How to Recover Your Resilience After a Loss with Alison Pena

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like DTC Pod. Today, we'll be breaking down how to recover your resilience after a loss. To drop these value bombs, I have brought Allison Penna into EO Fire Studios. Allison is the creator of The Affluence Code and the Life After Grief Blueprint, speaker, coach, and bestselling author of The Bad Widow Guide to Life After Loss. And today, Fire Nation, we'll talk about The Affluence code. We'll talk about the Life After Grief Blueprint, frameworks and rituals, and how to navigate grief overall, and oh, so much more.

0:45And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Allison and our sponsors. DTC Pod, hosted by Ramon Berrios and Blaine Bolas, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. DTC Pod is a podcast about all things direct to consumer. Ramon and Blaine cover everything from starting, growing, and optimizing e-commerce stores in DTC brands. If you're interested in the stories behind your favorite consumer brands, this podcast is for you. One recent episode on how the best brands are built is a must listen. Listen to DTC pod wherever you get your podcasts.

1:21Allison, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. I believe that the key to being really successful is to master resilience, not as an occasional thing, but as an always thing, so that you're able to pivot and reset really quickly from any circumstance, especially after a grief event. And Fire Nation, that will be our focus. That will be our theme today, how to recover your resilience after a loss. And I want to specifically dive into the affluence code. What is the affluence code and how can we unlock this? The affluence code is something that I was talking with you about 10 years ago.

2:08And so I have 10 years of working with this and helping myself, helping clients. And so the idea is when I was about six, it puzzled me that everybody didn't thrive. So I noticed some people thrived and some people didn't, and I could not figure out why. So in the course of sort of wandering around the world, what I discovered is that there are three things that everybody cares about. They care about focusing on work, focusing on connection, or focusing on community. And those became the three lenses of the affluence code. So once you figure out what your first one is, then those are the keys to the kingdom.

2:56Because when you have an event that's a grief event, so for example, my husband died of pancreatic cancer, and he fought it for 11 months. And so I needed to get back to centered as quickly as possible, because I needed to hold both of us up. So I looped back around to my affluence code to do that. What I knew about my husband was that he was focused on work purpose. And I was focused on community charity. So I knew that he needed to work. Even as he was dying, I brought his supplies home. He was an artist. He finished his last painting two days before he died. Wow. I was charity. So lean into community.

3:51So I was sharing what was going on with us throughout those 11 months. And after he died in 2016, I was sharing the experience. I was sharing the breakdowns we had. I was being really vulnerable about it because as a person who cares about community, I needed to serve my community, even in the midst of my worst pain. Fire Nation, this is absolutely fascinating stuff. And one thing that I truly love is when I bring people on, like Allison, who was last on Entrepreneurs on Fire, March 21st of 2014, so over 10 years ago, well over 10 years ago, and she is still focused and still delivering value on the same topic.

4:38Some of the individuals I bring back are onto their third or fourth different thing, which is great for them and they're loving it and they love that variety. Other people are still locked in and focused on what they consider is their life purpose. And that's why I want to keep talking about the affluence code because you're sharing some great ways that we can unlock this and how we can utilize this. But how do we actually discover what our affluence code is. How you identify what yours is, is what do you go to when you need to be centered, get back to centered. So for a person for whom its purpose, which is focus on executing impeccable work, those people need to get back to work immediately.

5:24And then they get back to center and they can make better decisions and execute better actions. Because from who you are, you know what to do. You know the next step organically. And the problem with loss and grief is it knocks us off. So how do you get back to center? So if it's connection, focus on nurturing one-on-one relationships, then who are the one to three people that you need to get with so that you feel nurtured? And then you can get back to center and back into action. And if it's charity, how do you need to serve others to take care of yourself? So it's super practical because it gets you right back to where you can make better choices, where you're not knocked off anymore.

6:21And one of the things that's so devastating about grief is that we identify ourselves very often through what is the job that we're doing? What are the relationships we're in? How are our communities going? And so when something happens to disrupt that, everything falls apart grief costs money okay according to the CDC unsupported grief in the workplace costs companies up to 225.8 billion dollars a year yeah so that's in lost productivity absenteeism avoidable mistakes higher turnover and increased use of health benefits so let's say you're an entrepreneur if you can't get back to centered in who you are when things fall apart, you're losing time and money.

7:23Because that could be a member of your team, but it could also be you. Now, sadly, grief is something that will visit most people in this world at some stage in their life. Let's talk about the life after grief blueprint. So what I discovered is that grief is loss of someone you love, bereavement, and that's the only grief that people recognize. But there is a grief to losing a job you love through downsizing. There's a grief to a business failure. There's a grief to a foreclosure, a medical crisis, a financial hardship, loss of a pet. All of these are grief events. And grief actually is cumulative.

8:07So you could lose someone you love. And then if the grief is not processed well, something else comes along and knocks you further down. So the life after grief blueprint was five pillars. And I started with the affluence code. Because the most important thing when you're knocked sideways is to get back to center. to be able to trust yourself again. When my husband died, all I could see was a horizon of pain. And I needed to take myself back to the basics. Who was I? What did I care about? And I didn't really know. We were together 25 years. So we were more of a we than I was an I at that point.

8:59So then who was I when he was gone? And anything, you know, a business that you lose, anything is like that, where you identify yourself as that thing, and then you have to come back. So what I discovered was that there were all kinds of resources, but they were all over the place. So there was no cohesive way to move forward through grief. And so with every breakdown that I experienced, I came up with a solution. And then I started putting those solutions into a plan. So Life After Grief Blueprint has five pillars. The first is reconnect. Lean into your affluence code and start acting from there.

9:45Act from who you are rather than who you're connected to or what you do. The second is re-engage. When we experience a loss, and for example, the pandemic was a loss, people were sort of forced inside and getting out has not been automatic. We have to re-engage proactively with the world. The third is reinvent. After any loss, you're no longer the same person. There's no such thing as bouncing back. Because the possibility, the future that you had prior to the loss no longer exists. There was no possibility of a future going forward, sitting on the porch holding hands with my husband after he died.

10:38that was a memory and so people who long for the past too strongly rob themselves of their future the fourth is to rebuild so there are two things that happen people either step up step back or step out of your life when you're grieving because it's confusing for everybody the person who's grieving and also the people who are trying to support them. One of the questions I get asked all the time is so-and-so had a husband, a child, a relative, a colleague who died. I have no idea what to do. I don't know what to say. I'm scared of getting it wrong. And so if they can't handle that, they very often leave.

11:32And one of the biggest complaints about people who are grieving is that people abandoned them. That's a real thing. And a lot of the time it's not malicious. It's, they don't know what to do and they're afraid of hurting you more. So rebuild is about two things. It's about looking at the network of, of people that you have in your life still and seeing who fits where very often. And if it's a person who died, you've lost people to do things with, someone to have your back, someone to cry with, someone to go for a walk with. You know, there are human resources that are gone. So who's going to fill those spots?

12:21And after a loss, there's this opportunity to rebuild better because very often we do it by default. the other thing is as a widow i needed different kinds of people to do different stuff with because i no longer had a husband and so i was actually looking for people who didn't exist in my network so that's what rebuild is about and then reset your path forward is there is a stark truth about grief, that it raises up what really matters. So my husband and I had friction before he got sick. And what really mattered, what rose to the surface in the face of his illness was how much we loved each other.

13:11But if we had lived those 24 other years with that, we would have had a very different marriage. So that's basically the life after grief blueprint. I pulled together all the things that I learned every breakdown I had. Um, quick example, I couldn't remember anything. My memory just went missing in moments in weeks. It was horrendous and really terrifying. and so what I would do is I created a um I took a big pad of paper and I wrote down every single thing that I did in my life personal life home business relationships everything I could think of and every time I thought of something that I did I put it on there and I would wake up in the morning and I would look at the kind of energy that I had and what kinds of tasks I had energy for.

14:15When I had lots of energy, I moved very fast because tomorrow might be different. Fire Nation, that right there is the life after grief blueprint. I love those pillars. I love that process. We have so much more to talk about around this topic when we get back from thanking in our sponsors. Marketers have never been spread so thin. Trust me, I feel it too. Between creating content, launching campaigns, generating leads, nurturing your prospects, and more, you barely have a second to breathe, let alone do your best marketing. But I've got some great news. There's a better way to do things, and it's with the help of HubSpot and Breeze, its new built-in AI.

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17:14And right now, Fire Nation, Vanta has a special offer waiting for you of$1 ,000 off Vanta at vanta.com slash fire. That's V-A-N-T-A dot com slash fire for$1 ,000 off. Now, Allison, one thing that I found really fascinating that you shared earlier on in the interview was after the passing of your husband, you looked in the future and you just saw this horizon of pain. But you believe that grief can actually open us up to both clarity of purpose and a capacity for joy. Tell us more about that. Yeah, that was very interesting because I didn't think that there was any upside to grief. And what happened was that because I was no longer the person that I was before, I was forced to look at everything newly.

18:05Who was I? What did I like? Who did I want to be around? What kind of work did I want to do? And I had to start sort of rediscovering that. And so one of the things that happened was that I found that there were compromises that I made that I was no longer willing to put up with. So there are ways that people had treated me, maybe put me down, maybe not done well by me. And I started telling the truth about how that was no longer okay. In a relationship, you get in and you're trying to be your best self. And very often you give up some things that you really care about because they don't love those things.

18:55So one of the things I loved to do before I met my husband was open mics. So now I do open mic poetry and open mic singing. But he didn't love that, so I stopped. When he was dying in those 11 months, I did two cabaret shows, including one three days before he died, because I'm charity, community. In order to stay whole myself, I had to remind myself that I was not just a caregiver and I would not just be a widow. I was a woman. I was a daughter. I was many other things. And I was myself. And so really becoming more true to who I actually was, practically, really not putting up with the things that I had sometimes put up with, was very freeing and opened me up to more joy.

19:51Now, one thing that you believe is that growing our ability to navigate grief is actually essential if we're going to create lasting success. And so our listeners here today, Allison, they're entrepreneurs, they're small business owners, they're people that are pursuing passions, using their message, their mission, their voice. Why is this important? Tell us more. Yeah, the thing that we don't recognize is that there are grief events that happen all the time, especially in business. And so our ability to pivot quickly from those events and actually move forward through them, learn from them, keep going, is critical.

20:35it's really helpful to develop frameworks. Where are you and where are you going and what is the best way to get there? Now, what you need as an entrepreneur will depend on what your affluence code is. If you are purpose first, your business is probably going to be more data-driven. If you are love first, it's probably going to be more about connecting with people. Each of these has ways to make money. So purpose is get things done. Not so good with people. Money comes easily. Connection, you have to use the raving fans to get the money. Because if money becomes the priority, everything falls apart.

21:21I'm charity first. If I'm not serving my community, I can't make money worth a damn. So getting back to center and who you are makes all the difference to having a thriving business. Fire Nation, a lot of lessons learned there because if there's anything you've learned in the 12 years, over 4 ,400 episodes of Entrepreneurs on Fire, these successful entrepreneurs struggled, had challenges, obstacles, failures, grief, sadness, setbacks, all of these things as part of the journey. And it's the ones that are able to absorb that the right way and keep going forward are the ones that are finding that lasting success that we're talking about.

22:02So Allison, you shared a lot with us today. You talked all about some incredible things like the Life After Grief blueprints, the Affluence Code. What is the one thing you want to make sure Fire Nation gets from our conversation today? What I want you to get from our conversation today is that you are your greatest asset. So everything else can go away. The services, the products, that as long as you are whole and centered in who you are and what you want to deliver and serve with, you have all you need to succeed. So understanding your best mode of operating, which is learning your affluence code and how to interact with it, is the key to a life of prosperity, much more ease and joy.

22:53Allison, if Fire Nation wants to connect with you, wants to learn more from you, what is your call to action for our listeners today? You can go to my website, which is badwidow.com, or I'm going to give you a link for the show notes, which is a little video, which will connect you to a much more deep dive into the Affluence Code. How do you identify what yours is? How do you use it to build better teams and make offers, communicate clearly, professionally and personally, all the things that the affluent understanding this stuff can give you, I can tell you about it. Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

23:37You've been hanging out with AP and JLD today, so keep up that heat. And for links to everything we talked about, including that video that Allison just mentioned, visit eofire.com, type Allison, that's with one L, A-L-I-S-O-N in the search bar and the show notes page will pop right up. And Alison, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, we salute you and we will catch you on the flip side. Thanks so much. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and to Alison for sponsoring today's episode and to Fire Nation's successful entrepreneurs accomplish big goals, which is why I created the Freedom Journal to guide you in accomplishing your number one goal in a hundred days.

24:16And we're talking step-by-step. So visit thefreedomjournal.com and I will catch you there or on the flip side.

24:47episode on how the best brands are built is a must listen. Listen to DTC pod wherever you get your podcasts.