Ashley Lemieux: Rewire Your Mindset, Heal From Grief and Trauma, and Start Again | Mental Health | YAPClassic

After facing unimaginable loss, Ashley Lemieux was forced to discover how to keep going and embark on a journey of self healing when her world fell apart. She was raising two children toward adoption when a contested court battle took them from her overnight, and years later a dangerous pregnancy complication took her newborn son. Ashely did what many entrepreneurs do: she buried the pain in constant work. Then when running from grief no longer worked, she learned to build her life with intention. In this episode, Ashley shares how to work through grief, reframe negative thoughts, and use her Clarity Mapping framework to make peace the filter for every decision in life and business. In this episode, Hala and Ashley will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (00:46) Losing the Children She Raised (05:24) Using Clarity Mapping for Self-Healing (07:29) Surviving Sepsis and Pregnancy Loss (12:24) Healing Grief Through Sharing and Community (16:06) Shutting Down a Successful Business and Starting Over (26:02) “I Am Here”: A Mindfulness Mantra (28:41) How Entrepreneurs Cope With Grief Differently (37:50) Reframing Negative Thoughts and Emotions (47:38) The Difference Between Grief and Trauma (50:42) Turning Fear and Failure Into a Growth Mindset (55:29) The Five Daily Questions of Clarity Mapping (59:55) Why Mental Health and Inner Peace Matter Ashley Lemieux is a grief expert, bestselling author, entrepreneur, and founder of The Shine Project. She holds a Master of Science in Mental Health and Wellness with an emphasis in Grief and Bereavement, and is the creator of Clarity Mapping, a framework designed to help people regain clarity and move forward with intention. She also hosts the Healing Her podcast, which focuses on grief, self-discovery, and emotional healing. Sponsored By: Indeed - Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/profiting Shopify - Start your $1/month trial at Shopify.com/profiting. Northwest Registered Agent - Get a complete business identity with Northwest. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com/YAPFree and start using free resources to build something amazing. Mindstone - Master practical AI skills without the complexity with Mindstone’s AI Competency Programme. Head to experience.mindstone.com/yap and get 10% off. AT&T Business - Stay connected with reliable, secure internet built for entrepreneurs. Switch to AT&T Business at business.att.com. HoneyLove - Treat yourself to the most advanced bras and shapewear on the market. Save 20% off Honeylove by going to honeylove.com/PROFITING! #honeylovepod Freshbooks - Manage all your business finances in one place. Right now, my listeners can get FreshBooks for less than $3 a month for your first four months — that's 90% off. Head to FreshBooks.com/podcast to get started. Walmart Marketplace - Reach millions of active online shoppers and get ready for holiday demand. Apply to sell today at marketplace.walmart.com/yap. AG1 - Get a daily health drink that helps maintain energy, support gut health, and support immune health, all in one simple scoop. And for a limited time, save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro at DRINKAG1.com/PROFITING. Resources Mentioned: Ashley’s Book, Born to Shine: amzn.to/437SVEY Ashley’s Book, I Am Here: amzn.to/417DzNR Ashley’s Instagram: instagram.com/ashleyklemieux Ashley’s Website: ashleylemieux.com Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap YouTube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Newsletter - youngandprofiting.co/newsletter LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business Podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side Hustle, Startup, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, Biohacking, Motivation, Manifestation, Productivity, Brain Health, Life Balance, Positivity, Happiness, Sleep, Diet

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Hala Taha?

  Today's episode is sponsored in part by Northwest Registered Agent, Whatnot, Mod, and AG1. Northwest Registered Agent gives you the tools and guidance to build a complete business identity. Start using free resources at northwestregisteredagent.com/ yapfree. Whatnot helps sellers grow through live shopping, community, and real-time connections with buyers. Search Whatnot, W-H-A-T-N-O-T, in the App Store, download, and you can start selling right away. Mod connects qualifying patients with licensed medical providers for modafinil to support sustained energy, focus, and alertness throughout the day. Visit mod.com for a free consultation and get 10%

• 0:41Hala Taha?

  off your first order plus free shipping with promo code PROFITING. See their website for important safety information. AG1 Next Gen supports your nutritional foundation with vitamins, minerals, pre and probiotics, and superfoods. Go to drinkag1.com/profitting and get a free immune support bundle with your first subscription order. As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or at youngandprofiting.com/deals.

• 1:08Speaker 01

  We experienced a very unexpected contested adoption, and we ended up losing the kids. The lack of purpose that I felt in my life is something that made it really hard for me to get out of bed in the morning, until I got to the point where I was like, I have to figure out what my intention for my life is now. And so I started with one simple question every single morning, and that question was, so that's when the concept of clarity mapping really started.

• 1:39Hala Taha?

  How did you get over the shame of starting a company and shutting it down?

• 1:45Speaker 01

  We get scared of this idea of starting over, but you're not starting over. You can't. You have so much knowledge now, and so you get to now apply all of that into the next thing.

• 1:56Hala Taha?

  Do you feel like entrepreneurs deal with grief and stress differently than other people?

• 2:03Speaker 01

  Something that is very common among entrepreneurs is...

• 2:08Hala Taha?

  Yap gang, if you've ever struggled with grief, loss, trauma, or just felt completely stuck in life, today's Yap classic is going to really resonate with you. Our guest today is Ashley Lamoy. She's the founder and CEO of The Shine Project, bestselling author, and the host of the Healing Her podcast. Ashley is an expert on grief and trauma recovery, and she's devoted her life to helping others reignite the light within themselves. In this conversation, Ashley shows us how to move through some of life's darkest moments and find a way forward again. So whether you're going through something right now, or just want to be more mentally prepared for the future, I hope you find this conversation with Ashley valuable. Ashley, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.

• 2:53Speaker 01

  Hey, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

• 2:56Hala Taha?

  Yeah, thanks for joining me today. So I'm gonna just jump right into it. For a lot of us entrepreneurs, our businesses grow out of something that we've struggled with in our own lives. And I feel like this has been especially the case for you. You've had a bunch of dark moments in your life. So why don't we start off with the first one that I learned about when I was researching your story? It was in your twenties. You unexpectedly became the mother of two children, and then you had some traumatic experiences around that. Can you tell us what happened?

• 3:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, so in our mid twenties, I was actually building my first company also. We were newly married, and we didn't have kids at all in our radar at that time. And overnight, we became permanent guardians of two kids. And for the next four years, we were a family in every sense of the word. And everything that we did revolved around raising the kids, giving them the opportunities that we, you know, as a parent, you want them to have. And all of us were under the impression that we would be together forever, for always. And during the final steps of the adoption process,

• 4:07Speaker 01

  we experienced a very unexpected contested adoption. And during that time, we ended up being in court for two years. I just remember the life inside of me. It felt like someone had taken a vacuum and just sucked it all out. We were in court all the time, depositions, high stress, no one knew what was going to happen. And we ended up losing the kids. I was actually on the other side of the country for work, and it happened fast. I didn't even get to come home and say

• 4:44Speaker 01

  goodbye to them. And that was almost eight years ago now. And it rocked our world in a way that I

• 4:55Speaker 01

  did not know how to come back from, or if I even wanted to figure out how to come back from it, to be honest.

• 5:02Hala Taha?

  Yeah. And so can you help us understand like how you ended up with these kids in your twenties? And then are they now back in your family, or the court took them away and you just never saw them again?

• 5:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, so there's parts of our story that we just don't share all the full details of, but

• 5:19Hala Taha?

  Got it.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  They were placed with us through someone we knew, and we have not had contact with them since, since we lost them almost eight years ago.

• 5:32Hala Taha?

  I'm so sorry to hear that. And I know that you guys decided to move after this happened. What did that teach you about grief when you decided to move? Were you able to run away from your grief?

• 5:43Speaker 01

  I wanted to. We were like, okay, what can we do that will help us not feel this hell, this weight that feels like it has buried every aspect of our life? And it was really hard to be in the home that we had raised the kids in. All of our friends were friends because our kids were friends from school. We were doing things in the community all together, or sports teams and whatever. And my husband and I were like, if there's any shot of us making it after this, we got to get away for a little while. So we ended up moving to Nashville, Tennessee. I actually had had some employees there. And everything about Nashville is very different than it is in

• 6:28Speaker 01

  Phoenix. And so we just said, peace out, let's go. But then, once we got to Nashville and settled in the adrenaline, you know, of a new city, of new opportunities, of the excitement of, okay, what are we going to explore? What is waiting for us here? Once that started to kind of wear off, and the grief was still there, we were then like, okay, how much farther can we run? So we actually ended up packing carry-on suitcases, and we went to Europe with pretty much no plans for almost two months, hoping maybe that that would help ease the pain in that acute stage of grief when everything is just new and raw, and you don't know how to take

• 7:10Speaker 01

  your next breath. And again, after a while, that wore off. And so we found ourselves really having to dig deep of answering the questions, what is it that we want from our lives now? And how do we rebuild so that we can participate in our life and not regret not living it? Because we were too sad.

• 7:32Hala Taha?

  And I know we're going to touch on this much deeper later, but you talk about this concept in your book called clarity mapping. So was this one of the first instances of you starting to get clarity around your life and what you wanted?

• 7:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. So what was really hard for me, and I think a lot of people can relate to this in whatever role you are in. Let's say you identify with your role of motherhood, or as a wife, or a partner, or your role at work, or whatever that thing is that really shapes your identity. If that is taken away from you and is no longer a part of your daily world, you don't have to base your decisions around it anymore, your actions aren't based off of doing that thing because it is gone, the lack of purpose that I felt in my life, no longer being a physical mother, is something

• 8:24Speaker 01

  that made it really hard for me to get out of bed in the morning. I didn't know how to focus my time and my energy anymore. It didn't matter at that point, because my business was running, you know, it was okay for me to step away for a little bit. It did not matter if I got out of bed or not. There was no one I needed to feed breakfast to, or to get to school, or to bathe that night, or to tuck in. And I, I had to, so I stayed in bed for a long time, until I got to the point where I was like, I have to figure out what my intention for my life is now. And so I

• 9:05Speaker 01

  started with one simple question every single morning. And that question was, what is my intention today? Because today, right now, in this moment, was all I could focus on. So that's when the concept of clarity mapping really started. I became a series of five questions that I answered every single day to help give me purpose and direction and clarity on who I was, and what it is that I wanted to be rebuilding, so that I could create tangible steps forward to start building that thing.

• 9:41Hala Taha?

  And one of those tangible steps was that you decided to have your own children. And so you and your husband started to try for a baby, and that led to another traumatic experience. Are you comfortable to share that with us?

• 9:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. We, we waited probably about, I think it was about four years after the loss of the older two kiddos, to feel like we were at a place where we were ready to continue to try to grow our family. I didn't want to go back into motherhood feeling as broken as I felt, because I knew that that would impact the next child that we were to bring into our family. And I had so much healing that I needed to do in order to be ready for that. So we were so intentional about what the next steps of growing our family look like. And we decided the end of 2019 that it was time to

• 10:36Speaker 01

  grow our family. So that is when we moved from Nashville back to Phoenix. We were like, okay. We're ready to go back home. We want to be by my family. We want solid roots there so that, you know, when we have more kids, we're close to family and they get that experience of growing up around cousins, grandparents, aunts and uncles. So we moved home and right when we moved home, we found out that we were pregnant. And obviously, we were so excited and it just felt like for the first time in several years, that there was this new breath of life being breathed into our lives again and that there was forward movement.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  And the grief was still there, but also now there was joy and hope and an opportunity to keep living our lives, right? And I know no one likes to talk about this time, but I feel like 2020 was a great equalizer for all of us because we can say 2020 and everyone's like, yeah, that's that year freaking sucked for me, right? And it sucked for all of us for various reasons. And for us, we moved into our home in March of 2020, the same week that the pandemic had shut everything down. And so that also mean meant that doctors' appointments when you were pregnant, everything kind of changed. And so it kind of felt scary

• 12:01Speaker 01

  for a moment to leave the house being pregnant. I got really sick one day and we couldn't figure out what was wrong because I had felt fine, but then by the end of the night, I was screaming in pain. I couldn't get out of bed. I spiked a fever. I'd never felt anything like that. So my husband called the ambulance. They took me to the hospital and immediately they checked the baby. Baby was okay. And I'm like, okay, I can get through anything if baby, if my baby's okay. And we found out that I had gone septic. I didn't really know what that meant, but I now know sepsis is a blood infection. So whatever

• 12:42Speaker 01

  infection you have enters your bloodstream and it started causing kidney failure for me. So that had to be treated immediately because it's very life threatening. And in that moment, they told us, you're going to be admitted to the hospital for an indefinite amount of time. But today's also the first day that we are shutting down outside visitors. So your husband cannot come with you. You're going to have to come by yourself. And I just remember feeling, that was the loneliest, loneliest I think I have ever felt. And I remember being wheeled back, just like sobbing, saying goodbye to my husband, neither of us knowing what was going to happen. Later the next day, there was a moment where they

• 13:26Speaker 01

  called a code or a rapid response, which means like a whole team of doctors was surrounding me because I was really struggling breathing and everything felt like every, all the pain had just spiked. And I remember looking at a tech who was giving a scan on my heart, an EKG, and I remember asking him, am I going to die right now? Because I felt like I was going to. And I knew that whatever was happening in my body, there was no way it was going to keep me and my baby alive. Like, I just felt it in my gut that something was drastically changing right then. So after I was stable, a couple hours later, I had

• 14:07Speaker 01

  them give me another ultrasound. And that's when they found out that we had lost our baby, our baby boy. And I ended up delivering him alone the next morning. And it sent me again into this part of life where you're like, well, I thought that we had gone through the hard thing, right? Like, I thought that this was our first step back of trusting life again. And now what am I supposed to do? And so that entered the next journey of really finding clarity again in my life for what does this look like now to move forward?

• 14:52Hala Taha?

  What's up, Yap gang? I started my business as a side hustle. And once I started landing clients and bringing in real revenue, I realized I had to go all in. That's when I ran into all the not so exciting, but essential parts of running a real company, like forming an LLC and getting everything set up properly. Luckily, that's exactly what Northwest Registered Agent is built for. They're the largest registered agent and LLC service in the US, helping entrepreneurs launch and grow legitimate, protected businesses. You get a complete business identity, including the essentials you need to run your business professionally and protect your privacy. Don't pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for what you can get from Northwest for free.

• 15:35Hala Taha?

  Visit northwestregisteredagent.com/ yapfree and start using free resources to build something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at northwestregisteredagent.com/ yapfree.

• 15:50Hala Taha?

  Hey, young improffeters. You know, hiring reminds me a little bit of dating. You can get a lot of potential candidates, but you still might not find your right match. And when I'm hiring at Yap Media, I don't have time to just hope the right person sees our job posts. And indeed, sponsored jobs helps me get in front of the right people. Sponsored jobs boost your job posts and search results so you can reach the people who actually help your business thrive. Plus, you only pay for results. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all of your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job

• 16:33Hala Taha?

  credit to help give your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast. Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast, Young and Profiting. That's indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need the right hire fast? Then this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

• 16:58Hala Taha?

  Yap fam, you know, October hits different. The season shifts and suddenly, when your alarm goes off in the morning, your body's like, absolutely not. But when you have the business and a million decisions waiting for you, you cannot start the day already feeling behind. And that's why AG1 has earned a real spot in my morning routine. AG1 Next Gen is a daily foundational nutrition drink with 75 plus ingredients, including vitamins, minerals, prebiotics, probiotics, and superfoods. AG1 Next Gen is backed by four separate gold standard clinical trials and key nutrient levels improved within three months of consistent use. Plus, it's formulated to support immune defense, which is really important this time

• 17:39Hala Taha?

  of year. Yap fam, if you want to start your mornings off right, go to drinkag1.com/profitting and for a limited time, get a free immune support bundle, including a bottle of omega 3 fish oil and a bottle of vitamin D3 K2 with your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro. That's drinkag1.com/profitting. Drinkag1.com/profitting. Are there people who are in the moment feeling like really stuck that they, they've gone through a lot of pain, they had a lot of traumatic experience, maybe a loss? What advice do you have for them in terms of like the steps to take next?

• 18:19Speaker 01

  I think this is such a good question because when we are in those moments, it really feels like we are the only one in those moments. Grief and trauma can feel so isolating. And so the very first thing that I would say is that I'm so sorry. And I want you to be able to know that what you've been through, it can't be fixed. It's not supposed to be fixed. There's not a band-aid that can be put on it. I think that there's platitudes that people like to say, like, everything happens for a reason, or time heals all wounds. And I'm going to be the first one to say that none of those things are true. And so it's okay to feel exactly how you feel. The one thing that we know about grief and trauma

• 19:04Speaker 01

  is that most people spend their entire lives avoiding the reality of the pain. And the one thing that if all of us did in this area of our life where we feel grief, that would change the trajectory of what we're able to do next is acknowledgement. We have to acknowledge what we've been through and also what it feels like inside of us. And it might sound so simple to say that, but having it be simple doesn't mean it's easy, which is why the majority of people never get to this place where they're able to acknowledge it. So if we can start there, then that allows us to have more freedom in acknowledging

• 19:45Speaker 01

  what has happened and the hurt it has caused us so that we can stop avoiding it and then create a plan that feels safe for us to heal and to be able to experience the world again in a way that feels safe so that we can create forward steps.

• 20:06Hala Taha?

  And I know that for you, you've shared your story on podcasts like this, on your own podcasts, you wrote a memoir. How did actually sharing, like you were just alluding to it now, how did actually sharing your story help you heal?

• 20:20Speaker 01

  I think that for so many of us, we carry these stories. Sometimes there's shame attached to it. Sometimes there's so much pain attached to it. But what we know is that when our pain can leave our bodies, and whether it's writing our story down and no one else even reads it, we know that that helps facilitate healing. So many of us suffer in darkness and our stories just need to be brought to light, to be acknowledged, to be received, to be validated. And as I've been able to share my story, has been so beautiful and I think is the greatest privilege of the work that I do, is that it helps give other

• 21:04Speaker 01

  people permission to share and acknowledge their stories. So I get so many stories sent to me by other women who have gone through really hard things, who are like, I've, I've seen your story and it's given me courage now to be able to share mine and walk through what that means for me. And what we know is that healing happens fastest in community. And so when we can create communities that understand each other and have shared

• 21:34Speaker 01

  Respect and validation for the pain that other people go through, we're able to heal faster.

• 21:40Hala Taha?

  So, speaking of that, you have created a whole business around helping people with their grief. And as entrepreneurs, one of the best ways that we can start businesses is by actually solving the pains that we once had and providing those solutions to people who are in the place that we once were. So what steps did you take to become more qualified and become more prepared to take on the role to help other people with their trauma and grief?

• 22:06Speaker 01

  I love this question because part of my journey is started even before I stepped into helping people more in their grief. I've had a personal brand online for, oh my gosh, it's probably been 14 years now before Instagram even existed and I had a blogspot.com. I've always wanted to be a writer. I've always wanted to help move people through their emotions. So I was doing that even before these life experiences. You know, I wrote my first book and I was in the middle of my edits for my most recent book, I Am Here, When We Lost Our Son, Jace. And after that, I really felt like my next steps in finding clarity for

• 22:51Speaker 01

  my life, I didn't know exactly what it was going to look like, but I knew that I needed to go back to school to get my master's degree specifically in mental health and wellness with an emphasis in grief and bereavement. And that's probably the least sexy thing that you could tell someone that you are an expert in is like, okay, what did you, what do you study, Ashley? What do you teach on? Well, I teach on grief and bereavement. And everyone's like, oh, there's nothing sexy about talking about that. But it is the one thing that every single person in this world is going to experience at some point in their life. And my life experiences, I felt very much qualified me to help others.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  And I then wanted kind of the paper, the education behind it so that I could take everything I had already learned and really just propel myself forward. So at the age of, what was I, 34, I went back to school to get my master's degree. And what's funny about it is that about four weeks later, after starting this intensive program, we got pregnant again. So I ended up graduating and finishing with a four-month-old. I was pumping at my graduation. It was the first time I had left my baby for any amount of time. And it was one of the hardest things I've ever done, but I knew that I needed

• 24:20Speaker 01

  that for myself and then to be able to help other people.

• 24:23Hala Taha?

  I love that for you. I love the fact that you were able to do that even with a young child and you've been able to grow your career so successfully. Your podcast is very popular now. You've got two books. So it's awesome. And you actually started as an entrepreneur even before teaching other people about grief and being an author. You had a successful jewelry business, but then you pivoted and you decided you wanted to become an expert on grief. So how did you decide to make that change? Like, what was the thought process behind that? You know, I've got a lot of entrepreneurs tuning in who are probably product-based entrepreneurs. And what kind of differences did you see between having a product-based business to now having more of like a personal brand business and an audience-based business?

• 25:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I had an audience during the time of my jewelry company. And I still was writing to them through blog posts, through Instagram. We would do meetups in person. I was speaking a lot. And something that all product entrepreneurs know is that it is a freaking grind. You are grinding so hard to meet your bottom line. We were doing shows all the time, wholesale trade shows, holiday trade shows. And when we moved to Nashville, I reached this point where I was like, this isn't how I want to be spending the rest of my life. I want to be writing. And it's really hard to be founder, CEO

• 25:50Speaker 01

  of a product-based company that was on the trajectory that we were on, and then also be able to do the other work that I really wanted to do. And so I had to make some really difficult decisions. But at the end of the day, what I've always wanted is to help people. And so whether that was through jewelry or now through writing and podcasting and my personal brand, I knew that I had to make a pivot. So I started writing more. And my first step was getting a book agent, which, and I'm such a believer, and when you are in alignment with that next step, sometimes things happen to help facilitate that step.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  So, once I made that decision, I literally opened my inbox the next day and I had an email from one of the top literary agents in the country asking me if I'd ever thought about writing a book before. And I was like, okay, if this isn't my sign for the next step, I don't know what it's going to be. But, but there also was this grief of closing the chapter on my jewelry business. You know, we were sold in large department stores like Hallmark and we had really, we had a large headquarters in downtown Phoenix. And

• 27:13Speaker 01

  so that also meant that I let, I felt like I had to let other people down because my course was changing. But looking back, I can't imagine not making that decision.

• 27:29Hala Taha?

  Hello, young and profiteers. If you're running a business, getting website traffic is only half the battle. The real key to profiting is turning those visitors into paying customers. And I know checkout friction can quietly kill your sales. That's why I always say, serious entrepreneurs build on Shopify. Shopify is a commerce platform that helps you launch and run an online store without needing to be super technical. You can build your storefront, manage your business, and make it easy for people to buy. And here's the major advantage. Shopify Checkout with Shop Pay converts up to 36% higher than the competition. With Black Friday coming up, now's the time to get your store ready and simplify your checkout experience. If you're ready to launch your business before Black

• 28:13Hala Taha?

  Friday, go to Shopify.com/profitting to start your free trial. That's Shopify.com/profitting. Go to Shopify.com/profitting today to hear your first

• 28:29Hala Taha?

  What's up, Yap fam? You guys know we love reading on this show. So I'm always excited when I find a book I genuinely think is worth sharing. Life at the Speed of Play: Launch Products People Love by Mark Pincus is one of those books. Mark is a legendary Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor. And this fast-paced 170-page book is his playbook for testing ideas quickly, navigating uncertainty, and figuring out what's actually worth pursuing. One of my favorite concepts is what he calls the abyss. Those moments when you feel stuck or unsure of what's next. Instead of fearing uncertainty, he shows you how to use it as a tool for discovery. Right now, Mark is doing a buy one, get one offer for Yap listeners.

• 29:13Hala Taha?

  Go to GetMark'sBook.com/Yap, buy one copy for $32 and get a second copy free. So you can keep one for yourself and give the second to a friend, future co-founder, or someone who needs a little push.

• 29:29Hala Taha?

  What's up, Yap gang? I recently had Gary Vee on the podcast and he told me something that really stuck with me. If you've got sales DNA, you've got to be paying attention to live selling because it's one of the biggest opportunities right now online. And that really got me curious. So I checked out an app that he told me about called Whatnot. I jumped into a live show and I instantly got it. The seller was showing products in real time, answering questions in the chat, and building a real relationship with the buyers. It didn't feel like boring shopping. It felt like a community. Whatnot is the largest live shopping marketplace in the country. And for entrepreneurs, the results are really hard to ignore. Sellers on Whatnot can sell up to 10 times more than traditional marketplaces. And the number of sellers making over a million dollars a year on the platform

• 30:12Hala Taha?

  has doubled. So if you've got products to sell and you're looking for a new way to reach customers, search Whatnot, W-H-A-T-N-O-T in the App Store. Download it and you can start selling right away. That's Whatnot in the App Store. There's a lot of entrepreneurs out there tuning in that might not have a business that either fits their life goals, feeling burnt out, they don't even like working on their business anymore, or their business is just not successful, just not taking off. You know, 99% of startups fail. But a lot of entrepreneurs, we've got an ego where we feel like, well, we already put it out to the world. Everybody knows me for this. What are people going to think if I shut it down? I had a blog in my twenties that became really popular. And I shut it down because I wanted to change paths. I wanted to go into marketing

• 30:55Hala Taha?

  and all this other stuff. I wanted to go into corporate for a period of time. And I'm an entrepreneur. Again, I have a media company, but I shut down my company and my, everybody who worked for me, at the time I had volunteers. It was like, kind of a blog that I basically like trained bloggers. And we were all just young, just doing it for fun, you know? And so they were all mad at me and I lost all my friends and I felt a little ashamed. But I can imagine being older and having a real company with customers and products, that would be really hard. So I guess like, how did you get over the shame of starting a company and kind of just shutting it down?

• 31:32Speaker 01

  You know what's interesting is that when you hit rock bottom in your life, which for me was losing the kids, there's nowhere else to go but up. And so I think that I was in a place in my life where I was at such rock bottom that I just freaking didn't care anymore. And I had to do things to get the life back inside of me. I had to. I describe it as feeling like I was dead, but I was alive. I was just a zombie through my life. And so at that point, honestly, I don't know if it's a good thing, but for that moment it was. Because I don't know what else would have forced me to do this, but

• 32:15Speaker 01

  It was the only way for me and I had nothing to lose. And I think a lot of times we get afraid of hitting rock bottom, or what if it doesn't work out, or what will I do? And honestly, sometimes it's the best thing because you finally make decisions off of what you actually want, because you can't lose anything more than you already have. So that's what that looked like for me. And like I said, there was grief, there was sadness to it. And I also started to feel excited about something again for the first time in a long time. And so I just kept following that feeling.

• 32:58Hala Taha?

  And I feel like for other people tuning in, what I want them to understand is that nobody really cares that much, you know, like we, we put all this pressure about what is everybody else gonna think? What are my friends gonna think? What is my family gonna think? Even people who are lawyers and doctors and who don't want to be lawyers and doctors anymore, who are so afraid of making a change. It's like, yes, it's gonna be hard in the moment. But as soon as you figure out the next thing, and you've got the next thing to talk about and feel proud of, no one's even gonna remember or care. If anything, people are gonna be inspired from you. And it's just getting over that initial hump.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And I think we get scared of this idea of starting over. I've put in so much time, I've put in so much money, so much resources, I don't want to start over. But that destroys our next step when we look at things like that. You're not starting over. You can't. You have so much knowledge now that has gotten you to this place. And so you get to now apply all of that into the next thing. And I think the place where we fail the most as entrepreneurs is we stay in the wrong place for too long because our ego gets in the way of it. And we miss out on really what could take off for us and feel in just such alignment that would not only help us, but other people to be able

• 34:16Speaker 01

  to serve others more because we are on a path that actually is working. And so that's something now, I actually help women in their own clarity maps, in high, high level entrepreneurs. Because this is one of the things I love so much is how do we help you pivot when you are in this season of having no idea what to do next? How do you, you find that clarity and the confidence and the strategy to support it so that you can move forward?

• 34:45Hala Taha?

  Totally. This is a great segue to talk about your latest book. So your first book was a memoir, it was called Born to Shine. And your next book is called I Am Here. And that's more designed to help others navigate their own experiences of grief and trauma. Clarity mapping is a big part of that. We're hopefully gonna dive deep into that later on in the conversation. But first, you say the biggest life lesson that has come to your life has been the phrase of three simple words, I am here, which is the title of your book. Why are those words so meaningful to you?

• 35:15Speaker 01

  They're meaningful to me because for so long I didn't want to be here. And I did everything to try to avoid the feeling of being here, whether that was numbing out with social media, or food, or traveling, or spending money, or working too much, or being in bad relationships, whatever that thing was to distract me from the other pain is what I latched on to. And once I got to this point, we were actually in Europe on one of our runaway escapades of trying to escape it. And I remember being in Milan. And next to me sat a mom and a daughter, and she had just lost her tooth. And she

• 35:58Speaker 01

  was about the age of the daughter who we had lost in the contested adoption. And I remember watching the joy between the mother and the daughter over this lost tooth. And I just started sobbing. I just, any composure I had left, I just, it was gone. I wanted those own moments with this human that I loved so much that I knew I was never going to have again. And so I remember I, I got up from my spot, and I started running towards this little apartment that we were staying at. And it was as if someone put a brick wall in front of me, and was like, stop, you can't keep running like this. You, you

• 36:42Speaker 01

  can't, you, you have to face these feelings. And I probably looked like a crazy American tourist, which I totally was. But in the middle of this square there, I threw up my arms, and I yelled, I am here. I am here. And I just started crying. And I just, that became this mantra for me that I still hold on to of, I don't want to run away anymore. I want to be here. I am here. And so now what does that look like? And how can I support myself to be able to get through these things so that I don't keep running away from this life that I've been given?

• 37:20Hala Taha?

  Yeah, that's a really powerful story. Like, I can just imagine you in the street just having that moment. And then now, years later, you've written a book with that title to try to help other people. Do you feel like entrepreneurs deal with grief and stress differently than other people? Or do they have certain personality types that enable them to get over things more quickly, potentially?

• 37:45Speaker 01

  This is such a good question. And it's hard, right? Putting people into these buckets. But something that is very common among entrepreneurs is that they're very high achieving people, they want to achieve. And one of the ways that we can cope with grief is called a maladaptive coping mechanism. So there's two types of mechanisms that we can use to cope. Adaptive, which adaptive is something that is positive, that actually helps your grief. And the other is maladaptive, meaning it's not good for you, but we do it anyway because we don't know what else to do. One of the maladaptive coping mechanisms that a lot of us have, and a lot of entrepreneurs have, is work. And working too much. And

• 38:29Speaker 01

  so I see a lot of entrepreneurs who throw themselves even deeper into work to avoid their feelings. And they can become really successful from doing that. And it's something that the world praises, and we look at as a huge success, while meanwhile, there can be these layers of emotions that are hurting them, that's driving this, just really unsustainable work. But that can make it really, really hard to get to this healing place. Something else that's really interesting that we know is the difference between men and women, and the grief, the way that we move through grief. So a lot of men, and obviously, when I say

• 39:14Speaker 01

  this, right, I'm not saying every man and every woman. This is just an average across the board. There's gonna be people who don't fit into these buckets, of course. But what we know about men is that men often throw themselves into work. They talk less about how they are feeling, and they want to spend more time in the action of staying busy. Whereas women, we want to talk about it. We want you to sit and listen, and we want to talk about it because that's our way of processing, of retelling the story of helping, trying to help ourselves understand what has happened. And so then, if you are in

• 39:55Speaker 01

  a relationship where both of you are grieving so differently from the other, we can see a lot of marital or partnership conflict because of that. So I don't know if entrepreneurs, you know, if, if there's a specific grief style for entrepreneurs, but men and women for sure. But then for the group of entrepreneurs who we know just love the work and the achievements, I would base my best guess on what I know about grief on, they are probably, a lot of them throwing themselves even deeper into work, meaning that they are not facing what

• 40:38Speaker 01

  is actually going on in their life. It's a dangerous combination.

• 40:41Hala Taha?

  So good. Yeah. And I, I can relate to that even for myself. When I started my business, I started it in 2020. And I started it while my dad was in the hospital battling COVID, and I wasn't allowed to visit him. And I, and he passed away after a month in the hospital. It was like the most devastating thing. I literally watched him die, not even like on Zoom, and wasn't able to even see him until he passed away. And it was very traumatic. He was buried with his clothes on, and his shoes on, and his cell phone. It was like just the most traumatic thing. And for years, I just worked and worked and worked. So.

• 41:22Hala Taha?

  I'm better now because I actually hired my business partner, Jason. And, and now I'm able to kind of like just have a life and everything like that. But for years, I really did just throw myself into work.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  I'm so sorry to hear that. I didn't know about your father. And I, you opening up about that is so beautiful and so hard. And I think that where we are at now, going into 2025, a lot of people aren't realizing what happens around the fifth year of grief. So if we go back to 2020, we all had these moments where we're in a pandemic, but then we're all also experiencing these personal losses. The loss of your father, the loss of my baby, the loss of what other people have gone through. Right? So then the past couple of years, we're like, I don't know how to cope and no one is teaching me how to cope.

• 42:18Speaker 01

  So I'm going to do what I think is going to help me best. And because of my personality, because of what I want to build, I'm going to throw myself into work. And then you're like, oh, my gosh, this company I just started is doing well. It's growing. It's great. And you can kind of run on that adrenaline high for a moment until you start reaching these achievements that once the novelty of it starts wearing off, you can find yourself in this place of, I accomplished what I wanted to. I thought that this was going to feel differently than it does. And that is a very common feeling that a lot of entrepreneurs find themselves in is,

• 43:01Speaker 01

  I won the award, I hit the financial goal, I have the growth of the company. I thought that I was going to feel differently than this. What is wrong? And what is wrong is, is that we have this grief that can't be pacified by these external validations in our lives that we think are going to pacify them. And so now as we head into 2025, which is five years after this major traumatic event for most people in the world, year five is the year where you take a pause and you start really looking around and being like, where do I fit into life right now?

• 43:45Speaker 01

  And how do I want it to go moving forward? It's like one of the first years that you really begin to take a breath because there's a little more time and space between now and then. But as a result of that, a lot of emotions can start coming up as you realize that your life has continued to move on. But emotionally, parts of you still feel like they are stuck in the past. And so so many people right now are burnt out, they're burnt out on work. They don't know what to do next. And it's because we never gave ourselves the opportunity to slow down and, and to sit with our grief for as long as we needed to.

• 44:28Hala Taha?

  It's so true. And it's like so bittersweet because I'm so happy that I did all this. Like I built, my company is going to hit eight figures next year, you know? Like I built this crazy company.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  That's amazing.

• 44:39Hala Taha?

  Yeah, like, thank you. Like I built this awesome company and I have an awesome team and I love my life. But I really did, like to your point, there was a period of time where I was like, I can't just keep running on fumes and I need help. I need a business partner. I need to kind of delegate and have some balance because you just can't do that forever. And I do think sacrifice is important, but you can't do it forever.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  No, yeah, it's not sustainable. So then how do we create a sustainable way where we can build what we want and love it while also acknowledging what it is that we've been through? And what does that dance look like for my life? And what is it that I'm needing? And, you know, part of that, part of your gift of grief that probably came was your ability to grow this company to what it is now. And, but now, part of what might come next is, okay, I've, I've built this. And so does that mean that there's a little bit more of a buffer for me

• 45:42Speaker 01

  to have some space and some resources to really make sure that I'm filled up inside? So that my insides match all of my external accomplishments? And that's something that was really hard for me over the past couple of years. I remember I would tell my therapist, I'm a huge advocate for therapy. I'm like, everyone should have a therapist. So I love talking about it to just help people know it is so normal to go to therapy. But something that I would often tell my therapist is, my insides don't match my outsides. Like what is happening around me, what I have in my life is so beautiful.

• 46:19Speaker 01

  But inside, I feel like there's this just chaotic exhaustion that never goes away. And it feels so out of alignment with everything that I see externally in my life. And I need those to start matching up with each other. And so my hope is that going into 2025, a lot of entrepreneurs are going to kind of hit this pause button where we can all kind of get a little bit more in alignment so that our insides match our outsides. But when that happens, moving forward, we are able to serve and grow even exponentially

• 46:58Speaker 01

  from what we've gotten to, to this point, because we're going to have the sustainability, the internal resources to be able to do so.

• 47:05Hala Taha?

  So let's get into some of that. Let's get into aligning our internal with our external, like you were mentioning. So one of the things that you talk about in your book is that we need to reframe our thoughts. First, I want to get clarity on like, what thoughts actually are? Do you mean our current beliefs and like current thoughts? Or are you talking about memories or those two different things?

• 47:25Speaker 01

  Talking about our current thoughts. So what we know about our thoughts is we have somewhere around 90,000 thoughts a day. And out of those thoughts, somewhere around 80, 85% are negative. And the majority of those negative thoughts are reoccurring. So then these negative reoccurring thoughts that we have every single day are creating this belief system, this internal world where if we say, I'm not good enough, or I'm never going to get out of this situation, or man, I make stupid decisions, or I don't like how I look in the mirror.

• 48:05Speaker 01

  Whatever those stories are, become truly what we believe about ourselves and the world around us. Now, of course, it is, it is impossible, right? To live in an internal world where we don't have negative thoughts. We're human. That's part of how our brain works is we assess danger and we try to figure out where we fit into things and how we feel about things to try to keep ourselves safe. But what we can do is start acknowledging those thoughts and then start reframing them so that we can create different habits and thought patterns that allow us to have a different internal world. So for me, that's one of the reasons I started using I am here.

• 48:49Speaker 01

  And because I was just conditioned to be like, I want to leave. How do I get out of here? I want to escape. I want to escape. So then my belief had to be, come, I'm here. I'm here right now. I'm safe to be here. That was then. This is now. And really becoming your biggest advocate for helping yourself reframe your thoughts.

• 49:15Hala Taha?

  So walk us through how we can kind of keep tabs on like, what are the negative thoughts that we actually have? And then how do we uncover their positive roots?

• 49:24Speaker 01

  Okay, so I love this. One thing that I always suggest to my clients that I work with is just for even if it's an hour out of your day, a whole day would be amazing. But even if you only had an hour, take out the notes app on your phone or have just a little journal with you. And anytime you notice that you have a negative thought come into your head, I just want you to write it down. And I don't want you to have any judgment on it. I don't want you to judge your thoughts, right? Because then we can get into this cycle of like, oh, my gosh, I'm so dumb for thinking that. Or what's wrong with me? Or no, we're just, we're just gonna. Be observers of the thoughts that are going through our head.

• 50:05Speaker 01

  And once we have all of those down, what I like to then do is try to get to the root of where those thoughts came from. A lot of times, thoughts that we have right now came from things that we heard when we were little, things that we began to believe about ourselves from when we were really small. Sometimes the origin of the thought doesn't even come from us. So if you're able to sit with it and really be able to go back to the first time that you can remember hearing it, or feeling it, or thinking it, a lot of times you can bridge that gap and realize that that did not even come from you.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  So, once we do that, being able to sit with, okay, this is what I believe, but this is what I would like to believe instead. This is my current thought, but this is what I would like to believe instead. And I keep it as simple as that and as gentle as that, as we are working through these, and being able to write down what we would like to believe instead. Then, being able to be mindful, whether it's then the next hour after that, after you have the thought come in, whether it's, I'm not good enough, being able to call it out,

• 51:27Speaker 01

  like, okay, I understand that right now I'm believing I'm not good enough, and I acknowledge that, but what I would really like to believe instead is X, Y, and Z. And that helps us create a pattern where we kind of can get, help ourselves get out of this routine of having these thoughts that we don't even realize are happening, and we can stop them and call them out, and then we just gently tell ourselves what we would like to believe instead, so that that becomes something that we begin to start thinking about. Does it take time? Of course it does. But after those two hours, I promise you, you are going to experience a shift in feelings

• 52:08Speaker 01

  that you might not have felt for a really long time, and uncover thoughts that you might not even know that you have. Like, you can reach the end of the day, sometimes, a lot of my clients be like, I don't know why I feel this bad. I just do. I don't know where it comes from. I don't know why I feel so lost in the roles in my life. And we do this exercise, and after an hour of them writing down everything they've been thinking, they're like, I didn't realize that I'm so hard on myself. I didn't realize that these are the things I'm consistently telling myself. So, that's a really good place to start.

• 52:49Hala Taha?

  And are there common thoughts that people have? And what would be the positive reframing? Like, just so people have, like, examples?

• 52:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, one that is really common, that I would argue the majority of people struggle with, is I'm not enough, or I'm not good enough. So, for that one, it's really important for us to do some work on, where did this come from? When did I start feeling this way? Why did I start feeling this way? Did it come from me? Did it come, is this something I picked up on from someone else? And then, being able to answer the question, well, what would it even mean to be good enough? And what areas of my life do I feel like I'm not good enough that I can begin to focus on?

• 53:39Speaker 01

  So, one of the things, one of the ways that I like to reframe, I'm not good enough, is I am enough for all of the needs that my life has of me in this moment. I am enough to take care of all of the needs that my life has for me in this moment. And again, being able to find evidence, something about our brains that I think is really cool is that our brains look for evidence that what we are doing is working. That's why journaling can be so powerful, because we need to see something is written down. So, when we write down our thoughts, and then what we would like to believe instead, but then kind of keep a log to see our progress of, oh my gosh, today I only thought about

• 54:22Speaker 01

  this 10 times, instead of 20, or whatever that is, it signals to our brain, hey, this thing is working, this is a good path for us to continue to go down, which is another reason why I recommend writing things down. Another one that's really common is anger. And anger can show up in a lot of ways in our lives, especially when you're grieving, because anger is easier to feel than sadness. A lot of times, anger is a mask for sadness, because we're too afraid to feel sad, or we haven't been taught, or culturally, you know, some people aren't allowed to show their emotions, or men versus women, you know, with gender and what's expected of us in the

• 55:04Speaker 01

  society, anger can be something that masks a lot of other feelings. So, something that I always think about with anger is, what do I love so much that I'm trying to protect, that is making me so angry right now, because I feel like I've lost control of it? So, for that one, I, I think that a lot of times, the root for anger is actually love. I'm angry that I lost my kids, because I love them so much. I'm angry that this person hurt you, because I have deep respect for you as a human being. Whatever that is, a lot of times, it goes back to love.

• 55:49Speaker 01

  So, if I can start reframing my anger, allow myself to feel it, but then understand it's coming from a place of love, how then can I fuel that love? Anger is needing action. It's like, it's signaling to us that there are alarm bells going off, we want to be in control of something that we don't have control of, so then how can we can take control to, to bring action to it? Who do you love, what do you love, that's causing the anger? And then, how can you show up for them? Or how can you be a part of that cause? Or how can you use your voice to help them? And so, helping do that can help kind of shift our anger to actually have action behind it.

• 56:31Hala Taha?

  That's so good. So, basically, whenever you're angry, there's actually something that you love and you're really passionate about behind that. If you can figure that out, and lean into the love part, instead of the anger part, that's really great.

• 56:45Speaker 01

  And sometimes, though, healing requires you to get pissed, right? Like, there are people who probably have wronged you, and you have every reason to be upset at it. You have every reason to just be so pissed off. And so, I say, let yourself be pissed off, but at some point, that has to move through you, otherwise, the one who becomes the most affected by it is you.

• 57:09Hala Taha?

  And sometimes, it's a love for yourself, right? So, it might be just like pouring into yourself, because you love yourself. How about trauma? How do you reframe thoughts and memories related to trauma?

• 57:22Speaker 01

  You know, this is a hard one, because I want to first explain the difference between grief and trauma, just so that everyone's on the same page. So, you can experience grief without experiencing trauma, without experiencing trauma. So, you can have grief, but there's no trauma attached to it. But all trauma has grief attached to it.

• 57:44Hala Taha?

  Okay.

• 57:45Speaker 01

  Does that make sense?

• 57:46Hala Taha?

  Kind of. Well, how do you experience grief with no trauma? Like, what's an example?

• 57:50Speaker 01

  So, me and you could go through the exact same situation. Let's say we were at the exact same event, and something really bad happened. Based off of my life experiences, how I'm wired psychologically, my previous trauma, my previous grief, that event could be something that completely traumatized me, whereas perhaps that event didn't traumatize you at all, but just gave you grief. So, a person can go through the same exact thing, but not have trauma while the other person does have trauma.

• 58:27Hala Taha?

  Got it.

• 58:28Speaker 01

  And so, there's no, like, definition of, well, this, this is what trauma is, this is what it isn't. It's your reaction. Trauma is your reaction to an event. So, as you're trying to process through trauma, we all need different things, and this is where I say, you need the help of a professional. Because so often, our brains are like, if you broke your arm right now, where would you go?

• 58:54Hala Taha?

  The hospital.

• 58:55Speaker 01

  You go to the hospital, like, no question. I'm gonna go to the hospital. Well, if your brain is, is feeling like this brokenness because of trauma, so often we feel shame, and we don't go get help. But we should also be going to a professional that knows how to help us be able to heal our brains. So, there's things like EMDR, which literally helps you heal your brain. There's, you know, psychiatrists, there's support groups, there's places where you can feel safe to go get that help, because it is really difficult to get through trauma on your own.

• 59:37Speaker 01

  And a lot of times, it's so hard, too, that it kind of carries with you throughout your whole life. You know, I, I think right now, a lot of people on, at least online, have been starting to talk more about generational trauma, and, you know, why things are passed down from one generation to the next, and it's because trauma literally physically changes your DNA, and when no one is taking a breath to be like, I want this to end with me, or how do I heal, it continues to be passed down through habits, through our reactions, through what we then teach our children, how we teach, how we treat them. And so, I always recommend professional help for trauma.

• 1:00:22Hala Taha?

  Makes sense. So, something else that you talk about in your book is fear, right? So, fear is something that I think a lot of entrepreneurs go through, especially, we, we work in very uncertain areas most of the time, we don't really know what's gonna happen next. So, how do we reframe fear? What do we need to know about that?

• 1:00:40Speaker 01

  So, I don't know about you, but for me, entrepreneur, in entrepreneurship, fear can show up in so many different ways, but I realize I'm not actually afraid of that thing happening. I'm afraid of something totally unrelated, but I have attached fear as the label to the current problem, because it's masking something else that I just haven't, you know, dealt with. One of the ways, though, that can help us reframe fear, is by doing the thing that we're afraid of. Our anxiety doesn't go away when we avoid the things that we're anxious about.

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  Our fear doesn't go away when we avoid doing the things that we are fearful of. In fact, it just continues to feed it, right? So a lot of times, we need proof, our brains need proof, that it's not something we need to be afraid of. And we need confidence that it's something that we can handle or walk through, or that if things really do go south, I have confidence in myself that I'm still gonna be able to figure it out. Because that's what life is, right? No one's life goes exactly according to plan. That's not what life is, it's what we want it to be. But then when we find ourselves shying away from doing what we really wanna be doing,

• 1:02:06Speaker 01

  or really leaning into the areas of our lives that we know would light us up, but we are afraid of it not working out, or us doing it wrong, or losing everything, that fear just keeps getting bigger. So the only way that we can start reframing that is by taking action on the things that we're afraid of.

• 1:02:28Hala Taha?

  And when it comes to action, a lot of people are afraid of failure. But as we all know, failure and growth kind of go hand in hand. You have this awesome quote, you talk about dirt as a fine place to start growing. I love that. So can you elaborate on what you mean by that?

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, you know, I think that so many of us, we're afraid of getting knocked down. We're afraid of falling flat on our faces. But it is in that dirt, when your nose hits the ground, the only way back is up. And a lot of times, that is the best place for us to be able to really start our growing journey. I cannot think of one entrepreneur who has not experienced a significant setback or failure that then also helped them lead to the next steps of their career, right?

• 1:03:25Speaker 01

  It's like, how could you expect to know exactly what to do if you never learned what not to do? Or if you never learned what didn't work? Or, of course, like, we have to fail, and no one wants to feel it. But it's also in those moments where we can really get a jumpstart on, okay, I figured this out the hard way, and now I'm gonna do X, Y, and Z, and have a clearer path forward this way.

• 1:03:58Hala Taha?

  Honestly, I feel like people who are willing to fail, they're just so much smarter. And I meet so many people, and the most successful people that I know just go for things. And they do it, and it fails, and it works, and it doesn't work, and they just keep trying and trying and trying. And then they just get so much experience, and they're such a well-rounded, skilled person. And then you've got other people who are just kind of afraid of making any sort of change. They stay in the same sort of mundane job where they don't learn anything new, and then they're stuck. And they don't really move in life, you know?

• 1:04:31Speaker 01

  And they stay stuck, and then the next year, I, because I hear from a lot of women who are like, I feel stuck here, but I don't know what to do, so I'm just gonna stay here. And then a year goes by, and you still feel that feeling. And to me, that's way more uncomfortable than trying something that doesn't work out, so that then I can find something that does, rather than feeling like I'm on this hamster wheel that's not getting me anywhere, and I know it's not getting me anywhere. I would much rather be the person that fails a million times to figure out where I actually really want to be, than the one who just feels like I'm stuck on Groundhog's Day every day that I wake up.

• 1:05:16Hala Taha?

  Totally. And so I think a great way to close out this interview, which also ties to what we were just saying, which is figuring out what you wanna do with your life, is learning how to do a clarity map, which you talk about in your book. So first off, tell us about the five daily questions. You mentioned that you have five daily questions that you came up with years ago. What are these questions, and how do they help us identify what matters before we move on to the next step?

• 1:05:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you can do these questions in as little or as much time as you want every morning. But the first one is, what is my intention today? The second one is, why am I worthy? There are so many of us who, when things are going good in our lives, we can start sabotaging ourselves because we feel like we're not deserving of it. We are afraid of life feeling good again, we're not good enough to receive it. And so being able to sit with, why am I worthy for this? Is actually really helpful to allow yourself to keep moving forward in a positive way in your life. The third question is, who can I serve today? Sometimes it's gonna be yourself. This is a really good place to check in of, are there needs that I'm not meeting for myself?

• 1:06:24Speaker 01

  Or how are my employees today? How is that stranger behind me in the grocery store doing? What about my partner? When's the last time that we had a check in? That's a really, a really beautiful place to figure that out. The next one is, what can I set down today? Or what can I let go of? You guys, we carry so much heaviness throughout our day, whether that's the fear, whether that's a responsibility for something that is completely off out of our hands, whether that's sadness for something that we can't control. But what can you just set down for that day so that you have energy to do these other things? And then the very last question is, how does the truest version of me show up today?

• 1:07:08Speaker 01

  I used to ask myself, how does the best version of me show up today? But then I realized I would change my answer based off of, well, what is the best version of a mom? Or what's the best version of an employer? Or what's the best version of a partner? And I realized my answers were based off of what I thought other people needed and wanted from me. So I changed it, and I now ask, who is the truest version of me today? So that I can show up as her and lead from that place of authenticity, and give the world who I am, instead of letting the world dictate who I am. So those are the five questions I start with.

• 1:07:49Hala Taha?

  Love that, love that. So as we close out this interview, what should we be doing at the start of the new year when it comes to making lasting change and working through grief, depression, trauma, loneliness? What can we do as like a New Year's resolution this year?

• 1:08:05Speaker 01

  I love this. This is one of my very favorite things. We start with setting an intention. So I don't set goals, and I don't set resolutions ever in my life. I set intentions. And I base my year and how I'm going to move forward based off of how I want to feel inside. And a lot of us haven't checked in internally for a long time. Like, how do I actually wanna feel? Do I want more peace in my life? Do I want more clarity? Do I wanna feel like love is driving my decisions? What is that feeling? And I write that on a piece of paper. And then around that, I draw four boxes for the different areas of my life,

• 1:08:48Speaker 01

  for emotional development, spiritual development, finances, or business, and then my relationships. And in those four boxes, I then set intentions for each of those four categories that match my overall life intention, so that I can have a strategy in those four life areas to move forward in a way that's going to support how I am feeling right now in my life. And if that's something you want more of, we do a challenge every January about it. I talk more about it in my book and in my podcast. But check in with your feelings, and then map out a life that supports your feelings, instead of starting with your goals.

• 1:09:31Speaker 01

  And that will help you feel more fulfilled once you bring everything to life.

• 1:09:36Hala Taha?

  That's great advice. I think that's fantastic. So like, really just focusing on your intentions, not your goals. So Ashley, I had such a great conversation with you today. I end my show with two questions that I ask all of my guests. The first one is, what is one actionable thing our young and profiteers can do today to become more profitable tomorrow?

• 1:09:54Speaker 01

  Ooh, this is such a good one. I would say invest in your mental health. There's that return of being able to really understand who you are and why you are, how you are, is gonna profit you more than anything else in the long run, and help you build a sustainable business.

• 1:10:15Hala Taha?

  And this one can go beyond business and finance. What is your secret to profiting in life?

• 1:10:20Speaker 01

  Wow, this is a good one. Okay, I'm like, what is my secret to profiting in life? My secret is to create peace as my priority.

• 1:10:32Hala Taha?

  We didn't get to talk about this. This is so important. Talk, yeah.

• 1:10:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, being able to live with peace as my decision maker, and as the feeling that surrounds me, that has allowed me to profit in every area of my life more than anything else that I have ever tried to do. And so I base every decision off of, is this going to invite peace in my life? Or is it going to be something that prevents me from feeling peace? That's the thing, is pursuing peace to have a profitable life in all of the areas that you wanna feel it in.

• 1:11:09Hala Taha?

  And when you say peace, because I didn't get a chance to ask you about this, and I actually really love this. So like, when you say peace, what is a feeling? Like, what is peace to you?

• 1:11:19Speaker 01

  Peace to me is the feeling that can't be bought, it can't be mimicked by anything else. It can't be something that someone else gives you. Peace is this internal feeling that comes when you are in alignment with your life, with who you believe your higher power to be, when you are able to make decisions that invite in more peace, whether that is setting types of boundaries, or whether that is letting things go that make you kind of feel chained. Peace to me feels a lot like freedom.

• 1:12:00Speaker 01

  And there's a lot of things that can kind of chain us that make us lose it, whether that's like we feel chained to our job, or to social media, or to comparison, or to toxic relationships, or to these habits we just can't get out of the cycle of doing because they've just become a part of who we are, because that's what helped us cope for a long time, but now it's not serving us anymore. There's so many chains in our life that we can have that prevent us from experiencing more peace. And so to me, peace is something that you cannot receive from any other outside source or thing.

• 1:12:41Hala Taha?

  So good. I feel like that's my favorite advice from the whole episode, is to make decisions based on if it's gonna... No, the whole conversation was amazing, but that really spoke to me in terms of like, making decisions based on what brings you peace and not. Is this gonna bring me peace, or is this gonna make me feel unaligned?

• 1:13:02Speaker 01

  And honestly, it's so simple. And honestly, you can make faster decisions, and decisions that support you more, based off of that answer of doing the gut check of, is this gonna bring me peace or not? And that's how I base every decision now, and it's changed my life and my business. And my family loves it.

• 1:13:23Hala Taha?

  Yeah, I love that. Ashley, this has been amazing. Where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do?

• 1:13:28Speaker 01

  My gosh, thank you so much, first of all, for having me. And I would love to meet all of your young and profiteers. You can come, find me on Instagram at AshleyKalemU. We love hanging out over there every day. You can also come and listen to my podcast, it's called Healing Her. And if you are wanting, you know, more support on your journey, you can go to my website to see what that looks like at ashleylemu.com.

• 1:13:52Hala Taha?

  Amazing. Ashley, thank you so much for joining us on Young and Profiting Podcast.

• 1:13:57Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me.