300 Keeping your Entrepreneurial Spirit Alive After Loss - Overcoming Grief & Moving Forward
Learn how to embrace difficult times like I did
and come out stronger on the other side.
After two years of pain and healing, I'm finally ready to share (in very rough form) my story of navigating through grief while maintaining an entrepreneurial spirit.
Learn how to embrace difficult times like I did and come out stronger on the other side.
In this episode I share some very imperfect insight into how to cope with your own grief and turn it into something positive. Please reach out to my on Instagram if you want to chat further!
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Access the transcript for this episode:
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You're listening to the visionary life podcast. I'm your host, Kelsey Reidl.
Each week, I'll bring you conversations with the most visionary humans on this earth, in hopes that you'll be able to absorb their wisdom, avoid their failures and feel less alone on the roller coaster ride that is entrepreneurship. This season, I'll be chatting with creative thinkers, masterful marketers, brick and mortar shop owners, brand builders, and people just like you who have a story to share or a vision that inspires if I can share one quick secret with you before we get into the episode is that we all have a little bit of visionary inside of us, you know, that spark that nudges us to pursue our full potential in this lifetime.
But perhaps somewhere along the line, it got covered up, I'm here to tell you that it's never too late to explore that inner voice and access the brilliance deep down inside of you. It's in you, it's in all of us. Let's dive in. I want to lead in to this episode, even though you have no context of what it's about. With a note I received recently, it said I was listening to your podcast earlier and I just can't stop thinking about how much you inspire me. With all that you've been through with the loss of your mom, it literally brings me to tears, you've expanded your passion and how you show up so brightly. I'm no expert and my own loss is so new, but I don't think grief shrinks, I think we expand and grow around it. I hope that makes sense. Anyways, it gives me hope for the future and to see you live your visionary life. I wanted to say thank you, man, I got this to my Instagram DMS recently, and I was speechless. The past two years have been the best years of my life and the worst. I feel like I'm living in two worlds simultaneously. I'm trying to live the life My mom wants me to. I'm trying to use my anger and sadness to create. I've had to figure out tools to shift my mood quickly. I'm on the hook for coaching calls in my business most days.
And sometimes guys, I am crying up till five seconds before a call and Kurt grief hits at weird times. And I really do believe that you can be incredibly happy and incredibly sad. At the same time I talk a lot about this dichotomy and it's okay to embrace living in these states simultaneously. I've watched my family grieve in such different ways than I have. So there's no right or wrong way. Just accepting that it's hard and it's unknown. And none of us are immune to it. So that's my little intro towards this episode. If this is feeling like too heavy of a topic, I understand if you want to skip and go to one of our 300 interviews in the archives, and otherwise, let's get right into it.Hey, visionaries, welcome back to a little mini episode of the podcast. And I'm excited to just sit down today and chat, just me and you and to talk about a topic that is not often discussed, which is grief as it relates to entrepreneurship and this kind of intersection between navigating grief in whatever way you may have navigated it in the past, whether that was through death, or through loss or through another circumstance in your life. And maybe you are someone who also is an entrepreneur and runs a business and is expected to perform at a high level and who takes ownership over your daily outputs and your work routine. And these are two things like grief can totally derail you and send you off track.
But entrepreneurship. And running a business especially a service based business can require you to be steady and present and rooted and strong for your clientele. And these two worlds when they collide can feel like absolute chaos. Because in one moment, you're feeling everything and you need to step back and you need a break and you need to disconnect. And then in the other moment you realize that you have such a deep vision for your business and you have people that you are accountable to whether it's employees or clients or partners, and there is no option or there's very little option to just completely fall off the face of the earth without things crumbling, right. And this is a topic that I actually don't have answers to so if you're coming for the solution, the formula I am not sure that this is the place but am I somebody who has experience in navigating intense grief while continuing to get out of bed to run my bed This because it's important. Yes, I am that person. So let me rewind a little bit and just give you some context. I've actually experienced maybe three bouts of extreme grief over the past few years. Most notably though, and the one that I feel most comfortable sharing is when I lost my mom. So it was summer of 2021. And I was hanging out at a friend's cottage no cell service, it was probably the first time in a long time that I was completely off the grid.
Both Dave and I. And the last person that I texted was my mom and I let her know, Hey, Mom, we're going up to a friend's cottage in the Ottawa Valley. Not going to be on my phone. So nobody knew where I was, except my mom and Dave, but Dave was with me. And so we had an amazing few days. And then Sunday morning, we packed up we started driving away from the cottage, and I turned on my cell service and I was like, Okay, we're coming back in the text messages are rolling in missed calls more missed called hundreds of missed calls. Where are you? Where are you call me ASAP? Kelis, we can't get a hold of you what's going on? Cousins messaging me. We don't know where you are. People are trying to figure out where you are. And I'm like, Holy shit, like something is is wrong. And the turn of events over the next 48 hours was that we routed straight for Huntsville, Ontario, where my mom was in hospital unconscious. And within, you know, 4824 to 48 hours, I believe she was gone. She was on life support. She was gone. No closure. No, nothing. Luckily, I was there. You know, in decent timing. Do I wish that I had been there earlier or reachable earlier when things were starting to go sour the day before? Of course I do. But you know, that's something that I've had to process and let go. So that maybe cues you up for the level of intensity of losing the most important person in my life. My mom was my best friend. She was my confide. And she was actually my biggest cheerleader in business, which I'm so grateful for. Because I don't know that everybody has that she would respond to every email newsletter I sent out saying I loved reading this, Kelsey, and she gives me the heart eyes emoji. She constantly watched my social media posts and would comment on them. She actually edited a lot of my blogs and my landing pages. She gave me feedback. When I didn't even ask for it. She'd be like, I didn't like that you swear it on your Instagram stories. I don't think your clients appreciate that. And so yeah, in addition to being my mom, my best friend, the person I called every day while I was walking my dog and just wanted to catch up and babble with someone. She was also, you know, my my cheerleader, and the person that I felt comfortable or most comfortable with. And so it was a tricky journey for so many reasons. But the reason why I'm here on the podcast is to talk about grief as it relates to entrepreneurs. And, you know, you're running a business, and a lot of you are spearheading the income generation. And I've been a full time entrepreneur for many years. And so, yes, I have option to take my foot off the gas pedal, but I don't necessarily have option to just disappear for months or years at a time and continue to make passive revenue.So if you do coaching or consulting or freelancing, like you are trading a service for money, and I personally think this is the most amazing career path, I'm so lit up by it. But there's this level of fear when you're not able to show up or when you're going through something that if I'm not at my best, then how can I continue to grow my business and going through grief really puts you out of your place and really forces you to look at yourself and say, What do I have to give today and there's a lot of challenges associated with balancing your personal emotions and your personal life with the professionalism of running a business and honestly, I really feel like there are multiple tracks you can take like, there is the side of you that can just say screw it, my grief is going to take up every ounce of me and I just need to lay in a dark room and stare at a blank wall. There's also the opposite end of that which a lot of entrepreneurs especially Taipei's who are go getters they experienced this of just avoidance And I'm going to work myself out of this grief, and go all in on a project. And it's almost a mechanism of distraction. Or there's that in between, which is I'm going to feel everything, but I have a business to run. So when I'm in my office, when I'm on I am professional and professionals, they don't bring their emotions into their work, right. And I think this is such an important distinction because a lot of people when personal stuff is happening, they shut down, and they can't even show up in a professional climate, which is totally okay. But in my experience, life is just always happening to us. Like, honestly, guys, every day, I'm being hit with stuff every week, something comes up every month, every year, something devastating. And so if I allowed myself to just take every opportunity to say, Well, I just can't do anything today. I don't think I would have a business because it would be easier for me then to go work for someone else, and to book time off and to take leaves and to take sabbaticals and to disappear and to slack off at the office and not do anything. Hey, visionary, I
want to quickly interrupt this episode to ask you if you've been curious what it's like to work with a private business and marketing coach, if you're a business owner, and you feel like your marketing plan is all over the place, you haven't figured out your search engine optimization or your SEO strategy, you have no idea what your social media marketing plan is, and you are not doing so well. On the self Express content front. I call these the marketing trio. It's the three S's SEO social media self expressed content. And by dialing in all three of these pillars, you too, can get more visible, generate more income and increase your lead generation where you're actually turning your followers into paid clients. And you're constantly bringing new people in at the top of the funnel. If you're not familiar with my work, I am a private business and marketing coach. And I have spent the last 13 years working in the marketing industry, many of those years doing consulting with clients like you who want to finally get more visible and get in front of their dream clients. So when we work together, you have me for four months, as your marketing partner, I'm going to do a full audit of your business, put you on a private project management software with me. And then based on your innate skill sets based on your strength, based on where you are curious and where your dream clients are paying attention. We're going to build out a custom marketing strategy, we're going to track it, we're going to optimize it. And by the end of the four months, you have a plan that works and you're seeing results. It's truly incredible.
Christina crook just landed a $100,000 consulting contract after implementing just one of my marketing strategies. Emily Fraser signed multiple new clients in one day after just one month of working with me. And now she is having consistent five figure months. And Natasha, she started leveraging her email list in December, and 30 days later in January, she pulled in $25,000 from one single email that we created. So these results are possible for you too. But don't sign up yet. Just head to Kelsey rydel.com. And check out how we can work together learn all about it, make sure you feel informed and if you'd like to book a discovery call with me just fill out the application on my website we can get on the phone and see if it's a good fit for you. So anyways, I don't want to interrupt this episode anymore. I cannot wait to work with you to support you and getting you more visible and let's get back into the show.But entrepreneurship it does require us to come in to devote ourselves to giving value to clients and customers and to show them that we are giving them our best selves and when I'm on a call with a client that I am 110% present even if I am navigating something pretty severe. And so there is no right way there's no wrong way, the way that I chose was to deal with the personal stuff, while also showing up as a professional. And I don't know if that's right, I don't know if it's wrong, I didn't know how long it was going to take to kind of balance these two worlds and get to the other side. But for me, I needed to keep the fire stoked for my business I needed to, you know, I don't know if I would call it distract, or avoidance, or just keeping busy in beautiful ways, because that's what my mom would have wanted. But that's what I did. And I kept the business very much alive in those times, but I didn't overdo it. And so you know, in the, say, first two to three months, I did need extra time. So I had my assistant take over a lot of the calls. And she handled the communication with clients. And I entrusted in some of my clients who I knew who had gone through similar just to give them a heads up, but for some people I didn't want them to be let in. And another thing was that I truly worked on my energy before I sat down at my desk, like I made sure I was good. I had gotten my exercise I had done, you know whether it was a meditation or a walk or a eatin healthy, to make sure that my energy was like a plus, plus, plus, plus, like I was taking the highest level of care of myself, even though I may have been a little foggy mentally. But I needed to prioritize my health, my mental energy, my physical well being, so that I could show up for my business. So those were some of the things that I did to help myself navigate. Well, obviously exploring other options to help me so I knew that talking to somebody I chose to hire a medium was super helpful. I began a project to honor my mom's passion, which was cooking, and I started building a 100 page cookbook, which is now in print today. And I'm so proud of it. I really always thought about like, what would my mom want me to be doing in this moment? Would she want me to be mourning or creating in her honor, which you want me to be mourning, or, you know, going out and living life to the fullest? Like she did. And so there's such a mixed bag of emotions. And like I said, I don't think that there's any one right journey. But I also knew that for me, I didn't really have a choice like, this is my livelihood, it's my income. I don't have the option to just step away forever and let business come and flow as it will like, this is a strategic like, this is my income, you know, like, it's the same way that people say I need to pick up more hours at my job, or I need to ask for a raise, like, this is the work that I do. And I I struggle, because I see a lot of people like constantly being derailed due to life's moments. And there's part of me that says, Yo, that is a okay, because life is tough, and things aren't perfect. And when there are chemical imbalances and things going on hormonally, like you don't always have the willpower or the desire to work. But if it's a conscious choice, and you're you're doing well, and you're taking care of yourself, life is gonna always be happening to you. Like I said, like, I don't share publicly a lot of the stuff that I'm going through. However, I still show up with professionalism, because it's my work. If I chose the path of entrepreneurship, it's because I'm going to keep choosing it day after day and choose to keep building and not letting these seven or eight years of hard work be taken away because I'm navigating a situation that feels emotionally draining.
So I felt called to share this today because I think it deserves some conversation like there are certainly times to take a break and to seek professional help. But there are certainly times and you know, even though I've gone through some of the most devastating moments of my life, I have always picked myself back up and said, Who am I what inspires me? Why am I going to keep going through this? Why is it important for me to show up to work today? And some days the answer is it's not and other days is because I am an equal provider like in this household and there is not exactly an option for me to step back. Of course my husband and I would say forward each other and bend over backwards, but like I take my business and, you know, achieving certain standards very, very seriously. So I hope that gives you a little bit of perspective, a little bit of insight, certainly murky waters. But if you're somebody who's going through it, I'm here for you. I'm here to chat. I'd love to know, how did you manage grief? What did you do to navigate or express yourself or manage emotions as an entrepreneur? Going through the hard times? And what resources did you turn to because I knew for me, I wasn't finding anything like this intersection of grief and entrepreneurship just felt unexplored and undiscovered. And it made me feel alone. And I don't know if I did it, right. I don't know if I did it wrong. I did it the only way I knew how. But I want to crack this conversation open and create a space and even inside of my 90 Day group program, and inside of our High Level Mastermind for female entrepreneurs, we talk about this, we're cracking into these conversations, finally, because whether it's grief of losing yourself, when you become a mom, and you're now devoting 99% of your time to these little babes or grief of shutting down one business and launching another, or grief of dealing with the death of a loved one, as you still have a dream to grow your business. These are topics that aren't off limits. And I would encourage you to reach out to send me an email Hello at Kelsey rydell.com. And let me know if you've ever gone through this if this is something that resonates if this is something you'd like to explore, among many other topics like wealth, and marketing and scaling businesses to hundreds of 1000s in revenue and building teams and operations and systems and all that. Again, I'd love to chat with you because this is an important conversation. So you can just send me an email Hello at Kelsey rydell.com. Just tell me listen to the grief episode, and I will send you something back and we can connect. So that's it for this week. A little bit of a topic on my heart. But I hope it resonated with at least one of you. And I will see you guys next week. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of visionary life. I love bringing you these conversations on a weekly basis. So it would mean so much to me. If you could help me out by rating and reviewing the show on either iTunes or Spotify. It just takes a second. And if you don't want to rate the show, you could also just take a screenshot of the episode and share it on your social media platform of choice tagging me at Kelsey rival. I'll catch you in the next episode.
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