Still In Progress | For Women Entrepreneurs Who’ve Outgrown the Business They Built

You treat every element like it's essential — the extra tagline, the fourth call to action, the decorative squiggle nobody will remember. And that instinct to keep it all is exactly why nothing lands.

I've been sitting with why AI-generated graphics bother me so much, and it's not that they're ugly. It's that nothing was ever cut. Everything technically fits, so everything stays.

And that's the same thing that happens when we build our own brands without deciding what actually matters: we keep adding because we're scared of what we'll lose if we choose.

This episode is about subtraction — why it's the one move a machine can't make for you, and why the willingness to lose something is what makes a brand feel human again.

The page isn't supposed to hold everything you know. It's supposed to hold the one thing you've actually decided matters.

You've had the moment. Maybe it wasn't on the steps of an apartment building with the electricity shut off, but you've had the version of it. The moment you realized the life you built isn't the one you actually want, and no one is coming to hand you the way out.

Donna Kreisler had that moment at 30, broke, divorced, and convinced her whole life was other people's fault. What she learned over the next ten years is that motivation and discipline are not the same thing, and only one of them actually rebuilds a life. Motivation got her started. Discipline, system, and the decision to stop waiting for someone to save her are what got her through.

In this conversation, Donna and Brittany talk about why motivation always runs out, what actually happens in the space between falling and getting back up, and why taking full responsibility for your own life, no blame, no shortcuts, no waiting for permission, is the least comfortable and most powerful decision available to any of us.

Donna is the creator of The Prosperity Mindset. Find her linked below.

Access all of Donna's links here: https://linktr.ee/donnakreisler

Connect with Brittany

Instagram: @catescreative.studio

Website: www.catescreativestudio.com

You know the moment. You're scrolling and you see it again: the same carousel format, the same trending audio, the same color text everyone's suddenly using. And some small voice in you asks, should I be doing that too?

In this episode, I'm talking about the real question underneath that pressure: how do you follow trends without losing the thing that makes your brand actually yours?

I walk through the four things I come back to every time I feel that pull, from the "would you jump off a cliff" test to why templates can only ever be a starting point, never the whole post.

We also talk about why your brain literally can't hold all the strategy advice you're being fed every time you open Instagram, and what happens when you stop bracing and start creating from ease instead of hustle.

If you've ever caught yourself copying a trend you don't even like because you're scared of falling behind, this one's for you.

If this episode resonates and you're ready for more ease and flow in how you show up online, send a DM on Instagram to @catescreative.studio. Let's talk.

You've been showing up the same way for a while now, same website, same social presence, same elevator pitch, and it's worked. So you've never really questioned it.

But "it's worked so far" and "it's still working" aren't the same thing.

In this episode, I'm pulling from something I see constantly in my day job as a UX designer: the person closest to a product is usually the worst judge of whether it still makes sense to a stranger.

I'll walk through why that happens, why it applies directly to your brand, and how to tell if you're in that blind spot right now, without scrapping everything you've built to find out.

If something's been nagging at you about how you're showing up, this one's for you.

DM me on Instagram @catescreative.studio if this lands.

Nancy Benet chased the CPA path since she was a kid. Got the degree, did everything right, and still found corporate accounting wasn't actually the thing she wanted.

That was just the first pivot.

Five failed businesses with her husband. A divorce. Four kids. $650K in debt, in the middle of a recession, with no job. She bought a tax practice because she had to, not because she had it figured out.

What followed wasn't a straight climb back to stability.

It was small steps, one pivot after another, and a slow rebuild of both her business and her relationship with money.

We talk about the moment she stopped blaming her circumstances and realized every choice she'd made had gotten her here, and every choice from here forward could get her somewhere else.

We also get into:

• The New Zero method, a piece of advice from a friend that changed everything for her business.
• Why cash flow is the thing that actually keeps a business alive.
• And why she still doesn't plan ten years out, only the next step.

If you've ever felt like you're rebuilding from nothing, this one's proof it's possible.

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Connect with Nancy

Website: www.successyourway.com

Instagram: @success.your.way

Book: Tame Your Money Monster

You're not behind. You're not lazy. You're waiting.

Waiting until you have more clarity. More certainty. More confidence that the direction you're heading is the right one before you fully commit to it.

In this episode, I'm getting honest about what that waiting actually feels like from the inside — and why the figuring out doesn't happen before you move. It happens because you move.

This is a conversation about permission. Whose voices you're actually letting drive your decisions, what it looks like to honor a commitment without punishing yourself, and what opens up when you stop making certainty a prerequisite for action.

Most of us were taught to find our one thing and stay. Build it, commit to it, become it.

And then we kept growing.

In this episode, I'm unpacking the belief that there's supposed to be one right path, one version of yourself you arrive at and stay. Because if something you've built no longer fits the way it used to, that's not a sign you made the wrong choice. It's a sign you've outgrown it. And those are completely different things.

This episode is about reframing what it means to keep evolving past the version of yourself who started.

Connect with Brittany

Instagram @catescreative.studio

Website www.catescreativestudio.com

You know something's off, but you can't quite name it. Your work has grown. Your brand hasn't caught up.

In this episode, I walk through four specific signs that your brand is still speaking for an earlier version of you, and what that gap is actually costing you, using a question I've been sitting with about my own life to get there.

If you've been quietly embarrassed to send someone your website, or you keep attracting clients who want to talk you down, this one's for you.

You're not behind. You're still in progress.

Connect with Brittany on Instagram @catescreative.studio

You've built the life you said you wanted. The business. The house. Maybe both, from the ground up. And somewhere in the middle of a completely ordinary day, it hits you: everything is technically right, and nothing feels like it.

This week I'm talking with Kendra Jarrell, author of Becoming Home: Self-Discovery Through the Power of Space, about the moment she pulled into her driveway of a brand-new custom home and felt the exact same frustration she'd been feeling in her business. Same tension. Different room.

We talk about what that discomfort is actually telling you, why your home has been quietly mirroring every version of you you've ever been, and how the space you live in can become the fastest way back to yourself when your business, your identity, or your life stops fitting the way it used to.

This isn't a home organization conversation. It's about what happens when you finally stop pushing the feeling down long enough to hear what it's been trying to say.

CONNECT WITH KENDRA

Website: https://www.consultwithkendra.com/

Clarity Quiz: https://www.consultwithkendra.com/quiz

Amazon Author Page: amazon.com/author/kendrajarrell

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ownbecominghome/

CONNECT WITH BRITTANY

Website: https://catescreativestudio.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/catescreative.studio/

You've got a list. The health goal, the relationship, the business that's finally thriving. And you know exactly what's on it. You just can't seem to act on it.

In this episode, Brittany unpacks a conversation with her coach that reframed the entire way she looks at her own goals, plus an unexpected moment from another podcast that cracked the idea wide open.

It's not about fixing what's wrong with you. It's about finally expressing what's already there, and chances are, you've got a version of that same list, whether it's your goals, your business, or the brand you keep circling back to and never quite landing on.