New year, new me! How often have we heard this before?
From vision boards to NY resolutions lists, so many of us enter a new year with bounds of ambition, hope and renewed direction for the 12 months ahead. Once our fresh goals are in place, the question is: ‘How do we keep up the momentum?’ Plus, how do we do that without losing motivation or experiencing burnout, all the while maintaining important relationships and a strong sense of self? Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it?
It’s a scenario that’s all too familiar to many of us. In the newest episode of the High Agency Women podcast, host Natasha Gillezeau (Tash) sets out to explore this further from founders’ perspectives by sitting down with Phoebe Saintilan-Stocks, author and founder of women’s media company Missing Perspectives, Rashida Dungarwalla, psychologist founder of Sydney-based psychology practice Flow State Space, and Alicia Vrajlal, journalist and founder of South Asian Australian media company Draw Your Box – and she also happens to work with Phoebe part-time at Missing Perspectives too.
Each of these women adopt various strategies to not only manage their wellbeing and mental health, but also their goals and expectations in running their own businesses (whether that’s a goal set at the start of the year or one that pops up later on).
According to Rashida, having hobbies or external interests outside of work is really important in maintaining a balanced lifestyle, and also having a clearer mind when you are at work. It sounds like a no-brainer (excuse the pun!), but many women would acknowledge it’s sometimes easier said than done.
“I think it’s important that you have activities or something you’re doing outside of whatever is associated with your work,” says Rashida.
“For myself, for example, I ensure that I know what my limits are in terms of how many clients I can see a week and what I can do for my business. Then I will make sure that for the rest of my time during the week, I am doing all of these various things that fill my cup, so that I’ve got enough when it comes back to putting on my business hat.
“It’s like this parts-work theory, essentially,” she explains. “There’s a part of me that obviously shows up when I’m in my business mode, founder mode, practice mode, clinician mode – and that’s the hat that I’ll wear. And I’ll take that off, and I’ll put on my different hat when I’m doing something else.”
Rashida says it can “take a while” to feel comfortable in putting various hats on and off. It’s been a process of “unlearning” and “learning” for her personally.
“A lot of people feel quite guilty for taking off a certain hat and putting on another hat, and really letting that part of you rest or be compartmentalised over there,” she says, “so that you can fully immerse in this different part of you. But that’s important for the balance when you’re a founder, because it does… it takes so much from you.”
Speaking of striking this balance, Phoebe touches on it from the perspective of people pleasing. How can she take the founder hat off and step away from her desk or work events, without disappointing others?
“I think it’s so tied to being a people pleaser too,” she reflects. “Putting boundaries in, especially when you’re a person who like struggles to say no to things… for me, that has been a big one.
“I read a great book that I was telling Alicia about this month called, Are You Mad At Me?” she says, to which Alicia adds, “I ask people that all the time”.
But one of Phoebe’s biggest goals has been to reach a point where she feels more comfortable in committing to less.
“Working on being able to say no to things,” she says. “With being a founder, it’s balancing not burning out with the importance of being visible at every single brand event because otherwise [you feel that] they don’t know who you are, or they’ll forget who you are. It’s so hard, but I think it’s just learning you have to start saying no to more and looking after yourself.
“The other thing I’ve learned is when I properly take that hat off and relax – I never work on the weekend now – I am so much more creative the next week.”
Rashida highlights that being a founder can feel wrapped into your sense of “identity” as well.
“It’s identity, right? Your identity, and how much you’re, at that chapter of your life, able to commit to this part of your identity,” says Rashida. “That’s going to be changing based on the chapter of the business you might be building, or whatever it’s going to look like.”
She emphasises the importance of separating “your identity into all of these different parts” and to “value all of them” as opposed to thinking “that one part of your identity is more valuable than the other”. She says it’s about recognising that “they’re all serving us in different ways”.
Alicia relates to the pressure of being visible as a founder, and speaks to it from the perspective of her online identity and personal brand on social media. What happens when she thinks she has the capacity to do it all? Or, what happens when she wants to commit less or say no to something, but risks disappointing others (audiences or collaborators alike) who only see the founder version of Alicia… a yes-woman always on the go?
“It’s hard, because for me on social media, people think I’ve got it all together,” says Alicia, then giving a nod to some of Rashida’s earlier comments in the podcast chat about the link between mental health and physical health (make sure you listen to the whole podcast ep to hear more about this).
“You were talking about physical manifestations earlier, of symptoms after mental health issues,” says Alicia. “I think that’s when [in 2024] a lot of physical chronic health [issues] and chronic pain – which is common amongst a lot of women – started.”
Alicia reflects on the challenge of managing her own and others’ expectations when you have the best of intentions to reach an outcome that’s a win-win for all parties. She says when you commit to new projects, “you’re figuring it [the business] out at the same time” and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. “You can just want to do everything and say yes to everything,” she shares, whether that’s a “podcast” or a “newsletter” for example.
Rashida says it might be challenging to implement boundaries and have the harder conversations, but “if you’re doing it all, the quality lessens”.
“You’ll end up being a disservice to the actual goal that you probably started with, which is being in service to people or providing really good quality output there on your social media and through your business. And so if you’re doing it all, the quality lessens because we just can’t… it’s not sustainable.”
Whether it’s Alicia taking her dachshund to the dog park, Phoebe not discussing work with her partner after-hours, or Rashida dedicating time to herself away from client-facing work, each of these founders have identified strategies that work for them. They’re all excited to strive for a greater balance between running their businesses and feeding their minds (and souls) in 2026. Now, how’s that for the vision board?!
Our High Agency Women series is sponsored by Blackbird.