Mask on, mask off

The sweet spot between struggle, visibility, & authority

I once had a mentor dub me as the queen of swagger.

“It’s literally embarrassing she’s on planet Earth,” he says, “Plays in a different league entirely.”

I remember that season of business. I was scaling out of my mind, everything felt easy, my community was on fire, and I was on cloud nine (much deserved after being patient in the “messy middle” for years).

About a year later, that message began to haunt me. I was going through an intense pivot, this time with everything to lose…and wasn’t feeling like that lady, like that leader, or like that coach.

Mask on.

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The internal tug-of-war: perceived authority vs. what’s raw and real right now

I knew real leadership wasn’t about pretending to be invincible. And yet—every time I thought about letting people see this in-between version of me and my success, I’d freeze. Lost in a sea of over-explaining, fighting the wave, and putting my energetic dukes up.

There was this constant push-and-pull between “confidence is king” and “this is what’s raw and real”.

Because what if admitting I was in the shit made people doubt me? What if my authority was built on confidence, swagger, energy and certainty that were also in creative transition?

So I did what I knew how to do. Worked on myself ruthlessly, tried to become the person I needed myself to be, lead with the moxy that I was trying to reclaim. And at first, it doesn’t even feel like a mask—it feels like maintaining standards. But over time it starts to feel like a slow suffocation, like that old version of you is gasping for air and if you stop feeding it your oxygen then everything you’ve built will die with it.

All of this pressure—this dichotomy between perceived authority and what’s real right now—is rooted in the belief system that struggle makes you less of an authority. That authority only exists when you’ve made it to the top and have found a way to stay there.

But the beautiful thing about running a business that sits at the intersection of creative fulfillment and money?

Creativity is always ending and beginning, so none of us have the time—or quite frankly the energy—to continue allowing that to be true.

The sweet spot between struggle, visibility, & authority