TO BEING EXTRA: My entrepreneur friend Sylvie and I often talk about how extra we are, and it sometimes includes a small fear of being called high maintenance.

However, I am celebrating being extra today. I followed in Sylvie's footsteps and hired a house manager and personal assistant. I was drowning in the work of trying to keep my fast-growing business running and be a human. The new member of my Success Team (Sylvie's term for her entourage) has already been a huge help.

Over the last year, I gained 15-20 pounds from overworking which led to stress eating. I literally cannot fit into any of my clothes! In the last 48 hours, my new assistant bought me an entire new underwear, bra, and dress wardrobe, returned all the clothes I didn't like, finally got a garment bag for my wedding dress (a three-year-old errand on my to do list), brought me multiple meals, and is picking me up this morning with my breakfast to take me to the airport. empire wedding

She has been so smart, eager, reliable, proactively helpful, and she's even experienced working as an assistant to women executives. Nearly every time she solves another problem or checks off another long-standing task, I keep marveling, "Whyyyy did I wait so long to hire someone like you?"

Entrepreneurs often feel like it's a good use of money to reinvest in our businesses, but are less committed to investing in making sure we are absolutely taken care of from head to toe so that we're actually enjoying the lives we have when we aren't working and can work to our highest potential when we're on the clock.

For example, I was spending more in 5 days on Facebook ads than her entire monthly full-time salary. That's bonkers that I would even question hiring someone like her if it meant I would feel better and perform better.

I just want to say to all the corporate and entrepreneur women and femmes out there who get called extra that I celebrate your extraness, and you may not actually be letting yourself be extra enough!