This Wasn't My Plan

Episode 47: Confidence Isn't What You're Missing I want to talk about two words I hear women in leadership use interchangeably ALL THE TIME. Confidence and self-trust. Because they're not the same thing. And I think understanding the difference can completely change how you make decisions, navigate uncertainty, and lead your life. Confidence is believing you can do something. Self-trust is believi...

Guest Episode 13: Hema Dey: Being Great at What You Do Isn't Enough Anymore What happens when you've spent decades building your expertise, but the way people discover and evaluate businesses changes almost overnight? In this episode of This Wasn't My Plan, I sit down with Hema Dey, founder and CEO of Iffel International, to talk about leadership, entrepreneurship, and how AI is changing the way b...

Episode 46: I Went for a Race. I Came Home With Clarity. What happens when you step outside your routine, challenge yourself physically, and spend an entire weekend with people you love? For Ashlee, it meant coming home with more clarity than she expected. In this solo episode of *This Wasn't My Plan*, Ashlee shares five lessons from completing her first Ragnar Bourbon Chase relay in Kentucky. Twe...

Episode 12: Leah Rosser: Translating Your Ideas into Execution Ashlee sits down with Leah Rosser, founder of Out of the Box Ops, to explore her unexpected path from classroom teacher to fractional COO and why growing businesses often have a clarity, ownership, and execution problem. After eight years in teaching, an opportunity from her sister led Leah into operations and HR. Today, she helps serv...

Episode 45: Your Behavior Under Pressure Is Your Leadership Brand Who are you when the pressure rises? It's easy to describe yourself as collaborative, supportive, calm, empowering, or a strong communicator when everything is going according to plan. But your leadership reputation is built in the moments when someone pushes back, an employee makes a mistake, you receive difficult feedback, the num...

Guest Episode 11: Kalebe Easley: You Can't Expect What You Don't Model Ashlee sits down with Kalebe Easley, youth sports performance coach and founder of Prime Evolution Fitness and Sports Performance, to discuss the unexpected path from his dream of playing professional football to coaching young athletes. Academic struggles changed Kalebe’s football trajectory. After returning home, working mult...

Guest Episode 10: Lisa Larter: Decisiveness is a Leadership Responsibility. In this episode, Ashlee sits down with business strategist and entrepreneur Lisa Larter to talk about the decisions, opportunities, and unexpected turns that shaped a career she could not have fully planned. From growing up without a clear picture of what was financially possible, to building businesses, becoming an author...

Episode 44: Confidence Is Calm In this episode, Ashlee challenges the way we typically think about confidence. After a mentor told her that confidence is calm, she began questioning whether moving fast, overexplaining, overperforming, and always having the answer are actually signs of confidence — or sometimes signs that we are still trying to prove ourselves. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN * Why confidence is...

Guest Episode 9: Bree Jeong: Betting on Yourself In this episode, Ashlee sits down with longtime friend Bree Jeong, a hairstylist and hair extension specialist, who shares how she went from working eight to ten hour days without eating or taking breaks to rebuilding her business, and her nervous system, from the ground up. Brie opens up about ripping off the band-aid to niche her business overnigh...

Episode 43: The Most Expensive Problem in Your Business In this episode, Ashlee breaks down the single most costly and least visible problem inside most organizations — communication ambiguity. She explains why it does not show up on a spreadsheet, why even the smartest leaders create it without realizing it, and why fixing it is the highest leverage thing any leader can do for their team right no...

Episode 42: The Longer You Wait, the Harder the Conversation Gets In this episode, Ashlee breaks down one of the most common and costly communication mistakes leaders make — waiting too long to say what needs to be said. She explains why most conversations are not actually difficult because of the topic, why avoidance is a form of enablement, and why clear communication early is one of the most po...

Guest Episode 8: Getting It Done: How Ranarda Jones Built a 35-Person Medicare Consulting Firm Without a Plan In this episode, Ashlee welcomes Ranarda Jones — co-founder and CEO of PSyn, Inc., managed care consultant, Medicare expert, and accidental entrepreneur with 35-plus employees — for one of the most honest, hilarious, and genuinely energizing conversations on This Wasn't My Plan yet. WHAT Y...

Episode 41: Communication Under Pressure Is a Trainable Skill In this episode, Ashlee blends her clinical background with her leadership communication expertise for the first time — breaking down the science behind why we struggle to communicate under pressure, what is actually happening inside the body and brain during high stakes moments, and why the solution is never more confidence. It is more...

Guest Episode 7: From Red Carpets to Healing Rooms: How Ilona Varo Found Her Calling Ashlee welcomes Ilona Varo — licensed marriage and family therapist, psychotherapist, and founder of her private practice and coaching company — for a conversation about identity, resistance, and leading yourself first. Ilona shares her path from entertainment publicist to massage therapist to psychotherapist, and...

Episode 40: The Fastest Way to Lose Credibility as a Leader In this episode, Ashlee celebrates hitting episode 40 and dives straight into one of her core values as a communication expert: the fastest way a leader loses credibility isn't a big scandal, it's the quiet, repeated habit of saying things they don't follow through on. She breaks down why trust is built through behavioral predictability,...

Guest Episode 6: Burnout to Blueprint: How Dr. Jen Bourgeois Built a Business by Healing Herself First In this episode, Ashlee welcomes Dr. Jen Bourgeois — pharmacist, nervous system expert, and founder of Peacefully Rich Coaching and Consulting — for a deeply honest conversation about burnout, identity, and what it actually takes to build a life by design. Jen shares how a decade of high-achievin...

Episode 39: How I Make Big Life Altering Decisions In this episode, Ashlee shares the behavioral based system she has built — not from theory or inspiration, but from real experience — for making big, high stakes decisions with confidence. Inspired by two clients navigating major career crossroads, she walks through the exact five steps she uses herself and with the leaders and founders she coache...

Guest Episode 5: When Fear Means You’re Going the Right Way with Dr. Brooke Stubbs In this episode, Ashlee sits down with longtime friend Dr. Brooke Stubbs, founder of Rooted Femme, a women's concierge medicine practice in Austin, TX. Brooke opens up about the dermatology residency she didn't get, the years of imposter syndrome that followed, and how a string of "failures" (a business that flopped...

Episode 38: Most Leaders Talk Too Much In this episode, Ashlee calls out one of the most common and costly communication habits in leadership — over talking. She breaks down why saying more does not create more clarity, what communication dilution actually costs your team, and how the strongest executive communicators she has ever worked with all share one thing in common: they say less and mean m...

Guest Episode 4: When Success No Longer Fits: Dr. Deepti Gandhi on Reinvention, Midlife & What's Next There comes a moment for many high-achieving women when the life they've worked so hard to build no longer feels aligned. In this episode, Ashlee sits down with Dr. Deepti Gandhi—physician, speaker, and midlife women's health expert—for an honest conversation about what happens when success no...

Episode 37: Learning How to Give Feedback That Builds Trust In this episode, Ashlee breaks down one of the most underrated and undertaught leadership skills — how to give feedback that actually builds trust instead of destroying it. She explains why avoidance is not kindness, why delayed feedback creates defensiveness, and what leaders must do to deliver clear, calm, consistent feedback that moves...

Guest Episode 3: From the Lakers to Bestseller Lists: How Jake Kelfer Turned Books Into a Business Ashlee talks with Jake Kelfer, founder of Big Idea to Bestseller, about what it really takes to write a book, build a business around your expertise, and stop waiting until you feel "qualified enough" to share your message. Jake wrote his first book at 23 while working for the LA Lakers, and has sinc...

Episode 36: The #1 Way to Build Trust on Your Team Is NOT with More Time In this episode, Ashlee challenges one of the biggest myths in leadership, that trust just takes time. Inspired by a conversation with a client who had been waiting a decade for her team to trust each other, Ashlee breaks down exactly what actually builds trust inside organizations, why inconsistent communication destroys it...

Guest Episode 2: Dress for the Leader You're Becoming: How Amanda Weil Uses Style to Transform Confidence and Presence In this episode, Ashlee welcomes Amanda Weil - stylist, soul coach, and founder of Amanda Weil Style, for a conversation that goes far beyond clothing. Together, they explore how personal style becomes a mirror for identity, confidence, and leadership, and why the way we show up e...

Episode 35: How the Best Leaders Speak Under Pressure In this episode, Ashlee breaks down one of her most important topics — how leaders communicate when the stakes are high. She explains why pressure does not create communication breakdowns, it only exposes them, and what leaders must do to stay clear, regulated, and trusted when everything around them feels uncertain. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN Why anyon...