I
studied
doors.

My architectural design thesis was on the psychology of doors – everything that happens in the body and the mind around a point of entry. Going through the threshold is the transformational part: the exact moment you walk through, instead of standing outside or in the doorway looking in. We start when we're born, and all through life we cross into physical and metaphorical spaces. And things happen to us when we do. Powerful things.

I've been working around these moments ever since – in my clients' lives, and more than once in my own.

Behind the scenes

I spent years in fashion and music, working with amazing artists and great photographers – always directing from behind the camera, never in front of it. In my twenties I was taking entire production crews – photographer, models, hair and make-up, assistants – to Paris and Cuba: terrified, and in charge. I learned how finished work gets made under pressure, on deadline, with no room for "nearly done".

No safety net

When my marriage ended, I was in Austria with my daughters. I barely spoke the language, had no job and zero income. Within a year I built a business there as a full reinvention (not my first): no map, no safety net. I don't tell that story for sympathy – I tell it because it taught me the importance of going after what you want, the difference between having ideas and doing them, and that the gap between the two is where most lives stay stuck.

Fabrizia Costa

Photo © Gabrielle Motola

Ten years
of Outside
the Box

For ten years I ran Outside the Box, coaching photography business owners across Italy, Europe, the UK and the US. On paper it was business coaching – branding, pricing, offers, positioning. But the work I loved best was always reinvention: the wedding photographer who got into branding. The studio that changed audience, pivoted their offer and doubled its prices – all at once. Clients who moved countries and started over. The pattern never changed: a smart professional, a business that worked, and a next act stuck in their head.

I closed OTB in January 2026 – deliberately, on my own terms. After ten years of guiding other people's reinventions, it was my turn again.

My turn

At the start of last year I was itching for more. The business still worked – the money was fine, the clients were lovely, I was still excited about speaking at conferences – but my energy was fading away. I stopped launching and chasing new clients. I had no idea what was next: I only knew it was bigger than one industry.

The book, in under two weeks

Then a cheat sheet I was writing in the middle of another project grew teeth. I turned my own system on myself and wrote Stop F*cking About in five and a half days, edited it in two, designed it in six – racing a bunch of flowers my husband brought home, playing a game of finishing before they wilted. It was on Amazon within three weeks. Proof, meet pudding.

And that finished book did what finished projects do: it told me what came next. I didn't think my way to the new business and then execute it – I finished one project, and it handed me the vision. Within a year, everything had changed: new audience, new work, and definitely new energy.

You don't think your way to your next act. You finish one project – and it tells you who you're becoming.

The brain
behind it

I have ADHD, and I'm open about it. I know from the inside what it's like to have a brain that starts everything, and I know the craft of finishing isn't discipline, willpower or ridiculous 5am routines. It's structure. It's design. And ideally, it's fun – because if it ain't fun, it ain't gettin' done.

Now

Now I work with people – women, mostly – who are successful on the outside and a bit miserable and stuck on the inside. Good at what they do, best work still in their head. Sometimes it's a project. Increasingly, it's their whole business – successful but not a good fit for who they want to be. I know that threshold so well. My job is simple: we get together to close that gap between you and your potential.

Big Energy. Future-focused. Zero waffle.

Things you
should know
about me

  • Trained as an architectural designer. Still think in structures.
  • Built a thriving business in a year, in a country whose language I barely spoke.
  • Wrote, edited and designed a book in under two weeks.
  • Pivoted my own business at its peak. On purpose. Using my own method.
  • Planned, designed and created the cutest money-tracking app in two days (beta-testing as we speak).
  • ADHD, and open about it.
  • Happiest day of my life: age eleven, being put on a horse that was far too big for me. It terrified me and exhilarated me. It set a pattern.
  • Was kissed by Ella Fitzgerald. Twice.
Work with me 1:1

Prefer to start free? Everything I teach is on YouTube. Or take one good idea at a time with The Fab Stuff.