Hey, I’m Ebony!
For most of 2023, I was the sole operations hire for a 15-year-old nonprofit — the first person in the organization's history to hold that title, which sounds impressive until you realize I inherited the job of replacing parts of a rusted 15-year-old plane while flying it in mid-air. No systems, no documentation, just one very overwhelmed CEO. I built the infrastructure from scratch — systems, SOPs, meetings — work that helped 5,000 students get free tablets during the digital divide, while I also kept critical funds flowing to nearly 4,000 community organizers nationwide.
I'm not going to pretend I regret being good at this. I am good at this. What I regret is not clocking what it was costing me until my body said "nope."
So I did the responsible thing you do when your body can't move forward anymore: booked a one-way ticket to Southeast Asia, then New Zealand. Objectively gorgeous. Also — plot twist — my body had no idea what to do with the newfound time I once poured into work.
Turns out you can leave the job and still be running the same program in your nervous system. I'd spent so long in survival mode that stillness didn't feel restful — it felt like a threat. I sat on a beach people fly across the world to relax on, and some part of my brain kept waiting for the next crisis. Nobody talks about that part.
That's when the real question showed up: not "how do I manage my time better," but "why is it so hard for me to rest?"
Burnout Isn't a Discipline Problem. It's a Design Problem.
I live with PMDD, which means my capacity has never been a flat line — it's a seasonal event. Some weeks I have real bandwidth. Some weeks I don't, and no amount of willpower changes that. For years I treated the low weeks as a character flaw. What actually shifted things was treating it as data about how energy moves. Once I could see that in my own life, I couldn't unsee it in every woman practice owner I talked with.
As women, our capacity fluctuates for a hundred different reasons nobody accounts for in a standard business model — motherhood, endometriosis, PCOS, you get the point. The exhaustion wasn't a discipline problem — it was a design problem.
Operations that optimize for wellbeing and profit
Why Cozy Business Blueprint?
Cozy Business Blueprint closes that gap for people doing meaningful, care-based work who are running themselves into the ground to keep doing it.
We build operational infrastructure around one idea: you don't have to sacrifice your wellbeing for a life of prosperity and ease.
Nobody builds a business on a foundation of one. Mine includes:
Lisa Franklin, my mother, who invested her time and energy into getting this business off the ground and poured into my dreams long before they had a name.
Angeline Atwell, my late grandmother. Without her, I wouldn’t have taken the step that brought me here.
Praha Lamisa, my biggest champion, who placed me with my very first client.
Nicola George, Stephanie Tavares, Dionne Smith, Melen Yemane, and Lily, who helped me refine my practice, kept me going with encouragement and prayers, and never once wavered in their support.