Many people start businesses in search of freedom, flexibility, and a life that feels more aligned than traditional employment. Yet somewhere along the way, they find themselves overwhelmed by responsibility, trapped by their own success, and unable to step away. This post explores how entrepreneurs accidentally create new cages for themselves and why systems, structure, and sustainable business infrastructure are often the missing piece.

The Freedom That Drew Us Into Business

Cages... how often do we accidentally create them for ourselves?

We think we’re escaping one cage, only to realise we’ve carried that exact same feeling with us into the next thing.

My guess is you didn’t get into business because you dreamt of building a business. Actually, many people I know, didn’t even realise that’s what they were doing.

They were drawn in by the allure of freedom.. of a life beyond the conventional route... a way out of suffocating jobs and the soul crushing reality that working for someone else could take away the best years of your life.

Or, they were fuelled by passion. Following the mystical, magical, spiritual, artistic path.

Uncovering gifts. Sharing them. And then discovering people would be willing to pay to receive them.

In the mystic, visionary leadership sense... it’s heart based, mission driven, soul expression. Businesses accidentally born as a byproduct of sharing their magic with the world.. these founders generally don’t even identify with being “entrepreneurs”.

In the entrepreneurial sense... it’s a knowing you were born for more, and obsessively creating a way to escape the stifling reality of the corporate world.

My Own Journey From Corporate Success to Entrepreneurship

When I look back on my own journey, I definitely didn’t dream about starting a business.

I was 9 years into my corporate banking career. I had the picture perfect life on the outside. The 6 figure salary, high flying role, I was winning awards, attending all the fancy functions, travelling a lot.

But then one day it hit me... this is it... for the rest of my life. And in one moment my entire life flashed before my eyes and the illusion shattered.

I wound up on a psychologist’s couch with a depression diagnosis and drugs prescribed.

And I went home and cried. There has got to be more to life. I sat on the prescription, something inside telling me not to fulfil it.

Instead, I took 6 weeks stress leave... and in a moment of scrolling, an answer jumped out of the screen.

Build your dream business. Travel the world and be free. I clicked some buttons, signed up for some training, and within a few months I had quit my job, moved to Bali to live with my mentors, and was building my affiliate business.

No real understanding of business. No idea what I had just opened myself up to.

That business took off. I got wild results, ended up on leaderboards, led a huge team, spoke on stages, jet setted around to luxe marketing retreats, and was making more money than I had in my job.

Buttt as my coach often says, “what’s fast doesn’t last.” and I absolutely learned this the hard way.

1.5 years into that business the company was shut down for fraud. And then began the real journey of learning how to build a business from the ground up.

I’d had a taste of freedom, I sure wasn't about to give it all up.

The Skills I Didn't Realise Were Valuable

Thankfully, what I had learned in that affiliate business was real skills.

Skills a lot of business owners don’t have.

I was taught about sales funnels, and email marketing, and course creation, and branding.

Even though we were selling someone else’s products, the reason our team was so successful, was because we made it our own.

We understood that people were connecting with us, not the company. So we focused on building our personal brands, leading people on a journey, speaking to their desires...

And what I was really good at was the implementation. Even back then, I had a service I provided to all my new members where I would build out their email sequences and funnels and automations.

They had to write their stories, share the copy, give me the branding... but I built the stuff that made it all work together. Everyone got results because we built a replicatable system.

My mentors recognised my skills and had me creating mini courses for our team around email marketing and personal branding and content creation.

The Cage I Built Through Self-Abandonment

The thing I’ve struggled with over the years is not a lack of skills. It’s a lack of seeing the value in what I offer. It just came so naturally to me, I didn’t see what a gift it is.

I’ve been in sooo many circles with people who don’t have a clue about this stuff. Who don’t value this stuff. That I started to lose sight of it myself.

Instead of owning that it’s good that I bring different skills to this world of spirituality and mysticism. I started to downplay and hide my gifts. Berate myself for not being embodied enough, open and liberated enough.. I became fixated on healing and started to feel bad for caring about business.

And that’s when I started to create my new cage.

I convinced myself it’s not spiritual to want to make money and be successful at business. That it’s materialistic and capitalistic, and these things don’t serve anyone.

So I abandoned myself in the name of “healing”. I thought I was coming closer to the truth of who I am, when really I was moving further away... shrinking myself to fit in rooms that didn’t truly understand my drive and passion for business.

In the last few years that’s all been stripped away.

It’s been a lonely time in Perth... but it’s also been a very revealing one.

Showing me all the ways I’ve played small. Hidden my gifts. Not shared my services. Because I wanted to belong.

How I had created a different kind of cage that had me feeling even more trapped. Because in my rejection of being seen as a successful business owner, I lost all the things I loved the most.

The freedom. The travel. The creative fire.

And now that I’m about to venture into the world again, I can feel that all coming back.

I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that people will always project their beliefs, see you through the lens of their own conditioning...

Some may see me increasing my rates, holding stronger boundaries around who I work with... and call me money hungry. Some may think I’m being overly capitalistic.

I know my heart. I know what drives me.

I built a business to be free. And I created something that had clients treating me worse than my old employers did. Expecting me to be at their beck and call, being everything for them... while refusing to pay me fairly.

When Business Owners Create Another Cage

Regardless of what drove you to become a business owner... there’s a stage in the journey of most founders where they begin to realise they’ve created an even fancier cage for themselves.

You think... I don’t want to work 40 hours every week for somebody else. So you start a business and hustle for years because that’s what you’ve been led you have to do to get results.

You show up with passion and devotion because you know what you have to offer is going to transform people’s lives. But then you discover all the other hats you have to where to keep the dream alive.

Suddenly you’ve gone from healer, therapist, facilitator, coach... to marketer, sales person, operations manager, and bookkeeper. And your burning out trying to hold it all.

The Low-Pricing Trap

You think keeping your rates low makes you a moral and good person. That being accessible to everyone is the key.

Meanwhile you’re about to snap because the only way to sustain yourself is to keep working harder, bring in more clients, do more more more...

The Team-Will-Save-Me Trap

And then you think the answer is to outsource. So you hire team members to alleviate some of the day to day pressure.

But then it’s putting more of a strain on your already stretched income. And the person who was meant to help you, needs answers and decisions.

The Everything-Depends-On-Me Trap

You’ve got more responsibility... and more stress. And still less time to do the things you actually love.

Everything depends on you and your creative fire is gone. You spend all your energy on exhausting daily firefighting and admin, rather than focusing on the high-level strategic vision you actually care about.

It was never meant to be like this.

Why Systems Create Freedom

The way out isn’t more hustle, and it isn’t disappearing into healing until the business slowly dies. The cage doesn’t open because you finally worked hard enough, or finally became spiritual enough to stop caring about money.

It opens when you build something underneath you that can hold the weight.

Systems. Structure. Infrastructure that lets your gifts move through the world without it being entirely dependent on your body, your time, your constant availability.

That’s the work I do.

I lived the version without systems, and I know what it costs.

If you're in that stage right now — burnt out, overextended, wondering how the dream got so heavy — that's exactly where a Systems Diagnostic comes in.