Shutting Down Your Business: Should You, When To, How To, and What Comes Next
About the Session:
Building a startup is hard and rarely linear. It is also inherently a risk or a bet.. it's not a guarantee for success, alignment, fulfillment or wealth. Sometimes the question of "do I actually keep going?" comes up and other times it stays top of mind during the journey. And it deserves a real, honest conversation... not a blindly optimistic pep talk.
I built RetreatVi for two years and shut it down last year. This session is me sharing what that actually looked like — what I tried before deciding, how I thought through it, how I navigated it, and what happened after.
If that question is lingering in your mind right now as a founder, I am hosting this so you can discover a clear sense of what to do before, during, and after making your decision. Whether you are presently debating or it comes and goes, this session is designed to empower you with perspective and information so that you always feel ready to make the best decisions for you and your life and to own them fully. Mostly I hope you leave feeling like even closing a chapter is more of a beginning than an end.
Open Q&A included!
Attendee outcomes:
A framework for evaluating whether to continue, pivot, or shut down
Clarity on what to actually do before making the decision
Practical guidance on navigating the process with integrity
Permission to see closing a chapter as momentum, not failure
About the Host:
I left my full time management consulting job to bootstrap a wellness tech startup, and I built from 2023- 2025.
I thought about shutting down 4 months after going live in the App Store in 2024 because the numbers just were not making sense to me. Once I recognized I was feeling this way, I reached out to women who had shut something down. They gave me raw and honest and incredibly helpful advice. Because of which, I was able to approach the next 10 months running a multitude of experiments and feeling less bad along the way. When I came to the decision to shut down in fall 2025, it was truly through an objective investment based decision for my life.
It naturally came with grief, but also with a deep sense of relief. I was told how I handled it was "a masterclass in grace" as I built in public, and very much shut down in public too.
Two weeks after announcing and beginning the process, I took myself to an 8 day silent meditation retreat.
About a month after returning from the retreat, I began working on a new business and freelancing with other founders.. taking all my earned wisdom with me.
7 months out now, I am so thankful I built RetreatVi but I am also so thankful that I shut down when I did. My background beyond business building and management consulting also includes holotropic breathwork and yoga teacher training, so I am uniquely positioned to talk about business, startups and mind body connection.