392 How to Show Up Consistently as an Entrepreneur (Even When You Don't Feel Creative)

Jan 25

I Panicked in December. Here's What It Taught Me About Running a Business.

**Episode 392:** Rain or Shine Podcast
**Host:** Kelsey Reidl, The Rain or Shine Podcast

Riding the Waves: Why "Boring" Weeks Kill Your Business (And What to Do About It)

Episode: Rain or Shine Podcast
Host: Kelsey Reidl, The Rain or Shine Podcast

Quick Summary

In this candid solo episode recorded during a tight one-hour window, Kelsey reflects on eight years of podcasting and shares raw insights about her recent panic spiral in December, the beauty of business inconsistency, and a game-changing mastermind lesson: if your life is boring, your content will be too. This episode is a masterclass in showing up even when you don't feel inspired.

In This Episode

Celebrating 8 years and 400 episodes of podcasting
Kelsey's December panic attack: white space, scarcity mindset, and discount codes she regrets
Why the "best thing about entrepreneurship is inconsistency"
The accountability power of having a team and manufactured deadlines
How to hold yourself accountable when you're your own boss
A pivotal mastermind lesson with Lori Harder on creativity and content creation
Why your boring routine is killing your content (and what to do about it)
The Stan's Fries epiphany: doing one thing exceptionally well
How to create "life as content" without filming everything

Key Takeaways

Consistency beats perfection: Kelsey has shown up every week for 8 years, even when she didn't know what to say. The key is manufacturing accountability through team commitments and deadlines.
Business inconsistency is a feature, not a bug: Unlike a job that pays the same $4K/month regardless of effort, entrepreneurship allows you to make $100 one month and $100K the next. Embrace the waves.
Panic during slow seasons is normal but temporary: Kelsey's December panic (giving out discount codes, feeling like AI was making her obsolete) lasted 2-3 weeks. By January, business was back to normal. Don't make permanent decisions based on temporary feelings.
Boring life = boring content: If your week is the same routine on repeat (desk, Zoom, dinner, bed), you'll have nothing interesting to share. Creativity requires white space, new experiences, and intentional "doing cool shit."
Stay in your lane unapologetically: The Stan's Fries lesson—do one thing exceptionally well and don't waver when people ask you to expand. They only sell fries with salt and vinegar. No ketchup, no credit cards, no apologies.

Memorable Quotes

"The best thing about being a business owner is the inconsistency. Let me say that again: the best thing about being a business owner is the inconsistency."
"If you look at your life right now and your life looks pretty boring, my guess is that your content isn't hitting."
"We often build confidence by keeping the promises we make to ourselves."

Resources Mentioned

Kelsey's Website: KelseyReidl.com
Kelsey's Podcast: Rain or Shine (350+ episodes featuring Canadian entrepreneurs)
Instagram: @KelseyReidl
Mentor Collective Mastermind by Lori and Chris Harder
Wave Mastermind (Kelsey's mastermind program)
Rachel Melinda (DJ and content creator example)
Stan's Fries (local fry shop in Kelsey's town)

About the Host

Kelsey Reidl is an entrepreneur, fractional CMO, and host of Rain or Shine (formerly Visionary Life). She's been podcasting for 8 years, helping entrepreneurs show up consistently and build sustainable businesses. She runs the Wave Mastermind and specializes in marketing strategy, website design, and business growth. Kelsey is a mom to a 2-year-old, an avid mountain biker, and a firm believer in the "rain or shine" mentality.

DELIVERABLE 1: CLEANED & EDITED TRANSCRIPT
Kelsey Reidl: Hey visionaries, welcome back to another episode of Rain or Shine. I'm so excited to be here with you today. I actually just realized something crazy—today is the eight-year podcast anniversary of Visionary Life, which is now called Rain or Shine. Yes, that means I started this show back in 2018, and there are almost 400 episodes for you guys to explore in the archives.
Eight years is incredible. We're almost a decade of recording this podcast every single week for you guys, and it's evolved and changed. You've been through every season with me—from the days where I biked around Toronto with a mic in my backpack and I would sit shoulder-to-shoulder with my guests. I was so ambitious and bold with who I asked to be on this show. I had no fear. I would just email anyone and be like, "Hey, you just started a business. Can I come by and record a podcast?"
You know what people would say to me eight years ago? They'd be like, "What's a podcast?" And then they would say yes because they had no idea. I always got compliments that I was a good interviewer, and I think I always did a lot of prep work. This was before ChatGPT, right? Now I feel like people write outlines in two minutes. I used to do deep research—I'd spend a couple hours listening and finding these random articles and piecing together really thoughtfully curated questions. I would print them out and show up with handwritten notes while we talked in person.
For example, I remember interviewing the founders of Zen and Tonic, which was a recovery studio in Toronto. They invited me in and Dave came as well. We did acupuncture, and then we did these recovery boots where you put your legs in and they swell up to reduce inflammation. People would always just be so ecstatic to show off their space or share their services.
One time I went to this girl's house and she was a creative visionary artist I met through a Facebook group. I go into her house and she's a full creative—there's art and scribbles all over the wall. She's like, "I just got so inspired to bake whoopie pies." So we sat at her kitchen table, ate whoopie pies together before we started the show, and then we got into it.
If you scroll back to the first 50 to 100 episodes of Visionary Life, there's probably weird background noise. I'm sitting on a farm with people recording. I'm drinking beer while recording with people. I'm in people's apartments and it's very intimate. It was just a really cool chapter, so thank you for letting me reflect back on that.
[TRANSITION: Introduction to Rain or Shine Philosophy]
Here we are kicking off year nine. Thanks for being here. If you've been here from the start eight years ago, please message me and be like, "Yo, I'm an OG listener." And if you're a newer listener, I appreciate you.
This podcast is all about sharing my favorite motto, which is rain or shine. It's showing up for yourself, living a life of consistency, not waiting for the shiny days, the sunny days to take action and to live our best life. Because we have today and only today, and even on the rainy days, there's so much opportunity to plant seeds and to know that the sun is coming and that good things are ahead.
I really do think a rain or shine mentality is crucial for entrepreneurship because we are gonna go through so much as business owners—so many mental struggles, the highs, the lows, everything in between. There are no guarantees here. You're not guaranteed shiny days every day. You're not gonna be guaranteed only rainy days if you keep showing up and putting yourself out there. But it's gonna be a balance, right? To expect that every day is gonna be sunny is not understanding how entrepreneurship works. There are challenges every time you open your laptop, every time you enter a new level. We almost just have to embrace it.
[TRANSITION: Today's Episode Topic]
What is happening in today's episode? I thought I would sit down, riff solo show, do a life update, and maybe share some things I've been thinking about in the last week. I'm recording in a very tight time block because this week I have zero time. When I looked at my schedule for this work week, I realized I had literally one hour. This is Wednesday from 10:30 to 11:30 where I can get this show done. The reason why it has to get done is because I have a podcast production assistant who needs this episode ASAP, and so I can't delay it.
That's probably the best thing about having a team—having somebody who you pay to do work for you means you're not just accountable to yourself. When there's something else on the line, like this person's relying on me, they need the episode to do their job, I'm gonna get it done. I'm not just gonna scroll Instagram for this hour. It's either now or I stay up late tonight, which is not gonna happen because sleep has been a challenge in our house with our two-year-old.
I'm really excited to be sitting down and I love having this deadline because people always say we show up best under pressure, and I think that's often the case. Even if you have to manufacture artificial pressure—if you're not doing the thing, if you're currently releasing a podcast once every seven weeks, you need to figure out how to apply artificial pressure. How are you gonna get this thing done?
If you've put it off six weeks in a row where you're just like, "Yeah, I didn't have time," well first of all, maybe it's not a priority. Reassess what's your priority in terms of your marketing and your visibility strategy. Second of all, you are a business owner. You need to be consistent. You need to output content, or you need to be following up with people or building relationships or showing up at events. You can't let yourself off the hook too many times before the business just becomes stale and stagnant.
[TRANSITION: Accountability and Consistency]
I know that is hard to hear, but the truth is, if you can't hold yourself accountable, you really only have two options. You either find an accountability partner or group, or join a mastermind where you have that layer of accountability and you declare goals to the group. Or you go work for someone else, right? Figure out a different situation where you are not the one in charge of the business growth. If you're constantly letting yourself down but then you're disappointed with the results, this is no way to grow a business and it's no way to move through confidence building in life.
We often build confidence by keeping the promises we make to ourselves. I get it—life happens. There have been so many times, even just in the past four weeks, where I got deathly sick and I basically just had to do nothing for two weeks. Then there have been things that have come up in the first two weeks of January that were not planned, and I'm like, "Oh my God, this totally derails this project." But that's not the norm, right? Of course, life happens. Of course I give myself grace when I'm not healthy. Of course I give myself grace when external circumstances really prevent me from doing the work. But there kind of is always external circumstances.
There's always stuff going on in the background, whether it's family stuff or client drama or maybe a friend breakup that you had to go through. I think there is a case to be made for the fact that we could all declare that every day is hard in business. I haven't been sleeping lately, so yeah, I do wanna just be napping on the couch. But I also know that to keep the lights on of this business and to fuel my soul—it's not just ever about money, it's never about just literally paying the bills—it's about I have made commitments to show up for people. I'm passionate about the work that I do. I try to hold myself accountable to show up for the things that matter and that move the needle and that produce an ROI, and maybe avoid the rest.
If you're in that season where there's background chaos—we can call it background shit—I see you, I feel you. It is so hard because you don't have to exit the door at 9:00 AM to go to your job-job, and you still have to show up for the job you've built for yourself, the entrepreneurial venture. You don't want to let yourself off the hook so many times that you cannot anymore work for yourself and that you end up needing to go back to your job-job. Such a fine balance. I'm still figuring it out, but here we are.
[TRANSITION: December Panic and January Clarity]
I mentioned we're mid-January already. So crazy. It's so funny thinking back to December because I had this crazy season of completion. I know that a lot of people said, with the year of the snake, it was about a year of shedding skin. For me, I didn't time it this way, but I had so many projects come to completion. I wrapped up a bunch of websites that I was doing. I finished off a big fractional CMO gig that I had with a client. A lot of my private clients started with me back in May or June, and then they finished in December.
I looked at my calendar and I just had all this white space for kind of mid-December onwards, which I should have been celebrating. I should have been the most joyful person to see this white space because it never happens. And of course I got sick during that white space, but that's besides the point.
I started to panic. I really panicked. I remember being on the couch with my husband and just being negative Nancy. I was like, "I don't know what I'm doing. AI is changing so quickly. I'm being left behind. What I'm doing is redundant. Why haven't I had a ton of new leads come through? My Google ads have been a little bit quiet."
In that moment, time felt like it was standing still. Every day I was kind of like, "What's going on? What's going on?" It felt like days were actually weeks. Now looking back on it, I'm like, that was literally a blip in time—maybe two to three weeks. I panicked. It made me reach out to some potential leads being like, "Hey, are we getting started? Do you wanna build that website? Do you need my services?" I started promoting a little bit more on Instagram. But I also started handing out discount codes, which I never do, which I shouldn't have been doing. That was a scarcity mindset that I had.
I was actually just reflecting on this with friends. I was like, "Guys, you'll never believe what I did in December." The reason why I'm sharing this is because I think we all have these moments of fear and worry as entrepreneurs when we have slow months. Whether your slow months are July and August when people are on vacation and they cancel their gym memberships, or December when they wanna take holidays and be with their families—it's very normal to have these panic moments where we're like, "Nothing's working. I need to burn it all down, build it back up, go back, apply for jobs." And it feels like eternity.
But here's what I wanna share, because now I'm in January, new month, I continue to plant seeds. I really tried to work on my mindset and not be panicky Kel. Here we are in January and business is right back to where it always has been. My panic, although I thought that was gonna be the future, my destiny, none of that was really warranted because I know I've been in business for eight years. I know that there are seasons. There are seasons of momentum. There are seasons of quiet. There are times when a bunch of leads come your way. There are times when no leads are coming in and you're like looking at a dry spell. There needs to be space for all of it.
[TRANSITION: The Beauty of Inconsistency]
Consistency in business is not normal. For most of us, you don't just get that recurring paycheck of $4,000 a month or whatever. That's what a job pays you—the same exact amount, no matter how hard you work, how non-hard you work. The best thing about being a business owner is the inconsistency. Let me say that again: the best thing about being a business owner is the inconsistency. Because it means you can make $100 one month and you could literally make $100,000 the next month. In a job, you're getting the $4,000 a month, right?
I think this is the coolest thing about being an entrepreneur—although it's scary, we get to fluctuate, we get to ride the waves right to their peak where we're about to surf the most insane wave of our life. And we have to ride, whether we want to or not, the waves that are crashing and burning over our head where we're like, "Yikes, this doesn't feel good." There has to be space for all of it.
I really wanted to share what has been happening behind the scenes, my December to my January, to reassure you guys that whether you're in my December right now and you're like, "What's going on? It's slow"—don't panic, hold the faith. Use this time to build up smart systems. Use this time to plant new seeds, to improve processes, to fill your own cup. Go do something cool, especially if you've been in a busy season and you've found yourself slipping, feeling maybe creatively uninspired. Maybe you've just kind of been in this rut.
[TRANSITION: Mastermind Insights on Creativity]
I was on a mastermind call yesterday and I'm in an amazing mastermind with Lori and Chris Harder—it's called the Mentor Collective Mastermind. I joined it because I am also a creator of a mastermind, the Wave Mastermind. I always like to put myself in other rooms where I can elevate and I can learn the best strategies for masterminds and how to build true community and how to coach better. My big investment was in Chris and Lori's Mastermind this year.
I asked a question to Lori yesterday because she outputs four podcasts a week. I said, "How do you do it? That's a lot. What are your systems, especially for creating solo show content?" I knew I was recording a solo episode today, but it's funny because I still didn't know what it was gonna be about. I'm like, "Well, I have to record. There's no other time, so I need to sit down, I need to do it."
I asked her, "How do you keep track of your solo shows? You do these every week, twice a week, and then you're doing interviews. I just need to know the behind the scenes here because that is a lot."
I thought she was going to answer more tactically, like, "Okay, well on Tuesdays I sit down..." She did share some of that. Or I thought maybe she'd say, "I have this ongoing note and I write the notes and then I send it to my assistant and my assistant does a first draft using AI and then I read it." But she took the question in a completely different direction, which was exactly what I wanted to hear.
She's like, "Are you doing things that are exciting right now and do you feel creative?" And I was like, "Oh shit." Because I feel like—and this was one of my goals for 2026—to return to a creative practice. I haven't been creative, or I haven't felt my most creative self in over a year. The last time I felt truly creative was while I was pregnant, kind of the late phase of pregnancy with Freddy, and while I was on mat leave. My brain was just running with ideas and I was loving it.
Then, you'll know if you're a parent or a mom, especially a mom running her own business, I slowly started to add more to my plate when maternity leave was getting to the three-month mark, six-month mark. Then I kind of returned to work slowly to quite a heavy schedule. Even though I only worked two official days a week with childcare, I was still needing to work in the evenings, work on Friday's nap. It felt like I came to this point where I was either working or I was being a mom.
Both of those things can absolutely bring creativity in unique ways, but for me, I know that so much of my creativity comes from doing my hobbies. I love to mountain bike. I love to paddleboard. I love to be active and go for hikes with my dog. I love to listen to podcasts while I'm hiking. I love to go to coffee shops. I love to travel. I love to go to new spaces and places and try activities with friends and go to a new class and try a workshop and do a chocolate making, do a pottery class. I'm a doer. I like to do stuff. I don't like to be alone too much and I've never been one to sit still for that long.
I just kind of had this season, the last 12 months, where I still did my hobbies a ton, especially in the summer. I found it really easy. But doing my hobbies with a forced schedule—like I'm meeting my friends at six for a mountain bike ride, we ride for two hours, then I ride home to have dinner, to go to bed—I wasn't in these beautiful white spaces of just dreaming, thinking, brainstorming, putting new ideas together in my head. That time was a luxury before kids for sure. I realized I had hours and hours each day. Not that I would ever want that back, I don't wanna return to that life, but I've had to be so much more intentional.
In order to scale the business the past two years, ever since Freddy was born, it's been growing, it's been busy. I've had to really prioritize systems and saying no and finding routine and rhythm and waking up early working. I'm not waking up and meditating and just drawing and things like that. I said yes to enough things that I was like, "I am accountable. I need to show up. Do the thing, do the thing." And that can really zap your creativity.
I just can't quite explain it, but I think it's just the fact that there's not a lot of white space and downtime and sit on the couch and sip my espresso, which I know would be really good for my creative soul. But I also know that life is about choosing your priorities in any given season, and being creative was not my priority. I actively would fill the time with things that didn't exactly fuel the creativity and didn't fuel the soul fire of my dreams and giving myself time to think about the future and new projects.
[TRANSITION: The Boring Life Problem]
Going back to the question that I asked Lori about the podcast, because I'm like, I want to start recording more solo shows. In a perfect world, I would love to be recording two episodes a week for you guys. I've done little blips in time where I was able to output two episodes a week, but if I'm being very honest, one feels like just enough right now. But I really do see adding a second episode as an opportunity to do more solos. Then I could have four interviews a month, four solos a month, and have really good content for you guys. But that would require so much more creativity.
Basically what Lori asked me is, "Okay, well..." First she told me a story. She's like, "You know, there are weeks where my weeks look the exact same. It's like get up, go here, do this, work on this, Zoom, Zoom, Zoom calls, go to bed, have dinner, have the same dinner. End of story. And when your life looks like that, you often have nothing to talk about. If you were to imagine your life as like a content reel or a movie reel, would people be bored AF watching it?"
I'm not telling you to look at your life as content because that makes you think you have to film it all. But if you are a creator of any capacity—you have a podcast, you have a Substack, you have a newsletter—you're probably storytelling. Storytelling is the most effective form of marketing. Relating it back to what you do and what you're learning in the process and your takeaways and your lessons and anything that you glean from any negative or positive situation in life, that's what we love to listen to as human beings.
If you look at your life right now and your life looks pretty boring, my guess is that your content isn't hitting. You're getting low views. People don't really feel that excited to watch your content. For example, I follow a few people online, one of which she's a DJ, Rachel Melinda. She used to practice as a nutritionist and I met her back in the days where she used to work for a very famous nutritionist. Watching her content is like watching a movie from start to finish each day because she's thoughtful. She tells a story. She's out doing cool shit, and she's putting it together in a way that makes you wanna watch start to finish.
I think those times when we sit down and we don't feel creative, we don't know what to say, it's because our week is boring. We're not doing anything. We don't have anything to say because we skipped the bike ride with friends. We didn't go check out that new yoga studio. We sat in our basement office instead of going to work at the coffee shop. We told ourselves, "Oh, I'll just eat in again," even though you really wanted to try that new cool restaurant. You are not traveling because you've gotten really comfortable at home or you're worried about transitioning your kids or putting them on an airplane.
Unfortunately though, there's not a ton of life experience that comes and lessons to be learned when you're just on your computer 24/7. That was a good reminder to me yesterday—if I wanna have cool shit to say, I need to get into my life and get back into trying new things.
I could give you every excuse in the book. I'm busy. I have a very demanding business. I want to hang out with my family and be low-key. Do you guys feel that way? It is a joy for me to just stay home and be present with Dave and Freddy and to cook a nice dinner. Especially in the winter, I find that's when I crave downtime. And yes, okay, that is important. Slow down. You don't always need to be operating at 110% capacity. But also you gotta do shit. Otherwise, what do you have to talk about? What do you have to show?
I'm not saying everybody—this is if you're a creator, you're somebody who creates content, creates interesting stories, who wants to grow a Substack or an email or a podcast or a blog or a YouTube channel. You have to have something to say. Even if that just means read more books, listen to more podcasts, watch cool YouTube videos, watch something new on TV, learn about a topic that you've never dug into before, and stop being boring. That was the big lesson out of the mastermind call yesterday.
I'm currently plotting what I wanna do to not be boring. I know people would say, "Oh my God, Kels, you're the busiest person I know," but it's January. It's been icy outside. A lot of my hobbies are outdoors and I haven't necessarily been able to do them at full capacity, and that has really slowed me down. I'm feeling like I'm in just a slower season. When I was wondering why this podcast episode wasn't coming through and Lori said that to me, I was like, I actually know why it's not coming through—because I haven't been fully living my life. I've been living in systems the last year. I've been living in a very full calendar that I've had to show up for and be very ruthless. Sometimes that leaves me with very little time to just explore the thoughts that are wandering around in my own mind, right? When we're crowding out the conversation in our head, when we crowd out thinking time, when we crowd out just chill time, we don't leave a lot of room for magic.
[TRANSITION: Taking Action]
How is your week gonna look different this week? What are you gonna do? Are you gonna just jot down one thing that's gonna shake it up? I swear that could be the catalyst, the game changer, the thing.
I'll share the dumbest example, but the other day on the weekend, we were driving around and there's been this fry shop near where I live that a lot of people have said, "Oh, I grew up eating Stan's fries." I remember one of my first friends when we moved to this town, she was like, "Oh, I used to work at Stan's fries. They're so good, so popular." But I'm more of a health girly. I don't really eat french fries that often. But the other day we were driving around and I was like, "Dave, have you ever had these fries?" And he's like, "No, but everyone talks about them." I was like, "Can we just go see what it's all about?"
So we stopped and we ordered fries. They're so cheap. They only take cash. They ask you if you want salt and vinegar on them. I was like, "Okay, cool. Yeah, we'll take salt. Do you have ketchup?" And they're like, "No, we don't have ketchup." I'm like, "Okay. Do you have anything else on the menu?" Nope. You either get a small, medium, or large fry with salt and vinegar or salt or vinegar or neither. No ketchup, no poutine, no nothing. No credit cards, no debit cards.
It actually just got me thinking in this whole new pattern, and I'll probably create an entire newsletter around this, about how when you stay in your lane and you become known for something and you get really good at that thing, there's gonna be pressure to waver. Here I am asking this 50-year fry shop for ketchup, and she looked at me like she wanted to slap me. Like, "No, we don't have ketchup. Have you never been here before? It's not our thing. Don't dip these amazing fries in ketchup." I was just kind of like, "Damn. Imagine the audacity, the boldness to be like, 'We don't do anything except serve these fries and people pay cash for them.'"
I just thought that was one tiny example of taking a little detour in your day and then all of a sudden having these epiphanies of, "Oh my God, do one thing really, really well and be unapologetic about when people ask you to go left and go right and launch this and launch that and expand your menu." No, they do well. They had a lineup, you guys, and it was like a weird time of day too.
It's the little derailments. Even when things go awry in your day, when things don't work out as planned, they always work out in the end. Yes, sometimes moments of panic—it's like, "What are we gonna do? How are we gonna remedy this?" But these are all learning situations. If you look at your life as content, not that you have to film at all, but that everything could be something to share with someone else to enlighten them... Going through hard stuff is not great. I would not wish that on anyone. But even the hardest moments of my life, I can see how that has prepared me to show up, to deliver messages, to share my truth with others. At the end of the day, I think that's what we're all hungry for. That's what helps us connect with people, helps us feel less alone.
If you're comfortable and if this is the path you're choosing to take, open up. Share what's going on. Share what you've been doing. Give us the spill, the tea on what's been happening.
[CLOSING]
Alright you guys, I think I will wrap the episode there. I've been talking for about a half hour now. Glad I got this done in my time block. I hope this episode was helpful. Please message me on Instagram—I'm at Kelsey Reidl. If you found this episode of Rain or Shine to be helpful, or if anything in particular resonated, or if we're going through the same thing, it would be my sincere pleasure to connect with you and hear from you. Because I never quite know—nobody who has a podcast ever really quite knows who's listening.
When we see you guys tag us in Instagram stories or send us a DM, it always feels very meaningful. I actually just said this to someone who I was emailing this morning. She's a potential client actually. We had a nice connection call and put together a proposal for her, and I could tell she was still kind of a little bit like, "Okay, well we just met, so I need time." And I said, "You know what you should do? You should listen to my podcast because I share my real self on there. There's no filters. I have solo shows, I have interviews. If you listen to a couple shows, I think you'll get a really good vibe for whether we click or not."
She actually just wrote back to me today and she said, "Hey, I've been listening to a lot of your shows. I am loving when you talk about X, Y, and Z." It just really warmed me up to be like, "Oh yeah, there are people listening." It's a good way for people to really understand who I am and how I speak and what lights me up.
That's it. I hope you have an incredible week and I will talk to you soon.