Leaving It All Behind
How personal tragedy propelled Silicon Valley publisher Debbie Gisonni to found a company that helps others cope with grief.
Jennifer Basye Sander
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| "How big is the market for Real Life Lessons? Unfortunately, it is limitless. Who among us has not experienced a loss or a setback for which we were unprepared? Who among us has not spent a sleepless night of staring at the ceiling, wondering how to go on after the rug has been yanked out from under our feet? Debbie Gisonni wants to help us get back to sleep and rise up the next morning to face another day. |
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A few weeks ago in this column I wrote about the death of my close colleague, collaborator, and friend, Laura Lewis. I know that her death will affect me both personally and professionally for many months and years to come. Will my business ever be the same? I don't know. And will I really want to be in the same business without her help? I don't have an answer for that either.
Silicon Valley publishing executive Debbie Gisonni faced this same situation several years ago. In four short years she watched as her family dissolved before her eyes — first her youngest sister, then her father, her aunt, and finally, her mother. Although she'd had a charmed professional life, describing her career advancement as "a perfectly organized slide show," after experiencing these wrenching losses she began to question whether her mantra of "work hard, make money" was the way she wanted to live her life. "So I decided to leave it all behind, stock options and all, to find meaning in my life where there was once just money."
Gisonni is now the founder and president of Real Life Lessons, a company dedicated to serving women in business, people who have lost a loved one, or those who have experienced a major change. She is drawing on her experience of loss and re-building to develop a speaking career to help others deal with the change in their lives. She also plans to develop a line of books and other products to help folks in the midst of major transitions.
Gisonni's first product launches in a few weeks. It's a self-published book she produced with iUniverse called Vita's Will: Real Life Lessons about Life, Death & Moving On. Vita Gisonni was Debbie's mother. "There are big lessons that I learned from my family experience, and I wanted to help others get a new perspective on life and their own life struggles," says Gisonni, who decided to write about her family story after leaving her job as the publisher of InternetWeek and embarking on a period of soul-searching.
How big is the market for Real Life Lessons? Unfortunately, it is limitless. Who among us has not experienced a loss or a setback for which we were unprepared? Who among us has not spent a sleepless night of staring at the ceiling, wondering how to go on after the rug has been yanked out from under our feet? Debbie Gisonni wants to help us get back to sleep and rise up the next morning to face another day.
About a year after Gisonni left her job she got a call from a recruiter looking for a CEO at an Internet start-up. The compensation and stock options were excellent. She looked around her home office at her stack of business ideas and the manuscript for a half-written book. "I went into a cold sweat," she says. "It was like waving cocaine under the nose of an ex-addict. I knew I could do the job with my eyes closed, but it would mean throwing aside my dream of helping others. And for what, a more expensive car or a bigger house?" She turned the job down and continued building Real Life Lessons.
I asked Gisonni if she had a message for us to think about during this holiday season. "We need to be grateful for the positive things in our lives, while also realizing that both difficult and joyful times are gifts of some kind," she says. "Sometimes they don't look like gifts, but through each experience we are given a chance to grow and learn." |
