For most of my life, I did everything I thought was right. I followed the blueprint society handed me and checked all the boxes along the way. I went to college, earned multiple degrees, including one in business and doctorate in transformational leadership.  As a life-long over achiever, I poured everything into my career, climbed the corporate ladder, and built the life I was supposed to want. On paper, it looked amazing.

But inside? I was exhausted, overextended, and extremely stressed.  I was quietly unhappy with the life I had built for myself, but too embarrassed to tell anyone. It started as a pit in my stomach I couldn’t explain. I wanted to achieve more, but felt guilty for it.  Wanting more made me feel ungrateful for what I had. It was confusing to navigate. What did someone like me have to complain about anyway? How could I have achieved everything I thought I wanted, but my life didn’t feel the way I thought it would?

I woke up one day with that same unexplainable pit in my stomach. As I lay staring blankly at my ceiling fan, grumbling about getting out of bed, I stretched my arms and legs fully with a loud sigh, and it hit me. A tornado-like swirl of thoughts came rushing in:

There has to be more to life than this.  I’ve sacrificed so much of myself to achieve what I thought would make me whole and it didn’t.  I’m not willing to do it anymore. Now, it’s my turn. I get one life and from here on I’m making the most of every f*cking moment. No more waiting for the right time, because there is no right time. I want to wake up excited to be alive. I want to feel wildly in love with my life every single day. Can you imagine what that would feel like? That would be unbelievable? Ok. Sold! That’s what I want. But one quick question…how do I get that? And follow-up question: Does it even exist?

I don’t know if it was sheer determination, delusion, or a blend of both, but I decided I was going to prove I could have it all. Success. Freedom. Happiness. Fulfillment. I was done compromising. That was the day I went all in on me, and everything changed.

I had been building my business behind the scenes for some time, but on that day, I made it my top priority. This was the area that would bring me the success, freedom, happiness, and fulfillment I had been searching for. I had read thousands of books on business and learned countless strategies from successful entrepreneurs throughout my schooling and career.  I started implementing components of each business strategy more intentionally and I quickly gained momentum. My business made me feel more alive than I had ever felt in my entire life. I thought if I kept focusing on the success of my business that the “feeling” I was searching for (freedom, happiness, and fulfillment) would automatically follow.  I was energized by creating something that was completely mine, so I kept pushing.  Things were going well, but eventually I found myself repeating the old patterns of typical high-achieving women. I was once again sacrificing my life for my career, missing out on moments with loved ones and continuing to put things on hold until “business slowed down.” The time and energy I was putting into my business wasn’t sustainable. I was going to burn out again.

I was working crazy hours, living and breathing my business. My social life was nonexistent. I had built a business meant to give me freedom to enjoy life, but instead, I had built myself a new job.  I didn’t own a business.  My business owned me. Yes, I garnered more success and in turn, felt happier about what I had built, but two vital parts were still missing: freedom and fulfillment.  

On a cold winter evening, I was walking my rescue dog, Gloria on the beach, and a familiar voice from my past started shouting in my ear:

“It doesn’t matter what you do or how hard you try. It’s not going to happen! Everything you’ve done and all the sacrifices you’ve made will be for nothing! You’re going to fail! This is the best it’ll ever be so stop trying! You don’t deserve that level of success!  What makes you think you can have it all anyway? Who do you think you are? What makes you so special?”

I immediately stopped.  “Whoa! Excuse me? Who the f*ck does this b*tch think she is talking to me like that?”  Spoiler alert: that familiar voice…it was me.  It was the part of me that intrinsically drove me to be a high-achiever.  The part I had been too ashamed to let anyone see. The “wounded” part of me.  And even though I wouldn’t have identified this part of me as “wounded” or “traumatized,” there she was on the beach with me, shouting my biggest fear that I had secretly carried all along, but never wanting to admit. 

“You’re NOT enough! YOU’LL NEVER BE ENOUGH!”

I stopped, collapsed on my knees, and cried. Gloria nudged me with her nose. I shook my head, trying to dismiss the voice, ugly crying into the overcast sky, wondering if the voice was right. That unexplainable pit in my stomach returned. Except this time, I could name it. It was “disconnection.” I was disconnected from the woman I was supposed to become and from the life I was destined to lead. Strength had always meant proving I can do it all myself, but in that moment I realized, real strength comes from knowing when to get the support you need so you don’t have to do everything alone.  Entrepreneurship isn’t just about building a business.  It’s about who you become in the process.  Every challenge, every setback, every win is shaping you into the person capable of leading at the next level.  And if I wanted to go to the next level, something needed to change.

I had never been someone who believed in therapy or diving into the past. Whatever I had been through, didn’t need to be dredged back up. I handled it and I was over it. I also wasn’t bought into the whole spiritual “woo woo” culture either. But I knew something had to give if I wanted a different outcome.  If I wanted to become the woman I knew I could be, I couldn’t keep doing the same things I’d always done. Which also meant that I needed to accept a truth about myself.  I begrudgingly accepted that I might be the problem.  And then I did what any determined, stubborn, successful, high-achieving woman would do when there’s a problem: I fixed it.

I explored EMDR, energetic work, subconscious reprogramming, neuroscience, neuroplasticity, quantum physics, and more. To my relief, I discovered there wasn’t a problem with me.  There were just internal patterns I wasn’t aware of, unrealized beliefs, buried fears, and unexamined habits that were quietly shaping every decision I made. I studied the ego, which is the self we think we are, and the subconscious, which is where our experiences, patterns, and traumas are stored. Most leaders do not realize the ego and subconscious are in constant conversation.  They are at the core of every leadership style.  Think of it like this: the ego feels like it is driving the car, but the subconscious is the GPS on mute, silently leading the way.

Once I understood this and learned to identify and shift those patterns, every aspect my life shifted too. My leadership expanded. My business became lighter. My decisions were clearer. I was able to cut 6 hours out of my work week each week (equivalent to 8 40-hr work weeks/year) which gave me more time to spend on things that truly mattered. I was working less, yet my wealth continued to multiply (my total sales grew 165% that year). My life became expansive without added effort.  Each time I’d dive deeper inward, I would emerge with more love for myself, clarity about my purpose, and trust in my intuition. The synergy and balance in my life was profound. I found more success, happiness, fulfillment, and freedom than I ever imagined.  I had gone from “There’s got to be more in life than this” to “I can’t believe I get to live this life!”

And my calling, my higher purpose, has been guiding Fortune 500 executives, female founders, entrepreneurs, and women in business through the same journey into a new era of leadership. I help them unlock what has been quietly running the show all along, so they can step fully into their power, into a life where success, freedom, happiness, and fulfillment exist in perfect harmony.  I mean isn’t this why you became an entrepreneur to begin with?  

Over time, I blended and perfected what I learned into what is now the signature Life & Luxe Method: a proven framework that combines soul-led leadership, money psychology, energetic mastery and business strategy for women whose success has outgrown the identity that created it. Life & Luxe exists because business strategy alone is not enough at this level. High-achieving women don’t need more tactics, they need a new way of leading that grows with who they are becoming.

I share my story with you, because I know what it feels like to feel disconnected from the life you were meant to live. I can promise you this: when you do the inner work, your life changes in ways that feel almost impossible until you experience them. I am living proof of this, and I cannot wait to guide you through the same evolution. It’s difficult to describe the transformation when there’s no words that even come close or do it justice. So I won’t even try to tell you, but what I can do…is show you.  Together, we’ll craft a personalized leadership style for your life to be effortless, expansive, and unbelievably extraordinary.

With love and gratitude,

DeAira