Most business owners know the feeling. Revenue is growing, the brand has momentum, clients keep coming back - and yet the owner is somehow more exhausted than ever. Every decision still lands on her desk. Every gap in the business quietly absorbs her time. The company is working, but it cannot yet work without her.

That is exactly the problem Cristy O'Connor and Aggie Chydzinski set out to solve when they co-founded Athena Advisory Collective. Cristy had spent years working alongside owner-led companies navigating the tension between growth and operational stability. Aggie had watched the startup and investment world up close - and kept noticing who was missing from those rooms. Together, they built an advisory firm specifically designed for women business owners who are ready to stop carrying the business on their backs and start building something with transferable, lasting value.

Athena works with founder-led businesses at the $1M to $50M+ revenue stage, helping them strengthen financial visibility, leadership structure, sales infrastructure, and operational clarity - whether the goal is a future exit, an acquisition, or simply a business that gives its owner more freedom now. You can also follow their conversation on Badass Women in Business, their podcast exploring what it really takes to build and scale. In this conversation, Cristy and Aggie share what inspired them to build Athena together, the problem they keep seeing behind the scenes of "successful" businesses, and what they believe the next chapter of women's entrepreneurship should look like.

This is part of our ongoing 20 Founders On a Mission series. New editions publish regularly. To be featured or nominate a founder, write to us at hi@foundedbywomen.org

What inspired you to start?

Athena started with both a frustration and a belief.

The frustration was that too many women business owners were being told to keep growing, keep pushing, and keep doing more, without enough strategic support to help them step back and examine the business as a whole.

The belief was that women deserve more than encouragement. They deserve partners who can look honestly at the company with them, identify what is working, name what is fragile, and help them make decisions that create lasting value.

We saw women doing extraordinary work, often with strong revenue, loyal customers, capable teams, and respected brands. But behind the scenes, many were still operating as the center of everything. Every major decision still came back to them. Every problem still landed on their desk. Every gap in the business was quietly absorbed by their time, energy, and attention.

From the outside, the business looked successful. Inside, the owner was often exhausted.

That is what inspired Athena.

We wanted to build the kind of advisory firm that does not look at one isolated piece of the business. The numbers matter. The team matters. The sales process matters. Leadership structure matters. Owner dependency matters. Long term value matters.

All of it is connected.

For us, this work is not about helping women build bigger businesses simply for the sake of size. Bigger is not always better if the owner is more overwhelmed, the margins are weaker, the team is unclear, and the business is harder to run.

The real goal is strength.

We help women build companies that create income, wealth, freedom, impact, and choice. Athena exists because women should not have to wait until they are burned out, preparing to sell, facing a leadership crisis, or reacting to an unexpected offer before they start building a business that can truly support their future.

What problem are you solving?

We help women business owners solve the problem that often appears after the business starts working.

The company has clients. Revenue is growing. The brand has momentum. The team is expanding. From the outside, it looks successful.

But inside the business, the owner is still carrying too much.

She is still the primary salesperson. Still the final decision maker. Still the person everyone turns to when something breaks. Still the one holding the vision, the relationships, the standards, and often the institutional knowledge.

The business may be growing, but it is not yet strong enough to grow without her at the center of everything.

That is the gap Athena helps close.

Many owners are never taught to distinguish between a business that produces income and a business that has transferable value. Those are not the same thing.

A company can have strong sales and still be too dependent on the founder. It can have a team and still lack leadership depth. It can have momentum and still struggle with weak margins, unclear roles, inconsistent sales processes, customer concentration, or operational chaos beneath the surface.

Athena helps owners strengthen the parts of the business that create real enterprise value: financial visibility, margin discipline, leadership structure, role clarity, sales infrastructure, operational rhythm, accountability, recurring revenue, and reduced owner dependency.

We are not interested in growth that simply creates more pressure.

Growth without infrastructure burns people out. Growth without margin creates stress. Growth without leadership keeps the owner trapped inside the company she built.

Our work helps women understand what their business is worth, what is limiting its value, and what needs to change to create more options.

For one owner, that may mean preparing for a future sale. For another, it may mean transitioning leadership internally, acquiring another company, bringing in a strategic partner, stepping out of daily operations, or building a company that gives her more freedom now.

Exit is not always about leaving.

Sometimes, exit means the business no longer depends on the owner’s constant sacrifice.

What’s next for you?

The next chapter for Athena is about helping more women business owners ask bigger questions earlier.

Too often, owners wait until they are exhausted, reacting to an unexpected offer, facing a leadership gap, or preparing to sell before they begin thinking seriously about value, transferability, acquisition, or exit.

By then, the options are often narrower than they should be.

We want to change that.

We want women asking these questions earlier:

• Is this business built to run without me?
• Do I know what it is worth?
• Are the right people in the right roles?
• Are my margins strong enough?
• Is growth creating value, or just more pressure?
• Could acquisition help us expand faster than building every new capability from scratch?
• Am I building income, or am I building an asset?

A major part of Athena’s next chapter is making acquisition, transition, and exit strategy more accessible to women owned businesses before they reach a breaking point.

Buying, selling, merging, and transitioning are not strategies reserved for large companies, private equity firms, or founders who are already at the finish line. They can be powerful tools for small and mid sized businesses when owners understand them early enough to make intentional decisions.

We are expanding our advisory work around acquisition readiness, exit preparation, business transition, and leadership handoff. We want to help first time buyers evaluate opportunities with confidence, and we want current owners to prepare their companies for a future sale, internal transition, merger, or next stage of leadership before they are forced into reactive decisions.

We are also continuing to build Athena as a collective because business owners need different expertise at different stages. No single advisor has every answer. Our role is to help owners see what matters most, then bring the right strategic guidance to the table.

And we will continue growing the Badass Women in Business Podcast because storytelling is part of the work.

Women need to hear from other women who are building, failing, scaling, buying, selling, inheriting, leading, transitioning, and starting over. They need inspiration, but they also need the truth.

Long term, our vision is for Athena to become a leading advisory firm for women owned businesses that are ready to scale, strengthen, acquire, transition, or exit.

Athena exists for the woman who knows her business has potential, but also knows it cannot keep depending on her the way it does today.

We help her build with intention, lead with clarity, and create more options for the future.

This is part of our ongoing 20 Founders On a Mission series. New editions publish regularly. To be featured or nominate a founder, write to us at hi@foundedbywomen.org