Leading Through Grief | Running Your Product Business When You Want to Fall Apart

Today's episode is personal and it might be the most important episode that I record this year. I want to talk about grief and business and what it looks like to keep showing up when life is not cooperating. So I lost my dad in June of 2024 and we had a strained relationship. But losing a parent is still losing an anchor. It's like losing a foot in the world. It feels unnatural, even though it is one of the most natural things that happens. And then my mom had been battling colorectal cancer, stage four colorectal cancer, for the past five years like a champ. I mean, she was an absolute warrior. And then she passed this last June. And so what I want to talk about today is this. How do you live through one of the hardest seasons of your life and still lead? How do you keep building without abandoning yourself? How do you be an entrepreneur and just go through life? Because here's what surprised me with my mom. When she first passed, I thought I would collapse. In fact, I was planning it for the last five years. I thought I wouldn't get out of bed and I wouldn't move again. And the thing is, is that when it happened, I was shocked and in deep grief, but I was still functioning. And then months later, it hit me differently. Especially when we got to the holidays. Like I just wanted to take a nap. Like it was all too much to think about. Like I had missed all the naps that grief needed in all the months. So if you've ever wondered, am I doing grief wrong? Am I doing whatever it is that you're going through in life wrong? Why am I okay and then not okay? I just want to remind you that you're not broken. You're human. Welcome back to the Product Boss podcast. I'm Jaclyn Snyder. I am your host and in this episode, it's going to be a personal episode, but it's also going to be helpful and practical as you navigate growing your product based business. And I'm going to give you a framework that you can use for any hard season, whether it's grief, loss, illness in your family or your own illness. God forbid, I'll knock on wood for that. Burnout, a business shakeup, or when life is just so quick note. Before we begin, I'm not a therapist and this isn't medical advice. This is just me sharing what I've lived through and what I'm learning in real time. So as someone who had to keep showing up, all while caring a lot. So here's the promise. By the end of this episode, you're going to have a way to name the season you're in and to stop judging yourself for how you're feeling and choose support and choose structure. And structure that lets you keep going. And so here's the mirror. Here's what this is reflecting to you in this moment. A lot of us, especially high capacity, high functioning women, cope by buffering. Hands up if that's you. So we stay busy so that we don't have to feel something else. We lone wolf it. Which means I've got it, right? I've got this. I'm doing this on my own. And we get hyper productive. And I'll say that's a big part of what I do. We might be scrolling, we might be numbing out, we might disconnect, right? Like, there's substance, there's a good old glass of wine, there's a good episode of the Housewives, or going back and watching all of the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. You don't know anything about me, but I might have just told you that. So as you listen, I just want you to notice. I just want you to take this moment to reflect and mirror back to you. What do you reach for when. When it's hard, when the day feels hard, when the season feels hard? Do you get productive to avoid being present? Do you disconnect to avoid needing anyone? Do you pour into your work so you don't have to face what's actually happening? I just want you to notice there's no shame here. This first part is just noticing a pattern, right? Because as a business owner, I like to see our businesses as a reflection. Like I like to call my business my life coach or my therapist. It's a mirror that's reflecting back to me other things that I'm doing. So if I'm buffering my feelings by working late or diving into something or over performing, I probably am buffering in other places in my life as well, right? There are a lot of drawers that have been organized in this house. There's a lot of Netflix binging that's happened as I've been buffering. But the thing that I want you to know here is instead of thinking that this is shame and it's not comparison, I just want you to notice so that you can connect it clearly. So my mom was battling stage four colorectal cancer. And I'm going to say this gently but directly, because I feel like this is part of my purpose of having this platform. If you have any family history of colorectal cancer. Please talk to your doctor about a screening. Do not wait. And if there's a history, ask about screening earlier than the standard recommendation. Okay. I say that because when my mom was diagnosed, we found out about it, and it was like, okay. We realized that there was a family history, and so my sister, bless her, had to have her first colonoscopy while she was in college. And so if there's any history in your family, go get screened early. And if you're 40 or above, go in and get it and do it. They recommend every 10 years, talk to your doctor. It might be less than that, but do not skip it. Do not wait. That's unfortunately what happened with my mom, because it happened during the pandemic, and lots of things were kind of put off and time passed and life got busy and they weren't doing certain things. And so cut to going from stage one to stage four very quickly, and stage four colorectal cancer is not what you want. So my mom fought. She fought like a warrior. She was a warrior. That's what we called her. And part of the reason that. That we moved back from the east coast to Los Angeles was because I knew you could make money. You could make money again, you could change your careers, you could do all these things. Money is infinite, but you cannot get time back. You cannot get time back with the people you love. And I used to say to myself, as I was, like, here, even though we were going through her cancer battle and supporting her through all of that, I used to say I would trade everything that I have for the moment that I'm in, In this moment, while my mom is alive, while my grandma is alive, while I'm healthy. Like, I would trade everything for it. So being present mattered. And I'm so grateful that I had that time to be present. Even though I also entered into a very hard year. 2025 was the second year after I bought the business out from my partner, and things just weren't operating and working the way that it should. It felt like nothing was going the way that I had planned. We were in la, we had the fires that kicked off the year, and there was all of the me trying to take care of my mom during the fires so she wasn't around the smoke. And then still growing the business. And just, like, I really got into the hustle and bustle of it all. So even though I was here and I wanted to be present, then business stuff started happening and things started to shift and change, and it was like, okay, I'm Here and I've got the time, but am I, am I doing enough? Am I a good person? Am I doing the things that I want? And then like a ton of bricks, like, I got smacked on the face. My mom passed and it was this wake up call. It was this other place of like, okay, my worst fear happened. We're halfway through the year. The whole first half of the year felt like the craziest year ever. I did so many things. Like, even before my mom passed, I was like, in this burn down mode. I was like, we're changing it all. Nothing is working as it should. My team, I pulled the business back to the studs. We'll do an episode on this another time. But I was like, this way. This isn't functioning, this isn't working. And the universe kept hitting me with all these different ways of it not working. I kept injuring myself. If you've been following along, I had a concussion because I blacked out in Texas from being dehydrated and I sprained my leg. And all, all of this stuff was happening while these massive disasters were happening and my mom passing and the grief of losing both of my parents in a year. But when she was in the hospital, I also made the shift in this change where I thought, I'm so grateful to be alive. I'm so grateful for the time I had with her. I'm just so grateful. I'm also going to live. I'm also like, all right, if everything just like it's. If I burnt it all down, which was such a year for la, like, if it just all burnt down. And I was like, I'm going to shift it and I'm going to fundamentally shift the way I'm doing business because my nervous system, my life, nothing was working. So if you're feeling like things feel so out of alignment and in such resistance and you're not paying attention to the universe literally smacking you on the ground like it did to me, then take a moment, breathe, and I'm gonna give you a framework how to do it. Because then as we go through the whole year and I'm thinking, okay, I think I'm making my way through this. I'm navigating this. I'm working on my emotional intelligence. I'm investing into groups and community and trainings and programs. I was investing into my own growth. But then the holiday hit, right? The holiday season hit and it hit me hard. And anyone who's lost someone knows what I mean. Because birthdays and holidays and especially the first of like, the first year that happens, or the second. And then there's these moments in between where. Where grief just surprises you, like it hits you in your chest. And I realized that grief wasn't a straight line. It was nothing I could solve. I'm such a problem solver, right? I'm like, well, if I just do this, I can solve it and I can move through it. Like, who am I to think that I could move through or fast forward through grief? Literally, grief was my humanity and the nature of being human. It's like going through the fire and. And coming out forged on the other side. And what I realized is it was an identity shift. Losing your parents changes who you are in the world. It's like I'm still me, and also I'm not. So it's the shift of no longer being someone's daughter in the same way that I was. And for me, I was thinking about family legacy, about being the eldest daughter. I was thinking about my siblings and my nieces and my nephew and my grandma, my stepdad, right? All the caretaking and all the responsibility. Because grief is really the other side of the coin to love. It's love. And it's realizing that the world is going to keep moving while something in you is recalibrating. It's like finding new footing in this world. And this is where I want to get into a teachable moment, right? I want to take what I'm learning and losing both of my parents over the last 18 months, and this is where I wanna get teachable. Because so many of you listening are navigating hard seasons. I've been a strategist, a consultant and advisor for over two decades now. I have worked with students and members of my community and friends and peers that have gone through these seasons of grief, of illness, of surgeries, of caretaking, of burnout, of loss of a job, of divorce, of financial stress, right? Anxiety, the world, all of it. So I want to give you a simple way to navigate that this time, right? That doesn't require you to pretend you're fine, and it doesn't require you to stop living either. So I don't have a perfect formula for grief. I'm still in the middle of it. And part of what I'm gonna share with you here is what I'm navigating through. And I don't think it's something that you heal from. Like, it's a broken bone, it's a loss, it's love. It's part of being human. But I've been practicing A way of carrying it. And I'm going to give you this today, in this episode as four moves. Because hard seasons. And in hard seasons, simplicity matters. So here are the moves that I'm using through this season without abandoning myself. So the four moves are Name, narrow, support and surrender. I'm going to say it again. Name, narrow, support and surrender. So first, let's talk about name. Name what season you're in. Not the season you wish you were in. Not the season you think you should be over by now. Not the season you're pretending not to be in. Just name it. So this season could be that you've got littles at home, or you might have just had a baby, like blessings, but it's the season you're in. The season could be a season of navigating, I don't know, your body shifting and changing. Maybe it's perimenopausal into menopause, right? It could be normal life stuff, or it could be a really, really hard season of loss or grief or divorce or caretaking. So for me, that looked like saying, I'm grieving, I'm also parenting. I'm also leading a business. And I cannot pretend that those don't all exist at the same time. And naming it matters because it stops internal gaslighting. It is like we're terrible to ourselves, right? It stops the self judgment that says, why can't I just be fine? Why can't I just be normal? Why am I so tired? Why do I wanna nap? Why am I okay today and not okay tomorrow? Or even within the same moment? So when you name the season, you stop fighting your reality. It's that acceptance, right? And that alone can give you the breath and the space that you need. And listen, right now, I just want you to say this to yourself. This is the season I'm in. Just let it be true. So second, we get into narrow. So hard seasons require fewer commitments. This is where so many of us get stuck because our capacity changes, but our expectations of ourselves don't. And then we think we're failing. We think we suck, we think we're not good enough. We have all of this noise in our head. But my friend, I want to tell you, you're not failing. You're in a different operating system. So there's a phrase, you can't serve two masters. This is something that's really gotten me through this. And in hard seasons, you have to choose what matters most. So sometimes that's you, your kids, right? Sometimes that's your kids. And that's what you're going to serve. Sometimes it's your health, Sometimes it's your family. Sometimes it's your clients or your customers. Sometimes it's just keeping the lights on through your business. But narrowing is how you remove the guilt. Because when you narrow, you're not asking yourself to be everything everywhere, to everyone, all at once. You're making peace with the truth. And the truth is, I can do some things really well right now, and some things are gonna just have to wait. And some things I'm gonna try and do, and I might fail epically at that. And that's not weakness. So I'll give you an example. Today I was onboarding a new team member, and as I was training her in something, I looked at my emails and my text messages, and I had this thing for my son that was, like, a really important class we had to go to, like, a kickoff of a class. And it was at my temple. Okay. Cause, like, he's getting bar mitzvahed. So I was like, oh, my God, we gotta get to this thing. We gotta meet the rabbi. We gotta do the thing. We have a year. It was a whole breakdown because not a lot of kids want to actually go to temple and get bar mitzvahed. And we get to the session, and the rabbi comes and sits down, and I've already just, like, gotten my kid there. And we're sitting there, and then all of a sudden, he's like, reading through the list, and he's like. He looks at us and he's like, you guys aren't on the list. I was like, what do you mean we're not on the list? He's like, this isn't your session. I was like, but he's getting. He's getting bar mitzvahed next year. And he's like, gal, will you start next month? I was like, but I got the email. He's like, well, you can stay. I don't like to be wrong. I like to be right. I don't like to mess up. I like to be like, the good girl. This is all my own crap. And I'm sitting there and I go back through the email, and I'm like, oh, I missed the line that, like, our cohort starts the month of his bar mitzvah the next year. So I'm sitting there and I'm like, do I sit here? He doesn't want to be here. He's got homework. I've got lots to do. Like, what do I do? Do I leave? Like, when do I Wait to interrupt the rabbi to tell him I'm leaving. Like, what do I do here? And it took every bit of me to make the decision of what was right for me in that moment. I'm traveling tomorrow. I had work to do. I get to record this podcast. My son had a ton of homework. Like, a lot of things had to happen. I was like, I could be here and I could stay, or I could do the uncomfortable thing and get up and kind of admit I made a mistake and I'm gonna leave. And I sat with that for a second because I was like, I have to interrupt the room. I'm gonna interrupt the rabbi while he's speaking. I'm gonna get up. My son's gonna leave. Like, just embarrassing all the way around. And then I thought, why am I embarrassed in this moment? If I narrow down my commitments and what I'm available for and everything that is going on right now, it's like, I get to choose what's best for me in that moment, which is not staying here to, like, avoid being wrong or to. To do the thing right. And it's like getting up and leaving and doing the uncomfortable thing. And that's not something I would normally do. In fact, probably I would normally have stayed for it to not interrupt the room and then maybe even come back the next time. Like, done it twice. But I didn't do that. And so when I said earlier about serving two masters, what I meant by that was when you're giving, when you're pouring in to something, right? Like, whether. For me, it was like, when my mom ended up in the hospital that same week, part of a group I'm in, we went and we fed across the country. We fed 1400 unhoused people in two hours. Okay. It was like this massive stretch. If you follow me on Instagram, you will have seen me do it. And so, like, my mom's in the hospital two days later, I'm like, I'm on this mission with my kids, and we're. We're feeding the unhoused food to mouth in conversations, like, with people, getting to know them, shaking their hands and doing this with my kids. How can I possibly be in despair when I'm also like, you can't serve that and also serve doing good in the world. And so I think a lot of that with this business, with the product boss, is serving all of you. Doing this podcast, showing up on social, like, being in my. In my programs and my communities and being your advisor and your strategist and watching your wins the things that you're all accomplishing that, the revenue you're making, the way you're changing your lives and your family's legacy, it's like when I'm in that, I can't feel the other emotion that's like the grief and the sadness and the despair because it's. It's living and it's life and it's. I'm narrowing what I'm able to focus on in that moment now. You know, the other side of it is in the quiet moments late at night when everything slows down. Yeah. I've been known to cry for several hours if I, you know, need to. And like, you know, there's. There's things like that, but it's like, how do I narrow what I'm doing but then also find. I know that's gonna sound funny, but like the high vibe things, the things where it's like, can I volunteer? Can I give back? Not to buffer, but to be. Can I? I'm looking at my family behind the camera right now. Cause they're doing things in the quiet. And like we're doing a puzzle, a thousand piece puzzle together where it's like quiet and we listen to music and we do a puzzle. It's like being in those moments is that area of narrowing, right? And even slowing down and being of service. But it's not being busy to avoid the feeling. Because a lot of times busyness can look like ambition, but sometimes it's just avoidance. Wearing lipstick. Right? So narrow. Narrow would be the thing. Choose your focus, choose your master. Choose your lane and let the rest be. Not now. Choose the thing that's going to pour into yourself and the rest doesn't need to be now. You can get to it eventually in that other season. Okay. Third thing that I'm really leaning into that I want to share here is support. Oh, support. This is the one I resist the most. Okay. Eldest daughter, parentified, you know, took care of my mom. Like just this version of me that shows up in the world. And obviously as an entrepreneur and a boss and a leader, I have a tendency to lone wolf it. Wolves like to be in packs, but a lot of us are lone wolves. We're like, we're just gonna disconnect. We're gonna do this on our own. We're gonna suffer on our own. So we can disconnect and we can call it focus, or you can call it discipline, or you could be like, I'm putting my head down to work, but really it might just be you trying to Control what feels uncontrollable. So hard seasons require a different kind of strength. So not gritting your teeth and baring it, right? The strength is actually the vulnerability. And receiving, asking for help. Support can look like community. Support can be asking for help at home. Support can be getting help in your business. Support can look like you being more honest with yourself, with your family, with your team. It could look like letting people show up for you. Support can look like therapy. Support can look like, I'm not okay and it's okay not to fix it. You might even have to ask the people around you, don't fix this. I just need you to witness this, or I just need a cup of coffee or I can't put the kids to bed tonight, or support is just asking. And I want to say this clearly. You do not win hard seasons by being tougher. You win hard seasons by being supported. And when I say win, really it's you survive hard seasons, right? And not only do you survive, but you thrive, right? If we think about going through the fire like we're coming out on the other side, forged and stronger and walking through this thing, right? And so when I first launched the sales accelerator, which used to be called Multi Stream Machine, I don't know if you all know this, but I was in a hospital bed the day after a surgery. I had an emergency gallbladder surgery, Literally was crying the whole night because he didn't give me painkillers. I wake up the next day. I talked to my. My business partner and she's like, should we still launch it? I was like, yeah, still launch it. I remember asking for the wi fi like a crazy person. That is a version of me showing up in survival and not asking for support and learning from that. I got to learn from that so I could bring it to you. Now, I've supported clients and students and members that have battled CANC while building their business. And one of the blessings I've seen even in the heartbreaking seasons is because they've gone through this in their. In the times, you know, they say health is wealth. When they've gone through this and they've decided, okay, I'm gonna ask for support, I'm going to get help in making in the kitchen and all the things that they've had to do. When eventually life lifed, they had built a business with operations and systems and realized they couldn't lone wolf it and they had to ask for help or they got to be supported or they set their business up so when life hit, they Weren't trying to carry everything alone. And I have a student right now, and you know who you are, if you're listening. She just had brain surgery. And she let me know that it was happening and what was happening. And her business, my friends, is literally at the height. And it's the funny thing. It's the ha ha when you laugh at the universe, where you're like, how did I get all of these blessings of, like, my business? Finally, like, her business is taking off. Like, she's in the collective. She's been in the sales accelerator. I'm so blessed to be her advisor and her strategist. And as this is happening and we're navigating, like, all these amazing things happening in business, then she's like, oh, and by the way, I have to have brain surgery. And I was like, okay, we're gonna get through this. You don't have to do this alone. You get to be supported. You can share it with the group. You don't have to share it with the group. You can share it with us. And so my team and I, we're like, whatever you need, we're here to support you through it. She's out of surgery now, and, like, you know, we're still waiting on stuff. But the thing is, is that she would have just kind of, like, buckled down, been quiet, gone through it. Instead, she decided, I'm gonna be supported. I'm gonna have a conversation. I'm gonna figure out how I get to go through this really hard thing and continue to have this business that grows and to ask for the support. So it's a choice. It's a choice to ask for it, and it's a choice to be vulnerable and lean into vulnerability, because there is such a breakthrough for you on the other side. Okay, so the fourth thing which happens to be my word of the year that I've just officially picked today is surrender. It's a word that I've been playing with, and now I'm like, okay, I get to surrender. And it doesn't mean giving up. I think surrender means letting reality move through you instead of trying to stand against it. Surrender means being human and everything that comes with being human, with being a mom, with being a business owner, with being a wife, a daughter, someone navigating grief, supporting my fa. All of it, right? I get to surrender to all of it. And the thing about grief is that grief is love with nowhere to go. I read that somewhere. It's part of being human. It's part of the other side of loving Someone so deeply that of course, this is how it's gonna be. And so I've been really practicing this concept of surrender. And I was just in Hawaii with my family over the holidays, and I love to find visuals that I can anchor into. So. Have you ever, you know, been in an ocean and you've stood where the waves are and the waves hit you and the waves will knock you down? You know, there's like that part right at the shore where, like, the. The waves are breaking, and if they hit you, it's like really hard, the waves coming. If you're standing it, you're trying to resist it, it's like it's going to crash into you. It's going to knock you down. It's just going to be so I was in Hawaii and I was laying there with. I was with my kid in the water, and I was like, I'm just gonna float. I'm just gonna float on my back. And if you've experienced this or you've been in a floaty, like on the water or even in a ship, when you just float and you ride the waves, right, you're not fighting it, you're riding it. You're gonna go high, you're gonna go low, but you're just kind of surrendering to the feelings of what it's like to be there. So the waves are not crashing. I get to ride the waves and just surrender to it and laying there and just like feeling and feeling in my body. What this is really saying is, okay, this is here. I'm not doing grief wrong. I'm not doing life wrong. I'm not experiencing things wrong. I'm not feeling wrong. Because a lot of us have especially, I think, women and girls, like, when you're sad, it's like, is your emotion wrong? Instead, it's, I'm going to feel it when it comes. I'm going to ride the waves when it comes. And I'm going to allow myself to feel good. When I feel good, I'm going to allow myself to feel sad. When I feel sad, I'm going to allow myself the full spectrum, because that's being human. And the goal isn't to be sad all the time, to prove that I love someone and the goal is not to be happy all the time, to prove that I can get through it. The goal is to be human and to let this all move through. To move through me without shame, to move through you without shame. So I've always thought of myself like a candle or not always thought I Actually recently referenced myself. I was like, I want to be the shamash. So the shamash is the candle in the menorah. The menorah is in. At Hanukkah. In the Jewish religion, it's a candle. You light a candle every night for the eight nights of Hanukkah, and you use the shamash. It's a center candle that lights on all the other lights. And what I see myself as, what I what my personification, the thing that I want to be in this world is I want to be the light that lights other lights. Because a candle lighting another flame will never lose its flame. You'll never lose your flame lighting someone else. Like when I say serve two masters, the shamash means help, right? It's the helper candle. And one of the parts of leadership that I've really stepped into is being a servant leader, someone who serves as a leader. And that's why I'm grateful to show up in this way. And it's this path forward for me that helps me move through. So when you're feeling life lifing, look for the light. Look for the lightworkers. Look for the way that you can serve, the way that you can be the shamash, the helper candle, the light. And know that you're never gonna lose your life and allow someone else to be the light for you. Allow someone else to relight your candle if that's needed, right? That is that surrender, and that is that support. And when we're pouring into each other, right when you're here, and this is why community is so important, when you're navigating business and entrepreneurship and life, people get to pour into you. And when you're being poured into and lit up, you cannot sit in sadness all day. You cannot sit in that overwhelm all day. So here's the key. Serving can be healing. But we're not going to use serving as a way to avoid feeling. It's just going to be a way to step forward. So if you're listening and you're using your work as a buffer or you're, you know, you're buffering in some sort of way, or you're hiding, I want this episode to be the invitation to navigate. The season that you're in is one to name the season, narrow down to what you're carrying, get support, and then surrender to the waves, the waves that are truly human. You don't have to be healed to keep living. You just have to stop abandoning yourself while you walk through it. You just have to Stop judging yourself and hating yourself while you walk through it. Because if you're in the middle of it right now, like I am, I want you to hear me. You're not behind. You're not broken. You're perfect. You're human. This is just the beautiful rainbow that is life and living. And we should all be blessed to love people in this world that these feelings in the full spectrum come up. And also blessed that we are entrepreneurs and we have businesses that we can, like, push hard into and pull back from as we're navigating life seasons. I've done it in high times, I've done it in low times. I'm gonna keep doing it and I'm gonna keep pouring into you. Being in the shamash, not serving the two masters, but also letting myself experience humanity. So thank you for letting me share this with you today. If this episode resonated with you, if you know someone else who's caring a lot, maybe they're experiencing grief, they're going through loss, they're going through major life change. And you see that one, witness them, ask them what support looks like, and perhaps send them this episode. If this episode feels like it would be something that resonates with them, that could be just really supportive. In that conversation, I want you to know that I see you. No matter what season you're in, I see you. I'm walking alongside with you. And I want to remind you, you don't have to do this alone. I'll see you in the next one.