Goal and Grind

Congratulations Dr. Paris Thomas, the board, staff, and entire team at for an excellent gala this week. I’m proud to support the work you do helping women navigate their cancer journey, researching, and advocating for health equity.

A lot can happen in a year...

May 2025 is when I left corporate and became a full time entrepreneur and since then I have...

✅ Become a published author
✅ Been selected to speak at two global conferences
✅ Reached Amazon Best Seller list
✅ Led global team offsites and leadership trainings
✅ Been interviewed on 3 TV shows, 4 podcasts, and several print media outlets

But before all of that...

I'd run my business alongside my corporate career for five years.
I'd learned what worked and what didn't.
I'd learned what I liked and what I didn't like.
I'd found my zone of genius.

This is the part no one talks about.

It didn't happen over night.

A lot happen in a year b/c of the preparation that took place before that year.

I celebrated the smaller wins for years and years and years so that I can celebrate larger wins now.

And I can only imagine what wins I'll be celebrating next...well, actually I'm pretty strategic so I have an idea what they'll be but you'll have to wait and see.

Happy Anniversary of being a full time entrepreneur to me! 12 months without a W2 paycheck and I'm still standing 🥳

Thank you to everyone in my JOY SQUAD for getting us to this moment. We did it!

She had 47 browser tabs open.

An Excel spreadsheet with the full strategic plan pulled up on her second monitor. A Slack thread with 112 unread messages. A calendar booked solid until 6:30 p.m.

And her team was still waiting on a decision she had been “thinking about” for two weeks.

I know that kind of pressure.

From the outside, she looks like she is handling it.

She is competent. Prepared. Respected. She has ALL the tools and the RIGHT experience.

But internally, every decision has started to feel way heavier than it should.

Now, I have sat with this leader in boardrooms, during planning sessions, and in those honest, hallway conversations that happen after the formal meeting ends.

The issue is usually not a lack of skill. It is a loss of clarity. Clarity fades when leadership becomes all pressure and no joy.

When I talk about joy, I do not mean a mood. I mean that internal signal that helps you recognize what is aligned.

The part of you that says, “Yes, this is hard, but it’s worth it.”

When your joy signal gets quiet, everything starts to feel exhausting. Every choice feels risky. Every document needs one more round of review.

We push forward, but in the absence of joy, you’re actually navigating misery.

At some point, we realize willpower is no match for that kind of daily depletion. Burnout becomes almost guaranteed.

That is why joy belongs in leadership conversations. It is not the opposite of discipline, it's not frilly, inconsequential fluff. Joy is our source of discernment, the internal voice that keeps us sharp and gives us our edge.

If any of this sounds familiar, I want you to know you can find your way back to joy at work.

My book, “The Stay Joyful Method,” offers a detailed, easy-to-follow framework for reclaiming joy at work and sparing your mind and body from burnout.

Remember, drudgery at work is not a skill issue. It’s actually a joy deficit.

Grateful.

I am beyond grateful for the opportunity to step onto the stage at ATD's 2026 international conference.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you to...
- the 250+ audience members who choose my session over the 30 other sessions held at 10am on Tuesday,
- the volunteer committee for reviewing thousands of speaker applications then selecting mine,
- the conference organizers for believing in me enough to put me in a larger room my first time presenting at their conference, and especially to
- my mentors who helped me prepare for this moment.

𝗚𝗼𝗮𝗹 𝗰𝗿𝘂𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝘀𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁. Together we're sharing joy based leadership around the world!

Thanks to for recommending to me💛💗📚

Thank you for having me on today!

Loved chatting with you about strategies for leveraging joy in the four key areas of life (personal, professional, health, and financial)…we covered a lot in 20 mins😳 and I can’t wait for our episode to air💛💜