Life Conversations with a Twist
Join me once a week for a new interview with a local, badass woman who has an amazing story to tell. Join me in conversation so you too can gain inspiration and empowerment from these stories! If you love hearing about leadership, relationships, families, motherhood and navigating hard times, then tune into my podcast and share with others. If you love what you hear, share and tag me on Instagram at @heathernelson.life. You can also visit my website at heathernelson.life.
Life Conversations with a Twist
Entrepreneurial Trauma: Burnout Recovery for High-Achieving Women with Carmell Clark
“There is nothing wrong with you or any of us. We are absolutely beautiful, whole beings, just as we are, and we do not need to prove anything to anybody. You are everything already inside. You're the whole world.” —Carmell Clark
Life can look successful on the outside and still feel heavy, confusing, and isolating on the inside. Many women are carrying full lives while quietly questioning their direction, energy, and sense of self. This conversation names that tension without trying to rush it away.
In this episode, Transformational Coach Carmell Clark shares her journey through entrepreneurship, loss, reinvention, and entrepreneurial trauma. Her work with women leaders is shaped by decades of experience helping others reconnect with confidence, clarity, and inner stability when life no longer fits.
Listen when clarity feels distant and the pressure to hold it all together feels loud.
- Why women feel isolated even when surrounded by people
- The difference between work life balance and balancing life and work
- How confidence erodes despite competence
- Radical self acceptance as the foundation of real confidence
- Entrepreneurial trauma and loss of intrinsic motivation
- Rewriting the stories that keep us stuck
- Non negotiables as a tool for alignment
- Why nothing is wrong with us
Connect with Heather:
Episode Highlights:
01:33 From Wellness Center Founder to Global Coach
06:52 Women Leaving Corporate
12:59 Common Challenges Women Face— Isolation, Balance, and Confidence
20:36 Introducing Yourself Beyond Resumes
26:21 The Secret to Finding Balance: Understanding Non-Negotiables
33:10 Permission to Rest— Letting Go of Guilt
38:32 Managing Anxiety
43:22 Pandemic Business Impact— Loss, Reinvention & Grief
49:13 Healing the Entrepreneurial Spirit
53:23 International Retreats— Unlocking Transformation for Women
58:44 The Challenge of Taking Time for Yourself
1:02:26 Encouraging Women to Embrace Growth & Retreats
Resources:
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Connect with Carmell:
Carmell Clark is a master transformational coach and founder of the Center for Transformational Influence, with over 20 years of experience training leaders worldwide. She works with executives, entrepreneurs, and influencers to align vision, resolve conflict, and create meaningful personal and professional change. A serial entrepreneur and author, Carmell leads group programs, international retreats, and private coaching rooted in consciousness, human behavior, and power dynamics—helping clients make bold, sustainable shifts in how they lead and live.
Hey ladies, it's your host, Heather Nelson, welcoming you to another season of Life Conversations With A Twist. This is a space where we dive into stories of remarkable women who've conquered challenges and emerged stronger. Join me each week as we unravel tales of resilience, triumph and empowerment. These narratives aren't just stories. These are stories of inspiration, and I'm so honored to have the space to share them with you. Plus, I will be sharing my own personal stories of inspiration as I navigate starting my own business and achieving my own goals. So whether you're driving in the car or out moving your body, get ready for heartwarming stories and empowering conversations together. Let's raise a virtual toast to empowerment, because here at Life Conversations With A Twist, every story has the power to inspire. Cheers, ladies.
Heather Nelson: Hello everyone. Welcome to this week's Life Conversations With A Twist. I have the honor of having Carmel on. We just met, and I already know that this is going to be a fun conversation. A beautiful conversation. Thank you for being here today, and welcome to the podcast.
Carmell Clark: Oh, thank you so much, Heather. It's really a pleasure to be here. I'm excited to dive into your particular flavor of how you cast. We were talking about that, and you love that organic which, of course, I do as well. If it isn't just who we really are, that authenticity, and that realness, then you know why we would be spending the time. I'm really excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
Heather Nelson: Yes. So tell the listeners a little bit about who you are? Where do you sit in life? Where do you live? And then we're going to dive into the work that you're doing. I know I'm going to have a million trillion questions for you.
Carmell Clark: Well, I'm sure so much of that will come up as we're talking too. But I've been a coach for the last 25 plus years. And before that, I owned a Wellness Center for 20 years with my former wife, and became an entrepreneur. We started our whole venture when I was 20, 21 years old. We were in the block within three months, and had all of our startup costs paid off in the first two years. And my journey as an entrepreneur was born. I was working at a corporation at the same time, and I left that entirely when I was, I think 28, because it was sucking my soul dry. I tried consulting. I did consulting for a little while, and I just found that I wasn't doing what I love. So maybe this is going to tie into where we go, this tangent that we take. Because I was like, I was thinking, where am I going to go with this question you ask about, what's the twist in your life? And I didn't know. I have some different thoughts and ideas, but I thought I would just hear it as organic. So I guess what I would say is I stepped out of corporate and did my brick and mortar Wellness Center for about 12 years. And that took me into a number of different things, including the coaching work. I also have found, and I think this is true when I work with my clients and my groups, that we'll have things happen in our lives that we don't expect all the time. Things will come up, and some of them will just force us onto a completely different path. Or they'll force us to consider things in a different way than we ever have before. And I think I've had that happen so many times. But always through that, there is a through line.
There's a thread, what I call the golden thread. There's something going on that's leading us forward on the most genuine path we could be on in our lives. And we have to stop and figure that out. And when we go against it, everything gets worse. It gets harder. We get more unhappy and more unfulfilled, all of that kind of stuff. So I think that's kind of the general course my life has taken. And then I've had a series of events happen after that where I left all of that world, reinvented my entire life, my business. Everything went from brick and mortar offices to global business with my coaching work, and brought it into corporate leadership training working with executive women all over the world. And I guess probably the core passion for me is really advancing women. And what does that mean? That means so many different things. I had a conversation just this week with one of my clients working to help her advance herself by how she takes care of herself. She's an executive. Another woman I'm working with a client today, she's in Brazil, and her vision has been too small for who she is. And so she's been working with me to try and figure out how to expand her vision. So today, we had a huge breakthrough, which I was so excited about. Because she came in and she's like, I think I need to not just do this one thing. I need to duplicate that five times over. And I was like, oh, here we are. And she was lit up like Las Vegas. So advancing women for me is this really core passion. And I think what I'd probably say is my life has been one of advancing myself according to finding what is aligned and what's next. But among all the other really amazing things, my international women's retreats, traveling and living globally, having created location independence for myself with my work, the pandemic, when that hit, this is kind of the unpopular thing, but I was relieved because it took me off the hook of everything and everyone for a while.
Heather Nelson: Oh, my gosh. Some days I'm like, I wish we could go back to Covid. I would love to have nothing on my calendar. And then, oh, you can't even go anywhere. So now, you have to just figure it out at home, and three different experiences.
Carmell Clark: I'm so glad you understand. And I have dear people who lost loved ones, and so I totally hold that in my heart. I know for myself, I felt like what I try to do when I travel and work from other places in the world, people think, oh, she's not accessible. And they're like, oh, thank God. Everything gets quieter. And you need that break. But that also led me forward into the last five years and a number of personal losses that happened, as well as some huge business challenges, worse than, I think, probably harder than any I'd ever experienced in my life up to this point of being an entrepreneur. And the result of that was something I've never heard termed, but I came up with the term. And maybe somebody else did too, entrepreneurial trauma. That is now something that I recognize and am looking for when I'm working with entrepreneurs. Are we experiencing entrepreneurial trauma? And it's a real thing. Where it left me was this, I've always been driven and always had connection to my vision. Or if I wasn't connected, I was on the path to get there, and entrepreneurial trauma left me in this place where I couldn't connect at all. Everything was blank and fuzzy for me. Anyway, I just think it's kind of an interesting topic, and an idea that maybe if you want to, we can dive into.
Heather Nelson: Oh, I wrote down all these kinds of notes. It's so interesting how so many people that I've had, especially on my podcast, are women that I've met that are doing the work that we're doing. Whether that's coaching or consulting. Or we build our own empire, or whatever that is. All of us started from this corporate world of where we worked for someone else, and we hustled for someone else, and we made money for someone else. I mean, that was the breakthrough for me, like, why am I losing time with my family and stressing about things that I can't control for somebody else? I'd rather do that for myself. And so it's just so interesting how, as we grow, and especially in our business or in our personal world, all of these little things lead us to where we are today. And you're always in the mess of it. I'm in the mess of it like, okay, now, what's next? What's next? But it always leads you. And it sounds like we're on the same path where it always leads you in the right direction.
Carmell Clark: It does. I had somebody say to me, a client, just the other day. We're talking about the different classrooms of our lives. And being able to see, this relationship is a classroom for me. My early childhood was a classroom for me, and this job was a classroom for me. Being able to look at things instead of looking at them in this lens of something that happened to me or something that is me to be able to externalize it and say, oh, this is just a classroom, and I'm learning in it. And she said, but what if this is the wrong classroom? And it was this moment for me where I was like, whoa, I haven't gone into that question for decades. And the moment she said I was, I waited and I listened to her, and she finished her thought. And I said, darling, there is no such thing as a wrong classroom. No such thing. There can be really difficult classrooms. I've been through a couple of those in the last five years. I do not want to repeat, but I will tell you, there's no wrong classroom. And there's something really encouraging and peaceful about that.
Heather Nelson: Absolutely. I never thought of it that way, but you're totally right. I'm in a transition right now with my business. I started my business, I was like, okay, this is what I want to do. But because I didn't have that clarity at first, and I just started, and then I took on projects, and I took on clients that didn't fulfill me. This last year just been in this mess of, what am I doing? This is totally not what I want to be doing. So at the end of December, I cleared out my clients. I have zero clients at this point after December, which is a little scary. But I'm investing in now getting really clear about what it is that I want to educate people on, and what I want to feel my cup with. I don't want to take on projects and clients that don't align with my values. You get to that point where it's like, ding. And you're like, oh, my gosh, what have I been doing? Why is it like this?
Carmell Clark: Okay. I just have to commend you for that kind of courage, especially at this stage. I did that early on in my coaching work, right back when I think I was 30 years old, to actually do that with making these transitions to say, this is not aligned. This is not the right thing. And to complete the relationships, the work, the clients and all of that, to complete them with all the love and best intentions we have, and at the same time, to say very clearly, and I'm moving in the direction and figuring it out, giving myself the grace and the time to figure it out for exactly what's aligned for me, that is an amazing amount of courage, Heather.
Heather Nelson: I've had my hands in so many pots. Anybody who's followed me along my journey, I do women's retreats, which I'm actually interested to hear about yours. I do women's retreats, I have my podcast. I do consulting. But then I picked up different projects, so my name is kind of stamped all over. I own another business with my husband, and I'm constantly doing all of these things. And I finally got to a point where I'm like, I can't keep doing this. This is not sustainable. But I feel like every little thing that I've had my hands in has given me a lot of clarity of, again, what I want to do, and what I don't want to do. I always challenge people to try different things. I've always been like that. Everyone's like, Heather, you're always trying this, or trying that. But I'm like, I want to find the thing that fuels my soul. I know that I haven't found it yet, but I feel like I'm at least now on the right path to do it.
Carmell Clark: Well, that's the right direction to find it. And I have had my own experience with that, so I commend you so much. Because there's that saying, I didn't come up with it, but the universe of core is a vacuum. And so when you open the space, and you open it for the right reasons with those intentions inside, the things that start to come in become more and more closely aligned to who you are and what it is you want. I've been there myself, and it takes a lot of courage to open that big of a vacuum, so wow.
Heather Nelson: That's probably why I have so much anxiety right now because I'm like, there feels like so much weight. It feels good, but it's also scary, especially when you're the financial supporter of your family. You've built this Empire in your own home, right? And I'm like, oh, am I going to sustain this with absolutely zero clients? But I feel like the universe is going to work in the way it's supposed to, and something magical is going to come out of it.
Carmell Clark: It absolutely will. It absolutely will. I've been doing this for a long time. I've worked with so many women and men, both on their own like huge, courageous moments, making decisions like the ones you're making for the right reasons inside. And what comes of that is always just astonishing and incredible to me. And also, frankly, so much more highly successful. That's the other part about it. The more aligned we are to that purpose inside ourselves, however that wants to express, then our success comes through that, following that. I found it doesn't really look like what we expect. You already have a smile on your face. You're like, yes, I know this.
Heather Nelson: It's a messy middle, but I am so proud of the journey. I'm curious, so you work with women. But today, we're gonna talk about women, the women that you're working with right now. Is there a common thread or common place that they're stuck in right now? I know the world is a very ugly place. It's scary, it's unknown. Even after covid, people don't communicate the same way, and people are mean now. And are you seeing a common thing that women are struggling with right now? Are you seeing it all over the board from different things?
Carmell Clark: Well, it's a great question. First of all, as I think about it, as I just really kind of settle into the question, there are a couple of things that stand out to me. Maybe three things that stand out to me. One is isolation. Another is balancing life and work. And the third is confidence. Deep inner confidence. Those are the three things that really stand out. But I don't think they're new. I think they've been there. I just think that what the intersections are may change as life changes, and the world changes, all of that. What do I mean by that? So first, isolation. I would say, what I find with us as women is we have an enormous amount of pressure for how we're supposed to show up. And even if you've deconstructed it, like I have, it's really hard for it to get down to radical self acceptance, which is the base of the work I do, we're still up against it day in and day out. These are the expectations. It's as simple as the emojis I put on my text to make sure that somebody understands my feeling behind the words I'm putting into that text message. I don't want to be misunderstood. I'm constantly trying to make sure the relationships are good, that they feel good, all of that. We take on the emotions of the conversation, of the situations that we're in all the time as women. And because of that, I think we isolate ourselves a lot, or we take on all these responsibilities. And other people around us maybe don't take on even half the responsibilities we've taken on that's isolating by itself. There's no way around it. And how do we move ourselves out of that way of thinking out of that story? I think it's really important. How do we move ourselves out of that story of isolation? So I want to mention that.
And then the next thing is the balance of life and work. And you notice that I put it in that order. What you see out there is work life balance. And I get kind of angry when I hear work life balance because I'm like, no, no, no, no. It's balancing life and work. That's the right order of things, in my opinion. Because I've lived and worked all over the world, in the United States, like nowhere else on the planet, we are so imbalanced. When I land back in the country, every single time when that plane touches down, I feel this wave like a tsunami behind me just pick me up and start shoving me forward at a thousand miles an hour every single time. It's just very violent against our central nervous systems. That's what I can say about it. We, as women, want to be successful. The race has been laid out. We're trying to make our place and compete, or form our success within a context that wasn't created around the realities of women's lives. Let's be honest about that too. I educate women and help them to recognize that the problem doesn't lie with them when it comes to this. The problem needs to be solved in the context of our workspaces and our relationships, where our relationships need to carry more equal weight. All the time that we tacitly take on gender roles, that ends up putting the majority of the responsibility or the everyday work on our own shoulders. Why? Why? Why? Why? Why does that need to be the case?
We are not somehow better suited or capable. There are amazing, wonderful single fathers out there, and they're doing it. So it's conversations with partners and making sure like, let's figure out how to make this more equitable in those ways, on the personal side, and then on the professional side. I walk women through the conversations with their employers. Or if they are an employer, or if they're an entrepreneur, walk them through those conversations of how to tell the story from the perspective of, I'm going to create balance in my life, and my work is a part of that. And once we start to tell the story differently, the reality changes. It's as simple as that. I tried an experiment years ago because I was constantly saying to people, I'm so busy. I'm so sorry we haven't gotten together. I'm just crazy. It's crazy, crazy busy, busy, crazy, crazy busy, coming out of my mouth constantly. And I stopped one day and thought, this is not the life I want. I don't want a life that is so frantic and frenetic that I can't experience it every day.
Heather Nelson: It shakes your nervous system up, makes you nervous. You're just like, ah. You're so angsty all the time because you feel that busyness, right?
Carmell Clark: And you're constantly chasing to make sure that no balls get dropped, and everybody's happy and all of this stuff. It's awful. And so I decided to try this experiment where I started telling myself the story, I've got all the time in the world. I've got all the time. And when I would answer people or talk to them, I would say things in a different way. I had to stop and think about what my phrases were now, because they weren't going to be the same ones I'd been using for a long time. So I came up with these phrases of, everything's just moving forward at its perfect pace, and I'm able to do what I need to. I'm just taking really good care of every single thing. I created a different narrative. And as I started to do that, I noticed within about two weeks, my whole experience of my life had smoothed, everything fitting into its place, and I wasn't running or chasing. And I thought, is that really possible? Obviously, I don't have children, so I'm going to just acknowledge that I don't have children. But maybe there's still more possible than what we know.
Heather Nelson: And it's funny that you say that, because I speak a lot around networking, and how you network, and how you show up to network, and how you communicate with people. And like, I fall guilty of this all the time, but it's something that I try consciously to not do. When you see someone, you're like, oh, how have you been? And they're like, I'm so busy. And as a potential client, or possible vendor partner, or whatever that looks like, you're like, I don't want to hear that. I don't want to hear that. Oh, my God, I'm so busy. Because you want to know, do you even have time for me at that point? So I'm the same way, I'm like, how do I re say that? I'm like, I'm great. Or things are great. It's really hard to do because we're constantly like, are we really that busy? Yes, we're all busy. We all have stuff. But why does that have to be the first thing out of your mouth?
Carmell Clark: Why does it have to be? It's like we have to prove our worth and our value through how busy we are. I don't think that's effective for us as women. I can't speak to men's experience because I'm not a man. But I know as a woman, we put so much on ourselves all the time that I don't think it helps us to front every conversation with that story.
Heather Nelson: Well, it's even like introducing yourself. Another thing I'm working on is when you meet someone and you're like, oh, I'm Heather. I am a podcaster, and I own two businesses. You read off your resume. But I forget where I heard this, probably a podcast. They said, you should really lead with who you want to be. I am a connector. I am the community connector. It's like saying who you are as a person, because that's the way you want people to remember you. But not because you're a resume of stuff. And again, you're just showing them how busy you are.
Carmell Clark: It's either we're showing how busy we are, or we're walking into that game of having to prove ourselves in some way with the resume. And I think quite a while back, I came to that recognition for myself that I was not going to play that game. I'm much more interested like you when we hopped on this call. We're just more interested in, tell me who you are. I want to know who you are. What you do is also interesting to me, but it's not who you are. I know the difference, and that's why I'm asking the question that way.
Heather Nelson: I love it. Okay. And the third thing is confidence. And we all know as women, we all struggle with confidence.
Carmell Clark: But why? We are so freaking amazing. We are so competent. We are highly competent. So why do we really struggle with confidence? And this has been a core part of the work that I do. I built a two year self awareness into a self realization curriculum. It's not self help. It's not even personal development. They'll do self help, and they won't even know the self that they're helping. They have no idea who that is. And so this is really a framework that I built to bring people into a relationship with themselves, engagement with themselves based on the work that I've done with myself and with my clients over all these years. And it's incredibly powerful. Very deep, very dense. I've had people go through so many other trainings out there, and they come back and they're like, oh, my god, Carmell, I've never done anything that was so rigorous and so deep. And they're like, all right, just hang in there. It's gonna be okay. But why? And I'll say this, Heather, and I think you feel the same way just based on our conversation so far. Inside of us, there is no problem at the core of who we are. We actually love and accept ourselves 100%, so how do we get down to that point? And that's the confidence I'm talking about. I don't want people to get competent based on their resume or their accomplishments. I don't want people to base their confidence on who they know and who knows them. All of those things are very surface compared to the confidence of self that says, I don't need to prove myself to anybody, because I accept myself completely. That radical self acceptance is the true center of confidence inside of us as human beings. And for women, we are constantly, the pink tax is a perfect example. The pink tax is that tax that's put on women's products, and it's for real. It's that invisible tax where women's products are priced significantly higher than men's products because we are sold a constant diet of inadequacy and not enough.
Heather Nelson: I did not know that was an actual thing.
Carmell Clark: It's an actual thing. Any of your listeners can get online, look up the pink tax, and you will find the research behind it. The articles out there. We are fed that constant diet of inadequacy and insufficiency, and what are we doing to fill it. We're constantly being sold. You need to buy this, so you need to buy this. You need to buy this. You need to buy this. There's so many layers, and then you put on top of that these cultural layers of, if you're a mom, right? Most women are moms. You have the mom guilt automatically because you love these little people so much, and you want everything to be perfect for them, and everything that's the best for them. Then on top of that, you are a person with your own hopes and dreams, and your desires, and likely your own career, all of those things, or your own job. There's so much on us. We are trying to show up with these expectations that are external to us, and there's no wonder that we come into a crisis of competence all the time as women. So I'm passionate about helping women start to recognize and put into their proper boxes. Oh, this belongs here. This is not me. This belongs here. This is external. This belongs here. It's on a personal level. Here's an internal piece I can work on that I have control over, and the rest of it doesn't have anything to do with me. I am going to redefine my reality to really recognize that my competence is based on something internal, and I'm not validating myself externally on an ongoing basis anymore. If all the women in the world did that, what would happen?
Heather Nelson: We would be powerful
Carmell Clark: The last of the party of how competent and incredible we are.
Heather Nelson: All that would be running for president is all these amazing women, and we're here to show up because we were confident. And we know what we can do.
Carmell Clark: We know what we can do. Absolutely. And I see that the world is over, with women everywhere. Not just the US, but everywhere. So that's what I see as the common threads to answer your question of where I am with women, what comes up frequently all over with women.
Heather Nelson: And based on those three things, the work that you do is help them get clarity on that, and how to move through that.
Carmell Clark: Yes, that's exactly right. There's so much there. Obviously, that's a perfect little statement to say, yes, these are core parts of the work that I do with women. There's no magic pill that is balancing your life and your work. And this is one thing I will add in today, because I think it's so important and powerful. It is getting clear on what your non-negotiables are. That's where I start with women with their balancing life and work, if you need to create a list of your own non-negotiables, personally and professionally. And on personal, that can't just be your family, or your children, or your partner, whatever. It also has to be yourself, your person. So getting all those non-negotiables clear, and then looking at them to see where the contradictions are, where the challenges to each other are, and then we can work on those challenge areas. Work on the challenge areas for the non negotiables. Sometimes, women will do the list and they'll realize, oh, that just reoriented me, and I'm good. I've got it. Now that I have my feet on the ground of my non negotiables, I know what to say no to. I know how to not play somebody else's game, but play my own game. This kind of thing. So I would say the non-negotiables are important. And then the second part of that is the balancing of life and work is not an arrival. It will not be an arrival. So please, if you're a woman listening to this, or you know women and you've listened to this, please share this message. Please, please. The balancing of life and work is not an arrival. It is a continual daily engagement. It's a process. And we can't beat ourselves up for a whole life of feeling like we're out of balance when that balance is a dancer, balance every day that we do. It's not a scale. It's balanced like a dancer, right? We're constantly in movement, so we're just focused on today, and how do I best balance today? That's all I'm going to worry about. Let go of this idea of arriving into a life that's balanced life and work.
Heather Nelson: I love that. I love that because it is so true, because some days are heavier than others. If you have a heavy work day and you're like, oh, my gosh. So the next day is a little lighter, but then you're hopefully getting a massage somewhere, or taking a walk, or doing something for yourself. So I agree. I think I'm on board with that, for sure.
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Heather Nelson: I think about it, and I'm going to ask this question. Because literally, I'm on a group text with a bunch of women, and we're in a fantasy football league. We're football fans when we try to be, and I hadn't heard from anyone in a while. And so today, I text everyone. It was like, hey, just checking in. Everyone's been kind of quiet. And I would say most of them are like, we've been in a rut. We're in this rut, including myself. I was like, I'm literally in a rut, and I'm trying to dig my way out. What's some advice or some easy tips that somebody could take away just to either change your mood or shake things up a bit? I'm curious to hear what your thoughts are around that besides, get a coach.
Carmell Clark: Obviously, we all need coaching, for sure. Somebody in our corner who's completely advocating for us and helping us see outside ourselves. Yeah, that's such a really great question. Really great question, Heather, because all of us have this experience. So if you're coming across that, there are a number of things that come into my mind. The first thing that I want to say is, what I will always say, our own hearts know how to lead us to what we want and need if we listen and pay attention to them. So instead of fighting my heart, I need to just stop and take some deep breaths, create some quiet for myself, and listen and ask myself, ask my own heart, what is it that I need? Is it a massage? For me, it's the solitude I need. I need to balance all of the giving in my life with solitude. So what does my solitude look like? It can look like binging a Netflix series, or getting on my exercise bike, or going on a hike, or even just catching up with somebody that I adore over drinks in the evening, something like that. Reading a book. There are so many different ways that I can show up to what I need. Sometimes, it's a lot more sleep.
Heather Nelson: So here's the thing, I just came off a retreat, and one of the things that was talked about is that we don't give ourselves permission to do those things. We don't give ourselves permission to binge watch all day on a Sunday Netflix. Feel guilty, and then we're like, oh, my god, we got to get up. We have to go do dishes. There's always these things that are constantly like, we have to do this, but to give ourselves the space to just be.
Carmell Clark: And sometimes, we need to check out. I went years and years without watching movies or anything like that. And then I had a time where I was like, no, I need to check out for a while. And I thought, Carmell, you shouldn't be doing that. You can use your time so much more productively. But I recognize that there are seasons of our lives, and there are times and ways that we just need to check out. And if we're judging ourselves, then we're really getting in the way of the value of that time for checking out instead of helping ourselves with it. So I agree with you, and I'm glad you said that. Judgment gets in the way of that being effective for us, instead of our just being like, yeah, I'm giving myself what I need. This is what I need. So I would say the first thing is listening to what the heart is saying, because the heart knows best. Our hearts know. I'm going to share this because I think it's a great little story. I'll try to tell you about it really quickly. I owned a Wellness Center, did massage therapy in my past life for a while, and I know massage really well. I've probably gotten tens of thousands of massages in my life. When I lived in Bali, I realized my body didn't want to massage every day. It couldn't handle that, so I was getting them every two to three days instead.
Heather Nelson: I'm sorry for you.
Carmell Clark: I know, right? So sorry. So I went to get this massage. This is years ago, and I went into the place I always went, the center. The woman who knew me really well said, Carmell, I'm so sorry. We only have this one therapist available, and I know she's not going to be what you want. That's all we have. And I said, no, that's fine. I really need bodywork. She's like, I really don't think it's going to be good. And she said, people don't generally like her massages either. And I was like, I really need bodywork. So I said, I'll take it. And she's like, okay. I go, and walk in, the woman comes in, and she's asking me questions about what I need to focus on, and she doesn't listen to my answers. As I'm answering her, I noticed that she's not really paying attention, which is a big red flag when you're going in to get bodywork.
Heather Nelson: She's about to do her own thing.
Carmell Clark: And then she tells me, you know what to do to get ready, and leaves the room. And I get on the table, and I'm face down. She walked back in, and I had told her that I wanted to start on my scalp. I didn't want to start on my back. I want to start on my scalp. She uncovers me and starts on my low back. She wasn't paying attention. And I kid you not, at that moment, she starts crunching hard candy in her mouth.
Heather Nelson: No bedside manner at all.
Carmell Clark: My gosh, it was loud, crunch, crunch, crunch as I'm laying there. And I don't like her technique as she started it on my low back, which is really tight. I needed her to start with my head. So she's doing all of this, and I'm just like, I can just feel my frustration and my anger just rising. I had started a new practice in my life about three weeks before this where I decided, instead of trying to control everything, which I tend to do in my life, I was going to just stop and say, I open myself to receive all my heart desires. I open myself to receive all my heart desires. And literally let go of everything. Just let go, and just keep reciting this mantra. And in that moment where everything's just amping inside of me, I just stopped. Took a deep breath and started my mantra. I opened myself to receive all my heart desires, and I just kept repeating it over and over again. And what happened next was extraordinary. Her touch changed, and it actually started to become really good. She must have finished her candy because the crunching stopped. Thank God. And then she started to move and listen to my body, and I let go and just continued my mantra. And I ended up having one of the best massages I've ever had, so kind of magic, I think.
Heather Nelson: I totally believe in that stuff, because I've even had it. I'm about to get on a podcast, and when you're not feeling up for it, you're not feeling yourself, it's always the best podcast. Or you go to an event and you're dreading going because you're super tired and you don't want to be social, and you get there and you're like, oh, my god, I just made the best connection. Or I just met the next person that's going to move me in the right direction. But sometimes, you just have to, again, release the control, release the thoughts in your head, and just do the thing.
Carmell Clark: And if you add in that heart centeredness, I open myself to receive all my heart desires. So thinking about all of your women who are expressing that they're in a rut, our hearts know the way to our happiness and our fulfillment. They're the truest voice. So if I am stuck in a rut, I just step back and ask myself that question, and I start really just trying to open the door of my heart as wide as I can. Where is it leading me? Where does it want to go? The next thing that comes is going to take me on the path to get me out of that rut. I work incredibly well. It works like the terrible massage.
Heather Nelson: I do have to say, I woke up today with major anxiety. I could feel it. It made me feel sick. I was just like, oh, my, okay. I just got done with the retreat. One of the things they said is to start doing some meditation, or some grounding breath work. And I'm like, okay. I got my YouTube, I put my earphones on, I came here in my office, I sat right in this chair behind me, and I just let myself do it. And I slowly could just feel it being released. And then I went for a walk, and I was like, there we are. There she is. Sometimes it's just about moving that energy out. That was like an easy physical thing that happened for me. But sometimes, you just have to take yourself out. You're like, I don't want to go for a walk. Or this feels weird to sit here and quiet, but it truly helped.
Carmell Clark: It does. And you listen to yourself, and you trust the things that were there, which I think is such a crucial part of that whole story you just shared. Anxiety is a real thing, and it happens all the time with all of us. But I remember reading or listening to an audio recording, Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now. And he said something at the beginning of that book that struck me at a time in my life where I was experiencing 24/7 anxiety that I'd never had in my whole life. My life had ended. I lost almost everything that was precious to me, and I had to start all over. And the anxiety was so complete and so constant. I couldn't get out from under it. When he said, there's no problem in the present moment. I found myself doing this thing. And obviously, people are gonna be listening, not watching, but I'll kind of describe it where I would bring my hands up like I was parting curtains in front of me, and I would push the curtain of the future to the side, and push the curtain of the past to the side to bring myself, as I took a breath, into just the present moment of being. Push the future to the future, push the past to the past. There's no problem in the present moment ever. It doesn't matter how dire a situation is. It doesn't matter if we are next to a loved one who's going to pass, and that moment happens. There's no problem in the present moment. Being right here, right now, and breathing like that breath just brings us into that presence, like you just talked about.
Heather Nelson: Yeah, thank you. One of those hot topics that came up tonight, I was like, this is the perfect person to ask.
Carmell Clark: We're all in it. Well, there's one other thing I wanted to add with the rut thing. The other thing that I absolutely recommend is something that's really powerful. It's a story of deconstruction, reconstruction. What is the story that I'm telling about this? Am I telling myself a story that I'm in a rut, and therefore I keep staying in the rut? Or is there a story I'm telling that puts me in a rut? And I need to examine that. And there are two things. How do I find contradictions to it? Let me look for the contradictions to being in the rut, and then let me look at context. Well, is there a reason that I have a lot of grief inside, and it feels like I'm in a rut? Or is there a reason I'm so exhausted and that's why I feel like I'm in a rut? Or is it just a fallback position because I'm holding myself back from what I really want to do, and I need to just kick myself in the ass and go for it?
Heather Nelson: You nailed it. Usually, that is what it is for me, but I have the power to change it. I have the power to change my perspective on it. I'm the one that's going to move it forward. I'm the only one that's going to get me out of the rut. No one's going to just knock on my door one day and say, here you go. You're out of it. It's like, you truly are the one that has to work through it, to get out of it.
Carmell Clark: And I think telling the story even with the same facts, telling it differently can actually change everything. It really can change everything. You know what you just talked about. I'm going to tell the story differently. I'm going to tell the story where I take time for myself. I'm going to breathe, I'm going to go out for a walk, I'm going to do these things, and the story changes. And all of a sudden, energy is moving.
Heather Nelson: Okay, you alluded in your journey that you had a huge entrepreneurial trauma, and I want you to talk about it. Because I work with a lot of business women, business owners, or I know ones that are struggling with certain things, and I say this to myself, there's something that happens because there's some kind of learning or some kind of experience. I'm dying to hear what happened to you and how you were able to move through it, because I know people listening are probably sitting in that same space. Or there's gonna be a time that they do, and I would love to hear how you got through that.
Carmell Clark: Well, okay, so I'll try to give the quick facts of the situation so we can get into the meaty stuff. My business dropped by more than 50% when I went into the pandemic. So many people lost so much business, right? But even harder than that was that my business model, not only could I not keep it going because it required traveling, working with groups and all of this stuff all over, so it became much more difficult to do the model that had been working so well. Impossible, actually. So that affected it. But then after we were coming out of the pandemic, that model didn't work anymore, and I had to start testing and finding the new model. And one thing after another just wasn't working. Meanwhile, a couple of things were coming through and working on the corporate level, and that looked like it was promising and going to jump forward. And then all of that seemed to fall out from under my feet as well with all the work that I have been doing. So my business not only dropped by 50%, it dropped even further. It came up again, and then dropped even further in the years after. But then that kept me from relocating to Portugal at that point in time. And then my dad passed away, and I was here, not there, and that was a very important thing because I ended up carrying my family in that period from the moment he went into hospital. And after that, I'd been single for 15 years, and it was unexpected that I would remain single for the rest of my life in one form or another. But I ended up, in that same year, meeting this person randomly, and ended up falling in love, and being in this amazing relationship.
And then fast forward, things start to move and start to pick up. I guess what I would say is there were so many different things that happened that caused me to be in a situation where not only the loss of revenue, but the forced trust walk. And I've done a lot of trust walks. I have flung myself off the cliff and built the plane on the way down multiple times. So at first it was like, oh yeah, I know how to do this. This is fine. But then the plane kept not coming together that I was building over and over, and over, and over, and over. Because if it had, perhaps maybe this is kind of the picture I can see right now at this point in my life, I would not have been in the right place at the right time for some very key things that happened. And that's really a consolation to me, but it doesn't. And this is the thing, it does not erase the trauma of me having been such an experienced entrepreneur and finding myself in a place where all of that experience was not producing any traction on the ground. And it cost me so much that it made me really angry. I was really angry at the universe for quite a while, maybe still a little bit. Nobody wants to blow through their savings because they're having to figure it out. But the truth is, the honest truth is that when we are, again, I would check in, do I need to change everything? What's the path? Like all of that. And there was no change on my path. I just had to stay put. And that didn't make any sense to me. And I think that it will continue to bring more sense as the years go by, as time goes by.
Zora Neale Hurston wrote, there are years that ask questions and years that answer. And I think I am in that kind of an art with this, but I'm going to come back to this entrepreneurial trauma idea. I want to recognize what it looks like. It looks like this sense of disconnection from your work and your business, and you're trying to get connected to it, and your heart just can't connect. Your brain struggles to connect to, and so you're trying to put together the marketing campaigns, or you're trying to handle your social media, or you're trying to put together proposals for clients, or whatever it is that you're doing, and you find that even if you can do it, it takes so much more effort for you to do it than normal. You don't feel that intrinsic motivation. I think one of the key factors in entrepreneurial trauma is that our intrinsic motivation, which is what drives an entrepreneur, all of a sudden has bottomed out. And I came to recognize that intrinsic motivation. The spark or the force inside the blood of being an entrepreneur, and it's like the adrenal system. When you use up your intrinsic motivation to stay in the game when you're not getting things to work over and over, and over again, and you put everything in, and you keep doing it, you burn out your intrinsic motivation just like we burn out our adrenals. And what happens when you burn out your adrenals? You have to full stop. A few nights of good sleep is not going to rebuild your adrenals when they get burned out. Or landing a huge, great contract, those don't solve entrepreneurial trauma. What we're having to do is really do the work of healing ourselves first, and then healing our businesses. And the path is not a linear path, for sure. So is this ringing any bells?
Heather Nelson: I pretty much think you just identified where I'm sitting right now in my life, or my career, because that's how I feel. I'm like, I know I need to do the work. And I'm just like, okay, it's on the to do list, and it keeps getting moved to the, you know what I mean? It's like, okay, I need to just sit down and do it. And I'm like, I just have been struggling with it. I know I need to, but I also know that I have personal things that I need to work through first to get the clarity to do that. So yes, I resonate with all of that.
Carmell Clark: Thank you. Thank you for sharing that with me too. Because when I hit the nail on the head, I was actually in, so my organizational director, she's also a consultant. She works with a number of different clients, and she's brilliant at what she does. And she does a year end planning for the coming year, but her planning is very different. I do that with my clients, but not in the same way she does. You go through because she's an efficiency expert based in heart and soul, and how you operate. You need to create your business around how you operate. So she does this year end thing. And what I found as I was going through her year end program, trying to do this planning is I would look at her prompts and her questions, and my eyes would glaze over. So it's the very thing you're talking about. I could not get into it, and then I'd show up in the groups and everybody's just sparking, sharing and everything. And I am like, yeah, yeah, there's no heartbeat. I can't make it up. I can't be fake to save my life. So there's no making anything up. I would just sit quietly, which is not like me at all, obviously, as we're sitting here. But I just sat there and I was at a loss. I was showing up to the thing, and I had nothing to give. There was nothing there. And then finally, one day, I was just like, okay. I just jumped in, and I pulled off all of those expectations I had on myself and just said the thing that was there. And as I said it, I just find myself staring at these pages and the prompts, and I cannot answer the questions. And I actually started to say it out loud. That was when, all of a sudden, out of my mouth came. I have been through so much in these last years, and I am really struggling with entrepreneurial trauma. I said the term, and I'd never heard it before. I looked it up, but I couldn't find it anywhere. I was like, oh, my God, this is it. And it came out of my mouth, and I felt like, oh, that's it. There's not something wrong with me. I thought there was something wrong with me. I kept trying to force it. But instead, I had to stop and recognize that I work with my clients who've been through trauma. Stop forcing it. You cannot force.
When somebody is dealing with trauma, you stop and listen. You ask questions, and you listen some more, and then you find what is the way that it will move forward on its own. And then you start to trust that, and follow that with them. Well, that's what I had to do with myself. So fast forward a year's time, right? And things are really starting to move again. And because I stopped forcing, I stopped putting all these expectations on myself, and I instead just started grieving, and I started being honest about what had happened and not expecting. Well, here's another part, not putting on myself that there was something wrong with me, or that I had failed. Because those are the other two lies that we, as women, do all the time. Oh, there's something wrong with me. Oh, I failed. I am a failure. After all these successes, suddenly none of that matters, and I'm just an abject fit like it doesn't exist. There's no such thing. And so once I was able to start to listen to, work through these things and do the work that I needed to do, everything started to heal, and I was able to start to have traction. And now, I'm at that point where those prompts are exciting again, and that's where your adrenals have healed. The adrenals of your intrinsic motivation have healed because you're excited to be able to engage in those conversations, and be able to build the things that you need to build, so I think it's so good.
Heather Nelson: That was beautiful. That was great. I love that so much, because I know that will resonate with so many entrepreneurs right now, because we all get to that point where we're like, hey, what's next? It feels like I hit the end of the road. And you're like, or you have to pivot. We'd love that word, but we have to change what our business looks like based on the economy, or based on what the needs of the clients are, and those kinds of things. And so you gave me a lot of clarity.
Carmell Clark: I'm so glad. Thank you. I'm so glad.
Heather Nelson: Which is gonna roll into my next question about your retreats. You do international retreats. I do like local retreats, and I would love to get to a point to go to one. I want to attend an international retreat because I hear, especially in Bali, that they're very beautiful. But I want to hear what you do. And then my next question to follow up is, most women I talk to know they need retreats, but they have a hard time paying for it, or they have a hard time walking away from their family or their businesses to do it. I want to hear why you think that they need to make the investment.
Carmell Clark: Great questions. Fantastic questions, so let's make sure we don't lose any of those things you just said. So first of all, I developed these retreats because I, myself, was in a place where I'd mentioned it earlier, everything in my life had fallen apart, and I had to start from scratch and rebuild. And in the process of about two and a half years into that timeframe where there was no spark for me, suddenly there was a spark, and that spark put me on an airplane to Paris for the first time in my life with a one way ticket and no plan to come back if I decided not to. I had everything tied up. I did come back weeks and weeks, and weeks later, but what happened in that experience for me was recognizing because I didn't have a plan. I showed up knowing where I was going to sleep for the next five days. That was it. And then after that, I was figuring it out as I went. So here I am in this state, and as I did as I literally just moved forward step by step in this terrifying and exciting journey. And this was back before phones actually worked in Europe, and Wi Fi was scarce. It was just crazy. But here I was in this experience, and I guess what really happened was that I found this part of myself that was so big inside that had been there all my life, and it was finally met, and that needed to happen, and it blew my creativity wide open. So I came back and reinvented all of my work, my business and my business model into what it is today. There was an early version of it.
So when I was on this first experience, I had this chance encounter with this couple from Big Sur, California, husband and wife in their late 20s. They did retreats where he taught writing, and she taught yoga and art. And I was like, you can do that? Does that exist? And my little voice inside said, Carmell, you're going to lead retreats. And then on my second trip a year later, I stayed in a place in Italy that was just random out of the blue. I was in Rome, and I saw friends of mine traveling to this place near by me. And I was like, wait, where is this? And I ended up going there because, of course, I travel without a plan so I can change on a dime and go wherever I want. So this was the learning process. I went there and met the people where I would start holding my Italy retreats, the first retreats I held. So all of this happened. I've held retreats in India, Bali. So I guess the thing that I want to say is I developed these because I found, as a woman, that I belonged in the whole world. And I saw that as women, we don't know that until we do it. I want women to feel and know themselves belonging to that big of a space, the whole world. And when you know that, then you walk back into your life, into your family, into your relationships, into your business, into your career, you walk back in with all the parts of you expanded massively. There's no way that you don't change. And as you walk back in, you start to shift your life to match all of the bigness that you are inside. That's what I want women to really see, because we're so used to doing it for everybody.
And this leads me into your other questions. In not doing it for ourselves, we have cut off the perspective of who we are to a great degree, and we really need to expand that perspective. And my adventures, I think that I would call them more adventures than retreats. But my adventures are specifically carefully curated, but so open and open-ended for adventure that women are able to discover and know themselves to a global degree for their time spent. The stories I could tell you about what comes from women coming on these adventures and these retreats are extraordinary. They're just amazing. Anyway, so that's the quick version, or not so quick version of that. But what I will do then to tell you to answer your question about, women don't let themselves do it. They don't say yes when they should say yes. The top reason isn't financial. I have found the top reason is all the other responsibilities that they feel they have that they can't possibly walk away from for 14 days. It's not enough.
Heather Nelson: I can't even give a day to people. I'm like, it's just one day, literally, and your husband is like, take your kids to school. Like, can someone else take the responsibility for a minute?
Carmell Clark: That's crazy. That's the rewiring where we, as women, expect more of that equity in our lives. We expect more of the equity and responsibility that we deserve to have, so that we are supported. We deserve to be supported as women, and that's one of the things that I tackle or take on in these retreats or these adventures is, really coming into our own with how we choose to build our lives to be supported. Because we are supporting all the time, it needs to be balanced. We need to find that balance. It can't just all rest on us all the time as women. If we define our value and our worth according to how much we can carry and how much we do for everybody else, where's the other side of that? Where's our worth and value are worth being supported? Worth being carried also. And that leads me into the financial side of it. So one of the things I've always created with my retreats, I want them to be affordable, but I also want to create the most expansive experiences that women can have when they're there. So I work really hard to do that. Because I've traveled and learned how to travel, I can have incredible experiences without having to spend a ton of money. One of my clients leads amazing retreats, and she's done the same thing. She wants women to have the same kind of experience where you don't have to spend your whole year's income on a retreat, for example. So that all said, I make payment plans with my retreat participants ahead of time so that they can just pay a bit every month toward it so that when they go to the retreat, it's all done. It's paid. The biggest challenge then after that is the conversation with their partner.
Heather Nelson: Partners are always scared. They're like, you're gonna go and gonna come back a totally different person. I have to admit, I've never actually been to one. I've only hosted my own, but I come back a different person to me, a better version of myself. Some husbands, usually the husbands are like, oh, my God, you're gonna come back and you're--
Carmell Clark: You're not going to love me, you're going to leave me, you're not going to be invested in the family, or you're not going to do all the things in the family that I'm accustomed to. It could be any number of these things. I'm not going to know who you are, or you're not going to love me anymore. Really, for men, it comes back to more, you're not going to love me, like something's going to change. You're going to get clarity on something. In a sense, part of that clarity for a lot of women is we need more equity in our relationship. Let's just be honest about it. That's not a bad thing. That's actually a good thing, because it builds intimacy, it builds connection. And really, both people in the relationship benefit greatly from that. But what I would say is, for women who want to do these retreats, to talk to their partners, their husbands and say, I want you to find the thing too that you want to go do, and I want to support you doing that because we both are going to benefit from building ourselves, our relationship benefits. We should not be holding either of us back because we're afraid, because you're going to feel like it's unfair, or you're going to feel like we're spending that money on you, or whatever this story might be. Challenge it directly and say, why would we build a relationship around that kind of holding ourselves back and holding each other back? Why can't we build a relationship around supporting and encouraging the most powerful growth and expansion of each of us? Our relationship should be able to grow from that.
Heather Nelson: Right. Absolutely. And this message is to all the women who don't want to come to retreats.
Carmell Clark: It's to all women who want and they think that they can't. You're called to it. We all are called to it in one form or another, because we know it will bring us so much. Your retreats, local as they might be, are transformational. I can already tell that about you. So why would we hold ourselves back? And why do we have to excuse that kind of transformation and growth from our lives? Because we're afraid that somebody will be jealous of it. The people who love us should be supporting that, and we should be turning around, supporting them to find and pursue their things as well.
Heather Nelson: Oh, so good. Carmell, I swear to God, I could talk to you all day because I feel like there's so much we could talk about, but I do need to wrap up. You have given us so many little bits and pieces for us to lean into, to think about, to noodle about, to implement in our own lives. But what is the main message you want to leave the listeners with today?
Carmell Clark: I already know what that is, very clearly. There is nothing wrong with you or any of us. We are absolutely beautiful whole beings, just as we are, and we do not need to prove anything to anybody. So that's the message. If there's one thing I could do, every person on the planet I could spend time with, that's what I want. You are everything already inside. You're the whole world, and I want you to believe that. I want you to carry that forward every single day. That's what I want.
Heather Nelson: So beautiful, and such a beautiful way to end this podcast. Thank you so much for being here. I truly love this conversation. I feel so fulfilled. It was one of those days where I was struggling all day, and this is the best way to end it. So thank you again for being here.
Carmell Clark: Thank you, Heather. Thank you so much. I know you and I are going to know each other for a long time now.
Heather Nelson: Maybe I'll come to one of your international retreats.
Carmell Clark: I will welcome you with open arms.
Heather Nelson: I love it. Thank you.
Heather Nelson: I hope today's episode resonated with you. And if it did, don't keep it to yourself. Spread inspiration. Share this episode on your socials, and tag me. And if there's anyone in your life who can use a dose of encouragement, pass it along. Looking forward to continuing this journey of inspiration with you. Until next time, stay empowered and connected.