How to be a mom...
Let’s start with a story.
When we were trying to get pregnant, I envisioned myself as totally ready to handle this mompreneur thing.
Like, totally ready.
I was going to work while the baby napped. The end.
You guys, that was my plan.
I was so naive.
I was working 60 hour weeks, easy, as a freshly married, young and vibrant creative business owner. And I loved it.
Sure, it was crazy stressful. I was pretty much working myself into the ground, but I loved every second of it. I was busy and overwhelmed and wondering how I was going to get it all done. I had a team of people, jobs out my ears and dreams galore.
Looking back, bringing a baby into that mix was a recipe for disaster, but whatever. I totally had it all together, and I had a plan, obvi.
Needless to say that plan blew up, and in a hurry.
I told myself 3 months. Three. And I would get back to work. But listen, my business didn’t wait for me. It moved on, even though I set an out of office reply email, had someone doing my book keeping and website that ran themselves.
No, my business still went on. And I wasn’t there to catch it.
Something funny happens when you don’t run your biz, and it’s running you. You lose it.
It’s kind of like the refrigerator running away from you joke. Except it’s not a joke, it’s real life, and your livelihood.
The money went down, the work went up, the email went unanswered and the clients found someone else to do the work sooner, and cheaper.
My ideal client before I was a mom was no longer my ideal client.
And I didn’t have any clue when that shift happened. I was probably on the couch nursing a newborn, wondering when the fog of my head of hormones might lift so I could see straight.
Once I got here, I started Googling.
I was coherent enough to know I would look back on this time with humor, so I wrote down in my journal what I was Googling. I knew this blog would matter one day.
How to be a mom
How to run a business as a mom
How to make money fast
How to work with a newborn
When does my body come back to normal?
Why do my boobs hurt from nursing?
Best way to nurse a baby, hands free
Do laptops emit radiation on my baby?
What do I ask the daycare?
How do I find a nanny?
Do babysitters carry liability insurance?
Can I sue my husband for not having lactating breasts?
Is there a course on being a working mom?
Self employed mom decision making matrix
How much is a laundry service
Seriously you guys. I actually Googled these things. I’m not kidding.
Now, I’m over two years into this mumming and running businesses thing. In fact, I’ve launched two businesses since Joey’s been born, and another while I was pregnant with him.
I’ve completely changed my existing business to better serve our life now, and I’ve generated more than a few revenue streams to serve our family.
It’s not perfect. Not even close. But here’s what I know:
If someone had just told me how to do it, and I had done it, I would not have had to figure it out on my own and I could have been thriving during mompreneurship RIGHT AWAY and not two years later.
There is no one size fits all way to make mompreneurship successful. But there are some core principles that carry over from mom to mom, from biz boss to biz boss, and once we put them together, it’s like a huge weight is suddenly lifted and we all can fly a little bit higher.
If there can be all these courses on how to run a badass business, I thought to myself, I know there must be one on how to be a badass mompreneur.
Well, friends, there wasn’t one. So we made one.
Mompreneur : the Course is simply that – a compilation of lessons learned, tools invented and resources found in order to be a badass mompreneur without the overwhelm, guilt or loss of time.
So I, along with the help of all the other badass mompreneurs I know, put it all down on paper, in videos and podcast episodes and blog posts, and made it a course.
And after 10 weeks of beta testing on a group of badass mom bosses, we are ready to get this thing into the hands of every mompreneur amidst the chaos and mess and overwhelm of everyday life.
Stop Googling these things like I did. There’s no good answer to any of them.
Cue, the only course you’ll ever have to take, every again. Ditch the grind and welcome to the new, glorious space of mompreneurship.