Success without fulfillment will always feel like failure.
In today’s solo episode of She Wears the Pants, Ashley Deland explores one of the most confusing experiences many high-achieving women encounter: reaching the goal, hitting the milestone, building the business, and still feeling like something is missing.
Through a powerful conversation about motivation, fulfillment, personal growth, and entrepreneurship, Ashley unpacks the difference between push motivation and pull motivation, and why so many founders eventually discover that achievement alone is incapable of creating the feeling they were searching for.
Because success can build a beautiful life. Fulfillment is what allows you to enjoy it.
If you're a woman navigating growth, expansion, leadership, or a season where the achievements are accumulating faster than the satisfaction, this conversation will help you reconnect with your purpose, strengthen your internal foundation, and build success that actually feels as meaningful as it looks.
In this episode, Ashley shares how to:
• Understand the difference between push motivation and pull motivation
• Identify when success has become disconnected from purpose
• Strengthen your state so you can hold greater levels of growth and opportunity
• Recognize how the stories you tell yourself shape the results you create
• Anchor into a version of success that feels expansive, meaningful, and sustainable
By the end of this episode, you'll walk away with a deeper understanding of what truly fuels long-term growth and why fulfillment is often the missing piece behind success that feels flat. If you're standing inside a life you've worked hard to build and wondering what comes next, this conversation will help you reconnect with the woman you're becoming and the purpose that is calling you forward.
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Transcripts
Welcome back to She Wears the Pants — the place where high-growth women come to build companies that match their calling.
I'm your host, Ashley Deland.
Today I want to talk to you about something big, which is what happens when you reach success and it still feels flat?
You work incredibly hard, you burn all the other boats around the island and here you are staring at your well-earned success, but somehow, oddly enough it feels like failure.
And that’s because another beautiful “f” word is missing - which we will get to later.
So picture this:
You've had the year.
The revenue you wrote down on January 1st, you’ve already hit it, the launch was a huge success, the team, title, recognition - checkmarks on the vision board - but you’re left here thinking “hmm, I thought that would feel better?
You look around and find yourself sitting inside a life that looks like everything you’ve ever asked for, and wondering why it feels shallower than it should.
I’m going to talk to that feeling today, because my friend - it’s the ultimate sign from yourself, God, the universe that you were are meant for more - and that the fuel you’ve been running on - was only ever meant to get you this far - not take you where you're ultimately called to go next.
So let’s talk about motivation.
There are two types of motivation.
The first is push motivation.
Push is willpower. It's drive, determination, the sheer force of making it happen. And if you're listening to this show, you most likely have push motivation in abundance. You decided, and then you delivered, over and over again.
Push is how most of us got to a certain level of success. And you can only squeeze so much out of yourself before inevitably - the tank starts to run dry.
Then there's the second kind of motivation which is Pull motivation.
Pull is when there’s something attracting you that is so much bigger than just you.
Something you care about more than your own comfort, your own image, your own name.
…And that, my dear, is where the real energy of a life actually comes from.
Not the head - but the heart and soul.
It's the thing that brings you to your desk morning after morning, clicking away, - building, long after willpower would have quit.
And that “why” that pull energy - can be absolutely anything that lights your soul on fire.
For me… it has always been the act of being of service - and watching the impact I have the pleasure of creating, whether large or small, in women's lives and businesses.
And I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this but when you are truly in service, or in that pull energy - your mind goes quiet.
You're just with that person, or connected to the energy of the people in the room - you are truly doing the thing you were brought down to this earth to do and you feel fulfilled.
And here’s something worth leaning into for;...
When you find the thing you care about more than yourself, you will never lack energy again. You will never lack passion or run dry. Because you stopped pulling from the tank, and instead plugged into the source.
And in case you didn’t catch it there, fulfillment was that extra beautiful “f” word that’s the missing piece to why when you achieve success, it will either fill full or flat.
Okay let’s move on to a different topic that I want to talk to you about today that ties perfectly into this theme.
You have heard me shout from the mountain that in business your state is just as important as your strategy.
So let me put on my business advisor hat here for a second, because this is the part where it gets a little practical.
I will be the first to admit that I love strategy.
It's what I do. I hand women the strategies and help them execute the breakthroughs they're looking for in life and business.
I tend to say often that the secret to success in business is the right mathematical strategy.
So whatever dream they’re trying to achieve; whether it’s building a larger investment portfolio, scaling their company to seven or eight figures, or even positioning their business for the exit.
I love giving women that equation to success. That’s my pull motivation.
But there’s also a reason that in the past 3-4 years I’ve become an advocate in saying that you need to also become the woman that can hold the success - because strategy is different (much different) then state.
And there’s two versions that I often see come up in advisory, the first is that the strategy is given, and the entrepreneurs looks at it and says - yes I can do that! - then months later no progress was made.
Because a strategy doesn't land on a blank page. It lands on the story she's already telling herself and the state she is currently in.
And if the story underneath is "I've tried everything." If the story is "nothing works for me." If the story is "it's harder for someone like me" — then it doesn’t matter how perfect the strategy is. The story and state will eat it alive. Every time.
The second version that I see is that because my containers are so private and hands-on, unlike most other advisors you get a partner within your company that is helping not just with breakthroughs, but also working alongside you as if it was my own business.
That’s why women become successful quickly - because they get my years of first hand-building, my business and corporate experience - as well as my network.
And sometimes that success hits quickly, suddenly and without an introduction, and that woman is left having to build her state and re-work her story in order to hold the success we just created.
So that’s why today I’m telling you that if success is feeling flat or you’re not hitting breakthroughs, it’s not because you have a strategy problem, it’s probably because you have a state problem and no strategy on earth can outrun the story you're running underneath it.
Simply put and nothing new coming out of my mouth…
Your business will never outgrow the woman running it. You can be handed the best plan in the world, and it will slip straight through your fingers if you have not become the woman who can hold it — not just mentally, but energetically. Your state. Your standard. What you believe you're actually allowed to keep.
So today, I am encouraging you to change your state, not the strategy. Change the story - because what you get in business and life my friend wont make you happy - but who you become along the way will either make you very happy or very sad.
And that’s what your destiny is all about - that’s why we want to make those decisions now and set the state and story straight - instead of just waiting for it to all unfold and hope it works out in your favour.
But with a directive mind and seeing the tangible progress to it - you’re going to slowly become the woman you are destined to be in this lifetime.
And here's where it all comes full circle.
Remember those boats you burned to get here? You didn't burn them so you could stand on the shore and feel empty. You burned them because some part of you already knew there was no going back to who you used to be. That flat feeling isn't the fire going out - It's your soul asking for more..
Push got you across the water. Pull — the why that's bigger than you, the service that quiets your mind, the thing that lights your soul on fire — that's what carries you the rest of the way.
That's the fuel you were built to run on. And the fullness you've been chasing was never on the other side of the next achievement. It was always on the other side of becoming the woman who could hold it.
So build the state. Rewrite the story. Find the pull.
Until next time — keep rising into the woman your calling requires.
And, if you're entering a season where your vision is expanding and you're craving a room that can hold the woman you're becoming alongside the business you're building, Founder Haus was designed for exactly that.
A private founder sisterhood built around proximity, strategic advisory, meaningful relationships, and the belief that extraordinary growth happens when exceptional women gather together with intention.
To preserve the intimacy and depth Founder Haus is known for, each cohort is intentionally limited to six women.
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For more information on Founder Haus click HERE
If you're curious about Founder Haus and would like to explore whether it's the right room for this next season of growth, you're welcome to book a private conversation with me here.
Until next time — keep rising into the woman your calling requires.
