Episode 01 - Laid Off Today: How We Stayed Calm, Avoided Panic, and Kept Moving Forward

Kim: So we're sitting here.

Some very thing interesting things have occurred this week. Some very.

It's been a tough week.

Sunday morning I got a call from my mother telling me she had breast cancer.

That's what started our week.

Then here we are on Friday and Kenny came home with some news of his own.

Some life changing news. Would you like to share?

Ken: Yep. And I was I was let go today.

So not even seven days after the news about grandma and here I am, unemployed.

Not sad for some reason because I was maybe planning to leave the job because I was kind of getting,

I don't know, burnt out somehow.

And that's how we're starting 2026.

But we have plans.

We've been working on our website to revamp or sales change the logo.

Looking for new opportunities to maybe open a retail store.

Seeing the actual potential with the store since the sales increased the last year. So I guess we just,

we have like a nice diamond on the rough. That's what I meant.

Kim: Okay,

Ken: so let's see what happens 2026, you wanted to record this and here we are recording it.

Kim: Well, yes, as I said. Okay, well let's just jump on the microphones and have a conversation. Maybe people can relate to it. And we finally got this beautiful setup and a nice space for it and we decorated it.

And we have expensive equipment that we have been know excited to use but we haven't had time to really get into it. And we get over in our little corner of the world here, go to plug everything in and start it all up and the cord doesn't work.

Ken: The cord doesn't work. Yeah. Cuz we had the new phones, we got the bad luck and we upgraded our phones the last year so we got the new 17s.

And now the cord is not compatible with the Rode caster.

Kim: Yep. So not that anybody listening probably knows what Rode caster is, but yeah,

the equipment is basically useless. So here we are sitting and recording on an app from our cell phone.

Yeah. It's just nothing ever seems to work the way you plan it.

Ken: The universe is always asking, okay, do you want it? It's there, but okay, how bad do you want it?

How much?

You need to put some energy. You need to put some intention and energy.

Kim: Yep. And even when you put in as much energy as you think you have, it's still gonna throw you curveballs and kick you while you're down.

Ken: You have to adapt quickly and you

Kim: have to adapt quickly and push through. Otherwise, might as well walk away.

Ken: I think this happened to a lot of people.

That, you know, they're planning,

they're trying to get stuff accomplished, and there's always a curveball.

And that kind of people, they think that it's their luck,

but it's not actually. It's just how to approach the issues.

We're approaching this again. You know, it's just as simple as that. Now, for us, it's inconvenience right now.

Kim: Hugely.

Ken: But that's how it is. Okay. The universe is telling you, hey, you want to get it done? Okay. You got a new cell phone, though. Nice. Better camera, better Microphone. But now you need to upgrade this.

And if you want to come with a full intention, you can still do it.

Now, the thing is that we just see it as a bad luck or nothing is working out.

Kim: Woe is me! Why me?

Ken: Yeah. And it is annoying because again, like you said, we. We bought it,

we have all this stuff here to record, and now we can't even do it right. And again, I get one thing after another about what is happening with your mom, me losing my job, and there's still resistance.

Kim: Well, let's talk about that. Like the thing with my mom being diagnosed with breast cancer.

I went to the doctor this week with her,

and as upsetting as it is and as scary as it is,

I feel like it's happening for a reason,

and whatever those reasons may be. And I'm not saying that it's all about me or anything like that, but it is a.

It's an. I'm trying to look at it as an opportunity to fix our relationship because we had a very stressful year last year.

A lot of things happened and we needed to work through them.

So I'm looking at it as an opportunity.

She's not upset. She's in good spirits about it. She's being optimistic.

They do think that it's just stage one and that it's going to just be a surgery and fix it. And I'm not downplaying that or saying that that will be easy or anything like that.

But the diagnosis could have been a lot worse, obviously.

So I'm looking at it as a fresh start for her and I in our relationship and to heal what has happened.

In this case, with losing your job, it's a big smack in the face because we weren't financially prepared for this.

But I'm also looking at it as maybe it's a silver lining to push us harder because we are constantly running out of time in the day to work on what could potentially move us forward.

Ken: Yeah.

Kim: And honestly, we've never had an opportunity to work on our business together simultaneously without being pulled, one of us being pulled by a job.

Ken: being tired at night and just basically working just with 20% or 10% of your energies and your creativity instead of just kind of going full, you know, all in and try to get stuff accomplished and barely moving the needle.

So that's very difficult.

It takes a lot of time and energy to kind of really sit down every single night in anything. Even if you're writing an email, if you have to write like a long email, if you have like a.

Some sort of.. Let's say you have an issue like with an appliance. what happened to the couch, this is some of our story, in the refrigerator.

Yeah. So we have to sit down, get the documentation, write an email. Like if you're tired and you're having a long day.

Right. With family at work and all that. And then you have to, at 8 o' clock or after 8, sit down,

try to put an email together and getting all the documentation ready so you can get.. You can get your appliance or your furniture fixed that also, like, Jesus Christ, It's gonna take 15, 20 minutes.

I'm putting all this together just to fix something that is just an essential.

You know,

it all adds up. Yeah, all adds up.

Same for the business, like, all right, I need to.

I have a website. I'm gonna have to fix the front page.

Then, you know, you start working on it. It takes some time to fix,

you know, to figure out what to get done. But then it's like, man, I'm tired. I mean, it seems like I didn't move the needle at all because I've been working just to try trying to fix the front page, but it seems like it's not adding anything.

It's not adding any value.

It's not bringing any.. it is not bringing more money now, it needs to be done.

Right. But. But it's just like how.

How time consuming everything is when you have to put a lot of dedication. You have to show up every single day.

Kim: Right. So what are.. what's your plan to stay positive, to move through this next phase here while everything kind of seems to be,

you know, if you look at it from the outsider's point of view, like, you know, life is really kicking our ass this week.

Ken: Yeah.

Kim: What are we gonna do to stay on top of it? Stay positive and keep moving forward rather than slumping back and just being the victim of our circumstances here?

Ken: Yeah. Well, the last six months, the job was Taking a huge turn on me mentally and physically.

So I think that now, after I kind of just put myself together in my mind or so, because this just happened a few hours ago within the..

Kim: Pick yourself up and dust yourself off.

Ken: Yeah,

reset, reset. And then I'm gonna really work on the business and kind of make the things that we want to do. So this could be a blessing in disguise. That's the way I see it.

And again, the job was taking a huge toll on me when I was actually thinking, like, man, I'm gonna get sick. I was feeling sick so many times, but I had to still go to work,

so I'm not gonna complain every single day. I'm like, I'm feeling sick while feeling sick because I'm burnt out.

But again, I see this just an opportunity for us to turn to work on your business, work on our podcast and, you know, and the website, and hopefully we can open that store that we've been talking about to see if we can put a plan together and.

Or if we can just again,

clear the whole vision that we have for. For our future.

See, maybe we can just embrace one path. Because, as you know, we've been working on the podcast and then we paused it and we're jumping back onto the website and some other things.

So maybe these weeks it's gonna really help us to kind of really, okay, what are we doing? You know, and then put all our intentions fully into those things to get it done.

We need it to get us to get these things going.

Kim: So how can we help each other stay positive through all of this?

Ken: Well, that's why I said in the. In the. When we were eating lunch. What?

Kim: Nothing.

Ken: The way I say lunch.

Kim: No, what. Go ahead.

Ken: What was funny?

Kim: No, it's not something I'm willing to repeat on recording. Go ahead. Oh,

Ken: see, now it's funny. But upstairs, it wasn't funny. It wasn't, super funny.

Kim: It wasn't. I thought that's where you were going. That's why I was laughing.

Ken: Like,

now I use my transfer some money from our savings to gonna have a month there for the next month, and plus the two weeks I'm getting paid. So that gives us almost a month and a half to four hours to work and hopefully, you know, get a job or so.

So that's one of the things I just kind of want to put down on the side. Okay. The money's there for a month and a half.

Of course, we don't want to deplete our savings or anything like that, but that will give us some like a reset.

So that's one of the reasons why I'm kind of okay. And then of course, spend less.

You know, we spend a lot. So I'll try to spend less.

Kim: Yeah, but what I meant

Ken: Wait, you're asking about how to keep us motivated?

Kim: Yes, positive.

Ken: One of the things again, like I will feel the pressure, like, oh, shit I gotta go to work, I gotta go to work. I gotta get a job. I gotta get a job.

You lose again the focus on the things we want to work. Because now it's like you need to get a job immediately because we are going to need the income very soon.

But that also. Okay. So it's good in a way that okay, with the job I'm making the income, but on the other side it's like, all right, so this is, this time, every minute you should utilize it, maximize it to see how you can get a business, which is our dream, to get it going and polish the business and to kind of get the results. We want to keep us motivated, just basically get up and work.

There is no other way.

just get up,

drop off Abrie at school,

come back, do. Let's do a little schedule for the next 30 days,

you know, so we can follow... go for a walk and take the dogs out. And then go to exercise for a minute. What time I'm going to eat breakfast, what time we're going to work.

So we, we follow that. I think that will keep us motivated.

And the time that I want to need to use to send resumes or we need to just kind of have it set in stone. And that way for the next 30 days that kind of.. we would know what to do.

Kim: That's a hundred percent the key. I realized that more and more every day when I get up here, since I work from home,

even recently, within this last week, like I had last week, I was working every day on the new website and I had a clear cut goal for the day. Like get as many listings updated as I could.

So it was just like listing after listing after listing and I was optimizing it and keywords and blah, blah, blah.

And then so I knew what I had to do for the day. So that got me up, it got me motivated. It. It was a schedule I needed to get done.

Okay. And like you put in breakfast and working out and lunch in there and picking up my daughter and running her around.

And then yesterday I believe I didn't have.

I had finished all of the work on the website. And so it was like I slow down, I Slow down. I'm like, well, why don't I go and lay down?

And I wanted to do a hypnosis, which in a meditation like that, of course is all important and whatever. But then I'm like, well, I am laying here. It's okay if I fall asleep because I don't have that to get to.

Although I have other stuff I needed to get done. It wasn't. It's not like there's no push for it, there's no rush for it, but that was like a rush.

And I sit down and I get hyper focused and I just do the thing and I bang it out as fast as I can. But as soon as I don't have that schedule,

my mind is like, well, it's okay if I fall asleep. Where. I would never do that. If, like last week when I had to get all those listings done, I wouldn't allow myself.

Oh, it's okay if I take a nap or fall asleep after I meditate because I don't have a deadline. Yeah, I guess, like, I'm very deadline driven and I'm just like, I get hyper focused.

So, yeah, that is key to keep a schedule and stick to it no matter what. So we should probably sit down and write that anyways.

So that's.

That's key number one is to not lose a schedule. For sure.

Ken: A schedule Yeah,

a schedule. But another thing that I want us to do, and we're gonna crush it. We need to crush it.

But I also want us to.

And it might sound unfair,

but I want us to make sure that we also connect because I know we're going to do work, work, work, work, work, work. And you get frustrated.

So I want us to. Okay, so what are we going to do on Saturdays if we're going to like hang out with the family or we're going to watch a movie.

When are we going to cut? We need to make sure when we run, when we're working,

and then when we're cutting just for us to reset.

And then I start over again because I noticed that every time we're working, we're just working, working, working. And then we feel like we need to go back to work.

And then it seems like we're just getting burnt out because. And then we go to bed thinking about job. The work and in the morning I'm tired. I kind of want us to have a nice set schedule that we're squeezing ourselves enough,

getting, being productive enough, getting results, daily results.

And on the same breath, it's like you and I okay. We're building this in a different way with a different approach.

You know, I'm not trying to say that we're going to slack off or anything. It's just that I know that we really,

we just kind of work, work, work, work and then we're just kind of frustrated with the things again. Like if we're trying to do something right now, we couldn't do it.

That's going to happen.

And you get frustrated, bent out of shame, nothing's working, you get all frustrated. So we just have to make sure that we need to be in good spirits every single day.

Kim: Something that's always kept us motivated in the past when we're trying to come up with new ideas and brainstorm is getting outside and walking,

keeping up the momentum and walking because it creates energy.

We're getting out in nature. We get the dogs out to get a walk. If Abrie wants to go on her bike or her scooter or whatever,

Ken: Use that as a creativity. Use our creativity, connect to the universe, connect with the nature, whatever. So we're gonna, you know, expand our awareness to get new ideas.

Kim: Yeah.

Ken: And also we might look into maybe like I go to some networking maybe for sure.

Maybe do something interesting. Just check on the app to show up and we gotta like, we gotta twist this thing.

We're gonna twist this thing. You know,

again, every curse comes with a blessing or vice versa.

Kim: I said it's the opposite that you always tell us.

Every blessing comes with a curse.

I've never heard you turn it that way before. Every curse comes with a blessing.

Ken: Yeah, they're both is the same. Yeah.

Kim: It's interchangeable. Okay.

Ken: Yeah.

Again, you probably don't want to talk about this, but it's just I still feel the pressure in me.

I think it's something.

So this actually is interesting because we are actually,

and this is a real example now we get like programmed to suffering, love.

We condition ourselves to things.

Like I still feel like this sense of responsibility with the company because I know there's a lot of work that needs to be done and for some reason I'm not like, oh,

I still feel like, you know, I don't feel like.

Kim: Well, cuz this just happens like what, nine o'clock?

Ken: Like it's embedded in my DNA for the seven and a half years I was working at the company.

Kim: That was like five hours ago or something. So.

Ken: But you know, you might think, okay, this.

No, I feel like a, you know,

that needs to be done and it's going to be really busy. They're working Now, Monday through Sunday, which is crazy.

So.

Kim: So it's like you need to release some of that energy.

Ken: Yeah.

Kim: So maybe have a good cry in the shower. Crying, that's how you release energy. Ken, you're so inappropriate. That's in record.

Ken: No, it's just again, like, you know, being committed to the company for so long and knowing that what's with all the stuff that are pending and the amount of work is just still, like, my body or my mind still, like, nope, it's not done.

So. So hopefully tonight and tomorrow, this weekend, I can just, like, you know,

remember, you have to let go to receive new events.

Kim: That's what I'm saying. Go have a good cry in the shower. Let it go for what?

Ken: There is nothing to cry about. What am I crying for?

Kim: Just to get it out.

Ken: If I was maybe like a. No, maybe like, if I was like at least a nice actor, and all of a sudden they kick me from the. Kicked me out of the fucking Oscars or kicked me out of the artist of the year or some bullshit like that, Like.

Well, yeah.

Kim: Well, I mean, doesn't it. Does it not hurt your pride a little bit?

Ken: No, not my pride. No. I don't know. Not really.

Kim: I mean, you wrote your letter of resignation, like, a month ago.

Ken: Yeah. I'm like, yeah.

Kim: So you were already out. Lord. Mentally, which probably didn't help things, but. Yeah.

Ken: So

Kim: Anyways, we have to continue to look at this as an opportunity and a kick in the pants to just keep moving forward versus just thinking like, this is happening to us. We have to look at it as this is happening for us and it's going to open the doors to what we've been wanting to accomplish.

Ken: Yeah.

Kim: So stay positive.

Ken: Are you telling me or to the the audience? both and myself.

Kim: A trifecta.

Ken: Oh, yeah.

Kim: Telling everyone. Everybody needs to hear it. I mean, it's hard to stay positive and when you're faced with life's challenges that it throws at you. So. Yeah.

Ken: Yeah. And this happens when we're going through. This happens to a lot of people out there. Some.. one way or another.

Kim: Yep. And it's just a season. And it will.

We'll look back at it someday and think, Jesus, that was so stressful. Or that was so.

Or why did we waste so much time being stressed on that?

Whatever that. Whatever it ends up looking like. But we'll get through it and on to the next.

So we just want to give you that little update and. And we'll talk to you soon.

Ken: All right. All right. See ya.

Kim: Bye.

Ken: Bye.