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Welcome to the very first lesson in your Mompreneur : The Course!

First of all, I am so excited you are here, and I want to personally congratulate you on taking huge leap of faith to focus yourself and put in the work it’s going to take to make mompreneurship everything you want it to be and more. 

Let’s dive right in, shall we?!

This week, we are going to find out what season of mompreneurship you are in.

I know that this may seem like a simple task, and maybe for some it is. But for most of us, it will be the first of many inward journeys we will take to become more self aware on our mompreneurship path. 

My initial inward journey was back when I was just finding Jesus. It was about a decade ago, and though I knew who God was, I had never had a trusting and intimate relationship with him. That is, until my best friend passed away in a drunk driving accident. 

My first real encounter with the Lord was a nasty one. I remember looking up into the sky, and cursing Jesus for what he had done. 

It took me an incredibly long and hard summer to realize that this was not the Lord he wanted me to know. 

I went to a women’s conference shortly after that summer, and came back with a small but substantial tidbit of wisdom. And though it helped in the time, I nearly forgot about this verse until after I became a mom, and I was yet again in unfamiliar and traitorous territory.

What I am hoping we can do together this week is find the season of mompreneurship that you are currently in, and have both your season of motherhood and season of business be one in the same, rather than fighting against each other.

Ultimately, when we find this alignment, we will be able to eliminate the tension between mom and preneur and instead be able to have each compliment the other.

First, let’s define this blurred line that is mompreneurship.

Mom - this is your place in life, motherhood, wifehood, familyhood, etc. Mom doesn’t just cover the parenting portion of your life, it covers the entire spectrum. We’ll dive in a little later on in the course about how being Mom does not define your entire place in the world, but for now, we can use it as an umbrella term to keep our “mompreneur” title on track.

Entrepreneur. This means your business. Your place in the creative outlet of your life, the place you have invested or are going to invest most of your energy outside of the home. Even if you workplace is in the home, this entrepreneur statement stands to cover all that is “work”, even if it doesn’t feel so much like work. 

Our goal is for both of these places to align.

Now, remember that verse I was talking about? Let’s dive in.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-9

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;

a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;

a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away; 

a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

What gain has the worker from his toil?

In order to identify the season we are in, we should be able to delineate a few key things in these phrases.

Born vs Die

Plant vs Pluck

Kill vs Heal

Break Down vs Build Up

Weep vs Laugh

Mourn vs Dance

Cast away vs Gather together

Embrace vs Refrain

Seek vs Lose

Keep vs Cast Away

Tear vs Sew

Silence vs Speak

Love vs Hate

War vs Peace

What gain has the worker from this toil – what is our goal in the midst of work?

From these terms, we can pretty easily break up the verbs into different life seasons.

Hustle, Rest, Prune and Grow

Hustle

Kill

Build Up

Laugh

Dance

Embrace

Seek

Speak

War

We find ourselves in a hustle season, usually when we feel threatened, bored, anxious or excited. Like summer, it’s hot and fresh and exciting. And we love the sun, but it burns. The watermelon tastes amazing but it provides very little nutritional value. Hustle, summer, provides us with yummy stone fruit and plentiful bodies of water to dip into. Hustle season is always temporary. It’s looked forward to, enjoyed for a very limited amount of time, but that time flies by.

I like to begin with hustle season in these lessons because the term hustle is so contradictory. 

Hustle tends to get a bad rap, and I know why. Generally, hustle implies lack of grace, and an emphasis on ego. Hustle implies going fast, or working harder, and almost always will lead to burn out. 

I have chosen to look at hustle differently. Hustle does not have to be bad. You can hustle gracefully. When in a hustle season, it’s easy to ignore the parts of your life, and overlook the other aspects of what is really holding it all together.

In a graceful hustle season, we are able to become aware of ourselves, our dreams and our ambitions in a more innate and intimate way. We feel emotionally, physically and mentally prepared for this season. Nobody begins a hustle season without preparation. Very similar to summer. We all work for our summer, right? Vacations, staying home with the kids, planning activities, etc. Summer is a little chaotic, but wonderful at the same time. So is hustle season.

Rest

Heal

Break Down

Weep

Mourn

Refrain

Lose

Silence

Peace

Rest follows hustle season for a reason. Rest can be described as burned out, tired, exhausted, etc. But rest is so much more than sleep or slowing down. Rest is about healing. Imagine fall as rest. The leaves, so exhausted from being perky all summer, the change color and fall to the ground. The colors change from vibrant to dull. The trees begin to bare down, go into dormancy. When we truly rest, our soul changes colors. We go from vibrant and active to a sort of dullness and leisure. 

Prune

Die

Pluck

Cast Away

Tear

Hate

Pruning season. I love this season. It’s magical in so many ways. That in order to grow, we MUST prune. We must cut back in order to make room for newness. We must pluck away, cast away, tear away the dead, dull, old and rigid, and allow blooms to form from our hearts.

Growth

Born

Plant

Gather

Keep

Sew

Love

The season of growth. We find our growth season as the air warms and we awaken from the dullness. Pruning can feel tedious, boring, and scary like a thunder rain storm. But growth season is what happens when the rainbow comes out. Growth season is usually the most emotional. It’s a little painful, a little scary, and a little risky. When we grow, we start new. We do new. We gather our tribe and our resources and our talents, we make new. 

Growth season makes us bigger in so many ways. We extend olive branches and make new friends and start new ventures. In growth seasons, we foster new relationships and find love in ways we haven’t before. 

So now that we’ve explored and been able to understand and digest the seasons of mompreneurship, let’s find out which you are in.

Let’s start with motherhood. 

When you look at your life as a mom (keeping in mind all the things we said “mom” covered earlier, what kinds of priorities do you have right now?

Make sure you’re thinking about right now - not long term. What kinds of tasks are on your list? Write them down if you need to so you can see them visually.

Are you focusing more on tangible activities or intangible experiences? Are your tasks focused on where you stand now, or do they play a longer game?

How do you feel about these tasks? Excited or resentful? Energized or exhausted? 

Look at your relationships within your household, your health and hygiene. Can you identify that season?

Now do the same for your business life. You may find it can be hard to draw that line, so don’t worry if it blurs a little. 

What season is your business in?

Now take those things and see if you can break them up into this chart. List your items where they go. Some may go in more than once space, and that’s ok!

I’ve given you a PDF download below, if you’d like to use pen and paper to see what this looks like.

Now, I hear you. It’s still a little tough to figure out. 

There’s a lot of tasks on those lists. Don’t worry, we’ll weed them out next week, but for now, can you find what the priorities are? 

Everything on your list can seem like a priority, so this chart might help you break them down a little. 

I like to break my tasks down into 4 categories:

High and Low Risk, Easy and Complex.

This helps me realize what is really needing my energy right now, and what I may be able to knock off quickly or all together.

Generally, things that are going in the High risk area will correlate to hustle season.

Low risk to Growth.

Easy to Rest, and complex to pruning.

But there’s no hard and fast rule.

Now, what does your chart look like now?

You should be able to align your seasons now, knowing where you stand on both home and work. Generally, you’ll have a runway season.

What gain has the worker from his toil?

This is my favorite part of the verse. As in, what have we worked so hard for, and was it with the gain?

We toil, but we gain. 

Be sure to share your season in the Facebook group or in the comments below, and let’s help each other with the seasons we each are in!

Next week, we’ll dive right into these tasks and to-do lists, and make your personalized flow chart to get this decision making in your season down pat.

Love you, mean it.