Hey! I'd love to hear your thoughts, send me a voice note.

What happens when you achieve everything you were supposed to achieve and still feel completely empty?

For Hema, it took being taken to the ER by ambulance and asking if she would make her 1pm meeting, trekking to Everest base camp, sitting in an IVF transfer room and realizing she did not want kids, and walking away from a thriving company with 90 consultants worldwide before she finally asked herself the one question she had never once asked.

What do I actually want?

Hema is the founder of Recalibrate, a coaching practice built around helping high achieving women get off autopilot and start building lives that are actually aligned with who they are. Not who they were told to be.

In this conversation Ashley and Hema talk about what it looks like to spend 18 years in corporate achieving everything you were supposed to and still feel completely disconnected, what it takes to walk away from a successful business, and what finally happens when you build something that is truly yours.

In this episode:

• Why high achieving women are most likely to end up living a life they never actually chose
• The ambulance moment that should have changed everything and why it did not right away
• How trekking to Everest base camp was the first time Hema truly slowed down
• Why she walked away from a thriving company with 90 consultants worldwide
• The 2021 moment that became the foundation for her entire business
• Why being good at something does not mean you should build a business around it
• How to redefine success on your own terms instead of society's
• What having a 28 day hormonal clock means for how you build
• What Hema would tell herself on day one of entrepreneurship

Whether you are a high achieving woman staring down burnout, considering the leap out of corporate, or a founder who built something successful and is not sure it is the right thing, this conversation was made for you.

About Hema: Hema is the founder of Recalibrate, a coaching and consulting practice helping high achieving women get off autopilot and build lives aligned with who they truly are. With 18 years in corporate HR across tech, biotech, and fintech startups and the experience of building and selling her own company, Hema brings a deeply personal and practical approach to helping women redefine success on their own terms.

Connect With Hema:

Website: www.hemacrockett.com

Substack: www.hemacrockett.substack.com

Email: hema@hemacrockett.com

Intro Call: www.intro.co/hemacrockett

About Ponder With Ashley: Ponder With Ashley is a business growth podcast and YouTube channel for founders, consultants, and small business owners who are building from the ground up. Every week Ashley drops Pondering Prompts to help you move your business forward, Pondering Lessons from real experience, and honest founder interviews from people who are in the fight right now. No highlight reels. No guru tactics. Just real conversations and practical lessons worth pondering.

New episodes every week. Subscribe so you never miss one.

Connect with Ashley:

YouTube: youtube.com/@ponderwithashley

Website: ponderthisconsulting.com

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ashley-waddington

Hey! I'd love to hear your thoughts, send me a voice note.

If you have been listening to Ponder With Ashley for the founder interviews, welcome to something new.

This is the first Pondering Prompt on the podcast. Every week Ashley drops a short focused question designed to help you move your business forward. These prompts are inspired by questions she is asking herself as she builds and they are the same prompts that have been running on the YouTube channel every week. Now they are here too so you can take them with you wherever you listen.

This week's prompt is an uncomfortable one.

Are you actively growing your network or are you secretly hoping that people will find you?

Content alone is not a network growth strategy (at least not in the beginning). Most founders post once or twice, go to a few networking events, send a handful of emails, and then wonder why business is not showing up on their doorstep. Building an inbound engine takes time, consistency, and a lot of reps. In the meantime you need to be actively adding new people to your network and nurturing those connections with intention.

Going viral will not save you either. There are founders who have had viral moments that generated zero business because the people who saw that content were not their buyers. The right audience is built intentionally not accidentally.

This week take two minutes and get honest. Are you actively adding new people into your sphere of influence? If not, what is one thing you can do this week to change that?

In this episode:

• Why hoping people will find you is not a growth strategy
• Why most founders underestimate how long it takes to build a real inbound engine
• Why going viral does not always translate into business
• What one action this week could immediately expand your sphere of influence

New Pondering Prompts drop every week alongside founder interviews and Pondering Lessons. Subscribe so you never miss one.

Connect with Ashley:

Website: ponderthisconsulting.com

YouTube: youtube.com/@ponderwithashley

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ashley-waddington

TikTok: @ponderwithashley

Instagram: @ponderthisconsulting

X: @ponderwithash

Hey! I'd love to hear your thoughts, send me a voice note.

What do you do when you spend 8 months building something and nobody pays for it?

For Kyle, the answer was to listen more carefully to what his market was actually asking for and start over. In this honest and practical conversation, Ashley sits down with Kyle Bowen, the founder of a leadership development consulting firm, to talk about what it actually looks like to pivot your entire business model, price your services in a way that communicates real value, and keep going through the emotional roller coaster of the first few years of entrepreneurship.

Kyle spent 6 years doing HR and leadership development at Chick-fil-A where he built a 10 week leadership program from scratch, created a mentorship system for every employee on staff including 16-year-olds in the drive-thru, and watched retention improve by 20% and turnover drop by 33%. Now he helps small businesses build the leadership culture they need to actually grow.

This is the kind of conversation that does not happen enough in entrepreneurship spaces. No highlight reel. No overnight success story. Just a founder who is a year and a half in, figuring it out in real time, and willing to share what it actually looks like.

What You Will Hear in This Episode:

• Why Kyle spent 8 months building a leadership platform that nobody ended up paying for and what he learned from the experience
• How one honest conversation with a client who was leaving completely changed the direction of his entire business
• Why people enthusiastically saying yes to your idea means absolutely nothing until money actually changes hands
• The pricing mistake that almost cost Kyle clients before he even got started and how he fixed it
• What the emotional roller coaster of founder led sales feels like when you have ten people in your pipeline and none of them are moving
• How Kyle built a mentorship program at Chick-fil-A that improved retention by 20% and cut turnover by 33%
• Why getting advice from founders who are one to three years in is sometimes more important than advice from someone 20 years in who has forgotten what the hard part actually felt like
• What Kyle would tell himself on day one if he could go back

About Kyle: Kyle is the founder of Hourglass Leadership, a leadership development consulting firm that helps small business leadership teams develop the clarity, accountability, and skills they need to actually lead. With a background in HR and leadership development at Chick-fil-A, Kyle brings a practical, people-first approach to building leadership cultures that drive real business results.

Connect With Kyle: www.hourglass-leadership.com

About Ponder With Ashley: Ponder With Ashley is a business growth channel and podcast for founders, consultants, and small business owners who are building from the ground up. Every week Ashley drops Pondering Prompts to help you move your business forward, Pondering Lessons from real experience, and honest founder interviews from people who are in the fight right now. No highlight reels. No guru tactics. Just real conversations and practical lessons worth pondering.

Subscribe and Connect:

YouTube: youtube.com/@ponderwithashley

Website: ponderthisconsulting.com

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ashley-waddington