Part 1: Not All Communities Can Support Your Aspirations

Hi friends,

Welcome back to My Business Baby - it’s been a while! My Business Baby is written to highlight the efforts it takes to grow and nurture an early stage business into maturity while also making sure women know that they have the right to succeed in any way they want this world, whether that be family building, community building, culture building, or business building, and all the tools to do that, well… it’s our business, baby.

• Recap about me here or here, I’m building this.

• & now channeling thoughts into this newsletter (the one you’re reading)

  • Feel free to forward to a friend who can sign up here

• This edition is heavily inspired by:

  • ~The Birken~

• Suggested soundtrack for this edition: Go Baby - Justin Bieber - an ode to his ambitious partner, Hailey Bieber who recently sold her company for $1B.

Shifting to an ambitious mindset forces you to strategize, pull together resources, and manifest with unprecedented focus. As a result, people see your progress and take you seriously—especially important for women whose goals are routinely dismissed as superfluous daydreams. Yet women face a peculiar double bind: mocked for being aspirational, punished for being ambitious. Supporting ambitious women isn't charity—it's strategy.

A few weeks ago, I found myself scrolling through Substack's quieter corners—those thoughtful communities devoted to textiles and emerging designers. These spaces feel refreshingly different from the usual fashion discourse. Members discuss "small batch" creators with compelling origin stories, not the latest Bottega or YSL drops. The conversation centers on conscious curation: a meaningful accessory paired with a Target white tee, the story behind a fabric choice, the philosophy of a designer working from her studio in Copenhagen, Brazil, India or Thailand.

It's style as intellectual pursuit rather than status performance.

Then, cutting through a soft-spoken discussion about Spanish-leather shoes and Nordic knitwear and wools, someone posted about acquiring a used Birkin bag.

The question lodged itself like a splinter: Why did this bother me so viscerally? Was it simple envy—the sting of wanting something I couldn't afford? Or was it the jarring mismatch between communities? We weren't here to broadcast wealth or chase trends. We were style curators, not logo worshippers.

But my reaction felt deeper, more urgent. Logo worship represents everything I've come to despise about aspirational culture, and the Birkin conversation has become particularly pervasive in my algorithmic feeds—despite the bag's supposed scarcity. Why was this discussion infiltrating every corner of my internet, including spaces explicitly devoted to rejecting such thinking?

The answer revealed itself within seconds.

I've been building, following my plan, pivoting quickly, absorbing feedback and updating my strategy at lightning speed. These aren't the actions of someone lost in distant dreams—they're the daily work of turning an idea into reality. My desire to help women through business is no longer a far-off aspiration; it's become ambitious, actionable, real.

The Birkin, meanwhile, remains purely aspirational. And in this particular Substack community, that aspiration directly undermines the group's ambitious mission to support small designers and cultivate authentic personal style.

Prior to achieving what I have so far in business, I lived in aspiration. The shift to ambition required something I couldn't provide alone: the right advisors to help me see beyond the paralysis of infinite decisions. My team simplified the decision-making process and helped me build forecasts that transformed probable goals into real ones.

Looking back, aspiration had been isolationist—a private fantasy that demanded nothing of the world. Ambition, by contrast, requires collective effort and detailed planning. It means expressing goals publicly, absorbing more rejections than acceptances, and sitting in the conviction to create something meaningful.

The realization hit me ten seconds after reading that Birkin comment: I wouldn't have made it this far without my team.

Ambition demands community. The Birkin conversation offers the opposite—a false altar of artificial scarcity that does nothing to showcase women's collective power or capabilities. Instead, it positions women as supplicants to aspiration, engaging in what feels increasingly voyeuristic: deriving enjoyment from witnessing others' desire for the unattainable.

The placement of that question in our thoughtful designer thread felt particularly telling. The aspiration overshadowed and seemed to dismiss the ambitious work of the creators we'd been celebrating. These designers are building businesses, creating employment, developing sustainable practices. The Birkin, once acquired, becomes primarily about display—wearing success rather than openly sharing the strategy, actions, and collaborative effort that created it.

Where are the viral conversations about women expressing concrete ambitions? Where are the public celebrations of the teams that ambitious women build, rather than performative likes for luxury purchases?

This distinction matters because shifting to an ambitious mindset forces you to strategize, pull together resources, and manifest like none other. As a result, people see your progress and take you seriously—especially crucial for women whose goals are routinely dismissed as superfluous daydreams.

Turning aspirations into reality through ambition is the path less traveled, less straightforward, and met with far more resistance both internally and externally. For women to reach their goals, an extra layer of laser focus and an IDGAF attitude is necessary to win. This doesn't just pay off for them—it usually benefits their families and communities multifold.

But here's what I've learned: we can be ambitious for our own personal happiness too. That might be the hardest step of all when turning aspirations into reality.

Over the next few posts, I'll explore how aspiration and ambition create a particular double bind for women across business, art, and popular culture. The pattern is consistent: society cheers aspirational dreaming while simultaneously undermining the ambitious action required to achieve anything meaningful.

We have a long way to go before we truly support ambitious women rather than simply encouraging them to dream. Learning how to support each other is our business, baby.

If you made it this far… wowza thank you!

Peace and love, 

~Sheila

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