Ash McDonald (00:00):

Oh my goodness. I am so excited to be here with a guest, as opposed to just my typical solo episodes. And today I’m here with Megan who is a women’s health coach. She is also a cyclist sinking guru, someone who loves teaching about your cycle, and most importantly, helping women to level up in their health, their mindset and their parenting. And I’m excited to dig in today to talk about the behind the things, stuff of business and what it really looks like to help other women feel seen. So I’d love to start with learning just a little bit more about you, where are you and who are your VIP’s, who are essentially the very, very important people in your life that you do it all for?

Megan Rempel (00:40):

Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you for having me. This is just an honor to be on your podcast. We’re really excited for you. So my name is Megan. I am a mom, I am a wife, we have four little kids and, you know, four children is always something that we wanted. And, you know, I just feel blessed to sort of be like living, living this life that I’ve always envisioned, like for me, children were, were so important and something that I knew I wanted to have, I knew I wanted to be married. I knew I wanted to be a nurse, like all these, all these things and, you know, we can kind of dive into that as well, but, and then I got all these things and then realized like, oh, I feel like something’s still missing. Like, I feel like there’s more I am also an online health and wellness coach, like you mentioned.

Megan Rempel (01:33):

And you know, the, my VIP’s, they are obviously my husband and my four kids. And, you know, I will even just go as far to say as like I have, I have one like really, really amazing friend that, you know, and, and for a while I always felt like I needed to have, like, I have a circle of friends and lots of, lots of women in my community, but I didn’t always have like a lot of like really, really close, close friends. And what I’ve realized is it’s like, if you can even just have like one solid friendship, like somebody who like lifts you up and you grow together and you are constantly like evolving together. And just having those really deep, deep conversations with like, that is sometimes way more impactful than having like a big, huge circle circle events. So I would say it’s like my one really dear friend and, and the little people and my husband in my household.

Ash McDonald (02:33):

I love that. I’m glad that you reiterated that and talked more about that because I think it’s really easy to just assume it’s just the people that we made and the people that we committed our lives to, but there are other VIP’s in our lives. And the people that we think about that give us the courage and the strength to push forward, even when times feel tougher. Right. So I’d love to hear more about who you serve and why, what got you to this place to serve the people you serve.

Megan Rempel (02:58):

Yeah. So it’s so interesting that I’m in a health and fitness or health and wellness business, essentially because I was never into fitness. I prided myself on being able to like out eat my husband on taco night. I’ve always like had a huge appetite for food. I was the person that would eat like fast food all the time and be so proud of how good I could feel still, even though I ate like garbage and, you know, I didn’t really gain weight. Like, you know, I, I just was, I was just that person that I didn’t really have to do anything quote, unquote healthy because I felt great no matter what or so I thought I did. And it really like coming into this type of industry and business, it really did happen sort of accidentally for quite a while I was solo parenting.

Megan Rempel (03:53):

So my husband was out west on the pipeline. So we live in Canada. So he was out on the west coast and he was gone for three months at a time. And then he would come home for four weeks. Then he was gone again for three months and we did this for, we did this for like two to three years. And the first time he went out, our third child was a baby. And so I had three kids under three, and I was working, you know, as a nurse. And so just doing all the things and it was the first time in my life that I actually felt depleted and exhausted. And I knew I wasn’t taking care of myself, but I also didn’t really know how to take care of myself. I wasn’t overweight. I didn’t have any weight to lose. In fact, I was actually really thin because I was just so like under nourished and not taking care of my own needs.

Megan Rempel (04:46):

So I didn’t really know what it was that I should be doing, but I just knew that living off of reheated coffee and grilled cheese crust and goldfish crackers was really not a solution. So I did start to learn a little bit about nutrition and what my body needed. And so I started to make some slow changes with that, and it was incredible how much better I felt. And because I started to feel better, I, all of a sudden was parenting different and I was treating my children differently. And I just felt like upbeat and positive, even though everything in my life was still essentially the same. I was alone. I was working at the hospital crazy shifts, but I just felt like I could handle this. And I realized like, wow, the power of nutrition and the power of you know, community and moving my body, you know, when my kids were having a nap or watching house, like it was, it, it had such an impact on me that, that right away, I was like, why isn’t everyone doing this?

Megan Rempel (05:52):

Like, why isn’t everyone creating these simple changes in their life? Because if I can be doing it right now in the life that I’m living in my full plate, everyone can essentially be doing this. So it sort of started me on this business path of like, well, I want to tell more people about this because there really shouldn’t be anyone walking around feeling, you know, overwhelmed and exhausted and defeated and, you know, overweight and just not taking care of themselves because the solution is actually very, very simple. And so it became my mission to just like, just help, just help everyone to feel better because it will impact every single area of their life.

Ash McDonald (06:34):

I love that. I love that so much. So now it’s been something that has brought up a passion in you, which I love, I think that’s where so many of us come from is this, like I learned something and it changed the way I see the world. And I knew I had to shout it from the rooftops. I think that’s the beauty of entrepreneurship that usually comes from that space. Like a very genuine, like core. Everybody needs to have this. I love it. Yeah.

Megan Rempel (06:57):

I always say like, whatever we’re doing in life, like, you know, most women who are entrepreneurs it’s because we needed it originally.

Ash McDonald (07:06):

Oh yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So part of me wanting to have this podcast was to create a space, a safe space for women to feel seen to women, to, for women to feel heard and like they’re not alone. And I believe fundamentally that shame is carried among women because we don’t talk about things. We don’t talk about the things that maybe feel a little embarrassing or they’re a little bit vulnerable. And one of those big things that I see come up a lot for my clients, for my colleagues, for my friends, for other women, is in and out cycles of burnout that you had mentioned, like obviously having kids, all the kiddos by yourself for long periods of time. I can’t imagine how complicated that can be. You’re obviously a multifaceted woman being both a nurse and an entrepreneur. There’s so many dimensions to you as there are to most women. So I’d love to just have some really candid conversations around burnout and I’d love to hear, have you experienced it? What does it look like for you? And just some honest talk around what you feel like other women need to hear from you in that state.

Megan Rempel (08:09):

Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I have to like go back a little bit in time in my memory because the way I operate and live my life is so much different now than what it was like in the beginning of me building my business. And, you know, I’ve been building my business for about six years now. So for the first couple of years, I was so hungry for it. Like I, and which you have to have. Right. There’s, you know, I look back and I’m like, could I have done it a different way probably, but it also got me to where I am. So would I change anything? I don’t know. Because you have to have that hunger and that major desire and the grit to, to build a business and to get it off the ground and to see success. And I think because I was, I was alone and my husband wasn’t here.

Megan Rempel (09:00):

There was no one to like judge me for how much I was working because my kids were little, like, by that point, when I started my, when I started my business I was pregnant with my fourth baby. And then after he was born I think my, my husband left again, maybe when he was like six weeks old, like he left, he left early again. So here I was with four. Okay. It’s like, I don’t even think there was, there were six men or like maybe even like five and a half and under, and so they didn’t really know what was going on so I could work guilt-free without that judgment of like, you’re always on your phone, you’re working too much. Like there was no adult to monitor that. And there wasn’t even like older children. Like now my kids are like, mom, like put the phone down right there.

Megan Rempel (09:51):

They’re aware. But at that age, they, they did not know what was happening. So I poured into my business and I, I was working at nonstop and, you know, to the point where it was almost an obsession I wanted to, I wanted to see success so badly. And I was seeing success, which made me like go even even further. And I kept going and kept going, but it got to a point where I knew it was so unhealthy. Like I knew I was living and breathing this business to the point that everything else was getting neglected. Luckily for my business to be successful, I also have to be working on my own health and fitness. So that was the one thing was that I wasn’t actually neglecting my own needs, but I was really neglecting everything else. Mostly my kids, like they were of course getting my time, my love, I didn’t feel present with them.

Megan Rempel (10:48):

And that was a really big wake up call. And there’s, there’s a lot of shame in that. There’s a lot of shame in admitting that you, what you were almost putting this business success before your kids. But I also believe that anyone who’s been in this, in this type of situation knows exactly what I’m talking about, because you’ve probably done it too, to some extent, whether it was just one time you put your business first and you neglected the kids, but I just got into this cycle of like, I’m so hungry for this. I’m so hungry for this. Like they’re little, they won’t, they won’t notice. But it really got to a point where and this is kind of like where like some vulnerability comes up and definitely shame, but I almost started to like blame my kids for the way I was feeling a lot of the times, because they would wake up really early and they weren’t sleeping through the night.

Megan Rempel (11:45):

And so because of that, I was exhausted and I just felt like I was like very high, strong trying to do all the things and no one was listening to me and no one was behaving well and no one was sleeping and everyone was out of control. And I started to feel like I didn’t even really like them. And that’s a very uncomfortable thing to feel. However, through a lot of personal growth and, and work on myself, I realized like, no, it’s actually that I don’t like how I feel when I’m with them. And it was because I had become so disconnected from so many areas of my life, because I was just on this like hamster wheel of like, I gotta go, I gotta go. I’m the only one who can carry all of these balls and I can not stop because then they’re going to drop.

Ash McDonald (12:41):

Yes. Oh my goodness. First and foremost. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for trusting me and this audience with your truth, because I believe fundamentally that that most women with children and a business can say, yeah, me too. Yes. Yeah, me too. So I really appreciate you sharing that. And actually you’re talking about something so important here, which is the, I’m the only one who can do all the things, right. I’d love to hear how that’s changed for you. What have you done to change that belief and, or even that truth in your life, whether it’s outsourcing or delegating or just taking things off your plate entirely, what did you do?

Megan Rempel (13:20):

Yeah, yeah. So that was probably about four years ago. I think that was, I was about two years into my business when I kind of had that, that moment of like, you know, I would go to, I would go to bed every night and my head would hit the pillow and I would be like so bad up about how my business was going. Like, oh my gosh, like you, like, I was just on fire today. Like I did all the things. I did everything on my list. And then the realization would hit me of, oh my gosh, like I neglected my kids. I yelled too much. Like I didn’t read with them. I didn’t sit with them. I like hurried and got them to bed because I had to get some work done in the evening and the guilt would hit me. And then I would promise, okay, tomorrow will be better tomorrow.

Megan Rempel (14:02):

I’ll be, I’ll be different. It will be so much better tomorrow. And then of course it was just the same thing over and over again. So it was just one night. I remember feeling that again and thinking like, no, I actually am not going to change unless I do something completely different. And for me, that was that was getting some help. I reached out to someone who I’d been following on social. She has a podcast as well. It’s called mama’s in control. So Heather show vane is her name. And I reached out to her and cause I knew she was like a parenting coach. She was also a business coach. And so I just reached out to her and wanted to know what kind of, you know, work she had. And I joined her program and started having her as a mentor, which she still is one of my mentors to this day.

Megan Rempel (14:51):

And she was really she really helps me in, in being able to like figure out, okay, well, how do I want to be living my life? What do I want my business to look like? What do I want my parenting to look like? And what needs to change? And like, what do I actually want? So just getting really clear on those things and nothing changed overnight. You know, and obviously outs like finding someone to help you at coach of some sort is, is going to be your best, bad and actual help. And just having someone in your corner to, to help you navigate this because I couldn’t have done it myself. I tried and, and clearly that didn’t work. But nothing happened overnight at all. And it, it really wasn’t this like noticeable, like, oh, things, things have improved.

Megan Rempel (15:44):

I feel so much more in alignment. It was just this gradual like, oh, I’m starting to feel a little bit better. Like, oh yeah, I used to react that way and I’m reacting sway. So it was this growth journey that was so uncomfortable and took a lot of time and I’m still on it. So I dove into conscious parenting, read so much about conscious parenting and just really, really hard to realize that the things that I was so off with in my children, it was just a mirror back to me. They weren’t the ones not listening. They weren’t the ones who were out of control. They weren’t the ones who were disrespectful. It was me, it was all me. And they were just showing me exactly the work that I had to do for myself. And, you know, I really like the reason why they’re my VIP’s is truthfully because I would never have been able to see the level of success in my business that I have.

Megan Rempel (16:42):

Now, if it weren’t for me having to go through that whole growth journey and you know, for what they continue to show me every single day, because when I’m getting triggered by one of them, which happens daily, when you, especially when you have four you know, it’s always like, Ooh, like what? Like you’re triggering me and I know it doesn’t have anything to do with you. What is this? Like, what’s this bringing up inside of me because that’s an area that I need to, that I needed to work on. I don’t even remember what your actual question was,

Ash McDonald (17:14):

But you nailed it. You nailed it. You know, I’m going to quote you here because I, I just, wow. I just want to say wow to the statement of it. Wasn’t that I didn’t like them. It was, I don’t like me when I’m with them. One of the things that I teach in my group coaching program, which is the ambitiously aligned arena, is this concept of identifying and developing your alter ego. Now oftentimes where we do this is we do it with our business because we think, we think of like, you know, Beyonce and her Sasha fierce, right? This is for her to do bigger, better things. Some of us, our ambitions is actually where we are our truest self in our business. And so we tend to put all of our work, all of our energy in how we can be better and better and better as entrepreneurs as CEOs.

Ash McDonald (17:59):

But in all actuality, the areas that might be a little bit harder and a little less organic for us might be areas like parenting or areas like being a wife or running a home or whatever the case may be. Right. And so I think often us entrepreneurs are taught. Like you just need to be fierce and go after it and do the big thing in business. But where is the conversation about upleveling and other areas of our life? And like you said, how much that impacts yes. Our business, right. Is to be able to have that wholehearted conversation with us. So you say, get help. I say, that’s step two. Step one is to like acknowledge where you have struggles, right? Like where it’s hard and not simply looking only at your business for ways to grow, but looking at other areas of your life, which is exactly what you did.

Ash McDonald (18:45):

And it’s so beautiful. And so this concept of alter ego is essentially a look at who do you want to be, as let’s say, as a mom and your instance where that was your hardest area, which I will 100% agree with you. Like motherhood is the area I have to work on more than anything else. Being an entrepreneur comes very natural to me. It comes very easy, doing the big, scary things. That’s easy. In fact, I get lost in it. I do a little bit too much. I kind of go too far, right. Motherhood is where sometimes I struggle the most. And so my alter ego was built out as a mom. And essentially that means that, who do you, who do you step into? What is that like person you step into that you have built for yourself to be who you need to be.

Ash McDonald (19:26):

And that starts with really clarifying, like who you want to be as a mom, which might not be totally organic to you. So I love that. I think that there is nothing more profound than that, right there. You just gave the best gift to the women who are listening to this. So thank you for being honest and vulnerable and real about what this looks like, because also the truth is burnout happens all the time. Even when we have really good routines and good habits and good systems, we’re not as so multifaceted. It’s not as simple or as put it in a box as we’ve tried to put it there. So thank you for sharing that. I love this. I love having this conversation with you. I would love for you to share where women can find you, where they can find you connect with you, maybe learn some new, amazing health and wellness tips and up-level their lives through what is that you do? Where can we find you?

Megan Rempel (20:11):

Yeah. So I do have a podcast as well. It’s called fit to be a mama mama. And I I’m like a mixed bag over there. I talk about, there’s like conscious parenting there’s cycles thinking there’s like really great interviews with some incredible women over there as well. I’ve had the podcast for about a year and a half now and also on Instagram. And my handle is at Megan Rempel for,

Ash McDonald (20:37):

I love it. I love it. We’ll definitely get that on the show notes as well. So my final question for you and a question that we’ll ask everybody on the show is what does it mean to you to be shamelessly ambitious?

Megan Rempel (20:49):

Oh gosh. That’s like a tough question. It’s not really that tough, but I think it’s just, it’s really just being bold about what you want in life and not, not holding that back. And it’s just, I got caught up for so many years and just doing what I thought I had to do and the way I lived my life to please others and to just do it the way that, you know, my sisters had done and my friends from high school had done. And, and I just realized like, I want so much more. And in order to do that, I’m actually going to have to go against the norm and just really be bold and, and, and just like step into exactly the person who I am, even if that means that it feels like it’s not who I am because I was being someone else for so long. If that makes sense.

Ash McDonald (21:51):

It totally, I mean, it’s the cliche, like be you do you type of thing, but there’s so much to this, right. We’re taught instantly from the moment we’re born, who we should be. And the, the opposite of shame is to let go of sheds. Right. I love that. So, so good. Well, thank you so much for being here for sharing your heart. For being honest and vulnerable. I think that we get to change lives collectively when we are real and have the tough conversations and the nitty gritty, like what it really feels like to be who we are. So thank you so much. I’m forever grateful.

Megan Rempel (22:24):

You’re welcome.

Ash McDonald (22:26):

Yes. Yay.