Burnout, Bravery, and the Business of Becoming

Reflections from my Escape Velocity conversation with Traci Schubert Barrett

🎙 Episode Link: Listen now to the full podcast episode →

Every once in a while, I have a conversation that leaves me with an expansive new way to look at things. This episode of Escape Velocity with Traci Schubert Barrett was one of those conversations.

There's a popular story arc out there. Someone walks away from a big career to "find themselves." Maybe they move to a farm. Maybe they start a candle company. And look, no judgment. But that is not what Traci did.

Traci was part of the original team that launched HGTV. She helped turn a wild, untested concept into a billion-dollar media brand. She climbed fast. Led big teams. Built something that from the outside looked like a dream.

But at some point, she realized she was no longer energized by the version of success she had achieved. It looked right. But it didn’t feel right.

And I know that feeling. I think a lot of us do. You build the thing. You get the title. You hit the number. And then you wake up one morning and realize you're exhausted. Not from the work. From the performance of the work. From carrying a version of success that someone else handed you.

Traci didn't burn it all down. She didn't rage-quit. She paused. She started asking better questions. And then she did the thing most people talk about but never actually do. She changed course.

She went back and got a master's in professional psychology. Not as a side hobby. While she was still at HGTV. Because she realized that leading through complexity takes more than strategy. It takes understanding people. Actually understanding them. Not managing them. Not optimizing them. Understanding them.

Now she runs Navigate the Journey, a leadership consulting firm where she works with executive teams and business owners on how to grow with intention. And she wrote the best-selling book What If There’s More? Finding Significance Beyond Success to help others navigate similar shifts and inflection points.

Her work now focuses on helping leaders close the gap between where they are and where they want to be, without losing sight of what matters most. She brings emotional intelligence, strategic insight, and decades of high-level experience into every room she enters.

Redefining success isn’t giving up. It’s leveling up.

“Success is a feeling,” Traci said. “If you feel successful, you are. But if you haven’t defined what success means to you, someone else already has.”

That line stuck with me. Because how many of us are running on definitions we didn't write? How many of us inherited a finish line from our parents, our industry, our culture, and just kept sprinting toward it without ever stopping to ask if it was ours?

Traci’s story isn’t about throwing away ambition. It’s about realigning it with purpose. It’s about replacing someone else’s finish line with your own.

Burnout is not about working too hard.

This is where Traci really nailed something. She made a distinction I think gets lost in the wellness and work/life balance conversations. You can work long hours and feel alive. You can pour yourself into something and come out energized. That's not burnout.

Burnout is misalignment. It's carrying invisible weight. It's performing success instead of experiencing it. It's the gap between what you're doing and what actually matters to you.

Harvard Business Review published a study on this. Burnout is often driven not by workload but by lack of control, lack of community, and lack of meaning. Traci sees it every day in the leaders she coaches. They're not tired from the work. They're tired from the pressure, the fear, and the silence.

And as she put it: business is personal. It always was.

Whatever you feed will grow

This was the idea from our conversation that hit me hardest.

Traci said, "Whatever you feed will grow." Fear. Resentment. Comparison. They will expand if you let them. But so will purpose and trust and creativity and courage.

That's not just a nice thing to say. It's a neurological fact. Our brains strengthen the patterns we repeat. So if your energy is constantly going to anxiety, urgency, the need to prove yourself, those are the things that will run your life.

You can make a different choice. But it starts with paying attention. Actually paying attention. Not hustling through another quarter and hoping you feel better on the other side of it.

The hardest thing she said

"When we stop trusting, we stop leading. We just become managers."

I've been there. I've been in seasons where I gripped everything so tight that I squeezed the life out of it. Where I stopped trusting my team. Where I stopped trusting myself. And I could feel the difference. The energy shifted. The culture shifted. Everything got smaller.

Leadership changes you. The betrayals. The heartbreak. The way you evolve is not through the easy times but through the hard ones. If you do it well, it reveals who you really are. And who you're capable of becoming.

But you have to stay open. You have to keep trusting. And that is not for the faint of heart.

Be ambitious. Just make sure it's yours.

Traci Barrett didn't trash her past. She built on it. She used everything she learned in corporate America to create a second chapter that feels more like her. And now she helps others do the same.

She's not anti-growth. She's pro-alignment.

And if you're someone navigating disruption or reinvention or burnout, her message is simple: you don't have to lose your soul to grow your business. You don't have to sacrifice your values to scale.

You just have to decide what matters. Then build around that.

Want more from Traci?

Pick up her book What If There’s More? and explore her work at NavigateTheJourney.com. Whether you’re leading a company or simply trying to lead your own life with more intention, her insights are worth your time.

And if this episode resonated, share it with someone who might need to hear it. Chances are, they’re carrying more than they’re letting on.

Because the truth is, many of us are not looking to escape success.

We’re just ready to define it on our own terms.