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I've been the corporate soldier, scrappy founder, confused romantic, and more. I disrupted the status quo with my companies while still holding true to guidelines tailored to me and only me. Most important, I've made plenty of mistakes and have the bumps and bruises to show for them! Now I spend my time equipping high achievers with the customized blueprints to redefine success and make the changes in their life to get them there. Ultimately, your dreams require rules reflecting your distinct desires for your life, not everyone else's.

Since I quit my corporate job, I've gone on to build one of the most progressive and profitable corporations in the media and tech space. I currently lead a team of more than one hundred brilliant co-conspirators as co-founder and CEO of Blavity Inc. What started as a whiteboard vision in my San Francisco apartment living room has exploded into an empire reaching more than a hundred million people each month.

Blavity Inc. operates trailblazing brands in media and beyond, accelerating equity and diverse talent while spotlighting Black culture and identity. Our digital media brands like Blavity, Travel Noire, and 21Ninety amplify and activate a new majority of consumers, influencing how traditional diverse advertising happens through our daily content, newsletters, and immersive in-person experiences. Our community, AfroTech, is the premier tech, equity, and wealth-building platform for Black culture and has become an essential destination for diverse global innovators and professionals, with more than fifty thousand people participating in events annually.

In less than ten relentless years, Blavity Inc. hasn't just moved the needle, we've redrawn the scale for access and business equity for multiple industries. We've scooped up accolades from heavyweights like The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Forbes, and Fast Company, and we've even received recognition from the White House. I've been honored as one of the Forbes 30 Under 30 in media, one of Inc.'s Top 100 Female Founders, and in the Advertising Hall of Fame, all before turning thirty-five. Blavity Inc. is not just a corporation. It's a movement, a force of change, an engine of empowerment.

But after an exhilarating seven years scaling Blavity into a media force out of Silicon Valley—raising over $12 million from venture capitalists while increasing our team from zero to hundreds of employees—I found myself depleted. The relentless hustle took its toll despite our glittering success. My health needed recovering. Relationships required mending. And simmering under the surface lay aspirations beyond business-building: I felt called to explore holistic living.

This realization became clear not in the buzzing California chaos that fueled Blavity Inc.'s growth, but in the rainforest jungles of Costa Rica during a monthlong sabbatical with friends. Surrounded by nature's rhythms and roaring waterfalls, the clarity one can find only in stillness washed over me. I knew that a radical change was required—one making my overall quality of life my new focus so I could realign my body and my time for sustainable impact. It is very easy for our careers to become our identities, and while I loved the work I was doing, my life begged for a reset in terms of how I executed my dreams. The time had come for me to renegotiate my own rules.

I had spent all of my twenties being the responsible one. The ambitious, hardworking student with many leadership titles. The serious career-driven founder. But I was maxed out.

Are you maxed out too? Have you been looking around wondering how you got here? I know exactly how you feel. I consider myself a high achiever and many who have come to follow me see themselves similarly. We are those who constantly strive for more, even at the expense of ourselves, and, at times, without enough clarity on what we want the result to actually be. As a high achiever, I pushed myself to the top, chasing after what I thought I was supposed to want. But then, something shifted. I started questioning my own mindset about what I could or couldn't do to make my life better.

I caught myself thinking, "Why am I waiting to be married before I buy my first house? Why am I holding off on taking that amazing vacation overseas until I hit a certain income level? And why am I stressing about getting recognition or awards if they don't contribute to my own personal goals and values?" I needed to accelerate the ease I was welcoming into my life, to make smarter choices about how I was spending my time and what I was willing to put on autopilot through delegation and smart systems. I needed to design an environment for myself where I could continue to be an intense high achiever (let's face it, that is who I am!) and also live a life full of joy. And I want that for you too. Why? The truth is, we really do want success both in the tangible and intangible, and there's nothing wrong with that. But how we get there is often flawed.