Not Just a Pivot — A Purposeful Transition into Life Design
From Consulting to Coaching: A Shift Toward Legacy Work. Why The Cheetah Company® is Coming to A Close.
If you’re in a tender season, this reflection gently explores grief, burnout, and the pressure to keep achieving when the soul is asking for something different. Come in when you’re ready.
THE CHEETAH COMPANY® IS CLOSING
After 5 beautiful years, I am closing this chapter of business advising, coaching, and consulting for the deeper work I’m meant to do with women and female founders. We celebrated 5 years of being in business on March 20th, 2025 and our last launch, The Harmonious Business Mini-Mind was our swan song.
I’ve tried to find words over the last few years as my inner knowing became louder and louder. Soon after my brother-in-law passed, I knew that my work no longer resided in helping female founders scale their businesses, but instead in deepening their lives.
The true why behind this shift is further below, but stay here with me for a moment as I share with you what I’ve seen after years (what feels like eons) in the online business space.
I’ve seen the backend of many industry leader’s brands and lives and have noticed a commonality again and again.
There’s a deep addiction to stress, being needed, being known, and being respected in the female founder space.
And most founders do not even realize how addicted they truly are.
Birthdays go uncelebrated.
A day for themselves is an unreal thought.
Friendships fade because “no one understands this level of ambition,” yet loneliness lingers louder than ever.
Creativity through anything beyond their business is something pushed off to “when it slows down.”
Sleep is sacrificed in the name of productivity, but exhaustion is worn like a badge of honor.
Meditation, journaling, or simply sitting in silence feels unproductive—so they don’t or they do simply to check the box.
Meals are skipped or eaten at a desk, as if nourishment is a luxury rather than a necessity (most sharing their meals and saying they’re having a real lunch break tech-less — and yet also posting about it).
Vacations are “working vacations,” where laptops replace novels and calls replace moments of peace, and sacred memories are interrupted by the dings of Slack.
Deals are made during family time in the name of integration, but all I can see is a lack of separation.
The to-do list is endless, yet no matter how much is accomplished, the “level of enough” is stretched to the unrelinquishing and elusive more.
The thought of slowing down feels scarier than burnout itself and once they do, they circle back on Voxer to share that they’ve announced a new offering, a discount for a past offering, and they’re opening up 7 more 1:1 spots.
Children ask their mothers to “please pay attention, you’re always on your phone.”
Stress is higher than ever and illness is becoming usual (and they push through anyways as though a day off will kill all momentum).
Gratitude is spoken, but never truly felt, because the mind is always onto the next goal.
Intimacy is a thing of the past between partners.
And the list goes on.
The thing is I’ve had my hand in the hands of female founders that have struggled with some, most, or all of these strains and it’s the fear of letting go and surrendering what they no longer have to hold onto that keeps them rooted in the pain of now.
These conversations were blended with The Cheetah Company®’s business consulting work, but separation was calling me and I kept hanging up the phone.
SILENCING THE CACOPHONY TO HEAR LIFE’S HARMONY
Days before my brother-in-law passed away, I was on a trip in the mountains to get away, start my podcast, and silence the cacophony of my life and businesses.
My brother-in-law had called my husband and within the conversation asked he my husband if he could call me.
All of us together usually texted or talked all as a group.
I was too tired to talk. Burnt out from business and the pile of issues on my desk. I didn’t call. He didn’t call.
I meant to call.
Days later, he was gone.
Days later, the story of “I should have called and I can’t ever be this busy again began.”
It took years to unravel through therapy, somatics, and brain retraining.
As I quietly walked through my own experience, I noticed that the conversations I was having in private with clients, potential clients, and this community shifted from “how quickly can I scale to 6-7 figures” to “where does my life go, with all of these businesses in my portfolio?”
WHERE DO I PUT PLEASURE? WHERE DO I PUT PRODUCTIVITY?
One of these business consulting clients had a few brands in her portfolio, a team for each brand, each brand already making 6-7 figures, and all she wanted to do was sell them and take on van life.
She, too, was questioning where her life was meant to go—torn between the demands of her brands (even with delegation, systems, and support) and her deeper desires: what she wanted for herself, what her family needed from her, and the freedom to pursue life beyond the hamster wheel of stress and cortisol controlling her every day.
I’ve noticed over the last 5 years of The Cheetah Company® that I’ll walk through a cycle 4-6 months before my clients will.
It’s the way it works for me; I go through it and then act as the wayfinder to guide others to have some semblance of a formula to work through in their lives or businesses while being a safe place for them to share the deepest pains of being a modern woman and female founder.
When this cycle started for myself, I realized I no longer desired to run The Cheetah Company® long-term.
I realized my legacy was different.
My legacy is to serve the women who desire it all but aren’t sure how to hold it all.
As a life coach, I act as a guide, helping high-achieving women navigate the space between ambition and alignment. Through deep, intentional work, I support them in unediting their lives—shedding external expectations, redefining success on their terms, and creating a life that feels as harmonious as it looks. Together, we cultivate the clarity, capacity, and confidence to hold it all—without losing themselves in the process.
THE UNEDITING OF A LIFE THAT ALREADY LOOKS SUCCESSFUL
The thing is most of the women I’ve worked with through The Cheetah Company® didn’t even realize how much they needed lifestyle design, evaluation, and coaching.
They were too deep in their ambition – as one client noted, her unchecked ambition was a bigger problem than anything else on her desk.
After my brother-in-law passed, I mumbled those same words to my therapist just months before serving the client above.
I had already come to the aching realization that I let my work override everything else in my life.
[A PICTURE IMPERFECT] of the life I was living:
- Talking to my clients more often than I was talking to any of my friends and family
- Irritated and exasperated by touch, sounds, and connection
- Disinterested in letting anyone truly support me even though I had a loving husband, a great circle of friends, live in a healing community in Asheville, and had a team of women ready to serve
- Working out to the point of aggression, eating less than enough calories to support brain and body function, and back to my burnt out ways of “thriving” on caffeine
- Making deals on date night, on vacation, even in the mountains with spotty service
- Taking far too much too personally
- Frustrated and enraged by business partnerships betraying me, private projects being used inappropriately, learning that the integrity of others could be a facade (especially if they constantly talk about being full of integrity)
[A PICTURE PERFECT] of the business I was running:
- Scaling quickly, achieving monetary goals I thought would take years
- Speaking on virtual and physical stages all around the world
- Working with industry leaders that referred me tirelessly to other industry leaders
- Visiting clients in-person to support growth
- Incredible media placements to distribute our message far and wide
- A very full client roster — from private consulting to group coaching and passive income
- Expanding into real estate and hospitality with our boutique rental, Stay at Harmony
- Partnering with incredible female founders around the globe
I could FEEL that something was very off. I was starting to slow down to feel it. My circle was shifting, my body was shifting, my energy had changed, and I couldn’t quite put 5 fingers down on it.
I was happy.
But I was actually just also high-functioning af and my stress didn’t know how to reach me.
And then Isaiah died in spring.
And then my schedule was shifted to add grieving at the top of the list. I found myself in those first months blending Shiv from Succession and my poetic Pisces moon into the equation.
In case you haven’t seen Succession, Shiv is everything you think of when you think of a modern female. Put together to a T. Intelligent, wildly ambitious, politically savvy, and she also struggles deeply with envy, insecurity, entitlement, and a deep need for validation—especially from her father.
Emotionally guarded, but extremely manipulative, power hungry with daddy issues, a complicated marriage fraught with imbalances, cruelty, and emotional imbalances, as well as physical intimacy hang-ups. She overestimates her abilities, her influence, and underestimates everyone around her to her own demise.
She’s demure and stoic, politicin’ at every turn, strategic but inconsistent.
Her downfall is both inevitable and devestating.
In the midst of her grieving period after a mammoth of a loss, she was scheduling her grief in. 15 minutes here in a private office on the lower level of her family’s media empire — deeply symbolic in its own accord — and 15 minutes there between meetings.
Is that the way to do it? I don’t know.
It’s a way.
I’m not sure any one ever has “the one and only way” for anything, especially something as life-altering as grieving a loved one, but I found myself in grief counseling with my husband, Chris, every Thursday at 3:30 PM for 6 months, wondering how the fuck did we get here as we grieved the loss of Isaiah.
I found myself crying for 30-45 minutes every morning, deep in depression, anxiety, and the early throes of Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Loss circling all around me as I had walked through 10+ deaths of my family members throughout my time running The Cheetah Company®, but Isaiah hit the hardest.
After my 30-45 minutes in the morning, I’d shower, put on makeup, tap into Voxer to support our global clientele and Instagram, do my daily marketing and community connection session, do the dailies and weeklies of running a business, work on house renovations, sob in the middle of it all somehow and fix my makeup, and start the same cycle again.
I did this Spring-Fall, only taking 2 weeks off to plan and execute Isaiah’s funeral, and then back to event planning and launching while grieving the loss of a few close business partnerships and training our newest team member. In early fall, I hosted a retreat for female founders in Asheville, North Carolina in desire of re-evaluating, repositioning, and renegotiating their brands in the marketplace and the day all of the attendees and my team went home… I laid on the sofa of the mountainside cabin and sobbed.
Grateful to have supported them and now fully shifting into supporting myself as I off-boarded my private roster to its foundation.
I knew then I was finishing up this season of business consulting and shifting into helping others heal through life coaching because this work was already showing me the edges of life. Something that building funnels, marketing strategies, increasing retention and new sales, systemizing onboarding and off-boarding experiences, and scaling to 6-7 figures never could. Even though, I’ve always said that entrepreneurship often feels like a personal development journey with a paycheck attached.
It was all a bit wrapped up together, but on that leather sofa in a cabin made with real wood, nestled in the mountains, across from a country club, I was solely noticing the sensations in my body — neurons firing from brain to body and body to brain.
Body was louder and she was say “what the fuck is happening here?”
After off-boarding our client roster in fall 2023, I slowly began to unravel. Taking time off after the retreat to re-evaluate everything in my life and business.
My healing team had been built — a grief counselor that counseled Chris and I, a chiropractor that focused on stress and disengaging the body from it in a low-pressure way, a bodyworker for massage and reiki, a mindset group that integrated somatics, and of course, all of my own private work of studying how to truly heal.
Deeper than ever before. The deepest edit of my life and self began.
THE JUXTAPOSITION OF PLEASURE AND PRODUCTIVITY
I lost sight of what mattered on the pursuit of being known, respected, seen, and paid. Most do, regardless of how high their integrity is.
Isaiah, my brother-in-law, acted as my guide back to what really matters.
We can build brands that are harmonious, but if we forget to include our lives in the process…
What’s the point?
This work began as a gift to myself, long before I created holistic harmony in life and business® — my modern version of balance and registered mark of The Cheetah Company®.
I started with books and teachings to support me in creating a life that felt as good as it looked when I first left my startup job as a marketing strategist to pursue building a social media and lead generation agency. Retiring that agency, shifting fully into consulting, coaching, and education, I was more than happy. And then, I found myself at a crossroads yet again each quarter asking myself if this is the legacy I’m truly meant to run with for the rest of my life.
The Cheetah Company® served as a testing ground for me to be in rooms with industry leaders that are the go-to’s for their services and experiences online and offline. Sitting across from hundreds of female founders on Zoom, holding a safe space of sanctuary for the true problems of business to percolate to the top was my deepest work.
I joked at a business retreat that business coaching is the way I actually contribute to the world with my lightwork. Lightwork is often associated with folks who feel called to help the world heal emotional or energetic wounds by working person-to-person, group-to-group, to raise collective consciousness through shifted perspectives and safe sanctuaries, and ultimately, to bring more love and awareness into the world. Lightworkers engage in practices like acts of service, hosting ceremonies, supporting energetic healing, sharing intuitive guidance, and leading meditation and visualization for healing.
The friend looked back at me, eyes watery and said “I can see that, completely.”
If I would have listened to the nudge then, I would have worked this work openly and freely without business consulting being the frontend way of doing so.
If I would have listened to the nudge then, it would have been a completely different pathway and the gratitude I have for the pathway I took is colossal.
The business consulting pathway acted as a way to attract those that were already productive, already successful, already looking for more and to do better, best, and the like in a hyper-optimized way.
And once they were in my Zoom room, my living room, or my event rooms, I could slowly unveil my work. The way that I intertwine pleasure, productivity, and peace.
The peace and pleasure that lacked from my ideal client’s over-productive life could slowly be woven back in.
The tapestry of this work is more saturated than I could ever explain, but I’ll aim to over the coming years of doing this work.
It’s an honor to serve you and I invite you to join me — if you made it this far I think we both know that this work is calling you.
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Images used throughout the article can be found here from Pinterest; other images were sourced from Canva. Collage template is by Xanthe Appleyard.
