Rachelle Stone:
What is success to you? What is your script — the one you've been carrying? Generally, that script isn't yours. It's something that's been fed to you throughout your life: what success looks like, that you get married by a certain age, have a kid by a certain age, have a career, do it all. That's "success," but it's somebody else's version of success. When people start to question their own success scripts, they start rewriting them. They start looking at them and saying, "This no longer serves me."
Betsy Jordyn:
Welcome, everybody, to this week's Consulting Matters Podcast episode. I'm your host, Betsy Jordyn, and I'm still in the middle of my special series called Where Are They Now, where I'm catching up with clients you've seen on the show before. We all want to be in business for a while, and I thought it would be fun to see how they've evolved their business and their branding over time.
Today's guest is Rachelle Stone. We worked together — I think it was 2017, maybe into 2018 — on her branding. She's been on the show before to talk about her passion around burnout and so much more. I honestly don't know exactly where this conversation is going to go, so we're just going to go with the flow and have a great conversation about what it looks like to achieve real success and impact over time — not just a flash in the pan, but something sustained.
So, without further ado, welcome to the show, Rachelle. I'm so excited to have you here.
Rachelle Stone:
Thank you, I'm so excited to be with you again. I can't believe it, but you're right — it was 2017 through part of 2018 when we worked together. I hired you to help me, and it's been an incredible journey ever since. I'm so glad we've stayed in touch. Excited to be here with you today.
Betsy Jordyn:
For those who don't know you, let's ground everyone in where you were back in 2017. I think we met at an ICF event —
Rachelle Stone:
That's right. It was in Orlando, at Nova, and I was speaking about the importance of branding. I had just moved to the Tampa Bay area from South Florida — I'd been in South Florida my entire career — and I was moving into a new field and a new city. I wound up going to that ICF Central Florida workshop you were running, and I remember sitting there loving your content and thinking, "I have to get this woman's card." Everybody was mobbing you afterward, and I grabbed your card and followed up. I need to talk to you, I thought. That was really the beginning of me recognizing the importance of branding — because I didn't have a clear message back then either.
Betsy Jordyn:
That's right. What's interesting is you actually had a clear vision, but it was buried under a lot of other things. With us, it wasn't so much about creating the vision as it was about pulling away everything extra. You had this whole "Vertical Challenge" brand and a lot of philosophy layered on top, and we just had to peel it back.
You got into coaching after being a meeting and event planner, and you hit a point in your life — I'd love for you to go back to that, because I think a lot of listeners can relate to what it's like to achieve success and realize it's not everything it's cracked up to be. You get to the top and wonder, "Is this it?" Is the ladder against the right wall? You got to the top and didn't love the view. Can we go back there? I don't love that you went through that suffering — I just love the lessons you took from it.
Rachelle Stone:
There was a gift and an opportunity in there that I couldn't see at the time, but I can see it now. So — yes, let's go back. I worked in the meeting and event industry for 26, almost 27 years, in South Florida — Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Naples, that whole high-end meetings market. I was in what's called destination management — inbound meeting planning. If someone's bringing a meeting to a city, they need a local expert for airport transfers, area tours, special events, theme parties, entertainment, awards — that kind of work.
I worked for other DMCs, and I worked for event companies helping them open their own DMC divisions — always in that small-business-building, creating-new-opportunities space. Then I had my own company for 14 years. After that, I worked for a private equity group, taking an underperforming DMC from under a million to over five million in under 18 months. I couldn't repeat that if I tried — it's impossible — but they wanted me to.
I think that's really what led me to leave the industry. After about three weeks I kept telling the investors, "I can't repeat that. You're going to burn me out. This isn't sustainable." And whatever support they tried to give me wasn't the right support.
Ultimately, I was driving up I-95 one day — if you know South Florida, that's six lanes of very fast traffic each way. I hadn't told this story in a long time. I was driving from a meeting at the Loews Miami Beach to another meeting at the Breakers in Palm Beach. The meeting in South Beach had been awful — a difficult client, vendors dropping the ball — and I was driving to another difficult one.
I remember being in the car and getting a call from my son, who was graduating high school that year. "Hey, Mom, this is going on," he said, and I told him I'd be out of town. I got off the phone thinking, again? And in my mind — this didn't literally happen, but in my mind — everything slowed down. I stopped my car in the middle of I-95, with traffic going ninety miles an hour around me, all in slow motion, and I opened the door and walked away. Very metaphorical. But that's what I saw in my mind, and I realized: I think I'm ready to go back to being an entrepreneur. I was tired of answering to angel investors and private equity people who didn't understand what I actually did, and the demands were unreasonable. I wanted to work for myself again — not answer to anyone.
So I went to that meeting at the Breakers, which went exactly as expected. I went home intending to write a letter of resignation — I didn't know what I was going to do, I just knew I was leaving. Instead, what I wrote was a retirement letter. I was 48 years old. I said, "I'm leaving the industry. It's been a great ride. Thanks for everything. I'll be gone by Thanksgiving."
That was early October. I stayed until Thanksgiving — a Wednesday, I remember — and then I walked away. No plan. I was getting calls from event production companies around the country who wanted me to open offices for them, because I was well known and a top performer in the industry. But I just said, "Nope, I'm done."
As I started exploring — did some traveling, no hurry, because I'd done well enough to take some time — I began asking, what do I want to do? What do I like to do? I needed to put it on paper, so I did what I now call the "four-quadrant exercise," which I take all my clients through when they're at risk of burnout or already in it: What do you love to do that you're really good at? What do you love to do but aren't great at? What are you good at but don't love? And what do you neither love nor are good at?
As I worked through it, I started seeing patterns in that "love and good at" quadrant. I got on Google — we didn't have Google quite the way we do now — and just started throwing in words, and "coaching" came up. I didn't know anything about it. What is a coach? I explored it and thought, that sounds like me — I love teaching, guiding, mentoring, growing people.
So I signed up for a foundational coaching course, just for — can I swear on your podcast?
Betsy Jordyn:
I think so. If it falls out, it falls out. This isn't a kids' show.
Rachelle Stone:
Good, because for shits and giggles, I signed up for this course. About three weeks in — back then the teacher emailed us documents; we weren't on Zoom, we were on the phone looking at our own computers — something she said gave me an epiphany. I realized I hadn't made any real decision to leave my career. I had flat-out burned out, and I hadn't even recognized it.
I was literally crying in that class, on the phone where no one could see me, thinking, oh my God, I burned out. I hadn't told anyone for two years. I was embarrassed, humiliated, ashamed — I felt like a failure. I was a leader in my industry — how dare I burn out? I thought people would laugh at me. I couldn't own up to it.
When you and I met, I was still in that denial stage. You were part of what peeled away the layers of the onion — I remember you saying, "It's burnout," and I'll never forget that. That was my real entry point into recognizing what had happened to me.
Over the next couple of years, as I continued my coach training, I researched burnout obsessively — how it happens, prevention, recovery, everything — and incorporated it into my coaching. Working with you, I actually started wearing it like a neon sign, owning it publicly and speaking about it at conferences, chapter meetings, anywhere people would listen.
That's about eleven years ago now. I'm in my eleventh year as a professional coach, with a lot of accreditation and continuing education along the way, and I love every minute of it. I like to say I've built a career around the life I want to live. That's been the real game-changer — flipping the script from "what's expected of you" to "what do I actually want and need, and how do I build a career around that."
Betsy Jordyn:
I remember that moment we stumbled onto it — I can still picture the office I was in. And I remember, shortly after, "for shits and giggles" became a bit of a running phrase for me too, because I resonated so much with the burnout piece — I'd had many rounds of it myself.
I was in the middle of launching something around quantifying the value of consulting work, lots going on. Then one Sunday — I think it was Father's Day — I'd had a couple of beers, came home still thinking about burnout, and just wrote a short LinkedIn post about high-achieving women and burnout. Out of all my years online, I'm not a big social media person, but that's the one post that went viral — the only one.
It struck a chord because I saw myself in it. That's part of what I love about brand messaging work — it's a bit like *Six Feet Under*, where the person who dies always mirrors something happening in the family. When I'm working with a client, there's usually something in their story that mirrors something in mine. You gave me the language, I did some research, and it became clear this is almost inevitable for high-achieving women — extra responsibility requires extra testosterone, and we have a fraction of it. We're carrying the dual load: kids, home, a thousand extra expectations. Men burn out too, I'm sure, but not at the same rate, and women still want to succeed in every area of life — to be excellent mothers and excellent professionals.
That conversation with you really helped me embrace my own burnout story. I'd burned out when I left Disney to start my business, though I didn't recognize it then. I rebuilt my career, and then burned out a second time — that became my real pivot point. You helped me name it and see it as something significant. The phrase we landed on was "success without the burnout" — nobody should burn out of a career they love.
Rachelle Stone:
That became the tagline, actually — "No one should burn out of a *life* they love." I struck out "career" and used "life," because we're whole, complete people. We're not two separate people when we go to work. If you're masking or armoring up all day at work, that's exhausting — you've got nothing left to give when you get home. And isn't the whole point of work that it gives you something to bring home to the people and community you love?
Betsy Jordyn:
Right — if you're actually doing work you love and using your strengths every day, it creates energy rather than draining it. It often gives you more energy for home.
Rachelle Stone:
It does — but too often it doesn't, because most people aren't doing that kind of work.
Betsy Jordyn:
When you're working with people you love — I'll never forget the live event where I brought my community together, and you and Dave showed up at the door. I have this photo from my fourth birthday party where I'm this excited little kid, like, "Yay, all my friends are here!" That's exactly how I felt when you two walked in.
Rachelle Stone:
It really was one of the best weekends — high intensity, a lot of work, but also a slumber party, fun, bonding. It's the experiences you remember and learn the most from.
Betsy Jordyn:
My daughter still remembers babysitting your dogs — it really was a whole event since you stayed at my house. You had two dogs then?
Rachelle Stone:
I had two then; I have one now.
Betsy Jordyn:
You brought them along, and they were part of the whole thing — snoring while we worked.
Rachelle Stone:
You mentioned "success without burnout" earlier, and I think we're still struggling with this collectively. It's becoming more obvious, and it's being said out loud more, that women haven't been set up to succeed the same way men have. We're expected to work three times as hard for half the recognition, while still doing everything else — and that comes back to the definition of success.
In 2024, or maybe it was 2025, I became master certified in navigating transitions — transitional intelligence. It's a small group of us who hold that certification, but one thing that always comes up is exactly this: What is success to you? What is your script? Generally, that script isn't yours — it's something fed to you throughout your life. Get married by a certain age, have a kid by a certain age, have a career, do it all. That's "success," but it's somebody else's version of it.
When people start questioning their own success scripts, they start rewriting them. They look at them and say, "This no longer serves me," or "I need to reframe this." Sometimes they still believe the script and choose to keep it — but the point is, they get to choose. Given the chance, most people end up rewriting at least part of it.
Betsy Jordyn:
That makes me think about life transitions more broadly — different phases of life. In your twenties, you're trying to find yourself. In your thirties, you're in the groove. In your forties, you're asking, "What difference have I made? What difference will I make?" Then there's a later phase where external definitions of success get internalized — you stop paying as much attention to the external markers and start asking, "Okay, what does this actually mean to me?"
For me, success now means having a good walk in the sunshine every day. It means wrapping up work at a certain time because I want to, because it's meaningful and life-giving to me. Having this conversation with you — I don't know if it's great for SEO or hits all the podcast best practices, but I wanted to have it because I find it genuinely interesting, and I think other people will too: how does a business evolve over time? How do we grow as consultants, coaches, and business owners?
Rachelle Stone:
Absolutely — and that idea of success evolves as you internalize it. It's the external version that's usually somebody else's.
Betsy Jordyn:
So maybe that's action item number one for listeners: what is your own definition of success? How do you take off the blinders — the external noise — and dial into what success actually means to you? What do you do, as a coach, to help clients stop listening to that external noise and start dialing in?
Rachelle Stone:
First, you have to help them recognize that the noise is there, because we internalize these messages immediately, starting in childhood. What I'll often do with a client is have them think back to the messages they heard growing up — things like, "Finish your plate, there are children starving." That's a script. You don't actually have to finish your plate; you eat until you're not hungry anymore.
Or, "What is success?" You go to college, meet someone, get married, start a family — that's someone else's idea of success. Then in school, in your first job, you're absorbing other people's definitions and scripts, all of it wrapped in "should." I actually wrote a whole piece on "don't should on me," because "should" is really just somebody else telling you what to do. These external scripts work the same way — we just don't recognize them, because we've been absorbing them since birth.
Once someone can identify their scripts — I have clients write each one on a scrap of paper — working with a coach really helps, because you challenge each one: How does this show up in your life? How has it impacted you? Do you still believe it? Did you ever really believe it, or was it just handed to you? Do you want to reframe it, and if so, how?
The other piece is values — what really matters to someone. I always go back to values, because they're foundational and fully internalized. It usually takes two or three sessions in coaching to really nail someone's values, but once you do, decision-making gets so much easier, because you're not operating without a foundation anymore. When you can fully articulate your values, difficult decisions become clear — there's no real question about the right thing to do in the moment, because your values are driving it.
Betsy Jordyn:
So it's less about putting the blinders on and more about becoming aware in the first place — like being the fish that has to first notice the water before it can decide, "No, this belief doesn't align with my values, and I can let it go."
Rachelle Stone:
I like the analogy of the frog in the well — it thinks the well is the entire world. Once it discovers there's a world outside the well, its whole perception changes. Same thing here. It's that awareness, that peeling back the layers of the onion, to get down to what really matters — the internal signal that's so often muffled by external noise.
As humans, we're not meant to be constantly busy and bombarded with information the way we are now — smartphones, constant podcasts, constant news, constant reality TV. We're meant to oscillate between busy and quiet. It's in the quiet that we recharge, refresh, and create. A lot of people really struggle to sit in that quiet space and be okay with it.
Betsy Jordyn:
This has become a real theme on the podcast — the idea of reflection. I interviewed Melissa Bowie a few weeks ago, and she talked about research showing that when people go within and reflect, some experience it almost like an electric shock on a neurological level. For some people, that's deeply uncomfortable — but that's exactly where the gold is. You can't align anything with what's inside you unless you actually unpack what's inside you. That could be some of the most uncomfortable work there is.
If you hadn't gone within and addressed the burnout that runs through your story, you never would have been able to recover from it and turn it into your platform. You had to hold up the mirror and sit with that discomfort before you could bring it forward.
Rachelle Stone:
Exactly, a hundred percent. That internal reflection is the launch pad for all the work I do — whether it's executive coaching or group coaching for emerging leaders. We're actively discouraged from doing that kind of reflection. How many people say, "I don't like being bored," or "I'm not comfortable being bored"? But when's the last time you were genuinely bored and did absolutely nothing? That's where some of the biggest, most creative, most inspiring ideas come from — internally, when the noise quiets down.
I always encourage people to look for "awe." There are actually eight different pathways to awe. Nature is a big one — if you don't get outside much, go outside and take your shoes off, stand in the grass. You'll feel a little jolt run through your body. That's the energy of the earth, and it matters. I also tell people to go to a museum and sit in front of a large painting for thirty minutes. Just look at it. And when you get bored with that, turn around and people-watch instead.
Betsy Jordyn:
And you have to ditch the headphones — no distractions.
Rachelle Stone:
Exactly — just dial into the world around you. That's why I love my daily walk. Hearing nature, the birds, seeing people out with their dogs, the squirrels — it centers me completely.
Betsy Jordyn:
Do we even have chipmunks in Florida?
Rachelle Stone:
No — squirrels, I think. Maybe not chipmunks here.
Betsy Jordyn:
The most radical and healing thing I've ever done was a sabbatical I took — not last year, the year before, at the end of 2024. I did a week-long, device-free, Wi-Fi-free, and advice-free retreat at home. I put my computer, my TV remote, my phone — everything — in a bag in the basement and shut it all off for a week. I told my daughter how to reach me in a genuine emergency, and that was it.
Every morning I'd wake up, light a candle, and wonder what I'd read that day from the stack of books on my counter. Then I'd go for walks around the neighborhood. It cost me nothing financially, since I was home the whole time, but it was the biggest healing and growth catalyst I've ever experienced. I got into my walking habit during that week, because there was only so much else to do. I'd read in the evenings, and I actually had to write down which day of the week it was, because the days blended together. It was so good, because it happened in the silence.
Rachelle Stone:
Was that healing enough that you'd want to do it again every couple of years?
Betsy Jordyn:
That was after two cross-country moves in two years and a lot of other upheaval —
Rachelle Stone:
So you were burning out again. Do we really have to hit that point before we take care of ourselves — before we feed our souls?
Betsy Jordyn:
My hope is that I won't need something that radical again, if I can keep the daily habits going — the walking became non-negotiable. I also take one day a week now, which I call my "reset day," where I have zero responsibilities and do nothing. I'm hoping that keeps me from ever getting back to that place.
Rachelle Stone:
You're building it into your life so you hopefully never burn out that badly again. But most people don't make that kind of space for themselves. You were once in a cycle of burnout, and you found ways to manage it — but if we're not processing stress daily, it just keeps building. It's not sustainable. As humans, we need to disconnect and recharge. We can't burn the candle at both ends.
Betsy Jordyn:
I think there's some real psychology to walking in sunshine. I thought about this a lot on my walks — the hero's journey isn't the hero sitting still; the hero is always walking somewhere, always moving, always on a journey. Even Jesus, with his followers, was walking everywhere — it wasn't, "Let's gather and just sit and pray," it was, "Let's move."
There's something in the physicality of it. I know a coach, Kathleen Oshab, who recovered from a traumatic brain injury partly through walking — she does forest bathing and similar practices, because there's real research behind the sunshine and nature piece, how nature moves your energy.
If you want to sustain success, going back to "success without burnout," you need routines you didn't have before — the ones that led to burnout in the first place have to be replaced with something like burnout resilience. It's not just about having work that aligns with your values.
Rachelle Stone:
Right — and I always ask people, do you want to prevent burnout, or recover from it? Because with recovery, you don't really have a choice anymore — you're already there. I'd rather give people the choice to prevent it. When you frame it that way, people realize prevention is far more appealing than recovery, because nobody likes having their choice taken away.
Betsy Jordyn:
It's radical, though, because it runs counter to our culture. I've tried so many burnout "solutions" that just added more to my plate — go do yoga, take these supplements, try this neurofeedback thing, do this, do that. More to-dos. What actually worked was doing nothing. Literally the opposite direction. Doing nothing was the prescription.
Rachelle Stone:
It really is the prescription. Funny enough, I often get clients who come to me right as they're starting medical leave from work, saying, "I need this resolved in six weeks." I tell them it won't be fully resolved in six weeks, but we can make real progress. What usually surprises them is how much busier and faster this process feels than they expected — because the need for genuine nothingness is so great.
If you're just starting to burn out, maybe a couple of good weekends and some new boundaries will help you recover. But if you've been burning the candle at both ends for a long time, with no time for yourself, your family, or the things you're passionate about, suddenly having open time is uncomfortable — people struggle with the nothingness, the boredom, sitting with themselves.
I want to go back to what you said about prevention living in routine and consistency. I always say we're a three-legged stool — physical, mental, and spiritual. If we're not tending to all three, we tip over. I like to call those "guardrails." How do you know you're at risk? What are your personal signals that you're putting yourself at risk of burnout again?
I say I've "dropped my guardrails." I love visuals and metaphors, so I picture the bumpers in a bowling alley — I need to put my bumpers back up. It usually starts with my sleep getting interrupted — waking up, ruminating, feeling a bit more anxious without knowing exactly why. That's generally because I've dropped my guardrails, and it takes me three to five weeks to get back to equilibrium. That's burnout *prevention*. Recovery happens after six months or a year of pushing through — you're completely exhausted, having physical symptoms, not sleeping or eating well, your blood pressure's up. Everyone's impacted differently, but that recovery takes a lot longer.
Betsy Jordyn:
Some of the research I did during my sabbatical showed that once your cortisol levels are that depleted, it can take three to four months just to replenish them. My three-month sabbatical turned into seven months, because I'd genuinely been running on fumes for far too long — real danger territory. That's the choice point: if you don't address it — if you just muscle through, "nut up," and push forward — you're only delaying the inevitable and making the eventual crash much worse.
But I also don't think I would have made the changes I needed to make if I hadn't hit that point. Those become sacred moments, in a way — a forced look at the patterns behind how I got there in the first place. During my sabbatical, I wasn't just sitting quietly; there was real emotional work — looking at my patterns of overfunctioning in relationships, overfunctioning with clients, always going above and beyond, never quite knowing when I'd done enough. Even in how I structured client engagements and pricing — I'd keep adding value, adding offers, without raising the price, over-giving in that relationship. And over-giving with my kids. Over-giving everywhere. That's not sustainable.
So when we talk about success on your own terms — success without burnout — I think there are really a few pieces. One is paying attention to the messages you've absorbed and checking them against your values. Another is understanding what you love and what you're good at, and organizing your career around who you actually are. And there's a third piece around burnout prevention and keeping that three-legged stool in place.
But I think there's a fourth piece too, around boundaries related to whatever patterns tend to pull you back into that place — for women, I think that often shows up as pricing and owning our worth, so we're earning appropriately without constantly overworking to justify it.
Rachelle Stone:
There's a great book on this — *Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle*, by twin sisters Amelia and Emily Nagoski. They talk about "human giver syndrome." Women are raised to be givers, and we constantly move our own finish line, even knowing it will stretch us thin. As human givers, we're used to stretching ourselves — we're taught that success means being able to give to others without much regard for ourselves, putting everyone else first. That's a script worth revisiting. Some people genuinely want to keep that script and be a giver — that's their calling. But it isn't everyone's, and it's important to recognize whether it's actually yours.
On the stages of burnout: you don't burn out overnight. It starts with unmanaged stress, which leads to languishing — not thriving, but doing more than just surviving. That's the masking phase — "I've got this, no worries" — and women are especially good at masking. Unmanaged languishing can lead to burnout, and unmanaged burnout can lead to depression, which is a medical condition. At that point, a coach can't help you out of it — you need medical support. But you can avoid getting there by keeping your guardrails up, setting real boundaries, communicating your expectations clearly, and staying anchored to what actually matters to you.
Betsy Jordyn:
And not violating that, even when it feels like "everyone else is doing this." Just because everyone's doing something doesn't mean you have to. I know everyone listening is going to be shocked, but I'm actually a total introvert — I need huge amounts of alone time to recover, even though I was raised in a very extroverted family where you basically had to be extroverted to survive.
If I have a weekend like this past one, with three days of extroverted "out time," I'm wiped the next day — still tired, barely functioning. It takes a lot for me to recover. So building a marketing strategy around constant networking and external activity just wouldn't work for me — it would burn me out, because it's out of alignment. I like creating content and having one-on-one conversations; that works for me. For someone more extroverted than me, speaking events and lots of external activity might be exactly the right fuel.
Rachelle Stone:
That's such a valid point, and I'm glad you brought up introvert versus extrovert, because most people think it's just about how you show up socially — really, it's about how you get and recharge your energy. Honestly, I love my own company. I could go days without talking to another human, just me and my dog, out in nature with a book, and I'm perfectly happy.
Betsy Jordyn:
I'd high-five you if we were in person.
Rachelle Stone:
But like you, I can turn on the extrovert — I can be outgoing when I need to be — and it's just as exhausting. By the end of a day like that, I'm happy and proud, but I'm also wondering why I'm so tired. That's why: we recharge in different ways, and that distinction matters.
Betsy Jordyn:
I've been working on new ways to present my "Listen to Your Life" exercise, which is the inventory I do with clients upfront. One phrase I keep coming back to is: you need to take yourself seriously. If you want success on your own terms, at some point you have to take what you want seriously — your strengths seriously, your passions seriously — and, from this conversation, I'd add: your temperament, your wiring, what actually gives you energy.
It's not just about knowing yourself; it's about taking that knowledge seriously and acting on it. How many times have we taken a personality assessment and just let it slide off, barely absorbing it? When I take people through my strengths exercise, I'm always struck by how quickly they discount it. You have to actually take it in — internalize it — "these are my strengths, I have to use them; these are not my strengths, and no matter how monetizable they seem, they're not where my happiness lives." You have to take yourself seriously, and if you want success without burnout, that's really the only path: operate according to your nature. Understand it, and then take it seriously — don't minimize it, and don't just keep it in your head.
Rachelle Stone:
That's a great framework, Betsy. Most of our lives are shaped by nurture, but it's really our nature that drives us. I love the idea of taking yourself seriously — doing that internal work, knowing what feeds you and what depletes you. That's so important.
Betsy Jordyn:
And doing it without apology. Not, "I'm so sorry, I guess I should really be doing more." When I have a quiet weekend with nothing going on, part of me thinks, "I should be getting out more" — but I'm genuinely happy. I love a weekend like that.
Rachelle Stone:
Hair up, staying in your PJs, taking it easy after a hard week.
Betsy Jordyn:
Exactly. Fridays are locked in for my longer walks — earlier now that it's getting hot. And it's not about permission anymore. I'm my own boss — who am I waiting for permission from? I get to choose.
Rachelle Stone:
You give yourself permission.
Betsy Jordyn:
What I love about this conversation is the theme of taking things seriously. When we wrapped up our original work together, your brand was still like a baby bird kicking its way out of the nest — you were on this "success without burnout" mission, but it was still forming. What I'm seeing now is that the mission is the same, just deepened. Your expertise has grown, and it feels like you've become a tree, fully rooted in this purpose in a different way. That's what this conversation shows me — what it looks like to really live into your purpose and your calling, and to make meaning out of both your life story and your natural wiring.
Rachelle Stone:
Everything I do now runs through that filter: does this align with me? Is this on my path or off it? I go every year to the Meeting Professionals International World Education Congress — just got back from it, actually, over a thousand people from my old industry. I go back because I know that world so well, and I know how burnt out and stuck so many of them are. I coach for free for three days at that conference, and it shapes a lot of my messaging, because no one tells these people it's okay to look at themselves first, to speak up, or to ask for what they need. No one gives them permission.
I love being able to help people get unstuck there — to start articulating what they want and being okay asking for it, and recognizing that "should" is really just somebody else's expectation. I have a choice.
I'm very much living this and bringing it into every conversation I have — though not everyone comes to me specifically for burnout. I also do a lot of leadership coaching and development that isn't burnout-focused, but well-being is always part of it, because we're whole people. We're not two separate selves at work and at home. Masking and armoring up at work is exhausting; being your whole, authentic self makes it so much easier to ask for what you need and to say no.
Betsy Jordyn:
Even if someone hasn't experienced burnout exactly, I think it's thematically the same conversation — wanting success and flow, wanting to operate in alignment with who you actually are. Burnout is really just what happens when you're operating in violation of your true nature. So if an executive comes to you and says, "I should hit CEO in three years, I should be making this kind of money and living this kind of lifestyle," I can't imagine you just nodding along.
Rachelle Stone:
No — I like to say I deliver difficult messages with kid gloves. I'm good at helping leaders see their own blinders — working seventy-hour weeks, health failing, family stretched thin, just pushing forward anyway. Generally, even when someone comes to leadership coaching to grow professionally, the fastest path to real growth is learning to take care of themselves first. It sounds counterproductive to make space and time for yourself, but doing so gives you far greater capacity to give to others, better energy, and more resilience under stress — because you're operating from a solid baseline instead of already stretched thin before something stressful even happens.
I like the word "reserve." It has a nice double meaning — in the UK, "reserve" is also what's left in your gas tank; in hospitality, we use "reserve" too. When you have no reserve left in the tank, you have nothing left to give others.
Betsy Jordyn:
That's a visual that clearly lands for a lot of leaders — realizing they have no fuel left to give.
That connects to another piece: taking yourself seriously ties back to honoring our basic humanity. We're designed a particular way, with real physical needs. What frustrates me a little about the AI conversation right now is that it feeds our rush for instant results — the assumption that we should get to the answer immediately. But who decided that? Where did this pressure for constant productivity actually come from? I think it runs counter to human nature, because we need rhythm — reflection balanced with action. Reflection is the real power skill. So what you're inviting people into is permission to operate in alignment with how their bodies are actually designed, so they can hit real, sustainable performance — not just productivity.
Rachelle Stone:
Exactly — productivity and volume versus performance and well-being. It needs to be about quality: the quality of the work and the pride behind what you're putting out there. That's part of the well-being equation too.
Betsy Jordyn:
And it shows up in letting a conversation flow naturally. You and I made a conscious choice for this episode — just catch up, see where your business has gone, and trust that something good would come out of it. I think what we got was a real masterclass on sustainable success without burnout, and we didn't even set out with that as the goal.
I actually thought we'd end up talking about you becoming president of ICF Central Florida — I thought that would be the centerpiece. But this is where the conversation went, and we let it.
Rachelle Stone:
That's the beauty of it — letting it happen.
Betsy Jordyn:
I hope you all enjoyed this one — the evolving conversation about sustainable success without burnout. That's really what this episode turned out to be about.
Rachelle Stone:
There we go — we've got our title now, and it's perfect.
Betsy Jordyn:
As we wrap up, if you had to boil everything we've talked about into one takeaway for anyone who wants sustainable success without burnout, what would it be?
Rachelle Stone:
That's tough to narrow to one thing, but I'd say: understand what actually matters to you — your values. Values are so foundational; they drive your purpose and your passions. You can be deeply passionate about something without fully understanding why, but once you get clarity on your values, everything gets easier. It's the foundation — you can't build a house without one.
Then I'd look at your scripts. What's your definition of success? Where did it come from? Who handed it to you? Do you actually believe it, or does it feel a little off? So: values first, as the foundation, and then examine the scripts you're living by — because so often, we're on autopilot, living out somebody else's script.
Betsy Jordyn:
That's good. Where can people find you, and how can they work with you?
Rachelle Stone:
LinkedIn is the best place to start. I do have a website — rstoneconsulting.com — though I admit I haven't updated it in years; one of these days. You can also email me at [email protected], but LinkedIn is generally the easiest way to reach me — I respond whenever I get a message there.
I also do a lot of work promoting the ICF Central Florida chapter, where I'm currently president — thank you for bringing that up. And if anyone wants to talk, I always keep thirty minutes open on my calendar for a conversation, whether they have questions for me or want me to ask questions of them.
Betsy Jordyn:
Is there anything else you'd like to share about your move into business ownership, your branding process, or what you've learned about success over time — anything I haven't asked about?
Rachelle Stone:
Working with you was genuinely helpful for getting clarity around what my brand looked like and where my lane actually was. I think coaches often come out of training being told, "Pick a niche, find your one specific lane" — but the reality is, you don't have to. My interests have expanded a lot. I do a great deal of executive and leadership coaching now, and I'm Hogan Assessment certified, so that's a growing part of my work too. But burnout remains a real passion, because I've lived it, and I love that work.
I've built a career around a life I actually love living, and my advice to anyone thinking about their own path is: don't worry about the career piece first. Envision what you want your life to look like — how you want to live it, where you want to be. Really visualize and paint that picture, because that becomes the glimmer you're chasing, the thing that makes it worth rethinking your work around the life you actually want. Flip the script on yourself — because most of us are living out scripts that were never really ours to begin with.
Betsy Jordyn:
One quick reframe on what you just said — I think "glimmer" might actually be more accurate than "clear picture." It's less like you had the whole picture from the start, and more like you had a glimmer, and then you followed the clues — your values, your strengths — until the fuller picture came into focus. You didn't start with the complete picture; you had a glimmer, and then all these clues: your passion was burnout, your strength was coaching. You followed the breadcrumbs to the glimmer, and once you got there, the whole picture came together.
Rachelle Stone:
But you can't see the glimmers if you're wearing blinders.
Betsy Jordyn:
Right — if you're still listening to all the external noise.
Rachelle Stone:
Exactly. Getting into nature, shutting off the noise, sitting in a museum staring at a painting — that gives you access. Go to the Grand Canyon, look up at the Milky Way, the Northern Lights — that's awe. Something bigger and greater than yourself. It helps you tap into your own glimmers, gets you out of your amygdala and into a bigger-picture, more expansive, more creative way of being. That's where the real growth happens.
Betsy Jordyn:
I think you and I could talk for a long, long time.
Thank you so, so much for being on the show, Rachelle. This was amazing — I loved every minute of it. If you're a coach in Central Florida, I highly recommend connecting with Rachelle and joining ICF Central Florida. And if you're an OD consultant, we have other groups too, though I'm partial to promoting this one. Of course, if you're interested in working with me on your own branding, you know where to find me.
If you enjoyed the show and want more episodes like this — going deep on the Where Are They Now series and beyond — please subscribe, and rate and review so more people can find the show. Until next time, thank you all so much for listening.
