Founder Diary ENG - 15th September

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The sun has just slipped behind the mountains. I’ve been hearing the crickets for a while now, and there’s still one heavy beetle buzzing around. By the way, they’re pretty terrifying here—three times bigger than in the Netherlands, incredibly loud, and for some reason, they love flying straight into long hair and getting stuck. My first year here in the wilderness of the Montenegrin mountains, that often led to sweaty palms and those short but intense panic reactions—you know, the kind that only last a few seconds but you feel them so deep in your stomach.

By now, I hardly even notice them anymore, just like the howling wolves at night. In the beginning, they felt so intense, keeping all my senses on high alert. A tent is easy to tear open with claws and sharp teeth, and surely a three-month-old baby must look like a tasty snack… But now I hear them differently, more deeply, almost as if I understand their language. First, the dogs bark in the valley, then the wolves join in. I can hear them hunt and communicate. The barking always builds up to a climax, then a sudden silence for a few seconds, and then they howl, they celebrate, and they eat.

Life here is raw.

And yet, you get used to everything. You learn the cycles, the language, the signs. You understand risks better, dangers, and you know when to really pay attention.

Just like in entrepreneurship.

What once feels so challenging, becomes easier over time. You and your business grow every year, and with that, your capacity to carry more grows too. Where an investment of €10,000 once felt overwhelming, now a €100,000 investment doesn’t faze you.

Funny how everything is connected.

Today is Monday, September 15th, 7:30 PM—my very first free journal blog. To share the raw side behind WildWithin and what it means to be a mentor. To show that I’m just as human as you are, doing the same deep transformational work and living through the same cycles. The same themes return again and again—never the same, always deeper.

Because patterns return in spirals, not in repetition, but in depth.

So it’s not surprising, though still a little amusing, that my theme of the past week has been authenticity. You’d think that after so many years of vlogging the raw side of my life, sharing knowledge through countless posts across social media, I’d have mastered this by now.

But no—stepping into WildWithin meant stepping into a new identity. Not suddenly, but a seven-year process now coming full circle. Seven years of going deep—surviving at sea and in the mountains, exploring the female psyche in all her layers and dualities. And finally, this past year, I could say: I understand the depth of our psyche as entrepreneurial women.

I’m allowed to rise as an authority in healing the female psyche of women entrepreneurs, in bringing back the wild woman.

And the launch of WildWithin is that final step—the embodiment of all I’ve learned, ready to pass on in depth.

And then, of course, the questions return: How do I want to look? What should my brand feel like? How do I want to communicate with my audience—through sound, writing, or video? Everything comes back again, even in this new identity. And honestly—you only know once you do it. So this month, I started with reels, short videos. That didn’t work. I love depth, nuance, recognition. Short videos don’t capture that. I tried podcasts—English or Dutch—but neither flowed yet. I hadn’t found my voice. So I returned to writing.

And writing works. Writing flows. So writing will stay. From there, I’ll step back into podcasts again—something I loved doing for years.

But then impostor syndrome shows up again. And with this new identity, new followers and new potential clients—clients who challenge me in my field (which is exactly what I need) but also make me feel uncertain. Can I really do this?

And yes, I know all the mindset tricks. I know how to tell myself new stories. The king of this field is Tony Robbins—I learned from him and shared his teachings for years.

But over time I also learned: it’s a created reality that doesn’t acknowledge the whole truth. And when you don’t acknowledge it, you don’t fully live it. And as women, we need to live it. Our brains work differently. Add in our hormones and our moon cycles, and you get a cocktail that can turn Tony Robbins’ techniques into a Molotov cocktail at the wrong moment.

We have to give it space. Let emotions move. Feel them fully without losing ourselves. So I lovingly acknowledge my insecurity, smile at myself, and embrace the duality.

And I know that two months from now, I won’t even remember what it felt like to doubt myself or struggle with showing up authentically.

So dear woman, impostor syndrome will always return when we step into a new identity, raise a new funding round, build or expand a brand, add a niche, or grow into a new market—from 10 to 50 team members.

She will always be there.

And every time, she will be easier to carry.

With much love,

Rianne