Addicted to the Elusive More: Why Most Female Founders Can’t Slow Down
The Thing Was: I Never Felt the Stress… I Was Too High-Performing For My Own Good (Penned By An Ex-Social Media Agency Owner and Business Consultant)
If you’re in a tender season, this reflection gently explores grief, burnout, and the pressure to keep achieving. Come in when you’re ready.
I WAS WEAPONIZING MY AMBITION AGAINST MYSELF
I loved my business portfolio.
I look at it now and kind of chuckle.
I can see where validation edged in and took a seat. I can see where beauty laid across the pink sofa, listening to me record another podcast for Your Conversation Pit®. I can see where all of those media placements were both supportive for the business and our positioning and could be an easy way to stroke my dang ego (if I let it).
If you like your ego stroked, I’m not the life coach for you, but if you know that there are a variety of tasks and goals on your plate as a 6-7 figure founder that are humbling you to consider how you can shift your life and brands to feel really fulfilling then I probably am the right one.
I was so busy building an ecosystem for female founders that I burned through seasons of my life I’ll never get back — all in the name of service.
There is often a lack of recognition that serving others is only a possibility when a deep well is available internally to the one that’s providing said service.
The funny thing is, I was positive I could keep it going. I’ll explain more under the heading “The Life I Missed While I Was Building An Ecosystem for Female Founders.”
Let me be clear: the problem does not lie in the podcast, the brands, the business structures, the media placements, the relationships that felt more like performative proximity than true connections, but in how I was approaching those tasks and goals.
Two years ago, it all really started to make me rub my eyes at my desk, stare out at the old trees that wave outside of the old Cheetah HQ office (now a guest bedroom in our boutique rental), and I had the tiny whisper of “something is off.”
And then it all came crumbling down when my brother-in-law passed away. It all clicked into place as my inner circle started shifting in a way I never saw coming. I laid awake at night, staring at a piece of the ceiling that has a small dent, just above my side of the bed, and thought about the hormone tests that came back and how I let my stress overtake my body.
The thing was: I never felt the stress.
I was too high-performing for my own good.
THE SWAN SONG: WHAT THE CHEETAH COMPANY® TAUGHT ME ABOUT THE ADDICTION TO AMBITION
What I’ve seen in high-achieving women has inspired me and terrified me. I inspired myself and terrified myself, too. I was in your shoes and it felt really effing good to wake up every morning with a full calendar, absolutely no time to breathe, zero space for anything but being locked to my desk for all of the private consulting clients I had, the membership I was running, the course students that I was supporting.
Every day was a day I was given the ability to wake up to feel needed.
When I realized how much my body needed me, I was already in adrenal fatigue, with toxic heavy metals swimming through me, consistent stomach issues, mixing my way between 2-3 coffees a day, not eating nearly as many calories as I should have been, and well, I was the picture of entrepreneurial health.
Because isn’t that what we’re sold?
Keep your nose to the grindstone until it’s time to bring on a co-founder, co-facilitator, scale to as many passive products as possible, and ultimately, sell?
Where’s the finish line for you? Have you reached it? Are you any closer to taking a breather? The breather you said you’d take a year and a half ago, but things haven’t slowed down yet?
THE LIFE I MISSED WHILE I WAS BUILDING AN ECOSYSTEM FOR FEMALE FOUNDERS
I know this is all the rage right now.
I’ve seen it in messaging across the world wide yet small af online business space and there is absolutely nothing wrong with building an ecosystem for female founders.
Building an ecosystem isn’t new.
James F. Moore has often been credited with coining the phrase “business ecosystem” in his 1993 Harvard Business Review article, “Predators and Prey: A New Ecology of Competition.”
He argued that companies don’t compete just as single entities, but as parts of ecosystems — networks of suppliers, distributors, customers, and competitors.
This article lived in my laptop bag throughout college — it was a mainstay in my mass communications program.
I originally thought I’d build an ecosystem in the photography space. Starting with a team, expanding into a studio, retreats, workshops, courses, connecting with vendors across the world to become the go-to. I started my photography business in 9th grade. LOL. I cackle still because I once didn’t even know I had ambition; I thought every one thought about serving others, making a name for themselves, and making money.
Turns out, living in government housing as a kid, loading mp3 players for $20 as I pirated from Limewire (did I say I was proud? no way), was a CEO move at the wild age of 12. I no longer pirate from the internet; been a solid subscriber of Spotify since my 20s.
The ecosystem for female founders in need of support from a business consultant they could trust was coming to fruition.
The partnerships were coming together.
The momentum wasn’t just growing, it was exploding.
The right clients were at the door weekly.
Retiring my social media and lead generation agency, shifting to business consulting, coaching, and education was an intuitive move that all of my mentors questioned.
I was missing a lot in my life, though.
Vacations with friends doubled as a laptop lifestyle and my husband is just as ambitious as me and thus, it turned into a conundrum.
Our inner circle started shifting and they were reflecting back to us what we knew to be true: burn out was here again and we were all feeling dim and weary of the goals we set before us.
My health was deteriorating in a way that felt unseen; hormone imbalances, heavy toxic metals were swimming inside of me, and the desire to hold our little babies in my arms felt far away because my body certainly wasn’t going to be able to handle the process at that time.
This was all years ago and in the midst of that timeframe, my brother-in-law passed away.
I missed something huge then.
I missed the opportunity to talk with him, vacation with him, and be with him.
He was the brother I always hoped for; I used to ask my parents for a baby brother weekly. I actually wanted an older brother the most until I realized that it couldn’t work that way.
So, I settled in my mind for a baby brother and my mom continuously said “hell no, girl.”
When I first met Isaiah, my brother-in-law, I knew he was the brother I dreamed of. I used to have dreams of a baby brother with curly brown hair. I met Isaiah at the height of teenage years and a curly afro that I highly doubt he brushed.
He ran in his room the first day I met him after I greeted him in my usual, bubbly, everyone is my friend already kind of way.
Just weeks later we were having long conversations on the couch, watching movies together, and I was given the honor of sister.
Not sister-in-law (which is why it always feels weird to add in-law to brother online), but sister. He called me sister.
And this sister was too busy with the creation of an ecosystem that she forgot about her home environment.
And I know that I’m not alone and my quiet aches that I had to walk through after his passing, moving directly into planning his funeral with my husband (something 20 somethings should never have to do), shuffling into a Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder diagnosis, recognizing that I have ADHD, and that grief and depression were imminent as I took off for two weeks for Isaiah.
And then got back online to sell a retreat for female founders as though my life hadn’t just been dropped open into a sink hole of sorrow.
SINK HOLES OF SORROW AS A FEMALE FOUNDER
The sink holes… They’ll happen to all of us.
Perhaps your experience won’t be as sharp as my experience was; I pray on hands and knees it won’t.
Perhaps your experience isn’t to a place that is communicating that there’s something that needs to shift before you launch that next offer, triple your seats, expand your business portfolio, or shuffle vacation off of the quarterly plan again.
Perhaps your experience won’t include the strategic cattiness that only women can harshly scratch into the lives of other women.
Perhaps your experience won’t include grieving, deaths, and your own natural rebirth earth side.
Perhaps your experience won’t include the shattering loneliness of being praised in public and misunderstood in private.
Perhaps your experience won’t include the slow disorientation that creeps in when the success you prayed for no longer feels like yours to enjoy.
Perhaps you won’t wake up one day and realize that your calendar is full but your spirit is starving.
Maybe you won’t feel your nervous system bracing like a fist every time Slack chimes, or question if the dream was actually yours to begin with.
Maybe.
But if you do —
If you’re brave enough to pause and look around —
If the sink hole finds you, as it found me —
May it not swallow you whole.
May it pause you long enough to listen.
May it pull you homeward, not under into the sink hole.
May it become the invitation you never knew you needed.
And when you’re ready to rise —
not as the version they cheered for, but as the one you recognize —
I’ll be here.
This is the deeper edit.
The unearthing of a life that finally belongs to you.
The life that you will not ignore for the ecosystem you desire to build, but perhaps you’ll include yourself, your joy, and the pie of life inside of that ecosystem, too.
THE DENTIST, ME, FRANK OCEAN, AND THE 2000s MUSIC CHANNEL
Shifting gears, let me leave you with laughter.
Levity and leisure are my signatures.
This past week, I couldn’t stop cackling as I planned for the days ahead—my Weekly Harmonies Method led me to aesthetically pin ‘dentist core’ to my Pinterest board.
Yes, dentist core.
I did find several cute pins in relation to Frank Ocean’s Novacane (praying that he comes back into music this summer plz) and in the midst of being too tense to breathe through my nose, the dental assistant said she was going to get a “bigger, better tool” to scrape my teeth as though I was in the latest release of the horror movie, Saw.
And when she departed to find said horror-movie tool for my teeth, I jumped up, and started shaking like a dog in that office to release the tense sensations in my body.
If you aren’t into shaking like a dog in public (I’ll get you there, don’t worry), there are a few ways to slyly bring your body back to safety when someone is scraping your teeth, giving you constructive feedback in a huge meeting, or questioning your life choices because they don’t match your LinkedIn profile anymore on The Deep Edit.
Find the sly body-based techniques that will support you immediately on The Deep Edit — I’ll be in your inbox weekly with personal narratives, thought-provoking insights from supporting hundreds of 6-7 figure female founders and high-achieving professionals, practical yet soulful guidance, and deeply resonant reflections.
Subscribe to The Deep Edit to receive an immediate newsletter with body-based tools to keep you sane and out of intense sensations in the midst of the moments that it matters the most.
WELL-ACCOMPLISHED FEMALE THAT HAS HANDLED IT ALL AND YET CRAVING A DEEPLY FULFILLING LIFE?
This work has been integrated into business consulting for years and it’s a pleasure to take business off the table and support you as you re-evaluate where peace, pleasure, and productivity belong.
Because you’ve already proven you can handle it all. Now the question is: can you let yourself feel it all — without breaking under the weight of it?
I’m here when you’re ready to soften. To re-root.
To rebuild a life that feels like a soft place to land.
Let’s begin.
There are two ways to work with me in this season: The Harmonious Living Program and Private Life Coaching.
Media Links:
Images used throughout the article can be found here from Pinterest; other images were sourced from Canva. Collage template is by Xanthe Appleyard.
