Dragon's Den, a Keynote, and a Dumpster Fire: The Month Nobody Saw Behind the Scenes

This season of building my legacy business has been full of the kind of momentum you only see on the highlight reels. But behind all the validation I’ve been receiving, I’ve been navigating some heavy and unexpected challenges that haven’t been making it to the stage. Today, I share what it’s felt like for me to hold both the expansion and the heartache at the exact same time, and how being in the messy middle of entrepreneurship often means learning to exist in both extremes without losing yourself.

I share how this tension has forced me to come back to my “why” in deeper, more honest ways, especially in the moments where doubt creeps in and everything feels uncertain. This is founder therapy in real time and if you’re a woman building something bold and feeling the weight of both the highs and lows, I want you to know you’re not alone, and that both can be true without meaning you’re off track. If this all resonates, head over to Instagram and leave me a message, because I would love to know how you’re feeling.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to Found Her, the podcast for women who build empires, break barriers, and blaze trails all while finding themselves. These are bestie level conversations from behind the scenes, the real work, the messy middle, and the wins that last. I'm Kimberly Hebert, founder, franchise builder, wife, mom, and Grammy, and a woman who has done the inner work while building the outer winds. Here we talk business, identity, relationships, and the kind of growth that cracks you open, then puts you back together. Stronger, better. This is your space to rise as a founder and as your truest self. Let's dive in. Hey besties, welcome back. Okay, so today I just gonna jump right into it. Today is a it's really, I've been really whirling about in the last month. It's kind of like the highlight reel, right? I've done a lot of great things that are like visibility, PR, being acknowledged and validated. And I know there's always a thing about validation, but there's been a lot of highlight reel going on for me and the business. My podcast, oh my God, you guys, thank you so much. My podcast keeps charting to the top 200, goes anywhere from 50 to 185, I think, you know, floats in and around there every now and then. I love those little surprise and delight texts I get from my podcast producer. And uh that's all because you guys, you guys keep listening, you keep sharing, uh, searching, all that kind of stuff. So I love that. Um, so that's a highlight. You know, I've been on this pitch circuit, pitch competition, and it comes with, and I've been advancing through the process and now getting ready for the gala. And that comes with a lot of visibility, a lot of increased traffic, if you will, both with my story, our business, our brand, all that. It's a lot of fun. We've had a Dragon's Den audition that was so good. Oh my God, it was so good. Uh, and it's funny because last year when we did a Dragon's Den audition, we it we botched it. It was terrible. It was a failure. And that's okay. Like it felt terrible because in the moment, it's like one of those things when you execute, like we planned, we planned, we practiced, all that stuff. And then we go to execute and it falls flat in the moment, but you have no choice but to just carry on, even though you know you're dead in the water. So that's what happened last year. And we went away from it thinking, oh, knowing, actually, not even thinking, knowing. And I know sometimes when you say when you go to do something and you're like your feedback is so critical of yourself, but there's and your friends and family and your supporters well are all like, no, no, it wasn't that bad because they don't want you to be hurt. Um, and they see the good and they see yeah, the try and all that. So they're always like, no, it was really good. Like, you don't get that really like not harsh, not mean critical feedback, but the real critical feedback that you need to grow. So that's the stuff I look for. I look for the critical feedback that helps me grow. It's not comfortable. I don't, it doesn't need to be delivered in a mean and catastrophic way. But anyway, so that audition last year, I just knew. I knew when I knew as we were executing it, I knew when we walked away that it wasn't our best. And we hoped for the best, of course, but we knew I wasn't our best. And then when we redid, we so this year, of course, we applied again and we did the audition and we did a different take of the different style of the audition. This time we did it virtually, and so we had to get way more creative and way more punchy, and we knew we had to captivate a little bit more. And um, because I had been already on this hamster wheel of pitching and practicing and practicing and practicing, and I've probably already dropped episodes about it. I have gotten so confident at delivering short, punchy information about the business, not on my podcast. Sometimes I still ramble, but um, and so I was able to construct or create the outline for the rest of the team to, you know, we we together built this great, it was a great audition. It was, you know, I had some I have some creative girls on the team and they really came uh with their uh they did a rap to The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, which is hilarious because they're young and we're all like, you even know that. Um, anyway, from that to the QA, even Darren, who usually gets a little bit of a stage fright when he presents in front of people, he's great one-to-one with people. But if he gets, you know, in front of a group who's actually looking to him, he kind of gets stage fright and will will uh freeze a bit. He did really well. It was just excellent. So, really a lot of highlight reels in the month of March, February and March. So it started kind of mid-February and kind of carried forward into March. And, you know, I was a panel host at a large female network in Eastern Canada. Again, just loved the connection, the acknowledgement, meeting new people, all of that kind of stuff, learning new things, highlight reel. Um, I was asked to be a keynote speaker at another event towards the end, middle of April, which is my first real big keynote, 45 minutes, uh, which is pretty, it's a long time. Uh, but again, these are just like momentum moments. And now, and also I'm going to the gala uh for the forum pitch that I've been working through since December. And in the forum pitch, the, you know, it's like a little minis drag mini dragon's den. You don't negotiate for equity on from the stage or anything like that. But, you know, you're presenting your business and the opportunity and who you are in a three-minute pitch, followed by a three-minute QA. And this one is to a room full of 800 people. And so it's and then they do a PR thing, they're developing a video, you know, a three-minute feature. I call it a documentary, but I mean it's only three minutes, but it's like, I don't know, 10, 15, maybe 20 hours of filming that goes into that. And so there's just a lot of really good things, highlights and all that. But, you know, in being true and honest of what it really takes to build a bold vision, that's what this podcast is about. It's about the messy middle. There has been a fucking dumpster fire in other areas going on and that have really like created a heaviness, and it's really an interesting um energy exchange to be in these super high, high, high places in terms of vibe, right? You're like celebration, expansion, just like an acknowledgement and a witness of the whole what we've been building, the whole team. It's not this isn't just me. I'm the spokesperson in this era and I'm the leader of the team in this era, but it's not me, it's everybody, right? It's what we've all been able to build and put into the brand. And it's, you know, having all of that going on is super exciting because at the end of the day, it brings visibility to, hey, what is she doing? It brings visibility to our brand. I have a fiduciary and not legal, what's that's the fiduciary. I have a responsibility to my franchise partners, to my current ones and my future ones to bring be bringing visibility and all that I do to our brand because it will bring business for them and bring more franchise partners to us. So I'm really like, you know, this is the this is the trail that I'm on, the path that I'm on. And um always looking to recruit franchise partners. That's really the end game is to become the North America residential door repair leader. And we are the first franchise to do that. So anyway, the point being is that that's my pledge, is the visibility. And so doing all these and being in this really uh high, high vibe is so fun. But then also behind the scenes, there's like been heartbreaking moments. And I'm gonna try not to cry. And I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna go into details. That's not what this is about. There are some things that do need to be protected while while they're ongoing, but I just want you to know that there are heaviness going on behind. There are things that happen that you don't anticipate that um take you out at the knees, and then you spit like so. For me, I'm like having you know this heaviness in one area and having to also be in this very exciting energy as I plan and get ready for my keynote speak, the gala, maybe an advancement to Dragon's Den while at the same time nurturing a heavy, sad heart that's attached to the business as well. Um, and then the stresses that go along with building this kind of legacy and the way we're going about it. There's a lot of financial and familial family pressures and stresses. And all of that seemed to kind of like collide in the same time frame. And so I just wanted to share that both things can be true at the same time. And just because we're going through, or you might be going through something like I'm going through right now, where you have some lower moments on top of these higher moments, it doesn't mean that things aren't for you. It doesn't mean that um you are pushing uh when you should be pressing or you should be pausing or anything like that. It just means there are other people and other things are at play and they interact with our energy. And the best we can do is honor what's happening, give space, but also know that there is a challenge in getting regrounded for the moments to get back into that vision. And I think that's where your why. And we talk, you know, people talk about this incessantly, knowing your why, knowing your why. But it really is moments like this when you're experiencing, at least for me, these big highs and these big lows. Like when we're in the high points, it's really easy to know our whys. We're like, yeah, fuck yeah, this is great, blah, blah, blah. Um, but it's when we're in those low moments when we start questioning, is this, is this, am I, am I out to lunch here? Did I, you know, did was I the only one that thought this was a good idea? Is this like, are we like out to lunch? What am I not seeing? Where am I blinded? Where am I blind? You know, you start questioning all of those, right? Did we, do we make an executive fatal decision somewhere? Like, like, you know, you start to kind of just like question all that. Would it be easier to be retired? Would that be satisfactory? You know, all those kinds of things. Uh, and I think it's okay to be in both stages. Someone once told me, or many people tell me, that when you're a founder building a startup, if you don't have these like, you know, high highs and low lows, um, the low lows where you question whether you're, you know, you question your own sanity or rationale to do what you're doing, that you you then haven't like put enough out there. I feel like we're there. I feel like we've put enough out there. We've put everything at risk, um, which really leads to another conversation about sacrificing relationships and even resources, money for the dream. But here we are, we're in this place where uh we've we've gone all in and there's no turning back for us. But there are moments where we have these high highs and these low lows, and they exist within the same paradigm. And so today I think I just wanted to share that those two things can both be true at the same time. Dig into your why, hold that, put that up everywhere, write it everywhere, lean in to your support, to your expanders during these kind of non-highlight real times. And yeah, be be honest with yourself that it's a tough period at the same time of um having the excitement and joy that's going on. And um it starts to like I I'm feeling like I'm starting to kind of come out of the heavy, heavy part of it as I've worked through what I need to work through in terms of my part of the process and whatever's happening. You know, building what did I say? Like, even just all I'm gonna get, I'm gonna go on another tangent. Like, even all the PR that I'm getting lately, it brings a new level of exposure. And I'm kind of an open book, so it's not like I got secrets to hide or anything like that, but there's a new level of exposure that it's like your nervous system has to, or mine has to kind of recalibrate. And I think that's what's happening is there's a recalibration, not a numbing, not a like a numbing out or a checking out, but a recalibration to a different level of exposure, which has other people having different narratives about you and what you might may or may not be doing. So anyway, that's my um that's my little chat for this whatever Wednesday morning. Don't forget to share the podcast with your friends, rate, review, subscribe, do all the things that we're supposed to do to make sure it gets pushed out on the algorithm. And um, yeah, feel free to email, message, find me on Instagram. I would love to hear from you. Until next time. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Found Her podcast. If you've enjoyed it, please, please, please leave me a review, subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes, and more importantly, please share with your business bestie. You can join our newsletter, find me on Instagram, all the places. I would love to hear your feedback and connect with you during your journey of building your legacy.