Why I Unpublished The Chickstas Club App (The R&D Report) - By Jo Veve

5 Hard Truths about Health, Survival, and Total Sovereignty.

They tell you in the start-up world to "move fast and break things." Yeah, nah. When it comes to your health, moving fast usually just means hitting a wall at 100km/h.

Five years ago, I started building a system to manage my life. I didn’t want another pretty wellness journal filled with "live, laugh, love" quotes. I needed a command centre. I needed a virtual marae (a sacred space for community and a distinct purpose).

See, my life has been a "chaotic masterpiece." From being a school dropout at fifteen and a solo mum by nineteen, to navigating the Pākehā corporate boardrooms, I learned early on that survival isn't about having a perfect plan. It's about Total Sovereignty.

So, I built the Chickstas Club App to handle this. I published it. And then? I did something crazy. I unpublished it.

I found that most of the advice we are given as women is fluff. It doesn't work in the trenches.

So, before we relaunch the new system on January 5th, I want to share the data. Here are the 5 Hard Truths I learned from 15 years of R&D.

1. "Balance" is a Scam. Aim for Capacity.

The wellness industry loves to sell us "work-life balance." But let's be real—in a life that looks like a "WrestleMania tag-team championship match", balance is mathematically impossible. Research shows that chasing balance when the odds are stacked against you just creates guilt.

The Fix: Don't try to balance the scales. Build the muscles to carry the weight. Stop trying to do it all; start tracking your Capacity—knowing exactly how much fuel you have in the tank before you enter the ring.

2. Your "BS Detector" is a Biological Function.

We are taught that stress is "all in our heads." But that "hypervigilance" you developed to survive a volatile childhood or toxic workplaces? It isn't just a personality quirk. It is a physiological tax on your nervous system.

The Fix: You can’t "mindset" your way out of burnout if your body is stuck in survival mode. You need data to see when your detector is redlining so you can pull back before you crash.

3. You Can't "Self-Care" Your Way Out of a Toxic Environment.

"Wellness" sells green juice and yoga retreats. But I learned that managing your health is just Sovereignty Management. If you are surrounded by "corporate psychopaths" or toxic structures, no amount of kale will save you.

The Fix: Identify the energy vampires first. Treat them like a virus. Stop the bleeding before you try to heal the wound.

4. Information Scatter is Making You Sick.

Decision fatigue is real. When I had "journals everywhere" and 15 tabs open trying to diagnose my own symptoms, I wasn't just disorganised; I was keeping myself sick.

The Fix: Centralise or die. You cannot heal what you cannot track. You need a "Command Centre," or a “marae, not a junk drawer.

5. "Perfect" is the Enemy of "Done."

I unpublished the original Chickstas app because I wanted it to be perfect. I realised that was vanity. We don't do "perfect." We do survival. An ideal tool that doesn't exist helps no one. A messy tool that works saves lives.

The Fix: The new app isn't perfect. Neither are you. And that’s why this system works—because it’s designed for the messy, imperfect reality of being human.

The Conclusion

The industry tells you to wait for a doctor to fix you.

But the biggest lesson from my 15 years of research is this: We as humans are responsible for our health, our bodies, our minds, and our souls.

The backup isn't coming. You are the CEO of your own survival.

The Solution

On January 5th, I am releasing the tool I built to manage all of this. It’s not a journal. It’s a Sovereignty Management System.