A DIFFERENT STARTING POINT
The first time I burned out, I was 17.
There would be four more before I understood that recovering enough to start again wasn’t the same as changing what kept bringing me here.
For much of my working life, I was exceptionally good at making things work for other people. I supported CEOs and global executives, managed complicated calendars and logistics, and anticipated needs before they became problems.
Alongside those roles, I built creative businesses of my own. A custom cake studio. A graphic design and hand-lettering practice. Eventually, consulting.
I loved the work. I was good at it. And I kept finding ways to ask more of myself than I could sustainably give.
I was doing for other people what I couldn’t figure out how to do for myself.
Each time I burned out, I recovered just enough to make a change and begin again. A different role. A different business. A new routine that seemed like it might finally be the answer.
But I brought the same expectations with me.
Being capable meant finding a way. Being dependable meant making it happen. If I could see how something needed to work, it was hard to accept that I might not have the capacity to be the person who made it work.
It took connecting my professional experience with chronic illness, late-diagnosed neurodivergence, and the patterns in my own life to understand what those expectations were costing me.
I had spent years treating my needs as complications to work around. They needed to be part of the design.
A DIFFERENT STARTING POINT
I know how much can happen behind “I’ve got it.”
My background spans more than fifteen years of corporate executive support and creative entrepreneurship.
At Wyndham, where I got my start in hospitality at the front desk. To Hilton, supporting international luxury-brand executives. And Williams-Sonoma, assisting leadership in IT and operations for customer care centers. Other roles took me into manufacturing, a boutique law firm, and the daily logistics of a private estate.
Those environments taught me to notice the details: who was holding information, where a decision was getting stuck, what a calendar demanded, and how much invisible preparation made something look effortless.
My own businesses taught me what it feels like when all of that belongs to you.
And when pain and numbness in my hands ended my lettering career, I learned something I couldn’t solve with a better workflow. Sometimes the way you’ve built your work no longer fits the body doing it.
Understanding why I needed to stop didn’t make it easy to lose something I loved.
That experience still informs how I approach change. There can be relief, possibility, grief, and resistance in the same decision. A useful plan needs room for the person making it.
THE IDEA AT THE CENTER
Your own nature belongs in the picture.
I use the word eigenkind to describe your own fundamental nature—the person you’re trying to build a life around.
The name draws on my German heritage and took shape while I was writing Same You, Better Systems. It also became the name of my consulting studio, the home of work I’ve been doing since 2019.
For me, eigenkind is an invitation to get curious.
What do you know about yourself when you stop measuring against someone else’s routine?
Which expectations did you choose, and which have simply been there so long they feel like facts?
What becomes possible when your capacity gets a say?
Those questions run through my writing and consulting. They’re also questions I keep returning to in my own life.
JUST A PERSON, STILL FIGURING THINGS OUT
It’s about more than the work.
I live on a quiet piece of land with my partner and three dogs. I write, crochet, garden (poorly, unfortunately), read, and make things because making things feels good.
I’m learning to let those parts of my life matter without needing to turn every interest into something productive.
I also have a weakness for strange little corners of the internet. My newsletter, A Cozy Ruckus, makes room for those alongside essays about productivity culture, journal prompts to take into your week, and the complicated feelings that come with changing how we live.
I’m still adjusting my own systems. My needs change. Life throws curveballs. And something that worked can (and does) stop working on a random Tuesday for me too.
That’s part of the work, too.
WHERE TO GO FROM HERE
Keep exploring.
Read the book.
Same You, Better Systems follows the story further—through the burnout cycles, the rebuilding, and the experiences of clients finding their own ways forward.
Alongside those stories, the WEAL Framework™ and SEED Framework™ offer practical ways to understand what isn’t working and begin making changes.
Explore working together.
At Eigenkind, I work directly with founders and creative entrepreneurs on the relationship between their energy, capacity, and business.
The studio brings together business advisory, systems strategy, and personalized support for building around the person leading it.
Invite me into the conversation.
For interviews, podcasts, speaking, and editorial collaborations, visit my press and media page for background information and to get in touch.
Media + speaking inquiries →
ABOUT HANNAH
The first time I burned out, I was 17.
For most of my working life, I was exceptional at one very specific thing: building systems that protected other people's capacity. As a high-level executive assistant to CEOs and global executives, I got very good at reading energy patterns, structuring schedules around peaks and crashes, and anticipating what someone needed before they knew they needed it.
"I was doing for other people what I couldn't figure out how to do for myself."
The burnout kept coming — at 21, at 23, at 26, at 29 — and each time I recovered just enough to restart the same habits that had broken me down in the first place. It wasn't until I started connecting the dots between my corporate experience, my own creative businesses, a chronic illness I'd been managing undiagnosed for decades, and a neurodivergent brain I didn't have language for yet — that something finally clicked.
The systems hadn't been failing because I was undisciplined. They'd been failing because they were designed for someone whose brain and body work nothing like mine. And once I understood that, I couldn't unfigure it. That's what this work is built on.
WHAT THIS WORK ACTUALLY IS
I am not here to fix you.
There is nothing to fix.
What I do is help founders find the version of themselves that exists underneath everything that's been layered on top — the productivity culture, the optimization advice, the morning routine borrowed from someone whose body works nothing like yours, the definition of success you inherited before you knew you had a choice.
I call it your eigenkind — a word I built from German roots, my heritage, because I couldn't find an existing word for one's own fundamental nature; the thing that stays itself under pressure. In German colloquial use, an eigenkind is a willful child — the kind who hasn't yet been convinced to override their own instincts for someone else's comfort.
Most of us start out there. Then the world gets to work on us.
This work is about finding your way back — and building a life and business that can hold the person you actually are.
THIS IS WHERE THE STORY GOES DEEPER
And where the map out begins.
Part memoir. Part framework + case studies. Part proof of what’s possible.
Same You, Better Systems picks up where this page leaves off — the burnout cycles, the diagnostic process, the research, the clients who rebuilt their businesses around who they actually are — and gives you the tools to do the same. If something on this page made you feel seen, the book is the next right thing.
GET THE BOOK →Not ready for the book yet?
Take the two-minute quiz → or see how we can work together →
FOR MEDIA, PODCASTS, + PRESS
For bio information, headshots, speaking topics, and media kit materials, visit the press page. For podcast booking and collaboration requests, use the media contact form to reach out.
