You are still showing up.
Even when it is the hardest thing you do all day.
No one teaches you how to run a business when your life is falling apart.
Not when you're navigating a separation. Not when grief has moved in and refuses to leave. Not when you're managing caregiving responsibilities on top of client deliverables. Not when you're carrying more than any one person should have to carry — and your business still needs you to show up tomorrow morning like everything is fine.
The Steady CEO is a free, live workshop for women entrepreneurs who are done pretending everything is fine — and ready to find a way through that actually fits the life they are living right now.
FREE LIVE WORKSHOP · THE REAL LIFE ENTREPRENEUR SERIES
The Steady CEO
From Surviving to Steady — One Breath, One Decision, One Step at a Time
You are running a business. And right now, something in your life is making that feel nearly impossible.
Maybe your relationship just ended. Maybe you lost someone. Maybe you are caring for a parent while trying to keep clients happy and revenue coming in. Maybe you have been through so much change in the last few years that you barely recognize yourself — and the business that used to energize you now just feels heavy.
You are not broken. You are not failing. You are a business owner carrying an enormous load with nobody specifically in your corner for this part of it.
This workshop is for you.
In this workshop, we will work through:
→ Why your capacity has changed — and how to stop planning like you’re a level 8 when you're running on a 4
→ The STEADY Framework — a practical six-step structure for protecting your business when you are running on empty
→ How to build your not to-do list — and why letting go is a strategy not a failure
→ What boundaries that actually protect your energy look like in practice
→ How to triage urgent vs. important when everything feels urgent and nothing feels manageable
→ How to disrupt the decision fatigue and overthinking that is costing you clarity and confidence
→ Practical tools you can use immediately — not after the hard season is over
This is not a workshop about pushing through or hustling harder. It is about getting steady. Finding your footing. Protecting what you have built, while you find your way through what you are carrying.
You will leave with a real plan, a real not to-do list and a clearer sense of what your business actually needs from you right now — versus what you have been forcing yourself to give.
DATE
Monday, May 4th, 2026
TIME
7:30 PM — 8:30 PM ET
+15 minutes Q&A
FORMAT & COST
Live virtual · Free
Registration required
IS THIS FOR YOU
This workshop is for you if...
✓ You are a woman entrepreneur navigating a break-up, separation, divorce, grief, caregiving, a health change, or any other heavy life transition — and your business is feeling the weight of it.
✓ You are showing up for your clients, your team and your family — but running on empty and hoping nobody notices.
✓ Your to-do list has never been longer and your capacity has never been lower and you cannot figure out how to reconcile those two things.
✓ You know something needs to change but you are too depleted to figure out what — and generic productivity advice makes you want to close your laptop.
✓ You want practical tools that work in the life you are actually living right now — not the life you had before everything changed.
✓ You are done pretending everything is fine and ready to find a better way through.
"This is not about doing more. It is about doing what matters — with what you actually have right now."
My name is Jodi Laking. I am a Business Triage and Stability Advisor, a 25-year entrepreneur, a 12-year business coach and a woman who has been through more in the last six years than in the previous thirty combined.
My relationship of fourteen years ended abruptly. I navigated separation and divorce while running a business — alone — because nobody existed who understood both sides at once. I sold the home it had taken two years to find. I moved twice. I worked through anxiety and nervous system overload with therapists and healthcare providers. I set boundaries with family members I loved but could no longer afford to carry. I tried dating. Stopped. Tried again. Stopped. Tried a final time.
I quit my full-time government job in April 2022 to finally — finally — pursue full-time entrepreneurship. A dream I had carried for years. Within months the ground shifted again.
I met my partner. Fell in love. Moved cities. Moved in together. Became a full-time bonus mom to four girls overnight — having never planned to be a mother. Built a new version of a family I never expected and would not trade for anything.
I watched my father's health decline. I started attending medical appointments. I braced quietly for the call I knew was coming. In December 2024 it came. I was the one who found him. I was the one who made the calls nobody ever wants to make. I navigated the chaos of settling an estate alongside my mom and brother, but with no single person to guide us through it — communicating with banks, government departments, lawyers, insurance companies — all at once, while grieving, while running two businesses, while trying to show up for four girls who needed me to be steady.
And now I am a caregiver for my mother — in a different city — while running two businesses and overseeing a household of six. Plus two dogs. I would not have it any other way. But I will not pretend it is easy.
Through all of it — every single chapter — the businesses kept running. Because they had to. Because I showed up. Because I figured it out one breath, one decision, one step at a time — with no roadmap, no guide, nobody who understood both the business and the human going through it simultaneously.
I share this not because I need you to feel sorry for me. I don't. Every one of those chapters brought something I would not give back — precious people, hard-won wisdom, a clarity about what matters that I could not have found any other way.
I share it because my story is one of thousands. Hundreds of thousands. Women wearing every hat simultaneously — entrepreneur, caregiver, partner, mother, daughter, friend — and losing sight of who they are underneath all of it. Women who kept going not because they had the answers but because they refused to stop.
I lost myself for a long time. I kept my pain quiet. I kept my head down. I told myself it was easier that way. And for a while it was.
But easier is not the same as better. And surviving is not the same as steady.
Here is what I know now that I didn't know then.
No one teaches you how to run a business when your life is falling apart. Not when your relationship ends. Not when you lose someone. Not when the roles multiply and the capacity shrinks and the business still needs you to show up and lead. There is no course for this. No framework handed to you. No person sitting at the intersection of the business and the human going through it.
I looked. That person didn't exist.
So I became her.
The Steady CEO workshop is the beginning of what I wish had existed when I needed it most. A practical, honest, human space for women entrepreneurs who are done doing this alone — and ready to find their steady.
I hope you'll join me.
WHO AM I
Who am I to teach this?
Because I have lived every version of it.
WORK SMART CANADA
"No one teaches you how to run a business when your life is falling apart. Until now."
Jodi Laking · Business Triage & Stability Advisor · Work Smart Canada
hello@worksmartcanada.ca · (519) 755-2530 · worksmartcanada.ca
Ontario-based · Canada-wide virtually
Ready to find your steady?
The Steady CEO is free. It is live. It is built for exactly where you are right now. Register below and I will see you on May 4th.
And if you know someone who needs this — a friend, a client, a colleague who is carrying more than she should have to carry alone — please share this page with her.
She might not even know yet that support like this exists.