The Aligned Achiever with Siobhan Barnes
Siobhan Barnes
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Interview: Know Yourself, Do Work That Actually Fits You. Founder Maggie McDaris on Career Pivots & Biology-Based Productivity For Women.
There's a version of success that looks exactly right on paper. And quietly exhausts you from the inside. Today's guest knows that version intimately. Maggie McDaris is the co-founder of Phase App, a registered dietitian turned corporate wellness expert turned entrepreneur — and one of the most candid, joyful conversations I've had on this podcast in a long time. Maggie spent years scaling a high-growth startup, delivering results, ticking every box. And behind the performance, she was approaching breaking point — in ways that the people closest to her could see far more clearly than she could. She shares the full story in this episode with an honesty I deeply respect. It's the kind of conversation that stays with you. What followed was real recovery, a move to the UK, a wild swimming conversation in Sintra with a woman who would become her co-founder, and the creation of Phase App — a biology-based productivity tool that helps women connect the dots between their bodies and their work. Because here is what most of us were never taught: across the four phases of your cycle, your hormones directly shape your focus, creativity, stress resilience, emotional attunement, and verbal fluency. Your biology is already influencing the version of you that shows up at work. Phase App makes that visible and actionable. Not as a reason to do less — as a way to do your best work. We also go deep into career identity in this one. Maggie began as a registered dietitian, moved into corporate wellness, then commercial real estate, then founded a tech startup. From the outside it might look scattered. But the through line has never wavered: she is a builder, in service of the people she builds for. She talks about the sunk cost fallacy with such joyful pragmatism and her reframe has stayed with me. The years you spent becoming something do not have to trap you inside it. You take the skills. The values. The parts of yourself that called you there. What you leave behind is only the label. You are not starting over. You are building on. If you've ever pushed through when something was quietly asking you to pause, or wondered whether wanting something different means you're ungrateful for what you have, this conversation is for you. For all show notes and links mentioned in this episode, head to: https://siobhanbarnes.com/147 Maggie McDaris is the CEO and Co-Founder of Phase and a thought leader at the intersection of human performance and the future of work. Connect with Maggie here: Website: http://phaseapp.ioLink to download the app: https://my.phaseapp.io/appInstagram: @phase_appTiktok: @phase_app
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