Becky Hirst
Co-founder, FTS · Founder, Hey Engage
About Becky
[Becky copy to come. Position her as a Brilliant Leadership coach and co-creator of The Perpetual Cycle of Brilliance & Burnout.]
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 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™
Karen Cocks
Co-founder, FTS · Founder, SALI Collective
About Karen
[Karen copy to come. Position her as a Brilliant Leadership coach and co-creator of The Perpetual Cycle of Brilliance & Burnout.]
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.