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Shelli Netko was on a family vacation at Disneyland, watching her kids enjoy the happiest place on earth, when her husband had a sudden heart attack and died in front of her. She was raising five children. She had a career of her own. And in that single moment, standing on the pavement outside a ride built for joy, she understood that her life had split into two parts: before, and after. There was no gradual transition, only a hard line drawn in the middle of an ordinary vacation.

In this episode of Fountain of Vitality, host LaMont Leavitt sits down with Shelli Netko, Founder of Heart-to-Heart Collective Publishing, to talk about what she calls power grieving, the discipline of falling apart on a schedule so the rest of life can keep running. Their conversation moves from grief into intuition, fear, reinvention, and the strange gift of watching your own children turn tragedy into purpose.

 Thirty Minutes Behind a Closed Door   

Netko did not have the luxury of a slow unraveling. With five children depending on her, she built a routine instead: go to work, take care of the kids, handle whatever the day required. Then, once the house was quiet, she would step into her closet, shut the door, and give herself thirty minutes to fall apart completely. It was, by her own account, deliberate and highly organized, closer to a strategy than a breakdown, built out of necessity rather than any plan she had studied in advance.

When the thirty minutes ended, she came back out, dried her eyes, and returned to the next task on the list. She calls it power grieving, an accelerated, almost tactical version of mourning that let her keep functioning while the rest of her processed the loss in private.

 A Different Kind of Family Portrait   

Grief did not move through her five children the same way. Netko describes them comforting each other like a pile of puppies in the early days, each one working out loss on a different timeline. One shift stood out. One of her daughters, then working in banking, left that career behind to study cardiology, chasing a firsthand understanding of the organ that had failed her father.

Netko sees that decision as part of a larger pattern. Every one of her children eventually took the worst thing that ever happened to their family and used it as a hinge point, a reason to move differently through the rest of their lives instead of staying stuck at the moment it happened.

 The Pie Nobody Keeps Balanced   

Long before she became a coach, Netko watched her husband's health decline under the weight of a downsizing company, four time zone conference calls, and years of stress he never fully named. That experience shapes how she talks to the leaders she now advises. She describes life as a pie sliced into faith, family, fitness, and friends, and points out how easily one slice, usually work, swallows the rest, leaving almost nothing for the pieces that actually sustain a person.

The imbalance rarely announces itself. It shows up later, as a health scare, a strained relationship, or a signal from a child that something is off. By the time the red flag appears, the damage has usually been building for a while, which is exactly why Netko pushes leaders to check the size of their slices before a crisis forces the question.

 Run Towards Your Fears   

Netko spent seventeen years at Motorola before a chance encounter with a book in the company store changed her path. She opened it at random to a page that read run towards your fears, and something about the timing landed. She had already been circling the idea of leaving to start her own company. That single page was the push she needed.

She went home that night and told her husband she wanted to quit. What followed was a run of businesses, some that thrived and some that closed, each one adding what she calls a souvenir to the suitcase of lessons she still carries into her coaching work today.

 Trusting the Thought You Push Aside   

Netko's core coaching philosophy centers on intuition over analysis. She tells clients that the thought they keep pushing aside, the idea they talk themselves out of with pros and cons lists, tends to be the one worth following. Logic, in her experience, is often just a delay tactic dressed up as due diligence.

The alternative, she warns, is that the suppressed idea does not disappear. It gets louder over time, resurfacing until it is finally addressed. Her advice is to calm the noise of constant scrolling and consumption long enough to actually hear it.

 The Fear Behind the Fear   

One of the more counterintuitive moments in the conversation centers on failure. Netko argues that most people are not actually afraid of failing. They are afraid of being seen failing, a distinction she ties directly to ego rather than genuine risk. It is a small reframe with large consequences for anyone who has ever quietly avoided a goal out of concern for how the attempt might look.

Her fix is simple to state and hard to practice: give yourself permission to be human. She and LaMont both return to the idea that anyone skilled at anything was once a beginner, and that avoiding the discomfort of looking unpolished is often the real obstacle to growth.

 New Tools, New Chapter   

Netko admits she was not an early convert when a client first introduced her to new AI tools for research and writing. She warmed to the idea gradually, testing it on small projects before using it to build an app, launch her own podcast, and expand what she can offer clients and authors on her own.

She jokes that the shift turned her into a solid B plus student, up from a self-described B minus, keys still occasionally missing. Her advice to other entrepreneurs mirrors her advice on everything else in the episode: try the new thing, see what fits, and do not let the fear of looking unskilled keep you from a tool that might genuinely help.

 Building Heart-to-Heart Collective Publishing   

Today, Netko runs Heart-to-Heart Collective Publishing, a boutique house built to help authors tell the kind of story driven books that come from lived experience rather than theory. Her own catalog includes multiple titles born directly out of what she went through after her husband's death, including the practical, unglamorous gaps in planning that most families never think to close.

One reader's response has stayed with her. A woman wrote to say that her husband, facing terminal cancer and largely resigned to it, read one of Netko's books, rebuilt a bucket list, and planned a trip to Europe before he ran out of time to take it. He spent his final months focused on what was still possible instead of what had already been decided. It is the kind of impact Netko says makes the whole venture worth it.

 Key Takeaways 

• Grief does not have to be linear to be honest.

• Giving yourself a scheduled thirty minutes to fall apart can be more sustainable than trying not to.

• Children can grieve the same loss in completely different ways, and all of those ways can be valid.

• A balanced life is a pie with more than one slice, not just work with occasional scraps for everything else.

• Imbalance rarely announces itself before it costs you something.

• The idea you keep talking yourself out of is often the one worth following.

• Suppressed intuition does not go away. It gets louder.

• Most fear of failure is really fear of being watched while it happens.

• Give yourself permission to be human, mistakes included.

• A tried-and-failed attempt still leaves you with something worth keeping.

Listen to the full conversation with Shelli Netko on Fountain of Vitality, available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.

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