Recovering from a Whole Year at Rock Bottom with Shay Rowbottom

Shay, how are you today?

I'm good, thank you for having me here.

I am. I think it's amazing we're even chatting because I followed you on LinkedIn for years and been impressed with your content. Not just the, the structure of it, but just the boldness you have in your content. And I think too many people, especially on a platform like, like LinkedIn, when they post content, what they're really saying is, I just want everyone to agree with me. I want a lot of people to agree with me. I want a lot of comments, likes, and therefore build my brand. Whereas you are not afraid to have dissenters. Right. And people just, you know, don't agree with you. Whatnot and whatnot. Because you believe in your message so much and I disrespect that a lot. But let's hop into who you are. Do you mind giving us some, some background information here? Who, who is Shay?

Yeah, sure. Thank you so much for that, by the way, Terry. I appreciate it. And yeah, who am I? That's the million dollar question these days. Honestly, I'm really figuring that out. But what I can answer is who I've been. Full transparency. I am changing a lot, but I'm known for and really skilled at video creation. So I started out my entrepreneurial career eight years ago now as a video editor. I got jobs for large blogs online doing their video content and, you know, was able to, through my clientele, learn a lot about how to grow on social media. And I was really fortunate. It was one of those experiences where, like, you don't even realize how fortunate what you're doing is until, like years later when it starts to pay dividends and you're like, wow, like, really valuable skill to know how to go viral and make videos and edit. And of course we all see that now. But yeah, yeah. So I took the Skill set to LinkedIn after a few years of making videos for clients and managing a editing company. And I started to apply what I'd learned to my own personal brand on LinkedIn. And it was the golden age on LinkedIn. Video was new, a lot of people with, you know, great businesses there, lots of money, but knew nothing about video. So I became the face and really took advantage of the market, positioned myself as a LinkedIn video trainer, grew a really big page on LinkedIn and collected the money. But I also realized now that I was not maturing emotionally as much as I could have at that time, which I think the money and the social media fame was disservice to me in that way. So that's why this past year, 2023, was all about me getting on it, feeling the energy for what it was, finally admitting. Okay, yes, the same. And the, you know, business on LinkedIn has been fun, but I. I've known for a while that there's something off about this, that it's not really me, that it's actually holding me back from something greater, so I'm gonna take a risk and just burn it down. So I shut it down last year, at least what it was. I do still have, like, a LinkedIn training, and we can talk about that, but I started to just really, really change my business. Fire people, uproot everything. Oh, this is exactly where I've landed. And I know now that this is what I'm supposed to be doing, or this. But it's not been like that, Terry. It's really been like. And I'm faced with the realization of why I intuitively avoided this in the first place, because there's a lot of deep healing that had to. Mm.

Here's what I want to do, because it's. It's funny how alike we are in a few ways. And the one way that I want.

To, for your listeners, is to hear about what happened when I was 26. I'm 31 now, so this all started about five years ago, before I blew up on LinkedIn, before I made a name for myself, a personal brand, which I am very grateful for, because even though I'm pivoting in my offers and I'm, like, rediscovering who I am as a businesswoman, that brand is there and those followers are there. And I think it's really a blessing and something I'm very proud of. Not to mention, I also, for three years, while running the LinkedIn business, as it was, made over a million dollars every single year. So, you know, I was able to invest and set myself up for a situation like I'm in now, where it's like, hey, if I want to cut the cord and pivot, I can do that now. So I think it's important to give some information about the success that I embarked on those three years after I turned 26, because, per my introduction, people might think that it wasn't so great what I went through on LinkedIn, but it was. It was amazing. I mean, I would show up to Newport Beach, California, people would stop and take my picture. I had businesses from all over the world wanting me to train them. I mean, it was, like, an incredible experience. I worked with the cardones, I met Bradley. I was on Dan Locke's podcast. Lewis Howes, like became a friend of mine and I have his number in my phone. Like, I'm so grateful. It just, I was really young and I had this level of immaturity where I wasn't ready for it. So let's talk about that and what really happened before I got this LinkedIn virality and, and blew up on LinkedIn, which really started to happen around 2019, 2020, actually during age 26 is when I first started to really get popular on LinkedIn. But 26 was a crap shoot. I mean, I'll, I'll, I'll go into it. So you ready for this, Terry?

I'm ready.

Okay. So my first company I started when I was 23 in Wisconsin, where I'm from. I started it with my ex boyfriend. We were very hardworking. We did have a lot of problems, but we put ourselves into our work and were able to grow a very successful business where we distributed licensed viral clips to publishers on Facebook. And at our peak, we're doing over a billion views a month. I sacrificed a lot in my 20s to learn video editing and help this man who I was in love with to, you know, hopefully make something of ourselves, learn business, make a bunch of money. And it was a really intense time for me because it was a hard relationship, but I learned so much and I poured myself into building that company. I gave up a lot of things that are easy to justify not being a problem in your 20s, like drinking, going out with friends, you know, and I worked like 12 to 14 hour days to build that first company. But when I was 26, so this is like three years in now, about. It was shortly after my 26th birthday. I was still living in Wisconsin running this company and there was an incident that occurred which caused my investors to basically demote me as co founder. You know, they, I was COO at the time. They wanted to, I think, demote me to creative director and take away my C3 title. It was going the route of eventually I wouldn't get paid as much as the other partners, who were all male by the way. And this broke me, you know, like this was the start of the year 26 and I had no idea how much worse things were about to become. But ultimately when I got the news from my investors that they didn't want me at the table anymore, it was I guess, comparable to like your first bad breakup where your heart falls into your stomach and you wonder how you're even going to get through the next day. I mean, I remember just going back to my apartment and drinking, I think, whiskey or tequila by myself, smoking weed. I smoked a lot of weed in my life. I had a rig. I was dabbing, and I was like, you know, just a wreck. Like, what's going to happen to me? I gave up so much in my 20s for this business, and it was my baby, and I did not want to let it go. But I knew that with the options on the table, it was like, stay and continue to feel devalued by these men and continue to watch new partners come on and surpass you when you were one of the founders, or get to buy you out and just leave. Like, take your losses. Go now. And that's what I did. So it was one of those situations where I was happy for the money, but I was, like, really sad to leave my baby behind because I didn't feel ready. And I felt cheated. And part of why I felt cheated was because of that relationship, you know, like, I had spent. I had put so much trust in this man to help him build this company, our company, and I just started to resent him as well. But I was really insecure, and I didn't feel like I could leave him. We were both very attached. So that was the beginning of age 26, and I'm born in October. Okay, this is about, like, November, December, like, the first two months of this age, I was dealing with the rejection from my own business, my investors, the buyout process, and literally saying goodbye to about 30 employees in the Milwaukee office at the time, many of who I managed, you know, and trained and grew close with. And then about a month or so after the new year, my ex resigned. He was also not happy there. So we were still together. But as you can imagine, through this business breakup, like, there was. There was a lot of tension. I started to really resent him. I felt like, you know, I gave all this up for you. You said this would work, and now I'm, you know, what am I going to do? But the silver lining in all of this is I had started posting on LinkedIn already, and I, at this point, had like, 30 or 40,000 followers. So I took the check. Me and my act. After he resigned, moved to Miami, which is also a huge change. Being a Midwest girl my whole life living in Wisconsin. But we both knew we wanted to get out of the cold. We didn't have the business holding us down anymore. And so by March 1, we were in Miami and we were getting ready to start our next business together. And it Was kind of like, okay, here we go again. Get the computers. Let's hustle. Like, hustle. Culture turned on. Let's grind startup mode. Like the. And something just really didn't sit right with me. I was like, I cannot do this all over again with this man. Like, this is. This is horrible. Like, yes, I got paid and I got the experience, but I. I knew deep down that I needed him, and I needed it, and I wanted out. And we fought constantly. It was a really toxic relationship. So shortly after I moved to Miami, I met a man who told me about ayahuasca. And it was not really of that much interest to me. It was more of like, okay, maybe like, you know, I. I actually remember my ex getting the number for the shaman, not me. Like, he was more interested than I even was. And I was like, yeah, whatever. But God works in mysterious ways. And I do believe that that series of events shortly after coming to Miami happened for a reason. Because it wasn't more than a few weeks later. I would say, you know, about a week or two into April, and this would have been 2019. So, like, a week or two into April, 2019, you know, fresh into Miami. We've been there, like, a month, right? And we got in this blowout fight again. Me and my got in another fight, and it was like, can't go on like this. Like, all this fighting, this toxicity. But something different happened that time with that fight, which was he said to me, why are you such a victim? And, you know, Shay, you can't take responsibility for anything. And what's interesting is he had said that to me many, many times in our arguments. What was different about this tire.