Shamelessly Ambitious I Helping Ambitious Women Prevent Burnout + Create Nervous System First Success in Business, Motherhood, & Life
Shamelessly Ambitious is an honest, grounding, and vulnerable podcast for ambitious, emotionally intelligent women who are done proving themselves, tired of living in constant high-functioning burnout, and craving a life and business that actually feel good. Hosted by Ash McDonald—therapist, nervous-system-first business mentor, and speaker this show blends clinical expertise with lived experience to deliver nervous system tools, embodied strategies, and radical permission so you can expand your capacity, root into emotional steadiness, and build sustainable success that supports your whole life. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, stretched too thin, caught in productivity guilt, or stuck running on stress, this podcast meets you where you are—with therapeutic insights, embodied practices, and heartfelt stories that create real shifts. Whether you’re navigating motherhood, entrepreneurship, or the messy middle of redefining success, each episode helps you slow down, regulate, and return to a felt sense of safety in your body. With over a decade of experience at the intersection of therapy and leadership, Ash pulls back the curtain on what really works—offering grounded guidance you can apply in real life. What you’ll hear: Honest conversations about burnout recovery, nervous system regulation, and redefining success Somatic tools, meditations, and practices that build inner safety and capacity Stories of motherhood, mom-life, ambition, and the courage to create a life and business that feel rich and real If you’re asking the following questions, you’re in the right place: How do I stop tying my worth to productivity? How do I know if I’m experiencing high-functioning burnout and what do I do about it? How do I balance motherhood and leadership without losing myself? How do I calm my body when I feel overwhelmed or overstimulated? This is the podcast for when you’re ready to reclaim peace, expand what you can hold, and create success that doesn’t cost you yourself. Tune in and take the next step toward a regulated, rooted, and deeply fulfilling life.
Episodes
You're all in… you know exactly what you want… you've got the energy, the ideas, the vision but it feels impossible to actually move!? This is not a motivation problem, it's actually a friction problem and there are four specific places it tends to show up with most of my clients.
TOPICS WE EXPLORE
- Vague ideas become paralyzing before you even begin the work
- The capacity trap that no amount of time management can fix
- ...
There's a version of you that only shows up when nobody needs anything from you. This episode is about her… what she knows, what she wants, what she's a little jealous of, && what she has absolutely no shame saying out loud. This is a go for it pep talk, my friend.
This episode is a reminder to get to know yourself a little bit more as I share a completely unedited version of me, (recorded naked in a bed in Rome&helli...
There’s a strategy I’ve been using in my marriage, my parenting, my friendships, and even with myself that gets me more of what I want without requiring anyone else to lose. And somewhere between two days of nonstop conversation in a tiny village outside Barcelona, I realized… technically, it might be manipulation. So let’s talk about it.
TOPICS WE EXPLORE
- The wildly underrated art of letting yourself be ...
I recorded this from my car on the way to a networking event because I couldn't wait. It started as a rough morning with my middle son && turned into the most important realization I've had in a while. The habit that’s making my life harder these days is a perspective problem. && I caught myself teaching my son something I clearly needed to hear myself.
TOPICS WE EXPLORE
- A rough school morning && wha...
This is a follow-up to my last (Episode 208), so make sure you listen to that first if you haven't already. Last week I announced the 90-day challenge to reclaim my edge && this week I'm getting specific: here are the actual rules, the micro-commitments, && what you're going to see from me starting October 1st.
TOPICS WE EXPLORE
- Why I can't decide if I'm done with entrepreneurship while only half participati...
I'm giving myself 90 days to find out what happens when I genuinely start going for it again. This is the formal announcement, the whole messy truth, && the reason I'm coming back to social media for a little bit.
Also… MIXTAPE opens September 21st to waitlisters only. ;)
TOPICS WE EXPLORE
- The slow unraveling nobody notices until it's already happened
- Why slowing down && soft living literally stole my fire
- The...
Last episode I got raw about uncertainty && not having it figured out. This one is the follow-up… because once you admit you've been standing still, the next question is: what does moving actually require? && the honest answer is sometimes it requires doing the shit you don't want to do, whether it feels aligned or not.
TOPICS WE EXPLORE
- Why "does this feel aligned?" can become a very sophisticated excuse
- Th...
I didn't know what I was gonna say when I hit record, truthfully… I'm in a funky season. I'm newly 39, && I'm noticing something I didn't expect: the more I know, the less certain I become. This episode is me processing that out loud.
We're talking about the certainty epidemic, why we buy it, what it's costing us, && what I actually think it means to be a 39-year-old woman who is ambitious as hell && h...
It's my birthday week, I'm turning 39, && I'm coming in with a raw one. This is a full behind-the-scenes Ash Unplugged episode, which means personal updates, business updates, && the thing I've been sitting with lately that I had to say out loud: it's kind of chic to know where you suck.
We're talking about the gaps that actually cost us, why self-awareness is the highest-leverage business skill most people aren't us...
I've talked a lot about burnout, but so has everyone else in this space. I'm starting to think we've been diagnosing the wrong thing, because the women I work with aren't always JUST exhausted. They have capacity, however they seem to be lacking the desire they once had. They're functioning, often even performing well, but they feel flat… uninspired && disconnected from the drive that used to make them insatiable.
Tha...
Welcome to the Grief Series, a collection of conversations about the grief woven throughout our lives with some extraordinary women bringing their raw, vulnerable stories to the mic. I hope you see yourself somewhere in these stories.
…
This episode is for anyone who has watched a business they built go from printing money to something they barely recognize, and had to figure out who they are on the other side of that. My gues...
Welcome to the Grief Series, a collection of conversations about the grief woven throughout our lives with some extraordinary women bringing their raw, vulnerable stories to the mic. I hope you see yourself somewhere in these stories.
…
This episode is for the woman who fought hard to build something she loved, then had a baby && came back to her desk crying because she hated all of it. My guest, Sophia Rose, is a mark...
Welcome to the Grief Series, a collection of conversations about the grief woven throughout our lives with some extraordinary women bringing their raw, vulnerable stories to the mic. I hope you see yourself somewhere in these stories.
…
This episode is for anyone who has ever had to keep showing up while watching someone they love disappear. My guest, Cait Howard, has experienced profound loss while building a business, raisin...
Welcome to the Grief Series, a collection of conversations about the grief woven throughout our lives with some extraordinary women && men bringing their raw, vulnerable stories to the mic. I hope you see yourself somewhere in these stories.
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This is episode 200 and I knew I had to make it count. I brought on my favorite person in the world, my husband Jake, for the most honest conversation we've ever had on record. We wen...
If you've been white-knuckling your way through a season and calling it productivity, this one is going to hit. Sometimes grief isn't about loss… sometimes it's about the story you've been telling yourself so many times it started to feel like fact.
A few weeks into summer, I caught my own brain running a narrative I didn't even realize had taken over. I was ending every day feeling like everything was too much and the issue ...
Welcome to the Grief Series, a collection of conversations about the grief woven throughout our lives with some extraordinary women bringing their raw, vulnerable stories to the mic. I hope you see yourself somewhere in these stories.
…
This episode is for anyone who has ever looked around and realized the people who were supposed to show up simply haven't. My guest, Emily Merrell, is a connector by nature, the founder of Seco...
Welcome to the Grief Series, a collection of conversations about the grief woven throughout our lives with some extraordinary women bringing their raw, vulnerable stories to the mic. I hope you see yourself somewhere in these stories.
…
This episode is for anyone who has ever walked away from something they built, a career, a marriage, an identity, and wondered what the hell comes next. My guest, Delia Monk, has done it more t...
Welcome to the Grief Series, a collection of conversations about the grief woven throughout our lives with some extraordinary women bringing their raw, vulnerable stories to the mic. I hope you see yourself somewhere in these stories.
…
This episode is for anyone carrying grief that doesn't have an obvious name. My guest, Chrissy Powers, is a therapist, ketamine-assisted psychotherapy practitioner, and someone who has personal...
Welcome to the Grief series - a collection of conversations about the grief woven throughout our lives with some extraordinary women bringing their raw, vulnerable stories to the mic. I hope you see yourself somewhere in these stories.
…
This specific episode is for the women in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and beyond who are entering a new season, physically, emotionally, and mentally. My guest, Bryn Daylor, brought her whole heart t...
Welcome to Ash Unplugged, the behind-the-scenes monthly episode where nothing is off the table and the real shit gets said.
In this episode we’ll explore the full rebrand reveal, the complete list of things I hate right now, the red flags me and my husband built together, and how I’m actually running our summer successfully.
TOPICS WE EXPLORE:
- The rebrand
- Everything I hate right now
- My red flags and what l’m doing ...
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