business strategist, Law Firm Owner, STRATEGIC ADVISOR, and creator of the Built to Flow Framework.
I helps experienced service providers navigate business evolution with clarity, intention, and sustainability. For more than two decades, I’ve built, sold, and advised service-based businesses across multiple industries. I’ve led through seasons of growth, recalibration, and reinvention, both in my own work and alongside clients whose businesses needed to change without breaking everything they’d built.
I’m also the co-owner and COO of a boutique, multi-state law firm. That role grounds my work in real operational leadership, long-term responsibility, and decisions that carry real consequences — not just theory or trend-based advice.
My work lives at the intersection of strategy and real life.
I'm Heather Crabtree
My Mission
Through the Built to Flow™ Framework, I’m on a mission to help entrepreneurs and experienced service providers realign their businesses with the season they’re in, so they can grow with clarity, rhythm, and intention.
I believe business strategy should support the life you’re actually living, not demand you override it.
But Why?
Throughout my 20+ years as an entrepreneur, I noticed a pattern.
Traditional business models reward hustle, urgency, and constant expansion, but they rarely account for capacity, context, or the reality that life changes. Caregiving happens. Loss happens. Leadership expands. Energy shifts. What once fit stops fitting.
I’ve lived this personally and professionally. I’ve watched capable, successful business owners burn out not because they lacked skill or discipline, but because the model they were following no longer matched their reality.
That realization changed how I approach strategy.
Instead of pushing harder or starting over, I help leaders pause, reassess, and respond with intention, aligning strategy to the season they’re actually in.
Built to Flow™ Framework
The Built to Flow™ Framework was created to replace rigid, one-size-fits-all growth models with a season-aware approach to business strategy.
It’s designed to help business owners:
* recognize when a strategy has expired
* identify what matters most now
* make fewer, better decisions
* build businesses that evolve alongside real life
Built to Flow isn’t about doing more.
It’s about building in rhythm, not resistance.
(The framework itself is explored more deeply through my advisory work, the Built to Flow Lab, and my book.)
Who I Serve
My work is best suited for:
- Experienced service providers with real traction
- Leaders navigating growth, recalibration, or reinvention
- Business owners who feel the weight of decision-making and don’t want surface-level advice
- People who value strategy, thoughtfulness, and sustainability over speed and hacks
I work best with people who are ready to lead their business differently, not just scale it.
A Few Things About Me
Where business growth strategy and soul meet, you’ll find me.
My inner nerd loves a personality test
Myers Briggs: ENFJ | Human Design: Generator 5/2 | Enneagram: 2w3 | Working Genius: Wonder + Invention | Kolbe: Quickstart
I’ve jumped out of an airplane... even though I’m afraid of heights.
Because courage doesn’t mean you’re not scared, it means you jump anyway.
Long walks in the Arizona desert and daily meditation? Yes, please.
Movement and mindfulness are part of my business strategy, too.
90s R&B are my forever vibe.
Lauren Hill, Aaliyah, SWV, Brandy, Mary J. Blige, Maxwell…so good!
I’m writing my first book.
It’s part business, part heart, and all about aligning your work with your life.
Healing is a practice, not a destination.
Weekly therapy, sound bowls, crystals, tarot, and sessions with my medium: these are part of my rhythm.
I’m in an ongoing negotiation with my naturopath about my love of Skittles.
(Progress, not perfection.)
I believe strategy should feel like support, not pressure.
And your business should feel like you.
I’m writing my first book.
It’s part business, part heart, and all about aligning your work with your life.
Healing is a practice, not a destination.
Weekly therapy, sound bowls, crystals, tarot, and sessions with my medium: these are part of my rhythm.
I’m in an ongoing negotiation with my naturopath about my love of Skittles.
(Progress, not perfection.)
I believe strategy should feel like support, not pressure.
And your business should feel like you.
What I Believe In
These values aren’t buzzwords. They’re the backbone of how I do business. From how I strategize to how I serve, these five values guide every decision, every offer, and every experience I create.
Intentional Action
We move with clarity, not urgency, making purpose-driven decisions that honor energy, access, and lived experience. By designing spacious timelines, flexible tools, and rhythm-aligned structures, we prioritize sustainability over speed and care over productivity.
Joyful Boldness
We show up with brave joy, honoring the fullness of who we are, even when it challenges norms or expectations. Our leadership is rooted in truth-telling and compassion, inviting others to lead from what’s real, not what’s polished.
Flow Over Force
We reject hustle culture and rigid timelines in favor of growth that honors capacity, context, and collective well-being. Flow means designing systems that support rest, recalibration, and human-centered strategy, not extraction.
Evolved Resilience
Resilience isn’t just pushing through, it’s learning how to adapt, resource ourselves, and lead through life’s hardest seasons.
We normalize grief, interdependence, and shifting strategies with softness and strength, because growth must include healing.
Rooted in Humanity
We build businesses that center equity, access, and deep care, where liberation isn’t a side note, but a starting point. Through trauma-aware tools, inclusive spaces, and flexible design, we honor the diverse realities of those we serve and lead.
LET'S CONNECT THE DOTS.
How I Made
it here.
During my third year of law school, my dad died suddenly just two days before my birthday. A few weeks later, the world shifted with September 11th.
I was grieving personally, while the world grieved collectively. This year put my life into perspective. I graduated law school and started working for a firm in Phoenix, but my world was about to shift again.
2001: A Sudden Loss and a Shift
As a kid, I always dreamed of becoming a lawyer and owning my own law firm. But life showed me a new path. I left law and started my own event planning business in 2004 and got married. I eventually grew a team, and gained a business partner.
Then, another pivot was forming. One, I became a mom. Professionally, other entrepreneurs started asking for help. With a business degree, a law degree, and a business that was thriving, I found my next season. In 2010, I started coaching entrepreneurs part-time while running the business and raising our first child. And just like that, a new chapter began.
2004: The Plot Twist
I had my second child. Two years later we sold the event business in 2014. I launched HeatherCrabtree.com with 1:1 coaching and a small Facebook group. That group grew to 25,000.
I created courses, a membership, masterminds, a sold-out conference, and a thriving podcast, all while raising our two kids.
2014: Another Big Pivot
Business was going great, but in 2017 shortly after adding a new business membership life once again turned upside down. London, our 9 year old, was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer. Multiple rounds of chemotherapy, surgeries, uncountable weeks of radiation, two stem cell transplants and more. The toughest years of our lives.
In 2020, I gave birth to our third child at the start of the pandemic and the world was exploding again. I was homeschooling, London’s cancer had relapsed, and I was running a business in the midst of it all.
2017: London’s Diagnosis
In early 2023, we learned London’s cancer had grown significantly.
Within two weeks of finding out, our sweet girl passed away. My life suddenly felt meaningless. I stepped back to grieve.
One year later, I took a sabbatical from my coaching business and my husband and I started a law firm, the dream I had as a child. We built it with care, intention, and clarity, growing it into a multi-million dollar firm. And now, I'm stepping into a new chapter once again.
2023: Grief, Pause, and a Return
This time, with even more purpose. Even more trust in rhythm. Even more commitment to honoring life first.
Built to Flow is the result of 20 years of experience, multiple businesses, deep personal loss, and seasons of growth and contraction.
It’s not just a framework. It’s how I’ve lived, grieved, rebuilt, and guided others with business growth strategy, soul, and sustainability.
2025: Built to Flow: A New Chapter
Community matters. Here are a few OF the organizations I proudly support:
Organizations I Support
The Trevor Project
Leading suicide prevention and crisis intervention nonprofit organization for LGBTQ+ young people
One Community
Coalition of LGBTQ inclusive businesses, organizations & individuals moving diversity, inclusion & equality for all Arizonans forward
One n Ten
Empowering programs for LGTBQ+ youth across Arizona
The Loveland Foundation
Bring opportunity and healing to communities of color, and especially to Black women and nonbinary individuals
Pro-Choice Arizona Foundation
Advocates for reproductive equity, pregnancy and family justice, and abortion access for all folks living in Arizona
Lighthouse for Hope
Strives to give pediatric cancer and blood disorder patients and their families the hope to fight, heal, and recover through providing critical emotional and financial support
Lift Women Fund: We Have Stories
Providing comfort, dignity, and everyday essentials to women living in shelters
ACLU
To defend and preserve individual rights and liberties guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and laws, working through litigation, advocacy, and community education to protect civil liberties and advance equity for all
