Latest / Crafted Connections / EP 69: SOLO - When the Thing You Built Falls Apart

Transcript

EP 69: SOLO - When the Thing You Built Falls Apart · Crafted Connections

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: What do you do when the thing you built your whole identity around falls apart?
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna dive into that question and my experience with it today in the episode.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: But first, welcome back to Crafted Connections.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: If you're new here, I'm Caitlin and this is Crafted Connections.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for hit and play.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: If you're hit and play again, I'm grateful for the for the repeat.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm grateful that you are showing up and taking a listen to today's episode and the series we're about to dive into.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Quick reminder of what this show is all about.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking creativity, business, and the humanness of building a life around the work that you love to do.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: I find myself very much in both aspects: creativity, business, all the jazz, fully human.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's a good time.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Last week I came back from my summer break from the pod, and if you missed it, go back for the Slow Girl Summer Recap and what's changed around here.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: I put a lot of um intention into it, and I'm really excited for this new chapter for the podcast.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh today the burnout series officially begins, and I'm going first.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Over the next couple months, I'm sharing my story in pieces, plus sandwiching conversations with people I love who have been through their own version of burnout.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: So grab your favorite beverage, settle in.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: This one's a little bit heavier and heartfelt.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think I'm meant to share this story, so let's dig into it.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, as I mentioned last week, I don't need to explain to you how burnout happens.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: We've all lived through it, heard about it, seen it happen.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I think it's popular enough, prevalent enough.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's a buzzword, correct?
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: But for this series to mean anything, you need to know my most recent story of burnout.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I was very intentional about saying my most recent story of burnout because I'm not gonna pretend like it's never gonna happen again.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: I am a hit the gas, go full throttle kind of person.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so this isn't going to be the last time, I imagine, that I that I go through burnout.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: But this particular story and what we're gonna go through in this series has taught me and reminded me regularly to slow down.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: So here we go.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Let's dig into it.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: As I've shared on the pod before, about 10 years ago, I left my full-time job and leapt into freelancing.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: I built my network, one coffee chat at a time, and you know, someone would introduce me to someone they knew and someone they would know.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: And eventually I had this amazing network in Indianapolis.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: And my business, teardrop pictures, grew out of that.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: It was part freelance editing, part self-driven documentary production, and full full heart, right?
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: So that goes exactly what I was talking about earlier, like part business, part creative, full human.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: And oh, I I loved that business and I just I gave it everything of me, and definitely to my own detriment, correct?
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: I I'll be sharing that here now, but I think about it and the identity shift, and this is a little sneak peek of what we're about to talk about, but the identity shift of Caitlin for the sake of teardrop versus like Caitlin as an as a human who who gets to fill her cup just by itself and not necessarily we're gonna invest in Caitlin so that teardrop thrives.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Spoiler alert, I ended up having to close the business two years ago.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: But that was not without, that was not without a fight, that was not without giving it everything I had.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I had this business, I started it in 2016, and around year five was when the pandemic hit.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: So 2020.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: This brought this boom of online business owners, and I started investing in myself as an entrepreneur.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the big reason I did this was not only was it like very popular online, right?
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: I would connect with other business owners, and then there were there were masterminds, and there was everybody was like operating and they're like, you can do this from home.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And and there was such a boom, and so many people were doing it.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, if if your friends jump off a bridge, are you gonna too, Caitlin?
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: No, uh, I'm not.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: But but there was this like this mindset and this narrative and this um this industry that grew from us all having to be at home.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I met so many women entrepreneurs through that space.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: So here I was in 2020, 2021, kind of caught between two worlds.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: I had spent my last five years in the film and commercial video industry, which is a very male-dominated field, has its own protocol and ways of operating that the online business space did not, right?
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: It had its own way.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like one thing in particular that really gets me is like a lot of the online business space is very uh you invoice ahead of time and you don't do the job until until you've been paid.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Or there's like contracts on everything, right?
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because that is business.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: And the freelance space in my Indianapolis market was very uh net thirty, very um, it was through repet reputation that you trusted people to pay you.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: The market was so small that people would know who doesn't pay on time, or like who has the best rates, this and the other.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: So it was very interesting to be between those two spaces and those two ways of operating.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: And both very much had a this is how it's done approach.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like we don't, we don't fear from that.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: This is this is what you need to do to be successful.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: So after consuming all that, taking it all in, trying to fit it all into one human being, one experience that was my own.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: I got this line in my head from a few podcast episodes that I heard from uh female entrepreneurs.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: And basically, the belief was you can become a seven-figure business owner in three years.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so your girl Caitlin, goal setter extraordinaire, marked her calendar.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it was, I feel like I heard that and really started to be like, okay, let's make it happen, probably summer of 2021.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, in my head, I'm like, cool, 21 plus three, 24.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: So in 2024, let's go.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna, this teardrop pictures will be a seven-figure business.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so I started setting really aggressive goals.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I think in 2021, I was like, I'm gonna hit$300,000 in gross revenue.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's like stuff that like didn't actually make sense.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you, if you actually connected the dots or looked at the numbers, or looked at my spreadsheet, looked at my cash flow, looked at my business model for the last five years, and it it didn't make sense.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that it couldn't have made sense, but it didn't.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: And trying to like do everything that everybody else tells you you're you have to do, all of a sudden you're like applying way too many things to one thing.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: And not to get too off track here, but it's the same thing I experienced with diet culture, where like I tried to apply every single rule about dieting, like don't eat after seven, keep your calories under this, you know, cardio does this, but strength training does this, uh, this food's bad for you, you can't get fat on apples, like just like shit that was just like taking over my mind uh in my early 20s.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: And here I found myself in my late 20s, early 30s doing it again in a whole different category of my life.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: But mind you, I didn't recognize that at the time.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: I just thought to myself, if these women can do it, I can do it.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: I can become a seven-figure business owner in three years as well.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: So the first time in my life, I was thinking about growing income instead of paying off debt.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because up till that point, I had basically Dave Ramsey'd my way to air quotes business success.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: And you can't grow a business using Dave Ramsey's model.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Dave Ramsey's model is not for business owners, or at least in my experience, it isn't.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: And also that doesn't mean investing without clear direction works either, right?
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: So, as I mentioned, podcast on entrepreneurship and manifestation, this was my this was my diet for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: I was walking and running so much, and there was always a podcast in my ear.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then I started investing in coaches and masterminds and um group communities that were, that were of all business owners.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it was like, there was one summer, I I think it was 2021, where I had three coaches at one time.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't at the income level to need that.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't have any employees, like there was no reason to have that many at one time, but I just got so excited.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that is, this is why, you know, to back to the beginning of the episode.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: I am the kind of person, I'm an extreme person.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: I love it about myself, and it can, it can really bite me in the ass.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: And this is an example of I needed to slow down.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: It was too fast.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: The course investments, the coaches, it was more than I could take in and actually implement.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: But I didn't slow down.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's not how this story plays out, y'all.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: During this chapter, I stayed afloat the whole time.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: But I was always close to tipping over financially.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: And this is not uncommon with business.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Cash flow is very delicate, both in my experience and, you know, through people I've spoken to, people that have had businesses for years, they'll have years where it's tight, you know?
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: You have years where you're in the red, but it's okay because it evens out over the long term.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: This this shit is hard.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's why people fail at it all the time.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I've also heard this through hundreds of podcast episodes that I've consumed, right?
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like the delicate balance, the being clear on like where your margins are, all that stuff.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: But I was trying to do this way too fast and learn everything way too fast to the point where like I wasn't actually implementing and creating the foundation of success.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: But I was doing good work.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: I was doing good work uh in it, and it turned out, you know, late 2020 to early 2022, deep investment, hard work, doing so many things at once when it came to investing in myself and growing my mind around this stuff.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Late summer, the client work did take off.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: It did blow up.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: I had this CRM that was hopping.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and in July, I remember thinking and saying out loud so many times.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: I just need a second brain.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: I just need a second brain for all this information.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: I need like I need someone to manage me.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Which came to my first hire.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: It was wonderful.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, quick pause in today's episode because I want to tell you about something I've been building, I've been working on, that I've been curating for y'all.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's called Calhoun Edits.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the thing: we all know we should be doing video.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Solopreneurs, marketers, business owners, you know the benefits.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: But the part that we all dread is the editing.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: You film something, it's super fantastic, but getting over that hurdle past the edit halts the entire project.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then you've spent all this time creating something, you don't finish that last little bit, right?
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: I've been editing video for over 10 years, and I'm here to make it super, super, super dang simple.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to succeed.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to utilize the power of editing and the magic that can come from putting things together, having that rhythm.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: And over on Instagram at Calhoun Edits, I break down short, practical tutorials, mostly in the edits app, because it's free as can be, on stuff that you probably don't know about.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: Keyframes, captions, sound effects, all sorts of little things that make your videos feel polished without taking your whole afternoon, your whole day, your whole life, right?
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: And if you'd rather hand it off or want some one-on-one help, you can book a free 30-minute consultation right in my bio.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: So go follow Calhoun Edits and let's get your videos out of your camera roll and into the world.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: We deserve it.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: All right, back to the episode.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Having a full-time employee was wonderful.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: I had a great fall, an income I've never seen before.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: There was one particular example that I love so much where my employee, I feel like I feel like my employee was on for maybe a week, two weeks at this point, and I was on a shoot in a different state.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a random Wednesday, and clients who had outstanding invoices started like texting me and emailing me and being like, How do I get this paid?
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: How do I get this paid?
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: Come to find out the next day, my new employee had been going through the invoices, hitting people up and being like, yo, why where's this invoice?
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: Why haven't you paid?
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like that is that is the magic of delegating.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: That is the magic of having someone full-time in your business, someone who is proactive and ready to go.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was wonderful.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: And even after this experience I'm going to share with you, I do see myself having employees again in the future.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: I will be very discerning and I will be much more educated.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: And these learnings of my past few years are going to come into amazing use.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: But that brings us to early 2023.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: This is where my ego took over.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: I I've mentioned that I'm an intense person and I go pretty hard.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um this is probably the hardest I've ever gone.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: I got um aggressive about my business in a way that I hadn't built a foundation for, uh, that I wasn't ready for, that the business wasn't ready for.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: And because my first W-2 hire was going great, I thought, why not one more?
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because because the work was overflowing and it was more than I could handle, and the more than what my first W-2 hire had the skill set for.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: So we're like, cool, we're gonna invest in this extra skill set that we can get work off of my plate.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like so impressed with myself in a way that like I am truly proud of myself.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: And this this both fed my ego, but also I am genuinely proud of myself.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: 27 people applied to this role.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: I had built a business that 27 people were interested in working for.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that that all of this I am proud of.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: I am proud of myself for putting myself out there and and um taking this risk.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it all makes sense as to why things crash and burn.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: But 27 people applied, some of who were friends.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I started picturing this bigger team making our own documentaries and writing our own ticket.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like I thought I had cracked the code because there's something about working in a creative field where we act like we're too good for money.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: Or or the artist approach is like it's the classic example of like a band air quote selling out when they get a label and go big and have a big grand tour, right?
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why wouldn't you want funds and resources to perform and excel at a like a higher level?
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: But I had my own internalized version of this like artist sellout, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: And um I was so excited because I thought I had, I thought I had circumvented that.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, cool, we'll just do documentaries.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: It'll be so cool.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: We'll write our own ticket.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: And the way that I had employees, I didn't recognize that it was going to be detrimental to my life.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: I really, I remember thinking, I don't want to, you know, F up their lives.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to F up their lives.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: But we'll get to this at the end of the episode.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: But when all was said and done, I was the one who had to pick up the pieces.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that was that was such a lesson for me.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: But back to back to the task at hand.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: I thought I had cracked the code and I was like, cool, we're writing our own ticket.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: So after all the interviews, I said, I thought to myself, like, if one employee is this good, imagine how great three would be.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and I saw that I saw this team come together that frankly I still am proud of to this day.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: I do think I put together a great team, but I was not ready to lead said great team.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't experienced enough.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: I I had done a lot, I had built a lot, but I I was not ready to be a leader who also was responsible for the payroll, who also had to go sell, who also had to, who also had to.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: And and the sit like nothing was in place for that.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: But it was so exciting.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: It was so exciting, and I still remember how giddy I was and how proud of myself I was, and how I was like, this is it.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: This is it.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: But as I have foreshadowed many a times already in the episode, uh, the company wasn't built for it.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't built for the financial weight.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: I was not ready for it to lead, sell, stand confidently in what I had built.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: I hired three employees in less than six months, was paying all of them around 70K and trying to pay myself that as well.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: And four months in, I was trying to keep it afloat with one main client and business financing.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I was taking out business loans, and we literally were tied to this one particular client.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that long story short was driving me crazy.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's not surprising that in the summer of 2023 I had to let go of three of my friends.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is genuinely one of the hardest things I've ever ever been through.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I I do not take that lightly, slash I recognize saying that sentence means I have had an amazing life.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: At the time it was absolutely devastating.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: Frankly, it still is devastating.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm still working on the forgiveness of this, which is which is where this series, this burnout series is going.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: And this is this weird thing that I feel compelled to share.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: But I didn't want to do it.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't want to do it.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: I I feel like the universe almost cut me off from money.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because if I if money kept coming, if people kept financing, like if if if banks and and investors, which I didn't really have any investors, but if if if an investor came in and was like, here's 100k, I would have gone for three for three to six more months.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I needed to be cut off because it wasn't working and I couldn't see it because I was so attached to it working.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: And this one particular story, I think this is where like I do consider myself a spiritual person.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the week that I had to let the first round of employees go, my power went out in my house.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it was almost like the universe is like, we're gonna keep taking things away from you until you do this.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, first things first, like, no more money for you.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then the power goes out.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it was out for like six to seven days, our power.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: And one of my employees at the time texted me, I just want you to have your power back.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: And the funny thing is, I didn't even think about it as my electricity, as my power.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: I thought about it as my human, like me and feeling empowered and being powerful and having like a belief in myself again.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's how I interpret this text.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, that person meant like the fact that you don't have power in your house.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I share this because I just I think it's so fascinating how we whether or not that was an air quote sign from the universe, my reaction, I'm a big believer in this about signs.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: Whether or not a sign is actually a thing, your response or your reflection in the thing is enough of a sign.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: And the fact that I the fact that I saw myself being cut off by the universe and I needed to stop, um is incredible to me.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I still and that's why it's why I listen.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm in this this stage right now of like really trying to be a better listener to people, to to fill my partner, to um to just what's going on around me, to listen and not decide and and to not decide and just commit to that's how it's gonna be.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because that might not be the best route or the highest timeline.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that summer was three years ago.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: And looking at that fall where I was, I had no employees, very little income, I was sitting on like six figures of debt from the experience.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, that one main client fired me as well.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because the human that I was, the erratic, it wasn't unhinged, but it was as unhinged as you can get without, like, you know, I don't know, without what.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: But like it was pretty unhinged.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: It was unhinged the behavior.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I'm not mad about unhinged behavior, but you gotta, like, when you're flailing and you're drowning in like two feet of water, you just gotta stand up and you gotta let it go.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: So that brings me to in that dark night of the soul, that fall where I was sitting in that situation, um, and it's not so much about the debt and the income as much as it was like I felt like my network had been disseminated because I felt like I had messed up so bad.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't imagine me having a good reputation, or that like the years, the the six to seven years of work I had done prior to that meant anything after this, you know, four to six months of complete failure.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where I was.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: So, in that dark night of the soul, I could not find an example of what you're supposed to do next.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how do you rebuild?
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: What are your actual daily actions?
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: And to go back to that initial question: who are you when the thing you were falls apart?
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: And how do you start believing in yourself again?
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: So that is why this series exists.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm hoping to to give examples of that.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm hoping to have conversations around that so that people can can understand that there's a life beyond it.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because I remember spring of 2023.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think if you had told me what was going to play out, I couldn't even imagine it.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: I genuinely thought that will kill me.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: I will I will be a dead person.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like I just I don't think I understood that something like that could happen.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then I would wake up the next day.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I did.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: I kept waking up, and you know, one little so I don't leave you in the in completely in the valley here.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, one little fun thing that came from like a podcast I listened to during the rebuild, during my climb out of it, was this woman on a podcast said, if I woke up, God's not done.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, whether or not you're religious, I don't know where I am, but I do know that I believe we have a purpose.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: I believe we're here for a reason.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that just showed me, okay, you've woken up like it's not over.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: So what are you gonna do with this?
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: You're not gonna, you're not gonna just wallow in this for the rest of your life, right?
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: So that's where I was.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's where I was, and I was still waking up and there was work to be done.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm so grateful to share this with you.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so grateful to be in a point where I feel comfortable sharing it.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: And next week we're gonna dig into a mentor of mine and her experience with her business and how this is a season a lot of us move through.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: So looking forward to sharing that with you.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to today's episode, and uh, we'll see you next week, my friend.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: Crafted Connections is lovingly produced by Calvin Creative Consulting, a strategic storytelling firm dedicated to helping people and brands tell their stories in a way that resonates.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe and connect with us on Instagram at craftedconnections.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: Keep creating, keep connecting, and telling me again.