Increase Your Confidence by Tending What’s Not Blooming.
Four Capitals for Women Veterans
Too many clients. Too many commitments. In her own words, that’s what Laverne Santangelo (a retired Army Major) told me earlier this year.
Laverne runs a grief therapy practice, and this is what the work does this to you when you’re trained to serve. Every need in front of you becomes your responsibility, and Laverne was feeling it emotionally. We all know the weight that comes when we’ve said yes to everything and there’s no space left to breathe.
I asked her what moment allowed her to shift.
She paused. Then: “I was not understanding that even in business, you can say no to certain things.”
That’s when something unlocked in her. Just saying it out loud. Permission. She didn’t realize she was allowed to draw a line.
The Pattern I Keep Seeing
Laverne had built something real. A therapy practice. Grief yoga. A mobile wellness van that brings her practice to people who can’t come to her. She’d done all of it starting during a pandemic with no safety net.
She had clients calling specifically for her. Hundreds of people knew what she solved, and she had revenue coming in consistently.
And yet… she couldn’t see any of it as capital. It was survival work to her. Just doing what needed to be done.
This is what I notice everywhere: Women building incredible things, thinking that they aren’t.
Women who are resourcing their own work from almost nothing, but don’t give themselves credit for it. Women who are known in their fields, yet battle with themselves to accept that knowing as being valuable to the world.
As women veterans, we often take all the right steps. We just need someone to ask the right question to help us see what we’re already carrying.
Four Types of Capital
Today’s post is to introduce you to something called the Four Capitals. I read about it in Eddie Yoon and Christopher Lochhead’s book Creator Capitalist, and something clicked for me about what women veterans are holding.
In fact, I felt so strongly about this connection that I sought out permission from the authors themselves to be able to teach their writings in my own voice, specific to the unique needs and mindset of women with military experience (permission was granted with a giant HECK YES! They love us).
Here’s what Eddie and Christopher name:
Intellectual Capital. The thinking you’ve developed. What you see that others miss.
Laverne understood something most grief therapists don’t. She didn’t just see grief as loss of a person. She saw it as loss of every role that person held for you. The job they helped you keep. The identity they were part of. The income they represented. Build a practice on that kind of thinking, and you have something nobody else is offering.
Financial Capital. The runway you have to make exponential impact. The breathing room between what goes out and what comes in. Freedom to choose.
Laverne didn’t have venture funding. She didn’t have a trust fund. She launched this practice during a global pandemic. And she still found a way. That’s resourcefulness. That’s capital.
Reputation Capital. Being known for what you solve. Not your title. What you’ve actually fixed, and why it mattered.
People don’t search for “grief therapist” and land on someone else. They search for Laverne. Because everyone who’s been to her knows: she understands. That knowing travels. That’s reputation capital.
Relationship Capital. The people who see the bigger picture with you. Who help you understand that saying no isn’t selfish. It’s strategic.
Laverne has family. She has faith. She has colleagues. When she finally asked the right question, they were there to validate it. They told her that protecting her capacity meant she could show up better for the people who truly needed her.
Here’s What Changes
Not every woman is building a business like Laverne.
But every woman veteran has some version of these four capitals. And here’s what matters: the strength of any one capital is rarely equal to the other three.
Laverne had fierce intellectual capital. Strong reputation capital. Those were built. But she was thin on recognizing her relationship capital. She didn’t have people around her giving her permission to say no. And she wasn’t tending her financial capital strategically. She was just letting it happen.
Your Wildflower type, the way you move through terrain, shapes how you build each one of these. A Sunflower builds intellectual capital through conversation, thinking out loud, processing externally. A Lily builds it in solitude, in reflection, in the work nobody sees. A Daisy’s relationship capital looks completely different than a Violet’s. A Primrose builds financial capital one way. A Goldenrod another. None of that is wrong. That’s precision.
Confidence shifts when you can see your portfolio clearly. You know what you’ve got. You know where you’re thin. You know what you need to tend. That’s the real confidence. The kind that comes from knowing exactly what you’re tending and where you need to grow.
Laverne stopped operating from scarcity the moment she could see her whole picture. She wasn’t scrambling anymore. She was strategic. She could say no because she knew exactly what she was protecting.
The Garden Question
Outside our children’s school is a wildflower garden bed. Someone tends it. You see people working in it regularly. The flowers are alive. They’re being cared for.
But when you back up and view it from the road, it just looks like a mess.
The issue isn’t the flowers themselves. It isn’t the care. It’s the arrangement.
The best gardens understand that different blooms have different seasons. They’re planted accordingly. Heights matter. Placements matter. A gardener who understands her garden knows that a tall flower in front blocks the short ones behind. She knows that crowding creates competition instead of beauty. She knows that space and strategy matter as much as the seeds.
Whoever created that garden bed must love it. Just as we can (and should) love all the people in our lives. But loving them doesn’t mean crowding them into a mess. It means we get to be the gardener. We get to decide what gets planted where, what gets tended this season, and what gets space to bloom.
That’s the work. Not just tending, but creating the design.
So when you back up and consider your four capitals (intellectual, financial, reputation, relationship), do you see a well-designed garden? Or a mess?
What’s Coming
Over the next few weeks, we’re going deep on each capital. You’ll learn how to see it, how your Wildflower shapes how you cultivate it, and how to tend it when the terrain gets hostile.
I’m teaching this to a government client this week. Different context. Different terrain. But here’s what I’m learning: the framework holds. The application is what gets refined. And the deepest refinement, the one built specifically for women veteran terrain, is what you’re getting here.
Because the terrain matters. A woman veteran’s capital portfolio isn’t built the same way anyone else’s is. The way you were formed created different assets. Different blind spots. Different opportunities.
Laverne’s transformation wasn’t about becoming someone new. It was about seeing what she’d already built, and then choosing to tend what wasn’t blooming yet.
You already know how to build capital. You just might not see it as capital yet.
What would shift if you could see your whole portfolio clearly? Which capitals are strong, which are thin, and which do you want to grow?
Next week: Relationship Capital. How your Wildflower shapes what you see.
The Wildflower assessment is available HERE (paid Substack subscribers access it free).
Laverne’s full interview is Episode 8 of Hardcore and At Ease - powered by Others Over Self®