122 | Rising Strong: Injury, Writing, and Playing Big at 40

Welcome back to That Big CEO Energy! It’s been a minute, but I’m thrilled to be here with you again. In this episode, I’m peeling back the curtain on a life-changing event that reshaped my perspective—an accident with my horse that left me with torn ligaments, months of recovery, and unexpected revelations.

Through this season of forced stillness, I rediscovered my love for writing, embraced deep self-reflection, and committed to playing big as I approach my 40th birthday. I’m sharing:

🔹 The accident that changed everything and how my horse showed up for me in ways I never expected
 🔹 Lessons from being sidelined—what it taught me about business, personal growth, and faith
 🔹 How I reignited my passion for writing and the role of Beth Kempton’s Do What You Love course in my journey
🔹 Why I’m leaning into the number 40 and making this my biggest year yet
🔹 The future of That Big CEO Energy—expect a blend of business, mindset, and personal growth conversations

If you’ve ever faced a setback that forced you to slow down and rethink your path, this episode is for you. Let’s dive into resilience, purpose, and the power of embracing life’s unexpected detours.

🎧 Listen now and don’t forget to subscribe for more episodes on business, mindset, and personal transformation!

Transcript

[00:00:18] Welcome back, everyone. It has been a minute, and I am so glad that you are here. I'm going to play a little catch up. I think the last podcast episode that I had recorded was talking about my exploration into the bakery world and, selling sourdough. And so, uh, I am still doing that, , but I want to talk about a little bit, about kind of what this channel means to me, where we're sort of going to go this year, and how it's going to evolve.

[00:00:54] And one of the things that What is really on my heart is just to kind of settle the score. I have removed myself from social media in some capacities. I have done a few deep dives, which we'll get into. And so it's just been kind of a season of revelation, slowing down and really trying to figure out what I want to do.

[00:01:21] So, this year I will be 40, November 2nd, and October 12th of last year really made my life come to a head, and for those of you that don't know, uh, I had an accident on October 12th, which just happens to be our youngest 18th birthday, and in that accident, It was me and my horse, and we were, um, riding around.

[00:01:50] There were some patches of wet that were in the arena. Not really uncommon. And she went down. And I went down with her. And what happened is, is ultimately I, I tore my ACL. Uh, a torn LCL, and then we thought I had a torn meniscus. But before that, when I went down, you guys, I've never broken a bone. I've never broken a bone.

[00:02:13] The closest thing to, invasive surgery of moving around internal parts is my c section when I birthed my daughter. That's it. That's the biggest thing. You know, like I've had my appendix removed. I've had other minor surgeries, but something that is totally traumatic on the body is this.

[00:02:37] And so at the time, uh, I was at the barn and obviously riding my horse and when I went down, uh, I think it's important to note that this horse and I had just been struggling. We'd been struggling connecting. Um, she had come to me with a host of trust issues. She had come to me, uh, with a body score of two, which in the horse world, if you don't know that is, uh, she was very unhealthy.

[00:03:06] And so we have spent the last almost three years, this September coming up will be three years that I've had her. Rehabbing her basically, trying to get to know her, trying to understand her quirks, trying to supplement her. And I never really kind of felt connected to her. But I still wasn't going to give up because I thought this is the best home for her.

[00:03:34] If we don't connect and I just, mares are mares, you know, if we don't connect and I just have to fight her tooth and nail, then that's just what it is. And I knew that down the line she would relax. I knew that eventually she would get to a place where she would start to trust me, but I didn't know that it would be in the form of this accident.

[00:03:56] And so on that day, when I went down, it was just like any other day. I, you know, got up. I actually went and bought a saddle from a friend, delivered her bagels. That morning and I said, Hey, I'll see you later. You know, I'm heading over to the barn and I stopped at another friend's house and dropped off some bread on the way.

[00:04:18] And, a few things that now, you know, hindsight is always 20, 20. It sticks out to me is I didn't take my phone into the barn and I usually do. And I also pulled up closer to the barn that I normally do, which. Is interesting to note and I let her halter fall to the other side of the aisle way, which if you're unfamiliar with, with cross ties on horses, there's, there's two of them, right?

[00:04:50] It connects to either side. And I had let it fall to the opposite side of the aisle, which would be the farthest away from where I would then return. So keeping all of this in mind, keeping these little details in mind, when I went down, she popped right up and I've gone down on her before, and it was, you know, kind of getting on and still having my footing, but she's taken off on me, and I've had to like chase her around the arena. And so, knowing this, when I went down, it took me a half a second to figure out what was happening, and when I stood up, she was standing right there.

[00:05:36] And she took a big deep breath, and she just waited for me. And I thought, oh, okay. So I didn't know until I went to go stand up on my own two feet. I thought I had broken my leg. Again, not, not knowing what a broken bone even feels like. But I was in the middle of the arena, and I had to figure out some way, some way, to get back to The cross ties so I could tie my horse up and it wasn't until I stood up and went to go reach inside my vest that I realized it didn't have my phone.

[00:06:14] Panic sets in. I start screaming hysterically, uh, because the owner of the barn had just gone into her house and it's fall. You guys, there are no windows open. The lady is a little bit older. There ain't no way she's hearing me. No way. So after talking to myself about that, I was in action mode and I thought, well, I got to get her to the crossties so that I can get to the car to my phone so I can start calling someone.

[00:06:45] Meanwhile, I'm in tears, hysterical. It's fine. What I didn't realize was going to happen is this horse was going to cling on to me like nobody's business and every step that I took she put her mane or her head down so that I could have my arm over top of her and limp to the cross ties which was about 30 yards.

[00:07:11] And when I put her in the cross ties, I realized then I had about 50 feet to go, with no help, to my car. And so I turned around and I saw a 5 gallon bucket, and I used that as kind of a crutch. I have my leg up in the air behind me, I'm bent over, I'm hopping with one leg and a bucket to my car. And I started calling.

[00:07:42] I called my husband first. That is always my default. I will always call my husband first. And he was, that day, he didn't come out to the barn with me because he was doing an oil change. Going to do an oil change with his dad on his dad's Suburban. And so naturally you wouldn't have your phone on you. And because we live in 2025, his phone is always on vibrate.

[00:08:09] And I was not marked as an emergency contact then. So I'm calling, calling, calling, calling, calling. Can't reach him. I called the barn owner. She didn't answer. Which, that's normal for her too. And then I call my mom. I always call my mom. And I'm explaining the situation and she says, do you need me to come and get you?

[00:08:32] Uh, what is, you know, what do you need? And I can be on my way. Well, as she is saying this, my husband is calling me back and Uh, the barn owner is walking out of her house and so I tell my husband what has happened.

[00:08:50] I'm pretty sure I broke my leg and he is on the way. He's on the way. And that's just the kind of husband that I have, which is amazing. And so Susie went and took care of my horse. Thank goodness. The horse turned out to be fine, which is also a blessing. And I was on my way to the emergency room and we chose to go to the next town over because that is where my mother in law is an emergency room nurse.

[00:09:20] And uh, so then I had to wait for an MRI. And so in this waiting of MRI, I knew it wasn't broken because I already got an x ray and they were pretty confident that there were things torn. And so I started rehab right away. And I am a firm believer that that is one of the best decisions I could have made was to start physical therapy right away.

[00:09:49] So it all worked out to where I wouldn't be having surgery until January 9th. And the thing for me is this happened October 12th, right? And I wasn't having surgery until January 9th. So I had all of this time and space. To be down. I couldn't walk, couldn't ride my horse, couldn't drive, uh, couldn't, couldn't do anything.

[00:10:13] And for those that know me, know that I don't do well sitting. So I had to find some way to use this as a way to get my, my life together and a few things happened one, I realized that I wanted to go back to writing. I have been writing since I was a kid. I mean I would, I would enter in writing competitions, I've been in the newspaper, , I took writing classes in, in college, creative writing, and I've just always been, you know, I was going to be an English major and all the things, right?

[00:10:48] And so I have this writing spirit in me. And I came across an author, I don't even know how I came across, probably in my midnight scrolling sometime, an author, Beth Kempton, who has a business called Do What You Love. And this was a course that was coming out, a free course over the holidays. And It totally changed my life.

[00:11:13] It changed who I thought I was. It changed who I thought I wanted to be. And it has really made an impact on me and my soul so deeply. In addition to that, I decided that I was going to start being a small group, which has now transformed into over 100 days, but at the time it was just going to be for 40 days.

[00:11:40] And when I heard that this was going to be for 40 days, I was like, great, 40 days, it'll get me to surgery. It'll be lovely. And then when I went to physical therapy the next day, he said, you know, the next 40 days after you get done with your surgery are going to be crucial. So I keep hearing this number 40.

[00:12:00] I'm going to be 40 this year. And I have decided that I am. playing big this year and going to focus on writing. And what comes out of that, I have no idea. But one of the reasons that I wanted to come back to this podcast is I've You know, we've done a lot of conversations around goals and getting yourself in a position of being in control of your life, being in control of your business, being in control of even if you don't have a business, ownership, right, of, of who you are, of the places you show up, of the spaces that you consume, and being the executive officer there.

[00:12:47] Of that area, whatever it is. And I think one thing for me is we're still going to talk about business because I love talking about businesses. I still have my clients, they're all wonderful. And I still love operationally putting businesses together. That is still a very core part of me.

[00:13:09] I also love facilitating. business operations and teaching other women how to open their business and the things and the components to think about. And for me, one of the small projects that I've taken on, which isn't really small, but I have a wonderful group of ladies that I've met over, I guess over a year now, that we've all gotten really close, but they're opening a cafe in our town, you know?

[00:13:37] And so they've asked me to step in as sort of this operations, manager piece and help them. And so these are the things that I enjoy and I'm still going to continue to talk about these things, but I also want to come at it from a lens of taking control of your life in general. Like, what is your big CEO energy that you need to work on, that you need to harness, that you need to uncover?

[00:14:07] Because it's waiting for you. It's waiting on the other side of whatever the yuck is that you're sitting in. And it doesn't have to take an accident, right? It doesn't have to take an accident for you to realize these things. But, when you do have something that is so profound that happens in such a way, it is an area of reflection that we get to.

[00:14:34] We get to slow down and really embrace what is happening, why is it happening to me, and how do I move through this with grace and ease and get to the other side while being in joy through all of it. You know, sometimes our businesses are not going the way that they are. And sometimes it's because you are the person that you are losing control of.

[00:15:01] Sometimes it is because you can't see the forest through the trees. And listen, just full transparency. There are clients that I have recently let go of, and it's because I couldn't mentally keep up. And what I'm saying to that is, is mentally keep up in the capacity of, I wasn't aligned to, to what they were doing fully.

[00:15:27] And I, I didn't understand that I was chasing money. I was chasing money last year. I went through, at the beginning of the year, like everybody does, right? And made goals for the top of the year, even though I'm down with surgery. But made goals of all of these things that I was going to do. All of the numbers that I wanted to hit and all of, all of the stuff.

[00:15:53] Right? I did that. And I woke up one morning and I, I was like, what am I doing? This is exactly how I got to burnout last year. This is exactly how I started resenting my business last year. This is exactly why I had to walk away from clients last year. It's because I thought I could do it all by myself.

[00:16:16] And the reality of the situation is that I can't. And I didn't. And I didn't want to. And so I came at it with the lens of if it's true then. That I need to slow down to the speed of joy and I need to find who Kallai is. Then I can't be chasing money. I can't be chasing umpteen amounts of clients. I can't be filling my roster to the brim.

[00:16:47] I can't be filling my weekends with work. I can't be doing any of that. I need to find a schedule that works for me. We build businesses, everyone. We build businesses because we want time freedom and because we want total autonomy to our finances. But when you don't show up in your business that way, you don't even give those things a chance to show you what that actually means.

[00:17:18] And so I do agree still with many of my previous podcast episodes that, you know, when you're first building a business, you have to have parameters in place, you have to have a schedule, you have to give yourself a box that you are working in so that it doesn't feed into other areas of your life. But as you move through your business, and this will be my fifth year in business, as you move through business, you can't, you can't, it's not sustainable.

[00:17:53] It is not a sustainable way of life. And so finding people, finding processes, finding, systems that work with you and for you in your business is the only way that you can become an executive officer truly in your life and in your business. And it isn't because you're working 60 hours a week, chasing 20 figures a month and being at the helm of burnout.

[00:18:21] It's not that. So we have to find a balance, right? We have to find what it is that we need. Not what social media tells us that we need. Not what the next influencer is doing with their 5 a. m. routine. Not what, you know, Grant Cardone is shouting from the rooftops about you need to do. And not that he does that, but there are power speakers, right?

[00:18:48] That they have the formula. They have the formula of success, and I'm sure they do for themselves. I'm sure they do for the people that are, are aligned with, with what it is that they're doing. But how do you know that you are aligned if you don't even know yourself? And so that is our message today, is we are moving this podcast through. Finding what it is that lights us on fire. Harnessing that. Moving through that with joy. Slowing down to embrace what it is. Relaxing into who we are. So that we can be a CEO of our life.

[00:19:34] And so, thanks for Being on pause with me, I'm gonna come back, uh, because I do love, you know, talking all these things. I do. And we'll get into more of the specifics. We will. But for now, if you are feeling like you need to slow it down, if you are feeling overwhelmed, If you are feeling like there are too many things on the plate that you just aren't getting to, we're going to talk about it.

[00:20:03] We're going to uncover it, and we are going to slow down to the speed of joy, intentionally. And not at the expense of dropping plates. My friends, thank you for letting this always be a space where we can gather and learn and grow. I'm so excited to keep chatting and I'll see you on the next one. 

[00:20:20] Thanks for listening to that big CEO energy. If you heard something today that helped you, I would love it if you would leave a review and share it with your friends. This helps more people like you become inspired just like you are. If you would like to learn more about how I can help you streamline and position your business for growth or lead your business as a CEO.

[00:20:44] Feel free to jump into the show notes with all of the links to find me. And don't forget to head over to Instagram so we can be pals.