Grief Built My Business... This Is the Part No One Sees 🤍

I've been working with her for a long time, and when I first heard her story, it really broke open my heart, and I've been really connected to her ever since. But you can never imagine what it's like to lose a child. I can't even imagine. It's. It's hard to fathom, but when I met her, she was so strong and so powerful and so intelligent, so smart. And, you know, I missed what it took for her to become that, the years of work that it took to heal. But her story is so powerful. And she also has a book. It's a theme that keeps going here that's being released. These are the stories, you guys. These are the books that are going to change many people's lives. So if we can put a beautiful, warm welcome for Melissa Dubilecki.

All right. Hi, everybody. Welcome. My name is Melissa Dugulecki, as Eric said, and I'm honored to be here speaking with all of you. Colton, we have the little visuals. So normally I speak on stage. I've worked with Eric for the last couple of years. I work with many of you in here, which is wonderful. I love meeting people in real life. Way better than zoom. No. Yeah. Can we agree now, I've worked with so many of you, and typically, I'm up here talking and whiteboarding on sales funnels, marketing, branding, messaging. That's what we do. And tonight I'm going to be speaking about something different. And it's really special for me because it is the very first time in which I'll be speaking about this on stage. I just want to see Marissa, do we have the slides? They're coming. Okay. There we go. So this is the very first time I'm talking about my book scar tissue and thank you. Did you guys notice he's got the forward written on there. Eric rock. Pretty amazing, right? One conversation. I'll say it all the time. One conversation can change your life. One client, one contract, one moment can change your life. I encourage you. You all traveled here. You bought tickets. You rearrange your schedules. You got childcare. You did whatever. It could show up and be in conversation because you have no idea how it could change your life. Now, scar tissue is about redefining how we relate to grief, to pain, to trauma. And it's a little nerve wracking to get up here and talk about something that, you know, makes people a little uncomfortable. Talk about funnels and making people money. And you're all like, yeah, oh, my God. We're going to talk about trauma and grief. And everyone's like, exit, right? But let me ask you something. Oh, you can skip this one. This is what I normally do. This is what I normally talk about. Go ahead and put your hand up if you've broken up with somebody, okay, you can put them down. Put your hand up if you've lost a pet, okay? How about if you've lost the future that you envisioned, the path that you thought you were on, the job you thought you were pursuing anyone. Divorce, loss of someone you love, watched somebody in your life, age or get sick, their health deteriorate, choose to step out of something, what I call chosen grief. Because you are mourning the end of something by choice. Because you know that it is no longer in alignment, but you feel the pain of that. Have you ever stepped into chosen grief? Okay, raise your hand if you had your hand up at any point in those questions. Nice and high. Okay, can we look around? I don't know what you all do for businesses. I don't know where you're all from, but we all have one thing in common. Can we agree? We have all experienced grief, so why do we make it so weird? Why do we avoid talking about the most universal thing that we all inevitably experience at some point in our lives? And my mission as a bereaved mother is to help us understand how to relate to, to work with, and to use one of Eric's favorite words, to leverage grief. All right, we can skip this one. I used to be a high school athletic director and I was obsessed with life lessons, right? But this girl right here, she taught me all my lessons, ones that I continue to learn because it is no finish line. It is not a one and done. That's my daughter, Layden. Now, when my daughter Layden was born, she had a heart complication. We went home. It was considered relatively simple. I had the same heart surgery. I was a scholarship division one athlete. I run 13 marathons. And I don't know if Ray Cash is in here, but I think I could take him on in push ups. We weren't concerned. Long story short, that one surgery turned into another heart surgery into an abdominal surgery, into another abdominal surgery into her stomach remaining open, going on life support, coming off life support, living off life support to take her last breath in my arms two weeks later. Scar tissue is about understanding how we don't get over it, how we work with it. I call it a playbook. I'm not going to break all these down for you. These are really important things that are universally applicable to anyone who raised their hand you can keep going. This is the theme right here. If I put it in two, Radical responsibility. Because what radical responsibility is, is it's understanding that you get to be in responsibility for things even if it's not your fault. My daughter dying was not my fault, but I had to be responsible for how it impacted me and how I navigated that. When you understand radical responsibility and I see I work with a lot of entrepreneurs and I tell them, instead of waking up and saying, how's my business going to make me feel today? Wonder how many likes I'll get on Instagram that will give me that dopamine hit ask what you can do to serve your business. Steve Harward is going to be talking about that tomorrow. Win by giving. I can't wait for you to hear him. When you understand radical responsibility. For me, it has created the most amazing business partnership, massive client retention, book partnership, and more importantly, it has been my path to freedom. Because you are no longer in the passenger seat of what's happening around you. Radical responsibility, as I teach entrepreneurs, is getting up instead of saying, what is my business going to do to me? Treat your business like a child who has children in here. How many of you wake up and say, what's my child going to do for me today? We know we get to be in responsibility to our children. Where can you bring that? Everywhere else in your life. When you're in responsibility, you let go of needing to be right. And my belief is that you're either committed to being right or you're committed to being in relationship, but you can't be committed to both at the same time. So these are lessons that I learned from my daughter when we were in the hospital. This is when she was ill. I put it in black and white because it's not the easiest photo to see. Hold this steady entrepreneurship. Most people are entrepreneurs there. How many of you get up one day and you're like, this is amazing. I'm gonna crush it. I love it. I'm going to the top of the world. And then by the time you go to bed, you're like, I quit. This post is so good. It's gonna do great. 0 likes. This contract is going to come through. It didn't. It's this I went through. You're going home from the hospital. Your daughter's going in for another surgery. Your daughter's going to be fine. We're putting her on life support. We're taking her off life support. Ma', am, your daughter lived coming off life support. As I looked around with the church and all of our family who came in to say their goodbyes. Entrepreneurship is no roller coaster. When I compare it to that. I learned to let go of the word should. Oh, you can. Sorry, Sorry. You can go back. I learned to let go of the word should. I encourage you to look around and say, where are you using the word should? It should be like this. It shouldn't be like that. You're giving your power away. I was doing that. My daughter shouldn't be in the hospital. She shouldn't be sick. We should be home. Most importantly, I learned to lean into the burn. I learned to love the burn. If you follow me on Instagram, I'm constantly talking about the burn. And for me, it's usually with a barbell. I love the burn because when you can stand in the fire of the burn. And as I look at this photo of my daughter, and you can see at the bottom right, her entire body was wires. I wanted to do this. Well, maybe if I step away, it'll hurt less. Maybe if I don't get so close to her, I won't feel so much pain. How many of you have ever stepped away from going all in on your business, all in on a relationship, all in on that book publishing contract, on your dream, on a musical thing? I don't know what it is, but where do you stop going all in because you're afraid it's not going to work out and. And you don't want to feel that pain. Well, I will tell you, my daughter taught me this lesson about going all in. And you do so by attaching to the process. Because I was crazy, Mom. I love that girl so hard. Pictures of her when she's healthy. Top right. I covered in the hospital room so the doctors came in and they knew who she was treating. Bottle in the middle. I went to the art and supply room and I got an orange marker. I pulled out the ink, I put it in the bottle, and I filled it with water. And to measure how much fluid the nurses had taken off that day. And it said, win the day, Layden. Layden couldn't read. She couldn't even see that. I needed the nurses to know that mom was watching the pinwheels up top. I went into the family supply room because she couldn't have a mobile in the icu. And I took the pinwheels and I took the plastic off and I tied them to a string and I poked them to make her mobile. The recorder next to her head. I didn't want her to just hear Beeping all day. The hospital now does this. This was 2014. 11 years later, they still do this. I ordered on Amazon.com to the hospital record myself reading book after book after book after book. So she never felt alone. What would it look like for you to go all in on something that you know might go to shit, but to do it anyways? Because 11 years later, what I'm the most proud of is how hard I loved her that she felt that. A couple of other lessons. Integrity of my word. I had promised her we were going to run the Boston Marathon for Boston Children's Hospital on marathon Monday. We were in the hospital. They told us we were going home on Friday. As you know, we never went home. When an email came asking me if I wanted to run the marathon, I thought my daughter's case was called a catastrophe. Why would I do that? I had promised her. Laden, next year we're running the marathon for Boston Children's Hospital and we will cross that line together. I realized I made a promise, not conditional on the outcome. Where can we be in more integrity with our worry? Because what I'm reaching for, right there, it looks like I'm fixing my sports bra. I'm reaching for my daughter's ashes. We crossed that finish line and the hardest thing I learned was forgiveness. Forgiveness for the doctors who looked at me and said, your daughter's case is a catastrophe. Most of all, forgiveness of myself. That's the one I still struggle with. I birthed her, I made her. I signed every piece of paper for every treatment that she had. Where can you forgive yourself? Where are you pretending not to know that you need to forgive yourself? And what do you create in your life when you do? These are more tactical things I was going to whiteboard on, but I want to be mindful of time. But these are all things in the book I break down that help you understand actual. I'm a teacher. I draw out things for you. They understand ladder, which is like a rung of expectations. Teammates don't put somebody like don't put Tom Brady at running back when he's a great quarterback. If we put him at running back, he wouldn't be Tom Brady. Where do we in our life look for people to be a running back, maybe to be a listener, but they don't have that skill set. They're a distractor, they're a doer. Understanding this will change your relationships, position people in your life to win. The most life changing lesson that I learned, this is the one I believe is my purpose to share was after my daughter Layden died and I was walking around Boston Children's Hospital. It's sad. I didn't know what to do with myself. Every day I woke up and took care of my daughter. I drove into the hospital. I'm walking around crying. And it was like this light came down and I heard this message. Melissa, you're walking around like you are entitled to a healthy child. You're worthy of one. You can grieve not having one. You can heal from it, but you need to remember you're not entitled to anything in this world. And in that second, I switched from feeling like something had been taken from me to something had been gifted to me. And I think we all walk around with so much entitlement. Like, I show up here, I should get that result. I put that post on Instagram. I should get that result. I paid for that mastermind. I should get that result. Notice the word should. Where do we have a hidden subliminal entitlement that we are owed something rather than being in radical response? Responsibility to create it. Okay, I don't have a clicker. Sonder is a term that means it's a great album by one of my favorite artists too. But the word means the idea that everyone around you is carrying a story you know nothing about. Every single hand in this room raised. Every single person in here has a story. So I invite you, Coeur d' Alene Summit, as we are in opening ceremony, to be in radical responsibility for what you create in the next one, two, three days and beyond, to look at the person next to you with compassion and empathy and curiosity about their story, to show up and share value. Because this is your experience you chose into. So what do you get to create? This was a print that I had made for my daughter Laden in her nursery. It was different colors, the same print. And I love that picture of her because she has such wonder and curiosity. And so I invite you, as we step into this and you step into radical responsibility, can we have gratitude for what we're here for? Can we have wonder for what's possible? Can we remember that we are in radical responsibility for creating whatever you want to create this experience? And if a bereaved mother, $100,000 in debt with 1,000 followers at the time she started on Instagram, could build a seven figure business, no paid ads, and love life more than I knew it was possible to love life. Like really weirdly love life. My brothers call me Elf from Will Ferrell. Love life. I know it's true. I believe it's possible for anyone. And so if my daughter's story and my story can unlock your possibility, unlock some wonder, unlock a new level of radical responsibility that creates a new, new result in your life, it is truly an honor. Thank you for witnessing me as a mother. Thank you for witnessing my daughter and thank you for showing up here in co creation because everything we do Coeur d' Alene Summit in the next couple days is a co creation. This is my book. Eric wrote the forward. It's my whole purpose. It goes on Pre sale officially June 19, which is the anniversary of her passing. But I asked my publisher if I could do a special one just here because it's the first time I've ever talked about these stories on stage and the first time I've ever shared my book. So thank you. Thank you. It is an honor. Thank you so much. Coeur d' Alene Summit. I'll see you out there. Have an amazing few days.