It's not about the money, money, money
What drives people who’ve already won but keep building anyway.
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I’ve noticed something about women who have already won the game: they don’t stop.
They don’t quietly disappear to an island somewhere or ride off into the sunset. They just build again.
I’ve always imagined it differently for myself. Get the $xxxM check, buy a Beyonce inspired yacht or an island or an Italian villa (could you imagine?). And just camp out there with my little family of four. But that’s not what’s happening.. these women keep building. And it’s been catching my attention.
I noticed it first with Suzy Welch (you’ll learn more about her later, but the pattern was answered for me this week when I saw Allison Ellsworth’s IG post). So here let’s unpack.
First up: Allison Ellsworth, founder of Poppi, who announced she’s hiring for her new consumer brand. She made it clear it’s not a competitor to Poppi.. but she also made it clear it’ll be another billion dollar brand.
The $2B sale to pepsi officially closed in May 2025. It’s July 2026. So that means she got to work.. almost immediately?! And by work I mean ideating, as founders do.
The founder brain never retires
There’s a certain personality that makes a founder. Someone who can’t stop thinking about making something 5.. 10.. 50% better. It’s innately in them. They see something at the store, or something they consume, or something someone recommends and they don’t even mean to think it but they do: I can make that better. I SHOULD make that better.
The same thing happened with Sara Blakely.
In 2021, when Blackstone acquired Spanx, the company was valued ~$1.2 billion. And the coolest part of Sara’s story is she owned 100% of the company for 21 years before that acquisition. So that billion dollar pay day with a B was all hers.
That could have been the finish line.
But instead she launched Sneex in 2024. Just 3 years after the acqusition of Spanx. Another sell it and get back to work because ideas are flowing call it ‘multi-founder story’.
Back to Suzy
Here’s a less familiar name, but someone worth mentioning because I know her personally. And this is actually where this whole observation started. The “wow, she keeps going even when she doesn’t have to” thought.
Her name is Suzy Welch: Harvard MBA. Reporter for the Miami Herald and the Associated Press. Then Bain. Then Editor-in-Chief of Harvard Business Review. Bestselling books. Publications in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, O Magazine. And she was married to Jack Welch, former Chairman and CEO of GE, and known to be one of the most influential business executives in American history.
So when he unfortunately passed away, it’s fair to assume she could have retired comfortably. But she didn’t.. she’s still actively building at 66. A total badass.
Today she’s a professor at NYU Stern and created an assessment called The Values Bridge, which I highly recommend taking.
So why is this happening? Why are these women who have already created big careers and wealth for themselves not choosing the simple life we all imagine they’d want? The villa if you’re a mountain person or the island if you’re a beach person?
I think.. for one, it’s the founder energy that lives inside certain people. The thing I just described.
But two.. once you’ve figured out how to build something, the ambition doesn’t disappear.
A new definition of ambition
And I don’t mean ambition in the way we usually talk about it. Not the “you can do it” “keep going even with kids” kind. I’m talking about a different definition of ambition. Something I see everywhere right now.. especially in women.
The drive to produce.
Here’s what I mean: creating is one thing. Plenty of people create. I have dozens of pieces sitting in my drafts folder that I’ve created. But I hit publish on this one.
That’s the difference.
Producing means giving the world something that didn’t exist before.
And that’s what I think these women have in them. They don’t just want to make things.. or even make more money for that matter. They feel called by that innate thing inside them to add something to the world that doesn’t exist yet. Or doesn’t exist as well as it could.
That’s why Sara made Sneex. She pulled that idea out of thin air. Something she believed needed to exist based on conversations she’d had, or problems she had heard from women she felt called to solve, or maybe it was as simple as a 3AM idea.
Whatever or however the idea shows up for this type of person, I don’t think it matters if your net worth is a $xxxM+ because the variable isn’t wealth.
It’s whether you’re the kind of person who feels compelled to leave the world with one more thing than it had before.
Some people achieve and some people produce. And once you do.. I don’t think that instinct to give to the world ever really goes away.
For them producing was always the prize.
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