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Shamelessly Ambitious I Helping Ambitious Women Prevent Burnout + Create Nervous System First Success in Business, Motherhood, & Life
Shamelessly Ambitious is an honest, grounding, and vulnerable podcast for ambitious, emotionally intelligent women who are done proving themselves, tired of living in constant high-functioning burnout, and craving a life and business that actually feel good.
Hosted by Ash McDonald—therapist, nervous-system-first business mentor, and speaker this show blends clinical expertise with lived experience to deliver nervous system tools, embodied strategies, and radical permission so you can expand your capacity, root into emotional steadiness, and build sustainable success that supports your whole life.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, stretched too thin, caught in productivity guilt, or stuck running on stress, this podcast meets you where you are—with therapeutic insights, embodied practices, and heartfelt stories that create real shifts. Whether you’re navigating motherhood, entrepreneurship, or the messy middle of redefining success, each episode helps you slow down, regulate, and return to a felt sense of safety in your body.
With over a decade of experience at the intersection of therapy and leadership, Ash pulls back the curtain on what really works—offering grounded guidance you can apply in real life.
What you’ll hear:
- Honest conversations about burnout recovery, nervous system regulation, and redefining success
- Somatic tools, meditations, and practices that build inner safety and capacity
- Stories of motherhood, mom-life, ambition, and the courage to create a life and business that feel rich and real
If you’re asking the following questions, you’re in the right place:
- How do I stop tying my worth to productivity?
- How do I know if I’m experiencing high-functioning burnout and what do I do about it?
- How do I balance motherhood and leadership without losing myself?
- How do I calm my body when I feel overwhelmed or overstimulated?
This is the podcast for when you’re ready to reclaim peace, expand what you can hold, and create success that doesn’t cost you yourself. Tune in and take the next step toward a regulated, rooted, and deeply fulfilling life.
Shamelessly Ambitious I Helping Ambitious Women Prevent Burnout + Create Nervous System First Success in Business, Motherhood, & Life
160. How I Plan Profit Without Burning Out: Quarterly Goals for a Regulated Business
What if your business could feel steady instead of like a monthly rollercoaster? In this episode I walk you through my nervous-system-first profit planning, and how I map the year, choose what to sell (and when), and protect my creativity, energy, and peace while hitting my numbers. Today I’m sharing the exact quarterly profit planning process I use to grow my business and protect my nervous system. No more feast-or-famine energy. No more “I have to hit X this month or everything is falling apart.”
We talk about why month-to-month planning keeps you dysregulated, how quarterly goals create actual ease, and the system I swear by — from mapping my annual intention down to quarterly numbers, to creating a 100-idea money list, to filtering everything through desire, capacity, and season.
TOPICS & TANGENTS:
• Why month-to-month planning spikes anxiety
• The quarterly structure that keeps your business steady
• How I map my annual goal into spacious quarterly targets
• The 100-idea money list (possibility = regulation)
• Desire, capacity & season: my simple decision-making filter
• Building a business runway so you’re not creating from panic
• Planning in a way your body can actually hold
POINT OF THE STORY:
Strategy only works if your nervous system can hold it. Sustainable profit isn’t about perfect months… it’s about rhythm, regulation, and a plan that supports the life you actually want.
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Episode 158. The Money Myth That’s Draining Your Energy (start there for the energetics)
- The Surrender Retreat & therapeutic integration: recalibrate your relationship to success, safety, and expansion.
Are you loving it? Send Ash a text!
MORE ABOUT ASH
I am the definition of duality — I swear like a sailor and break rules like it’s my job, but I also hold incredible space for my clients and work my ass off to help them achieve the success they’re after. But I'm also here for the non-preneur woman, too. My background in counseling gives me a unique perspective on what it means to show up, serve, & create connection for those who feel like they've never belonged before.
LINKS:
- Become the Regulated Woman
- Get emails that feel like your best friend (if your best friend was a therapist and actually told you the truth).
- Use code BB20 to get The Burnout Breakthrough for only $7
- Follow me on IG (dropping in once a quarter for updates & gossip)
- Website: ashmcdonaldmentoring.com
Work with me 1:1
- Therapeutic Mentorship
- Business Therapy (therapy + strategic mentorship) ...