Surviving Personal Struggles in Business: A Story of Resilience

Your Dream Business

Today’s episode of the podcast is an interview with Kimberly Swenk, where she talks openly about her experience with facing numerous personal struggles and shares how she managed them whilst still being able to run a successful business.

Kimberly is a Digital Marketing Expert and two time cancer survivor. She has 15 years experience in digital marketing, including social media, websites, SEO, email marketing, and paid ads, in addition to traditional marketing like print and events focusing on small business communications and client loyalty. This episode is filled with so much wisdom, insights and important messages, and really is a must listen for all business owners.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

1. How Kimberly stopped herself from going down a rabbit hole of depression and failure
2. The actions Kimberly took to ensure her business didn't disappear completely
3. Kimberley's experience of guilt and how she learned to show herself grace and empathy

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Kimberly on Instagram Check out Swenk Social's website Connect with Teresa on Instagram, LinkedIn or Facebook

Transcription

Teresa: Hello, and a really warm welcome to this week's episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. How are you doing? I feel like I start that off the same every single time. It's hilarious. I really should have, even my voice goes up at certain points, so I do it. But you guys are used to that now, so that is fine. So I am back with a another interview today, and I am really excited about today's interview, because, well, this conversation could go anywhere. So we're going to see where it goes, but I'm interviewing the very lovely Kimberly, who has been in my world for a really long time. And it's actually so nice to get on and have a proper chat with her. Cause I don't think we've done this. So welcome to the podcast Kimberly. Kimberly: Well, thank you for having me. I'm excited. I definitely have a unique, because I've been listening to a lot of your podcasts that have been, and I don't know if you've had someone like me on here yet. Teresa: We have. I don't think we have. So start as always by telling us what you actually do and how you got to do the thing you do. Kimberly: Well, my actual job is I help I'm in the marketing and advertising world. I help anestheticians, usually smaller ones, like solo anestheticians, smaller med spas create and work on their digital marketing strategy. That includes email website, social media, and basically most of my clients need someone like me to come in on a one off because they can't afford the big agencies come in and be like, okay, this is what. You need to do these are your weak points all to do with their marketing strategy, because a lot of times an estheticians and med spas, they're not trained in marketing and advertising, you know, that's a whole they don't teach that. And their type of medical or aesthetic school, and also they're very intimidated by it. Because as I know, you know, and your listeners know, it's the digital part is very technical and that can be overwhelming. And when you get into like Google ads, Facebook ads, I mean, you know, it's technical. Teresa: And that's not what they're there to do. That is not what they've been qualified to do. That is not. And I think I see this a lot and you must see it, especially in the industry you're in. Like they come into their business because they're good at the thing they do or they want to do the thing they do. And then suddenly they're expected to have all these other skills doing all these other things, which quite honestly, why should they know about these things? Kimberly: Exactly. And they don't, they don't teach that. And it's, I'm sure you have this a lot with a lot of your clients. It's extremely, it's a long game. It's a marathon. And, you know, you keep hitting these walls and you keep failing and which is not really failing. But if you don't know, you don't know that. And you just want to give up and that's the worst thing you can do. Teresa: Yeah. A hundred percent. Kimberly: A lot of it's just telling them, like, listen, you're doing great. You may not think it's great. You may not think, you may not think a 1 percent conversion rate is great, but I promise you in this instance, it is really good. Pat yourself in the back. And so it's a lot of that. Teresa: That is something that I think as marketeers, as people who are in businesses need to talk about more, the amount of people that I speak to and they go, Oh, it didn't do very well. It didn't go very well. And I go, do you want to tell me your numbers? And then they give me their numbers now. And then I've sat here with my calculator and I'm like, that's like a 10 percent conversion. It did amazingly. Like, but they don't think it did because they don't know. And. We need to educate people a bit more. So what, cause obviously you've been in this digital marketing space for a long time and you niched into this space you're in now. Why did you decide to take that niche? Kimberly: Well, it goes back. I, I worked in the corporate world forever. Worked with, it was Danone, which is the French water company. I've worked for AT& T. All the biggies and the corporate world in the US is not very conducive to a family. And I had my first child who was premature and he couldn't go into any type of daycare. And in the US we really don't have a support system. Like legally, I could take three months off and not be fired. But you know, I was technically kind of expected to come right back. So, I had to quit because. Couldn't do that with a premature child and so I just thought I took a couple of years off to raise him because he was premature. And then I started just continuing doing what I was doing, like AT& T and Danone, but I did it for just companies just random, I did, I did a funeral home, like just random, total. Teresa: I love this stuff though. Like when you're in marketing, the stuff we learn to market is nuts. Kimberly: I mean, I did a tire company, but the most interesting one was the funeral home. And, you know, it was all the, the website, the search, the ads, you know, you're like embalming. One of them was actually a trailer park, and this was the big drama is they didn't want to like when you go into a search, you have to like Google, you have to search for what the people are thinking, not what you want them to think. So they were trying to change their branding away from trailer to mobile unit. And I'm like, people don't type in mobile unit. Teresa: No, they try to type in trailer. Like, I love this. I love it. Okay. So you were doing it for anybody. Kimberly: And then at a random shoot, I was, it was a organic soap company and I was at a random shoot and I was doing the social media, you know, all the behind the scenes. And I met at the time, the spokesperson they had hired was the head makeup artist for CNN. Which when I lived in Atlanta, that's where CNN is based. So she actually hired me to help her. And then that's how I got into it. We formed a really great relationship and I started working for her and she introduced me to people and she, and I'm like, you know what, this is kind of my dig. This is, this is what I do. It interests me very, very much. I'm very vain. And it's better than the tires. It's better than the tires. And it's better than the funeral home in the trailer parks. And I just really loved it. And I always believed that, you know, what is the riches in the, is in the niches or the niche that phrase. I know it. And. I really enjoyed it. And I got along with the people in that industry. It felt more organic, the relationship. So I started going that route and working with her and I did a lot of her personal stuff. She also owned a magazine and I did a lot of stuff for that. And then that's how I kind of organically grew into it was when my kids were older. So that helped too. Yeah. And just kind of grew into that. And that's how I yeah. I basically went with my passion. It's, is it easy? No, but I'm legitimately interested in it. Teresa: Yeah. And I think like that helps massively. And when you've had clients, you know, cause I've done it the same, you know, when I started just with the agency, we work with people that are not. Like, I have no interest in the thing that they sell and it's not that, you know, when you're a marketer, you mark, you know, you can market things, that's your job. However, if you can be interested in it, I just think it's, well, you've just taken another step, haven't you? So the reason we've got you on today isn't necessarily to talk about, social media and the job you do. It's to talk about resilience in business, because this is the bit that I don't think, and I try and talk about it a lot, but I don't think we talk about it enough. I think we have grown up in a world where one, you know, women's. Women are not seen the same way as men in business. And when we've gone into a business world where we, as entrepreneurs have created our businesses, we are being coached or watching experts who are males who don't have the same life experience as we do. And yet we're still expected to just rock up and be like that and get up at 5am and do the 5am routine and do this thing and do that thing. And you have had the most stuff thrown at you. And if I was you, I'd be like on a sofa with my head under a blanket. Kimberly: You know? Yes. And and no. What I, you have to accept things for what they are and you can either fail or you can succeed or you live or die. Yeah. There's no. So you have to make a decision of what you want to do, and you can't, you can only play the victim so much, you know, I think a lot of that. Once you stop playing a victim and realize, okay, I've got to do what this is, this is my world. So, and it, you know, but when my child was premature, I had to do what I wanted. I had to do. I mean, it is what it is and. I, the corporate world was just not that, you know, and then my second son was born, but he has severe dyslexia and ADHD and dysgraphia, which is where you write backwards. Teresa: Oh, wow. I've never even heard of that. Kimberly: Yeah. And he cannot, the good thing, he can only write in cursive. He cannot write print. Okay. So he actually has beautiful handwriting. And it took us about five years to figure out what he's also was speech delay. He's fine now. What was going on? So all my dreams of having this big career and my ignorance of knowing what having children was like. Yeah. You know, I had to change my paradigm of what I expected out of life and I still wanted to work and I, this is what I think is difficult being a woman is almost in a way you're expected to have a career and a family and you can't have both perform at a level 10 at the same time. It's just impossible. Teresa: And then add in. Like some of the other things that you've been dealing with. So, just tell us, like, I've got your personal bio in front of me. Just like, just talk through kind of what's happened in your life. Kimberly: Well, so, basically my life was Pretty easy till I was 17, and I mean, that being normal, like, nothing extreme, but my dad had served during Vietnam and was exposed to chemicals at a camp, a military camp called Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. And what they had done is they had not lined the refuse like ponds. So all the chemicals were sipping, dripping into the water. So my dad had been eating, breathing these god awful chemicals and ended up dying at age 45 of a rare cancer that's attributed to these chemicals. Any American might, you can just type up Camp Lejeune and it will come up. Yeah. And he died was basically over six weeks. And then my mother had a nervous breakdown. And one of the last things that I was doing with my father was trying to get my mother institutionalized. And so that, I don't want to get all teary eyed just cause that's so traumatic. So, my father died and then it was basically me and my brother and my grandmother used to come in and my mom was physically present, but not mentally, she did not do well, it was very suicidal. And so I basically had to step up in the span of six weeks. So a little stressful there talk about post traumatic stress and I'll get that plays into it later. So when I was 25, I was first diagnosed. So my dad died when I was 17, when I was 25 after university, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and it just came up as a lump on my throat. That's it. From my understanding, it's largely genetic. It runs in the family. All the females in my family have thyroid problems. It's just me and another aunt that have the cancer. So they're thinking it's some type of gene. And so I went through that. Luckily at that point, see what it was is at that point in 1999, they were not sure how Synthetic thyroid would affect your childbirth, your ability to carry a child to term because that plays a role in accepting the foreign body and not aborting it. So I kept, I only had the part of my thyroid that was cancerous removed, so I had the rest of my thyroid left in because at that time I was like, I need some organic natural thyroid hormone and that was a risk I took and I knew it and. People who are familiar with thyroid cancer, it's a very manageable cancer. It's, you know, you only die Teresa: saying to me, as cancer goes, it's the best one. Like you're going to get one, get this one. Kimberly: Yeah, pretty much. Who really die of it are 89 and they also have, you know, C. P. O. D. They also have heart failure. You know, it's kind of like Parkinson's or something that it leads to a decline. But that's not what kills you. It's something that side effect of it. You know, like, most Parkinson's people died choking. Yes, you know, it's not. But anyway, so then I was fine. I went on, had my children. And so then I've been working and it was COVID back and forth. I moved from Atlanta, Georgia, all the way to Colorado. And that was a change in itself. If you, it's definitely a better change, but going from a huge Southern. U. S. southern city where it's hot to the middle of the Rocky Mountains in a ski town. While it's great. It's a change. Teresa: And it's beautiful where you live. Like the pictures are stunning. Kimberly: It's beautiful. Except when, you know, like the other day, my 17 year old son had, I had COVID and I didn't know it, but we were driving over a mountain pass. I'm like, Son, you got to drive like I'm about to pass out. So there is 17 and a foot of snow driving the car over a mountain pass in the Rockies, but it is what it is again. And so then I, when you have thyroid cancer, any cancer, you go back for a yearly checkup and 22 years later, 22 years later, it came back. And this time. It was in the other part of my thyroid and it was also in 9 lymph nodes. So it had really kicked up a gear, which is very common when a 2nd cancer comes back that it comes back stronger. And so this was all during COVID and I'm like, this is this is hell, like, you know, and part of my treatment was delayed because of it. Yeah. You know, and I actually had 3, I have 3 members of my family who at the time were COVID. They were, critical care nurses. So they were in the COVID world. And so it was delayed. I mean, there's no way around it. It was just. It is what it is. So I had this in Atlanta. There is a thyroid research center. So I had my actual surgery there. Done by a surgeon who only that's all he does is thyroid cancer surgeries. And so he took all all of it out. But since it was a non lymph nodes, it had migrated. I had to go get radiation treatment and the radiation treatment is nuclear. So there's only so many places that can do it. So there's, I went to the Mayo Clinic in Arizona cause that's not that far from where Colorado and it's absolutely amazing. And Shannon, Shannon, right? Shannon, Shannon, she actually lives near where the Mayo Clinic is. And it's absolutely wonderful, but. So with the nuclear stuff, you have to go all the way. It's like three stories in the ground. Teresa: Oh my god. Kimberly: Yeah, I know, because it's, and it's surrounded by steel walls. Teresa: I mean, that makes you feel like, well, this is going to be safe for me to do it. Like, literally, you're surrounding, like, walls, and not letting other people get exposed, and yet you're going in there. Kimberly: Yeah, that's the scariest part, and I don't Many of your US listeners will know this, but not so much the UK, the Mayo Clinic does special treatments, research, end of life, last hope place. And so while I'm not end of life, my nuclear medicine is specialized only so many places. I mean, I don't know if they use uranium. I don't know what they do. And so I have to, and this is where I really was probably in the lowest points of my life. So I go in and this sounds awful, but what. I felt like it was the grim reaper's waiting room. I'm like, this is awful. At least when I had my surgery, I was just in the surgical office. Now, this is where people go afterwards. And a lot of the people who go there are on their way out. It's the last ditch effort. And I'm sitting in there. So the way it works is you always have to go to the blood work floor first, and then you have to go to your ultrasound gamma ray, x ray floor, and then you go to the doctor. So you're, but everyone there is either. Most people aren't coming out alive. They are. And it's, I'm sitting there and I'm, you know, I'm 49 and I'm one of the youngest. And I'm like, this is just awful. And at the time, the only, you couldn't really have anyone in with you because of COVID. And I was like, I mean, they're, I'm just like, Oh my, like one person next to me, this was the blood work floor was stage four lung cancer. And the other, this other lady next to me, she was older, probably in her eighties in a wheelchair. I don't even know she was alive. Like she was so gray. Cause her blood was, you know, it kind of comes to your core. And here I am 49 and this was on my first day, you have to go through all these appointments and I have a panic attack. I start crying. A couple of reasons, one, I was at the same exact age that my father was, he died. And then here I am again, and this goes back to the post traumatic stress disorder, because I didn't understand, because I talked to my psychiatrist, why I was absolutely having panic...