She's That Founder: Business Strategy, Time Management and AI Magic for Impactful Female Leaders

069 | Realigning Your Business When Life Gets Loud: Strategy + Time Management for Women CEOs

• Dawn Andrews • Season 2 • Episode 69

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Let me be real: I didn’t expect to hit record this year while juggling caregiving, teen stress, a fifth round of COVID, and still trying to run a business. But here we are.

This episode is for every high-capacity woman trying to keep it all together. I’m not here to glorify burnout or pretend everything’s fine, I’m here to share the Realign framework I created when my life cracked wide open and my business model didn’t fit anymore. If you’re in a messy season, this isn’t the part where you fall behind. It’s the part where you realign, rebuild, and remember you’re allowed to do business differently.

Let’s walk through it, together.

In this episode, you’ll learn…

  • A powerful 7-step framework for realigning your business to your real life
  • How to recognize when your business model no longer fits your current season
  • Why chaos might actually be giving you valuable feedback (not just stress)
  • How to audit emotional and energetic drains that are quietly costing you
  • The mindset shift from grit-and-go to leadership that holds you up — not just what you hold up

This episode at a glance:

[3:15] -This isn’t the part where you fall behind. This is the part where you get clear.

[4:53] - I was trying to run a business built for a different season of my life.

[9:27] - Rage equals unsustainable energy leaks.

[15:20] - The business you’re building now has to serve the woman you are today.

[16:01] - Realigning isn’t a one-time fix. It’s a practice.

[16:11] - You don’t need to be less human to be successful. You need a business that’s designed for your full humanity.


Resources and links mentioned in this episode:

Want to increase revenue and impact? Listen to “She's That Founder” for insights on business strategy and female leadership to scale your business. Each episode offers advice on effective communication, team building, and management. Learn to master routines and systems to boost productivity and prevent burnout. Our delegation tips and business consulting will advance your executive leadership skills and presence.

Dawn Andrews:

Dawn, hey, hey, hey, welcome to she's that founder the podcast for high achieving women who are building their empires and reclaiming their time using their humanity and AI, I'm your host. Dawn Andrews, business strategist, founder, advisor and champion for female CEOs who are ready to step out of daily operations and into their power. So here's what I didn't expect to say into a microphone.

Dawn Andrews:

This year, I'm running a business supporting both of my kids through anxiety and school stress, guiding one of them through the emotional and financial roller coaster of college decisions and getting started with his plans for post high school. I'm caregiving for my mom, who's just moved into senior housing after a health crisis, and just to top it all off, recovering from covid for the fifth time. And yet, as a founder and business owner, I am supposed to lead and grow and scale and serve.

Dawn Andrews:

So what does one do when life gets so big, so chaotic that it feels like your business no longer fits inside it? Here's why. This isn't just personal like this isn't just about me. If you are a founder, a leader, a high responsibility human. You probably know this moment, the moment where the stuff of life isn't neatly off to the side, it's on your desk, it's in your body, it's in your calendar. And what I'm realizing is I've spent years building a business that depended on a version of me who could hold it all together, that had the capacity for more, that could work a little harder, work a little smarter, work a little faster, and that version of me, Well, God, love her. She's freaking amazing, and now she's tired, and she's evolving.

Dawn Andrews:

So here's the business truth that I've uncovered. The chaos is showing me where systems break down, where the delegation didn't happen, where my model requires more me time than I actually am giving myself, and that I was able to reframe as a gift. It's my life, giving me feedback about the way I'm actually living and what is actually working, and that helped the overwhelm feel not so overwhelming.

Dawn Andrews:

So the real work now isn't just about growing my revenue. It's about growing my capacity, not my capacity, individually, as a human, to do more, but the capacity of me, married, in my business situation, to do more. And that means creating offers that work when I can't work 60 hour weeks. Who wants to do that seriously? It means automating, simplifying and clarifying. AI has been the number one tool for me during this time. Sometimes I don't even know how I would be standing up without using AI across all areas of my business. Additionally, it means being brave enough to shift things before I burn out completely. And if you've been a long time listener of the podcast, you know that I've been through at least three cycles of that, and I refuse to do that to myself again. Most importantly, it means being honest with myself about what kind of business I actually want to be inside.

Dawn Andrews:

So if you're listening to this and you're in the thick of it, here's what I want to offer you. This isn't the part where you fall behind. This is the part where you get clear. Let your life show you what's sustainable, let the stress show you what needs to shift, and let your business become something that can hold you, not just something you hold up.

Dawn Andrews:

Today, I'm going to walk you through a moment of breakdown that became a turning point, because buried inside this mess, I found a roadmap, and I want to share that with you, not as a big boohoo therapy Mic drop. Not that there's anything wrong with that, by the way, but I'm just past that particular boo hoo moment. Give me another 24 hours. I may get there again, but this is a practical tool that just might change how you lead yourself and your business during hard seasons during hard times. It's called the realign framework, and it's how I'm rebuilding from the inside out. Here's a little backstory. The last few months have cracked me wide open.

Dawn Andrews:

And truth be told, the past week, most mornings, I have cried it out. I have been doing the emotional labor of three roles, founder, mother and daughter, and often failing at the part where I remember that I'm also a person and a friend and a wife and a business owner. My business hasn't fallen apart, but what it's done is it's gotten louder, almost like a child demanding my attention, and it was asking for it in ways that I wasn't able to give. And here's the turning point. I realized that I'm not off track. It's that I'm on a new track, but I'm still using the old map. I was trying to run a business built for a different season of my life.

Dawn Andrews:

So I created a tool. So for me, and for every high capacity woman who's ever whispered, if one more thing goes wrong, I don't know how I'm going to keep going. I want to light a match and burn it down. Because it's not about starting over. It's definitely not about burning it all down. It's about realigning your business to fit your real life. Here's the framework that I'm using in real time. It's called realign. And it's not cute advice. It is a step by step pattern interrupt that has actually been working for me.

Dawn Andrews:

Hang with me as I break down these seven steps, because each one really matters, and you don't necessarily have to do them in order, like whatever rings your bell. You know, as you're listening to this, if there's somewhere that you want to start with what I'm sharing, start there and then revisit the other areas. Please let go of perfection. Please just get in here and check out these steps and see what makes a difference and helps you move forward. So realign R recognize the season that you're in.

Dawn Andrews:

I had to admit, and I'm still honestly coming to full acceptance, that I am in a place of caregiving. This is the season of my life, and it is a deeply demanding season. So I had to admit that caregiving, financial pressure, teen mental health and chronic overwhelm are not a footnote. It's not something that's going to resolve in a week, a month, maybe even a year. This is a season, and my business had to reflect that, not ignore it.

Dawn Andrews:

So here are a couple of questions to ask yourself when you're recognizing the season that you're in. What's true about your life right now that can't be ignored in my life, it's caregiving, grief, watching after my health, watching after burnout and parenting overwhelm, what's non negotiable in your energy and time mine is I need to have at least one day a week where I fuck right off, I do absolutely nothing for no one, and just let my natural rhythms of my body guide me through what that day looks like.

Dawn Andrews:

And this is another good question for you with the RS, what are you pretending isn't affecting you? What are you trying to push through? If you can acknowledge it, name it, and stop designing your business like that's not real, it will give you so much relief so quickly. The E in real line is evaluate what's actually working one to one, work with the right clients. So energizing for me. Love it, trying to do five things at once. I mean, it's fascinating to me. I was able to actually reintegrate the podcast into my life in this season because of this framework. Otherwise it would have gone by the wayside entirely, because I would have felt too overwhelmed. So it just gives you an idea of the power of what I'm describing to you.

Dawn Andrews:

Realigning when I work with the right clients, energizing trying to do five things at once. Absolutely not. There was gold in the parts of the business that still created a sense of flow for me, and I just had to stop overlooking them. Here are some questions to ask for the E in redesign, evaluate what's actually working.

Dawn Andrews:

Ask yourself, Where is the ease already what's coming with flow and almost feels like magic. What feels aligned life giving and profitable? Which offers your clients energize you, which systems are running without you constantly propping them up? Where are you already supported and maybe haven't noticed it yet. Start there and double down on what's working fish, where the fish are, as they say, the A in realign, audit the hidden drains.

Dawn Andrews:

How did I audit? What I did was I looked at my calendar and I realized that some of my stress wasn't about life. It was about things I was still saying yes to out of habit, guilt, fear of disappointing people living like an earlier version of myself, someone who maybe didn't have the same sense of self worth or confidence or capacity or empowerment, and realizing that those drains were brought on because I was still in the ghost of Christmas past, if you will. I was still being somebody that didn't realize she could say no, once I looked at the drains, the nose started popping out of my mouth with ease. And the connection that I made for myself is this where my rage lives. I was telling my husband, I was like, I'm very ragey these days. And he said, Yeah, it's usually because there's something draining you that you feel like you have no power over. And I was like, damn, there it is. Rage equals unsustainable energy leaks.

Dawn Andrews:

So let's find them and plug them up. Here are some questions to ask for the a step auditing the hidden drains. Ask yourself, Where Am I bleeding time, energy and money without realizing it. Are there tasks that you think only you should do, but really you shouldn't? Are your offers under priced? You need to be charging more and standing firmly in those new prices? Are there clients or team members that feel emotionally expensive? Maybe they're priced right in terms of the value that they're delivering, but they're draining you emotionally.

Dawn Andrews:

And are there. Tools, subscriptions or services that you're really just not using very much. Eliminate those because they're silently or obviously draining you the L in realign, lighten the load. This one hurt a little bit. You guys, I'm gonna be real. I had to pause projects or drop entirely things that I loved. I had to say no to things that I really wanted to do with my kids. I had to say no to helping my mom in certain ways that I really wanted to but just could not do. I had to delay business ideas that I was excited to share and launch, and I had to let go of some revenue streams in order to make space for my actual well being. But the payoff, and it's just starting to come to fruition is my sanity.

Dawn Andrews:

Here are some questions you can ask yourself in the L of realign in lightning your load, what can you pause, drop, delegate or automate, even temporarily, projects that don't serve your current season, content that can be repurposed instead of created fresh. Oh my gosh. When I realized the amount of content that I have created over the years, and I'm still creating as if today is all brand new, I am repeating the same conversations and creating new content each time, that was a huge relief. And then ask yourself, if there are systems that could be simplified or outsourced. You know that there are, and this is where your courage starts to meet your capacity. You have to be brave enough take the time and ask yourself these questions and then put the answers that you find into action.

Dawn Andrews:

The I in realign identify what you actually want. Now, if I were building from scratch, would I rebuild this exact same business? I would not, not all of it. I needed to start to redefine what success actually looks like in this chapter, and I'm still honestly sorting that out. I don't have all the answers, but I'm happy to share it with you guys when I do. Here are some questions for the ISTEP identify what you actually want. Now ask yourself, if I built my business from scratch today, what would I say yes to, and what would I never agree to again? What kind of clients? Schedule, income, model. This is about honest desire, not legacy decisions.

Dawn Andrews:

What do you actually feel excited about? G generate a new game plan. I took everything that I was learning from those first letters and started to make more aligned moves. So what I'm in the process of doing right now is realigning all of my offers to work with my current capacity. I am restructuring my team and my SOPs to stop being the bottleneck, because even though we had certain systems down, they worked for the business that was before, not the season and the business that I'm in now, and I planned one brave, simple outreach strategy to reconnect with revenue, and it honestly has been going back to the basics.

Dawn Andrews:

You guys, I'm just I am reaching out to individual clients, past and present, and having conversations, keeping it really simple. Here's some questions for the G step. Generate a new game plan. Ask yourself, based on what's real, what are my next three aligned moves? For me, it's refining my offers. It's setting a few boundaries with people in my life. I also recently sent one scary, brave email and then reorganizing your calendar to match your energy. And we actually have a training about how to do that with AI. So keep it simple. Clarity needs structure, not pressure, and it needs alignment. And n of realign, normalize the pivot. Pivoting, which is what's happening for me right now, is not failure.

Dawn Andrews:

This is all feedback, and I'm learning to talk about the changes, not as shameful detours, but as part of building a business that can actually hold me up, not the other way around. Here are some end questions to ask yourself for normalizing the pivot. So what would you change if you believe that pivoting didn't mean failing, just recalibrating, just that reframe alone totally changed my world. Create a pivot mantra, if you want to, it's not broken. It's evolving. It's evolving. It's evolving. It's evolving. Communicate the shift honestly with your clients and your team, and that can be over an extended period of time. One of the mistakes that I make regularly, unfortunately, is that when I come to a realization, I want to blurt it out and share it with everybody immediately, and not give it time to kind of marinate and see how it actually plays through in my business.

Dawn Andrews:

So please learn from me, when you come to clarity, give yourself some time for that pivot to occur. You don't have to, like, whip a fast U turn. You can take a nice, slow curve, a long arc, if you will communicate your shift honestly with your clients in your team, and then model what sustainable leadership looks like, which means Friday's off for me, among other things, that's my realign framework, and I'm sharing it to you, like hot off the griddle. I'm actually living it and doing it as I record it for you, so you're getting a little bit of the messy middle. I hope that it's helpful. I hope it makes you. Feel not so alone or overwhelmed, and that you have a pathway out.

Dawn Andrews:

So if you're feeling like everything's on fire, or like you want to set it on fire, or like your business is just demanding more than you have to give to get the results that you want to get, then this framework is for you. It is not about making things pretty. It is about making things real, because the business you're building now has to serve the woman that you are today, not the one you were five years ago, not the one who never needed help or had endless capacity and free time, not the one who thought that asking for space or softness made her weak. You can be a leader and recalibrate. You can be powerful and tired. You can rebuild in public and be respected for it. I am and you can too.

Dawn Andrews:

So this is how you build a business that can grow with you, not in spite of you. When things fall apart, it's not the end of your business. It is the beginning of your next, truer version of your business, and yourself in it. Realigning is not a one time fix. It's a practice, and it starts by letting your life matter as much as your work. Oh, that one was just like a game changer moment for me, you don't need to be less human to be successful. You need a business that's designed for your full humanity. I'm working on just that, and I'll be sharing more in the coming episodes.

Dawn Andrews:

If you want a copy of this realign framework, check the show notes. I've got a free downloadable for you, and if this episode spoke to you, share it with another woman in leadership who might need the reminder your chaos is not the end of your story. It might just be the redesign that you're looking for. I'm going to send it to my entire mailing list, because we need to stop pretending that grit means isolation. Now more than ever, we need each other. You are allowed to rebuild, and I am rebuilding right beside you.

Dawn Andrews:

Thanks for listening to she's that founder. Subscribe, share and leave a review. If this episode sparked new ideas or helped you feel more empowered, you've got this, and I've got your back, if it's aI delegation and all the things that it takes to be a female founder that is successful in this world, I am here for it, and I'm here for you. See you next time you.