My Story
As I lay in the E.R. waiting for the morphine to kick in, I found myself wondering how I'd gotten here. I was trapped by a paralyzing sense of dread every time I thought about the monster I’d created.
My business had just hit a quarter million in revenue for the year and I felt more trapped than ever. On paper, I was the visionary and founder of a thriving coaching business. But, behind the scenes, my business was my greatest source of anxiety and exhaustion.
I had followed all the “rules” on how to niche, grow, and automate a “soul-led” business.
But there I was, lying in a hospital bed, burnt out again, feeling about as far from fulfilled as I could get. I had turned my passion for connection and communication into a booming relationship coaching business for brave, driven people. There were engagements and marriages and growing families that had come out of the beautiful work I’d done with clients I adored. And yet, the advice I was getting in my “high-end” masterminds was taking my business further and further away from the intimate connection that I had built it to nurture.
“Automate and delegate!”
“Charge high ticket!”
“Get in the frequency of abundance!”
It was all jumbling together to make me feel more disconnected from my work than ever before. Running my business felt like a hamster wheel I couldn’t get of. I was over-investing in masterminds that promised that if I just spent more money on their high-ticket program, I was “becoming the client I wanted to attract” and soon I would be achieving larger-than life milestones with “more ease than ever”. It took a long time for me to realize that the “overnight success” clients they showcases as testimonials were usually representative of less than 5-10% of their client outcomes. Those star clients were the exception to the rule, not the rule.
Instead, making reliable, recurring income sustainably felt more esoteric and evasive than ever before. There was always a "next level" I was suppose to be buying into.
I did everything I was told I needed to do in order to create a successful online business…
~ I committed to “being the client I wanted to attract” and invested in higher and higher-end coaching.
~ I worked relentlessly on my limiting beliefs and scarcity mindset.
~ I held summits, ran challenges, and hosted big lead-generation events.
~ I charged high ticket prices and ran group programs.
~ I learned how to write copy, do sales calls, structure launches, achieve $50k cash months...
AND IT PUT ME IN THE EMERGENCY ROOM.
While I was coaching my clients NOT to contort themselves to fit into someone else's box... I was doing exactly that to myself.
I was exhausted. I was sick. I felt like I had fallen out of love with coaching and the MLM culture that had taken over the sector. I loved my livelihood and all the people that got into it because they genuinely wanted to help others live happier, healthier, more sustainable lives. It looked like the predatory nature of MLM had hijacked the whole industry.
I yearned to let go of all the things I had been taught so that I wasn't constantly second-guessing my creative process. I was tired of hearing pithy but overly reductionist marketing “tips” in my head that made it hard for me to communicate authentically with other people. I longed for the freedom the business coaches I hired had claimed they would help me create.
I had burned out. Mentally, emotionally, and physically.
It’s difficult to describe how excruciating and painful it was to come to the decision to shutter my business and let go of my amazing team. For months, I was incapacitated with grief, and my confidence was shattered because I felt like an utter failure.
Out of abject necessity and the inability to do anything else, I turned all of my attention towards getting healthy again. I spent many grueling months assembling a health care team. I let myself rest. And rest. And rest. And rest some more. It took me over 2 years to recover to a functional baseline and I now live with chronic health conditions that resulted from burning out.
I wish I could say that rest and healing was easy and straight forward, but it wasn’t.
Ironically, letting myself rest in the face of capitalist pressure to always be doing more especially when you know what you should or could be doing better, was wildly difficult. My attempts to rest were plagued with shame and anxiety, that often prevented my body and nervous system from getting the rest it needed to actually heal to regain some the capacity I’d lost. This inability to rest effectively drew out the healing process months longer than I wanted it to take.
Healing was hard and I had to make decisions I didn’t want to make. Many of wish I wouldn’t wish on others.
It took a long time to recover and the recovery looked like a lot of 2 steps forward and just as many steps back.
When I could finally work again, I dedicated myself to unlearning the bad business advice I’d been taught so that I could rediscover peace and joy in my work. I dove into learning about anti-capitalist business practices, equity-centered business models, and what it means to center people and planetary well-being at the center of how we design and lead organizations - and just as omportantly our own careers.
Now I am finally enjoying the stability and quality of life I was striving for when I invested in all those “high-end” business coaches.
I serve as the part-time as an Executive Director for an incredible non-profit that I deeply believe in, while also working with a few values-aligned consulting clients each year.
Four years later, I am finally healthy more often than not. I enjoy a more reliable work-life balance that allows me to deliver quality outcomes to me work commitments while still supporting my ability to rest, restore, and enjoy the rest of my life.
Our businesses must sustain us or eventually both will fail.
I am a queer, neurodivergent, cis-woman living with chronic health issues, and these realities directly inform how I encourage people to design, develop, and lead their own companies so that they are supportive ecosystems for everyone - you, your team, your clients, and the planet.