100 F*cking Episodes

Welcome back to She Wears the Pants — the place where high-growth women come to build companies that match their calling.

I'm your host, Ashley Deland.

Listen my friends - today is a special one, because this is episode one hundred.

I want to sit in that for a second with you, because I have been looking forward to hitting this milestone with you.

One hundred episodes. One hundred times I've sat down with this microphone and opened up a conversation with you. And when I started, I had no idea if anyone would even be on the other side of it.

So before anything else, I want to say truly thank you.

Whether this is your first episode or your hundredth, the fact that you choose to spend this time with me is something I will never take lightly.

It's sacred to me. Because every time you press play, we get to connect, and that connection is the whole reason this show exists.

So today I don't really want to give you a strategy or bring on a guest, I want to honour all this time that we’ve spent together by telling you the truth about why She Wears the Pants exists in the first place — because the reason I started it a hundred episodes ago is the same reason I'm still here today serving you.

So let me take you back.

When I first thought about starting this podcast, it wasn't because I wanted another platform or another thing to manage.

It was because I was done hiding and I wanted to tell my story.

And when I say “tell my story”, it’s not the polished, professional bio that hangs out on my website, it’s the real Ashley and all her past trauma’s, hardships and resilience battles that make me who I am - and You who You are.

For a while at the beginning of building businesses, I had been hiding behind the strategy. Behind the marketing tactics, the highlight reel, the version of me that looked like she had it all figured out. To this day I say, that I am a product of my own marketing - but it came to a point where I just got tired of performing and acting the way that I thought successful women were portrayed and kept diluting my personality and trucker mouth - until one day I was like “wait, why can’t I be successful and also be my crazy, swearing self?”

I wanted to step fully into my truth and break free from all of that pressure to appear a certain way.

And beyond just that, I wanted to create a space where other women could do the same. Where we could be raw with one another. And actually learn from each other's real stories instead of going on socials and seeing these soundbites of other peoples curated shit and then wondering if we were cut out for this journey.

Because entrepreneurship is a wild, beautiful, brutal ride. And there are seasons in it where you look around and you wonder, am I doing this right? Am I even cut out for this? And in those moments, the loneliest thing in the world is to feel like you're the only one going through it.

I wanted She Wears the Pants to be the place you land in those moments.

A place where you can tune in and hear another woman say, I've been there too, I know that brutal lesson - I'm on the other side of it and let me share what I've learned with you.

I wanted it to feel like you’re sitting in a room full of sisters. Some of them a few steps ahead of you, some of them a few steps behind, all of them building something very real.

I wanted to create a place where you come not just to be educated, but to feel really seen. To feel understood. To feel like you belong to something bigger than just yourself.

That's the heartbeat this whole thing was built on. Sharing our truths, and forming a sisterhood for the women who were craving more.

And now, a hundred episodes later, I get to look back at what we've actually built together, and it honestly moves me.

We have had some absolutely phenomenal women sit down in these conversations. Allie Webb, the founder of Drybar, who built an entire industry-changing empire. Monica Yates. Olivia Fernie. Carrie Colbert. Rebecca Cafaro.

Powerhouse after powerhouse, women who came on this show and shared the real version of themselves, their lessons and journeys.

And something that you don't know - when I prep the guests right before I hit play, I always say to them “my listeners are the real deal, they want to hear the truth about building businesses at your level so be as transparent, raw and open as you can.” and they have certainly delivered.

And you know, we've also gone just as deep in the solo episodes, the ones where it was just you and me, where I laid my own story, advice, experiences out on the table and just served it from the soul.

This really has been a journey of self-discovery, for everyone involved - And honestly the response has humbled me.

We've now been downloaded in over sixty-seven countries. There are women on the other side of the world, in seasons I'll never know about, who press play and let this show be part of their day. I don't have words big enough for what that means to me. I feel so deeply honored and so blessed, because I know how precious your time is.

To this day, I get messages about episodes that landed with you all and truly I feel like the luckiest person alive to be able to do what I do and have such incredible, phenomenal and talented women like you tune in. Sharing this time with you is a true highlight for me.

And here's what all of this has taught me, over two years of building and a hundred episodes later.

The truth is the most magnetic. Your truth, your authenticity, your rawness — those are the most magnetic things you will ever own.

Every single time I've been the most honest on this show, the most unguarded, the most willing to share the part I was a little afraid to say out loud, those are the episodes that reached the most women.

Some of them up to ten thousand views.

And it was never the polished ones. It was never the performance. Because that is exactly what the world is craving right now — authenticity. People showing up fully as themselves and letting go of that performative state we've all been taught to live in. The performance never moved anyone. The truth moves people, every single time.

So hear me when I say this…

You do not have to perform to belong here, or anywhere. You don't have to have it all figured out. You don't have to be the most impressive person in the room.

You just have to be the most real. Because the real you is the one everyone is already drawn to.

She's the one who builds the deepest relationships. She's the one who builds her brand and her business from a place of love and service. And she's the one who creates the most meaningful, beautiful, lasting life.

She has been in there the whole time, underneath every version of yourself you thought you had to be in order to be accepted. And the moment you let her lead, everything changes. Your work changes. Your relationships change. The way you carry yourself into every room changes. Because there is nothing more powerful, nothing more unforgettable, than a woman who has finally given herself permission to be exactly who she is.

That is what I want for you.

I want you to stop waiting for the perfect version of you to arrive before you let yourself be seen, heard, or step into that next level — because she was never the one we were waiting for. We were always waiting for you. The real you. She's the gift.

And one more thing that I want to remind you of today.

You are never doing this alone. Whatever season you're in, whatever you’re quietly carrying that no one else can see, you are part of a collective of sisters from all over the world who are building, and rising, and stumbling, and failing, and becoming, right alongside you.

The wins you're celebrating, someone here is celebrating them too. The doubt you're sitting in today, someone here knows that exact feeling. You are so much less alone than this journey sometimes makes you feel.

So my sister - You belong here and this is your reminder that you are part of something so much bigger than yourself, bigger than your business, bigger than any single season.

You are part of a sisterhood of women choosing to show up as themselves and build lives that actually mean something.

That’s what we are and that’s what we've built together, a hundred episodes in.

So here's to the truth. To showing up as exactly who you are. To this sisterhood And here's to the next hundred episodes together.

Until next time — keep rising into the woman your calling requires.