Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Tracy Allyn. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Tracy, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Was there a defining moment in your professional career? A moment that changed the trajectory of your career?

“The results are in!”

The Georgetown University professor sat across from me.
I was more nervous than I wanted to admit, waiting to hear what she had discovered.

She had been studying multimodal communication and had asked if she could follow me for her research. I was flattered. And she was thorough. She shadowed me at work (I owned a digital agency), at home (I was raising a two-year-old and a six-year-old), and in my community (I was president of our local chamber of commerce).

All I remember from that final conversation is this:
“It is confirmed from my research that you want to be a tall bald man. Why?”

She was right. I laughed, remembering the moment that sparked her observation. At a business event she had asked me, “If you could be anyone in this room right now, who would it be?”

My eyes went to a very tall, fit, bald man in a blue suit. He was leaning against the wall, silent, yet magnetic. The moment he walked in, everyone noticed. People moved toward him. He didn’t have to say a word, and still, he commanded the room.
That was the kind of leader I had always aspired to be: the kind that felt safe and calm in a sea of chaos. The kind who was so present, so aligned and centered in themselves, that they can walk into in a room, not say a word, and people will look to them regardless of their position in the organization. That to me felt like true authority.

But I was petite. Blonde. Outgoing. Energetic.

In other words, I thought I was the opposite of the tall bald man.

Fifteen years later, I had sold my business and was working as a sex and intimacy coach. One client stands out in my memory: a successful executive who couldn’t sit still long enough to make it through our first session—let alone a quiet moment of intimacy.

Over the course of three sessions, I watched her sink into her body, release trauma, and begin to repair her frayed nervous system. In that third session, she showed up different. Calm. Relaxed. Open.

That’s when it hit me: the very tools I was using to help my clients as a sex and intimacy coach were the ones I had needed most when I was a CEO.

I had spent two decades chasing that bald man’s kind of power. I took the executive programs—Wharton, EO, Vistage. I learned to speak with gravitas, to manage with precision, to lead from strategy. But I never quite “got” how to lead with embodied authority.

It wasn’t until that one client session that I realized: no business school or leadership program could teach what I was now teaching.

And here’s the best part: because I’ve lived both lives—the boardroom and the bedroom—I now show business leaders how the skills of intimacy transfer directly into leadership. My workshop is called:

“From the Bedroom to the Boardroom: How Being a Great Lover Makes You a Great Leader.”

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

After founding, building, and eventually selling the digital agency I devoted more than two decades to, I stepped away from everything I knew to become a sex and intimacy coach.

Parallel to building the business, I was quietly walking my own healing path. I was facing, head-on, the sexual and religious trauma that had shaped my family for generations: mothers betraying daughters, fathers harming the people they were meant to protect. Those wounds left physical and emotional scars that rippled through multiple generations.

My search for healing carried me through meditation halls and into the presence of gurus, through plant medicine ceremonies and 5 days sitting alone in total darkness, into somatic practices and the offices of traditional therapists. Each offered something, but the thread that tied it all together was my own erotic awakening (which is an entire story in itself that I reserve for those inclined to believe in the magic of things beyond our comprehension).

So here I was:

A business leader.

A seeker on a healing journey.

A human in the middle of a profound sexual awakening.

At first, these lives felt separate. But then came the moment when my spiritual path, my business experience, and my sexual journey converged. And with that everything changed and I knew exactly what I was on this planet to do.

Today, I work with high-performing individuals — entrepreneurs, leaders, creatives, and seekers — who are outwardly successful yet inwardly longing for more: more aliveness, more intimacy, more truth, more connection.

My coaching is trauma-informed and blends modern neuroscience and nervous system regulation with ancient Tantric, Taoist, and shamanic wisdom. I help my clients reconnect with their erotic energy, reclaim their emotional vitality, and step into the embodied power that makes them not only more fulfilled lovers, but also more present, alive, and authentic humans.

Clients come to me because:

Desire has quietly faded under the weight of age, stress, or exhaustion. You tell yourself you’re simply too tired or too busy, yet beneath the surface you ache for the passion and vitality you once knew.

Work has become the easiest place to hide. It demands everything from you, and conveniently distracts from the intimacy you no longer know how to reach for.

Deep down, you crave connection, but you feel unseen, unacknowledged, or emotionally neglected. If you’re partnered, it can feel more like co-managing a household than being lovers…and the loneliness inside you is growing.

Sex feels like another task on the list: predictable, uninspired, mechanical. The spark has dimmed, and with it, the play, spontaneity, and wildness you long for.

The grind of life leaves you depleted. Stress, financial or health worries, or the constant buzz of responsibility make it nearly impossible to “switch off” and surrender to love, touch, or pleasure.

You feel disconnected from your own body as if it no longer belongs to you. Shame, old wounds, or performance pressures have created distance from intimacy, leaving you unsure how to trust yourself again.

You’re starved for touch; the simple sweetness of hugs, kisses, soft caresses . Intimacy has narrowed to mean only sex, while what you truly yearn for is warmth, tenderness, and the kind of closeness that makes you feel alive again.

What I Offer
1:1 Coaching for individuals who want to explore intimacy, healing, and authentic connection.

Workshops + Speaking for corporate teams and leadership groups. My safe-for-work engagements help other leaders find deeper presence within themselves in order to show up more powerfully and authentically at work.

Writing + Substack where I explore themes like embodied leadership, authentic power, nervous system wisdom, and sacred sexuality.

What Sets Me Apart

While I work with both men and women, I hold a soft spot for men navigating the pressures of today’s world — and for women who have spent years “fitting” themselves into masculine roles to succeed. I’ve lived both: the structured, performance-driven world of business, and the fluid, embodied world of eros and spiritual awakening.

Because of this, I bring a rare blend of grounded leadership experience and deep somatic, emotional, and spiritual healing work. My clients often tell me they feel both safe enough to be completely honest and bold enough to transform. That combination, safety and courage, is where true transformation begins.

What I’m Most Proud Of

If I’m honest, I’m most proud of my daughters. I am in awe of how grounded, centered, and loving they are. They’ve witnessed me build a business, walk through divorce, and reinvent myself in an entirely new life. Watching your mother make such bold changes has its impact. They’ve seen the persistence, resilience, and determination it takes to remake yourself again and again.

I’m proud, too, of the long and difficult journey I took to reclaim my own voice, my body, and my truth. To arrive in a place where I help others restore reverence for sex, intimacy, and self feels like a sacred honor.

And I’m deeply proud of my clients. It takes immense courage to simply sign up for a session. Again and again, I get to witness people soften into who they are meant to be; watching someone who once couldn’t sit still long enough to connect with their own breath transform into someone radiant, present, and alive. That never stops moving me.

What I Want You to Know

You are not broken. You are not alone. Whatever blocks you from intimacy with yourself or with others, I’ve seen it before.

Slow down. Be gentle. Be soft. We are so hard on ourselves and our bodies are craving gentle touch.

Feel. Really feel. Feel all of your emotions. The grief, the sadness, the anger… and the joy, the tenderness, the pleasure. Most people are surprised to discover that while we’ve built resilience for pain, our capacity to hold great amounts of pleasure is limited. Expanding that capacity is where transformation lies.

And if you are a business leader, know this: success and power are not found only in striving. They are also found in softness. You don’t have to settle for numbness. The very thing you’ve been avoiding: the depth of your own feeling, may be the gateway to the intimacy and aliveness you’ve been searching for.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Busy-ness is not the same as productivity. And productivity does not make your work or your life more meaningful or more impactful.

I remember the exact moment I decided that the key to my success was to “stay busy.” I was in high school, and looking back, I was depressed. I didn’t have language for it then, but I was searching for something to shake me out of the fog. My solution was to get involved in everything: every club, every group, every activity the school offered.

From that moment on, I made myself busy. So busy that I developed habits: I walked fast. I talked fast. I was proud of the moments I could multitask.
I was productive. I got a lot accomplished. “I did more before 10am than most people do in a week” I would marvel.

…and looking back now, it’s almost painful to remember how little presence I gave to myself and to the people I loved most, all in the name of packing my life full.

Fast forward to the beginning of COVID. I was working with a client I absolutely adored: the American Society for Association Executives. My team was collaborating with Amy Hissrich and Reggie Henry on a “Jobs to Be Done” project.

They were brilliant humans and they both energized and inspired me.
It was our second week in lockdown. I found myself alone in my living room, the kids downstairs. No meetings. No travel. No noise.

For the first time in a long time, I allowed myself to just be. I didn’t open my laptop. I didn’t pick up my phone.

I sat on the couch and let myself think.
A fit of inspiration came over me. I’m not using that term casually. I mean it in the truest sense: I felt feverish, an urgency, a sudden, uncontrollable surge of creative energy that seized me completely. I stuck large sheets of paper to my walls and I drew out the framework for the project in great detail.

Hours later, I stepped back and looked at what I’d created. That moment was a revelation: all of my busy-ness over the years had come at a cost. It had cost me access to this kind of brilliance. The quiet, deep creativity that only emerges in stillness.

This was the beginning of my unlearning.
Of slowing down.
Of embracing the beauty and spaciousness and softness that contemplation brings.

Coming out of COVID, I worked differently. Slower. Smarter. With more questions and more presence.

It remains one of the greatest un-learnings of my career.

Conversations about M&A are often focused on multibillion dollar transactions – but M&A can be an important part of a small or medium business owner’s journey. We’d love to hear about your experience with selling businesses.

I started my business, a digital agency, when I was 26 years old. The year was 1997. Only 26% of businesses were owned by women (compared to around 40% today). There were just over a million websites online. By comparison, today there are over 1.9 billion. Back then, I would literally have to explain to business owners why having a website might matter.

Over the decades, the business grew me and shaped me. Three recessions. Two children. Countless sleepless nights. Through it all, I kept looking ahead to what’s next. That forward-looking instinct allowed me to pivot and evolve the business twice as digital became central to our lives and marketplace needs shifted (and we no longer had to explain “what a website is”)

After 20 years, essentially my entire adult life, my company was acquired by one of the largest privately owned agencies in Washington, D.C. I was genuinely excited. I saw the acquisition as a way to grow my vision faster with the backing of greater resources. The owners seemed to appreciate my vision for how Digital worked to help clients succeed. They were a bit “behind the times,” but I chalked that up to them lingering in the “Mad Men” era of advertising.

What I didn’t fully grasp was how innovative and forward-thinking I had been required to be to survive in the fast-moving world of digital. I didn’t see clearly that I had built a team that could move at that pace. Anticipating change, learning quickly, and translating “what’s next” into value for clients.
Looking back, one thing I wish I had done before selling was to ask trusted colleagues and clients:

“What do you see that I don’t? In the business, in how I run it, and in my team?”

That outside perspective would have helped me see the unique strengths that made my company work—and where alignment (or misalignment) might arise post-sale.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.tracy-allyn.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracyallyn/

Image Credits

Tom Erickson