The entrepreneur, author, podcast host, and mother of six thinks success looks less like a climb and more like a garden. Her new book, The Cultivate Her, makes the case.
Aimee Rickabus has spent much of her adult life doing several jobs at once. She is the CEO of Tomahawk Information Solutions, a nine-figure technology solutions company serving Fortune 500 clients. She hosts The Manage Her podcast. She is raising six children. Somewhere along the way, she also found time to write two books exploring the expectations placed on women and the possibilities that emerge when those expectations are reconsidered.
Her first book, The Manage Her: Unveiling Women’s Invisible Work & Sparking a Leadership Revolution, examined the work nobody counts: the scheduling, the caretaking, the emotional labor, and the quiet holding-together of homes, offices, and communities. Rickabus argued that this work is leadership, and that it deserves to be recognized as such.
Her second book, The Cultivate Her: When Women Stop Climbing and Start Cultivating, will be published on November 20, 2026, by Synergy Publishing Group. This time, the question is more personal.
“Recognizing women’s invisible work was the beginning,” she says. “But recognition alone isn’t enough. We also have to give women permission to examine their own lives, heal what needs healing, and cultivate what truly matters to them.”
Where The Manage Her encouraged women to recognize the value of everything they contribute, The Cultivate Her invites them to reconsider what they want to create with their lives.
Trading the Ladder for a Garden
The book is built around one central image.
For decades, women have been encouraged to picture success as a ladder. Keep moving up. Watch whoever is ahead of you. Don’t stop climbing.
Rickabus believes a garden offers a more expansive way of understanding a successful life.
Gardens require patience, intention, and regular care. They grow unevenly. They experience seasons of abundance and periods of rest. What flourishes in one season may need to be released in another.
“Women have spent generations proving that we can climb the ladder,” she says. “But somewhere along the way, we forgot to ask whether the ladder was taking us where we actually wanted to go.”
She is careful to distinguish her philosophy from a rejection of ambition.
As the leader of a successful technology company, Rickabus knows firsthand what it means to build, compete, and achieve. Her argument isn’t that women should stop pursuing meaningful goals. It’s that achievement alone may not provide a complete definition of success.
The book encourages readers to become more intentional about where they invest their time, energy, and attention, and to consider whether the lives they are building reflect the things they value most.
Midlife Isn’t the End of the Story
Much of The Cultivate Her explores the seasons of a woman’s life.
Using spring, summer, fall, and winter as a framework, Rickabus examines how women’s identities, priorities, relationships, and contributions evolve over time.
She is particularly interested in the transitions that are often described in terms of loss.
Midlife and menopause are frequently portrayed as periods of decline. Rickabus sees the possibility for something different: a season of wisdom, discernment, and renewed purpose.
In her view, a woman’s life isn’t defined by a single period of productivity or achievement. Each season brings its own opportunities for growth, contribution, and transformation. The book also explores the expectations women carry around resilience.
On her podcast, The Manage Her, Rickabus discussed with Dr. Katie Pritchett how the pressure to remain strong can prevent women from recognizing their own needs.
The Cultivate Her builds on that conversation, challenging the assumption that women must continually become stronger, more productive, and more capable of carrying everything.
Instead, Rickabus asks what might become possible when women begin cultivating the support, relationships, and practices that allow them to flourish.
Cultivating a Life With Intention
Although the garden serves as the book’s central metaphor, Rickabus also offers a practical framework for personal growth.
She identifies four essential ingredients for cultivation: Presence, Purpose, Practice, and People.
Presence invites women to become more fully engaged in their lives rather than constantly anticipating what comes next.
Purpose encourages them to examine what matters most and how they want to contribute.
Practice focuses on the habits, rituals, and intentional choices that support meaningful growth.
People recognise that no garden flourishes in isolation, and that relationships and community are essential to a fulfilling life.
Together, these four ingredients provide a framework for moving beyond the pursuit of achievement toward a more intentional and meaningful way of living.
Rickabus brings her own experiences to this philosophy. Alongside decades of entrepreneurship and motherhood, she has spent years studying personal development, yoga, meditation, and energy healing.
In 2025, NAWBO Orange County recognized her with its Remarkable Woman Award for Innovation.
Her work reflects an evolving understanding of leadership, one that encompasses not only professional achievement but also personal growth, relationships, and the contributions women make throughout their lives.
Bring a Few Friends
Rickabus hopes The Cultivate Her will become more than a book women read individually. She wants it to inspire conversations.To encourage that process, she has created a free companion workbook and book club kit designed to help women explore the book’s themes together.
She suggests gathering six to ten friends to discuss the ideas, reflect on their own seasons of life, and consider what they want to cultivate next.
The materials include opportunities for personal reflection and group discussion, encouraging readers to move beyond understanding the book’s philosophy and begin applying it to their own lives. Launch gatherings are planned in Southern California and Arizona in November.
Pam Roy, an author and educator whose work explores personal growth and human development, contributed the book’s foreword. Roy will also join Rickabus for a special episode of The Manage Her podcast scheduled for November 16, 2026, just days before the book’s release.
From the Page to the Garden: Retreats and Experiences
For Rickabus, The Cultivate Her is also the beginning of a larger movement centered on personal growth, connection, and intentional living.
Beginning in January 2027, she will host a series of intimate women’s retreats and experiences designed to bring the book’s philosophy to life.
The first, Cultivate Yourself, takes place January 29–31, 2027, in Dana Point, California, in collaboration with wellness practitioner Brenda Orill. The immersive weekend will focus on cultivating peace, clarity, and calm through practices including yoga, breathwork, meditation, sound healing, and guided reflection. Additional retreats and gatherings are being planned throughout 2027, including a spring retreat in Sonoma, California, with author and educator Pam Roy.These experiences will invite women to step away from their daily responsibilities, reconnect with themselves, explore the seasons of their lives, and consider what they want to cultivate next.
For more information about upcoming retreats and events, visit www.thecultivateher.com.
“The goal isn’t simply to sell books,” Rickabus says. “It’s to start conversations that change the way women see themselves and the possibilities for their lives.”
For Rickabus, the message is ultimately one of possibility.
Women have spent generations demonstrating how much they can accomplish. Perhaps the next chapter isn’t about proving they can climb higher.
Perhaps it’s about deciding what they want to grow.
ABOUT THE BOOK
The Cultivate Her: When Women Stop Climbing and Start Cultivating
By Aimee Rickabus
Foreword by Pam Roy
Published by Synergy Publishing Group
Publication Date: November 20, 2026
Available on Amazon and through retailers supplied by IngramSpark.
Print ISBN: 978-1-960892-86-7
eBook ISBN: 978-1-960892-87-4
Book Information, Retreats & Events:
www.thecultivateher.com
Podcast & Community:
www.themanageher.com
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