For most of my life, I was trying to do everything right. People-pleasing? Check. High-achiever? Absolutely. Fulfilled? Not even close.

After college, I didn’t have a clear plan, so I made one. I started a business from scratch. It grew fast from a scrappy two-person operation into a 50-person company scaling nationwide. After years of struggling we landed a partial buyout. I was married to my business partner and best friend. We owned a home with an ocean view in Southern California full of designer furniture and a bank account that said I’d “made it.”

But inside? I was anxious, exhausted, frustrated and for the first time in my life? Depressed. Money felt like a trap. My marriage was increasingly strained. And the buyout deal that was supposed to be a big win felt like a slow leak of everything I’d built.

The harder I worked to hold it all together, the more it drained me. It felt like I was living someone else’s version of success. I’d done all the right things, but for who? Certainly not for me.

Eventually, the stress caught up to me. I landed in the ER thinking I was having a stroke. I was burned out in every single area of my life, and it was the wake-up call I needed. The ER doctor looked at me hooked up to a bunch of monitors as I held my work laptop and told me I needed to fix my life, or I would pay with it.

I got radically honest with myself and asked the questions most people avoid:

• Would I choose this life again?

• What am I tired of pretending I like?

• What’s calling to me now—and what’s keeping me stuck?

The answers changed everything.

I had no clear roadmap, but I had a wild idea that there was more. What if the life of my dreams was possible, and what if I could get there?

I started over. I ended what no longer fit. I reconnected with the love of my life. And eventually, I moved abroad to a tiny village on a Greek island where we now live a life that once felt impossible. People call it “living the dream,” and in many ways, it is. But here’s the real dream: I get to help other people do this too.

That’s why I created The Joy Academy – to help you build a life that fits who you are now, not who you were when you first started checking all those boxes. To give you courage and direction as you write your next chapter whatever that looks like.

If any part of this resonates, I’d love to hear from you and I read every message!

With love,
Rose