Young and Profiting with Hala Taha (Entrepreneurship, Sales, Marketing)
Ashley Lemieux: How Entrepreneurs Can Overcome Loss, Heal, and Build a Thriving Business | Mental Health | E340
Mon, 03 Mar
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Ashley Lemieux’s journey is a masterclass in navigating grief as an entrepreneur. She became a mother overnight, only to lose the children she raised in a contested adoption. Years later, she was pregnant and hopeful, but a battle with sepsis led to the devastating loss of her baby boy. After years of running from grief, Ashley finally reached a breaking point. One day, she broke down, threw up her hands, and screamed, “I am here!” That mantra became a powerful reminder to stay mindful. In this episode, Ashley shares how the Clarity Mapping framework helped rebuild her life and teaches us how to shine, even through life’s darkest moments. In this episode, Hala and Ashley will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (01:11) Unexpected Parenthood and Loss (05:46) Clarity Mapping: A Guide for Self-Healing (07:56) Surviving a Health Crisis and Pregnancy Loss (11:01) The Power of Storytelling in Healing (16:33) Shutting Down a Successful Business (22:25) The Fear of Pivoting in Entrepreneurship (27:09) “I Am Here”: A Mindfulness Mantra (29:33) How Entrepreneurs Deal with Grief (36:54) Building a Sustainable Life and Business (38:57) Reframing Negative Thoughts and Habits (49:00) Distinguishing Grief from Trauma (52:08) Overcoming Fear in Entrepreneurship (56:58) The Five Daily Questions for a Growth Mindset (1:01:43) Why Mental Health and Inner Peace Matter Ashley Lemieux is a wellness coach, bestselling author, and founder and CEO of The Shine Project, an online community that provides women with support and motivation. Having overcome profound grief and loss, she developed Clarity Mapping, a tool for finding purpose, making mindset shifts, and gaining clarity. Through her podcast Healing Her, she helps others rebuild their lives after loss. Sponsored By: Shopify - youngandprofiting.co/shopify Airbnb - airbnb.com/host Rocket Money - rocketmoney.com/profiting Indeed - indeed.com/profiting RobinHood - robinhood.com/gold Factor - factormeals.com/factorpodcast Rakuten - rakuten.com OpenPhone - openphone.com/profiting Microsoft Teams - aka.ms/profiting Get the exclusive NordVPN deal now at → https://nordvpn.com/PROFITING. Try risk-free with the 30-day money-back guarantee Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Resources Mentioned: Ashley’s Book, Born to Shine: amzn.to/437SVEY Ashley’s Book, I Am Here: amzn.to/417DzNR Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap Youtube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting 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, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, Psychology, Wellness, Biohacking, Manifestation, Productivity, Brain Health, Life Balance, Positivity, Happiness, Sleep, Diet.
Chapter 1: What challenges did Ashley face with unexpected parenthood and loss?
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.
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Chapter 2: How did Clarity Mapping help Ashley heal?
And that question was, so that's when the concept of clarity mapping really started.
How did you get over the shame of starting a company and shutting it down?
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.
Do you feel like entrepreneurs deal with grief and stress differently than other people?
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Something that is very common among entrepreneurs is
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Yeah, fam, if you've ever struggled with grief, loss, trauma, feeling stuck, or just the occasional bout of seasonal depression, then today's episode is just what the doctor ordered. My guest today is Ashley Lemieux. She's the founder and CEO of The Shine Project, the author of books like Born to Shine and I Am Here, and the host of the Healing Her podcast.
As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or at youngandprofiting.com slash deals.
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Chapter 3: What was Ashley's experience with a health crisis and pregnancy loss?
Ashley is an expert on grief and trauma recovery and has devoted her life to helping others reignite the light within themselves. Today, she's going to teach us how we can all learn to shine even through some of life's darkest moments. Ashley, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.
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.
Hey, thank you so much for having me.
I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for joining me today. So I'm going to 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.
And that question was, so that's when the concept of clarity mapping really started.
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 20s. You unexpectedly became the mother of two children. And then you had some traumatic experiences around that. Can you tell us what happened? How did you get over the shame of starting a company and shutting it down?
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.
Yeah, so in our mid-20s, 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 together. And for the next four years, we were a family in every sense of the word.
Do you feel like entrepreneurs deal with grief and stress differently than other people?
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Chapter 4: How can storytelling aid in healing from trauma?
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. 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 at night or to tuck in.
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 your next breath. And again, after a while, that wore off.
And 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 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.
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?
We're gonna 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?
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.
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.
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?
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 that made it really hard for me to get out of bed in the morning.
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Chapter 5: Why did Ashley shut down her successful business?
The one thing that we know about grief and trauma 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.
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?
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.
Well, thank you for sharing that with us. I know that's probably very difficult to relive. For other people who are in the moment feeling really stuck, that 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 the steps to take next?
So if we can start there, then that allows us to have more freedom in acknowledging 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 And to be able to experience the world again in a way that feels safe so that we can create forward steps.
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.
And I know that for you, you've shared your story on podcasts like this, on your own podcast. 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?
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, whether it's writing our story down and no one else even reads it, we know that that helps facilitate healing.
There's not a band-aid that can be put on it. I think that there's platitudes that people like to say, 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.
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Chapter 6: What is the significance of 'I Am Here' for Ashley?
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... you started teaching other people about grief and being an author.
And after that, I really felt like my next steps in finding clarity for 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,
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? What was the thought process behind that? You know, I've got a lot of entrepreneurs tuning in who are probably product-based entrepreneurs.
What do you study, Ashley? What do you teach on? Well, I teach on grief and bereavement. And everyone's like, 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.
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?
I was. 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 riding.
And I then wanted 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. 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 that for myself and then to be able to help other people.
And it's really hard to be founder, CEO 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.
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Chapter 7: Do entrepreneurs handle grief differently?
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 to serve others more because we are on a path that actually... working.
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 that's something now I actually help women in their own clarity maps in 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 find that clarity and the confidence and the strategy to support it so that you can move forward? And so I just kept following that feeling.
And I feel like for other people tuning in, what I want them to understand is that nobody really cares that much. 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 wanna be lawyers and doctors anymore, who are so afraid of making a change.
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 going to dive deep into that later on in the conversation.
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.
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?
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 wanna 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.
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 that is what I latched onto.
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Chapter 8: How can entrepreneurs pivot their careers despite fear?
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