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Work Addiction Looks Like Success—Until It Costs You Who You Are

Work addiction doesn’t arrive as a crisis.
It builds through competence, trust, and responsibility.

It receives praise. You are rewarded for it.

You deliver more.
You take on more.
More people rely on you.

Over time, the work expands to fill more of your life. The trade happens in small increments. Stepping away starts to feel unavailable, not because something is wrong, but because too much depends on you. Gradually, who you are becomes defined by who you are at work. And your personal life is in the way of you working more.

In this episode of The Business Growth Architect Show: Founders of the Future, Beate Chelette speaks with Traci DeForge about work addiction as a leadership pattern that develops in plain sight and how to break that cycle.

By 30, Traci was running a rapidly expanding radio operation in a male-dominated industry. She was effective, visible, and carrying increasing responsibility. She was also questioned about how she got there—who she slept with, or whether her father owned the station—pressure that shaped how much she carried and how difficult it became to step back.

Nothing looked broken.
Until it was.

This conversation stays centered on founder awareness.
How responsibility accumulates.
How separation erodes.
How optionality disappears without announcement.
How identity becomes inseparable from performance.

This episode is about what happens when you are the victim of your own success because it removes your ability to step away from it.

Today, Traci DeForge helps leaders find and trust their voice through podcasting. Drawing on decades in high-pressure media and leadership roles, she supports founders and executives in translating lived experience into meaningful conversations that reflect both their work and who they are.

Follow Traci and learn more about her work:

• Website: https://produceyourpodcast.com
• LinkedIn: Traci DeForge

#Founders #Leadership #WorkAddiction #Responsibility
#FounderAwareness #BuildToLast #HumanCenteredLeadership

Other Resources Mentioned:

Instagram | Facebook | YouTube

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Does it always have to come to a full rock-bottom burnout before our purpose can emerge? This episode matters now because a new generation of founders is pushing back against hustle culture while still wanting meaningful work, financial success, and a life they actually enjoy. If you feel the pull between your ambition and the reality of wanting a balanced life, this conversation offers insight into how purpose is found and how you might side step the mess all together.

In this episode, I speak with Dylan Clayton Bost. He had it all:

The business is established.
The lifestyle reflects achievement.
The pace keeps accelerating.

Dylan built a successful agency and lived the version of success he believed he was working toward. He did what he was told. Prove your value with work. Over time, the pressure and responsibility required to sustain it led to burnout and disorientation, forcing him to burn it all down and redesign what kind of future he wanted to live. For himself and his family. Balance, quality of life, the whole nine yards.

This conversation follows Dylan through that turning point and into the work of finding purpose. He shares how questioning his assumptions about success, work, and identity opened space to design a life and business that felt aligned rather than performative. Purpose emerged through experience, through boundaries, and through deciding what was no longer worth sacrificing.

We talk about whether burnout has to be the doorway. Whether purpose can be found earlier. And what founders can notice before exhaustion becomes the signal. Dylan reflects on what he wishes he had seen sooner and how stepping away from hustle-driven definitions of success changed how he built, chose, and lived.

If this conversation resonates, share it with someone who’s questioning the pace they’re running at—or let me know what it stirred for you.

🎧 Listen to the full episode and reflect on what you’re building—and whether it still fits.

Resources Mentioned:

Website | Website | Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn | Podcast

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Rock bottom is dramatic. It’s embarrassing, disorienting, and painful. For many founders, it becomes the origin story they try to hide while pushing themselves to move forward.

In this episode of The Business Growth Architect Show: Founders of the Future, Beate Chelette speaks with Jason Clark about intentional suffering, the law of polarity, and why business growth moves in cycles.

At 26, Jason was homeless, divorced, coming off heavy psychedelic use, living in a tent in Alaska, and experiencing panic attacks. That period reshaped how he relates to responsibility, discipline, and choice under pressure.

Jason explains how this internal shift informed the way he built his company—how he approached money, clients, decision-making, and leadership. Over time, these choices supported the growth of a multimillion-dollar business and a successful merger that expanded capacity, stability, and opportunity.

This conversation stays centered on founder awareness. How leaders experience uncertainty. How they prepare during expansion. How they relate to contraction without personalizing it. And how understanding polarity changes what gets built and sustained.

Listen and notice where you are in the cycle.

Resources Mentioned:

Website | LinkedIn

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If you’ve done everything “right” yet still feel stuck, this reframes how your words drive behavior and culture by shifting attention to the present.

We often don’t realize how often our questions point backward. That moment when something goes wrong and the first words are, “Why is this happening?” You sift through past details, replay conversations in your head, and feel the pull of self-judgment. The rest of the day goes to rehashing.

Over time, the loop shows up as hesitation, slower calls, extra checking. Energy shifts to second-guessing. Decisions sit. Confidence drops.

On the Business Growth Architect Show: Founders of the Future, I sit with Blair Dunkley as he shares his trigger moments that cracked and remade his inner stance: his mother being refused a $200 budget to throw a tea party for her patients, his father’s 14‑year coma, and later his own health challenges. We examine how language patterns direct behavior, how acceptance can loosen the grip of pain, and how turning toward present choice shifts what becomes possible. It’s an inquiry into awareness and responsibility

He identifies the “why-hole” and what changed in his understanding of language and behavior to change thousands of lives following his mind models.. Blair has seen these patterns up close for years under pressure. He watches how words shape behavior until the structure is clear.

Here are the five key takeaways from this episode:

• Why true “why” questions are past-based and immobilizing
• The two questions that restore your own agency in minutes
• Behaviors lead belief: how to build confidence with evidence
• The Three E’s: Effective vs Ineffective, External vs Internal, Evaluation vs Judgment
• State shifts that work: acceptance, posture, and perspective

Join the conversation because when your pressure keeps stacking this loop burns time and attention. The way we speak to ourselves under stress drives how we lead. Are we staying in the past frame, or are we ready to face the present without more reasons?

Find out more about Blair on on blairdunkley.com and find his free resource: The Three E’s ebook + 80-minute masterclass.

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AI is everywhere. And there is real fear..

Fear of being replaced, fear of machines taking over, fear of losing entire job segments. and the fear of losing self, our ability to critically think and what our place in this world is now that something so super smart is taking over.

Because when something can speak like you… think like you… mirror your voice and your worldview… a very critical question emerges: Does AI have a soul?

This episode does not focus on productivity. Rather it is about this new identity. In this episode of The Business Growth Architect Show: Founders of the Future, I sit down with Stephanie Sylvester of Avatar Buddy to explore digital twins, therapeutic AI, and why the future of business with AI isn’t just about optimizing—but about humanizing our processes with AI.

This episode is for you if you:

• Know you're here to build something bigger than yourself
• Believe AI can serve humanity—but only if it stays connected to the soul
• Are searching for a way to scale impact without losing your voice
• Want to design business systems that honor your values
• Feel called to bring spirituality into tech—and tech into service
• Have ever wondered how to turn your lived experience into a replicable solution

If you’ve been using AI like a tool, this conversation may change how you see it forever.

👉 Listen the full episode
🔔 Subscribe for more conversations on building businesses that don’t break the people who are building them
🌐Learn more about Stephanie + Avatar Buddy: https://avatarbuddy.co/

Resources Mentioned:

Website | LinkedIn

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A year after everything burned, the pain hasn’t softened.
It’s still back-breaking.
Still soul-stealing.
And there’s a piece of me that will never come back.

This episode is not about moving on.
It’s a one-year-later reflection on loss, identity, and what leadership looks like when nothing is restored—only revealed.

In this solo episode of The Business Growth Architect Show: Founders of the Future, I share what the last year has asked of me—personally, professionally, and spiritually.

After losing my home, my office, and everything I owned in the Palisades Fire, I was forced to sit with questions I could no longer avoid. Not just about grief, but about identity. About what it really costs to build a life and a business inside systems that reward performance while quietly draining the person doing the work.

This episode explores what happens when external success continues to function, but internal alignment begins to fail. When burnout, health issues, and fractured relationships become the real price of “making it.”

I speak openly about surrender, identity shifts, and why spirituality isn’t separate from strategy—it shapes what survives. I share why redesigning your life is different from repeating the damage, and why alignment has to show up in practice, not just intention.

This episode is for you if you:

• Feel successful on the outside but disconnected on the inside
• Are questioning the cost of the life you’ve built
• Sense the old way of doing business no longer fits
• Are in a transition you didn’t choose—but can’t ignore
• Know something has to change, even if you don’t yet know what
  
  

If you’re standing in that in-between space—between who you were and who you’re becoming—this episode doesn’t offer answers. It offers honesty.

👉 Listen the full episode
🔔 Subscribe for more conversations on building businesses that don’t break the people building them
🌐 Learn more at UncoverySession.com

Resources Mentioned:

Website | LinkedIn | Instagram | YouTube | TikTok | Podcast | Substack

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What do you do when the life you built disappears overnight?

In this episode of The Business Growth Architect Show: Founders of the Future, Michele Novack shares the moment her career—and identity—came to a full stop.

After 30 years in the same industry, and now in her 50s, Michelle received the call no one is prepared for. The kind that ends a career in minutes and quietly dismantles the story you’ve been telling yourself about your value, your security, and your future.

Michelle didn’t have a backup plan.

What she had was fear, grief, and a question she could no longer avoid: Who am I without this?

This conversation explores what happens when your identity collapses and certainty is stripped away. Michelle’s story is not the pushed-harder-and-now -I-am-back story. Rather it’s the brutal honesty about surrender, confronting subconscious patterns, and choosing self-trust when there are no guarantees.

This episode is for anyone who is asking themselves - what now?

👉 Listen the full episode
🌐 Learn more about Michelle Novak and her work
🔔 Follow me for more conversations with founders and leaders who are building businesses—and lives—aligned with who they are

Resources Mentioned:

Website | LinkedIn

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SUICIDE WARNING - TRIGGER WARNING

What do you do when you’ve tried everything—and nothing worked?

A note for listeners: this episode includes an honest reflection on a period of deep emotional and spiritual distress, including a moment of asking God to take one’s life. Please take care while listening.

In this episode of The Business Growth Architect Show: Founders of the Future, John Stewart Hill shares the moment his life came to a full stop. At 42, divorced three times, financially depleted, and convinced he had failed, John reached a place of complete surrender. He didn’t have a plan. He didn’t have answers. He only had a question that changed everything as he dealt with a massive heart attack:

Do you want to stay or do you want to go?

This conversation explores how purpose is often revealed after identity collapses—not through striving, but through letting go. John’s story is a powerful reminder that purpose isn’t tied to credentials, success, or certainty. It begins the moment you stop trying to become someone else and allow meaning to meet you where you are.

If you’re questioning your direction, your worth, or why you’re still here—this episode is for you.

👉 Listen the full episode

🌐 Learn more about John’s work: https://thegoodcontractorslist.com
🔔 Follow me for more conversations with founders and leaders who are building businesses—and lives—aligned with who they are.

Resources Mentioned:

Website | Instagram | YouTube | LinkedIn

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