“Show Up and Love Well”: One Step at a Time, a Mother Overcomes Tragedy

The packed ballroom fell silent. During a keynote session at the 2025 Entrepreneurs’ Organization Global Leadership Conference (GLC) in Hawaii, famed businessman Marcus Lemonis invited attendees to share their journeys with the more than 1,000 fellow EO members who filled the room. “I am looking for the courage to inspire other people with your own story,” he told the audience, “on how they can get through the challenges in their life.”  

For a moment, no one moved. Then, from a chair near the front of the room, a woman rose and pierced the silence.

“Jade, EO Reno Tahoe,” she said, gripping a microphone. “Nice to meet you all. Aloha.”

Jade Bogan’s voice trembled, but she did not waver. What followed was not a story about a successful startup launch or a daring career pivot: Instead, 90 seconds of raw, searing truth.

“My 15-year-old daughter went missing and was gone for six months; we did find her, but it was devastating,” she told the rapt crowd. “And then last year, I lost my 19-year-old son, and I recently closed one of my businesses. So, I describe to my friends and pastor that I am in this elongated season of loss.”

“This is actually my first time getting back out in a business setting and being on my own and starting the process of healing and finding my way again. So, thank you for being the family for this moment.”

When she finished, the room erupted — tears, hugs, a lingering standing ovation. The moment marked not an endpoint for Jade, but a careful first step back into the world, surrounded by a room of strangers she inherently knew she could trust, that portended a steadier journey ahead.

Jade Bogan (EO Reno Tahoe)

Building Something from Nothing

A few months after that moment in Hawaii, Jade Bogan sat in her Truckee, California office reflecting on the life she and her husband, Chad, had built. They opened InMotion Mechanical, an HVAC company that specializes in hydronic heating systems, more than a decade ago. Her path to entrepreneurship wasn’t linear: Jade once worked as a controller for an oil company in Texas, but she left that stable, high-paying job to homeschool and spend more time with her children. She had two biological sons and four adopted children, three of whom were her nieces and nephews who grew up amid addiction and instability. “I left all of that to be more of a mom,” she says. “We lived on 40 acres in the middle of nowhere and shared an old pickup. We had chickens and a garden. It was just a really simple life.”

When Chad’s employer refused him a raise after years of loyalty — telling him he had hit his ceiling — Jade didn’t hesitate. “I said, ‘OK, well then we are going to open our own business.’”

She had picked up the entrepreneurial bug from her grandfather and was undaunted by the uncertainty. With a private loan and a used $5,000 box van, they launched InMotion. “The first year we were struggling so bad just to get the phone to ring,” she says. “We were using Christmas gift cards to buy gas to put in the truck. It was a big leap of faith — but it worked.”

Jade, Chad, and two of their sons have made InMotion a true family business. 

A Season of Loss

The adoptions came in waves — one was a teenage girl from an abusive home, three were children of Jade’s brother, whose addiction had left him unable to parent. “He just showed up one night and said, ‘Hey, I’m going to be homeless now,’” she recalls. “The mom had already checked out. He said, ‘I’ll get sober and I’ll come back.’ But four years went by of no visits, nothing.”

The trauma in her children’s past was raw and ever-present. They would hoard food and chicken bones under their pillows and self-mutilate during the night. “It was hard on our children, hard on us, hard on them,” she says. “We weren’t prepared and there was no support from the state.”

To endure, they relied on lots of therapy and even more love. The difficulties forged a family motto that guides them to this day. No matter the circumstance, they promise to “show up and love well.”

InMotion grew into a success, but life outside of work began to fracture. Jade’s adopted daughter, Kloey, had long battled mental illness and her behavior became increasingly erratic when she stopped taking her medication. Then, one day in December 2022, Jade and Chad discovered she had escaped out of her bedroom window.  

“At first you think, this is temporary,” Jade says. “It’s a teen. She’s going to go to a friend’s house and come back. Then days turned into weeks, and we ended up in a full-blown investigation trying to find her.”

“My Forum-mates showed up at my son’s funeral. They have loved me and encouraged me to show back up for myself.”

- Jade Bogan, EO Reno Tahoe

For six months, Jade lived amid fear, sleepless nights, and constant guilt. The family hired investigators and purchased space on billboards, anything to get Kloey back. Eventually, authorities found her halfway across the country, having hitchhiked to Missouri to rendezvous with someone she had met online. She was 15 when she ran away, but the 16-year-old who returned home “was a different person,” Jade says softly. “She was so broken.”

Then came the unthinkable. In January of 2024, Jade’s adopted son Brandon, 19, died of an intentional overdose after years of mental health and substance abuse issues. Jade’s world soon unraveled. “Losing a child rips everything out from under you,” she says. “You have to learn how to love again because you are so afraid. You are afraid of losing more.”

Purpose Lost, Purpose Found

Amid that unshakable grief, Jade struggled to keep her businesses afloat. Her next venture, Grafted Whiskey & Wine Bar in Reno, had been her passion project — a place where people could gather and connect. “It was beautiful,” she says. “It was really special.”

She had signed the lease in a new high-end (and high-rent) development just before COVID swept across the globe. Grafted survived the pandemic, but after Kloey’s disappearance and Brandon’s death, the constant stress of operating with razor-thin margins amid all-consuming grief became too much to bear. Grafted closed its doors in February 2025. They held a farewell dinner for staff and regulars: On that final night, the quaint restaurant that had long felt like a second home was filled with laughter, tears, and hugs.  “When you fall, usually you are alone,” Jade says. “But to have a room filled with people on your one of your lowest moments was a real testament of what we really built, which is relationships.”

Chad found some humor amid the misery. He told Jade: “It was the most expensive midlife crisis he’s ever seen,” she laughs now.   

Jade and her team during Grafted's final day.

After all that loss, the perpetually optimistic and driven woman found herself unable to get out of bed some days. Still, InMotion kept humming along without its owners’ full attention because of the bonds and trust they had formed with their employees — including their two biological sons — who clocked long hours and extra overtime to cover for owners whose hearts needed time to mend. “Their hearts broke to see both Chad and I so hurt,” she says. “They rose to the occasion and sustained things in our absence, and it was really beautiful.”

The Bogans’ employees were not the only ones who supported them through their “season of loss.” When Jade joined her local EO chapter in 2021, she expected a few networking opportunities and some practical business advice. Instead, she found a lifeline.

“My Forum-mates showed up at my son’s funeral,” she says. “They have loved me and encouraged me to show back up for myself.”

EO and her Forum became a rare safe space for Jade. They brought meals and offered their time and energy to help whenever they could. “They did not just sit in a room and say, ‘Oh, Jade, we love you,’ and then go about their day,” she says. “They actually showed up.”

One Giant Leap

In April, after months spent hiding from the world, Jade forced herself to board the plane to Hawaii. “I felt like I had to start taking leaps again,” she says. “You can choose to remain a victim. You can stay. I remember my therapist said, ‘No one would blame you if you gave up.’ … That is not who I am.”

At GLC, she attended a few sessions but also gave herself permission to rest and reset — to drive along the coast, breathe ocean air, and rediscover a little peace. Then, in that ballroom during the final keynote and the conference’s waning moments, Marcus Lemonis invited someone to be brave and share their journey. Jade stepped forward and took the microphone. Another leap.

The aftermath of her impromptu speech stunned her. Legions of EO members in attendance found her and thanked her after the session; many others later sent messages of support. It prompted her to think her next venture may involve sharing her story more and inspiring others. “I was not expecting that,” she says. “It lit a fire in me. I could really do this. I think there is space for me in this world to share my voice a bit more and my experience a bit more. Maybe I have something to offer.”

Since then, Jade’s gaze has begun to shift from the past to the future. She is gradually moving out of grief therapy and is engaging with a life coach. She exercises regularly. She attends local and regional EO events. She is an active member of her church. She is also caring for her youngest son, now 17, who is finding stability after years of turmoil and the devastation of losing his older brother.   

Jade doesn’t pretend to have tied her grief into a neat bow. In unexpected moments, it still grabs at her. The financial impact of losing Grafted still weighs heavily, but via her faith, family, and community — in and out of EO — she has begun to rediscover joy and optimism.  

“I am waking up hopeful for the future,” she says. “I am loving well.”

Interested in becoming an EO member like Jade? Learn more here.

Jade's family.