How to Achieve Sustainable Success Without Burning Out with Rachelle Stone

I didn't plan for this episode to become a masterclass. I thought I was just catching up with my former client and longtime friend Rachelle Stone, executive coach and burnout specialist, to talk about how her business had evolved since we worked together on her branding back in 2017. But that's the beauty of allowing space in a conversation. What unfolded was one of the richest, most honest conversations I've had on the Consulting Matters Podcast about what it actually takes to build a career you love without destroying yourself in the process.

If you've ever hit a peak and wondered, "Is this all there is?" or quietly suspected you might be running on fumes, this one is for you.

The Burnout She Didn't See Coming

Rachelle spent nearly 27 years in the high-end meeting and event industry in South Florida, working her way up to running her own company for 14 years, then taking on a private equity role where she helped flip an underperforming DMC from under a million to over five million in revenue in under 18 months. By every external measure, she was wildly successful.

And then she fell apart without even realizing it.

She was driving up I-95 one day, caught between two difficult meetings, when she got a call from her son about something she was going to miss. Again. "I'm thinking to myself, again. And I get off the phone with him and I'm thinking to myself, I don't know." That moment cracked something open. She went home intending to write a resignation letter and instead wrote the word "retirement." She was 48, didn't have a plan, and walked away.

It wasn't until she was a few weeks into an exploratory coaching course that the truth hit her. "I recognized... I flippin' burnt out. I didn't even know it. And I'm literally crying in class. I burned out. I didn't say anything to anybody for two years. I was embarrassed, humiliated, ashamed. I was a leader in my industry. How dare I burn out?"

That moment of recognition changed everything. And it became the foundation for the work she now does with high performers every single day.

Why High Achievers Miss the Signs of Burnout

One of the things Rachelle and I talked about at length is why burnout so often sneaks up on the very people who should see it coming. The answer has a lot to do with masking.

"Burnout, you didn't burn out overnight. It generally starts with the stress that you're not managing. And that unmanaged stress is going to lead to the feeling of languishing in that you're not thriving, but you're doing more than surviving. And women are really great at masking. I got this, right? No worries, I got it."

That pattern of silently holding it together is one of the biggest risk factors. Rachelle is also certified in transitional intelligence, and she references the concept of "human giver syndrome" from Emily and Amelia Nagoski's book *Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle*. As women, we are socialized to give constantly and move the finish line, even when we know stretching ourselves further isn't sustainable. That script runs so deep most of us don't even question it.

Which is exactly why the work of identifying and rewriting our scripts is so essential.

The Role of Success Scripts in Burning Out

This was one of the most powerful threads in our conversation. Rachelle asks every client some version of this question early in their work together: what is your definition of success, and where did it come from?

"Generally that script isn't yours. It's something that's been fed to you throughout your life. What success looks like. You get married by a certain age, you have a kid a certain age, you have a career, you do both. Like that's success, but that's somebody else's version of success."

Most of us are living on autopilot scripts we inherited from parents, schools, employers, and culture without ever stopping to ask whether those scripts actually fit who we are. When clients begin examining them, something shifts. "When people start to question their own success scripts, like they start rewriting them. They start looking at them and saying, this no longer serves me. Or I need to reframe this."

The rewrite is where freedom starts. And according to Rachelle, values are what make the rewrite possible.

Why Values Are the Foundation of Everything

I've seen this play out with my own clients and in my own life: when you're clear on your values, decision-making gets easier. Dramatically easier. Rachelle said it better than I could.

"Values are so core and foundational. They drive your purpose. They drive your passions. You can be really passionate about something and not understand why. When you can get clarity on your values, it's so much easier. You can't build a house without a solid foundation."

She takes clients through multiple sessions to really nail their values because rushing the process produces surface-level results. But once those values are truly internalized, they become a filter for everything. What to take on, what to say no to, where to invest energy, when something feels off. "Making difficult decisions are super easy. There's no question what the right thing for you to do is in that moment because your values drive."

The values work and the script work are deeply connected. When you know what actually matters to you, it becomes much easier to recognize which scripts to release.

Prevention vs. Recovery: You Want to Choose Prevention

This might be the most practical distinction in the whole conversation. Rachelle frames it as a choice: do you want to prevent burnout or recover from it?

"I always say to people, do you wanna prevent burnout or do you wanna recover from burnout? Because recovery, you really don't have a lot of choice. I would rather have the choice of preventing it."

Recovery is not a weekend reset. When burnout is full-blown, the body needs months, not weeks, to recalibrate. Physical symptoms pile up, cortisol tanks, sleep fractures, and no amount of willpower moves it faster. I lived this. My three-month sabbatical turned into seven months because I was genuinely running on fumes.

Prevention, on the other hand, is about keeping the guardrails in place before you ever get close to the edge. Rachelle uses the image of bumpers in a bowling alley lane. She describes watching for her own early warning signs: disrupted sleep, low-grade anxiety, a creeping sense that something's off. "Generally it's because I've dropped my guardrails. Baby bumpers back up. It will take me three to five weeks to get back to that place of equilibrium and balance again."

Three to five weeks versus six to twelve months. That's the math on prevention.

The Three-Legged Stool and Why You Can't Skip a Leg

Burnout resilience is not just about loving your work or setting better limits at the office. Rachelle talks about being a whole person as a three-legged stool: physical, mental, and spiritual. All three legs have to be tended. Let one go, and you tip over.

"If we're not taking care of all like our physical, mental, and spiritual, we're not gonna we're gonna tip over."

She also talks about the concept of reserve. You can't give from an empty tank. "When we don't have any reserve in the tank, we have nothing to reserve to others." The daily practices that seem indulgent or counterproductive, the long walks, the time in nature, the mornings without a screen, are actually what builds the capacity to sustain high performance over time. Not working harder. Building reserve.

She also encourages her clients to look for awe. Literally. "Go to a museum, sit in front of a really, really large picture for 30 minutes. Just stare at it... Go to the Grand Canyon, look at the Milky Way, the Northern Lights. That is awe. That is something bigger and greater than yourself. And it helps you tap into what those glimmers are for you. It helps you get out of your amygdala and into your bigger picture, more creative, more expansive way of being."

Building a Career Around the Life You Want to Live

This is the phrase that Rachelle lives by, and it's one she came to only after burning out and spending real time in the stillness to figure out what she actually wanted. She used what she now calls her four-quadrant exercise: what do you love and are good at, what do you love but struggle with, what you're decent at but don't enjoy, and what you're bad at and don't want anyway. The patterns in that first quadrant became the blueprint.

"I've built a career around the life I want to live. And that's really been a game changer for me in flipping the script from what's expected of you or what you should do instead to what do I want and need and building a career around that."

That flip is the whole thing. Most of us organize our lives around our careers. Rachelle, and increasingly my clients, are doing it the other way around. You decide what you want your life to feel like first. Then you figure out what work fits inside it.

"Envision what you want your life to look like. How do you want to live it? Where do you want to be? Really visualize it and paint that picture. Because that becomes the glimmer that you're shooting for."

And then as she reminded me near the end of our conversation: "You can't see the glimmers if you have horse blinders on."

What Sustainable Success Actually Requires

After an hour of conversation, what I kept coming back to is that success without burnout isn't a strategy. It's a practice. It requires self-knowledge, values clarity, rewritten scripts, daily habits that build reserve, and a willingness to take yourself seriously without apology.

It also requires getting quiet enough to hear yourself. We are not built for constant noise and stimulation. "We're meant to oscillate between busy and quiet. It's in the quiet that we recharge, we refresh, we create, we can tap into. And a lot of people really struggle with that."

The most radical, healing, growth-catalyzing thing I've ever done cost me nothing but time and stillness. And the same is true for Rachelle. The burnout that looked like her worst failure became the foundation for her best work.

That's the invitation in this conversation. Not to grind harder or optimize more, but to slow down enough to build something that actually lasts.

Next Steps:

• Identify your success scripts. Grab a stack of scrap paper and write down one script per slip: the messages you absorbed growing up about what success looks like, what you should achieve, how you should live. Then ask yourself honestly: do I actually believe this, or was it handed to me? That audit is where the rewrite begins.
• Do the four-quadrant exercise. Draw four boxes: what you love and are good at, what you love but struggle with, what you're okay at but don't enjoy, and what you're bad at and don't want anyway. Spend real time in that first quadrant. The patterns you find there are the blueprint for building a career around the life you actually want.
• Ready to build a brand that reflects who you really are? If this conversation sparked something and you're ready to get clear on your message and stop hiding your best work behind a cluttered brand, visit https://www.betsyjordyn.com/services  to learn how we can work together.

Other articles you may enjoy:

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• How to Create a "What I Do" Statement That Impresses Potential Clients [On-Air Coaching with J. Kyle Howard]
• How Denise Musselwhite Went from Fully Booked to Scaling on Her Terms
• Purpose, Alignment, and the Work You're Meant to Do
• How to Overcome the Fear of Failure in Your Consulting or Coaching Business
• How Different Consulting and Coaching Fields Define People-Centered Leadership & Orgs

About the guest: is a leadership consultant and executive coach who specializes in helping high performers recognize, recover from, and avoid burnout — drawing on her own firsthand experience navigating it and coming out stronger on the other side. She works with entrepreneurs, emerging leaders, and new business owners as a trusted advisor, helping them build confidence, close skill gaps, and move from where they are to where they want to be with fewer costly missteps. Through one-on-one coaching and workshops covering everything from stress management to positive intelligence, she's on a mission to make sure no one ever has to burn out of a career and life they love.

About the host: Betsy Jordyn is a business mentor, brand messaging strategist, and former Disney consultant who helps purpose-driven consultants and coaches build profitable businesses rooted in their unique strengths. With over 20 years in the industry and a knack for turning big ideas into clear positioning, she's your go-to for strategy that aligns with your calling. Work with me: https://www.betsyjordyn.com/services