2024 was one of the most challenging years I’ve faced, both in business and life, but it was also one of the most transformative.

In today’s episode, I’ll share what this year taught me about resilience, gratitude, and the beauty of navigating hard seasons.

This isn’t a highlight reel—it’s an honest look at what it takes to keep going when things feel heavy and how those moments can lead to the biggest breakthroughs.

If you’re ready for a real and personal conversation about growth and perseverance, tune in.

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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Emily Hirsh: 

Hello, everybody. Happy Tuesday. Merry Christmas Eve if you’re tuning in live to this podcast the day that it drops. If you celebrate, it is Christmas week. I love Christmas. I really love it. And I love it even more with young kids. It’s so fun. So I will be taking pretty much the rest of the year off. I’ll be on a little bit, but i I take the rest of the year, definitely Christmas week. And then I like to do some reflecting and vision board. My kids always do a vision board with me. We’ve done the last three years. It’s so fun. It’s still up in the room from the year before. So that is what I will be doing for the rest of the year. We might be a little bit lighter on the podcast and then. I’m starting January entering my podcast studio. I’m going to build it out and get it all set up and then hopefully in early February get to relaunch it. So before I dive into today’s podcast episode, which was a list of my reflections from 2024 lessons and things I wanted to share on here.

I want to share that we have just announced opening the door to the Elevate Mastermind for the next round. The next round kicks off February 3rd and the application doors are now open. For those of you who don’t know what Elevate is, it’s my mastermind. It’s a way to work one-on-one with me for basically six months. It’s the deepest that I work with businesses and it includes a weekly coaching call. You get one-on-one hot seat on that call. Every week we dive deep when it comes to your marketing, your business, you, team, operations, offers, all the things. I’m also a private texting group that you get access to meet every single day. There’s an in-person retreat in Austin and that will happen in the spring and you also get one-on-one calls with me throughout the six months. So if you’re interested in joining this next round, I only take six women. So I’m highly selective. i’m You can go to embodiedmarketing dot.com/elevate and see more information about it and then fill out your application if you’re interested. There is a bonus for Anyone who joins and commits at the end of the before the end of the year, I will also do a half-day VIP day with you in person. 

So I will literally come to you within reason, like depending on where you live. Otherwise, we can do it at the back end like I had somebody in Finland this last round. So we did it while she was here in Austin. But I will come to you. We will do an in-person four-hour day deep dive into your strategy, anything you want. So, all right, let’s get into my reflections from 2024. I basically just made a list of my thoughts and my reflections. It’s not necessarily like in any order or teaching things. It’s just my reflections on this year. And to be honest, if I were to summarize, To be honest with you, if I look at this last year and I’ve been having conversations about this, it was a really challenging year for me. There were a lot of things that happened behind the scenes that I have talked about and also haven’t talked about, and I just feel like I was really tested not just not just in business, just in general, like just really tested with different situations, different scenarios, different challenges and obstacles that I faced on on the journey of this year. So a lot of my reflections actually are about the beauty in that. So here they are.

Number one, one of my biggest reflections in less lessons from 2024 is that you learn more from the hard than you do the good. And I’ve, I’ve been in business almost 10 years now and I have been through a lot of good seasons, bad seasons, hard seasons, not hard seasons, all of it, right? And everything that happens is always temporary. And I think this year really drove home for me. kind of a newfound gratitude for the challenges because I believe that the most challenging seasons and you know the darkness can’t exist without the light and you learn more in those seasons and so because you learn more because it makes you question and look at things differently because you’re kind of forced to right in a hard season You grow more and they are so necessary for growth to have the hard. And so this year I really found a new gratitude for the hard because as much as it’s not fun to be in a challenging season, it always results in the next up level. So that’s number one.

Number two is a more marketing specific one, business specific, but your warm audience and the relationships you build are everything. Even in the harder challenging seasons, I found that my relationships, whether that was with my team, clients, friends, mentors, or you guys in my audience, Your connections and the relationships you build are the foundation of your entire business and your life. And I don’t think I used to value those as much as I do today. And really without expectation and without strings attached, pouring into those relationships can literally never steer you wrong.

Number three is knowing your priorities and then aligning your time and energy with them, especially in the harder seasons. So let me explain this one. I have an exercise that I do with the women in my mastermind and also people that I coach and clients. And that is saying, you know, through an exercise, what are your priorities? If I were to ask you like, what are your core values? What are your priorities? And how would you rate them in your life? Most of the time people say like, my health, my family, my kids, my husband, my partner, whatever, right? And then you determine what your priorities are. And then you say, okay, now I want you to go look and take inventory of how you’re spending your time, energy and money. And does that align with your priorities? Like, are they really your priorities or what would your time or the resources of your life say are your priorities? And why I say especially in the harder seasons, because I think when things get overwhelming or stressful or full or chaotic or busy, it is so much easier to forget our priorities. And we might know them in our mind, but our actions are not aligned with that.

And I can honestly say this year, for me, my priorities have always been number one, my health. I put that number, I put that first myself and my health. Number one, number two, my family, my direct family, my kids and my husband. Number three is my business. And I can honestly say this year that if you look at my calendar, you look at how I spent my time and my money, even in the hard seasons, even when I was being pulled different directions, my priorities stayed true. And I didn’t waiver and I know my priorities and nothing can waiver me from those priorities. And I think that’s a really necessary place to get because I don’t think you can continue to get to the next level until you realign that.

Number four is knowing when to pause and when to put your foot on the gas. There is an ebb and flow here in business and life and some seasons require that action. Foot on the gas, let’s freaking go. Go as fast as you can and in a doing mode. Some seasons and times and days and weeks require a pause, a slowdown, some reflection, recalibration, realignment,

And learning to know when is the right time for each is very powerful because this will always ebb and flow. And I used to stay in the put, put my foot on the gas. That’s how I would get through challenges. That’s how I would get to the next thing is just constantly. How can I put my foot on the gas? How can I go faster? How can I just keep going, keep running, keep chasing and you don’t want to go the opposite direction where you don’t take action and you overthink things and you’re a perfectionist and you pause too much, but knowing when is time to pause and when is time to put your foot on the gas is it very powerful. 

Number five, nothing lasts forever. And I think it can be easy in the seasons of challenge to feel like I have failed. I’ve messed up. It’s never going to get better. It is so horrible. And instead in the hard seasons, remembering nothing lasts forever. Everything is a season. Everything is temporary and instead finding the gratitude. And there’s something so powerful about gratitude because the moment that you find the gratitude and even in the hardest of hard seasons, you have things to be grateful for. And things could always be worse. And, you know, for me, I found myself in hard seasons and I take a step back and be like, look at my life. Like it is so incredible. And I’m so grateful for so many things that while this over here might feel challenging, I have so much to be grateful for and focusing on that versus what I don’t have or what isn’t going right.

Number six, some of the best things don’t come from direct payoffs and instant gratification, but instead consistency without strings attached. When I think back to this last year and honestly more than this last year, and I think about the time that I poured into my team or creating value like this podcast, like the content that I create or the live events that I put on, it’s never failed me and You can’t always see a direct payoff or a instant gratification or an instant confirmation that something is working when it is those type of things. Like when I invest in coaching my team, it’s not like the next day or the next week things are solved, right? It’s a very consistent commitment this podcast, you know, it’s a consistent commitment. I can’t tell you, oh, I got 15 sales in the last 30 days directly from this podcast. I can’t track it, right? Like that, because it’s part of the journey. It’s part of the ecosystem. Some of the most rewarding things, situations and things that happen or things you accomplish or goals you achieve or I don’t know, like sometimes you don’t even expect it. It’s like an opportunity that that comes your way, come from the things you can’t directly track or are not a direct, if I do this, then this happens type of payoff, which is why consistency a lot of times has to be the goal.

Which kind of leads me to this next one, which is it’s never about the finish line. It’s always about the journey getting there. Always. We think it’s about the finish line. We think it’s about the goal post. It’s never about that. That’s giving us direction. It’s giving us purpose. But what’s more important is the journey getting there. The journey is going to change. The journey is going to shift. It’s going to evolve and who you are and how you show up in that journey is what matters. Because I can promise you that you’re going to get to the finish line and you’re going to say what’s next. And there’s this really great balance that you hope that you learn to find that is an ebb and flow between structure and goals and discipline and embracing the unknown. And over the last year, I really learned how to embrace the unknown.

I learned how to have more faith and trust in the unknown and be open to the unknown while also still having the goals and the structure and the finish line that I was chasing, but understanding it’s not about that. It’s about the journey and appreciating the journey and focusing on who I am today in that journey.

Okay, number eight, the more you set yourself free of what people think, the better you will feel and the more successful quote you will be. This is something that definitely I embraced this year more and more stepping into my voice, stepping into my opinions, sharing those opinions publicly and understanding that that’s going to get some people to decide you’re not for them and others who like you even more. And the only way that you can truly do this and fully be your authentic self, I believe, is if you let go of the attachment of what people think. Because as long as you really care what people think, you’re going to allow that to dictate your actions and dictate how you show up, what you say, what you do. It’s gonna have an influence in that. Maybe not a direct dictation of it, but an influence. And the more you set yourself free from that, the more you stand in who you are and your truth, and your values and you do that unapologetically and you do not care what other people think because you are so rooted in that, the more successful you’ll be, the more magnetic you’ll be, the more free you’ll feel.

All right, number nine, I’ve got two more. Number nine is it’s always about how you show up, not what you do. Who you be versus what you do. This is another lesson, another experience I had multiple times this year and kind of an unlearning of my value is in what I do. My value is in the accomplishments and more looking at, yes, I wanna accomplish great things. I want to cross that off. I want to accomplish that. I want to do that. Doing is great. Also, what matters more is who I am in the doing. How I’m showing up. Because I could make $10 million dollars and be completely miserable and not present and not grounded and not a good leader. And it wouldn’t matter. The $10 million dollars wouldn’t matter. I could also make $10 million dollars and be living my dream life how I show up, who I be, is what matters. And then finally, a big reflection for me this year is faith. I definitely came back to my version right now of faith. I wouldn’t call it necessarily religious, like I’m not following a structured Christianity religion. I believe some of those things, but ultimately, I came back to the realization that God is within all of us this year.

And that came from some specific experiences I had, some work I’ve done and just my journey. And I think that ultimately it’s this beautiful thing that when you face a challenge and you face a harder season and you get to a point where you say, I don’t want to do this on my own anymore. I want to say the word forced, but I don’t know if it’s forced, but you are left with no other option but to find faith. And for me, it’s been the most beautiful experience because I don’t worry about things anymore. Like it’s wild. I can be, I can have the craziest week I just had like two weeks ago, a crazy week. Bunch of things happened. I was dealing with this terrible situation in the last month with a merchant processor who’s holding like right now still $40,000 of mine. Will not release it for six months plus other things that happen, like a stressful, stressful week. And I was like, okay, lead the way God, like I’m giving it to you. And I feel still very, I feel very not ready to fully talk about this because I previously had so much judgment for religion that when I speak about God,

I don’t want people to make this assumption that I’m blindly following a religion, and this is totally my own experience, my own bias, but that it is so much deeper for me than religion. It’s it’s a faith in something bigger than me, God or the universe. I think you can call it either one. Regardless, when you are in challenging times and you get to that point and you hear about this happening all the time with people like it happens when people overcome addiction or they go through something really challenging like someone dies or they get a divorce or very challenging life event. Oftentimes in those seasons people find their faith because I believe we’re not meant to go through those things alone. And however your journey is, like I’m not here to be like, this is what you should be doing. But for me, it has been so transformational because I have never felt more grounded, more trusting, and more calm in the face of storms that I look back and I’m like, how did I do this before without this? like It is so insanely powerful. Every morning, I do my 10-minute meditation and I pray. And I ask God and I say, you lead me. You help me have the impact I’m here to have. have You use me and I will follow or something challenging happens and I i surrender and surrender has been such a huge theme for me. I got a tattooed on my arm last year and I know that I struggle with control. I’ve known that for a long time.

And I would always be like, I need to surrender. I need to let go. I need to loosen the grip. I need to surrender. And I think for me this year, it was realizing you can’t surrender without faith. You can’t surrender without something else to trust, because then what are you surrendering to? And that’s why I could never surrender. I was like, okay, if I surrender, then who’s got me? So it’s been a beautiful experience. And I think that in a lot of ways, The challenges I faced led me to this and led me to this just deep knowing. And it’s definitely created a path and an experience that I think opens me up for so much more because you have the capacity to face things that you previously couldn’t. And it just feels so easy. It’s so beautiful. So.

Those are my 10 reflections from 2024. If you listen to this podcast all year, or if you are new here, thank you for being here. Thank you for constantly inspiring me to show up. We’re almost 700 episodes into this podcast. It’s wild. And I just love it. I love this community. I’m so grateful for the opportunity. I’m grateful for the opportunity to grow alongside you guys to not only support you and your growth, but also allow me to grow and grow through you guys and with you guys. And the last year, two years, I have changed so much. And it’s really beautiful those of you who have been here through all of that. And I’m just so grateful for you. I hope you have a beautiful holiday if you celebrate. I would love to hear from you on Instagram if any of these resonated with you. And again, I’m just so grateful you are here. I will talk to you guys soon.