How Do You Start a Business and Protect Your Health After a Brain Aneurysm? A Live Coaching Session with Erin Dohan
Summary:
Starting a business can bring excitement, freedom, and a fresh sense of possibility. It can also bring self-doubt, pressure, and the temptation to prove yourself by doing more than your energy allows.
This week on The UpLevel Podcast, join us for a live coaching conversation as Christie Mann works with Erin Dohan, a financial strategy leader, entrepreneur, writer, and brain aneurysm survivor, as she navigates a new chapter in her life and leadership.
After years of significant medical challenges following a ruptured brain aneurysm at age 27, Erin has learned that she cannot keep measuring herself against the person she was before. She’s since co-founded an accounting and outsourced CFO advisory firm and published her debut memoir, I Think I'm Ready To Talk. Now she’s working out how to grow her business, continue her advocacy, care for her family, and honor the health needs that are part of her life today.
During the coaching session, Erin identifies an anxious inner voice she names “Furby.” It shows up through questions like, “What are you missing?” and “Are you sure?" That voice can send her into hours of unnecessary research, make her question years of professional experience, and pull her away from the time and rest she needs.
With Christie’s guidance, Erin begins to recognize the difference between responsible diligence and self-doubt that keeps her stuck. She reconnects with her values of integrity, honesty, understanding, and empathy and creates practical ways to make space for herself while staying connected to the reasons she started her business.
This conversation offers a meaningful look at imposter syndrome, leadership, health, work-life balance, and what it takes to build a business that reflects the person you are today.
In this episode, we'll explore:
How to recognize imposter syndrome and the internal voice that makes you question your expertise
Why experienced professionals can still struggle with self-doubt when they start their own business
How to distinguish careful research from unproductive overthinking
What it means to accept who you are now after a major health challenge
How to make room for rest without feeling guilty about unfinished tasks
Why your personal values matter when making business decisions
How to create practical habits that protect your health, family time, and professional ambitions
How coaching can help people access their own answers, awareness, and resourcefulness
Order of Topics:
Life After a Brain Aneurysm
What Is Coaching and How Does It Work?
Starting a Business While Protecting Your Health
Recognizing Imposter Syndrome and Self-Doubt
Naming Your Inner Critic: Meet “Furby”
Creating a Vision for Your Next Chapter
Redefining Success, Rest, and Being Present
How to Stop Letting Self-Doubt Control Your Time
Building a Business Around Your Values and Integrity
Creating a Vision Board to Stay Aligned
Three Practical Commitments for Moving Forward
Recognizing Your Strengths and Owning Who You Are
Some of the strongest leaders we work with still carry self-doubt. What sets them apart is learning to recognize it, name it, and keep moving anyway. If you want help building that same skill for yourself, the Coachability Blueprint walks through exactly how to start. You can download it here: https://uplevelproductions.com/freeresources-1#coachability-blueprint
Action Items:
Working with your Saboteur
1. Give your inner critic a name and a face. Erin named hers Furby and pictured a slimy green creature, which made her laugh and gave her distance from the voice. Action: Take five minutes to write down what your inner critic looks like, how it sounds, and what you’d call it. Silly names work well, and the goal is for the voice to feel separate from you.
2. Learn its favorite lines and notice what happens in your body. Erin’s voice says, “Are you sure? What are you missing?” When she repeated it, her own voice started to shake and she felt nervous. Action: Write down the one or two phrases yours repeats most. The next time it speaks up, notice where you feel it physically, since that sensation can become your early warning.
3. Tell thorough from spiraling. Erin values double-checking her work and still wants to protect the hours that get lost in research rabbit holes. Action: Decide in advance what “checked enough” means for a given task, such as one review of the regulation or one second source. When you reach that point, move on to the next thing.
4. Talk back to the voice with what’s actually happening. Erin doesn’t expect Furby to change what it says. Her plan is to acknowledge it and then state the facts, with something like “Okay, but this is what is actually happening.” Action: Write two sentences ahead of time that you can say to your inner critic. Think about what a trusted friend would tell you, since the person who loves you usually sees the situation more clearly than the voice does.
Protecting your energy and health
5. Put rest on your to-do list and put it first. Erin is very task-oriented, so she realized rest will happen if it’s written down. She’s adding it to her weekly list in its own color. Action: Schedule one block of time this week for yourself, even 10 or 15 minutes. Give it the same weight as a client meeting, and place it at the top of the list.
6. Give the chores a different timeline. On low-energy days, Furby lists laundry, bathrooms, and groceries. Erin’s response is that it can all wait a day and the world won’t end. Action: Look at your current list and ask of each item whether it truly needs to happen today. Move everything that doesn’t to a later date, and leave yourself the space.
7. Allow your capacity to be different from what it used to be. Erin said she kept waiting to get back to who she was, and then realized this is who she is now. Action: Finish this sentence for yourself: “This is who I am now, and here is what I need.” Let your answer shape how you plan your week.
Leading the business from your values
8. Build a vision board around your values. Erin’s commitment is to a vision board that holds alignment and integrity, so she can check in whenever she feels she’s drifted. Action: Set a deadline within the next week. Gather images and words that answer why you started, who you want to serve, and how you want your life to feel while you grow the company. Keep it where you’ll see it every day.
9. Tie your weekly goals back to your why. Erin and her co-founder change their goals each week, and they check every set against their shared values. Action: At the start of each week, look at your goals and ask which value each one supports. Reconsider the goals that don’t connect to anything you care about.
10. Choose clients and boundaries that match your mission. Erin and her co-founder work with companies whose missions they agree with, and they protect time with their kids so work doesn’t become their whole lives. Action: Write down your criteria for a great client and for a healthy workweek. Use them the next time you’re deciding whether to say yes to something.
Staying with the practice
11. Bring in someone who shares your why. Erin said her co-founder helps her stay accountable because they have the same reasons for building the company. Action: Pick one person and agree on a check-in schedule. Ask them to listen for what you’re learning, since that keeps the check-in curious and gives the saboteur less to criticize.
12. Remember that the brain changes through repetition. Each time Erin chooses rest over the voice that insists on productivity, she builds a new pattern. Action: Count the times you follow through this week, and treat the times you don’t as information. The practice grows from what you notice.
13. Acknowledge who you are in this moment. When Erin named her qualities, her inner critic called it bragging. Her answer was that this is who she wants to be, so it’s okay to say it. She named integrity, honesty, understanding, and empathy. Action: Write down four qualities you see in yourself right now. Read them aloud, and let your inner critic say whatever it wants while you do.
About Erin:
Erin Dohan is an accounting controller, writer, wife, and mother based in the western suburbs of Chicago. At 27, on May 29, 2019, she survived a ruptured brain aneurysm — an event that fundamentally transformed her life trajectory. What followed were five years of relentless medical crises: miscarriage, emergency abortion, infertility, complicated pregnancy, postpartum complications, ovarian torsion, and the removal of both ovaries.
Through it all, Erin did what many women are quietly taught to do: she kept going. She managed a career, built a family, and showed up for everyone around her. What she didn't do — until she finally couldn't not — was talk about it.
Her debut memoir, I Think I'm Ready to Talk, is what happened when she stopped minimizing. It's a raw, honest account of surviving not just illness, but the medical system, the silence, and the long middle years that nobody celebrates. Written with clarity, dark humor, and deep compassion, it's the book Erin needed to find during the hardest years of her life—and couldn't.
Professionally, Erin is a financial strategy leader for startup companies and a mentor to women in leadership. She lives outside Chicago with her husband, their son, and a goldendoodle. She is a champion for brain aneurysm awareness and advocates openly for better listening in women's healthcare.
Website: https://erindohan.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/erindohanthings/
🎉 The UpLevel Podcast was listed as #3 among the Top 7 Best Coaching Culture! https://podcasts.feedspot.com/coaching_culture_podcasts
🎉 It was also ranked #16 among the top 49 Best Workplace Mental Health Podcasts! https://podcast.feedspot.com/workplace_mental_health_podcasts
🎉 It was also ranked #10 among the top 23 Best Conscious Leadership Podcasts! https://podcast.feedspot.com/conscious_leadership_podcasts
About UpLevel Productions: Founded by Christie Mann, MA, CPCC, PCC, and Rachel Baldi, CPCC, PCC, UpLevel creates, produces, and delivers Transformative Experiences, Workshops, Training, Events + Media that develop leaders who make our world a healthier, more alive, and connected place to be. As Associate CTI Faculty Partners, UpLevel is licensed to sell, produce, and deliver Co-Active coach training and leadership development programs around the world to support the transformational growth of individuals and culture inside the workplace and organization. www.uplevelproductions.com Instagram @uplevelproductions Facebook & LinkedIn @uplevelproductionscompany
Comments