394 The Art of Redirection: When Things Fall Apart, You're Exactly Where You Need to Be
From Setback to Success: Master the Entrepreneur's Most Important Skill
Episode 394: Rain or Shine Podcast
Host: Kelsey Reidl, The Rain or Shine Podcast
The Art of Redirection: When Things Fall Apart, You're Exactly Where You Need to Be
Episode: Rain or Shine Podcast
Host: Kelsey Reidl, The Rain or Shine Podcast
Quick Summary
What if your biggest setbacks are actually redirecting you toward your greatest opportunities? In this candid solo episode, Kelsey shares powerful stories of unexpected career pivots, mindset shifts, and marketing changes that taught her to embrace redirection as an entrepreneurial superpower. From getting let go from her dream job to moving cities during a pandemic, she reveals how learning to redirect—quickly and confidently—has been the key to her success.
In This Episode
Why entrepreneurs must master the art of redirecting on the fly
The unexpected phone call that ended Kelsey's dream job at Vega and launched her entrepreneurship journey
How a pandemic move from Toronto to a small town challenged limiting beliefs about business growth
Why Instagram stopped working for lead generation and what Kelsey did instead
The mindset shift that turns failures into compass points
Practical strategies for redirecting your business when things aren't working
Key Takeaways
Failure is your compass - When outcomes don't go as planned, that's not a dead end—it's directional guidance pointing you toward where you actually need to be
You can't control outcomes, but you can control your response - The power lies in how quickly and confidently you can redirect after disappointment
Marketing agility is non-negotiable - What worked last year won't necessarily work this year; attention and buyer behavior are constantly evolving
Limiting beliefs often mask opportunities - When Kelsey thought she couldn't grow her business in a small town, she created The Wave for Women Events and built the exact community she needed
Redirection is a skill you can develop - The more you practice pivoting instead of wallowing, the more resilient you become as an entrepreneur
Memorable Quotes
"Just because something is falling apart, it could actually mean that it's redirecting you to exactly where you need to be."
"When we can make things that go wrong into things that actually go right, we become more resilient entrepreneurs."
"Maybe everything you think is going wrong right now is actually going right because it's going to redirect you to somewhere you never could have imagined."
Resources Mentioned
Kelsey's Website: KelseyReidl.com
Kelsey's Podcast: Rain or Shine (350+ episodes featuring Canadian entrepreneurs)
Instagram/Social: @KelseyReidl
Vega (plant-based nutrition company)
The Wave for Women Events (co-founded with Emily)
Orangetheory Fitness
Rachel Hollis Podcast
Instagram and Google Ads for marketing
About the Host
Kelsey Reidl is an entrepreneur, consultant, and host of the Rain or Shine podcast. After being let go from her corporate dream job, she built a thriving consulting business over the past 8-9 years, specializing in helping entrepreneurs grow through strategic marketing and authentic brand building. She co-founded The Wave for Women Events, bringing together entrepreneurs in small towns across her region.
-
CLEANED & EDITED TRANSCRIPT FOR SHOW NOTES
Kelsey: Hey visionaries, welcome back to the show. I, as always, am so excited to be recording a solo episode. I find myself dancing between wanting to do about 50% interviews with incredible Canadian entrepreneurs and about 50% solo episodes because I can record them on my own time and I just feel lit up to talk to you guys.
I'm quite confident that this is the channel where I can show up as my most authentic self and I don't have to worry about the video. Well, actually nowadays I do because I do mostly clips. And today I decided not to turn on video just because I want to riff and I don't want to worry about how I look or how my lighting is, or my Zoom backdrop, or my clothing choices, or my makeup or my hair.
Even though we know video is amazing for discoverability, there's something very genuine and wholesome about turning on a mic. It's like if you're a writer, just going into your cozy corner, brewing a cup of coffee and writing without needing to perform. And I think that's how I feel on the podcast sometimes when I don't have to record video. I don't feel like I'm performing. I feel like I'm able to just show up and be myself and talk how I want and not stress about how I look.
We know that we all act different when we're trying to be someone or elevate ourselves. I always recommend when you're on Zoom, you want to come up as the most embellished version of yourself. Turn up the dial. A lot can get lost through the screen. But something about just sitting in front of a mic right now and knowing I have about 30 minutes to just lean in—I have a rough outline for this episode, but honestly, I kind of want to just see what comes through. Do a little bit of channeling or see what the universe drops into my lap at this moment.
We are recording this at the end of January. You're going to be listening to this in February, and I will actually be away on vacation when you guys listen to this. So maybe I posted on my Instagram about our adventure into the jungle, into the beach. I'm really, really excited. But yeah, we're recording this at the end of January and I was literally just chatting with a client about her having end of January energy. I was like, girl, I get it. This has been the most January January, the most wintery winter. I think this is a time when we can kind of just fall into slumps and not make the best of any situation and maybe feel like things are falling apart even though they're not.
[TOPIC SHIFT: The Power of Redirection]
Even just as an example, I just had a podcast guest who canceled on me last minute, and I had my whole day booked out. If you know me, you know I love a calendar block. When I look at my day, I want to know exactly what I'm doing each minute, each hour. It just feels so good to me to have these scheduled time blocks. So when somebody cancels, and I totally respect when things go wrong—I almost had to cancel my day because I thought my son was going to have a fever today. He woke up totally fine, and I was already anticipating these hard conversations of being like, I have to cancel all of these appointments.
Anyways, I had someone cancel on me today and I was kind of like, oh man, that derails my day. But it's just a chance to redirect, and I honestly think this is a skill of entrepreneurs. You have to know how to redirect in a moment, in an instant, in a season where things aren't going well, after a year where you have sunk money into something that's not working. Just because something is falling apart, it could actually mean that it's redirecting you to exactly where you need to be.
My mindset—I know this is a trivial example and I'll go into more—is that yes, somebody canceled on me. I have to redirect. Instead of wallowing and wasting this hour, I could have literally gone and scrolled Instagram for an hour because I'm like, oh cool, I have all this time back. But I'm like, no, I'm going to redirect because that's what we do. We have to play on the fly. We have to pay attention to what's going on, where are our windows of opportunity, and redirect accordingly.
I think when we can make things that go wrong into things that actually go right, we become more resilient entrepreneurs. So actually in this episode, I think inspired by this recent cancellation and honestly so many things in my life where I've had to redirect—I remember going through my first miscarriage. I had already thought about my maternity leave and when that was going to be, and I had started planning some design overhauls of the house. And then when we lost the baby, I just remember being like, okay, yes, this is devastating and I'm allowed to wallow as long as I want. At a certain point, I need to redirect and point my arrow in a different direction for the time being so that I have a compass moving forward.
There are so many times in life where we cannot control outcome. We can try to walk in a certain direction. We can try to hold on to something that's working to bring us clients or hold onto the dream job or hold onto the vision of whatever family planning or hold onto the vision that you get that promotion or have a top podcast. But you can't always control the outcome. So you do all the things. You do all the right things, you show up, you're consistent, you're kind, but sometimes you don't get to the outcome that you want.
We can't control the outcome all the time, and that's when you ask yourself, okay, so I didn't get what I wanted, or I'm not at the outcome. How can I redirect in this moment? These are beautiful detours. These are teachable moments. This is when failure becomes your compass and it's how you act in that redirect moment. Do you break down, throw the fit, start walking backwards, or do you take a minute, posture yourself after crying and maybe doing a little stomp and toddler scream, and you say, it's okay. I've got this. I've got the tools. I'm resilient. I know there are going to be more open doors. There's going to be arrows pointing me in the right direction if I keep showing up.
This is literally the rain or shine philosophy you guys. It's about showing up, trusting the redirections through the rain and the shine. So I hope by the end of this episode you can look at failures differently. You can look at unexpected changes differently. Say, okay, I'm just going to redirect and literally tattoo that word on your arm. Tattoo a little arrow. Maybe that'll be my first tattoo because I don't have any. Just looking at it and going, okay, literally I can point this arrow on my wrist anywhere that I want.
[STORY: Getting Let Go from Vega]
Let me go back to one of the first redirections of a career path that wasn't mine, but I thought in my twenties that I was going to own it and that it was going to be my forever. So many of you know that in my young to mid twenties, I landed what I would call a dream job working for a company called Vega. They're a plant-based nutrition company. After meeting the team at a spin studio that I was working front desk at, I met the experiential marketing manager. They came in, they did this whole team building activity and some of these people that I met that day actually became some of the most pivotal people in my life.
I met the team and exchanged Facebooks with one of the guys, Michael, who was in the experiential marketing role at the time, and he somehow recruited me to join their demo rep team. I'm going to fast forward this story. But anyway, so I become a demo rep, which is basically mixing up samples of smoothies and greens powder and handing them out at Whole Foods and Loblaws and grocery stores and health food stores, and doing demos everywhere. Not a super glamorous job, but I loved it and I worked really hard and I picked up shifts everywhere. I proved that I was very good at this role because I love talking to people and sampling products that I love.
Then a couple years into that role, I just did it part-time. I actually got the chance to apply for Michael's job, so he was moving to California to fill a role there. And then I applied to take over his job in the Toronto GTA area for experiential marketing. Anyways, I landed the job. I started working for Vega. Truly a dream career trajectory that I am forever grateful to. It was a company that was growing quickly, that had massive vision that I felt so part of.
I always say that if I were paid a dollar for every person that I converted onto Vega products, I'd be a millionaire because I was a walking billboard. Proof that when you are passionate about something, and when you talk about it all the time and when you give people a sample, you will convert people. It's a contagious energy, and you can feel that when people have that around their products or their service or their business or their passion. You just immediately lean in and you're like, tell me more. I'm putting up what you're putting down. What's in the water? Let me drink your Kool-Aid.
That was me. Drove the branded car, bright green car, the Vega Mobile, we called it. I wore Vega shirts every single day. Vega swag, got a Vega yoga mat, Vega water bottles. I know any of my friends who knew me during that chapter know I was drinking the Kool-Aid.
Anyways, two years into this job, I'm loving it. I'm so happy I can never envision myself leaving. I am literally walking down the road to go do a little bit of admin work at a coffee shop because we didn't have an event that day. I get a phone call from my manager and she goes, hey, HR is on the line. Do you have a second to chat? And HR chimes in. She's there. And I'm like, okay. I get this sinking feeling and I'm like, I did not expect this at all. She goes, our whole team is being let go. Company's redirecting their marketing budget and there's no more experiential team.
So that was wild because in a moment where I thought I was crystal clear on my compass forward, I had to redirect. And I do remember laying on the couch feeling sorry for myself and feeling like holy cow, I don't know what to do. And I felt so lost and I was sad, of course, as anyone would be when they get let go from their dream job. But then I also thought it is up to me now to redirect.
I have a passionate energy for health, food, for being in this industry. I was teaching fitness at the time as well, and I thought, what can I do? I will give myself time to be sad. But I'm going to point my compass in a different direction. I'm going to go apply for jobs. I'm going to train at Orangetheory Fitness to become an instructor. I'm going to start my own business doing consulting and social media work. I'm going to bring back my nutrition skills because I was seeing nutrition clients. It's like you just open the toolkit and say, that's okay. I am going to redirect myself because my plans fell apart. But what if this is leading me exactly where I need to be?
And little did I know that was literally sending me into my dreams of entrepreneurship. I probably wouldn't be here today if Vega hadn't let me go. I'd still be working corporate, which would be great, I'm sure. But eight or nine years into running my consulting business, I've never been happier. Now I have the freedom, the flexibility. I don't work for someone else, quote unquote. So yeah, that redirection, I just feel like was one of the first times that I realized that it sucks to be redirected unexpectedly, but it's what you make of it.
[STORY: Moving from Toronto to a Small Town]
Let me get into another example of redirection that I didn't expect. So this one's actually more of a mindset redirect. Let me bring you back to 2020. We all know what happened in 2020. At that point, my husband and I had been living in Toronto for the better part of eight years. I had been there eight years, maybe he was six because he moved there a couple years after me. We loved the energy of the big city, and I had this mindset that in order to grow a business and in order to be plugged into the right communities, you have to be in a big city like Toronto, like New York, like California.
While I still have these little thoughts in the back of my mind that it is probably a good idea to be in a major bustling area if you are wanting to connect and grow and be around the right people, I always have to bring myself back. So anyways, let me go back to the story. So we're living in Toronto. It's 2020, it's a pandemic. We start to feel a little cooped up in our little one bedroom apartment, and we start to have conversations about moving. We're like, okay, we're either going to buy a place in Toronto, or maybe let's move to a small town outside of Toronto and build a new life and literally redirect what we thought our future was, which was putting roots down in the neighborhood that we lived in in Toronto.
We didn't think it would happen right away because we needed to save up to buy a home in Toronto because they're so expensive. But then we started having these conversations of maybe moving outside and redirecting our vision for the future into something completely different. Small town, going to a place where we could live on the water, building a whole new network in a town that really, we knew maybe two people who lived here.
So the biggest hesitation that I had in that moment was I won't be able to grow my business. What if I start to decline? What will this do in terms of impact on my growth and my ability to meet people and to find clients? And I knew that it was probably a mindset issue and that I just had to redirect my thoughts around, it's not like people are going anywhere. You can still go back to the city. You can still build community. There are many entrepreneurs just walk down the street of any town, any place. Every single shop with lights on, every single practitioner inside a wellness clinic, they are all entrepreneurs.
So I had to keep redirecting my thought process back to, you don't automatically start to lose your business momentum just because you moved to a small town. And so we ended up moving and we get to a small town and I start to feel a little bit isolated and I'm kind of like, okay, there are entrepreneurs here. I'm meeting people, but I'm still feeling like maybe this is not the best business move.
I had to redirect that thought to wait. If there are probably a hundred entrepreneurs within a 10 to 20 minute drive of me, and I just haven't met them yet, is there a way for me to start gathering them, bringing them together, creating spaces where these people can show up? Which is a huge reason why my co-founder, Emily and I started The Wave for Women Events where we now host twice, three times annual in-person meetups in these small towns near us, within an hour radius where we gather all the entrepreneurs. We had over 70 women out at our last event. And that's just the women in the area. So it just goes to show that you can have these limiting thoughts, but usually if you can just take a minute, ground yourself, redirect your compass and go, where is this thought coming from? Does it have validity? Why am I even thinking this?
It's such an opportunity to just hold the mirror up to yourself and go, can I be part of the solution? Do I have to take this as a hit to my career, or do I have to take this as a major blow to my ego? Probably not. How can we redirect?
[TOPIC: Marketing Pivots]
I hope this concept resonates just because I think it's so important to be agile as a business owner. And this goes for marketing too. For so many years I relied on Instagram for a lot of my lead generation. I sold my group programs through Instagram. I was able to do launches, sell courses. I did a lot of promotion for events and workshops all through Instagram. And what I noticed over the last two to three years is that it is not really working like it once did. I think a lot of us feel that way, and I am not in a place where I'm willing to lean 100% into becoming an Instagram creator, keeping up with the trends, the reels, the algorithms, how to reach more non followers.
I know what is required to play that game right now and it requires a lot of investment in your content creation and making sure you understand virality and hooks and keeping people captivated and putting together fast moving videos. And I know that at this season of life where I have a 2-year-old, I'm busy, I'm not sleeping, and I have other things that I need to focus on to land my consulting clients, it's just simply not priority.
So as I saw those numbers starting to go down and down—and I track my business metrics every single month—I realized I think I just need to redirect my strategy. When I looked at what was working, instead of wallowing and saying, oh my God, Instagram's not bringing in the necessary leads that used to account for 30% of my annual business revenue in terms of 30% of my clients came from Instagram directly, I simply looked at, well, what is working and how can I double down on that?
And for me, that is search engine optimization and people finding me organically through traditional search engines and AI search engines. And then I ask myself the question of how can I make this better? And that is all about adding fuel to the fire. So now I run Google Ads, which help me to boost my organic rankings and also show up in the sponsored rankings. So it's a redirect. It's knowing that in particular with marketing, your marketing plan is not static. It is always evolving.
So to say this thing isn't working like it did last year, it simply means you're not willing to look at the redirect, which is the most important thing because attention is always changing. People's behaviors in terms of buying, in terms of consuming content, in terms of where they're building trust with you are always shifting, always evolving. So to avoid the redirect and to simply rely on what used to work, on what feels safe, on what feels comfortable, it's not going to help you long term as an entrepreneur.
[CLOSING THOUGHTS]
So that's kind of the topic that I had on my heart today, and it's a tough one because change is hard. I know change is hard. Changing from my dream job to an entrepreneur, that was super hard. Moving cities from Toronto to a tiny town, that was hard. Seeing my marketing strategy stop working in real time and needing to fill that final 30% of my revenue from last year, that's hard too.
I even find myself—okay, so I was listening to the Rachel Hollis podcast and I saw an episode pop up on her feed. It was literally called I Moved to New York City or something. And I knew she lived in California before that. And I immediately tuned in because I was like, oh my God, what a change. And then I went to her Instagram and I knew she had four kids. I'm like, why? Why would she do that? And I could feel myself resisting the change for her. Why would she move from beautiful, sunny California to New York? And it almost was a visceral reaction, the way that we respond to change.
That was how I felt when I got the cancellation notice today for the podcast recording. It's a visceral reaction. It's like, why is it so hard for us to redirect? And if we can get better at the redirect, if we can get better at evolving in real time, pivoting—for example, I am now recording this podcast, which I would have had to do in the evening, or I would have had to carve out some random time block before vacation, which I probably don't have in my schedule right now. I would have had to figure it out, but instead, I was able to quickly, in one minute, redirect and say, the commitment right now is, yeah, the podcast is canceled. I'm going to record my episode, my solo episode, which I needed to get done anyways.
So sometimes a redirection is actually the best gift. And what feels like a failure or a bomb dropped on you is actually just the best course correction because you make it that way. You are in charge. And new doors can always open if you're willing to open your aperture, keep the possibility of redirection open. Maybe the work you're doing today, the place you're living today, the relationships that you have today, the people you're surrounding yourself with—everything could be redirected in an instant. And are you open to it? Are you available to it? Is your aperture wide enough that you can see the opportunities outside of your current plan?
And this is advice to me too, because honestly, I can be a creature of habit. I try to avoid the rainy days just like you do. And I love a sunny day. This is the Rain or Shine podcast. But when it's raining, there's always a lesson. There's always something we can do better, learn for next time, water the seeds, and be open to the magic that's on the other side when the sun comes out.
Alright, so I guess as a final thought, I'll spew some profound wisdom on you guys. Thanks for listening to my musings, me going all over the place. But you know, maybe what you think is going wrong right now—this is my wisdom, my stoic thoughts of the day—maybe everything you think is going wrong right now is actually going right because it's going to redirect you to somewhere you never could have imagined.
Alright, guys, this was the most random solo episode. This is what happens when I sit down without a plan. I'd love to hear from you, so feel free to screenshot this episode. Let me know what you think. If it resonates, if you're going through a redirect right now, if you're resisting change and feel like this nudged you in the right direction to embrace it. I want to know. Tag me on Instagram at Kelsey Rele and I hope you guys are having a beautiful week, that your February's off to a wonderful start. And as always, I will see you in the next episode.
Book Your Free Marketing Strategy Call
Your business deserves to be found—both on Google and ChatGPT.
If you're a solopreneur, author, or thought leader wondering why your marketing isn't translating to consistent revenue, the problem usually isn't what you think.
After 8+ years of working with ambitious entrepreneurs, I've discovered something crucial: most marketing challenges aren't about needing more tactics—they're about solving the wrong problem.
Here's What We'll Uncover Together:
✓ The Real Constraint blocking your growth (it's rarely what you think)
✓ Your SEO Opportunity to rank on Google for what matters
✓ Your AI Visibility Gap and how to show up when prospects ask ChatGPT
✓ Your Lead Generation Blind Spots and where you're losing potential clients
✓ Your Custom Funnel Analysis showing exactly where the leaks are
Book now!
The Potential Return: A clear path to $10K-$50K+ in new revenue
I work with business owners who are done guessing and ready for a marketing strategy built on what actually works—not marketing myths.