The founding cohort

Brilliant Leadership (without the Burnout)

An 8-week program for high-achieving neurodivergent women, from the founders of The Perpetual Cycle.

Expressions of interest open soon.

Twelve places. This is the founding cohort.

A woman in conversation in front of softly blurred brutalist architecture

A letter to you

Dear Jen,

You've probably already worked out that the brilliance and the burnout aren't two separate problems. That's not a small thing to know. Most of the world still treats them as opposites, fix the burnout, keep the brilliance, as if you could pull one out of the machine without stopping the whole thing.

We built this program because knowing the pattern and knowing what to actually do inside it are two different skills, and nobody ever taught either of us the second one either. Not a course. A room, live, with women who are exactly where you are, working through the six stages of the cycle we've lived inside ourselves, tested on ourselves, and finally written up properly.

This is the founding cohort. Twelve women, eight weeks, us in the room with you every time, not a recording. We're still building this. You'd be helping us build it.

Becky and Karen

What it is

The Perpetual Cycle of Brilliance and Burnout

An 8-week live program built around The Perpetual Cycle of Brilliance and Burnout, the six-stage model Becky and Karen built from their own observations and lived experience, watching themselves and women like them win the award and crash the same week, sometimes the same day, then set it out properly in their white paper. One stage per week, Ideas, Create, Impact, Push, Crash, Reset, bookended by an opening session (getting to know each other, the big picture) and a closing session (bringing it all together, what changes now). Live, over video, with real discussion time in every session, not a lecture series.

01
Ideas
02
Create
03
Impact
04
Push
05
Crash
06
Reset

The core reframe

Crash isn't the enemy. Crash, the brain simply stopping, is a healthy, necessary part of the cycle. Burnout is a different thing entirely, what happens specifically when Crash gets denied, when you push through instead of letting yourself stop. Most burnout advice tries to eliminate the crash. This program teaches you to work with it instead, so burnout stops being the inevitable cost of being brilliant.

Why we're doing it

Because we needed this exact room ourselves and it didn't exist.

We're not running this as finished, polished training handed down from on high, we're running it as a founding cohort, live, so we can test what we've built against real women living real versions of this cycle, not just the two of us. You'll shape what this becomes. The on-demand version, if there is one, gets built from what happens in this room, not the other way around.

Your coaches

Brilliant Leadership (without the Burnout) coaches and creators of The Perpetual Cycle of Brilliance & Burnout™

Becky Hirst

Co-founder, FTS · Founder, Hey Engage

About Becky

Twenty-six years. More than 50,000 people brought into rooms where their voice mattered. Becky is a sought-after community engagement specialist, published author, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and host of a podcast on community engagement. She is the person organisations bring in when an engagement is highly political, emotionally charged and the stakes are high. Her unique ability is making sure every voice gets heard and presented properly, then getting the right people around the right table to make the right decision. She also knows what it looks like when a capable woman keeps going past the point she should have stopped, because she has been that woman.

Karen Cocks

Co-founder, FTS · Founder, SALI Collective

About Karen

Karen's Twenty-five years in senior leadership, leading transformation projects across banking and financial services, local government and consulting. Karen is a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP), holds a Master of Business Leadership, and is qualified in coaching, leadership development and 360 feedback tools. She is the person organisations bring in when the problem has been sitting unsolved for a while and everyone's too close to it to see why. Her unique ability is cutting through the emotion in a room to find the root cause, then building the plan that actually holds once she leaves. She also knows what it looks like when a capable woman keeps going past the point she should have stopped, because she has been that woman.

Who it's for

You're already doing an enormous amount.

You're already operating at a high level in your career, established, capable, the person people bring the hard problems to. You're in your late 30s, 40s or 50s. You might be diagnosed neurodivergent, wondering if you are, or you've just always known your brain runs differently and you're tired of managing around that alone.

By day, you might be the one who moved an entire call centre offshore, managed a multi-million dollar budget, tabled a report for Parliament, or led the piece of work everyone else was too nervous to touch. By night, you're standing in the supermarket unable to remember which tuna your family actually likes.

This isn't for someone trying to work out what to do with her life. It's for someone already doing an enormous amount, who wants the language and the tools to keep doing it without the crash turning into burnout every time.

And yes, we know you're also a parent. This runs in the evenings on purpose, lock yourself away in your room with your laptop and headphones, stay back at the office a bit later, whatever actually gets you into the room, we built the timing around a real evening in a real house, not a fantasy version of your calendar.

What you'll get

The working version, with real people in the room.

The whole model, properly taught, not the white paper summary, the working version, applied to your actual week.
A live room of women who get it, twelve of you, not a recording, not a forum, real people, real time, every week.
Direct access to Becky and Karen, in every session, not a support ticket.
Reflection prompts between sessions, so the model gets tested against your actual life, not just discussed in the abstract.
A say in what this becomes. Founding cohort feedback shapes the next version of the program, and possibly the on-demand version that follows.

How it runs

Eight weeks, live.

Eight weekly live sessions, over video (Teams or Zoom), evenings, so it fits around a working week rather than competing with it, and around a parenting week too, see above.

Slides to anchor each session, but built around discussion and sharing, not delivered at you.

Week 1Tuesday 13 OctoberWelcome, the big picture, meet the group.
Week 2Tuesday 20 OctoberIdeas, the tickle before the spark.
Week 3Tuesday 27 OctoberCreate, plans and momentum.
Week 4Tuesday 3 NovemberImpact, taking it out into the world.
Week 5Tuesday 10 NovemberPush, when the system pushes back.
Week 6Tuesday 17 NovemberCrash, why it's healthy and how to let it happen on purpose.
Week 7Tuesday 24 NovemberReset, what actually recharges you versus what just looks like rest.
Week 8Tuesday 1 DecemberBringing it together, what changes now, closing the loop.

What it costs

$1,200 inc GST$600 inc GST

Founding cohort rate, twelve places.

Most professional development like this gets paid for by an employer, not out of your own pocket, so before you assume this is a personal expense, it's worth asking your workplace whether it counts toward a professional development or leadership training budget, plenty do. Either way, whether that's a yes from your employer or a yes to yourself, this is genuinely built to be worth it.

When it starts

Tuesday 13 October to Tuesday 1 December 2026.

Both confirmed Tuesdays, eight weeks exactly. Finishes right before the Christmas parties and school concerts start. That's a real, deliberate piece of timing, not incidental, and it's exactly the kind of detail Jen will notice and appreciate.

The founding cohort

Brilliant Leadership (without the Burnout) starts here.

Twelve places. Founding cohort. We'll be in touch.

Expressions of interest open soon.