24. Rising Strong After Setback with Branding Maven Rachel Lynne Wall

When life threw branding strategist and serial entrepreneur Rachel Wall a curveball in the form of a devastating car accident and two autoimmune diagnoses, she emerged with a story of resilience that's nothing short of inspiring. Encountering the wake-up call of a lifetime, Rachel opens up about her journey through the physical and emotional aftermath, the lessons on the importance of being present, and how she breathed new life into the definition of success. We walk alongside her as she aligns her professional world with her deepest passions, post-diagnosis of fibromyalgia, and navigates the choppy waters of financial and personal upheaval with a spirit that refuses to be quenched. Her podcast, 'Pulp to Profit,' stands as a beacon for anyone longing to embrace their truth and evolve personally.

This episode peels back the layers of our identities, questioning who we are beyond our job titles and the impact our authentic selves can have on not just our careers but our families as well. It's a conversation that spans from the struggle of redefining oneself to the fulfillment found in honoring one's intuition. As Rachel and I unravel our stories, we extend an invitation to our listeners: join us in celebrating the power of personal change and the courage it takes to live a life true to who we are.

Connect with Rachel
www.rachellynnewall.com
IG @rachel.lynne.wal

Connect with Heidi
Work with Heidi
IG @realheidisawyer

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Checkout the Heart First Leadership Podcast with Ryan & Heidi Sawyer

Transcript

Heidi : 0:36

All right, welcome to the show. I would love to have you introduce yourself and let everybody know who you are.

Rachel: 0:43

Yeah, thank you so much. I'm truly honored that you had me on here. I know this space is one that takes a lot of intentionality and time to create in, and I'm really honored to be here. My name is Rachel and Wall. I am a branding strategist and serial entrepreneur that is a doer and beer of all the pretty things.

Heidi : 1:04

I love it and, yes, having taken a look at some of your website and the work that you do, it is all beautiful. So love it and really excited to have you here and on this show. It's all about the stories of reinvention and I find that in those stories that comes from usually a sort of wake-up call moment, a choice point moment, and I'd love for you just to drop everybody into what that moment was for you and kind of share your story from that place.

Rachel: 1:35

Yeah, absolutely. I remember sitting in the driver's seat. I was driving a GMC terrain and I just dropped my mom off at the Sanford Airport we live here in Florida and I remember she got out of the car, I turned on the GPS, I popped on a podcast and I was cruising and the next minute I opened my eyes and there was shattered glass all around me. My phone was flung on the other side of the car. I had, and I remember thinking I had this like vivid moment of Rachel don't move, don't do anything, but just breathe. You're here, you're conscious, so everything else is figureoutable, just breathe.

Rachel: 2:28

And within like 30 seconds I remember fire trucks and ambulances and the passenger in the other vehicle was just all kind of surrounding me. And I remember just the first thing I thought of after that moment was oh my God, who else is hurt? What is happening? Where am I? Who is involved? You know just absolute panic. And in that moment of panic I felt this inner, inner voice and inner being, just like just breathe. And that's what I did from the time they pulled me out of the car until I got to the hospital and of course you know the police officers and everyone is asking you what happened, and at that point it's like word vomit and you just start regressating everything that you remember, but the one constant thing from the time I opened my eyes and saw the glass until, honestly now, in every panic situation I've been in it, the thing that comes back to me is just breathe.

Heidi : 3:27

Wow, yeah, that's really powerful. We were chatting a bit before we hopped on and you were talking about this being where your feet are being present and that being a lesson that you learned through this experience and have taken with you. I'd love to hear kind of how did that accident become the catalyst for you to start creating change in your life?

Rachel: 3:55

Yeah, I was a hairstylist. That was my total identity. Prior to that crash, I had worked really, really hard in the sales and marketing arena and several different corporate positions, and my husband and I had met and I was doing marketing within his concert promotion company. We did that for a while and then I got to the point where I wanted this out, or safety net, or backup plan or something that was just mine. I wanted to create this thing from this very masculine kind of place of doing and, you know, for saying things, I had always known I was meant for this, this easy life, but I thought that in the process, you know, the way to get there was to work really, really hard for a really long period of time and then I could have it. And so I didn't believe enough in my sales and marketing abilities or really who I was as a person. And so I told myself, if I learn a tangible skill, then I will be enough and I will have enough to let things be easy. And that's what I was doing.

Rachel: 5:04

Up until the moment of that car crash, I my hair career, was at its peak. I was on my way up to teaching and moving into an educational role versus just being at the chair. I had, two weeks prior to that accident, signed a lease for a storefront space. We had just moved to Jacksonville, florida, from Indiana and my business partner and best friend and I had signed a lease literally two weeks to the day of the wreck Wow, and had planned on opening this boutique in salon. We had started painting, we had torn, you know, literally gutted the entire space and I was hit by a truck.

Heidi : 5:44

Wow, what a total just shake up of everything that you thought was the next step in your plan. And so, in the days after the accident, how did things start to unfold it? Did it take a while for you to realize I'm really doing what, what I meant to be doing here in this life, or there? I have more to offer, or I've been finding, maybe find, trying to find my value and other things.

Rachel: 6:18

Yeah for sure. The days so I had been diagnosed with fibromyalgia about two years prior to the wreck and in the days, you know, following the accident, the nurses and everyone at the hospital. I had a ruptured spleen, I had a ton of internal bleeding and it was a mess. I was in the hospital for a little while there in Sanford and the irony of all that is I was also hit by a major league baseball player.

Heidi : 6:40

Such a strange Like you can't make that weird Right, if you haven't written a book about this.

Rachel: 6:50

this would be really interesting. I remember the nursing staff and the doctor saying you're going to flare like you have never flared before because of the trauma that you went through and you need to not do anything for six weeks. And then, back in my mind, all I could think about was the money and how much we had just paid and we only had, you know, four weeks of included groups, you know, gratis rent or what have you and I knew that there was a time. It was like a ticking time bomb before we had to start paying, like there was a deadline there, and so I got out of the hospital and within 24 hours I was rolling pain and pain in yourles, because if you're not working as a stylist, if you're not working, you're not making money.

Rachel: 7:37

That is 110%, the God's honest truth, unless you are an educator or a salon owner, and I've never met a salon owner that can fully disengage. It's even my mentors that have been wildly successful and do take all these wonderful vacations and get to travel. They are on all the time. It's just part of the business and it was one of those moments where I pushed through and I think it was like a shock or traumatic response where it didn't hit me until February, when we opened, I started taking clients and my customer experience and customer service went down the tubes.

Heidi : 8:17

So how much timeline wise. When was the accident? What month? So the accident was November of 21.

Rachel: 8:25

Then that was February. We fully opened in February of 22, and I powered through the entire calendar year of 2022, but at the chair, eight to 10 hour days, I was the cash cow. It just was one of those moments where I realized, okay, the first realization was I have to hire people. I can't do this all on my own. So I started hiring stylists and I was networking. I was at every event that I could be at and I was putting butts in the chair. I was living my life like gun to your head where is your next sale or do or die situation? Where is your next client? Because if you don't have it, you lose everything. That is how I was living. Wow, and I did. I pushed through and I powered through, and it wasn't until June of 2022 that I ended up almost hospitalized again, and this time the diagnosis was it wasn't just a fibromyalgia flare. I was diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis and my hands were like this for about a week and a half.

Rachel: 9:33

Oh my gosh, and it was just one of those moments where it's like I was told by the rheumatologist you either stop what you're doing or your mobility. The expectancy for your ability to have to move and walk and hold a pencil and do your own hair and all of those things Make yourself a cup of tea is about 10 years, because you cannot keep going at the rate you're going.

Heidi : 10:00

So what was your first thought when you heard that from the doctor?

Rachel: 10:05

Well, I do hair for a living. My job isn't to look beautiful, it's to make everyone else look beautiful, and my first thought was oh my god, I can't hold a round brush anymore. I can't paint. That is what my entire career and entire existence had been built around, to the degree that I went through hair school pregnant twice. I missed the first really four to five years of my youngest kids' lives because I was at the chair and my kids grew up in a salon and that's all I knew. So for me to hear you have to stop. It's a choice between stop or walk.

Heidi : 10:49

And this was a major part of your identity at this point. So that had to be incredibly devastating. What were your next steps after that? Where did you go from there? From just, of course, being in shock and thinking, OK, from one diagnosis to then an accident and then another one. Now you're telling me I can't do the thing that I identify with, that I've given up and sacrificed so much for what happened next.

Rachel: 11:21

I well, first I think I hit my knees. It was one of those things where I connected more deeply in my prayer life than I ever had. I had felt like I had lost everything, and I had lost everything. I you know I'm speaking as someone who has filed bankruptcy my husband's filed bankruptcy. I've done without, I've been dirt poor, but in that moment it was, I felt like my entire being was literally pulled out of my hands and it, for the first time, wasn't about the money or wasn't about what we had or could have. It was about I have no idea who I am anymore.

Heidi : 12:06

OK, so where did you go from there?

Heidi : 12:08

Because we know that you're on this show because you've reinvented yourself and you've stepped into that. You stepped further into the truth of who you're here to be. So tell me what that? First, we kind of heard a little bit about what the sacrifice was right. I mean, you ultimately had to give up doing hair and give up that identity that you had adopted to be you right and your dream of the salon and and all of that. So what? What were your key lessons? How did you pull through that?

Rachel: 12:43

I think the first thing and it was really to understand and know that honoring my intuition is the greatest blessing I can give myself and when I don't do that, that is the biggest dishonor that I can do to myself. And I had had nudges all along. You know everything from the fibromyalgia diagnosis to my kids. You know running up and saying, mom, I don't want you to leave again, why do you have to go to Florida to do this? And instead of just listening, I picked up my family and I moved to Florida, thinking I wouldn't have to work or travel as much, and said I just found more and more local events and things to do and I just kept filling my calendar and not listening to truly what was happening around me. And it was.

Rachel: 13:32

It's weird, no-transcript. Through that accident and through that whole just I have. I have spaddled anxiety my entire life and that accident really gave me the freedom to take a step back, even in a moment of what should have been total panic, and reassess and realize I am here and I am supposed to be here and breathing and just taking that moment to just stop is okay, and sometimes that's the thing that gets us through is just to take the moment and stop, and so that's what I did. I got the psoriatic arthritis diagnosis and I stopped. I took two weeks off and I sat down with a poster board and magazines and a pen and I wrote out Okay, if this skill can't be my identity anymore, who am I and what can be my identity?

Heidi : 14:29

Yeah, and really just a chill, just picturing you with that kind of blank poster board like, okay, now where do I go? Because I've put everything I have into this, so now what?

Rachel: 14:41

Yeah, it was that piece of and I mean don't get me wrong like it honestly took me an entire year of a lot of reflective work and a lot of therapy and a lot of prayer to get to this place of playing. Okay, my identity is not in what I do, so if it's not in what I do, then what is it? And the thing that I've learned is it's in who I'm being, and it's not so much in who I'm becoming or what I, you know, want to be or any of those things. It's who am I right now and what is that essence? And what is that thing that makes me Rachel? And I tell my clients all the time, like, what is the thing that makes you you? And how do you? What can you do to allow yourself to be you just a little bit more? Because that's where the goal is for me.

Heidi : 15:30

Yeah, I love. I love what you're saying about it's. It is at that moment by moment, awareness of who, who we're being, and not necessarily all of the the doings of life and all of the things that we're striving for. But actually, you know, I say this to my clients all the time it's like I don't really care that much what you're accomplishing. Of course I want you to to have a worthy challenge and a goal, because it's what's going to create a catalyst for growth within you. But I care about your experience from moment to moment. I care about you, you know, being with your kids and looking them in the eyes and having that experience, and it sounds like that's kind of what came back to you. After all everything that you went through, you realized I'm kind of missing out on some things here. For sure. How was, how did that affect your family?

Rachel: 16:25

Oh, it's been night and day and I think that's the funniest thing, you know. I originally thought, okay, I'm going to go into this new venture slow, I'm going to take it back to what I I know to be true and what I feel like I. It's not a heavy lift, it's something I didn't feel confident in pursuing, but I knew that I could do it and it was one of those things that I could do it from home. I told myself I am going to put myself in a place where I can work out here. This is my pool.

Rachel: 16:54

I'm like I don't, I don't have to go in anywhere, I don't have to report to anyone, I'm not going back to a corporate role. I need to give myself the grace and space to create, and so I'm very blessed and that my best friend and business partner is a photographer. And we took it back to what we know and that's sales and marketing and content creation and all the things that we were doing for our business. We just started doing it for other businesses and I realized really quickly that, in just being who I am, I was organically taking all of the connections that I had made and all of those really like 18 months of networking and they became clients and then they referred people and it was like I made more money talking about spending time at the spa than I ever did trying to sell someone a haircut.

Heidi : 17:50

It was wild, and what's so really unique about your story is that you sat down. You know you're a creative person and that's who you are. You're, by nature, a creative, you know a creator. We're all creators in our own way but you're a visually creative person and you sat down with this poster, board and magazines and it's so interesting that that ends up, you know, becoming your path is taking the sales, knowledge and the marketing and the things that you had done before and all that networking that you had done, and then you're rolling it into this really beautiful offer that you can, you know, help other women specifically to, to find their voice and to see what that looks like for them. I just think it's a really talk about following your intuition.

Rachel: 18:43

Thank you. It's something that I felt like, okay, I know it's there, but there's always someone, more than something, that you know, whether that's more spiritual or more or prettier or whatever that is, I was not enough, in whatever capacity, to not really fully accept that, that those intuitive judges were, you know, divine and they were meant for me and I need to do something with that, whether that's actor, pause or whatever. But just to you know, acknowledge it, and I got to this place where it's like, oh, my word, this whole time I've been listening to someone and finding external validation and and seeking advice from people who have never went where I'm trying to go and wondering why it's not working and I don't know. I woke up and really quickly realized that by saying yes to me and by truly listening to the feedback that I've been given, you know, internally, choices became a lot easier to make and they became much more aligned and the outcomes became so much better.

Heidi : 19:55

Yeah, yeah, I love that and I'm just so glad that you're out in the world doing the work that you're doing now, because so many times it's hard for us to see, we don't see how even the things that happen in our lives that are. You know, we would never wish upon anyone else a diagnosis and accident, you know, having to give up a business that you've worked so hard for all of these things, when we look back, we can see how those dots connected and we can see how each of our experiences, built upon the last and having done, you know, the promotion with your husband's business and all the networking that you did and all of the little pieces along the way, were just breadcrumbs that were leading you towards what you're doing now. And that's, I think, the important part is that's not the end of the story. You're still continuing to evolve and grow and what you're going to be doing 10 years from now may be totally different.

Rachel: 20:55

Yeah, and I think that's the beauty I think could serve for everyone is that you don't you don't have to assign permanence in tasks and you don't have to assign an identity in a skill. You are who you're exactly made to be and it has nothing to do with the actions that you take. It has to do with you are, and it sounds so wooey, but it's true, it's been my truth, mm-hmm.

Heidi : 21:22

Yeah, I feel that A couple questions that I love to ask my guests, and one of them is what's one piece of advice that you would give to your younger self? Oh gosh.

Rachel: 21:37

The most impactful thing, I think, that I could have heard very early on would have been to not trust the girl in the mirror unless she was saying nice things.

Heidi : 21:53

Yeah, that's a mic drop right there. Yeah, and what age did you really need to hear that message?

Rachel: 22:01

I remember being in the fifth grade. Our school system decided that fifth graders should be in middle school, which I think is a I would riot if my child had to go to middle school.

Heidi : 22:13

I have a fifth grader right now, so I'm just trying to picture that.

Rachel: 22:16

No it's a mess, but I remember sitting on the couch at the library in middle school and I went to a public school and they had a TMZ magazine and this is like 2003. And of course the cover is Brittany and Christina and JT and all of the early 2000s pop icons. And I remember looking at the belly button ring and then looking down and thinking like what the heck mine would get lost, like where the heck would that even go, my little fifth grade body comparing to this 17,. You know, 17 to 22 year old women, girls and young women. And that's really when I started feeling like I don't look like that, I am inadequate and nothing that I say or do is ever going to look as polished as what is being portrayed in these magazines. And that really was the start of the body dysmorphia and the imposter syndrome.

Heidi : 23:19

Yeah, yeah. And so if you would have had that and if we could just go back and give that advice to our younger selves, we could save ourselves a lot of lessons. But those are our lessons to learn in this life. So I'd love to hear from you what are you reinventing now? Is there an area of your life?

Rachel: 23:38

you're reinventing Always, always. I am really feeling into taking everything back to those boards. It sounds so silly but I love a good poster board and magazine clippings. Branding is my jam and I think we change as people really definitely annually, but you need to go in and revise. But I set intentions monthly for my personal life, for my business, and I make two boards. I make what I call a being board and a vision board, and one is more goal aligned and manifestation driven and the other one is more of like my essence and I fact check and I use that as a baseline for how I want one to experience the world, but how I want the world to experience me, and so I'm really vibing with creating those and I just launched a podcast of working on guest interviews and traveling and doing it in a really conscious, intentional and aligned way, and I'm really, really vibing with the therapy that comes from the microphone. It's been great.

Heidi : 24:49

Yeah, I love that. So one is kind of manifestation goals, things that you want to accomplish and then the other is sort of a personal standard that you hold yourself to within who you're being. Absolutely I love that. I'd love for you just to share with our listeners where they can find you online if they want to follow along with all of the amazing things that you're doing, or maybe they need some branding help or some marketing help. Could you share the places that are best for people to find you?

Rachel: 25:22

Absolutely. I have just set the intention this year to become more present and active on Instagram. After the accident, I went through about an 18 month period where I couldn't look at my account. It was full of hair and my followers are all hair related, and so I just started repurposing and using that modality to connect with people. I'm on Instagram at rachellynwall and then I'm really active on LinkedIn. I love LinkedIn and I'm Rachel Lynn Wall there as well as rachellynwallcom.

Heidi : 25:56

Okay, and your podcast is it out?

Rachel: 25:58

now it is I have dropped two episodes, with the third going live this week. It's called Pulp to Profit.

Heidi : 26:05

Pulp to Profit. Okay, you guys go and check out. Rachel, I thank you so much for being here. It was just such a pleasure to hear your story, to get to connect with you, and I can't wait to see how you continue to reinvent yourself and evolve and step closer into the truth of who you are here to be.

Rachel: 26:23

Oh my gosh. Thank you so much. I really genuinely am honored and appreciate you giving me the platform to share.