All About Summit to Your Success

Hi, I'm Dortha. I pay attention for a living.

Hiker, systems thinker, strategist, somatic practitioner, writer, professional noticer of the thing everyone else has somehow learned to work around.

For more than 20 years, I’ve helped business owners figure out how all the pieces fit together, what’s making things harder than they need to be, and why the thing someone swears they delegated six months ago is somehow still taking up space in their brain.

The tools I use have expanded over the years.

The thing I’ve been doing all along?

Paying attention.

Before "virtual assistant" was really a thing... 

I was juggling work as a paralegal with running Avon events on the side. Yes, Avon. We are going all the way back. 😂

At one of those events, I met a woman who wanted me to become her research assistant. I thought, hell yeah, that sounds awesome.

Before long, the job required me to learn CSS and HTML. So I did. If you were around for the MySpace era, you know exactly what kind of technological frontier we were dealing with here.

I realized pretty quickly that this kind of work was my jam, so I went to school for graphic design and kept learning anything that helped me solve the problem in front of me.

And as my clients’ businesses grew, my role kept growing with them.

I wasn’t only completing tasks.

I was noticing what needed to happen next.

I could see where something was going to break before it broke. I could hold the big picture while figuring out the tiny details. I could build the system, run the launch, manage the moving pieces, learn the technology, solve the weird problem, and find a way through when nobody quite knew what to do.

Within a few years, I had accidentally built myself a virtual-assistant career before I really knew that was a career someone could have.

The work was never only about getting shit done.

My favorite part became being the person my clients trusted. Over the years, I've helped business owners run launches, build systems, manage teams, create events, automate processes, delegate work, solve operational problems, and make a truly astonishing number of pieces work together. 

And I started noticing something else. Getting the work off someone's plate didn't necessarily mean we'd gotten it out of their head. The owner could have a team and still be the person everyone asked. They could delegate the task and still remember when it needed to happen. They could automate the process and still know every weird exception.

They could build an objectively successful business and still have that business consuming far more of their attention than they wanted to give it. That observation eventually changed the questions I was interested in asking.

Not only: How can we make this business work better?

Also: What is this business requiring from the human running it?

And: Does it need to?

Somewhere along the way, the trail found me.

In 2014, Jason’s colleague invited us on my first backpacking trip. That colleague and his family have since become like extended family to us, but at the time, I was walking into something completely new. I had also been living through nearly two years of intense grief.

I went into that trip with a simple intention: To receive whatever I was meant to receive.

Three days and more than 40 miles later, I came home with something I hadn't experienced in those two years. Peace in my heart.

That was enormous for me.

I also earned a trail name on that trip - Rexie.

I didn't come home knowing where any of this would lead. I only knew something had happened out there that mattered.

So, Jason and I kept going back.

The mountains and long trails became part of my life. Places where I could pay attention differently. Places that have taught me about perspective, patience, gratitude, discomfort, wonder, and what we choose to carry.

And then, ten years after that first trip, came Mount Whitney.

Mount Whitney was a different kind of mountain.

At 14,505 feet, Mount Whitney is the tallest mountain in the contiguous United States. During the decade leading up to this trip, I had also worked through a debilitating fear of heights. With lots of preparation, training hikes, mindset work, and visualization, I felt ready.

And when I reached the summit, I cried. It's the type of crying I can still reconnect with just by thinking about that moment for a few seconds. 

My husband, lifelong adventure buddy, and hiking partner wrapped me in the biggest hug, and I stood there taking in what I had just done. I was stronger than I had understood myself to be.

Mount Whitney also gave me a way to think about the summits we create in our own lives. The things we're reaching toward. The limits we've decided are real. The expectations we've inherited. The things we think we should want. And the question of what our own version of success actually looks like.

That idea eventually became part of the name and philosophy of Summit to Your Success. Because I don't get to define your summit. You do.

My work has changed and evolved because I have.

Business operations are still here. Systems are still here. Strategy, delegation, automation, implementation, and solving complicated shit are very much still here.

And over the years, I became increasingly interested in the human inside all of those systems.

I became a coach. I studied somatic practice and became an Integrative Somatic Practitioner. I kept exploring attention, behavior, capacity, nervous-system responses, nature, and the relationship between the way we build our businesses and the way we experience our lives.

Eventually, all of those threads started belonging in the same conversation. That's the work I do now.

We pay attention to what you're carrying, what actually belongs to you, and what your business is asking of you that it may no longer need to. Then we use the right tools for what we find.

Because your summit is still yours to define. And I’d like your business to help you get there without making you carry the whole damn mountain.