Gratitude, Growth & New Beginnings: Reflecting on 2025 and Preparing Your Second Act | #224

In this special Thanksgiving episode of the Second Act Success Podcast, host Shannon Russell, business coach, author, and mom of two, reflects on the incredible milestones, personal growth, and business breakthroughs that made 2025 a transformational year.

From publishing her book Start Your Second Act, to speaking on stages across the country, to running global LEGO® Serious Play® workshops, to celebrating precious family moments…Shannon shares the moments she’s most grateful for and the lessons that shaped her second act as an entrepreneur.

This episode will inspire you to slow down, reflect with gratitude, acknowledge your growth, and step confidently into 2026 with clarity and intention. Whether you're planning your own second act, building a business, or craving a fresh start, this warm and honest year-end reflection will help you recognize just how far you've already come.

Grab your journal, settle in, and let’s celebrate gratitude—one meaningful moment at a time.

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Transcript

Second Act Success Podcast

Season 1 - Gratitude, Growth & New Beginnings: Reflecting on 2025 and Preparing Your Second Act | #224

Episode - #224

Host: Shannon Russell

Transcription (*created by Descript and may not be perfectly accurate)

Speaker 3: [00:00:00] Are you ready to quit your nine to five job and start a business of your own? Well, you're in the right place, my friend. Welcome to the second Act Success podcast. I am your host Shannon Russell, and my mission is to help you produce your best life. This podcast will teach you how to get from where you are now to where you want to be and how to build a business that fits your life and lights you up.

Let's get started.

Welcome back to the second Act Success podcast. I am your host Shannon Russell. I'm a business coach, a mom of two boys, an author, and someone who is feeling extremely grateful right now this week.

Is Thanksgiving here in the States, and I thought it would be fun to do a podcast based on things that I'm grateful for because this year has been a very big year. I wanna spend some time [00:01:00] reflecting on what I am grateful for. I believe we all need to slow down, take a deep breath, and spend some time reflecting on really what we're grateful for over this year, professionally, personally, and everything in between. Because if there's one thing I've learned over my own second act journey, it's that gratitude is the glue that really holds our growth together.

When I left my career in corporate, I was grateful for everything I had learned, everything I had experienced, and I took that with me into entrepreneurship. And since launching my first business and being able to be a present mom to my kids, that was my why. That was my reason for making my second act transition. And I was full of gratitude in that venture as well. And you know, this year I've had a lot of things going on. It's been a very busy year for me and my family and my business, and I want to [00:02:00] sit in that gratitude really settle in and talk about moments this year that were meaningful to me and how maybe you can. Do some of your own reflecting when it comes to gratitude and the year we are, , wrapping up soon and what we want in the year ahead.

The Number one thing hands down every single year that I give things for are my boys and my family, and the health and the happiness, and the fact that we have a roof over our head and food to eat. I'm grateful for. the, the world that I have for my family.

 aside from my family and our health the thing that is at the top of my gratitude list is that I released a book this year. My book, start Your Second Act is out into the world. I worked on it for a good year and a half before the the release, and now I can say I'm a published author, it's been such a learning experience, so [00:03:00] much growth, and I am just truly grateful for the experience for the team that helped me launch this book for every reader who has purchased and read the book, , and given me feedback, all of the reviews.

I'm very, very grateful. Because seeing this book out in the world in reader's, hands on store shelves in photos that people tag me in on Instagram, it just really blows me away and If you have written a book, then you understand this, and if you haven't, let me just say that writing a book is a very vulnerable thing.

You're putting your words out on the page, and especially nonfiction. Nonfiction is the truth. It is your story. So I put my story, my lessons that I've learned. In my career transition in venturing into entrepreneurship coaching other women in client stories and stories of women who have shared their second act successes here on the podcast.

All of these [00:04:00] truths are in the pages of my book, and so it's my heart on the page and it, I hope that. Other people who read it and share it with others really have takeaways and are able to feel like they're worthy as well, of starting over in whatever area of their life that they want to.

 writing a book was definitely a milestone that I will be forever grateful for in 2025.

Another goal of mine for this year that I was able to achieve was passing 200 episodes of this podcast. for that, I want to thank you the listener, you who have been around for now, 234 episodes. This is episode 2, 3, 4, and so I thank you. I thank you for listening. I thank you for sharing the episodes that sit well with you 

I thank you for messaging me and giving me ideas for show episodes, for letting me know what you. Thank I thank you for leaving a [00:05:00] review. , As someone who is in the top 2% of all global podcasts, , and now over 200 episodes, I am very, very grateful.

So thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

And in reflection, because we're sitting here in gratitude, but also in reflecting, I want to reflect back to the very first episode I ever recorded of the second Act Success podcast. It was me sitting in front of a microphone, a different one that I have now, but still the same. And honestly, I would never have believed that, you know, three plus years later I would be on episode 234 and have interviewed experts and women sharing their stories and, just having those relationships because many, many, many of the people I've interviewed have become friends and we've supported each other in our businesses. And that's been an incredible, results of this podcast that I never expected in the beginning as well.

And so I'm grateful [00:06:00] that every download, every message, every story that you have shared, and every person who has hit play on the second X Success podcast. I'm so grateful, and this podcast has become one of my greatest joys in my business. And I thank you for being part of it.

2025 has also been a really big year for me because I've been speaking on more and more stages across the country and internationally, and it's been an incredible nerve wracking, really challenging, , experience. It was my goal at the beginning of 2025. I wanted to. Become more stages, talk to women about starting over in their lives and starting over in a second act before it's too late, and taking their experience and building a business out of it, or creating whatever that second act looks like.

And I've been able to do that more and more, and it's been, like I said, very challenging because. Remember I'm a television producer. [00:07:00] I produce other people on camera. So for me to stand on a stage in front of hundreds of people and speak my truth and talk about what it is that I teach and coach and write about is very uncomfortable for me to an extent.

I've had to really work on that. So there's been a lot of personal growth this year when it comes to stepping into, I guess, that version of myself that I. Want to be, because we're all challenging ourselves. We're all learning and growing every day. And so yes. I'm very grateful that I, I challenged myself this year and I am grateful for everyone who's asked me to speak at their events, at their masterminds, at their retreats, at whatever gathering, of, of women, of people, because I love it.

I love being able to have those conversations and share my message. And this year I've been able to do that with the other arm of my business, which is working with corporations and businesses [00:08:00] doing Lego serious play. And I've really upped the amount of Lego serious play, events and workshops that I've done this year.

So that is just another way of me getting out of my comfort zone, getting in front of large groups, small groups and speaking and teaching and I am grateful for every stage, for every invitation, for every person who's shown up, ready to learn and grow at one of these events. thank you.

I have two more things that I am thankful for in 2025, and these are personal. So this one is the fact that I was able to go on a European vacation with my 13-year-old. If you've been around the podcast for a while, you know that last year I sold my franchise business you know, and I was in the process of writing my book.

There were just a lot of big things that happened between 2024 and 2025 for me. And I decided that I really wanted to find a way to celebrate just all of those big milestones and big, kind of [00:09:00] achievements. And my son turning 13, he's my oldest, and I was like, you know what? Let's go on vacation and a big vacation.

Let's just go do it big and spend this time together. And my little one didn't want to go. He thought it would be too much walking. So, I took my 13-year-old and the two of us went to Dublin, Ireland. We went to London, England, and Paris, France, and we went for about 10 days. And it was such an amazing, unique experience to go to Europe with him.

I've been in the past, but he had never. we went together and we did all of the things that, that he wanted to, we walked and we talked and we learned, and we had moments that truly will stay with me forever. And I'm beyond grateful that I.

Did this on my own, just me and him, and that I was able to make some memories this year with him because he's only getting older, and as sad as that makes me, I want to keep my kids as little as they are. [00:10:00] So this was really a moment for me to be able to do that with him and have that special one-on-one bonding time with him.

So I will forever, forever, and ever be so grateful that I made that happen.

Okay. And this last thing that I really am grateful for is that my parents had their 50th wedding anniversary this year, They took us, me and my family, my sister and her family, to Disney World in Florida, and we were able to celebrate them together and we're lucky enough to live near each other, so we see each other.

All the time. Literally all the time. But being together, celebrating their love and watching my kids spend this special time with them away in the happiest place on Earth, was just a way of feeling connected and a way of truly realizing. Even how much more I truly love them and this family that they have built and created with us.

So, so much so it was [00:11:00] such a memorable trip and I'm very, very blessed that they took us and we were able to truly celebrate them because life is short, family is everything. And thank you mom and dad for creating this family and for taking us on this memorable, memorable vacation.

 Okay, so that was a lot of thankfulness, gratitude, and I hope in talking about these different ways that I am thankful for this past year, both professionally and personally, I hope you can think about the things that you are grateful for , to sit in that gratitude and be thankful as we reflect,

because oftentimes we think of the bad things or we think of things that didn't go well, launches that didn't go well, clients that, we're a little bit more difficult or you know, just whatever it is. Like things that made us feel less than, rather than things that filled us up. In this time of year, I think it's truly important to reflect on the good things because it gives us that [00:12:00] confidence to step forward in the right mindset, to enter into a new year, 2026, with a full heart and with that gratitude and with a way of saying, wow, 

look what I accomplished that was not in existence a year ago, and that gives me the confidence and that ability to step boldly into the new year to say, wow, I can't wait to see what I can accomplish over the next 12 months. That's where we all need to sit and get excited for and ramp ourselves up for the possibilities of the year ahead.

So as we look back on this year, think about what you feel most grateful for is, is it growth? Is it change? Think about this year and what stretched you, what challenged you, and what blessed you. this past year for me really reminded me that reinvention doesn't happen in one big leap.

We [00:13:00] continue to reinvent ourselves and it happens. One step, one decision, one brave moment at a time. For my business, I was able to reinvent my second act accelerator group coaching program, and I added so much new stuff to it. I revamped the way and the structure that that program runs, and it's been extremely successful this year.

 Even with the new clients I've met in this past year, it's kind of crazy to think that there are clients that I didn't know a year ago and now I'm so in tune with their businesses and with the growth and the plan that they have for the future.

And I've been able to see businesses launch and businesses change. And, I'm very, very grateful for everyone that I'm able to work with because you're inviting me into your business and into your life, and that is something I will never, ever take for granted.

So, Think about that for yourself as well, and really how you can show up each and [00:14:00] every day to your family, to friends, to clients, to customers, and how you are changing their lives and impacting their lives, and. Let yourself feel grateful for that and proud of that because you are having an impact on others in such a tremendous way, I hope that you can sit in that and feel that love and feel that appreciation that others have for you and your work and what you're putting out into the world.

As I wrap up, I want to thank you once again for being here. Thank you for tuning in every week to the podcast, and thank you for letting me be a part of your second act at whatever stage you're at. As you reflect on this season, on the holidays approaching, I just encourage you to take that moment and write down what you are grateful for.

Sometimes we move so, so quickly we forget how much we've actually lived. And I think [00:15:00] reflecting is so important, and that's what I hope this episode, , gave you that inspiration to do. And that after you finish listening, you can find time in your day to today to reflect, write down what you're grateful for, what you've accomplished, and what you're excited about in the year ahead.

also, if you are ready to make next year the beginning of your second act, maybe you've been listening, you've been getting this advice, hearing stories, I'm here to help.

You can check out my second Act Accelerator program. I also work one-on-one with clients, but head over to second act success.co and you'll have all the information on how to work with me and free resources and all of that good stuff.

I'll link to it in the show notes as well, so you have it.

Okay my friend. Until next time, keep producing your best life when grateful moment at a time and enjoy Thanksgiving. I will talk to you soon.

Speaker 2: Thank you for joining us. I hope you found some gems of [00:16:00] inspiration and some takeaways to help you on your path to second act, success. To view show notes from this episode, visit second act success.co. Before you go, don't forget to subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss a single episode. Reviews only take a few moments and they really do mean so much.

Thank you again for listening. I'm Shannon Russell. And this is second act success.