Episode 02 - 10 Days After the Layoff: The Emotional Roller Coaster (and How We’re Not Spiraling)

Ken : So, Kim how do you feel now that I lost my job about 10 days ago and being home every single day

How do you feel about that?

Kim: I feel. I, of course, felt very scared, and I still do. I have a roller coaster of emotions about it. Some days I feel like, okay, this is exciting. This is our chance. We can work on all these ideas that we've had together that we, you know, put minimal effort into because we never have the time. Then in the same day, I might feel like, oh, geez, you've got to get a job. We can't do this. We. We need the income.

We don't have a plan B. We, you know, so it's like a constant roller coaster throughout the day of emotions of up and down and all around. But I keep. Every time the negative emotions creep in, I keep saying to myself,

okay,

you know, I have to kind of stop the script in the middle of it and just be like, nope, I don't want to go down that road right now. I just want to try to see this as a blessing. And what. What we asked, you know, the universe for is for, you know, to work together from our home office and work on our businesses. And so I try to tell myself that this isn't happening to us. This is happening for us because this is what we wanted.

Ken : Yeah.

Kim: So that's where my focus has to be every time I. Every time those negative scripts keep running in my brain.

Ken : Yeah. Now it's. It's weird. It feels weird because again, you have this uncertainty every single day and every minute.

Kim: Yep.

Ken : Even though we get excited because we start working together, but, you know, every minute that goes by, we're like, okay, are we really being productive enough?

Kim: Yeah. You know, that's a hard one to. To gauge. Especially when I think it's. It's normal to feel both sides scared and excited at the same time.

Ken : Yeah, I know. So one of the thing is that I feel is that the confidence comes after action for sure.

So it's not just like, you get up in the morning and you're like, all right, so I'm really excited to get this done or whatever,

because again, in the back of your head, you're like, shit!

you know. Yeah.

Your mind defaults to the norm, which is you have to go to. You have to go to work.

Kim: Yeah.

Ken : Right.

So even though. So you have. I have this constant, constant battle with the project, the business,

and. Or just me taking the easy way out, which is just to go get a job and kind of, you know, keep having our Life the way we're having it,

and just put in 10% on the side of the business.

Now we know that a lot of people out there were able to build a business, a side business.

It is really hard. Yeah, it is super, super hard.

It is not just like, all right, yeah, I'm going to get it done at night or on the weekends. Yeah, it can be done,

but it's just. It takes a huge toll on your health and your family dynamics.

Kim: Well, that's the thing, is that there's always sacrifices. So, you know,

we had our hard non negotiables that we weren't willing to sacrifice, which is our family,

our two kids, we weren't willing to put in, you know, the bare minimum effort into them.

And I think that, you know, like you said, it's like the health or the family or whatever, like something has to give because you just don't have enough time in the day to put enough energy into all of those things.

So, you know, it depends where your priorities are. And our priority was and always has been our kids.

Ken : Yeah.

Kim: You know, and. And it's like again, another roller coaster in life. Like in different seasons of your life. Like at certain seasons, like,

you know, we weren't putting enough effort into our kids or in another season, we weren't putting enough effort into our health or into,

you know, our business or whatever. So something is always giving.

Ken : Right.

Kim: And. Or taking. And so we have,

you know, that's all about priority. And with your job,

the thing that always we always let go was kind of our business.

Even though I was home working on it, you know, I was still putting my efforts into other areas as well.

Ken : Yeah.

Kim: So.

Ken : Yeah, I know. Because again, every single night, you know,

there's always an opportunity up.

It's 7:30 after dinner.

Can I jump on the computer and continue working?

Yes. Every single night. Yes.

Now you. I'm not gonna have that. You're gonna sacrifice having some time with your kids and even with your wife.

Kim: Right.

Ken : I mean, with you, if I just, you know, so that's one thing that you have to really be certain, like, all right, this is what I'm doing.

Kim: Yeah.

Ken : So the family, you and me back then we were like,

I'm talking about back then when Abrie, our daughter, was little,

when I started building a website,

when Shopify just kind of came out and the whole Facebook ads and everyone was doing kind of drop shipping back then, back 10 years ago or so.

And I remember every night, of course, I was 10 years younger, so I had more energy or stamina whatever. You know, back then, like, I was like, all right, let's get it done, you know, every single night.

But I remember that Abrie was little,

you know, so she was in bed, and I was able to kind of work at night until midnight or so every single day.

But after, you know, she started getting older. You kind of see, hey,

you know,

I have to put. It's the job is their business or the family.

And that's when you kind of, you know, gets into these kind of inner battles,

you know,

and the family takes a lot of energy out of you too.

Kim: Right.

Ken : You know, so.

So it's not easy, you know, I. At some. Again,

there's a sacrifice. All right. Were you working fully in building a business and. Or you have to commit with your family.

There is now and I think this shark tank. This guy. No shark tank. This shark investor.

The guy from Canada forgot his name.

Kim: Kevin.

Ken : No, not Kevin. I forget his name, He said that there is no happy medium.

Kim: Kevin O'Leary.

Ken : No, no, Kevin O'Leary

Ken : There's another guy. Well, he's from Ukraine or something.

Robert. There you go. Robert. He said that there is no happy medium.

You know, you. There is not like a balanced life.

And it's true. or you work, work life balance,

or you fully work,

you know, focus on the business and. Or you go with your family? And it's true. You know, you have to. Hey, you have to grind at night, during the weekends. And that's another thing for realtors, right? They have to go during the weekends, You know, some of them take their families with them to do their showings and open houses and all that. But there's always a sacrifice, right.

And if you don't take your family with you to do the open houses that. You told me that your mom, when you were little,

your mom used to take you to those,

to open houses.

There's always a sacrifice that needs to be made.

Kim: Yeah.

You know, there's always a give and take and where you are willing to put your energy. And like I said, our priorities were,

you know,

where our priorities were falling.

It always left business for the last of the priorities. But now I feel like we're in a different season of our life here and we're now more focused on them on growing the businesses because now we have time to do so and is really what we've been asking for.

While we don't let go of other priorities like our family and stuff like that.

We want to. We want to have it all.

Ken : Yep. Another thing is acting without clarity. That's a tough one too.

Kim: Yeah.

Ken : Because again, like here I'm trying to every single day. And I know this happens also to a lot of people. I go, okay, but what. What should I do to really move the needle?

You know, like,

where is the goal?

You need to set up the goals somehow write them down.

But the thing is that sometimes I go, well, what's the goal?

Kim: Well, that's always been my problem is, you know, we kind of jump around like 10,

like 10 years ago or more 12 years ago, I guess we were just like, we want a business, let's start a business, let's buy a business, let's get into the game, blah, blah, blah.

And we're like, okay, what business? And we're looking around and we're going through a hundred businesses, and none of it really struck a chord with us. But we landed on restaurants, of course, and we bought the restaurants, and lo and behold,

we hated it and,

you know, couldn't make it work and whatever else.

Ken : So we're talking about 2013.

Kim: Yeah, 2014, I believe, was the end of the year 2014. But.

And then from there, you know, we jumped into E commerce. That we weren't like,

dropshipping, that we weren't like, hugely passionate about either for one reason or another. And then from there, we start investing in other E-commerce businesses and different things all along the way.

Blogging and I don't know, I could name a bunch of things that we've dabbled in,

but we had no clarity of what we really wanted. And it certain those certainly weren't things that resonated with either of us. We weren't passionate about any of those things.

We weren't excited about any of those things. Could we show up and do the work? Yeah.

But we couldn't get excited about them.

Ken : Yeah, yeah. It's hard because again, we. As you know, Kim, everyone wants to have a business, right? Everyone.

Kim: Not everyone.

Ken : Not everyone. But, you know, majority of people, like,

majority of the people like, all right, yeah, I would like to have a business. And what is it? What is that that really resonate with you that you feel happy, excited, get up in the morning, do it. is it a product, service, something that really, really gets you motivated,

you know, and this is the things that we.

Like you said, we. We got into the restaurant business and we didn't like any of that. We just kind of went thinking,

how

Kim: can we make money?

Ken : How can we make money? How can we be, you know, how can we have a business, a successful business?

Kim: Well, yeah, we wanted what the lifestyle that came with that too. We wanted flexibility.

So we wanted to own. Not that flexibility comes with owning a restaurant, but flexibility of owning many restaurants and managing a manager to manage those restaurants. That would, you know,

the lifestyle that we wanted, that would, that would build that lifestyle for us. But you know, a host of reasons prevented that.

Ken : But yep,

if you don't have clarity of what you want to have an attainable goal, you need to really have clarity in your idea.

You know, it have to absolute resonate with you.

You know, with your mind, your heart, your soul, your entire being needs to resonate with the, with the idea so you can, you have this fuel that kicks in every single day.

So it's in you and releasing from, from the inner out,

you know,

and that's a hard one when,

when you don't know what you want and you're just gonna again trying to accomplish something because you like trying to grasp, trying to catch something out of the air.

It's not gonna work.

Kim: I mean,

can it work? Yeah, of course people get, get lucky with that stuff. But you and I aren't willing to any longer. Now that we've tested a million things, we're not willing to work on things that don't resonate with us and that we don't care about or that we're not passionate about.

So we really had to do a lot of soul searching and figure out what resonates with us. And I think for both of us, I know we're very different people and you have many different interests than what I have, but one of the core interest that we both have is helping people in some way and showing up for people and doing kind of heart centered work in some capacity.

And we still haven't niched that down far enough yet, but I feel like we continue to work on that goal of figuring out a way to help somebody. And we're hoping with this podcast that we can show up for people in a way and that we can help them through working through some of the issues and bringing clarity into their lives.

Because I know for myself that's always been something that I've always said about myself since I don't know, early 20s or late teens,

is that I want to help people in some capacity. I never knew what I had started with psychology in college and kind of fell off the, fell off the track for that, but I always knew in my heart that that's the path that I wanted to be on, is helping people in some way gain clarity in their Lives.

Ken : Yeah. So we are actually experts of a lot of things that do not work.

Kim: Yeah.

Ken : So we have a firsthand experience in a lot of things. Yeah. You said we. I went to college also for engineering. I didn't.

I didn't finish my degree after five years.

We started our restaurant business years ago.

Didn't work out.

We had two restaurants two in Connecticut.

We also, like you said, mentioned,

we had the drop shipping and our chaos with that.

Kim: Yeah.

Ken : Even though we were executing, you know, we were getting sales and all that. But it's just the business model that,

you know, that we didn't like that and we might get into that another episode.

We also.

Kim: I've done real estate. Real estate license, but.

Ken : Real estate license. Yeah.

Kim: Yeah. But that wasn't ever intentionally to.

Ken : We were more thinking into flipping homes.

Kim: The investment side of.

Ken : The investment side of it.

Kim: Trying to do.

Ken : Yeah. We also Amazon, you know, E-Commerce again with Amazon. FBA or so. Yeah. I mean we just.

Kim: Life coaching.

Ken : Life coaching.

Kim: Coaching certificate.

Ken : Oh, you do have your life coaching. Yeah. And I did a. Get a certification for a transformational coach as well.

And again, we're always exploring life. It's not only.

You're not only trying to.

Yes, we're trying to make a lot of money. Who doesn't? Right. You know,

but it's not the ultimate goal. Right. Because we know. I know now that, you know that money is not really gonna make you happy. Yeah. It's gonna help, you know, you to be happier, you know, In some ways. But, you know, it's the, the happiness for me is just to get up in the morning and be happy,

you know, with myself and sleep all night being grateful,

you know, enjoying taking my daughter to school.

Or having my cup of coffee or, you know, being with you, Kim.

Going places, restaurants. You know, for me now, wealth is more than just money.

Right. It's just how I feel inside of me.

Right. What's in my head, what's in my heart. You know, How. How do I feel every single day? More than just, okay, I have 100 million bucks in the bank.

Kim: Yeah.

Ken : Okay. Like, it's really. It's funny because I'm reading a book from Grant Cardone.

It's called 10X.

It's funny because he said that yesterday in the book says that everyone wants a hundred million dollars, but do you need $100 million right now?

It would be nice, but no.

For what?

Yes, you can buy a lot of things,

but 100 million bucks will be sitting at the bank.

It will Be just for your ego. Yeah. You can buy a lot of stuff, cars,

islands, whatever, you name it.

But like, think about it, you know, I was trying to put a thought, a deeper thought into the reality of it, you know, to.

You're right. Who the heck needs a hundred million bucks if I'm right now, you know, sitting right here?

Yes, it would be nice to have it in the bank,

but it's like,

you need to live, like, now, right now.

You know, you have to feel that you're fully alive now. And you don't need $100 million dollars, some people do.

Kim: But, right.

Ken : To have it in the bank, to actually feel alive and feel happy.

Kim: Right, you for sure have to.

Yeah, you have to be. You have to feel good on the inside. Because money sitting in your hand or in your bank account and buying stuff, it feels good in the moment, but that fades quickly,

you know, I know people that are really struggling,

like, to think differently and they think, no, no money. Money will make me happy. Like, it truthfully does not.

And.

Ken : And I think there's nothing more worse than being miserable in. In a $10 dollars million home.

Kim: Yeah.

Ken : You are depressed now, while being super rich.

Kim: Yeah.

Ken : How sad is that? Like.

Kim: Yeah. Because I think of when I was, you know,

clinically depressed years ago.

I think about how miserable I was and I always thought, like, oh, if I just had money, I. I would be fine. I would be good.

But like, I think about it now and even if I had 10 million sitting in the bank or whatever,

I. I wouldn't have been good. I was terrible. I. And I. I literally wanted to kill myself. I had,

you know,

I was thinking about killing myself all the time and suicide ideation and all that. I.

I wouldn't have been happy. That couldn't have. That could not have fixed the hole within myself.

Only I could have fixed that.

And I did.

So now I just need the 10 million

Ken : And this concept for a lot of people that hear it out there, like, come on. Like, yeah, I want the money! The money will fix it. Yeah, the money will, you know, will fix me or will make my life so way easier.

Yes, it is true, 

Kim: It makes your life easier and fixes a lot of problems, but it doesn't bring happiness.

Ken : But not everyone wants the same thing.

Kim: Right.

Ken : If you bring 10 people to the table, you have them, right now. Write down what you want right now, immediately. You have 20 seconds. Write them quickly.

So we're going to give it to you right away.

Everyone is going to write something different for sure.

Kim: Because what you're going to write is going to be way different than what I'm going to write.

Ken : Everyone's going to write something different.

You know, no one is going to write,

you know. Yeah, some. Some amounts are going to maybe be close to. To another, but some of them are going to write,

I want to make 100,000 a year.

The next one would be like,

I want to make a million bucks, you know, a year. And then some of them will be,

I just want to.

I don't know. Some of them won't even write money.

Kim: No, they'll. They'll want to be thin or they'll want a boyfriend or a girlfriend or a husband or they want kids or they want, you know, health for their ailing parents or whatever.

Everybody has some, you know, happiness for everyone is different.

Ken : Yeah.

So now with me losing my job,

it's just give me. It's giving me like a clarity of, okay, Ken, there's a chance now to.

To again to kind of rewrite yourself one more time.

Kim: One more time.

Ken : Right.

Kim: Once again.

Ken : Once again. And.

Kim: But this time we need to act with clarity.

Ken : Yeah.

Kim: Is the bottom line.

Ken : That's the bottom line.

Kim: Yeah.

Ken : And everyone needs to act with clarity. And that's one of the things that is really hard to even comprehend.

Kim: It's hard to pinpoint for a lot of people because I'm 45 and basically have been lost my whole life.

Like I said, I've always known, like, I want to help people in some capacity, like,

whatever that is.

We're still narrowing it down and niching it down and figuring it out in. Until just, you know, within the last year or so, we're like,

I really resonated with the podcast because I wanted to share our story.

I feel like we've learned so much and have so much useful knowledge to. That could help people.

And that really is my ultimate goal.

But it took so long to figure that out. It was like, you know, a hundred different wrong paths to figure that out.

And that's okay because they've all gotten me to where we are right now, sitting here talking about it.

Ken : Yeah. Yeah. We have a lot of things to share.

Uh, for sure.

And it's funny because everywhere we go,

we like to sometimes network. We don't do it often. We used to do it more often years ago.

Uh, but what we do,

we always have our stories. People get, like,

not enlightened, but they get interested about our, Our. Our stories or,

you know, for you and me Kim their normal. They're like, okay, that was part of Our life. But for some other people, like, oh, wow, you know, you did that.

You did that. Yeah.

Kim: And we were kind of like, it wasn't really that big of a deal, but, yeah, so.

Ken : And that's one of the things that made us think, hey, you know what? We should have a podcast, because we should, you know, start talking about just our life,

right? You know, things that worked in the past,

things that we're still doing,

trying to really find ourselves.

Kim: Right. You know, and just to be clear, like. Like, we still don't feel ready.

And we still are.

We still are,

you know,

trying to figure out exactly what, you know, the clarity. We. We're still trying to figure out the clarity piece of it.

And as we tried to start this episode, we had to restart it,

what, five, six times before we could get on the right path of how we wanted it to sound.

But we're choosing to just show up and put in the work and do the thing even without that hundred percent clarity. And,

you know, we're trying not to let ourselves spiral. And,

you know, it's not always about how much you believe in yourself,

because, you know, we don't always believe in ourselves.

You know, we have. We have good days and bad days.

Some days we are like, you know, just like everybody else, like, so excited about an idea and we believe in it, and we're, oh, yeah, we could do this. We could do this.

And the next day we're like, oh, my God, we can't do that.

What are we even talking about? But the point is to. To stay with yourself through all of that.

And that's what we're really working on, is just to keep showing up regardless of those bad days where we feel like crap about ourselves and feel like, ooh,

we don't know what we're doing. We don't know how to, you know,

scale our e commerce business or run a podcast or hire,

you know,

people to do our.

Ken : Developers.

Kim: Developers or for our website or other people to do the marketing,

you know, the influencers. We don't know how to do any of that.

But we showed up last week and we went to a meetup and we learned a little bit about it, and we learned that it's not a really big deal. And today we have a meeting with one of the guys that we met there.

And, you know, we don't know the answers and we don't have all the pieces up front, but we just keep showing up and pushing through that resistance.

And that is, like, the key,

especially during this time of our lives. With so much uncertainty without your job.

Ken : Yep.

Kim: And that's what you and I have to continually remember, is just to keep showing up for ourselves.

Ken : Yeah. We know that our story is going to resonate with some people out there.

Kim: Yeah.

Ken : Again, you know that a lot of people out there, they're trying to still figure it out

Kim: They have the same struggles.

Ken : Same struggles. Same. You know, one day you see them and they're doing okay, and then two months after

Kim: it all blew up in their face.

Ken : Yeah.

Kim: They're starting over.

Ken : Exactly. Or. Or.

Yeah. So this is the whole idea. The whole idea for us is just to basically put our life out there, you know, our experiences out there. And I know that's gonna resonate with a lot of people out there, but we also have a lot of tools and techniques that we use to keep us afloat.

Because, again, yeah, you used to have a bad depression, which you don't have anymore,

and now I used to be depressed. Not.

Not bad as you.

Kim: You had situational.

Ken : Situational depression. But we overcame and so, yes, I think that we. We came along. We're doing better now. Way better than years, years ago.

Kim: For Sure.

Ken : You know, way, way better. And yeah, we will continue sharing our

Kim: story, stories and hopefully helping people along the way. We look forward to talking to other people and here hearing your stories and seeing where we can kind of jump in and help you along with your journey as well.

Ken : Yep. All right, we'll see you the next time.

Kim: All right. Bye. Bye.

Ken : Bye.