Shayla King’s journey from corporate burnout to executive coach shows how prioritizing happiness and well-being can lead to sustainable success.
Shayla King’s rise to success isn’t your typical corporate story. Her journey began at IHOP, serving pancakes and balancing tables, and led her to the C-suite, where she now serves as the Chief People & Culture Officerof a major company. But the real story isn’t just about climbing the corporate ladder; it’s about the profound transformation that happened along the way, a transformation sparked by a near-death experience and a personal reckoning with what true success really looks like.
Shayla’s breakthrough didn’t come from a moment of luck. It came from a moment of realization, a wake-up call that forced her to rethink everything. After years of working long hours, achieving incredible results, and gaining accolades in the corporate world, she found herself burnt out, stressed, and, most importantly, unfulfilled. It wasn’t until a life-threatening medical error left her in a coma that she found the clarity to redesign her life.
Today, Shayla is a successful executive coach, founder of Evolve Career Coaching, and creator of the Performance + Happiness (PH+) Formula, a framework that helps leaders achieve both career success and personal happiness. But it wasn’t always this way. Here’s how a near-death experience, and the lessons learned from it, transformed her approach to success, leadership, and life.
A Wake-Up Call That Changed Everything
Before Shayla was coaching high-powered executives, she was a corporate warrior. She worked long hours, climbed the corporate ladder, and hit every target in sight. She was rising fast, and for a while, it felt like everything she worked for was falling into place. But something was missing. Success didn’t feel like success anymore. It felt like survival.
“I was winning professionally, but at the cost of my health, relationships, and peace of mind,” Shayla shares. “Burnout wasn’t a badge of honor, it was a signal that something was broken.”
That’s when her “frozen-arm moment” happened. Overwhelmed by stress and overwork, her body physically shut down. It was a wake-up call that sent Shayla on a quest to understand how people can truly be successful, without sacrificing their well-being.
But her transformation didn’t stop there.
From Corporate Burnout to Life-Altering Clarity
A few years after that turning point, Shayla faced another life-changing moment. After a nurse’s error left her in a coma and on life support, Shayla was forced to confront her own mortality. “I wasn’t afraid of death, but I was terrified of living a life that wasn’t true to myself,” she recalls.
The experience wasn’t just a wake-up call; it was a clear message from the universe: success without happiness is meaningless.Shayla had reached the top of her career but had forgotten to live. The realization that “I was doing it all wrong” became her turning point.
Instead of returning to her old habits, Shayla decided to do something radical. She would take everything she’d learned about performance and mindset, and apply it to create a life of balance, joy, and genuine success. The PH+ Formulawas born from this decision. It’s the culmination of Shayla’s personal journey to wellness, happiness, and high performance. And now, it’s the key to transforming the lives of leaders around the world.
The PH+ Formula: A New Approach to Leadership and Life
Shayla’s PH+ Formulais a holistic framework designed to help leaders achieve high performance while fostering happiness and peace. It’s not just about “working smarter”; it’s about creating a life that fuels both career success and personal joy. The formula focuses on three core principles: mindset shifts, essentialism, and ritualsthat create more time for what truly matters.
“I don’t just teach people how to work smarter; I help them redesign their lives so they can thrive in every area,” Shayla explains. The PH+ Formula is all about prioritizing happiness and health without sacrificing success. Through mindset shifts and simple rituals, Shayla’s clients learn to work less, live more, and finally enjoy the fruits of their labor.
Redefining Success: It’s Not Just About the Results
One of Shayla’s core beliefs is that success doesn’t have to come at the expense of happiness. Most of us have been conditioned to believe that success is the ultimate goal. But what happens when success doesn’t bring happiness? What happens when the pursuit of success leads to burnout, stress, and loneliness?
“We’ve been taught to chase results, but we haven’t been taught how to live well while achieving them,” Shayla says. “Success doesn’t mean anything if you’re not happy, healthy, and at peace with yourself.”
In her coaching, Shayla helps leaders redefine success. It’s not just about hitting targets and climbing the corporate ladder. It’s about finding joy, fulfillment, and peace on the journey. Once leaders stop “proving” their worth and start embodyingtheir true selves, success follows, effortlessly.
Mindset: The Key to Both Performance and Happiness
One of the most important elements of the PH+ Formulais what Shayla calls the King Mindset. This approach focuses on rewiring the brain to support both high performance and inner peace. Through mindset shifts, Shayla’s clients learn how to master emotional regulation, create calm confidence, and lead with intention.
By reprogramming their thoughts and building emotional intelligence, Shayla’s clients are able to perform at a higher level, but with a sense of peace and purpose that makes the journey enjoyable. No more burnout, no more stress. Just clear, focused leadership.
Real-World Transformation for Leaders
Shayla’s coaching isn’t theoretical. It’s practical, real-world, and transformative. Through The PH Lab, her group coaching program, and personalized 1:1 sessions, she guides corporate leaders toward achieving their next-level goals while building lives that are balanced, fulfilling, and healthy.
Her corporate partnerships bring the PH+ Formulato organizations, helping companies create cultures of wellness and high performance. Leaders from Fortune 100 companies and emerging entrepreneurs alike have benefited from Shayla’s approach, achieving better results, improved confidence, and deeper fulfillment.
A New Kind of Leadership: Ready to Break Through?
Shayla King’s story proves that it is possible to achieve at the highest levelwithout sacrificing your well-being or happiness. True successisn’t about accumulating more money, more status, or more accolades. It’s about having the freedom to enjoy the journey, and living a life that is meaningful, fulfilling, and joyful.
With her PH+ Formula, Shayla is changing the way leaders approach success, offering them the tools to build thriving careers without losing sight of what matters most. If you’re ready to redefine success and experience the true meaning of fulfillment, visitShayla King’s Websiteto start your transformative journey today and follow her onInstagram,LinkedIn, or listen to her podcast onApple Podcasts.
