Big Life Journal Reviews

This is a stressful, stressful, stressful, toxic and dysfunctional place to work run by an owner who rules by bullying and belittling you. Everyone gets a “manager” title but nobody gets any autonomy or authority to be effective. Everyone reports directly to the owner; and you will feel “owned”. She constantly wants to start new schemes she’s seen on social media that are based on other people’s ideas. And she has a habit of rejecting ideas that come from team members but then presents them as her original ideas later. There is constant pressure to take on more and more work than you were hired to do, but without added support or compensation, with multiple projects overlapping due to her unrealistic scheduling. When she does turn her attention to things, she criticizes and degrades the efforts that have been made by the “managers”. There are no “departments” despite attempts to organize among the team. The owner is paranoid about team members speaking freely to each other so she shuts down any communication that she’s not part of and also shuts down suggestions for improving things and berates the people making the suggestions. She will not delegate or relinquish control of anything so everything gets derailed or stalled because she won’t respond or “approve” things when needed and then blames others for it not getting done. This company is run out of the owner’s apartment and it operates like it. There is no Human Resources person or department and there is no IT person or department. She insists on using a messenger app for everything but won’t upgrade for the team to find anything on it. Unfortunately, there is nothing “growth mindset” about this company even though it sells growth mindset journals. Many “team” members suffer from physical illness over the stress and are afraid to say anything. Some of us were able to practice self-care and quit.

I am astounded that this founder has never faced repercussions for being such an insidiously toxic individual with such an openly hypocritical approach to her company and its supposed values. She routinely takes credit for the work and ideas of her employees. Observing her, I nicknamed her management style the "frying pan." In this approach, she dumps an aggressive mix of criticism and unrealistic expectations on the team for failing to meet nearly impossible goals announced merely days or hours before. Once she has pushed them to breaking point (whether it's crying, freezing, or pure stress and anxiety in secret), she then abruptly abandons the project and throws another team or individual into the "frying pan." It's no wonder that projects often fail under her leadership; she either ignores crucial emails or delegates essential tasks when someone is not currently in the "frying pan," then later expresses outrage over decisions made in her absence. The beauty of her social media-driven business is that when a project fails, she simply erases all traces of it and pretends it never happened. Her talk of a growth mindset and embracing failures is merely a sales tactic. Ironically, she often discusses the importance of having an "abundance mindset" and claims that "money is like air" on her social media, yet she meticulously counts every dime in the most miserly way. On two occasions, I witnessed staff members courteously requesting a raise, only for her to secretly seek replacements for them. When her efforts to find someone as capable for a cheaper price fell short, not only did her frustration escalate, but she proceeded to hold a passive aggressive grudge against those employees moving forward--how vexing it must be to have competent staff that need to support their families! There is absolutely no room for any kind of career progression in this company due to the penny pinching mentioned earlier - that and her ego couldn't handle anyone else succeeding within a mile of her. She never offers praise or recognition, unless she can film herself giving it out, and then use it for her social media facade. She consistently demands discounts and outsources work to individuals in developing countries. Subsequently, she expects the remaining team to resolve any issues her "international frying pan" causes (of which there are many). It's frightening that a person so mean and so toxic can fool millions into believing that she shares their values. In reality, she has never demonstrated a growth mindset in any aspect of her business. Her primary focus remains on greedily accumulating wealth as fast as possible, and collecting the adoration of mom fans who don’t know her, but are willing to pull out their purses and fund her momfluencer fantasy.