Hey Reader,

Welcome back to Little Leadership Lessons, my Saturday newsletter sharing quick, powerful insights from coaching seven-figure creators. These lessons help you grow as a leader so you can grow your business—with more clarity, alignment, and peace of mind.

Before diving into today’s note, I want to give a shout-out to neuroscientist Dr. Anne-Laure LeCunff (who has previously been a Good Work podcast guest). Anne-Laure recently launched a course called The Experimental Leader, a neuroscience-backed course for ambitious professionals ready to upgrade their mindset, navigate uncertainty with confidence, and lead with calm, intention, and impact. The course blends practical tools with powerful mental models grounded in cutting-edge neuroscience. I think you’ll really enjoy it—be sure to get on the waitlist and check it out.

Now let’s get to it. Today’s Little Leadership Lesson is for anyone who’s ever worked themselves to exhaustion, recovered, and then… wondered how to dream again without reigniting the burnout that nearly broke them in the first place.

A Beautiful Photo to Quiet Your Body and Mind

The Situation

Recently, a client and I were chatting about a long season of intense growth that ended in burnout. After rest, therapy, and reconnecting with nourishing physical routines, she had returned to a healthier baseline. She knew she had reached that healthier place because:

• Her body felt strong, resilient, and “in shape” like she hadn’t felt in years
• She was more connected to and in tune with her family
• She felt energetic and excited about what work might come next

Despite these signs of healing, she wasn’t celebrating. She was caught in the in-between:

The challenge wasn’t necessarily what to do next (although that was a question too). It was more about how to move forward without losing herself again. And this revealed the real work that needed to be done in coaching.

The Emotional Blocker

This is the inner conflict so many founders face:

• Gratitude for stability, but restlessness for more.
• An inner voice that says you’ll never be good enough.
• Guilt for wanting more: “I should be grateful for where I am.”
• Fear that ambition and contentment can’t coexist.
• A belief that the work has to feel hard to be valuable.

The belief that you must choose between peace and progress keeps you stuck. You’re afraid of repeating the past, but unfulfilled by standing still. And so founders do one of two things:

1. Opt out entirely, choosing to “retire” or “coast” on what you’ve already built to avoid losing yourself in the work
2. Repeat the same patterns, leading to the yo-yo effect of burnout recovery in a 24-36 month cycle that feels like groundhog day

All along, you’re convinced that you’re sentenced to this experience of quiet suffering. “The plight of the entrepreneur!” you tell yourself, while secretly hoping that maybe there’s another way around it. But at the core, the vulnerability of that hope is overcome by the grind of getting it done, whatever “it” is.

The Breakthrough

Right about the time my client was feeling the despair of the tension between her inner peace and her drive for more, I introduced the idea of centered ambition. Centered ambition is the ability to remain grounded in the present, knowing you are already enough, while still reaching forward toward your potential. It’s ambition rooted in wholeness, not in fear or scarcity.

She sat with this idea for a moment of quiet contemplation and she almost immediately realized that the core of her burnout had come from trying to do it all herself.

She was building the systems. She was tracking the metrics. She was holding the goals and plans in her mind. She was making sure marketing was driving leads and sales was converting them and customer support was taking care of them. She was stressing about churn in the membership.

She was keeping everything in her head, knowing for certain that it all relied on her. And it was quietly drowning her sense of hope and possibility.

The thing that would get her out of it? Finally learning to rely on her team.

For this client, that meant realizing she didn’t need to go back to doing more hands-on work. Instead, she could channel her ambition into developing others.

She committed to shift from being the expert on everything to building a team of experts to support her vision. She decided to invest her energy in hiring, onboarding, and leadership.

This move from doing the work to leading the work created emotional and mental space for growth that was healthier, more sustainable, and more aligned with her purpose.She knew immediately that if she could pull it off, this shift would allow her to maintain her ambition AND maintain her wholeness and peace.

This is centered ambition at work.

Coaching Questions to Apply This to Your Business

The reality is that most people face the same thing. If you are in a season of burnout right now or want to avoid one in the future, here are a few questions to coach yourself through the process:You don’t have to choose between ambition and contentment. When your ambition is centered, you can build from a place of enoughness. And with that balance, many things become possible without sacrificing yourself in the process.

1. Have you recently stepped back after a season of burnout or overextension? What has helped you recover or recuperate?
2. What does ambition look like for you right now? What are you driven towards and hoping for in the years to come? How would those goals change if they weren’t driven by fear, but centered in wholeness and trust in yourself?
3. What would it take for you to be both content and ambitious in chasing your plans? What would have to be true for you to reach all of your goals without experiencing burnout (again)?
4. How might you grow by leading others, not just by doing more yourself? Where in your business can you ask for help?

Much love and respect,

PS: If you have some extra time this week, I’d love for you to check out my most recent conversation with Nathan Barry on his podcast The Nathan Barry Show. In it, we discuss the five traps that keep creators stuck below one million in revenue and how to avoid each one. After you tune in, hit reply on this email and let me know what you think!