In this episode: what it looks like to push past the cultural norms of constant productivity and putting your sole identity into your work, and how slowing down and allowing yourself to play will actually open up more possibilities of success in your business.

Ashley Kruse is the founder of Baddie Creative and a growth marketing strategist who helps establish coaches and course creators use paid social to scale without diluting their brand that they've worked so hard to build. Ashley and Teresa talk about how easy it can be to tie your identity up in your business, the ways they have worked to untangle that, the differences between entrepreneurs and business owners, and why they are passionate about supporting female founders. They also dive into how Ashley operates her business; the purpose of ads and when you should use them to support your business; and how the ultimate goal is to have a business you love while also being able to separate yourself from it to live a more fulfilling life.

If you’ve ever felt the pull to try something new in your business, but have been too hesitant to take the leap, this episode is for you.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Sometimes your version of success will change over time, and that’s ok - it might just lead you down a path that is better than you could have ever imagined.
• You may need to “burn your life down” in order to start building one that makes you happier and feels more fulfilling.
• If you had all the time in the world to play and explore outside your business and goals, what would you do?
• It’s so easy to get caught up in the push for constant productivity. Having more play in your life actually opens up the opportunity for you to be more productive, while also living a fulfilling life.
• Surrounding yourself with people that you admire and that are different from you allows you to form a new identity that you might otherwise not have realized.

I'm not, like, death gripping my goals. I'm not death gripping every single thing that I could be doing. I really want to release it and to just step into it with confidence and trust that it's all gonna work out, but also to take care of myself. - Ashley Kruse

Connect with Ashley:

• Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/the.business.baddie
• Website: https://baddiecreative.com/

Connect with Teresa

• Join the Becoming Obsessed Playground, the weekly email for curiosity-led women building a life they love.
• Instagram: @becomingobsessedpod and @teresaajean
• Leave a review on Apple or Spotify Podcasts. Reviews are the biggest thank-you, and reviews help ambitious women find the show.
• Website: teresaajean.com

Topics: work-life balance, identity crisis, mom entrepreneur, business ownership, personal growth, redefining success, parenting and business, female entrepreneurs, marketing strategy, organic marketing, self-discovery, community building, overcoming burnout, entrepreneurship mindset, business systems, achieving fulfillment, building a fulfilling life

Mentioned in this episode:

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I cut my hours in half this summer so that I could spend two days a week with my son, just doing something with him.

And for me, that's huge because I am just perpetually a person that I will find something to do.

And it is so hard to step back and to be like, okay, well, what if my identity was actually just more mom?

What if my identity was more Ashley and, like, explore exploring my health and my wellness?

What if I did have more time to work out and do all of the things that I put a little bit on the back burner so that I could become the version of success that I wanted?

Welcome to becoming obsessed, where curiosity leads you to a life you love.

I'm Teresa Stasmy, and after over a decade of traveling the world, working with small business owners, and creating a couple of businesses of my own, I know a thing or two about playing by your own rules.

It's not always easy and it's often messy.

It can be hard, especially, especially if you're doing it alone.

I've seen way too many incredible women shoot for the stars only to burn out along the way.

Or worse, live on default and never chase their dreams.

We're done with all of that.

Together, we're gonna challenge what keeps us stuck and figure out what it takes to live a life we truly love.

If I asked you this simple question, how would you answer it?

If you had all the time in the world to play and explore outside of your goals, what would you do outside of business, outside of your achievements, how would you actually spend your time?

Now, if you've been hanging out with us long enough, you might actually have an answer to that question.

But it's something that I explore with my friends all of the time.

Are we just striving for more or are we building businesses that support our lives and are created to actually do the work for.

For us?

And that's what we're getting into today.

With one of my very best friends that I've been begging to be on the podcast for basically a year since we met.

I'm so excited to introduce you to Ashley Cruz.

She is the founder of Baddie Creative business, Baddie on ig, and a growth marketing strategist who helps established coaches and course creators use paid social to scale without diluting their brand that they've worked so hard to build.

Her philosophy is a strong point of view wins with ads every single time.

Especially now when the Internet is is louder than ever.

There's more AI generated slop that sounds the same and everything can Kind of feel transactional, especially sometimes with ads.

And we're going to get into all of that.

Ashley, welcome to Becoming Obsessed.

Thank you so much.

I'm so excited to be here.

I feel like this has been a long time coming, and I'm just amped to be having, like, a chat with my bestie.

Like, we do this all the time.

It's just now we're on a screen with your branding.

No, literally, I have been, like, dying for you, our other girl in our collective, Emily Dean, and me, to have a podcast where we just yap about marketing.

So, like, literally, we need to do that.

It's on the docket for sure.

Yeah.

When I recorded with Emily finally as well, I even said, like, by the time this airs, maybe we'll have our own podcast.

I'm crossing my fingers.

The Eat Collective.

Yes.

Podcast, everybody.

When you're listening to this comedy, hit up Ashley and Emily in the DMs and be like, go record podcasts with Teresa.

We need more, because you're going to need more of this.

And in a lot of ways, this is going to be maybe just a longer conversation of what is always being set in voice notes in our group chat constantly.

But I always say, let's start at the beginning.

Maybe it's not, you know, the full beginning, but.

Ashley, how did you come to create your own business and really start to live life on your own terms and work to create a life that's gonna work for you instead of just living by default?

Yeah, I think it's important to share that I've lived by default out of desire, but also out of necessity pretty much my entire life.

I don't come from money.

I don't come from a family that has extensive connections.

I've had to really build my path on my own.

And that's not to say that my family hasn't supported my dreams and goals.

It's not to say that I haven't had a good mentorship.

But for me, everything was always built off of my own achievements and how I showed up in different rooms and, like, where I put myself in proximity to other people that I wanted to be like.

And so for me, because of that, I was very much in the grind of this is the way it has to be.

This is what success, quote, unquote, looks like.

And I got obsessed with success.

I was obsessed with overcoming everything that I had ever come from.

And that worked for me for a really long time.

Instead of partying in college and all of that, I got my master's degree.

By the time I was, like, 23, I just really put my nose to the grindstone and just fricking did the things to get myself into a better place in my life.

And I found myself working at Big tech company.

Y' all might know it, it's LinkedIn.

I worked there for seven years, and I absolutely love it.

I found a community.

I found what felt like management and leadership that truly cared about their employees.

And at the time, that was very true, in my opinion.

I ended up getting pregnant toward the end of my tenure at LinkedIn.

And when I had my son, literally everything changed.

The way that I looked at the world changed.

The way that I viewed success changed.

My priorities shifted massively, not only during my pregnancy, but also during maternity leave.

And for those of you that don't know, Big Tech usually gives their employees, like, six months of maternity leave.

And that gave me a ton of time to really consider what success truly meant for me.

So it was sort of this time of uncovering what that was gonna look like and where I wanted to go from there.

And shortly after, I came from maternity leave, went back into sales.

It's very high stress, very high quotas.

I was traveling constantly, and one day I was in Minneapolis, actually, at Mall of America.

And I was just like, f this, I am so done with whatever version of success this is.

I'm over it.

I'm exhausted.

I want to be home with my baby, who at the time was only, like, six months old.

I just needed to readjust.

And so I started setting things in motion and to start my own business.

My husband's business kind of went in on with him.

Ended up leaving LinkedIn and sort of went on, like, a little bit of an identity crisis.

I think when you leave Big Tech, you're like, who am I?

What do I do?

What is my life?

Who am I outside of this big organization and all the friendships that I've made there?

And I, like, went into a little bit of a depression, if I'm being fully transparent.

And it was scary.

But then I realized I am so much more than that.

And so for the last seven years, I've really spent this time redefining what success looks like.

And that's looked so different year over year for me.

And now I'm here at this place seven years after leaving LinkedIn, starting my own business, and I am just so obsessed with the culmination of what I've created.

It's truly like she burnt it down and built it back the way that she always wanted and probably the way that she never could have dreamed that it could have been.

But that all came from just taking little steps and, like, following little nudges of intuition.

So that's kind of a long winded story of my journey to this place.

But it really did start out of necessity, of being successful and then having to, like, redefine that over time.

There's so many good nuggets in there.

When you started to have this identity crisis, and this is something you and I have talked about a lot, and it's not something that happens one time.

It's like every two years, I'm like, oh, shit, that's not who I am anymore.

Who am I now?

What goals am I chasing now?

But really going from tech to starting to build your own business, what were some of the key identity pieces that started to fall away?

We kind of wake up and realize, like, wow, I'm really tying my identity to this or to that that you noticed and started to shift away from.

To be honest, a big part of it was community.

I had spent so much time being part of teams that were being built from the ground up.

I was at LinkedIn, like, right after they went LinkedIn was my identity.

And, like, everybody knew that I worked at LinkedIn.

People that didn't even work the LinkedIn were like, oh, yeah, she works for LinkedIn, blah, blah, this is so cool.

But for me, my identity was really rooted in community there, my friendships, like, I had invited my friends to work with me.

I had made such solid friendships, we had traveled together.

And so when you take all of that away and now all of a sudden you're a solopreneur, you're like, I am nothing.

I am not good.

I can't do anything without people.

And I'm an ambivert.

So, like, a part of my energy does come from connecting to other people.

And when I didn't have those people to connect with on something that we all shared, I really struggled.

And I think that's where the downfall of my identity crisis really started.

And then it was also like, well, I don't want to be a salesperson anymore, so who am I if I don't sell?

Who am I if I'm not making an impact at a large company?

I felt really minuscule and small, and whatever I was doing didn't matter.

And on top of that, I was terrified to be visible on the Internet because at the time, like, no one was doing what I was doing.

Most people were like, you and your husband went crazy.

You'll be back.

It's kind of like this time of Life.

That just didn't happen back then, which sounds so weird cuz, like everybody has an online business now.

But it felt like so new to so many people and it felt so risky.

And then I started to question, did I make the worst mistake of my life?

And I actually ran a bunch of webinars about this is how I got a lot of my first clients is people saw the steps that I was taking to be happier and to live a more fulfilling life.

And suddenly everybody was like, curious how I was doing it, why I did it.

That's how I started my business.

It really just started that way, which was cool.

I was working through my identity issues and then also like sharing that journey with people, and suddenly I was somewhat of an authority in burning your life down.

I don't know.

It's crazy.

Well, and it's so interesting too, because identity is one of those things, like most things, that you can't have an answer until you're actually walking through it and processing.

And like, you can only figure it out as you are in motion.

And so it is.

I think often we lose something and we're like, okay, our identity was tied to that.

I'm a LinkedIn girly.

Like, that was part of the identity.

There's so much power behind that name that you get to associate with.

And so when you remove that name, it's like, okay, so what power of that was mine?

Or was I just borrowing all of that?

And filling that void also can only happen, like what you're saying.

You're like, okay, well, I just started putting myself out there and sharing my story and taking that next step.

And it's only through that motion that you start to actually fill that hole of, okay, who am I?

What do I want to do?

What am I sharing with people and how am I helping them?

Totally.

And that's so hard when you are like, in a vulnerable state, when you're transitioning away from everything that held your identity that made you feel like you matter to now.

Something that's risky and scary for you and then also scary for your family.

I can't tell you how many people were like, I just don't know that the coaching thing is ideal and blah, blah, blah, blah.

And it's like, yeah, but I'm just gonna, like, try it out and see what happens.

And so it's like, if I didn't have that compass from when I was smaller.

To be like, whatever you guys are doing isn't working for me or isn't what I want.

I don't think that I would have been able to make the strides in the direction that I did.

I'm really grateful because I think a lot of times the success that I've had, I attribute to, like, what I learned at LinkedIn, what I learned in corporate.

But the truth is, is that it's always been in me.

There's always been a compass of some kind.

I wouldn't have known that had I not done some deeper identity work of what I'm capable of and how my brain works and, like, you know, all my traumas.

I'm so grateful for those things because it does show me, like, oh, I, like, always had that compass in me.

And that's what I built LinkedIn off of.

Anyway.

Tenure at LinkedIn was built off of the compass of showing up, being very forthcoming with my thoughts, and very open and very vocal about what I felt like was right for the members and what wasn't.

And I've taken that into my business.

There's still parts of me that are there, and it's just been a little bit of a dismantling and an untying of where that identity stems from.

So that compass took you from coaching in the early days to now being the best ad strategist that I know and I know of.

Why ads?

What got you to ads?

Why are ads the thing that you are spending your work helping people with?

So I've always, always, like, I can remember back to college, I was obsessed with the customer journey.

Understanding how you take somebody from completely unaware of a product or a service and taking them all the way to the point where they are, like, buying from you consistently.

So, like, the psychology of that has really always fascinated me.

And on top of that, being a coach who organically launched her programs all the time, I was like, God, there's gotta be a better way.

I'm exhausted.

The amount of emotional capacity that it takes to hold an organic launch, it's almost devastating to your nervous system.

And so I was like, okay, I believe that there's gotta be a better way.

I started playing with ads for myself, and I have ad experience.

Like, I did ads at LinkedIn on the recruitment side for a long time.

But I was like, okay, let me figure out how to help people do this for their businesses.

One of the reasons I'm so passionate about ads is because I truly believe that the clients that I work with are change makers.

They create New waves, they create new niches, they're creating new methodologies that nobody has ever talked about, no one's ever heard of before.

And the only way in my mind to cut through the noise and to get that to the people that they want is through paid advertising.

And I know a lot of people, like hate meta ads and it's frustrating, but when you see from my side somebody who's literally changed lives and helped people get out of thousands and thousands of dollars of debt or who have come from these super traumatic backgrounds and have now gone on this healing journey, when you see the ripple effect of that, it's hard not to want to help people expand their vision, expand the rebellious nature of the coaching industry, which is why I love it so much to be able to get that in the hands of more people.

To me, that's the way that I help change the world in the long run.

It's such a minor thing, but I don't know that there's a better way to do it in a more effective way, especially as it relates to supporting founders who are oftentimes solopreneurs anyway and have a lot on their plate.

So that's my way of contributing and it's why I'm so passionate about it.

Well, and something you and I have had in common from the RIP is that neither of us believe that people should be solely relying on organic social media for their income or their revenue.

That's how I'll say it is.

I don't want to build a business that the only way I make money is if I show up on social media enough and say the right things, actually, that people are now finding me.

But with ads and email and building, these other pieces help to close that gap in a way social media can.

If you're really good at it and you love showing up and you really, really love testing.

For most of us that don't love spending every moment thinking of content ideas, what's the better way?

Ashley, you mentioned you started doing your launches in the beginning with organic and then you started to test with ads, which is one of the things I love about ads.

And your ad strategy is often you will pull from the organic side of like what is working.

And something that I also want to talk is when you're ready for ads and how do you maybe use ads to make sure that you have the right offer that you're promoting, but also when ads kind of don't work.

So that was like three questions in one.

But I just want you to talk to us a Little bit about organic and paid together separately and that go to market.

How do we know that we're ready.

With organic and paid?

I want everybody to think about it as an ecosystem.

There's a place for both.

And in fact, you should have a very solid organic approach already before you're running ads.

Because the thing about ads is that they're only going to scale what you're doing well organically.

So a lot of my clients, they will layer in ads during specific periods of time, like when they're running webinars, when they're wanting to build their lists, if they have an event that's coming up, those are the times that you really want to leverage ads.

Anytime that you need to get more traffic to something that organic just can't give you in one fell swoop.

Unless you go viral, which we all know the process for going viral is basically hit and miss.

And you never know when it's going to happen.

Ads really introduce more predictability into your marketing ecosystem.

And that's why I like it, because it also honors our capacity.

For example, I'm going on a trip for the next five days.

Am I worried about lead generation?

No, because my ads are doing that for me.

That's where I think the beauty comes.

When you have a solid organic and a paid approach, it doesn't mean that you're reliant upon one or the other.

They just work cohesively to support your business and the life that you want with inside your business.

And then in terms of, like, when you're ready, it just comes down to how you want to leverage ads.

It really comes down to ads being an amplifier.

So if you're listening to this and you're thinking to yourself, okay, am I ready for ads?

The question I would ask you is, what is working well in your business right now?

And is that something that you would feel confident putting ads to behind?

Do you have a thousand to $2,000 to test ads with?

And that's not to say that test isn't a bad thing or a good thing.

It's to say that ads are a long game.

They are not something that's going to immediately make you thousands of dollars.

And that's where people go wrong, is they think, oh, I'll just put some ads behind this low ticket offer and I'll make thousands in my sleep.

Passive income, y'.

All.

Ads are not passive.

That's literally why I have a job, because it takes a lot of effort and energy and you have to know your numbers to look at what's working, what's not so you don't waste your money.

So the big thing is if you're ready, look at what's working well in your business and then amplify that with ads.

You never want to test something brand new out of the gate that you've never run before with ads.

That's what organic is really for.

And it's a fine line.

So if you have questions on that, I'm sure Theresa will drop my info.

You can always reach out to me in the DMs.

I'm happy to kind of talk through it with you.

Yeah, 100%.

Because everyone listening, Ashley, Emily and I, this is what we do for businesses, is talk through this and help business owners understand what is your go to market strategy, what is the missing piece in your funnel and how can we fix that hole?

So that's really what I want.

Our little podcast that I'm just keep throwing out there until Ashley and Emily indulge me and we create it.

We're going to go to the Omaha Central Library and that's going to be our first place that we start to share all of our podcast info.

I can just envisioning it right now.

Okay.

Right now I'm going to say what would be the most helpful?

If you're listening and you're like, okay, wait, tell me more.

Do you want to hear us actually coaching and helping business owners?

Do you want us to talk through what we're talking through in the group chat?

Because that's almost what I see at first.

Ashley is I'm like taking my little voice notes from the group chat and just dropping them into a podcast.

So let us know if you're listening and you're like, okay, I could use help with my go to market strategy or part of my organic is working.

It's not going as far as I.

Want it to, but when people do see my organic, they do click through.

They do buy helping to be like, okay, now maybe it's time for ads.

What does that look like?

How do we actually know our numbers and know if an ad is working and know if organic is working and then how do we actually get those leads to convert?

But this is not just an ad for our Eat Collective name is up in the air.

But that's what I call it.

I want to get into a little bit of what I started this episode with because this is something we've talked about and I love that I have best friends that I can talk about this with.

And so I want to bring everyone listening into this conversation with us.

But this question that came up in our group chat a little while ago, when I wrote it down, if I had all the time in the world to play and explore outside of building my business, outside of my goals, what would I do?

Walk me through, Ashley, why this question was coming up for you and kind of what's going through your head when I'm reading that question?

Yeah, I have, like a visceral reaction to this because I'm still exploring what this really means.

The reason that this question really came up is because we're in the age of AI, where there's a ton of discourse around how to use AI to work smarter, not harder, where you're going to implement it.

Do you have departments that skills, blah, blah, blah, blah.

There's just so much going on at that.

And as I started to sit down and think about where I wanted to invest my time and my money as it related to AI, this question really came up.

If I had all of the support in my business that I needed to be successful, who am I outside of my business?

Who am I outside of?

Just somebody that runs business.

Baddie and batty creative.

And that really struck something with me because as I said earlier, my identity has really been rooted in success for so long.

It's like encoded in my DNA because I came from nothing.

And so it's funny because I felt like as we were Talking about the LinkedIn identity, I also realized now, even just as I'm saying, and I kind of known this, my identity has been so rooted in being a business owner too, and it's like it kind of shifted.

And I really do define success through productivity.

Strategy is like one of my core nervous system responses.

When I'm feeling out of control, I just go in and start doing things.

And that helps me to come back into control.

But if I didn't have to do that, that is what brought up the question of what would I do?

Okay.

And so luckily, right now I'm in a season in my business where I can kind of explore that.

And so one of the things that I did, which feels so stretchy for me, is I cut my hours in half this summer so that I could spend two days a week with my son doing fun things, whether it's going to the zoo or going to Urban air or wherever, just doing something with him.

And for me, that's huge because I am just perpetually a person that I will find something to do.

And it is so hard to step back and to be like, okay, well, what if my identity was actually just more mom, what if my identity was more Ashley and, like, except exploring my health and my wellness?

What if I did have more time to work out and do all of the things that I've put a little bit on the back burner so that I could become the version of success that I wanted?

And that's what I've been sitting with.

And it's been a really, really hard question for me to answer in full transparency.

I'm still, like, trying to figure out what that looks like, but I figured I would start with the identity that is one of the most important to me, which is being a mom.

So that's kind of where we're starting.

Oh, my gosh.

I love getting to explore these questions with you because we, in a lot of ways, like, I just relate to so much of what you're saying.

Our culture pushes productivity, and it's so easy to find our worth in being productive.

And the whole reason I talk about play on becoming obsessed with is because my identity is so tied to being a business owner.

And so the last two and a half years of building tech and feeling like I'm failing on all fronts, it really brought my identity into question, too, of, okay, I've helped all these other business owners be successful.

And those feelings of, well, if I'm actually not a successful business person, if I'm actually not good at business, which, you guys, I'm great at business, but if I'm not, who am I?

And the first or second episode I had back this year was calling into question, what if I stop claiming the identity of being a business owner and try on being a creative or an artist first?

How does that open me up?

And, Ashley, I love that you are sharing this question that you've wrestled with for a decade and how it showed up leaving corporate and how it shows up in your business now.

Because I know in my own life, I wrestle with the same questions over and over.

2.

And it can often feel like we haven't evolved, but it's always just that next iteration.

It's like climbing a mountain.

I couldn't have handled dealing with this question now if I hadn't practiced dealing with it before.

And I'm so much better and quicker at recognizing it or not being completely derailed when I'm like, okay, my identity is coming into question.

It's like we've had all this practice of dealing with it, so we get better and better each time.

And so I love hearing your story where it's not just in this moment, but it's the last decade and all the growth.

But then also me, because I'm like, yes, I also just tie so much to productivity.

And I also don't always know how to answer this question.

And even this year, after three years of having this podcast and literally spending a whole season last year talking about play, this year I realized I was not letting myself play.

We were just talking about puzzles.

I haven't done a puzzle all year because I had work that needed to get done that I was behind on.

And I just realized how asinine that is considering.

It's like, I know the science of play.

I know that play is the thing that then helps us do better in our work.

And yet here I am, guys, preaching to myself because I'm the one who needs to hear it.

It's so interesting, though, because I think it's like we know consciously that play, that rest, that the slow down to speed up is going to help us.

But like you said earlier, our culture pushes this go, go, go, this productivity, and we're seeing it on scrolling every single time.

Like seven acts to be more productive on Clawd.

It's hard not to want that dopamine hit from those little productivity moments.

But I think for me, I'm in a season where one, I struggle with play because I've always had to be the serious one.

And I'm the eldest daughter and you know, all of those little things that the holistic psy talks about when it comes to the oldest girl, I'm like, ah, this is all me.

But it is finding those dopamine hits in different ways and, like, exploring these tiny little nuances that, like, in maybe some phases of my life didn't feel big enough.

For example, breathwork.

Breathwork changed my life.

And I have not done it in over a year, I would say, because I just forgot how meaningful it was to me.

But it's like, okay, if I'm not having to be productive like, y', all, I get up at 4:30 every morning.

It's my me time.

And usually for a long time there I was getting right on the computer, helping my clients, doing things at random times.

And since thinking about this question that we're talking about today, it's like, oh, no, I'm avoiding screens in the morning.

And that used to sound so silly to me to be like, whatever, I'm just gonna scroll if I want.

But, like, the amount of energy I have, the REM sleep that I'm getting by not being on my computer or my phone first.

Thing in the morning has opened up so much more capacity for me during the day.

And again, like, I am more productive.

It's kind of that weird moment where you're like, I'm more productive when I work slower.

I'm more productive when I take my time, which is such a hard concept to grasp.

And it's especially hard if you're someone who has tied all of their success to do, do, do, do, do.

And it's so easy for us to know it on a logical level, but to actually work from that place and with play.

I have been reading the book on play and the science of play by Dr. Stuart Brown, I believe.

And I was just reading yesterday, and he's talking about the definition of play.

And it's hard because part of the definition of play is that it is unproductive.

And so it's this funny circle where we could talk in a circle all day about, if you're doing play for the point of being productive later, then you're not doing play right.

But we know that if you play and you're unproductive now, you'll be more productive later.

And it's like this circle of not doing it for the sake of being productive because that defeats the purpose.

But also I'm doing it for the sake of being productive because it actually makes me live a better life.

And just redefining what production really is and how that plays into our life totally.

And I feel like I'm entering into a season, and, y', all, I'm about to be 40 in March, so I still have six months left in my 30s, but I am entering a different season of my life where, like, I've been here for a while.

I don't want to hustle.

I've never really wanted to hustle outside of.

In the last, I would say, like, six years, I've kind of been on my business hustle.

But, like, I broke up with the hustle culture a long time ago.

And stepping into my 40s, I really do want that, like, soft girl era, that more feminine era.

I talk about this with my therapist all the time, where I'm not, like, death gripping my goals, where I'm not death gripping every single thing that I could be doing.

I really want to release it and to just step into it with confidence and trust that it's all gonna work out, but also to take care of myself.

I'm just in a different phase where I don't have little baby anymore.

I can actually focus more on me.

And it's trusting that I can step back from that and lean into this era.

And I'm so glad that I have people like you, because I would say that, like Tracy, you've truly changed my life this last year, just in the way that you look at the world.

I truly do feel like it has helped me explore questions like this deeper than any coach I've ever paid thousands to.

You just are so intentional and mindful.

And I think why I want to say this to your audience is because I feel like when you surround yourself with people who operate in a way that you admire, that helps you form a new identity that you likely couldn't have figured out just alone.

When we surround ourselves with people who do things differently, who want different things maybe than us, but, like, approach it in a way that maybe we appreciate, that creates the form for maybe you understanding what that new identity looks like.

That's how I've always approached my identity anyway, is who do I admire?

Who do I want to put myself in proxy to?

Because I like the way that they move through the world.

That, for me, has always been the way that I do things.

And so this would be no different.

And so it's just fun to know that, like, you know, you and Em being two people that I literally talk to multiple times a day, we have literally transmuted muted energies to each other.

And we're all thinking about this.

I don't think it's because we're burnt out or anything like that.

It's because it's a conversation that we have on a daily basis, and we're inspired by other people who are doing similar or the same thing.

And we're able to give each other space to feel the hardship of entrepreneurship and just of life and the heaviness.

But then we're also always challenging the inner stories we have and the narratives.

Can I talk about when we went to lunch, BBD Live, and you had your breakthrough?

So one amazing example of this is when we were at Business by Design, Shout Out James Wedmore, Business by Design live in Phoenix.

This whole conference and his whole business, he's all about breakthroughs.

He's like, somebody's gonna have a breakthrough.

Everyone's gonna have a breakthrough.

You get a breakthrough.

You get a breakthrough.

And we went to lunch.

I think it was on the third day, and we're sitting outside, and Ashley's like, I haven't had a breakthroug.

I don't remember exactly how it went.

But you're talking about what it is that you want, and you're talking about wanting a break from work and wanting your business to feel like it was supporting you more.

Emily or I.

Somebody was literally like, girl, you've just been telling us how you spent the last year building systems in your business, and now they're starting to work for you.

You've already been focusing on and building what you needed to support yourself.

You just haven't switched from, I'm building it to, oh, now I've built it, and it can support me.

And it was like this moment where it's so hard to see the forest from the trees.

It's so hard to see even when you have made the conscious decision and put the work in for a year to make sure that your offer and your systems and your lead gen is all working for you, so you get to do less active work on them.

And then it's like, hard to be like, okay, great, now I get to stop, because I've already done it.

And I get to now level up so often.

We never decide that there's a stopping point.

And so without somebody else being able to be like, girl, you've already done it.

It's time to hit stop and switch a little bit to actually, like, letting your business support you instead of just continuing to build more for the sake of building.

I'm so glad that you brought that up because that was such a huge breakthrough.

And the way that you described it in terms of shifting into the mindset of, like, oh, yeah, I built that.

That versus I need to build.

That was so crucial for me in that moment, because since then, that was in December.

We're recording this in June, and I'm in a place now where I do allow my systems to support me.

The reason that I've been able to cut my hours in half this summer is solely because I built those systems over the course of a year.

And I'm still building those systems even better.

I'm refining them, and I would not be able to receive the support or make the money that I'm making right now in my business so that I could hire a housekeeper one time a month, that I could hire a lawn service while my husband's out of town, that I could have the support that I want and that I desperately need from my therapist, which I have to pay for cash because my insurance doesn't cover that.

So it's like those systems created a way to support me that actually is, funny enough, outside of my business, because my business functions and makes the money that it does.

I then can take my profits and reinvest it in myself and other things outside of my business to support me and that I'm fully present in my regular life as opposed to just being always in the business.

That's fundamentally what I've always wanted.

And like, here we are.

Seven years took me there.

You're welcome.

You know what though?

That's what people say.

It really does take take seven years before it feels like your business is working for you and is grown up enough to support you.

I love what you're saying about this shift of how you relate to like almost your relationship with your business.

And speaking of James Wedmore on his podcast, I was just listening to an episode where he hit me right in the stomach with the concept of entrepreneurship and business ownership being different.

And entrepreneurship is you are in the mix, you are getting it done.

You are like, I can do it better than everyone.

And you're building something new and different that the world hasn't seen before, a new way of doing things.

But that's not the same as business ownership.

Being a business owner means you are separate from the business and it can run on its own and it is self sustaining and you can step away from it because you're not having to do everything.

And it's what you're describing.

Ashley, of what is your relationship to your business?

Are you believing that you and your business are the same thing?

That your identity is completely tied to your business and your business dictates who you are?

If you're good at business, then that dictates your identity.

If you're bad at business, then your identity and your worth take a hit.

Or are we creating that separation where we can actually step away from our business and let it support our lives?

And this is actually, Ashley, what you were saying that really stuck with me.

That is like a new unlock of a way.

I haven't thought about this before.

I always talk about what it takes to build a business that works for you instead of a business that you work for.

And I think level one is you're just doing everything you can to figure out how to get your business to work.

And level two is building systems where now you enjoy working in your business, but it's like you're on this next level.

Ashley of now.

It's like, yes, the business can work and it supports my life.

Not just my work, but my life and everything outside of it.

And creating more separation and being able to take more time away from it.

And let, like you said, let it support you.

Yeah, I love that.

I listened to that podcast from James as Well, where he broke down the nuances and I was like, oh yeah, I'm not an entrepreneur.

I don't want to do something like brand new.

I just want to do more of what this ad thing is for more people.

I love that distinction because it does help you immediately separate your identity as separate.

I also would argue too that and you probably feel this way, but like when your identity is so solely tied into you being the business, you probably don't pay yourself.

You do a lot of those weird little things that we do to like, like keep that alive.

But I do think the most beautiful thing that has come from separating my identity from my business is really getting the opportunity.

And I mean that, like I want to underscore that has been the opportunity to explore myself on a deeper level and to figure out who I am in spite of my business.

I love the business.

That's great, that's wonderful.

I'm so glad I've done it.

But also I'm so much more than the business and I'm so much more than a mom, I'm so much more than a wife.

And I feel like our friendship has helped me see that because we just have our own little vibe where it's like separate from my kid, it's separate from my husband, it's kind of with our businesses, but we almost separate ourselves outside of the business too.

And we just come together as girls, you know what I mean?

Yes, furta girls, we just come together as girls.

And that has brought so much joy into my life.

And I truly do think that, that I would not have been able to take this journey into my identity without that joy.

Cuz that joy has what truly has unlocked the desire to explore myself at a deeper level without completely deflating on the floor with all my trauma, you know?

Cause I mean like identity work can be real serious too sometimes.

So it's a tricky little slippery slope.

But all that to say, I think surrounding yourself with people who you admire, who admire you, who lift you up and you can lift up too, that is like in my mind the, I don't want to say the fastest way, but it's the most effective way to identity work in my opinion.

I would stand on that every day.

Well, and I like to think of it as whose fruit of their labor do I want when I see people, do I want the life that they have and the path that they're going down?

And all three of us really care about female founders and helping more women make more money.

And we've all found the sliver in which we can really make a difference in people's businesses and create that.

Like, I mean, I love what we do because we're like, there's ROI right here, baby.

Like, I don't have to convince you.

It's in the numbers.

And so it's an easy sell.

But we can make that immediate impact.

But then all three of us are doing it.

From this place of supporting women, being for the girls, and wanting better for our own lives, families and community, we bond so well because we do similar things.

And we're all B2B.

We all understand what it takes to speak business.

I talk to a lot of people and I'm like, you might be a business owner, but you're B2C.

Like, you don't know how to talk business.

And the three of us immediately were like, we talk business.

We're here to make a good life.

We're for the girls.

And like, more women need more money, baby, let's do it.

Let's go figure this out.

Without being willing to sell our soul for it.

Okay, well, we could yap forever.

I'm gonna start wrapping us up with a final series of questions.

I wanna know, when it comes to play and being creative and resting, you mentioned getting to hang out with your son and prioritizing that more this summer.

What else are you currently obsessed with?

With?

Oh, gosh, I am obsessed with the pool right now.

I just love a good pool day.

With or without my kid?

Truly.

With or without getting rained out like we did last Friday?

Yes.

Like, I just to sit and just do nothing and like, look at the pool and like get in the water and just that feeling of just being at ease is like what I'm obsessed with.

And like, I'm looking at that.

How do I implement that feeling more in every single aspect of my life?

Even in my workouts.

Like, I quit crossfitting because I didn't find ease in that.

My body is craving the ease.

And so that's what I'm obsessed with, is finding all of the ways that I can bring more of that ease into my day to day, into every activity that I am doing.

Okay, next question.

What are you listening to?

Watching, Reading.

I'm a sucker for any kind of love show.

I watched Age of Attraction.

Like any Netflix love is blind energy.

I will be on the love island energy this summer for sure.

I love a love story.

I also, like, love the crash outs.

Let's be real.

Yeah.

So I love that I'm reading a lot of, like, fiction.

Kristin Hannah is one of my favorite authors ever.

She's got a more serious take.

But girl, the historical fiction.

I'm like obsessed about understanding the nuances of politics from a historical perspective.

And historical fiction is how I've gotten there because I'm like, oh, I understand so much more deep about all of the things that are happening in our world.

And it literally took me seeing it from a woman's perspective.

Which is why I like Kristin Hannah so much is she writes from the female perspective in very trying times.

Those are like two things I'm obsessed with in terms of reading, listening, listen.

I try to read regular old non fiction books but I can't do it.

I'm just.

I literally just tune out.

I'd rather listen to a podcast or something else which by the.

I do like to listen to a lot of podcasts and I don't know that I have one that I'm super obsessed with.

I kind of dabble depending on my mood, so.

Oh.

One thing I am obsessed with though is I will read a book on my Kindle and simultaneously listen to it on audiobook depending on my mood.

I don't know what that is.

Maybe it's because I'm a generator or whatever in the human design, but like I need stimulation in multiple ways.

So that's kind of what I'm obsessed with is like learning in different modalities.

Well, and then it's nice because you're like, okay, I just want to sit and read.

But then you're like, well now I need to go clean or go on a walk and you're just like, flip it right into your ears and you can do it.

Yeah, love.

Okay, Ashley, how can somebody connect with you, get into your world and work with you?

So you can find me on my [email protected] that's B, A D D I, E. I know everybody should know it, but just in case you didn't, baddycreative.com or find me on Instagram at the business fatty.

That is where I spend the majority of my time.

I'm also a little obsessed with Threads right now, so head on over to Threads because I just love the like little quips, quick witted thought process, that kind of thing.

I'm obsessed with that.

So find me on any of those places.

And if you're really curious about ads, I would love to support you.

I'll tell you yes or no if you're ready or if you're not.

I promise I won't waste your time.

I don't want my time wasted.

And I certainly don't want you coming after me if ads don't work.

So I promise you, I will tell you if you are ready.

And that's what I spend a lot of calls doing, is we'll look at your numbers, figure it out, and make a good decision for you.

Because I'm here to help people get their visions to the masses, and ads are a great way to do that.

Amazing.

Well, I know everyone listening is as obsessed with you as I am.

So go follow Ashley on Instagram on threads, go connect with her, and then come find me on Instagram at Becoming Obsessed Pod.

Send me a dm.

And especially if what we were talking.

About taking time to learn who you are outside of your business, outside of.

Your work, outside of all of the labels and identity that has kind of been put on you.

If you want to explore that, send me a dm.

Because I'm working on some fun stuff to help you do that, to help you explore who you are outside of business.

All right, y', all, let's go get Obsessed.

You're still listening, which means this episode connected with you, and I want to know how.

Send me a DM on Instagram at.

@Becomingobessed pod.

Then send this episode to a friend.

If you know someone who is building a life that they love or they're feeling a little stuck and might just need a nudge, send this to them.

Then rate and review, because it also helps us get the word out.

And as you know, we're on a mission for more people to live a life they truly love.

All right, let's go get Obsessed.