Buzzapp Master 
At the height of her success, entrepreneur Bianca Best hit rock bottom, succumbing to severe burnout that left her emotionally drained and physically exhausted. “One of the lowest points for me was when I was hospitalised with total immune collapse,” the 50-year-old reveals.
“I was told my whole body was starting to shut down. And at that point, my hair had all fallen out. I had tonsillitis, conjunctivitis, bronchiolitis – every-itis.”
Bianca struggled with major burnout for around 10 years, between 2004 and 2015, confessing, “I was so ashamed, and I was embarrassed – I thought I was a failure because I was getting ill.”
The businesswoman, who now splits her time between Surrey and Amsterdam, where her fiancé Ruud, 53, resides, devoted decades to building her career and raising a family.
The busy mum-of-four decided to quit the corporate world
By her late twenties, Bianca was juggling motherhood to son Ashley, born in 2002, and daughter Scarlett, born two years later, while running the Bespoke Gift Company, which she founded in 2004. However, behind the scenes, it was all becoming too much to handle, reports the Mirror.
“For those first few years of running the business and having children, I didn’t have childcare because I thought that would make me a bad mother. I would try to put the kids to bed and run the business through the night,” she admits. “I was literally trying to do that as well and keep house.”
Bianca’s entrepreneurial journey was nothing short of a whirlwind.
Her business took off “exploding” online, and in no time, she found herself on ITV’s This Morning, her products becoming a hit and selling “thousands” of items each year.
“I soon had gift manufacturers working for me and a retail outlet,” she fondly recalls.
“I had concessions in Debenhams – it just grew and grew all while I was mummying the kids. It was an incredible, exhilarating ride. The business went on for many years, growing to the point where I was about to launch a franchise model. I had a vision for a boutique on every high street in the UK.”
But life threw her a curveball when she fell pregnant with twin boys, Sebastian and Beau, born in 2009. “When I got pregnant with twins, I decided to focus on family as the priority,” she shares.
In 2013, with her children in school, Bianca sold her business and climbed the corporate ladder, recently achieving the impressive role of global Chief Growth Officer for Publicis Groupe.
Yet, success came at a cost. With each career milestone, Bianca’s health paid the price.
She opens up, “I used to burn out and just recover, hop back on the life treadmill and keep pushing and grinding and go on and on again. And eventually, I started to realise I couldn’t do this any more because my burnouts were getting worse and worse.”
Bianca revealed: “Everyone in the house would get a cold, and I would get full-on catastrophic flu and be in bed for two weeks.
“But then it started to become pneumonia, and then I’d be hospitalised. One of the lowest points for me was when I was hospitalised with total immune collapse.
The busy mother is now helping other women in similar situations
(Image: ILENA INGWERSEN PHOTOGRAPHY)
“That was a massive wake-up call. Things needed to change.”
She confessed to feeling overwhelmed with shame and guilt, adding, “I saw burnout as an illness, as a failure. I saw illness as a failure. I had so many warped belief systems.”
Things only got worse for Bianca. She explains, “My doctor told me I was having a total immune shutdown. My body was literally in such a cortisol state, everything was shutting down, which is why my hair was falling out. But I was in denial.
“I was like, ‘I’m not stressed, I’m living the dream. Everything’s fantastic. I’ve got all these kids and this house and this business.’ I felt like I couldn’t even admit that I was exhausted from stress.”
As her health worsened, she slowly began to realise she needed to make significant life changes.
“Initially, I started physically looking at how I could moderate myself and my physical wellbeing,” she explains. “So, I needed more sleep, to eat well, and do all the usual exercise-type stuff. But that wasn’t enough.”
The busy mum, who was by now on a quest to beat burnout, increased the time she spent journaling, in meditation, and conscientiously managing stress by actively soothing her nervous system. However, the real turning point came when she bravely confronted her emotional stressors and made the courageous decision to end her marriage.
New Beginnings Bianca and her ex-partner had been together since she was 18 and got hitched when she was 26. But at 44, they both agreed that divorce was the best path forward, seeing it as “evolution not failure”, and they handled it with grace and integrity.
She shares, “There was a lot of pain and sorrow, but it was the right thing to do. I started to live in harmony, in physical, mental, spiritual and emotional balance, and then I stopped burning out.”
She even began hosting workshops for those finding it hard to balance life’s demands. Once, she was surprised when, after advertising in her local community, 25 women showed up at her doorstep one Saturday morning seeking advice.
Bianca remembers, “I just talked for two hours, and I said, ‘Look, this is what I’m doing. This is what works for me. Is that useful?’ At the end of the morning, people were like, ‘Yes, that is very useful. Can you do more? Can you do this again? Can you do a whole day?’ So I really started turning it into a business.”
Bianca is now trying to help other women who feel overwhelmed with everything
A Bold Decision In 2019, Bianca wrote her first book on burnout, titled Flourish: Redefine Success and Create More Time, Energy, Impact And Happiness, and started working as a career coach for big names like Google and Amazon, all while keeping her corporate job.
After releasing her latest instant best-seller, “Big Impact Without Burnout,” she’s decided to step away from her high-flying career to guide others.
Bianca happily shared, “I’ve hung up the golden handcuffs, and I’m now running my business, The Burnout Clinic.”
Her commitment is unwavering as Bianca says, “I’m 100% devoted to inspiring the world that there is a way to soar, work joyfully, and achieve success with grace.”
Fortunately for Bianca, her last dance with burnout was in 2015, and she’s been passionately passing on her secrets of survival and success to those who need it most.
Reflecting on her journey, Bianca admits, “I’ve learnt that a bit of healthy stress can be beneficial. But when it’s continuous, you just crash. And I was crashing dangerously down all the time.”
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