THE TRUTH I’VE NEVER SHARED ABOUT MY SUCCESS

I’ve never shared it because I’ve always thought it was a flaw in me, something to hide, something — dare I say– even a bit shameful in the entrepreneurial circle.

I STARTED to share a bit of this in March, but only with my members, and even with THEM I stopped short of the real truth, which is not like me.

So, here it is…. (At the end, if you get that far… I have a gift for you.)

PART ONE — ME, THE DRIVEN BADASS WOMAN IN THE ROOM.

When i began this journey into business, i was OFTEN one of the only women in the room. I wanted MORE than other women, it seemed. I had a drive that I could share with other (often male) ‘treps but not with others. To the civilian world, my ideas were grandiose in general, but to think I could do all that while working from home and homeschooling and all of that… with NO funding or $$ backing: I went from being thought of as grandiose to delusional.

Until I did it.

I hung with the big ones.

the BIGGEST names spoke at MY events.

I was known for my drive.

AND — to be fair — for my no b.s. approach,

my intolerance for excuses,

and my RUTHLESS commitment to being ALL of me,

not some Michelle-ized version of whoever was popular at the time.

So, THIS was my entrance into the Entrepreneurial World. I stayed here a long time. I built to 7-figure years and then walked away… to build it again, but on my own terms. I built a container for OTHER driven women like me, a place where we could belong together AND become more.

In May 2022, I lost my brother and my only sibling. We were two halves of a whole. The loss of ANY sibling is an often underestimated but also deeply soul-splitting loss. But to lose your ONLY sibling, and for me to lose MY sibling (if you know him, you get this!), it’s another thing entirely.

In that moment, I lost myself. Gravity shifted and took a long time to return. I became grief personified. My identity — a HUGE part of it… sister — was challenged for the first time in my entire life. I had to watch my parents endure the unimaginable. I had to watch one of my daughters lose her Dad. Helpless. Impotent. Heavy.

To say that I stepped away from my business is an understatement. My right hand woman (and only full time employee) ALSO stepped away, as she is my daughter. We didn’t launch anything new for — well — until now. Three years later. I had no drive, no inspiration. One of the GREATEST loves of my life is this business of mine, but I lost all passion and any vision for it.

BUT HERE IS THE THING. Even as I stepped away from podcast interviews, didn’t respond to requests for quotes or articles… even as I turned down speaking opportunities, even as a stopped producing new content daily… even as I DID NOT DO ONE MEASLY LAUNCH, My business kept performing.

This little business of mine proved herself a self-sustaining, profitable little BEAST.

When I had enough wherewithal to pay attention again, I stood back amazed. I had built a machine. I had built a business that ran SEPARATE From me. I had built EXACTLY what people want: a

TRUE lifestyle business.

My entrepreneurial confidence grew,

even as my passion stayed low.

Somewhere around January of 2025, the stirrings of entrepreneurial passion began again. I started lingering over ideas and getting that soulful excitement that had always provided the seed for action for me. I wasn’t just in love with MY business again, but with business in general… because I believe business to be THE ULTIMATE vehicle for women who want to live ALL of life on their own terms.

I started getting back to the entrepreneurial thing again. WITH SO MUCH EXCITEMENT and ANTICIPATION. I was attending masterminds and events. Buying programs. Reading other business leaders again. Paying attention to what the newly (often self-) appointed leaders were saying… teaching… promoting.

I quickly discovered that among the TRUE entrepreneurs (meaning, those who are serious about earning money… they are not husband funded and are not hobbyists) the word of the day being SOLD and PACKAGED and PROMISED and PROMOTED was… “leverage.”

Around the cool tables, lol… ALLLLLL of the talk was about more and bigger:

Should I hire THIS position or THAT position? DO i need an operations manager or a full time sales person? Should I pay this person $8K / month to follow up in person on my those my funnel didn’t convert? Should I double my ads budget because return on my current ad budget is way down? Problems with team members and turnover and so maybe we need to hire someone to oversee THAT????

all the while, the REASON behind these discussions was that SALES were down. Profit was down. What worked before wasn’t working quite as well as it had in the VERY RECENT past.

It was not missed by me that even as I felt like I’d all but ABANDONED my business, what had ALWAYS worked for me WAS STILL WORKING. WELL.

It was not missed by me that I had none of their overhead, complexity or stress or strain. And i was out earning them.

BUT also I could not deny what was OBVIOUS to my soul: I was no longer the most driven in the room. NOT EVEN CLOSE. I was the one who was hiding how UNDRIVEN I was. I was the one who didn’t have a problem to mastermind. I knew what I had and I LOVED what I had:

I loved SMALL.

I loved LEAN.

I loved HIGH profit (but not high ticket pressure and hand holding.)

I loved SIMPLE.

But mostly I loved the FREEDOM I’d built with a small, lean, simple profit creating machine.

Still… I’d build a brand for the “seriously driven woman.” Oops.

Enter a new definition of drive. It hit me HARD that…

it is EASY to get overwhelmed by a business that runs you into the ground.

It is EASY to follow the crowd into a common (but completely unnecessary) reality of high overhead, large virtual teams, AI-powered this and that, and high-priced software systems that provide “leverage” but still have to be managed, fed and of course set up to begin with.

It takes SERIOUS drive these days to resist the complexity, the chaos and the overwhelm. It takes InCREDIBLE AUDACITY to build simple, to do things your own way.

Like, brass balls audacity and UNDENIABLE drive.

THIS is the new “driven woman” I serve. And yes… she has drive for days!

I’m going to reveal the HOW to create a lean mean profit creating machine, YES in 2025. But before I do I want to point out something I JUST realized this morning when talking with my parents.

My dad is a builder. he has built every house I’ve ever lived in. The joke is that he builds rectangles. MOSTLY 90 degree angles. Chris and I are designing OUR next house right now… On the “wish list,” is a “whale watch tour” so that we can see the water. My dad advises against it. lol….

But this I can’t deny: Whatever my dad builds, lasts. It lasts in hurricane alley over decades of hurricane seasons. He builds for STRENGTH and LONGEVITY. And THAT requires a certain level of simplicity. A certain REJECTION of complexity, no matter how cool it looks.

So, my OWN pull towards simple is in my DNA. I’m going to give you below the EXACT plan I follow in my own business. But first I want to tell tell you two things:

I’m going to do a FULL and FREE summit, a challenge of sorts, a 3-day call back to SANITY in business. If you want in, comment below. (I’ll soon get a sign up form for you. but for now, just comment below.) This summit will go over my plan in DETAIL.

THEN, for those who want to go deeper, Im creating what amounts to a business REconstruction zone, allowing us to GET CLEAR on the business you want, CUT OUT the b.s. you’re doing now that is NOT working and create an ENGINE that gets you where you want to go.

Quick analogy: Your car is built on certain engineering principles. It runs on certain fuel. THIS is why you don’t worry that the car won’t get you where you want to go. I can help you build your business with the SAME certainty.

CERTAIN design +

CERTAIN fuel =

CERTAIN destination.

Period.

HERE are the ONLY parts you need for the design that works:

STAGES: Yours — of course — but primarily others. Build a habit of getting on OTHER PEOPLE’s STAGE and PAGEs. THIS can be automated and syndicated. THIS is what I have relied on for two and a half decades. THIS is what I rely on now.

POSITIONING: You must decide and decree WHO YOU WILL BE in your industry. And then you must BACK that decision. You cannot BUY this positioning by the way. You have to EMBODY it.

OFFER: Your offer must hit a nerve and be MORE than information. It MUST do something more than just teach.

HABITS: You must build your engine to function OPTIMALLY on a small number of habits that come naturally to you. You must have a ROUTINE that accomplishes your core business goals.

Simple. Easy. Repetitive.