I got rid of every designer label in my closet.
Thousands of dollars of designer suits, heels, and handbags. As soon as I left corporate, I got rid of it all. Then I let go of every one else’s expectations and built success on my own terms.
I’m the founder of The CEO Collective® and host of the Promote Yourself to CEO® podcast.
Every playbook assumed I had a wife at home.
I earned an MBA in Entrepreneurship, won the National Small Business Institute Competition, and spent my twenties in suits doing strategic planning for executive teams and consulting for small business owners. I had checked off all the boxes of what success should look like.
But it didn’t feel like success. I burned out completely. Ten panic attacks in ten weeks, years of 75-hour weeks and drive-through dinners, and a body that had stopped negotiating with me. I took a medical leave of absense, cleared out the suits and the designer shoes, and started my own business in 2008. Six months later I was pregnant with twins.
What I noticed in every business room I sat in after that was that the strategy on stage only worked if you had a full-time wife at home. The speakers could compartmentalize and hustle as hard as they wanted because someone else was running their life. Most women don’t have that option, and pretending we do made the advice unusable.
The Cook family, 2017
Our family in Italy, 2026
So I built the alternative. It took a decade of running my own business to see what was missing. Despite knowing WHAT to do, many women entrepreneurs were still stuck.
Nobody had taught them how to run a small business, so they stayed in hustle mode, personally pushing every button: sharing the blog post, creating the content, chasing the next client. When they couldn’t show up, nothing moved.
That realization became the first CEO Retreat, and the CEO Retreats became the 90 Day CEO Operating System®, a way of running a service-based business that keeps moving even when you can’t physically, emotionally, or mentally push it forward.
My husband Jameson left teaching to be our family’s primary caregiver, and I’ve run my business on 25 hours a week for more than a decade.
The real test came in 2025. I moved my mother into memory care and my dad into senior living, sold their home, and cared for my mom until she passed. I put my business on cruise control, working just 5 hours a week, while my team continued to run the day to day. That’s exactly what a life-proof business is designed to do.
These days I’m in Richmond, VA with Jameson, our three kids, and Lindy Lou, the chihuahua I inherited from my mom.
Where I stand on the important things.
Less mission statement, more how I’m wired.
I believe life is short, and you don’t get the years back.
When I was four, my mom was in an accident that left her in a coma for three months and in the hospital for two years. I learned early how fast life can change. So when I had kids, the rule was simple: if the business wouldn’t let me be the mom I wanted to be, the answer was no.
I believe hustle culture is toxic.
My 25-hour week was never a productivity hack. I built it around my own capacity, which is why I’m usually done by 2:30, nap most days, and have still run this business for almost 20 years.
I believe business grows at the speed of relationships.
My dad was an insurance agent. After every major storm or hurricane, he loaded his pickup with a chainsaw and water bottles and went to check on people before he ever mentioned a policy. Take care of your people, and your people will take care of you.
I believe in soulmate friends.
In my 40s I made it a priority to build friendships where we do life together. We’ve shown up for each other through loss and really hard seasons, we laugh a ton, and we protect our time together, whether that’s a girls’ trip to the River House or a long weekend in NOLA.
I believe in celebrating your own birthday.
Since I turned 40, I’ve thrown my own party with the women I love: tea at the Jefferson one year, a Favorite Things party with about 30 women another. Nobody should sit around waiting to be celebrated.
What it looks like to live my own definition of success.
Family
Married to Jameson. Mom of Li, Alex, and Mitchell. Loving watching these teens become the coolest people.
Flowers
Every week, I go by Trader Joes and spend a couple of hours making fresh arrangements for myself and friends.
Books
I average about 1-2 books a week and my TBR is full of historical fiction, feminism, and witchy novels.
Music
I started college as a music performance major – and I just picked up my french horn again for the first time in years.
Foccacia
After spending June in Italy, my entire family discovered how much we love fresh bread for panini and pizza!
Mahjong
I started playing with a group of 3 friends this year. Last game I won three times and walked away $2.50 richer.
Handmade
Crochet stuffed animals, baby blankets, hats, and sweaters. Cozy season is making season, mostly for the people I love.
RVA
We moved to Richmond, VA in 2007 and have fallen more in love with this city each year.
The Matriarchy Would Never.
The patriarchal business model is extractive, and most of us were handed it as the only map. In a business built the other way, everyone involved benefits: the CEO, her clients, her community, and her team.
Get the full series as a playlist, in order, straight to your inbox.
- …assume you are the safety netThe idea that got the most response of the whole series, and why carrying everyone is often what's stretching you so thin.
- …leave you out of your own business planResourcing yourself first, which is one of the first things we do inside The CEO Collective®.
- …let you overfunction your way to successMe as my own case study: what I decided success meant before I set a single goal, and where I stopped overfunctioning at work and at home.
- …treat your clients like trafficWhy the best client experience looks more like a dinner table than a pipeline.
- …build a business where only one person winsThe closing conversation with Cris Caruso, client turned friend, on building it the other way.
