Build the Business That Fits Who You've Become

Lately, I feel like every time I open my phone, I’m bombarded with videos of people telling me what I’m ‘supposed’ to be doing and who I’m ‘supposed’ to be showing up as - as a business owner, mother, wife, friend, and more.

The internet has a lot of expectations, yet very little reward for adhering to those impossible standards.

I truly believe that the constant need to keep up with the ever-growing list of expectations is what leads so many women to burn out, and so many business owners to fall out of love with their business.

When we’re prioritizing everyone else’s expectations we’re no longer showing up authentically or in alignment with who we actually are and want to be - but we’re performing in hopes that our audience is attracted to the curated version of ourselves and our businesses.

The Deeper Issue

I honestly believe that this issue goes much deeper, and it’s a lesson that I’ve had to learn through my own journey in business & becoming.

I’ve had to learn the hard way that oftentimes we feel the need to perform out of fear that we aren’t good enough.

That showing up in authentic alignment with who we truly are and how we want to operate our businesses isn’t good enough and won’t connect with the right people.

When I first started my business, you could say I lived a much more ‘aesthetic’ or appealing lifestyle. I was young, single, hopping from city to city, coffee shop to coffee shop, always dressed in the latest trends, and curating my life in a way that reflected the lifestyle so many young women strive to live.

I wasn’t performing because it was truly the lifestyle I was living at the time.

Fast forward 11 years, I live in the South in a much slower-paced beach town, I am a wife, and a toddler mom - often juggling business and baby-raising.

Recently, I had to be honest with myself in that for the last 5 years, I was constantly striving to ‘perform’ online. I was striving to keep up with the image of the lifestyle that I lived as a young 20-something, instead of sharing what life really looked like as a 30-something settled into business ownership and motherhood.

And it’s ironic that around the same time - almost 5 years ago now- I began to really struggle with burnout, overthinking, and constantly iterating new versions of my business - seeing what would resonate the best.

It wasn’t until this last year that I finally decided I couldn’t keep up the facade anymore. And if I’m being honest, I don’t think my audience wanted me to.

Authentic Connection

I started to notice that every time I shared the real and raw truth of my current lifestyle beyond my business, I was connecting on a more personal level with my clients and audience.

Little by little, it began to validate that showing up authentically as myself allowed other women to relate to my current phase of life, and revealed a truth I thought would never come true:

People wanted to work with me because they related to the human that I was now, not the human that I was 10 years ago.

If I’m being honest, there were so many parts of myself that I’ve felt like I had to hide as to not turn anyone away or even offend anyone.

Whether it’s my faith, my liberal approach to faith, making athleisure & no makeup my daily uniform, or my 3-year-old making an appearance on client calls.

My love for this work had started to become more about the people I was connecting with than about building the next ‘luxury’ brand on the pages of Vanity Fair.

And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I realized it wasn’t just my content that felt disconnected.

It was my business.

The Becoming

For years, I kept trying to fit the woman I had become into a business that had been built for a completely different version of me. The visuals still reflected the polished, monochromatic world I had created years earlier. The messaging was trying to appeal to a version of success that no longer motivated me. Even the way I structured my offers was beginning to feel out of alignment with how I actually wanted to serve people.

The irony is that I spent years wondering where my creativity had gone.

I thought maybe I had simply outgrown this work. Maybe I needed another pivot, another niche, another business model. But looking back now, I don’t think I had lost my creativity at all. I think it had been buried underneath years of trying to maintain a version of myself that no longer existed.

Once I gave myself permission to let that version go, everything else started to change.

My brand slowly became more colorful because my life had become more colorful. Not in the glamorous, jet-setting way it once was, but in a way that felt infinitely more meaningful. It looked more like sandy feet after work, a toddler making surprise appearances on client calls, slow mornings, and building a business around the life I actually wanted to live instead of the life I thought I needed to project online.

It also changed the way I wanted to work.

For a long time, I believed growth meant creating more distance. Bigger projects. Bigger teams. More polished systems. More exclusivity.

Instead, I found myself craving the opposite.

The work that has always meant the most to me has never been about delivering a logo or a website. It’s been about getting to know the woman behind the business. Understanding what season of life she’s in. What she’s building toward. Why this idea matters so deeply to her in the first place.

Because businesses don’t exist in isolation. They grow alongside the people leading them.

And if the founder changes, shouldn’t the business be allowed to change too?

That realization has completely reshaped the way I think about branding.

For years, I believed my job was to help women build successful brands. Today, I think it’s something much deeper than that. I want to help women build businesses that actually fit the lives they’re living now, not the lives they thought they were supposed to be living.

Businesses that reflect their values, their priorities, their families, their ambitions, and the woman they’re becoming.

Because when those things finally align, something unexpected happens.

The overthinking quiets down.

The constant need to compare yourself to everyone else starts to fade.

Creating feels exciting again.

Showing up no longer feels like performing.

Your business begins to feel like an extension of who you are instead of another role you’re trying to play. I think that’s what I’ve been rebuilding over the last year. Not just my visual brand, but my relationship with my business altogether.

It’s also why I’ve created my newest offer, The Becoming.

Not because I think every woman needs another strategy session or another perfectly polished brand. But because I know what it feels like to arrive at a season where you know something has to change.

Maybe you’ve outgrown the business you built years ago and can’t quite figure out why it no longer feels like you.

Or maybe you’re standing at the edge of something completely new, ready to leave behind a career, an identity, or a version of yourself you’ve held onto for years in order to finally build the business you’ve been dreaming about.

Either way, I don’t believe the answer is to copy what everyone else is doing.

I believe the strongest businesses are built when we first take the time to understand the woman who’s building them.

The Becoming is a one-on-one brand partnership designed to help women build businesses worthy of the person they’re becoming. Together, we uncover what’s always been true about you, what this next season is asking of you, and how to build a brand that reflects both.

Because I’ve learned that creativity isn’t something we have to chase.

It often returns the moment we stop trying to become someone else and start building in alignment with who we already are.

Maybe that’s what becoming really is. Not becoming someone entirely new. But having the courage to become more fully yourself, and building a business that’s brave enough to grow alongside you.