piece and it's not going to fall in place until you deal with this baby girl. Okay?

So this is the hidden org chart. Every husband and wife home service business has two org charts. I have yet to engage with a business where there isn't some of this going on. If there is a husband and wife duo. And I'm speaking specifically to this because this is an experience that literally drives the construction industry.

So many companies have the husband who started a business and kind of brings in his wife, girlfriend, partner to do the back office work, but we're not talking about it at all. So I want to talk about it here. So back to the org charts, okay? There's the one that people describe that rolls off the tongue that is public and then there's the one that actually runs the company. So to be clear, in case you don't know what I mean when I say org chart, I'm talking about an organizational chart.

The chart that it's like, you've probably seen these before. It's a little like there's usually a box at the top that says CEO and then there's a line and then couple boxes underneath that that are like the VPs or the COO and then underneath that are the people who work underneath that person. Okay. So we have the standard org chart that we recognize and then the one that is actually happening. So for the hidden org chart, in the out let's do start with the public org chart.

The public org chart, it's usually like, homie is the owner of the business. He might say his wife's the co owner, but he's the CEO. He's on the face of things. We are assuming he's making the decisions. He's calling the shots.

He's running the show. And she's, you know, she's doing the books, right? She's doing a little accountant, dipping in a little bit of admin here and there, right? And this is the out in public org chart. In the true org chart, if we look at what is being handled, what is being driven, what is moving forward, she is often at the top.

She is the one truly making the strategic decision. She's the one saying, maybe we need to handle the client in this way and oh, do we have contracts in place for this? She's often the one holding things together at the back on the back end without a title, often unnoticed and even unnoticed by herself. So the industry, the home service industry has built an entire ecosystem around helping the contractor get out of the truck, get off the ladder, get out of the whatever, like so many analogies, right? But what nobody is saying out loud is that someone is actually already doing that work.

She has been doing that work, you have been doing that work and you are not in that conversation. So again, if we're going back to this tightness, this struggle as you are embarking on your heroine's journey and you are like, man, I want more, I want to be more strategic, I want to feel more expansive in this business, but I feel tight. It this hidden org chart is likely why? Because we're not even naming the thing, right? Because we are we've named that your man needs to get out of the truck, right?

But we have not named that you are doing all the work that these programs are talking about him eventually stepping into the strategic thinking, the HR work, the growth, the employee building, etcetera, right? And you're absent from the conversation. And so this tightness, you know, it doesn't always feel like anger. It's the sense of something isn't quite right. And for me, I've noticed time and time again in my life that it emerges when there is not clarity, there isn't truth, there isn't reality being spoken in a situation.

And if you go long enough, right, being the de facto CEO of your company without that recognition and sometimes without the authority, still feeling like your voice may not be heard fully or you may not be respected. There may be a little bit of vying and jockeying for who gets to make this decision within your partnership. It eventually builds resentment. So I want to be clear, this is not all blame. I'm not saying your man ain't shit, your husband sucks at all.

Your partner oftentimes is genuinely not seeing it. Nothing in their environment has asked them to look. In episode one, I mentioned very briefly that in the industry and society as a whole, we depend heavily on women's unnamed and unpaid labor, right? This is well documented and this even in the most well meaning egalitarian of partnerships, this can seep in where in another role, in another space, someone would see the work you're doing, your partner may see the work somebody is doing in a different company and say, oh, that's yeah. They said they're actually running the show.

They're a XYZ. But in the in your business, in his own business, it's harder to see. It's harder to see when it's at home. So I wanna be clear. This is not about blame.

And my hope is that you do have a partner that as you embark on this journey and you yourself are getting clear about what you bring to the table, they're also so willing to navigate and shift and you know, fashion a business that honors your skills and honors your desires just as much as his. If you don't have that in your partnership, that's a whole other conversation. Maybe that'll be Holistic Home Service After Dark because boy, the stories we've got, but for now, we just want to talk about the dynamic and assume goodwill from all the parties. Another little side note I will say is, and I think I'm going to do a podcast on this, about internalizing. It can be so easy to look at the situation and say, okay, I need to be more bold.

I needed to figure this, da da da da. And I'm gonna give you a lot of tips to help navigate through this. But I wanna be clear that this is an industry problem and a society problem, and you can't completely internalize this. If you do, you'll become paralyzed by this and you will not move in the self compassion that will be helpful in this. Remember, this is not just a, Oh, I haven't spoken up enough and so now I'm in this situation.

This is also a, Oh, this has been centuries of this kind of dynamic and I am now navigating some of its tendrils in my relationship. So have grace with yourself as we go along this journey. Okay, so we've established all this. Now, what does it look like to begin to navigate the situation where your role is not fully outlined, what you're bringing to the table? You guys are kind of running on this dual org chart where you're actually handling all this shit on the back end, but you don't have the authority, the title, the heft, the recognition to go along with it and you're feeling that resentment.

It really first starts with respecting your gifts first. Before your partner can recognize what you're carrying, you have to. You want to begin to own the potency of the work you're doing. And this can be real hard again, we're gonna the good girl, we're gonna talk about the good girl throughout this whole podcast because that programming runs so deep in so many of us and hinders us from so much. And we're going to call her directly.

We're going to name her because when we speak and we name, things lose their power. So when somebody asks what you do at a networking event, don't say I help with the office stuff. I help with the office stuff. No ma'am. No ma'am.

You are the operational architect of a growing company. Say I handle all the operations for a company. Matter of fact, own a title if you want to. I'm the COO of our company. I'm the operations manager of our company.

I'm the growth strategist. I'm the HR, head of HR. It doesn't matter if it's just you and hubby and one subcontractor, you own the title, you own what you're doing. And then from that place of beginning to name what you're doing, you're going to begin to paint a picture of what you actually want. And not just, okay, I want not just relief, not just, I don't want this thing.

I don't want to be stressed. I don't want to be ignored in conversations. I don't want be out of the loop in business stuff. But like, what do you actually want beyond that? What does it look like when your strategic capacity is fully utilized?

What does it look like when your relational capacity is fully utilized? What does it look like when your creative capacity is fully utilized? Like, let's start dreaming, let's start thinking as we are anchoring in the present of like, I'm already doing all these things. And then what does this next level look like? So first, respect your gifts first, embody with clarity what you're bringing to the table and this, I mean, said than done.

And I keep on saying later episodes, want to let you know that this podcast is going to be a really solid resource for you. We're going to talk about inner work. We're going to talk about identity shifting. We're going to talk about getting unstuck. But for now, just know that you need to begin the journey of respecting your gifts first.

And if this is hard for you, pop into your favorite AI and I know we have a whole mixed relationship with AI, right? Pop into it and list out the things that you do and say, you know, I what what title would I have? You know, and what things am I missing? And AI will help you and reflect that back to you or go on Reddit if you would prefer to use people and, you know, ask around Google CEO of x y z company of, like, plumbing company, you know, COO, sales manager, like, Google some of these titles and you'll see that, oh, am doing all this shit. Right?

Doing all this shit. Okay. Respect your gifts first. Two, get support. We talked about this in podcast one.

As you're moving forward, as you're expanding, as you're moving from doer to director, you're moving out of secretary to strategist, you need support because somebody else needs to be doing all that doing stuff. Right? Get structural support. Someone who can carry the operational layer so you can step into the strategic one. So because baby girl, we are not about working harder inside the current dynamic.

I don't want you to be like, oh, yes. I am the COO and the front office administrator and the and the and no. No ands. No ands. Cut those ands off.

Right? This is not an invitation to work harder and double down. That's a good girl. And it it feels safer. Right?

Because, okay, maybe I can have this. I can have my cake and eat it too. I can have this roll and do more here, but then I don't have to upset the order and I don't have to we are in our business, we don't have to invest more and I can just keep in, we can just do this and I don't have a like, I can just keep all this. No. No.

No. No. No. No. No.

This is about expansion. This is about abundance. We're gonna change the whole structure so that the dynamic shifts. This is, let's be clear, I'm not talking about cute little cosmetic changes. This is a structural reorientation of your business.

Your business has been built on your unseen labor, unrecognized labor on tapping into your ability to execute and not tapped into your creativity, your intuition, your emotional intelligence, all these other pieces. It may have to a degree, but you're hungry for more, right? So this is a we're talking about structural changes that will require structural investments, getting support. Little plug here, this is what I'm all about. I exclusively serve home service companies and often specializing in husband and wife duos to get the wife of the partnership out of the back office.

I have a twelve week process where we first clean up your key systems documenting, clean them up four weeks and then eight weeks of placing a trained virtual client manager to take on very specific tasks and processes that will get you out of the back office. So I'm not, I won't say any more on that, but there is link links below to take a look and get acquainted. Okay, so we're talking about respect. We've said you need to respect your gifts and then you need to get some support. Those are the two biggest steps.

Now I want to speak to those of you who've already tried. If you've tried to have these conversations about stepping up, about shifting, about getting more support and it's gone sideways, right? He got defensive, you backed down, or you backed all the way up. And then you guys got tense and rigid and eventually just you tucked it away in a in a closet. And maybe when things got too stressful again and you just could not abide by remaining where you are, you brought up again and it was this cycle, right?

I want to offer to you that it is that maybe it is about figuring out the words to say and how to say it, or this is what I'm offering to you, that it's not necessarily a you problem or a communication issue. Maybe this is an overarching issue of your dynamic. So this is a whole podcast. This is a whole podcast. And some of you are ready to hear it, some of you are not and that's okay.

Perhaps this is a larger conversation about power, about love, about care. Because I know for me, if somebody comes to me that I love and care for and they are in pain or they are struggling, they're not feeling good and fulfilled and they're saying, I want to make a change. Just that alone will get me to move and shift and enter into conversation. But especially if on top of it, they're saying, I think the changes that we might make, might make us more money with less stress. I'll be like, baby, come over here, let's talk, right?

But if you're finding that you are coming and expressing struggle and dissatisfaction and you're being met with stonewalling with circular conversations with deflection. This is a larger problem than just your business. This is a larger problem than just communication. Please don't let anybody gaslight you into thinking that like, if you start using more I statements instead of you statements and you say it in this perfect equation, that it will make it work. I've had rough conversations, very raw conversations with people I love, where we have been able to stay in the trenches, talk it out, sometimes duke it out a little bit and come out of it more connected.

Why? Because they're not policing the tone. They don't need a perfect equation to hear it. They're doing their own inner work and their growth work and they care about me deeply. So much so that they're willing to, even when they feel defensive, even when they feel triggered to stay in the conversation or take some time to get grounded and more regulated and come to a solution.

If somebody is not willing to do that with you repeatedly, this is a bigger conversation. So I wanna be clear about that because I don't want you to internalize the inability to reach a satisfactory conclusion as an internal failure. Some things truly are out of our control. Some people's responses are fundamentally out of our control. The industries, an industry wide problem is out of your control.

We can make it better day by day incrementally as we step into our own power, right? As we step into place positions of authority in our businesses, as we start our own businesses, make our own tables, right? But we have to recognize that there are things externally, we don't need to internalize all this. So the heroine's journey doesn't happen in isolation. It happens in relationship to your partner, to your business, your own sense of worth.

I hope that is so clear that what I'm inviting you into is a deeper conversation with not just the mechanics and the tactics and okay, change, tweak this and look at this metric spreadsheet and try this. No, This is about the connection to self, your inner self, the connection to your partner, the connection to your business and the community as a whole. The hidden org chart concept is where the abstract, what do I want meets the concrete, what am I currently doing? And is it the same thing? Right?

We want to bridge that gap. We want to come, we want your business to be integrated. Integrated in the sense of whole, right? One. And right now, you are experiencing these split org charts, your business is fragmented between what is actually happening and what is being communicated.

The conversations are happening about around what is being communicated meanwhile, this is reality. And when we are split like that, we're on shaky ground. As we integrate ourselves, right? Our desires, we align our lives with our desires and also integrate our business. It becomes as it becomes coherent.

We thrive, our business thrives, those who work for us thrives. So, as I've mentioned before, I have a book just for you, free for you that I wish I had when I was navigating being the operational co owner of a tree service business for five years. It's called Which One Are You? Five archetypes of the spread thin woman, woman running a home service company and what she needs to navigate each one. This will take you deeper from our conversation into your specific archetype of what you're navigating and the simple steps you can start taking to shift your reality, to create a new reality for you and your business and life at large.

You can find it in the show notes below. Thank you for being with me here today. I hope this has been supportive. As a reminder, you are not alone. You don't have to carry this alone.

We are out here, a community of women who have walked this path and are walking this path. Feel free to connect more at [viadiodora.com](http://viadiodora.com). Thank you. Until next time.

## Episode 3

<iframe width="100%" height="180" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" seamless="" src="<https://share.transistor.fm/e/89e6ceaf"></iframe>>

In this third episode of *The Heroine’s Journey*, we dismantle the heavy burden of internalization—the quiet shame that tells you your stagnation is a personal failure rather than a systemic one.

We explore how the construction industry’s tendency to mislabel high-level feminine strategy as “just admin” keeps you stuck in the weeds, and why true movement requires stopping the self-blame, naming the external headwinds, and building the community support needed to shift the structure itself.

This is an invitation to drop the “superwoman” narrative, recognize that you are navigating prevailing winds, and give yourself the grace to fix the system instead of fixing yourself.

**Key Takeaways**

1. You are likely internalizing an external problem, blaming your own lack of effort when the real issue is an industry that systematically mislabels your strategic work as "just admin."

2. When a partner says you "help with the books" while you are actually performing CFO-level strategy, the gap isn't a communication failure on your part; it's a societal failure to value feminine wisdom in the trades.

3. Stop trying to fix your business by working harder alone and start recognizing that some headwinds, like sexism and entrenched partnership dynamics, require external shifts, not just internal grit.

4. Giving yourself grace isn't about letting yourself off the hook; it's about acknowledging that you are navigating centuries of systemic conditioning, not just a bad Tuesday at the office.

5. The heaviest burden you carry is the belief that your stagnation is a personal flaw, when finding your community and naming the external forces at play is the actual key to unlocking your next level.

**Resources**

Ready to illuminate and take control of your Heroine's Journey as you scale your home service company?

👉🏾 [*Which One Are You?*](https://viadeoduraa.com/which-one-are-you/) provides the common five archetypes of women running residential contracting companies, the hidden dynamic driving their experience, and the next step to take to shift your trajectory.

🖥️ [viadeoduraa.com](http://viadeoduraa.com)

🦋 bsky.app/profile/viadeoduraa.com

**Other Episodes to Check Out**

- [The Heroine's Journey pt. 1 (you're on a journey *too*)](https://share.transistor.fm/s/759878d1)

- [The Heroine's Journey pt. 2 (exposing the hidden org chart)](https://share.transistor.fm/s/a7806615)

**Credits**

Edited by [Error Jordan](https://www.instagram.com/jbanks/)

Intro music by [Error Jordan](https://www.instagram.com/jbanks/)

Transcript

I'm Edi Oduraa, and this is the Holistic Home Service Podcast.

I want to speak today and help alleviate a burden that may be on your shoulders.

And I'm guessing it may be on your shoulders because it's been on mine.

I turn around and I realize that it's crept back on there.

It's on the shoulders of a lot of the women I work with and a lot of the women I interact with.

We tend to internalize struggles that are largely external.

So what do I mean?

You're in your business, you're doing the thing, you're building, you're growing, you're scaling this enterprise by yourself, with your partner, with your non-romantic partner, and you look up and you find yourself further from where you expected to be at this point.

Maybe you imagined yourself as a strategist, you wanted to maybe focus more on the client relationships and doing sales and business development, maybe strategic guidance and more of that CEO type work, but you find yourself answering the phones, running invoices, handling the minutia that you were okay with for a bit but no longer work for you.

And the first instinct may be, how did I get myself here?

I didn't do this, I should have done that, I've been too much of this and too little of this.

I feel like that, our default so often is to say, I did something wrong here, I've gotten myself off track.

And while personal accountability and agency is incredibly important, I don't want us to internalize our journey so heavily that we ignore all of these external factors around us.

In the construction industry, it is a heavily male dominated industry.

And as such, we often see women relegated to the role of the admin support, the back office support, which there's nothing wrong with being back office support, admin support, especially if you want to be there.

But what is endemic in the industry is not accurately labeling the skills that women are bringing to the table.

So a husband may say, my wife helps with books, meanwhile, she's out here doing CFO, strategy level, financial forecasting, cash planning, and maybe she herself doesn't call it that.

She may not know that what she's doing is high level.

She's just like, I'm seeing that we're running out of cash, and so I'm creating a spreadsheet or some sort of system to keep track of it.

But this is a strategic role and strategic set of skills that she's implementing, but we just call it keeping up with the books, right?

Or she handles the client calls, but really, we're talking about a high level business development officer who is closing deals, who is wheeling and dealing and knows all the different clients and the quirks and the tweaks and is able to bring back clients, retain clients again and again and again.

And so when we look up and we find ourselves in a space in our business where we didn't really expect to be, we always have agency, right?

And we're grown adults, we've been walking this path, and let us recognize that the headwinds are prevailing against us accurately naming our skills and stepping into the role that is appropriate for those skills.

And when we internalize what we feel as failures or shortcomings, it gets harder to move.

We can get stuck in that place because we're not looking at the external levers that need to change.

We're just looking at ourselves and saying, okay, I need to stop doing this, I need to do more of this, da, da, da, da, da, da.

And again, more than likely, there are internal things that need to shift.

There are things to take ownership of that you have given ownership of.

And we cannot forget that there are these external forces.

And so there's external parties that will need to be brought in on this conversation.

If you're in business with your husband, there's going to be conversations that need to happen.

And there's probably pivots and shift within himself that he is going to need to be responsible for in order for you shifting to work, right?

And we need to continue having conversations in the broader construction industry about the role of women.

And I'll continue this even further in society in general, the conversation around women and the role of women.

You can't divorce these different things from each other.

And I think we so often do, right?

We feel like we're in our little microcosm of our business.

I know my people, I'm doing my thing, and we forget that there's all these other forces around us.

And I don't say this to make it feel insurmountable or to get on a soapbox.

So I do love a good, I love giving and listening to a good soapbox, but more to unravel some of the shame you may be feeling about where you're at.

You are doing a great job.

And when you are clear now that you want something different, you can take the steps, not just internally to quote unquote fix whatever led you here, but also to engage with the external world and engage with some of the prevailing winds that are preventing you from moving in the direction that you want to move in.

So what does this look like?

What does not internalizing your journey look like?

It means building the muscle of recognizing when somebody may be in the wrong headspace for where you're trying to go.

We don't want to talk about this, right?

I can even feel myself hedging around it, but some of us have been or are in partnerships where our husband really struggles at the idea of you taking a bigger leadership role.

Even if you guys are in this together, even if you say you're building this together, we can call a spade a spade.

Prevailing society is uncomfortable with women in leadership, with women taking up space, with women calling the shots, and that may have seeped into your partnership.

And it feels more tangly because this partnership is with someone who's not just a business partner, perhaps, but also a romantic partner.

But we have to recognize that and name it.

It's also recognizing that you may have more responsibilities outside of the business that are preventing you from stepping into your fullest potential in this role and asking yourself, what do I need for this to succeed outside of myself, not just me taking on more as superwoman, but what kind of support do I need from my community?

Not internalizing your journey means giving yourself grace.

It looks like giving yourself grace as well.

When we think this journey is a solo journey, a lone journey, a journey you have brought upon yourself that is not a part of a larger context, it can be easy to be harsh with ourselves to say, why can't you just get this?

Why can't things just shift?

Why am I like this, da, da, da, da, da, right?

But when we recognize and we externalize what needs to be externalized, and we recognize that this is a part of a larger conversation and we are one person navigating it, we can give ourselves grace and understand that things are likely not going to be fixed overnight.

If we are in a partnership that is thriving, that is really built on mutual support, then maybe one conversation is all it takes to shift.

But honestly, even then, there's the process of building the systems and building the business in such a way that it is no longer dependent on this labor from you that is not aligned with you.

Not internalizing your heroine's journey looks like also giving yourself the support you need.

Community is one of the biggest ways to dissipate the heaviness of internalization.

When we get into community, when we get into sisterhood, when we sit around the sacred circle, as people call it, gathering together with intention, and we share our stories and we recognize that, oh, you're also struggling with this.

You're also dealing with this.

Oh, you dealt with this.

This is how you got out of it.

Oh, you recognize that there's all these other things at play.

We realize that we, again, are not alone.

This is not a unique circumstance that we have found ourself in.

And that means that the solution doesn't have to be unique.

We don't have to reinvent the wheel.

We don't have to struggle and fight this on our own.

When we believe that our individual situation is purely driven by individual factors, the factors that are holding us back continue to perpetuate.

If we believe that we are just not good enough at articulating ourselves, that we don't have enough of a backbone, or that we're not clear enough, or we're not smart enough for people to take us seriously, and that's why we're at where we're at, then the concepts of sexism, of not honoring feminine wisdom and what we bring to the table perpetuates because we continue to internalize instead of facing this bigger issue and this bigger concept and speaking to it and speaking against it and crafting our lives in a way that we're no longer plugged into that narrative.

And so I want to deeply encourage you to reflect and see, first of all, where am I feeling dissatisfied with the way things are in my business?

And you can extend this to life, right?

And then where are the places where I'm assuming there's something wrong or broken with me or maybe there's more at play?

And again, getting in community can make this so helpful, bringing these things to people who are in a similar space as you, who are understanding and empathetic, can really open the floodgates.

I have a friend who we send voice notes daily and long-ass voice notes, like legit podcasts.

And from our conversations, we have grown tremendously in the years that we've known each other and also shed so much guilt, shame, internalization.

As we're talking, we realize, oh, you've dealt with this and you've dealt with this and oh, we see this larger picture and this larger conversation and we're able to navigate it more elegantly with grace for ourselves, with grace for others, with self-compassion because we see that we're not alone.

And while there are internal factors and internal levers to be pulled, we do have agency, we do have sovereignty.

Some of this energy needs to be directed towards the external and shifting things in the external.

So this was a bit more of a theoretical to a degree podcast episode, but I hope it was helpful.

When we stop internalizing everything in our business, in our life that we're dissatisfied with, we can then truly move into resolving it and not being weighed down by self-judgment and self-blame.

Until next time.