Balance & Beyond

I'm Burning Down My Business (Here's Why)

• Jo Stone • Season 3 • Episode 96

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Have you ever achieved something substantial, only to hear that nagging whisper inside saying "this isn't enough"? That moment when you realise the success you've built—even when it's working beautifully—no longer fits who you've become?

I recently had this profound realisation about my own multi-million dollar business. Despite changing thousands of lives, winning awards, and creating beautiful retreats, I discovered I've been filtering myself, hiding parts of my authentic voice, and playing within boundaries that felt "acceptable" rather than aligned. This isn't burnout—it's evolution.

The turning point came when I noticed my most authentic moments—like a LinkedIn post that reached 1.6 million views—happened when I stopped censoring myself. When I showed up raw and honest instead of careful and curated. I've made the declaration that I would rather lose people than lose myself, and this means burning down old personas that no longer serve me.

What's emerging is a vision for a movement where women can pursue ambitious goals without sacrificing their wellbeing. Where feminine-aligned success can thrive. Where we value intuition alongside strategy. Where we can be messy, vulnerable, and seen in an era dominated by AI, perfection, and sameness. This is about creating a community of women who are done playing small, done playing by rules that never served them in the first place.

If that whisper inside you saying "I'm meant for more" has become impossible to ignore, perhaps it's time to join us. The world doesn't need more women hiding their light—it needs your full, magnificent self. Stay close as we embark on this evolution together.

To view the Transcript from this week's episode, visit our Balance & Beyond Podcast webpage: https://www.balanceinstitute.com/podcast/2025/96

Thank you for joining us today on the Balance and Beyond Podcast. We're so glad you carved out this time for yourself!

If you’re keen to dive deeper into our world, here are our socials where you can discover more about the toolkit that has helped thousands of women create a life of balance.

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Email: jo@balanceinstitute.com
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Thanks again for tuning in, and we'll see you next time on the Balance & Beyond Podcast!

Jo:

Welcome to Balance and Beyond, the podcast for ambitious women who refuse to accept burnout as the price of success. Here we're committed to empowering you with the tools and strategies you need to achieve true balance, where your career, relationships and health all thrive and where you have the power to define success on your terms. I honor the space you've created for yourself today, so let's take a breath and dive right in. I've built a multi-million dollar business that's changed thousands of lives, but recently I realized it's no longer big enough for me. This isn't burnout, it is something else, and if you are someone who has ever had that little voice inside of you, even if it's just a whisper, saying I made for more, there is something else here, there is something else that I meant to be doing in the world, then this episode is for you. Then this episode is for you.

Jo:

I have had this moment recently, facilitated by AA, believe it or not, in terms of the amount of reflection and self-awareness deepening I've been doing on top of all my own work, and I've realized that I am done, that something has shifted, and this is an awareness that I didn't even realize I had. This wasn't behavior that was conscious in the slightest. I could have sworn blue murder that everything I was doing was completely aligned and was fine. But I am done playing small, I am done shapeshifting for what I believe people will tolerate, for giving them a filtered version of what I think is acceptable in a version of the world that I think is okay to operate in. And I'm done pretending that success as I have it right now is enough. And this moment was when I realized that I've outgrown the business that I built from scratch Pretty scary thought. Right, because this business has worked. We've got hundreds of direct clients, we've impacted tens of thousands through our content, and the thought of burning all to the ground is absolutely terrifying. And not because it failed, but because it worked. And I know that there's more here. Something shifts inside a woman where you make this internal declaration that I'm done playing small and it's time for me to step up into a version of myself that I didn't know was accessible or even possible. So I built this big, beautiful business called the Balance Institute through a lot of blood, sweat and tears over the past six years, like I mentioned, we've got hundreds of clients. We've had these most beautiful retreats. I've had 12 retreats, can you believe, in person, plus virtual ones, won awards gone viral in the millions. Our podcast has reached 50,000 downloads. We've been given all these accolades.

Jo:

However, over the past, particularly 12 months, I have noticed as more and more people start stepping into the space as the market becomes more crowded, because barriers are entry to low and anyone can stick a badge on and say I'm a life coach and come and join my program or let me come and help you Now. I'm not for a second saying that we don't need more people because the market is growing and there are more and more women feeling burnt out. However, I know that many of these people are not capable to do what we do here. They can give great band-aids, they can give hints and tips, but I know that there are very few places in the world that can offer the depths of transformation in the way we do here, and that is due to a number of factors, including our team, including how my brain works, including all of our experience. But as I've built this business and more people are rushing in this whisper of am I playing small these thoughts of what makes me different in this sea of sameness, particularly when so many people coming in are using AI. So everything starts sounding the same. Am I really owning and claiming that which makes me different and unique? The challenge becomes. If you don't know what makes you different and unique and you haven't even owned and claimed that part of yourself, then there's no way you can possibly share it with the world. I've mentioned before that I used to avoid anything remotely woo like the plague, at least publicly. But recently that side of me has been opening up in ways that I can't ignore.

Jo:

At one of our recent retreats we were sitting in circle when I got a strong, intuitive nudge to pull a card from the tarot deck on the table. Now, if you've known the corporate version of me, that sounds ridiculous. Someone even looked at me and said what Jo's pulling a tarot card? What's happening to the world? But I trusted the hit. I shuffled the deck, pulled a card and that landed perfectly. It was the exact transformation. We were all circling in the room in four lines. It's like the universe dropped a mic that moment.

Jo:

A year ago I wouldn't have shared it, I wouldn't have had access to the hip, let's be honest, and probably even a couple of months ago I may not have shared this publicly, but I'm done hiding the parts of me that don't fit neatly into logic. Because the truth is, I've seen what happens when women start trusting that part of themselves, when they stop overthinking and over-functioning and start accessing the kind of knowing that we were never taught to value. It feels like a crime to hide that part of our intelligence and it's time we start awakening it unapologetically. And it was in this process, on this journey that was probably a really in-depth four to six week process for me that I began to realize, oh, I'm being really selective in the parts of me that I show. Those who have been clients in my world have seen more of, I guess you would say, the real me, more of the woo sides of me.

Jo:

On retreat, I do all kinds of interesting things, as does my team, but those who were, let's say, more external hadn't yet come into our ecosystem. I was still fitting into a version of what I thought was acceptable, palatable. You can be a little bit edgy, but don't be too edgy. You can be bold and speak up, but you can't really speak up. And I found that the more inside I was craving strength and power and visibility and actually stepping into my true self, the more I'd realized I'd built this little box for how I believed I could be perceived.

Jo:

Sure, I show up with the makeup on and I don't do my hair and I don't wear fancy clothes, and I can own all of that, but there are parts of what makes me me that remained hidden for a really long time. So here's what I am burning down. I am burning down old personas of myself that were created from a place of who I was at the time and what I believed was the right thing to do and what was in the right interests of finding people and servicing them and paying my mortgage and keeping the business alive, all of these things. But I'm going to burn the one who softened, who hid some of the parts of me. I used to be very, completely woo-free, logical, only talking, very corporate, and in time I realized that that's no longer who I am. That's who I was six years ago, of course, but not anymore. Likewise, I will start burning whether it's programs or parts of my business that don't reflect who I am now and start building different containers that reflect the version of me that I've become.

Jo:

Your business is simply a reflection of you, and the size of your business is a reflection of the challenges that you can hold and the problems that you can solve. So if I want my business to grow, if I want to have a bigger impact, I need to get better at solving bigger problems. I need to build a bigger container that has more of me in it energetically, so that I can hold more, and I also need to move away from not that I really lean too heavily into this, but how do I bring the soul back into marketing? How do I stand out in a sea of sameness and not sacrifice myself in the name of an algorithm or trying to get clicks or likes or virality? And I saw in my LinkedIn post that ended up going viral 1.6 million and counting. That was me having a rant. That was me being raw and honest and not censoring myself and not acting like a good girl. And look what happened.

Jo:

As part of this burning down, I'm also burning down and releasing the fear that if I evolve, I'll be too much, a fear that I've held for a really long time that if I speak in my true voice, I will lose people. I will alienate people, people who perhaps came to me for who I was, or people who think I am something that perhaps I am not, and there's a chance that I will lose people. There are people who will listen to this podcast or maybe see associated emails with the evolution of what we're doing and go. I'm out, that's it. But I have decided and this actually has become a declaration that I would rather lose people than lose myself.

Jo:

So, as I step into this new season, what I am becoming is not a business that has better offers or better programs. Of course, we will still support people, but this is about how do we tell the truth louder, how do we start thinking and creating a movement of women who are done, playing small done, playing by the old rules? But here's the thing when you want to create a movement, when you want to have a bold vision and a big dream, I have to go first. That's always been my role in life. I have always been the bridge. Take me back to primary school. I was the one carrying notes between the boys and the girls. I have always been the one facilitating conversations, creating the space, holding the space, interpreting for people, helping people take this thing and understand this thing. In this community I want to build, I have to believe and have faith that the right people will come to me in far greater numbers than I would lose. And those people who choose to step away and find another container, somebody else to follow, someone else to listen to, who better aligns with where they are right now, then that's the best thing for them and it's the best thing for me.

Jo:

What does a movement mean? I've been asked by a number of people, and this is a collective of women who are craving deep connection. They want community in an era of AI and sameness and how, inhumanity and a lot more perfection. How can we be vulnerable? How can we be messy? How can we be seen? How can we show up and get evidence that it's possible to have a life more than they currently have, a life more than they currently have. And I don't mean a life of more stuff or more doing, or more awards, or more cars or more houses or any of that stuff. I mean a life where you can sure have the bank balance and the title, and if that's what you want, great, go for it, but it's not at the expense of your peace or your fulfillment or your nervous system or your safety or your health or your relationships, because you can talk to many a billionaire, and they have all of the external things, but inside they're a shell of themselves and they are miserable and they would give it all up in a second to find peace, fulfillment. Find peace, fulfillment, happiness, whatever the markers are for you. And so my job has always been to be that lighthouse, to be that bridge and shine a light on what could be possible. So I have to go first.

Jo:

So in building a new version of my business, of claiming a different space in this market, I have to start with myself. I have to go first and declare that I am ready for more. I'm not willing to sacrifice, I'm not willing to push and hustle and white knuckle my way there. This is not about saying I want more and great, I'm just going to work 80 hours a week and I'm going to thrash my health and I'm going to push my body and I'm not going to sleep, because that's just what we need. This is about creating a movement where feminine, aligned success can thrive, where we value intuition, where we value our bodies, where we cultivate a nervous system that is safe and regulated and, in doing all of these things, allows us to collapse time, allows us to make faster decisions, allows us to conserve energy for what matters. Because when you are in deep, deep alignment, the world speeds up, but you don't have to do as much. So this is what I want. I want a world and a movement where women can climb the ladder. They can climb to whatever they want, in corporate or in their own businesses. They can leave corporate and start their own businesses because they're not confined to this box that they have decided is safe.

Jo:

I have to be a good girl. I don't have to rock the boat. I can't want too much. I can have just this much, but not more than that, because that would be ostentatious and that no, we have to start asking for more. We have to start declaring that it's okay for us to shine, we're not at risk, we're not going to lose everything and we are not going to be too much. We're not going to lose everything and we are not going to be too much.

Jo:

So, if this episode has stirred something in you, if there is a part of you that is realizing that maybe you've outgrown parts of your life, parts of yourself, and that you no longer want to settle or live in fear or worry about being too much, too big, too bold, too ambitious, whatever your too is, and I know that it can be scary to burn it down, but there's also usually a whisper where you can't stay where you are anymore. Then maybe it's your time too. Maybe you're ready to find a movement, to join a community of women who are up for big things in the world, who are ready to smash stereotypes, who are ready to lead differently, to love bigger and bolder and prove that we can live a life on our terms, where we can have alignment with comfort, where we can have our freedom, where we can have our peace. So if this has stirred something in you, then stay close. Watch this space. We have all kinds of things coming.

Jo:

You will notice we talk in a different way now. We are infusing more soul into what we do. We are fusing more emotion. We are starting to talk to the woman buried under the exhaustion and the shame and the to-do list. Sure, we can talk about surface level stuff, but I'm done with that because that's not really where we wanna play. You can go to the school gate and have a chatter about how busy you are and you've got this on and this on, but that's not what we're craving. Your soul is craving deep human connection and from now on, the Balance Institute is going to stand for that depth the women who are willing to stand arm in arm and move into the future deeper, brighter and bolder.

Jo:

I hope you come with us. Thanks for joining us today on the Balance and Beyond podcast. We're so glad you carved out this time for yourself. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend who might need to hear this today. And if you're feeling extra generous, leaving us a review on your podcast platform of choice would mean the world to us. If you're keen to dive deeper into our world, visit balanceinstitutecom to discover more about the toolkit that has helped thousands of women avoid burnout and create a life of balance and beyond. Thanks again for tuning in and we'll see you next time on the Balance and Beyond podcast.

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Jo Stone

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