Becoming Impossible to Ignore

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.

Today I want to talk about something that almost every ambitious woman in business experiences at some point and at some level within their journey…and it's that quiet pull to be seen.

Specifically the way it changes how you operate within your business, and the strange things that happen to your brand — and to you — when you both desire it, and then finally stop needing it.

And in true Ashley Deland fashion, I'm going to start by telling you about a version of me that I'm honestly a little embarrassed by — because this is the place I'm the most raw.

And well, it's just you and me, right.

When I first left corporate and started my first business, I really held this energy of proving.

I wanted to prove to myself that I could build a successful business. I wanted to prove to my family that I wasn’t insane for leaving an amazing job - And I wanted to prove to the world that leaving what looked like the obvious path was actually the right decision.

I went to business school. I specialized in marketing. I was working alongside Canada's media mogul and on paper, my career trajectory made perfect sense. It was what you did.

And then I left the rat race.

I walked away from all of it to start my own business.

And that’s when the proving energy really spiked.

And at the time, I don't know if I would have called it proving. I probably would have glazed it over with calling it ambition or masked it as drive. But looking back now, it was definitely proving.

I wanted evidence that I had made the right decision.

So I became very focused on building. Building the business. Building the brand. Building credibility.

My first business was a yoga studio, and I understood marketing well enough to know that there was a large component of visibility that mattered.

I knew there were certain rooms to be in, certain people to collaborate with, certain opportunities that would elevate the brand. Becoming a Lululemon ambassador was one of them. Showing up at events. Sponsorships, strategic partnerships, collaborations. Etc etc.

But looking back I can say that at that point, though, it wasn't really about me being seen. It was more about growing the business and the bigger shift only happened a few businesses later.

When I owned Karmah, my vegan restaurant, I started feeling this pull that was different.

I still wanted to serve people first and foremost. I still wanted to build great businesses. But there was also this desire to be seen - like the proving energy came back.

And if I'm being really honest, I think what I was actually looking for was proof. Proof that I could be successful across multiple industries and that each business I had built actually meant something.

And that energy didn't fade when I eventually scaled and exited Karmah. If anything, it followed me into the next chapter.

Because by the time I became a business advisor, I was no longer just building my own companies — I was building other people’s and that weight felt much heavier.

I remember very clearly being nominated for the Stevie Awards for Canada's Best Female Entrepreneur. There were a few finalists, and Ryan and I flew to New York for the award ceremony.

And I remember sitting there thinking, wow, if I win this...

Like if I win this, this is it. This is the proof. This is the thing that tells me I've made it. I went to business school, I did the corporate dance, built, scaled and exited my own businesses then advised other women how to become successful. This is all I needed…

And then they called my name.

I won.

And honestly, it felt amazing. It felt validating. At that point I was probably six or seven years into entrepreneurship. Things were going really well. And winning felt like confirmation that all of it had been worth it.

And here’s the truth, I probably rode that high for a good week. Maybe two.

But lo and behold, right around that two-week mark, I started to notice something.

That high — the entrepreneurial drug — it started to wear off. And before I knew it, I was already looking for the next big hit.

The next award, the next feature, the next recognition. The next thing that would make me feel validated, successful enough.

And that moment was incredibly interesting to me, because I realized the feeling I was chasing was never going to come from the award itself - because - the moment I got the thing I wanted, I was already looking for the next one.

And that's the thing about chasing visibility through accolades and accreditations and external proof.

Ultimately, it's a leaking bucket. You can pour external validation into it your entire career and never once fill the internal thing you're actually trying to fill.

Here's what I didn't understand while I was inside of it. I thought the chase was just ambition — because it felt like drive, it felt like hunger, like the very thing that was going to carry me to the top.

But now, looking back, it wasn't a runway at all. It was almost a cage. And I couldn't see it, because I was always looking at the next thing to reach for.

I thought I was collecting freedom— proof that I'd made it, permission to finally exhale. What I was actually doing was building a more and more elaborate prison, and handing the keys to a room full of people I'd never even met.

Because from the inside, a cage and an accomplishment can look exactly the same.

And that's when I felt how much that chase had quietly been costing me. For years there had been this low hum running underneath everything I built.

A part of me always managing how it looked. Always asking, underneath all of it, am I impressive enough yet?

And the day that hum finally went quiet, I felt lighter than I had in a decade.

Because here's what was actually on the other side of the chase.

It was never a bigger award. It was permission. The exact permission I'd spent years waiting for someone else to hand me — and then finally just gave to myself.

And when I did, I realized that I had been building it up myself the entire time.

I know the results I get for the women I work with. I know the depth of what happens in the rooms I lead, and in the private conversations.

And once you have that kind of internal proof, the outside stuff just loses its grip on you. You stop performing and instead just feel grounded in your own power.

And this is the part that matters for your brand.

That is the exact moment you become magnetic. Because people can feel the difference between a woman who's trying to convince them she's good, and a woman who simply knows.

The first one is subtly exhausting to be around — you can feel the effort, you can feel the need, you can almost feel her watching your face to see if it's working. The second one has a kind of gravity to her. She isn't chasing the room. The room and all the people inside of it lean toward her.

And the truth I keep coming back to is that I became impossible to ignore the moment I stopped trying to be seen.

So if your brand doesn't feel like it's landing right now, I want to offer you a different diagnosis than the one you're probably reaching for. It might not be your messaging. It might not be your visuals, or your strategy, or how often you're posting. It might be that people can feel you performing — that they can feel the part of you that's still trying to prove something, still gathering evidence that you're allowed to be here.

And I want to be gentle about this, because I know exactly where it comes from. That energy almost never comes from ego. It comes from a woman who's been underestimated, overlooked, made to feel she had to work twice as hard to be taken half as seriously.

So the chase made sense. For a long season, it even moved you forward.

But there's a point where the very thing that drove you becomes the thing that's caging you. And no one is going to tell you when you've reached it. You have to notice the bars yourself.

So if there's one thing I want to leave you with today, it's this.

Stop asking how to get the room to notice you. Start asking what you would build, how you would show up, and honestly, how it might feel to finally breathe — if you had absolutely nothing left to prove.

Because my dear, you have nothing to prove.

You never did.

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