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I spent a decade raising kids and I think this set me up to be a better entrepreneur than had I not done it.

Whether you believe in God or not or you have faith or you have any sort of sense that that things happen for a reason. I feel like that the decade I spent as a mother raising three small children, I’m not very much money. I’m not a very big house and no help. How that prepared me to be a better entrepreneur. We all know that. Like being a parent, you get no thanks, right? You’re lucky if your kid thinks you when they’re 21 or 22 or maybe when they have their own kid, they’re like, wow, mom, thanks right. You get used to doing things because it’s the right thing to do because it. Because it comes from within you. Not because your kid’s going to hand you a thousand dollars paycheck or patch in the back and say you did a good job and so once you start business, especially a business like this where it’s all very like you have to get out in front of the camera and try to get followers.

People who are not used to doing things and just sticking with it and going for the long haul if they don’t get the worship or the validation of the adulation that they need and they just quit. But I learned how to do it despite that, you know. And so I think that’s one thing. I think the other thing is, you know, as a parent we’re constantly having to pivot. Like you have a plan and then they break the plan and then they break the plan again some more. And just when you think that your plan couldn’t go any worse than someone craps all over the car seat. In business, the same thing. You have so many variables that you can’t control and you just have to pivot and pivot and pivot and being a parent teaches you how to do that and just kinda like done is better than perfect and I’ve put a lot of really done is better than perfect.

Dinner’s on the table and outfits together and kids in hair and I’ve learned how to live in a mess and growing a business is a lot like raising a baby. It is messy, it is not perfect, and you find the people who aren’t comfortable with that. They spent all this time on their own building a business where nobody can like infected or break it, but then they never actually launched. So I think a lot of parents, they learned the patience, they learned the grit, they learned the flexibility, and they learn how to do it when nobody’s watching and there’s a lot of things in business that you can do and no one’s watching it make you better and make your business healthier and stronger than all of the highlight reel stuff that you see out front. One of the downsides of being a parent first is that you get very used to the sacrifice, right?

The sacrifice of like no sleep, you don’t eat whatever those sacrifices may be because you’re not expecting anything in return and when you get to the business world, you can kind of sometimes carry that over where you just give, give, give to your customers even when they’re unreasonable or your prices are too low, so there’s definitely like a a balance there of learning how to assert what you need and what you’re worth or what your services are worth and getting that reciprocation. It took a while, like I had some, some awkward years there where I was way undercharging and they almost took pride in that thinking that somehow that made me a better person and I realized that was a lot from the days of being like the self sacrificing mother and realizing that that isn’t always the best route, right? Because ultimately be sacrificed yourself too much.

Right? Then you’re… You don’t have anything to give out and the realization that if I require something of you to purchase my service or my coaching or whatever, I’m not doing you any favors by not having boundaries. I’m going to set you up for failure because you’re not going to take the relationship with the product or the service seriously either. It took me a long time to get that. Part of the exchange of money is about the investment of value between two parties and once I figured that out, I stopped feeling guilty and I really tightened my boundaries, raised my prices and stopped apologizing for it.