I Read The E-Myth Years Ago—But It Still Slaps Me in the Face

(Especially Now That I'm Building the Thing I Swore I’d Never Touch Again)

I read The E-Myth Revisited over a decade ago.
Back when I was still deep in the post-CrossFit crash.
Back when I swore I’d never coach again.
Back when I had torched the whole damn thing—my body, my business, my passion—and walked away.

Let me back up.

I was coaching CrossFit in 2009, 2010, 2011.
Not just coaching. Living it. Breathing it.
I co-owned and operated one of the first affiliates in Massachusetts.
I programmed the workouts, coached the classes, answered the emails, cleaned the floors, fixed the rowers, taught the on-ramps, ran the business, tracked the payments, and tried to keep it all from imploding.

It was the kind of grind that people romanticize when they don’t know better.
But I do know better now.

Because back then, I didn’t have systems.
I didn’t have boundaries.
I didn’t even know the word “capacity,” let alone how to protect it.
I just kept giving. And giving. And giving.
Until I had nothing left to give.

And when it finally all came crashing down?
I was done.
Done with fitness. Done with coaching. Done with the community I once bled for.

I left the industry. I went back to school.
Studied Neuroscience and Behavior—because I needed something far away from burpees and macros and AMRAPs.
I wanted logic. Rigor. Silence. Structure.
Anything but fitness.

But here’s the thing.
This work—this calling—never left me.

They say your ikigai is the intersection of what you love, what you’re good at, what people will pay you for, and what the world needs.

This is mine.
It’s always been mine.

Coaching, teaching, leading women back to their power—physically, mentally, emotionally.
It’s what I’m built for.

I just couldn’t see it clearly back then because I was trying to do it without any scaffolding.
No business model. No mentorship. No nervous system regulation.
Just passion, grit, and a complete disregard for sustainability.

That’s why The E-Myth still resonates.
Even now—especially now—as I rebuild this thing from the ground up.

Not the way I did at 23.
But with intention.
With structure.
With vision.

With three kids at home, a BSc in Neuroscience in my back pocket, and a decade of athletic maturity, hormonal education, injury, identity crises, postpartum fog, and real-life reflection to pull from.

I’m not the same woman who burned out in that gym a decade ago.
And thank God for that.

I know my patterns now.
I know how seductive technician-mode is.
How good it feels to just do the work instead of build the machine that delivers it.

And I still fall into it sometimes. I still catch myself over-functioning, over-giving, skipping my own workouts, answering messages at 9:45pm “just this once,” because it’s easier to react than restructure.

But I come back to the lesson:
If I want this to last—
If I want to lead something real, raise resilient kids, coach athletes, build Rebel Nutrition & Fitness into what I know it’s meant to be—

Then I have to stop working in the thing and start working on it.

So I write the systems.
I protect my calendar.
I invest in support.
I schedule deep work blocks and keep my phone across the damn house.

Because I’m not trying to rebuild what I lost.
I’m building something I couldn’t build back then—because I didn’t have the tools, the boundaries, or the self-awareness to lead it.

But I do now.

And even when it’s messy, even when it’s humbling, even when I fall into old patterns—I know how to come back.

To structure.
To vision.
To breath.
To boundaries.
To the part of me that knows how to coach, how to lead, how to build—without burning everything down.

The E-Myth gave me language for what I was doing wrong—before I ever had the maturity to fix it.
Now I do.

So if you’re in that season—of growth, of building, of trying to keep your dream from swallowing you whole—let this be a reminder:

You’re allowed to slow down and zoom out.
You’re allowed to build it better this time.
Not from panic.
Not from hustle.
From clarity.
From structure.
From soul.

Because your dream deserves to thrive.
And so do you.