Grief, Growth and Entrepreneurship

What really matters when you become super aware of how short life is and how precious time is, is that you spend that time doing things that are important to you?

This is the Entrepreneur School Podcast where we believe you can run a thriving business and still make your family a priority. This show is all about supporting you the emerging or early stage Entrepreneur on your journey from solopreneur. To CEO, while wearing all of the other hats in your life. My name is Kelly Sinclair and I'm a brand and marketing strategist who started a business with two kids under 3am, a corporate PR girl turned entrepreneur after I learned the hard way that life is too short to waste doing things that burn you out. On this show, you'll hear inspiring stories from other business owners on their journey, and learn strategies to help you grow a profitable business, while making it all fit into the life that you want. Welcome to Entrepreneur School.

And going through all of the phases of grief immediately afterwards, of course, was very challenging to walk through planning a funeral delivering a eulogy, which I did, and talking to my kids about it who were so little. And then thinking about what do I want to do with my life now because I've left my job? How do I? What how do I decide what's next? How do I even have the capacity to think about that? Right? And it was, again, at the time, you don't see these things. Now seven years later, having had therapy and time to reflect back on it, it's very clear that I needed to not be in the job that I was in, I needed a change. And I don't know that I would have made that change on my own accord. I really don't. And so I really a lot of credit to anybody who makes that decision for themselves and decides I can't, I don't want to do this nine to five career or this corporate ladder climbing or this working for somebody else, or just doing something that doesn't align with my passions or my values. That's the awareness that I had afterwards is that what really matters when you become super aware of how short life is and how precious time is, is that you spend the time doing things that are important to you. And when that comes to your career, it should be working in a space that lights you up in a in a job that is fueled by your passion is that brings you joy, and that allows that joy to spread to other people and with your family. Having time with them. Not just you know, like those first five years of your kids lives are like the most impressionable, and they're home a lot. And they could be home a lot right before they go to school. So those are such important years. And so now, that's the story of what all happened. And I thought that was the end of my story. And that was all that I would be able to share because I saw you know, I can look back on it. I see what happened. I see how it affected me. I see what I did with it. You know, I took that grief and I turned it into an entire new career and entire new way of living for my family which has been so bad offical seriously being able to have the flexibility to do what I do in work in the timeline that I want and realizing how important that really is. And also how not selfish that is, to be able to have that flexibility. It's, it's one of the absolute most amazing things about being an entrepreneur is building your own schedule around the life that you want. And being able to work however, whenever from wherever that you want, like I went for a massage this morning, my kids are off school all week, I love working in pockets of time, right now, as they record this, I hope that they're not about to walk through the door and make the dog's bark, I'm not really sure if that's going to happen.

But what I now see, as I'm looking back is the importance of understanding and really living with these two opposing feelings at all times, in terms of grief being a heavy, sad feeling that can completely collapse you into a puddle at a moment's notice. And joy, being excited to progress to build relationships to build a life and build a business that you want around what makes you happy. And that these these things always exist together when you're someone who's experienced grief. And just to caveat, this grief is not just about a loss of a person, a close person to you. Or it could be a relationship, it could be that you move to a new place, that you're you've lost friends that you've lost a career, you lost a job, whatever it is, grief exists in most people's lives from but to think that you're going to get over it. And I'm using air quotes like one day, it doesn't exist anymore, it's more about learning to navigate both of these things at the same time and allow for when they when they need to intermix, and don't feel guilty about feeling happy at times when you think you should be feeling sad. And don't feel mad about feeling sad, because it's not a designated day of crying. So it would have been in the way that I was looking at things for most of the last seven years. And so it's really about like resilience and how this strengthens you and that you can have these two emotions or two countering feelings coexisting at all times. And then work through that and allow for those to happen. Because last year, I had a full on breakdown.

So I think that that was my big lesson is that maybe I was still trying to write, I was trying to divide, distract myself with the work because I was excited about the work and I liked doing the work. But I wasn't allowing myself to feel the feels. And that both of these things can happen. You can do the work and feel the feels, and pause on the work and, like, communicate, if you've clients, you have people that you're working with that you need to like, you know, shift a deadline or something people can be empathetic, it's possible. And if they're not, they're not the right people to be around you to be working with, or for or any of those things. So that was the message that I felt called to share right now. Just how to be resilient and how to accept the emotions, not really how to actually because I don't have like a blueprint for you. But mostly just to showcase that. This kind of learning and navigating all of the stuff that's happening, takes time to do. But it is possible, it is possible to come through with clarity to grow as a person to become aware of the emotions that you are experiencing, and how to manage them in your own personal way. Because there's no blueprint for this, there's no oh, just go watch this show. Take a box of Kleenex take a week off work, cry it out and move on. Sometimes I love a good show. I love the notebook I love like watching a sad movie, when I like I feel like I need a cry and I need something to help draw it out of me. I'll do that for sure. But there's no one way one size fits all for people to walk through this. The purpose of me sharing this is just to show you that if you are also experiencing any of this, you're not alone. And that's what I wanted to say.

So if this connects for you, on a personal level, and you want to reach out and talk about it more, I am open my DMs are always open over on Instagram. So please reach out at Ksco_Kelly, and send me a message and let me know what's going on. Because it can feel very lonely to go through these heavy emotions and these challenging times. And sometimes it's just really good to know that somebody else has had a similar experience. And I'm happy to share more about that. If, if you feel called to reach out and connect. So I'm gonna leave it at that and I will see you with a much more upbeat I'm sure episode. Next week, we'll dive back into all things business strategies, visibility promoting yourself. But I always wanted to make sure I'm sharing the behind the scenes life as an entrepreneur.

You did it you just listen to another episode of the Entrepreneur School Podcast. It's like you just went to business school while you folded your laundry, prep dinner or picked up your kids at school. Thank you so much for being here. I want to personally celebrate your commitment to growing your business. You can imagine I'm throwing confetti for you right now. If you enjoyed today's episode, please leave us a review. Make sure you're subscribed and let us know you're listening by screenshotting this episode, and tagging us on Instagram, head to entrepreneurschool.ca for tons of tools and resources to help you grow your business while keeping your family a priority. You can subscribe to our email list and join our community. And until next time, go out there and do the thing.