How Rose Howard turned burnout into a business blueprint
After experiencing burnout firsthand, entrepreneur Rose Howard is building three ventures while helping founders and executives identify the systems, growth strategies and operational gaps holding their businesses back.
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Entrepreneur Rose Howard knows burnout. Having spent years building a health and wellness business from zero to $4 million in revenue, she’s seen the importance of not only good business systems and operational processes, but also a founder’s personal health.
Now, Howard is using her experience to launch three businesses aimed at helping executives excel at work and in their personal lives: Exhale by Privé, a new Gold Coast-based day retreat concept launching this month; Elevate by Privé, a clinical longevity retreat for high-performing leaders; and an advisory practice where she works closely with a small number of founders and operators to sustainably grow their businesses.
While her new ventures serve different purposes, they are underpinned by a common philosophy: optimisation through systems.
In an advisory capacity, Howard encourages founders to think about what she describes as a business ecosystem: a combination of marketing channels, customer nurturing processes and operational systems that work together.
“I’ve seen many founders make the same mistake,” she says. “They focus on marketing as a substitute for strategy.” Instead, Howard focuses on helping businesses build “a moat” around their business to ensure sustainable growth.
“When your LinkedIn is high functioning, your Instagram is high functioning, your Google is high functioning, and everything is working together with your customer’s journey, that’s where sustainable growth comes from,” Howard says. “I’m really good at building systems so that you can leave work and still know your business isn’t going to burn down.”
In practice, that means examining everything from lead generation and customer acquisition to process design and client experience. “It’s not usually one big problem. It’s lots of small gaps,” she says.
Howard also encourages founders to look at sustainable growth from a personal perspective. This thinking underpins Privé Retreats, which Howard founded after identifying what she saw as a gap between wellness experiences and measurable health outcomes. The business combines luxury hospitality with evidence-based health assessments and education from qualified health practitioners. The retreats don’t just serve as time off work to relax, they are to help participants return to their lives with a clear understanding of how to perform sustainably over the long-term, with actionable takeaways.
“The wellness space was missing that one-stop shop,” Howard says. “Wellness and business are ultimately connected – founders often spend years optimising their companies while neglecting themselves. I used to think it had to be one or the other, but sustainable performance, whether in business or life, comes from building systems that support both.”
As she prepares to launch Exhale by Privé while continuing to grow Elevate and her advisory practice, Howard is focused on applying the lessons she has learned from building businesses herself. The goal, she says, is not perfection, it’s creating businesses that can continue to grow without relying on burnout to get there.
Visit priveretreats.com.au to enquire about Privé Retreats programs. To register interest in Exhale by Privé, visit exhaleretreats.com.au. For interest in Howard’s advisory practice, visit rosehoward.com.au.