Hills I Will Die On: Mindset Tips for Women Entrepreneurs
I posted a list of hills I will die on as a woman, a mom, and a business owner on Instagram last week. It was one of those posts that came from a real place, not a content calendar. The kind of thing you type out because something happened and you need to get it out of your body and into the world.
It resonated. So I wanted to expand on it.
This is not a perfectly packaged motivational episode with a tidy bow on the end. I am not going to sit here and pretend that I have it all figured out, because I absolutely do not. What I do have is seven and a half years of building a business from nothing, three kids in competitive sports, a whole lot of stumbles, and some hard-won lessons that I keep having to remind myself of regularly.
These are the mindset tips for women entrepreneurs that I wish someone had said to me out loud sooner. Some of them I am still learning. All of them are true. And if even one of them lands for you today, then this rambling solo episode was worth it.
Let's get into it.
You Don't Need to Be Good at Everything
This is the hill I will die on first and the one I fall off of the most. Whenever I’m scrolling through Instagram or sitting in a networking event and I see another woman doing something incredible like building something beautiful, showing up in a way that looks effortless, something in my brain goes: I need to do that too. I need to do all of it.
I do not need to do all of it. And neither do you.
Trying to be everything to everyone and doing everything yourself is the fastest route to burnout, I know. When I stay in my lane and I focus on what I am actually good at, which is writing and strategy and stepping into my clients' shoes and creating content that stops the scroll, that’s when things work. That is when the business grows. That is when I feel good about what I am putting out into the world. The minute I start chasing someone else's version of success, everything starts to fall apart a little.
It is the same in motherhood. I will never be a Pinterest mom. I have accepted this. I love that aesthetic. I love the people who can pull it off. I am not one of them and forcing myself into that mold does not make me a better mom. It just makes me a stressed-out, resentful version of myself that my kids definitely do not need. The type of mom I am naturally is enough. The zone of genius you have right now is enough. Stay in it, get really good at it, and find people who are great at the things you are not.
There Will Always Be Whispers. Tune Them Out.
Something happened recently in my personal life that I am not going to get fully into, but the short version is this: I found out people were talking. About me, about my parenting, about my kids, about my home. And it stung. I am not going to pretend it didn't, because it did. It took me down for a minute and I started spiraling into that awful place of what if they're right? What if I am not enough?
And then I took a step back and looked at who was doing the talking.
Here is the thing about whispers: the people doing them are rarely the people whose opinions should matter to you. There is a reason they were whispering and not saying it to my face. And there is a reason I do not look at their life and think that is what I am working toward. You do not take advice from someone whose life you do not admire. The same goes for criticism.
This is true in business too. Seven and a half years in, a business that has consistently outearned my entire corporate paralegal career, nearly seven figures built essentially as a one-woman show — and there are still people who ask me how my little business is going. Still people who question what I am doing and why. There will always be those people. They do not go away when you get more successful. They just get quieter or louder depending on the day.
One of my favorite quotes is from Jalen Hurts of the Philadelphia Eagles (go Birds!), I had a purpose before anyone had an opinion. Read that again. You had a purpose before anyone had an opinion. Hold onto that when the whispers get loud, because they will get loud sometimes. And your purpose was there first.
You Are Probably Stronger and Smarter Than You Think
When those whispers got loud, I did what I think a lot of us do. I started believing them. I started asking myself if I really was a bad mom. If my house really was a mess. If everything I had built was actually as good as I thought it was. And I went down that spiral for a little while before something clicked.
I have been through a lot. And I have figured it out every single time.
That is not me bragging. That is just the truth. And it is probably the truth for you too. Think about every impossible situation you have faced, every moment where you genuinely did not know how it was going to work out, every time the answer was not clear and the path was not obvious. You figured it out. Maybe not perfectly. Maybe not on the first try. But you are still here, still building, still showing up, and that counts for a lot more than you give yourself credit for.
This is one of the most important mindset tips for women entrepreneurs that I can offer, because we are really good at talking ourselves out of our own capabilities. We see someone else doing something incredible, and we think they have something I don't.
Meanwhile, we are sitting on years of experience, hard lessons, resilience that was forged in genuinely difficult circumstances, and skills that people are paying us real money for. Own that. You earned it.
You are probably stronger and smarter than you think. Act like it.
Rest Is Not Something You Have to Earn
I grew up in a household where rest had to be earned. Where you were only as good as your last achievement, where there was always someone better than you, always something more to do, always another bar to clear before you were allowed to stop and breathe. I carried that into my business and I ran myself into the ground.
For years, I was non-stop. Constantly thinking about how to grow, how to scale, how to get better for my clients, how to make more money, how to do more. And what happened was I burned out completely.
Worse than that… I lost my creativity. And as someone whose entire business runs on creative output, that’s a real problem.
Here is what I know now that I wish I had known sooner: rest is not a reward for finishing everything on your list. It is a requirement for doing the work well in the first place.
Some of my best ideas have come in the middle of a nap, or on a walk, or in that quiet space after I finally stopped grinding long enough to let my brain breathe. You cannot pour from an empty cup and you cannot create from an exhausted mind. Your body is not a machine and it will eventually make that point for you whether you are ready or not.
You do not have to earn your rest. It was never something that needed to be earned. Give it to yourself without the guilt and watch what comes out on the other side.
Find Your People and Hold On Tight
This one is simple, but it is everything. Finding people who genuinely see you, respect you, and support the real you changes the game in a way that is hard to fully explain until you experience it.
And it does not have to be a big group. Honestly, one or two people who truly believe in what you are building and who show up for you without an agenda are worth more than a hundred connections who are only around when things are going well. Those one or two people are the ones you turn to when the whispers get loud. They are the ones who remind you of your purpose when you have temporarily forgotten it. They are the ones who do not need you to justify your dreams or explain your choices or shrink yourself to make them comfortable.
I try to teach my kids this too. There are a lot of people in this world and not all of them are going to get you. Some of them are never going to be pleased no matter what you do, no matter how hard you work, no matter how much you show up. Stop spending energy trying to win those people over. Find the ones who already see you and pour into those relationships instead.
In business specifically, having people in your corner who understand your vision and believe in what you are doing makes the hard days survivable. When everything feels like it is falling apart and you are questioning every decision you have ever made, those people are your anchor. Build that community intentionally. Protect it. And show up for them the way they show up for you.
When You Want to Burn It All Down, Take a Nap First
There have been a lot of moments over the past few months when I have wanted to close the business, go back to corporate, and just be done with it all. Like genuinely, fully, dramatically done. Torch the whole thing and walk away.
And then I took a nap and felt completely fine.
Here is the distinction that I think is really important: there is a difference between a real pivot moment and a 3pm Tuesday spiral. Real pivot moments exist. This podcast is full of women who reached genuine crossroads and made brave, necessary changes. That is real and that deserves to be honored.
But a lot of the time, that burning-everything-down feeling is not a sign that something needs to change. It is a sign that you are depleted, overwhelmed, and probably haven't had a snack since breakfast.
Drink some water. Eat something. Take a walk. Take a nap. And then come back and look at the situation again. Nine times out of ten it is not as catastrophic as it felt at 3pm. The business is not broken. You are just tired. And tired is fixable in a way that torching your entire livelihood is not.
Give yourself the space to feel the frustration without making permanent decisions from it. Rest first. Decide later. Your future self will thank you for it.
Talk About the Hard Stuff Anyway
I saw a post recently arguing that business owners should not share their mental health struggles publicly. That it is unprofessional and too much. And I have to be honest with you, I could not disagree more.
I have struggled with anxiety and depression for a long time. The thing that finally pushed me to reach out and get the help I actually needed was another woman talking about it openly. It was someone saying out loud that she was struggling and that getting help made her life better. That was my permission slip. That was the moment I stopped waiting and started doing something about it.
There is a quote from the very first episode of this podcast that I come back to again and again: another woman's admission is your permission. If you are sitting on something hard and wondering whether it is too much to share, whether people will judge you, unsubscribe, or think less of you… some of them might. But someone else is going to read it and feel less alone for the first time in a long time. And that person matters more than the ones who were never going to stay anyway.
Talk about the hard stuff. Share the messy parts. You do not have to make your struggles your entire brand, but you are allowed to be human in public. Actually, I think we need more of it. The world has enough polished, performative perfection. What it needs is more honesty. More women saying me too. More permission slips.
The V List — Because Someone Else Sees What You Can't
I almost forgot to mention this, which is honestly very on brand for me and also kind of proves my point about not giving yourself enough credit.
I was named to the inaugural V List, a list of 200 women entrepreneurs from across the United States, sponsored by The Visionaries, an incredible organization for entrepreneurs and business owners. There were over a thousand applications. I made the list.
I sat with that for a second before I recorded this because here I am, an entire episode about self-doubt and whispers and questioning whether I am good enough… Yet someone looked at what I have built and said yes, that deserves national recognition. While I was busy wondering whether my business was good enough, a panel of judges was adding my name to a list of 200 women doing something worth celebrating.
I am not sharing this to brag. I am sharing this because if you are anything like me, you are probably doing something right now that someone else looks at and thinks that is incredible, but you have not stopped long enough to see it yourself. You are questioning your work while other people are admiring it. You are whispering doubts to yourself while the world is quietly taking notes.
So if you are questioning yourself today, let this be your reminder. Someone out there sees you as an award-winning badass. Maybe it is time you started seeing yourself that way, too.
Want to Hear More Stories Like This?
I know … this episode was a lot of rambling. It was contradictory in places. It was messy and unpolished, and honestly, that felt right, because that is exactly what building a business while living a full human life actually feels like. Not linear or perfectly polished. There’s always a little chaotic middle…
If this resonated with you, you are going to love The Chaotic Middle Podcast, where every week I sit down with real women who are building real businesses, navigating real motherhood, and figuring it all out without a blueprint. Just honest stories from women who are in it, just like you.
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Because you are probably stronger and smarter than you think. And sometimes you just need someone to say it out loud.
