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Have you ever stopped to consider the significant role empathy plays not only in our personal lives, but also in our professional environment? That's exactly what we did in our recent conversation with Michael Tennant, the founder and CEO of Curiosity Lab. Michael, a new dad, shared with us his deep respect for his wife and all mothers, and how becoming a parent has forced him to remain present and lead with empathy. We explored how empathy can be a secret weapon for anyone - be it moms, founders, entrepreneurs, or creators - and how it can shape healthier, happier lives.
Our exploration into the world of empathy didn't just end there. We dug deeper into our emotional understanding. You know those butterflies you feel in your stomach when you’re nervous or that lump in your throat when you’re sad? We discussed how our bodies physically respond to our emotions and how we can mindfully navigate these sensations. We also delved into the five core emotions - joy, fear, anger, shame, and sadness - and the three types of empathy - cognitive, somatic, and emotional. We learn that all these are here to keep us safe and, with a touch of practical exercises, we can use them to make intentional choices in our interactions with others.
This episode is brought to you by Fertile Imagination: A Guide For Stretching Every Mom’s Superpower For Maximum Impact – My book is now available on Amazon in its audiobook format, paperback version and Kindle format. Grab a free chapter on www.fertileideas.com.
DM me on Instagram @melissallarena just type the word FERTILE and I’ll share the link if that’s easier to get to fertileideas.com for all the details you need to celebrate your own Fertile Imagination! Here’s that link: https://www.instagram.com/melissallarena/
About Michael Tennant
Michael Tennant is the CEO of Curiosity Lab, a purpose-driven venture studio and consultancy that aims to make empathy easy and accessible to learn and teach. He is also the author of the book "The Power of Empathy," a 30-day guide that walks readers through the five phases of empathy. Through Curiosity Lab, Tennant creates and incubates businesses that help values-aligned individuals and organizations use empathy to live happier and healthier lives and to nurture productive and inclusive environments. He also teaches empathy to various organizations, schools, government and non-profit organizations, including NASA. Tennant's approach to empathy has been shaped by personal loss and he advocates for greater emotional proficiency to deal with challenging moments and to foster connection. His innovative approach has led to his company receiving an investment from Pharrell and the Black Ambition Prize in 2022.
Let's face it - balancing motherhood and business isn't just hard, it's a superpower. Join us as we navigate through this enlightening journey of understanding empathy, emotions, and more. Share your thoughts and let's explore together.
In this episode, you will hear:
Michael’s leadership has steered the organization towards nurturing businesses that are not only empathetic but also align with individual and organizational values.
His book, "The Power of Empathy" is structured as a 30-day guide, aiming to simplify the concept of empathy and make it accessible.
The book takes readers through a comprehensive journey of understanding empathy, breaking it down into five phases. This approach provides a clear and easy-to-follow structure for those looking to improve their empathy skills.
Curiosity Lab aims to utilize empathy as a means to enhance various aspects of life and work. They believe that empathy can improve happiness, health, productivity, and inclusivity.
Tennant’s collaboration with NASA, demonstrating the broad reach and relevance of his empathy training initiatives
How Tennant's personal experiences, particularly his own losses, have significantly influenced his perspective on empathy – Empathy can not only be a personal skill but also a viable business strategy.
A major part of Tennant's advocacy revolves around promoting emotional proficiency to help individuals navigate difficult situations and foster stronger connections.
How empathy plays a crucial role in creating productive and inclusive environments – Michael champions empathy as a necessary tool in building harmonious and effective workspaces.
One of the notable investors in Michael's company is the renowned artist Pharrell. This suggests that his work has resonance and appeal across different sectors, including entertainment.
In 2022, Curiosity Lab was honored with the Black Ambition Prize. This recognition is a testament to the studio's purpose-driven work and innovative approach to empathy.
Curiosity Lab and Michael's innovative approach to empathy have earned recognition and awards. This affirms the significance and impact of their work in promoting empathy.
SHARE this episode with shared with entrepreneurs and business leaders seeking to enhance their understanding and application of empathy in various aspects of life.
Supporting Resources:
Curiosity Lab
“The Power of Empathy” - https://www.amazon.com/Power-Empathy-Thirty-Day-Personal-Growth/dp/1797220276
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About Fertile Imagination – www.fertileideas.com
You can be a great mom without giving up, shrinking, or hiding your dreams. There’s
flexibility in how you pursue anything – your role, your lifestyle, and your personal and
professional goals. The limitations on your dreams are waiting to be shattered. It’s
time to see and seize what’s beyond your gaze. Let’s bridge your childhood daydreams
with your grown-up realities. Imagine skipping with your kids along any path – you,
surpassing your milestones while your kids are reaching theirs. There’s only one superpower versatile enough to stretch your thinking beyond what’s been done before: a
Fertile Imagination. It’s like kryptonite for impostor syndrome and feeling stuck when
it’s alert!
In Fertile Imagination, you will awaken your sleeping source of creative solutions. If you
can wake up a toddler or a groggy middle schooler, then together with the stories in
this book – featuring 25 guests from my podcast Unimaginable Wellness, proven tools,
and personal anecdotes – we will wake up your former playmate: your imagination!
Advance Praise
“You’ll find reality-based strategies for imagining your own imperfect, fulfilling
life in this book!” —MARTHA HENNESSEY, former NH State Senator
“Melissa invites the reader into a personal and deep journey about
topics that are crucially important to uncover what would make a mom
(and dad too) truly happy to work on...even after the kids are in bed.”
—KEN HONDA, best-selling author of Happy Money
“This book is a great purchase for moms in every stage of life. Melissa is like a
great friend, honest and wise and funny, telling you about her life and asking you to
reflect on yours.” —MAUREEN TURNER CAREY, librarian in Austin, TX
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In this episode, you'll delve into the insidious impact of imposter syndrome on mom entrepreneurs. Discover the toll it takes on your confidence, time, and financial opportunities, and learn why confronting it head-on is crucial.
I emphasize the necessity of breaking free from societal norms and embracing expansive thinking, a key component of your journey with my Imagination to Impact to Income Method™. We'll explore the risks of not addressing impostor syndrome, especially regarding missed networking opportunities and stalled career growth.
Through a strategic blend of personal anecdotes and actionable steps, I offer you a roadmap for overcoming imposter syndrome and maximizing your networking potential. Plus, I'll highlight the urgency of seizing the opportunity to enroll in my "Fertile Imagination to Instant Access" masterclass, available now at a beta rate with limited spots remaining.
You're encouraged to sign up for a 30-minute breakthrough session www.melissallarena.com/sessions with me to explore how the masterclass can transform your life and propel you towards success. Let's rewrite the narrative of your success story together and step boldly into your greatness.
Free Resource: From Contact to Connection: The Go First Networking & Follow-Up Playbook for Mom Entrepreneurs
SIGN-UP for playbook: https://bit.ly/hypernetworking
• Easy to follow steps to craft your networking outreach goal
• Research necessary to not ask silly questions or feel awkward
• Unconventional follow-up ideas and timing that will not come across as thirsty/ pushy
• Templates that you can tailor based on your business goals and personality
• Worksheet to uncover ways to add value to contacts and make everyone feel goodBONUS: 30-second elevator pitch that is MEMORABLE not FORGETTABLE---this is there too
TRANSCRIPT
Listen up, ladies! Are you familiar with that nagging feeling of not being "enough"? Do you have ideas, hopes, and dreams but no confidence to do them? Well, if you've been battling imposter syndrome, you're not alone. But here's the kicker: it's costing you more than just confidence; it's robbing you of time, money, and opportunities you can't afford to lose.
At last week’s Mom 2.0 conference, there were hundreds of attendees, including several famous ones. From video gamers to industry disruptors, I connected with many. Now, here's the kicker: If I let my impostor syndrome go unchecked, I wouldn't have had the courage to ask them to be guests on my podcast. Did I hear that little voice in my head saying, "Who am I to do this?" or "Melissa, you're out of your league"? You bet I did. But even as I hit send on those email invites, I reminded myself: With 12 years of coaching experience and my proven method, my impostor syndrome can stick around, but it won't stop the party.
Let’s turn this to you….Picture this: You've got dreams as big as the sky, but every time you take a step forward, that little voice in your head whispers, "Who are you kidding?" It's time to put an end to that self-doubt and reclaim your power.
As a mom founder, you're already juggling a million things. You don't have time or resources to waste on self-doubt. That's where my method comes in - it's not just about suppressing those feelings; it's about conquering them and stepping into your greatness.
Enter my Imagination to Impact to Income Method ™. This isn't your average self-help spiel; it's a battle plan tailored specifically for moms like us. With my proven strategies, you'll learn to crush imposter syndrome and turn your dreams into reality.
But don't take my word for it. Listen to what one of my incredible clients had to say:
Melissa will push you out of your comfort zone, will force you to really look at where you are and where you want to go, and then push you to think even further. Then, she will help you come up with steps to get to your goal and provide support as you do the work. Her ideas are incredible, her methods to get you out of your rut and propel you forward are unmatched. Her Q&A is awesome, especially when she says, okay, let's do this together and sits with you on Linkedin to find the contacts or writes an email with you or otherwise helps you get where you want to go even when you're overwhelmed or uncertain what is next.
So, how do we tackle imposter syndrome head-on? We start by breaking free from societal norms and embracing our limitless potential. This requires expansive thinking which is also known as a fertile imagination. You have choices that you will not even think about if you limit yourself to what you’ve tried or seen other people in your circles do.
In my program, I go through the ACE acronym which stands for asset, community, explain…without expansive thinking you will never come up with the idea to use impostor syndrome as an asset….there are other options available to mom founders which I have used and teach.
From there, we dive into strategic networking and intentional relationship-building, because success isn't just about what you know; it's about who you know and how you leverage those connections. If you are stuck in step one I feel like an impostor and I do not have a method that works for me then you won’t talk to stakeholders. You won’t aim for the top of the food chain in your industry. You’ll stay in the middle limited by your comfort level.
And it we play this out to leveraging these connections…it won’t happen….you’ll talk to people without the power, authority, or know-how to help you achieve your company vision in a short period of time…you won’t have the guts either to ask for what you REALLY want. A lot is at stake if you do not pre-plan for how you will handle impostor syndrome as a mom founder and certainly not as one with big hopes, ideas, and dreams that you want to bring to life in this lifetime.
Remember, embracing your limitless potential starts with breaking free from imposter syndrome and leveraging your network for success. Don't let self-doubt hold you back from achieving your dreams. It's time to rewrite your narrative and step boldly into your greatness.
And now, I want to tell you how I can help you right now….this is huge and something I’m totally excited about it because it is about bringing mom founders out of the sidelines….from the networking conversations they need to be having to fast-track their success!
Listen in: I've got an opportunity you won't want to miss. Introducing "Fertile Imagination to Instant Access: A LIVE 9-week group coaching masterclass" - your fast track to success.
But here's the kicker: imposter syndrome is costing you more than just confidence; it's robbing you of time, money, and opportunities. And one of the biggest missed opportunities? Networking your way to faster income success.
That's where this masterclass comes in. Available now at a beta rate, but with only 3 spots left in April, this is your chance to conquer imposter syndrome, master the art of strategic networking, and unlock your full potential.
Sign up for a 30-minute breakthrough session with me today go to www.melissallarena.com/sessions, and let's kickstart your journey to success. We'll dive deep into your goals, challenges, and aspirations, and explore how this masterclass can transform your life and propel you towards the income and impact you deserve.
But remember, spaces are limited, and enrollment is closing soon. Don't let imposter syndrome hold you back any longer. Head to www.melissallarena.com/session now to secure your spot and schedule your breakthrough session.
Together, we'll rewrite the narrative of your success story and make magic happen. Let's turn your dreams into reality, starting today.
I can't wait to connect with you and see you thrive in the masterclass. Let's make it happen!
Alright, powerhouse moms, it's time to take charge of your destiny. Say goodbye to imposter syndrome and hello to a future filled with limitless possibilities. Remember, you've got the power to make it happen. Until next time, stay fierce, stay fabulous, and keep chasing those dreams. This is Melissa, signing off.
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Saknas det avsnitt?
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Ever feel that pang of guilt when you finally score a kid-free getaway with girlfriends? How about when you go away to a conference and that means missing your son's trumpet solo? Big confession. I recently went to a conference and missed my kid’s solo. Yep, I felt mom guilt especially while I watched the livestream, but as a mom of three, I knew I was doing my best and that this conference (ironically the Mom 2.0 conference) was a big deal for my book and business. And (further justifications) it wasn't an on-stage solo in front of an audience...it was a Saturday morning classroom solo in front of a teacher. All of this to say, yes, mom guilt still continues to pop up for me when I pick career over family (and it doesn’t even happen a lot!), and yet it's a constant juggle. So imagine this: what if you had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to live in another country without your family to explore your childhood career dreams? Sounds impossible? Would that make you feel guilty? This episode tackles the monster called "mom guilt."
Enter Alisha Fernandez Miranda, a super-achiever mom of twins who decided to hit pause on her high-powered CEO career at 40. We delve into her story and ask the lingering questions: Does mom guilt ever truly fade? Is self-care a selfish act, or a necessity? Most importantly, can our actions teach our kids valuable life lessons that words simply can't? Tune in to episode 225 for an honest conversation that will empower you to embrace motherhood on your own terms.
Let's connect on Instagram! https://www.instagram.com/melissallarena/
In This Episode You Will Uncover:
-How to navigate the guilt of pursuing your own passions as a mom, especially if it means taking time away from your family.
-The importance of role modeling and showing your children how to live a fulfilling life, even if it means taking risks.
-Why it's better to try something and fail than to never try anything at all.This Episode is Perfect For You If:
-You're a mom who feels stuck in a rut and longs to pursue your own interests.
-You're wondering if it's possible to chase your dreams while still being a good parent.
-You're looking for inspiration to break free from self-doubt and create a life you love.Key Points:
-Many moms struggle to find inspiration for pursuing their own dreams because the media often portrays women who achieve success without children.
-The guilt of leaving your family can be a major obstacle, but sometimes the risk of not following your dreams is greater.
-By taking action and showing your children how to live a fulfilling life, you can inspire them to do the same.
-It's okay to fail, and in fact, it can be a valuable learning experience.
Taking time for yourself can ultimately make you a better parent.This episode is brought to you by Fertile Imagination: A Guide for Stretching Every Mom's Superpower for Maximum Impact, which reached the #1 spot as an Amazon bestseller in both the motherhood and women and business categories! Woo hoo! And if this episode deeply resonates with you, then you are definitely invited to read my book, Fertile Imagination! In my humble opinion, I believe double-fisting Alisha's book The What If Year and mine, Fertile Imagination, would make for an epically fun weekend of reading. Dive into Alisha's adventures and live vicariously through a fellow mom, and then turn to my personal framework to help you think about your best first step on getting your imagination fired up about your own adventure!
As I alluded to earlier, this episode tackles the struggle of mom guilt that tugs at our hearts, even when we deserve a getaway or break from adulting! I’ve been there too!
Moreover, I, Melissa, share a vulnerable moment straight from my book, Fertile Imagination, where I spent Sundays unlocking a surprising talent. And guess what? It was totally worth it!
Intrigued to discover your own hidden mom superpower?
Head over to https://www.melissallarena.com/fertileideas/ and grab a FREE chapter of Fertile Imagination. It's your guide to maximizing your impact as a mom. Imagine achieving goals you never thought possible, all while rocking motherhood on YOUR terms.
Download your free chapter today and ignite your fertile imagination!
https://www.melissallarena.com/fertileideas/
Official bio for Alisha Fernandez Miranda
ALISHA FERNANDEZ MIRANDA is the author of My What If Year, featured on Good Morning America, CNN, MSNBC, NPR and as one of People’s Best Books. She is the host of podcasts Extra Shot with Alisha Fernandez Miranda and the award-winning Quit Your Day Job. Alisha also serves as chair and former CEO of I.G. Advisors, a social impact intelligence agency that consults with the world’s biggest nonprofits, foundations, and corporations on their philanthropy and social initiatives. A graduate of Harvard University and the London School of Economics, her writing has appeared in Vogue, Marie Claire, Insider, Romper and Huffington Post. Originally from Miami, Alisha currently lives in Scotland with her husband and children. Follow Alisha on Instagram @alishafmiranda and her website at www.alishafmiranda.com.
TRANSCRIPTAlisha Fernandez Miranda. I am excited to have you on the podcast, and I feel like you need to like stamp my passport. Where are we going? Where are you located? Let's chat. Let's chat. Thank you so much, Melissa, for having me. I am in Edinburgh, Scotland right now. Behind me, it's like hurricane force winds blowing outside, which is sort of typical, typical Wednesday for January in Scotland.
Yeah, kind of, sort of like, uh, Canada, actually, so it's, it's interesting, but Alisha, I am so excited to have you here. When I saw your profile, cause I know you're going to be attending probably like mom 2. 0, right? Yes,
I'm going to be there this year. I was like, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa. There's like this like twinsie of me somewhere in, in Europe.
So that's a good thing. Cause I want to eventually land there. But when I saw that you wrote the book, my what if year, I was just like, Holy mother of guacamole. This is so cool. Like, this is like really, really cool. So why don't you share with listeners just a little bit about my what if year, and then we'll go into maybe like what has stopped a lot of moms from pursuing their own what if years.
Totally. So I guess the story really kind of started for me in 2019. I was living in London. I had done the expat thing. I grew up in Miami and moved to London in 2008. I was the mom of my twins who were eight years old at the time. I was CEO of a business I had founded with my husband and we were kind of consulting to the biggest foundations and wealthy people, companies, nonprofits, all on social impact and philanthropy and how to give away money a bit better, which was an interesting job.
And I sort of, I had done. All of the things that I had said I was going to do in my life. I had my list. I had checked everything off my list and I found myself approaching 40 and thinking, oh my God, is this really where I want to be? Then of course, feeling horribly guilty about. Thinking, is this really where I want to be?
Which we can definitely talk about. Cause I think a lot of moms can relate to that. And I just sort of had this moment where I was like, what, what, what were all the things that I didn't do that I had maybe always wanted to do? And is it really too late to try them? Or could I do this crazy thing, which is to take a year and through a series of little small.
Sabbaticals, I was calling them, could I go try out all the jobs I wanted to do when I was a kid and never got a chance to do the things that I really loved, like working on a musical or working in the art industry. And so that was my what if year. It was an attempt to explore these paths that I never got to explore and to do internships at the jobs I had always dreamed of doing.
So all of that sounds like so theoretically amazing. It's like, I want to just the, the abort mission, but, and I guess you could say on life and I just want to go and be in Cirque du Soleil. That's what I wanted to do. Actually. I have that in my own book, fertile imagination. I didn't do it just let's just to be clear.
You haven't done it yet. That's true. I am working on mobility, so you never know what's up for me. But that was like my thing, right? I was like, Oh, how cool would it be Cirque du Soleil? And, and I have other, I have a list of other things too, but there was, there was nothing, I never saw any woman, certainly any mom, Nor any Latina do something where she was away from her kids for such a long time during a time when they still needed her, right?
And 40, my goodness. So 40 years old, like how far could someone go 40? I'm just curious from your own perspective, like what sort of things were like, okay. Within the realm of possibilities for a mom versus what you did.
I mean, it's such a good question because the guilt was real and the feeling that my primary responsibility was always to my family, no matter what, even if that meant putting myself further down the list.
It was just, I had just accepted that. I had accepted that that was the case. Without really stopping to think, what are the implications on my family? If I am a person who is not happy with my life and not feeling complete in myself or full in myself. So, I mean, of course, who are the people that had done this kind of like, They press the abort button on their life, right?
Okay, you have like Elizabeth Gilbert who wrote Eat Pray Love, not Latina. Didn't have kids, I don't think either. But she went, she took a year. She went to eat pasta in Italy and to India. And then she went to Bali and fell in love with a hot surfer. And that was the end of that book. But that was not a possibility for me.
Neither was the Cheryl Strayed Wild. Also not Latina. Also no children. Because there was no way I was going to sleep in a tent for like a year at a time. But again, she left to deal with her grief. And she walked the Pacific Coast, the Pacific Crest Trail. And this idea of literally blowing up my whole life, that was off the table for me.
Because I love my children. I love my husband. And I was so conscious that whatever I did was going to be at best inconvenient for them. And at worst, a really big deal. for their day to day lives, if I was going to leave and go try these things. And so I was very, very conscious of that. It wasn't like I was just like, Meh, screw you all, like I'm going off to Italy to eat all the pasta.
So when I started thinking about what this experience was going to be for me, I had a plan. I had, Months of planning, of fitting everything in, of figuring out who was going to pick up my kids from dance and soccer on the different days when my husband had to work, of organizing everything, of figuring out how to do my internships at the same time as their vacations from school, so they could come with me and join me.
This was like a beautiful color coded plan because I wasn't willing. To really throw their happiness out. I could never, I could never have done that to them and I couldn't have enjoyed myself if I knew that that was the case. Now, of course, I say all of this and then I'll tell you my first internship started on February 29th, 2020.
So all of my careful plans went completely out the window as soon as the pandemic hit, but definitely. I was very, I was putting myself first, but only to a certain extent. I was very conscious that I didn't want my kids and my husband to be collateral damage somehow to my desire to go and chase these opportunities.
And it's so interesting because it's, it's true. Like, it's like, who is it that you look towards as inspiration for what's possible in your life? And me too, for, for some odd reason, I don't know if it's just like a quirk, but like, I look at these like billionaires that have no children whatsoever that are men as like, Oh, why can't I be like Tom Bilyeu?
And it's like, Hello, you have three kids, two of whom are identical twins who are 10 years old. You live in Austin and there's just no way for you to create a fitness bar or a protein bar without high fructose corn syrup without breaking some nails, right? Cause the machinery that Tom broke and used, I wouldn't do.
So it's, it's just a weird, it's super weird, right? Like what a, what an interesting thing to kind of compare yourself. Those articles that are like advice from successful CEOs. And one of the things that, and they're almost always men. And one of the things that they'll say is get up an hour early, get up at 5 AM to start working and start your day and exercise and clear your head.
And I'm like, if I'm getting up early, I'm making breakfast for people. I'm feeding the dog. The kids are getting ready for school. So that's, that's not possible in my life. I think you can be a successful CEO, by the way. And still have all those responsibilities, but that model, that inspiration, it's, it's not really meant, I think, for people like us, at least it hasn't been historically.
Yeah, which is why we have to kind of carve our own path. So as a mom with two kids who were eight years old, who started this adventure right when the pandemic hit ultimately. And at that, you started with. theater as your first internship, which I think listeners can now appreciate had a big hiatus, right?
During that time, how did you sort of navigate the mom guilt? And then also just like the regular guilt, because this was a very unique timeframe. And I'm saying that 1000 times unique once in a lifetime timeframe. Right. As far as being away from family when there was a lot of uncertainty and fear. So why don't you share a couple of stories about that?
I felt, I felt, I felt so guilty at every point. I mean, I felt guilty for even thinking that I maybe wanted to. A life that looked different because I had been brought up to always be grateful and appreciative of what you have and what you have been given. My dad was a Cuban immigrant. I grew up in a family where that story of we left everything to come here and give you a better life.
And you need to work hard to get to the point where you don't ever have to do that and be appreciative and grateful for everything we've done and what you have. That was my. like cornerstone mythology of my entire childhood. So I felt guilty even for, for thinking. This thought that I was unhappy, that was like something that I shouldn't be, I shouldn't be thinking that.
That's just being ungrateful for everything I have. And so I felt guilty even from the inception. I felt guilty about doing something that was about putting my needs, even for a short period of time ahead of my family, even though I did not abandon them completely. I felt guilty about all of those things.
And I like to joke always that my dad is Cuban and grew up Catholic. My mom is Jewish. And so I have the most guilt. I have Catholic guilt and Jewish guilt. It's like all the guilt forever. But at the same time, I could recognize, finally, after a lot of thinking and soul searching, that I was not in a good place in myself.
I was not happy. I was not being the best mom I could be, or the best wife I could be, or the best me that I could be. Because I felt like I was treading water in my own life, and I was living a life that I had signed up for, but wasn't right for me anymore. And so, really, I got to the point where it felt like the risk of not doing something was greater than the risk of doing something.
And this worry that I was always going to feel this way, or maybe even worse, became so great that I just knew, I That it was going to be worth the kind of short term inconvenience for my family as it, as it was going to be worth it to have this experience. Now, right before I left, like the night before I left, my husband and I were sitting on the sofa, and at the time, You're thinking back like late February 2020, China had already been in lockdown for a month.
Italy had gone into lockdown. Iran was, I think, in some sort of lockdown. But there was still, people were still saying like, oh, it's going to be contained to these three countries. This is not going to spread. It's going to be very small. The idea that the pandemic would have happened on such a scale was so far from our heads.
But I did have a conversation with my husband and I said, do you not want me to go? Do you want me to stay behind? And then I held my breath. Because I was so worried he was going to say, yeah, I think you should stay, which I was going to be devastated if that was the case. Theater was like my dream, the dream of the all the dreams.
It was the dream to be able to be part of a production. And I had these incredible opportunities to be part of two shows about to open on Broadway and off Broadway. And so I went and then. The whole time I was there, I kind of had my fingers in my ears until the very end. Things were getting worse. My husband was definitely freaking out.
And I was like, nothing's happening. Everything's fine. This is all going to blow over. It's not going to be a big deal. And it wasn't until things got really bad. That I decided to leave. And then the following day, before I got on my plane, they announced that all the Broadway theaters were closing for what was initially going to be a period of, I think, four weeks.
And then of course ended up being, I want to say 21 months altogether before everything got back to normal. normal. But yeah, I mean, I was a little bit in denial and I, I, the thing is I felt guilty anyway. I felt guilty, but I did it anyway. Right? Like that's how I navigated the guilt. I never stopped feeling guilty.
I just knew that it was important. And so I was able to push the guilt to the side. and do what I knew I needed to do. Yeah, and,
and I was wondering about that. So like, kind of like exposure therapy, like, do you feel that it got a little bit easier the first time you're like, Oh, okay, everybody survived.
And then the next time and the next time. So do you feel like it got easier during that time?
I don't know. I don't know that it's gotten easier. The first time I went on a work trip after the twins were born, they were about not quite 18 months old, I think. And I had a new job that I had started and I went to China and my husband was in, we were in London at the time with the kids and I flew for a kajillion hours to get there.
I got there like in the middle of the night and I pick up the phone to call home and it's like a disaster zone at home. Like, They've already been to the, the emergency doctor with my daughter who has like a horrible cough and her nose is blocked and she can't breathe the, and now Carlos is starting to feel sick and I was so upset and like, I have to get on, I have to get on a plane home.
I have to go home right away. And of course I couldn't do that. I had other responsibilities. He was like, look, it's going to be fine. You don't need to come home. You're not going to get home in time anyway. Continue with this trip. So I've always had that fear that something has gone wrong. And sometimes stuff has.
I went to Paris once on a girl's trip with my daughter and my son broke his arm. And thank God he didn't need surgery, but he was in the emergency room with my husband for several, I mean, like stuff has gone wrong. Even in the book, as soon as I get to New York on my internship, my kids have terrible food poisoning and they have thrown up all over the house.
They're all three in bed together, my husband and the twins and. He eventually they had to get that room professionally cleaned before I got home because it was so it was so disgusting. Okay, so stuff goes wrong. It does go wrong. It still goes wrong, and I don't know that it gets easier because my kids are 12 now, and for whatever reason, it feels like they miss me more sometimes when I go away.
Now, I don't know if it's that they're better able to articulate how they're feeling than they were when they were little or what. So it's it's. I know that things are going to be okay. That has changed. I know the more times I do it, that everybody will survive. But I'm not sure it really gets easier. The thing that is easier is that I've seen The positive impact of taking these moments for myself, whether it's a work trip that I need to do, or just going to spend a weekend with my girlfriends because I haven't seen them in a long time, or sometimes meeting my parents somewhere that I wasn't able to do.
I mean, they're so rejuvenating. They helped me reset. They helped me come back into my life and myself, uh, feeling better and doing better all around. And I think that's, what's gotten easier because I know that it's worth it. Yeah. So even if I still feel guilty about leaving them and I still worry about what's going to go wrong, I know now that I've done it so many times for really fantastic experiences that I would do it again.
And I think anyone that's listening, that's inspired by this, I think you don't have to necessarily. Go away for an entire year. We could do this like baby steps. What I mean? It's like you nurse your kid or you bottle feed your kid and then you introduce solid slowly. So it's kind of the same idea for us.
I know in my case, in my book, Fertile Imagination, like I decided to actually take storytelling classes at Magnet Theater in Midtown in Koreatown. Love it. Yeah. And it was nine Sundays and I was coming from Connecticut. I like to call it fancy town, Connecticut, and it was a schlep, right? And so the whole idea is I know that on Sunday, technically, if I followed a certain script, like I was supposed to be at home, I don't even know, either washing the walls or like being at a soccer field or like something, right?
Making pancakes for somebody, for sure.
Right, in the shape of their desired animal farm person, right? Or whatever. I'm thinking dinosaurs and I'm just saying animal farm. I'm like, I'm a city girl. I can't help it. So yeah. And it's kind of like just doing that, like on weekends, for goodness sakes, it's not saying I'm out an entire year, but you could work your way up.
If you start noticing that, wait a minute, when I got back home and I saw my kids, I was happier. I had stories to tell, what I mean? So there, there are benefits and it's not all one sided, but it takes courage because then, yeah, maybe, maybe you are not the mom who's doing the things with the other moms and you might feel a little bit like an outsider, but again, was it worth it?
And what I'm hearing from you, Alicia, is that it was worth it to actually take action in your life that might go against what. Other individuals may have done before with children that are Latina. And so I'm curious in terms of really what your, my, what if your experience showed your kids, like, why do you, what do you think is the difference?
Right? Cause we could tell our kids like, Hey, when you turn 40. I mean, granted it's very far ahead, but like 40, that's so old. I know. Right. So, okay, fine. So, Hey, when you go to college, you could do a gap year, for example. Right. Like that's something that I've heard people say, and, and that's one thing, right, you're saying it to them, but what if you actually like did it yourself?
And so for you, Alicia, like, I know they're still young, they're 12, but what do you think is the difference between showing versus telling? A. K. also how to write a good
book. I mean, I think, okay. So I remember like when my kids were, when they were babies, I was like, I'm never going to let them eat like junk food because I grew up only eating junk food, but if I eat junk food, my kids, turns out they also like some junk food.
Now we don't eat a lot of junk food, but. There's only a certain point that you can tell your kids, wouldn't you rather have this carrot stick than a pack of McDonald's French fries. If you're sitting there eating the McDonald's French fries, they're going to realize that maybe you're not being completely true and authentic to yourself.
So I do think that kids receive information so much better. From modeling and from you showing them how to do it. And the thing is that my kids went on this journey with me. They were, I was away for different parts of it, but even the times that I wasn't with them, we were talking on the phone every day and then I would come home and talk to them about what I was doing.
And subsequently they got to come on my book tour. They've heard, heard me talk about this book more than I'm sure they'd ever liked to in the world, but they. watched me decide to do something different. They watched me try my hand at these varied jobs, many of which I was very bad at, like very, very bad at.
And they watched me fail, and they watched me dust myself off and stand back up and go back the next day and do the thing. To me, that is the most important lesson that I hope they have taken from this and that I try to instill on them is that it is better to try something and fail at it than to not try anything at all.
That you are not going to be good at everything and that's okay. And that the most important thing in your life is not necessarily picking the job, doing it perfectly and sticking with it on that path, no matter what happens, then no matter how you feel and that they know that when they're adults and hopefully have families of their own, that they are important people, both my son and my daughter and their needs also matter.
And I just was in the U S last week. Doing a bunch of different work things and some fun book stuff and my son and I had, I had, I did a talk at the IFC, the International Finance Corporation for my what if year, it was amazing. And the day before my son was like, why can't you just tell them you're sick and cancel and come home early because I want you to come home so you can come and see my hockey match.
And I was like, okay, so not only would that be. Completely setting aside my responsibilities, but also I want to be here. This is important to me. I want to be able to share this experience with people. This is why I did it. Why I wrote the book. Not why I did the internships, but why I wrote the book. And so, no, I'm not going to tell them I'm sick and come home early because this is important to me.
And making sure that they are seeing me choose myself sometimes, I am hoping is going to give them that Permission or awareness that when they get to a point in their lives, when they are caring for other people, too, that they know they also can choose themselves sometimes. And that's okay.
Yeah, I love it.
I think, I think what you said as far as like the, they saw you maybe like, Either fail or, or have errors and stuff, but then like, decide to like, get back up again, like watching you do that. I don't think it, I don't think it could be replaced with words. I mean, that's like resilience in action. That's resilience while mommy ing.
Yeah, resilience while mommy ing, I love it.
Yeah. Yeah. And, and it's just like, it's beautiful. And, and I witnessed it with my own mom because she has a mental illness. And so every time she'd get into an episode, she had to like dust herself off in, in very dramatic ways. But then it gives you a sense as a kid, it's like, huh, I'm related to that.
Maybe I got a little bit of that in me too. Right.
100%. There's beauty. That's how I, I think, I think that a large part of the reason I have such resilience, and I do feel like I'm a very resilient person, so far so good, is because I came from a family that I, I grew up hearing all of the stories of my grandmother, my dad, and his siblings, and my, my grandfather, and how they, how they, you know, Left everything behind.
They left Cuba with a suitcase each and nothing else and moved to a country where they didn't speak the language and they had to just pick themselves up and they had, they had no other choice but to do that. And that, knowing that that's part of me, that's inside of me somewhere, has always made me feel A lot more capable of dealing with challenge, I think, because I know there's got to be something in there that came from them that is propelling me forward.
And I know that I have that, and I want my kids to know that's part of who you are. You come from a long line of people who have failed at things and had to move forward, and that is, I think, the best gift that I could give them, if that's a realization that they take from this whole thing. Definitely. I love it.
Alicia, where can people continue to follow your story and purchase the My What
If Year book? Well, you can get my book anywhere that you get books. You can get it at a bookstore. You can get it online at bookshop. org or Amazon if you want. You can listen to me on audiobook if you enjoy this. It's me reading it, so it's basically just like nine hours of this or however long the book goes for.
And you can find me on my website, which is aliciafmiranda. com or my Instagram at aliciafmiranda. And that's A L I S H A I'm named after a shoe store. It's not because that name has anything to do with anything else.
I love it. Fun facts. Appreciate it so much, Alicia. Have an awesome Scottish day.
Yeah, well, let's see if I can survive the wind and rain.
Thank you so much for having me. Oh, thank you.
You're awesome. That was great.
Here are the three things that really stood out for me in terms of this conversation. The first one is, it's true. I have seen a lot of non Latina moms who decide to actually go and live in Europe or press abort mission on their lives, like that we see in the media.
But there's not too many Latina moms who have been portrayed, not even in Hollywood, as making this idea okay to choose yourself every once in a while and not have to struggle with so much mom guilt and let it hold you back. Second point is there is this point where if you really think about it, When you weigh the risk of doing something for yourself versus not doing something for yourself, there's that, that point where the risk of not doing it might outweigh the risk of doing it and the inconvenience of doing it.
When I lived in Australia with my family, when we all went abroad, it was highly inconvenient to sell every single article of furniture that I had. It was highly inconvenient to find brand new schools, but The risk of not doing it would have meant that my kids would have never been exposed to a completely different culture or side of the world.
And for that, I'm grateful. Here's the third point. In terms of, you know, does it get easier, right, with mom guilt. So Alicia said it best in that it might not get easier, but you do appreciate the fact that things will be okay. Having more. evidence that things will be okay if you choose yourself and you're away from your kids just builds your confidence and gives you this sense that, okay, I might be feeling this emotion of mom guilt.
However, as in the past, things have been okay. So I hope you enjoyed this conversation. And I want to hear from you. Like, do you suffer from mom guilt? Is it particularly hard or when it's unrelated to doing something that you have to do, like building your business? Like, what if you wanted to all of a sudden take tennis lessons?
Like, is that the point where thickly? Let me know on Instagram at Melissa Llarena. I would love to hear from you. -
Welcome to episode 224. Tired of sounding like everyone else at networking events i.e. boring? Wish you could stand out and really put yourself and your business out there in a way that will make an impact? This episode equips you with the tools to transform your elevator pitch and turn those events into meaningful connections, even if finding and sharing the essence of who you are and why your business is unique has been harder in the past! This is a special episode especially for my fellow mom business owners who are making the trek to in-person networking events like Mom 2.o in Nashville or the like! You are spending time, money, and changing up your family's logistics so tune in to ensure you make these big networking moments worth your time! Elevator pitch prep here we go!!!!!!!!
In this podcast, you will learn:
The 3 Powerful Ideas to revolutionize your elevator pitch - the slides for this can be grabbed here for FREE: https://bit.ly/hypernetworking
Be Brief & Tailor Your Pitch: Consider the person, their company, and your goals for the interaction.
Differentiate Yourself: What makes you unique? Highlight your niche and competitive advantage.
Make it Memorable: Use clear, concise language, metaphors, or anecdotes to stand out.Plus, a Free Playbook Alert! Download my "From Contact to Connection" playbook for mompreneurs – go here to grab this book! https://bit.ly/hypernetworking
Get my exact follow-up timeline, proven email templates, and strategies to master the art of following up without feeling like a bother.
Stop feeling like you're missing out!
Listen to this episode and grab the free playbook to craft a magnetic elevator pitch and build connections that matter at your next networking event!
P.S. Don't miss the free playbook with valuable templates and follow-up strategies!
P.P.S. Attending Mom 2.0? Look for me in the beige wide-brim hat! I’d love to connect with you in person and yes I’d love to hear your elevator pitch! Below is mine….. but don’t forget to grab the template right here: https://bit.ly/hypernetworking
SAMPLE ELEVATOR PITCH – grab your template: https://bit.ly/hypernetworking
For 12 years, I've coached women leaders to rediscover and resell at a profit their skills. My signature approach has been to equip them with the art of initiating strategic networking, streamlining the process and accelerating their success.
Fueled by my #1 Amazon bestseller, Fertile Imagination, I pivoted my own journey to empower mom founders, entrepreneurs, and creators. Today I’m most psyched about bringing the same coaching to embolden unconventional leaders (i.e. the ones who struggle with impostor syndrome or feel more like introverts) to unlock their unique identities including that of a mom and reignite their creative thinking, transforming these into powerful competitive advantages.
What sets me apart? I skip gatekeepers and show you how to connect with high-level contacts, just like the CMO of GE I interviewed on my podcast Beth Comstock or GaryVee who has millions of people knocking at his digital door. Together, we equip you with the crowbars to shatter the padlocks guarding the right doors, unlocking the connections that can catapult your business.
Love this episode? Let's connect: https://www.instagram.com/melissallarena/
This episode is brought to you by "From Contact to Connection: A Step-by-Step Strategic Networking Playbook for Mom Founders and Entrepreneurs"
Not sure how to go first in networking, or perhaps what to say in a follow-up?
Answers to these strategic networking questions are addressed in a free resource that has helped me and my clients talk to the right people in way less time than it would take using traditional networking methods!
Download my FREE playbook, "From Contact to Connection," and learn:
• Easy steps to find the right contacts and reach out confidently.
• Unconventional follow-up tips to stand out and build relationships.
• Templates to personalize your outreach for maximum impact.Stop feeling lost and reignite your spark! Download your free playbook now and watch your business thrive.
Click here: https://www.melissallarena.com/fertileideas/
Limited time offer!
TRANSCRIPT
So I wanted to share this because this week in my nine week group coaching program, we were going through.
Picking the right stories to tell. And one way that you will want to share a story is by wrapping it around your elevator pitch. There are several for reasons. There are several reasons for that. But right now we're going to focus on a simple elevator pitch, and we're going to focus on the things that are critical to your success.
So there will be three key ideas. Grab a notebook, grab a pen, and let's get to it. Alrighty, so here's the baseline. When it comes to an elevator pitch, it is important for you to be brief. And to tailor the content of your pitch based on the person in front of you, based on the company that they work for, or that they own.
And also in light of what you want out of that conversation. Now This is just point one out of the three ideas that are critical to writing and then rehearsing and then articulating the right elevator pitch. Here's why these thin...after you grab the playbook. That is what I want you to really do. Cause I want to be sure that if I'm engaging with you at mom2. org, Oh, or a virtual summit, or I hear someone's pitch.
I want to be sure that I've done my best job to get the word out on the street, that there's a way to do it. And there's things that have to be considered. Okay. Alrighty. So. Grab the playbook. That is the biggest thing. And good luck on your elevator pitch. What I would say is really, really right before you tell your elevator pitch, just get yourself in that mindset, right?
Get ready. Make sure that you're warming up your imagination so that this way you can play with it a little bit. And trust me, if I see someone playing with new ideas or with the way that they express what they do, like that lights me up because I think. Think that they're more comfortable in, in their skin.
And who doesn't want to do business with someone that's more comfortable in their skin? Alrighty. Until next Tuesday.
-
Welcome to episode 223. Do you rush to fix your child's mistakes, shielding them from failure? Many moms do! Maybe it's a forgotten homework assignment or a missed deadline. This episode is your guide! New York Times bestselling author Jessica Lahey shares a relatable story of when she had to decide: intervene and save her daughter, or let her face the consequences of forgetting homework.
In this episode, you'll learn:
• How Jessica handled the homework situation (and the surprising lesson her daughter took away!)
• The #1 thing moms can do to avoid over-parenting or under-parenting
• How to create situations where your child feels empowered to solve their own problems
• Techniques to raise a confident, capable child who embraces challenges
• Empower your child, not enable them! Listen to this episode now!This podcast is perfect for you if:
• You want your child to learn from mistakes and build resilience.
• You're worried you might be preventing your child from developing independence.
• You crave tips on raising a strong, capable adult.
• Don't miss out on these valuable strategies! Tune in today!Love this episode? Let's connect: https://www.instagram.com/melissallarena/
This episode is brought to you by Fertile Imagination: A Guide for Stretching Every Mom’s Superpower for Maximum Impact
Feeling Lost and Uninspired as a Mom? Reignite Your Spark Today!
Do you long to rediscover the things that truly light you up as a mom?
Feeling stuck in the daily grind can leave even the most passionate moms feeling drained and uninspired.But what if you could recapture that spark, that creative energy that makes you, you?
Fertile Imagination is your guide to unlocking your inner powerhouse.
This #1 Amazon bestseller, written by a mom who's been there, will help you:
• Uncover your hidden passions and talents.
• Develop a clear vision for your future as a mom and an individual.
• Learn powerful strategies to overcome overwhelm and rediscover your joy.Stop feeling like you're just going through the motions. Light a fire under your dreams and become the best version of yourself for your family!
Visit Melissa Llarena: https://www.melissallarena.com/fertileideas/ right now and grab a FREE chapter of Fertile Imagination!
Don't wait!
Your most inspired and fulfilling life as a mom is waiting to be discovered.
On the same website, we also have a limited-time offer for mom entrepreneurs who want to speak to the right people and catapult their business success in 30 days or less!Not sure how to go first in networking, or perhaps what to say in a follow-up?
Answers to these strategic networking questions are addressed in a free resource that has helped me and my clients talk to the right people in way less time than it would take using traditional networking methods!
Download my FREE playbook, "From Contact to Connection," and learn:
• Easy steps to find the right contacts and reach out confidently.
• Unconventional follow-up tips to stand out and build relationships.
• Templates to personalize your outreach for maximum impact.Stop feeling lost and reignite your spark! Download your free playbook now and watch your business thrive.
Click here: https://www.melissallarena.com/fertileideas/
Limited time offer!
Official bio for Jessica Lahey
Jessica Lahey is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed and The Addiction Inoculation: Raising Healthy Kids in a Culture of Dependence. Jess was awarded the Research Society on Alcohol’s Media Award for “outstanding journalistic efforts of writers who cover empirical research on alcohol” […] “for her book The Addiction Inoculation and advocacy for the recovery community.” Over twenty years, Jess has taught every grade from sixth to twelfth in both public and private schools, and spent five years teaching in a drug and alcohol rehab for adolescents in Vermont. She has written about education, parenting, and child welfare for The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and her biweekly column “The Parent Teacher Conference” ran for three years at the New York Times. She designed and wrote the educational curriculum for Amazon Kids’ award-winning animated series The Stinky and Dirty Show, and was a 2019 Pushcart Prize nominee. Jess holds the dubious honor of having written an article that was later adapted as a writing prompt for the 2018 SAT. She co-hosts the #AmWriting podcast from her empty nest in Vermont.
Links to connect with Jessica Lahey• https://jessicalahey.com
• https://www.instagram.com/teacherlahey/
• https://www.facebook.com/jessicapottslahey/
TRANSCRIPTEnjoy the conversation. Jessica Lahey. Thank you so much. And welcome to unimaginable wellness. I am thrilled to have you here. How are you?
I am great looking out on a snowy Vermont woods through my office windows.
Oh, New England. I remember, New Hampshire and I got a big, thick coat that was for the Arctic weather.
Sounds about right. Yeah, that's about right. And that started at the end of October. So that's, that was always interesting, but yeah. Thank you so much for being here. And why don't you share with listeners a little bit about you, your book, your wisdom, and then we will jump into something that listeners definitely need help with, which is our mental bandwidth.
So take it away, Jessica.
Thank you. So I was a teacher for 20 years. I've taught every grade from sixth to 12th grade, but my heart, I have to admit, lies in middle school. I love, love, love teaching middle school. I also taught for five years in a drug and alcohol rehab for adolescents. So I've sort of taught in hoity toity private schools and in public schools and all across the, the range.
And about the same time that I was teaching middle school, I had kids in middle school and I was Finding that a lot. And I was also at the, at the same time writing, I was a education journalist. So I, as a teacher and as a parent, I was really interested in how kids learn, how to create a situation, a home, a home life that sort of got kids excited about.
Inquiry and curiosity and all that sort of stuff. And at the same time, sort of battling my demons of how much do I step in and help with my kids? And how much do I step back and encourage them to be independent? And then saw my students, a lot of my students parents were doing things that were sort of doing an end run around a lot of learning opportunities.
And that was getting frustrating to me. And so I was on kind of a high horse about that and, and sort of, Just irritated with some of the parents of my students, which is really bad, like the better the homeschool relationship is the better kids learn. We know that. But then the journalist side of me, I was writing for the Atlantic and the New York Times and eventually started writing a column for the New York Times called the Parent Teacher Conference, which was a biweekly column sort of for the Parents wanting to ask questions about education and teachers wanting to ask questions about sort of the, it was at the intersection of education and parenting.
And so my brain was constantly thinking of what is the impact of this learning environment or this parenting thing. And, you know, what I was sort of seeing was that some aspects of over parenting, whether it's highly directive parenting or controlling parenting, were undermining. Learning in many respects, but I wasn't really clear on how that was happening or even if that was happening.
And so the journalist in me got to go out and research that for like two years, and then write a book about what I found in terms of how parenting styles affect learning, motivation, engagement, all that kind of stuff. And, and then I had to get real about my own parenting. Cause it turns out I was doing the same thing.
To my own kids that I was irritated for the parents of my students were doing. So it became something I had to look at both as a parent and a teacher. And it became personal for me, which was where I had to be quite humbled to take a deep breath and look at my own, my own, my own habits and what I was doing to my own kids.
I love how you brought both sides of the same coin together, just like being part of the experiment and then also like trying to figure out what's going on in this experiment, like, are we too involved? Are we not? Well, no, we are definitely not not involved. But it's it's just interesting how then you had to almost take your own medicine in a way.
Yeah, I appreciate it. Like I said, Humbling, especially since, well, so much of what I write about, I mean, the gift of failure was my first book and it was very much about the impact of parenting styles over parenting, directive parenting and autonomy, the alternate, the alternative autonomy, supportive parenting and what that does to kids ability to learn and their motivation and stuff like that.
And that's based on research that's out there in the field. And then my second book. Was about my coming to terms of the fact that I am an alcoholic and getting control of my own drinking, not really getting control of it, but not drinking anymore, and then having to think about, okay, well, what has the impact been on my children and what will the intact impact continue to be on my children in terms of their own risks?
So I have really what I consider to be one of the coolest jobs in the world, which is to get curious about a topic and then. Go in my hidey hole in the woods of Vermont and research the heck out of it for a couple of years and then translate that research for people who don't necessarily want to go around reading studies and, and having to learn the statistics and all that other stuff in order to translate it to real life and how that actually translates to parenting and education and what we do in the classroom and all of that sort of stuff.
It's, it's a really, it's perfect for me as a job. Yeah, I mean, it's so interesting, too, that you have this like, or had this fascination for middle school. May I ask, before we move on, why? Because I have kids in middle school and I'm like, who would be fascinated with middle school? Well, I actually, uh, my very first teaching gig was with kids, was at the Duke Talent Identification Program.
And it, there were, they were sort of gifted or really advanced middle school kids, but they weren't, they were so mature for their age in many ways that it, so I moved directly into teaching. And I thought that's where I would stay. And I had applied for a new teaching job in a high school that I really admired.
And I got a note from the head of a middle school saying, is there any way you would come and interview for this job? Would really love to talk to you about it. And I'm like, Middle school. I, I, I don't know. They, they freak me out. I didn't like middle school myself. I can't imagine that I would want to teach kids that young.
And she said, look, just come meet them, which was the kiss of death. I went and I met them and I fell in love with them immediately. And it was, there's something about the fact that they are still. Children, in the sense that their guard isn't completely up, they still need hugs, they still, there's, there's something really magical about this, this age, and I think the more you understand about the adolescent brain and cognitive development during adolescence, the more You can understand why middle school is so magical.
They, we give them far more than they can handle from the perspective of where their brain development is. And so the expectation is if you're a middle school teacher who absolutely loves this age group, and I don't know why you would teach middle school if you didn't, because it would be maddening. The expectation is, is that we will watch them screw up all day long over and over and over again, and find those learning moments because Kids aren't always teachable on our schedule.
Sometimes it requires us to sort of step back and say, okay, in the back of my mind, I know I'm going to have to talk to this kid about his total lack of organization, but I can't do it right now because he hasn't had lunch yet or his Guinea pig died last night or whatever is happening at home. His parents are getting divorced and now isn't the best time to be talking.
It's more than he can handle. So you wait for just that right moment. And over. I was really lucky. I got to teach sixth grade and seventh grade and eighth grade. So I had these kids for three full years, something that education is, is really starting to realize is important, which is sort of tracking teachers along with kids for more than one year.
You really get the opportunity to get to know them. And so if anyone's ever parented a middle school kid, sixth grade and eighth grade are like two different planets. So getting to watch them grow from sixth grade to the end of eighth grade and heading off to high school. It just, it's amazing. It's incredible.
I love it so much. I have a seventh grader, so I'm smack in the middle. I'm seeing a little metamorphosis. It's kind of like, oh my goodness, what's coming out on the other side. But, but I'll say this, I'll say this. I think as far as this idea of how much a kid can handle, depending on their age. Is it, oh, of course.
It's an idea that even it involves us moms too, and how much we can handle. And on that note, I thought we would totally talk about one of your viral videos. I'm going to say Instagram with regards to a topic that I think a lot of us. might not be able to handle. Like if we have kids and, and we're kind of focused on grades and we want to be sure that they get to like the right high school, the right college and all of that, the topic that you shared your perspective on was my kid left her homework at home.
Should I take it to school for her? And the reason why that topic resonated with me is because here's my theory. My theory is. The reason why a lot of moms are challenged in terms of their mental bandwidth, like, why does it feel so stretched? My hypothesis is because they're also taking ownership of our kids burdens and challenges and problems to solve.
And along the lines of how much they can handle and how much we can handle, I would love your thoughts. thoughts on this idea of, of homework. It's like, I feel like there's got to be a lot more to it than just a piece of like paper giving to school. There's got to be a lot behind that. So say more. Yeah.
So this story actually is in the book, the gift of failure and is It's a cool story because since gift to failure came out, there has been a long period of time in which I've seen how the choices I made that day have played out over a long period of time. So you have to understand the backstory, which I explained in gift to failure, which is that my daughter had real issues with organization.
I mean, again, this was for her, this was fourth grade, but this is something that could come up any, at any period in time. And what. We understood was that she just at first was that her homework just wasn't getting done. That's what I heard from the teacher like homework is not happening. Well, it turns out that wasn't exactly true.
What we did was we talked to her about the homework issue. And what we found out was that actually the homework was getting done. It was just that she was either not handing it in. It was getting lost. It was stuck in the bottom of her backpack. So what was fascinating about that to me is that my assumption was that she was just not doing it.
That's Turns out wasn't true. It was a whole different piece of this. So we had to lay out really clear expectations for homework and then really clear consequences for if she didn't hand it in. So our really clear expectations were you'll do it, you'll do it to the best of your ability. You'll put it in your backpack, you'll take it back out of your backpack and you will hand it in to your teacher so that your teacher can give you feedback because homework is all about feedback.
And So by the time this homework was left on this coffee table and my daughter was already out at the bus stop. And we knew that her major problem was putting the homework in the backpack, taking it out of the backpack, handing it to the teacher. And we'd had a whole conversation about this and we'd been working on this specific thing.
And so I went back and forth and back and forth. Do I take it? Do I not take it? In fact, I had to go to the school for something later that day anyway, so it would have been super easy for me to take it. And I actually even went to Facebook and put up on Facebook that this was a challenge for me. I was right in the middle of writing the gift of failure.
What I do, blah, blah, blah. And a friend of mine who helps run this website called Grown and Flown and wrote the book Grown and Flown about helping your older kids sort of out of, out of the nest, she said, Jess, I really respect you and I love your work, but I disagree if, if. If this were your husband and he forgot his, his charging cord at home, then you'd take it to him.
Right? Because family, if no one else has your back, right? We show each other, we have their backs and we love each other. And if no one else in the world supports us, our family supports us. And I'm like, Oh crud, what do I do now? Because my instinct is I can't take the homework and not just because my entire very small community knew I was writing a book called the gift of failure about this exact thing.
And so I didn't take the homework that day because I realized no, yes, I would take the, the charging cord to my husband, but my husband, always remembers his charging cord. Like that's not an issue we're working on with him. He's an incredibly careful and meticulous person. And so it would be an oddity, an outlier for him to forget something like that.
But with my daughter, this is a very specific thing we've been working on. So I didn't take it. I'm also, by the way, not raising my husband. I was raising my daughter with this very specific blind spot in her, in her executive function skills. And so I didn't take it. And what ended up happening was her teacher got fed up.
Wonderful Mr. Dano. I love him so much. I talk about him all the time. Mr. Dano kept her in from lunch, which plus a minus I'm not in agreement with that. We, Kids need exercise, but kept her in from recess and said, this is something that's been going on for too long. It's time that you just, you have to come up with a strategy, like how is tomorrow going to be different from today?
And that day, the day I didn't take the homework and did not rescue her, she was forced to sit down and come up with a strategy that would work for her. And that strategy won PS, I had been recommending for ages that she didn't. Listen to came up with her own strategy, which again was the one I had been recommending you forever, but it was the one that she thought she came up with all on her own, which is what matters, which was a checklist, like having a checklist at home so that she remembers everything.
And what was so cool about that was. She's very proud of herself when she told me all about this checklist thing. She had come up with clearly all on her own, but it's the, the tool she used, the strategy she used all the way through middle school, all the way through high school. I kept all of them. She would remake them from time to time, depending on what she needed.
And she's in college now, and it continues to be the way she thinks about it. What she needs to leave house with or the dorm room with or whatever And it stuck because it was her Strategy and if I had taken the homework that day She wouldn't have had this moment where she had to talk to an adult about how She needed to be supported in coming up with a solution to this ongoing problem that she wasn't hearing from me and I'm forever indebted to Mr.
Dano for, for being that person that really pushed her to come up with something. So it was really hard to stay home that day, especially since it was for a subject that. She was having trouble with, it was kids who were starting to tease her about being the kid that forgets everything. I could have saved her from that if I had just taken the homework that day, but, and it would have made me feel great, but I had to put off my own, Need to feel good about here's how much I love you.
Here's visible evidence of how much I love you for what would benefit her long term, not necessarily that day. And I would have stolen that learning opportunity from her. And to your point, it's not great at there's another story that I tell in the book, which is that former. Student of mine, we were working on some stuff together about her anxiety and her anxiety around homework and all that stuff.
And it was because her parents were so, so invested in helping her with homework every single day, like literally on top of her. And it was causing major chaos, not just chaos, but anxiety in the home. When it came time for her to go off to college and I asked her what she was excited about, she's like, Oh yeah, I'm so excited for this, that, and the other thing.
She said, but I'm really, really worried about my parents because I don't know what they're going to do with their time because she had never seen her parents have a life outside of her needs and wants and schedule. And that's bad for kids. Like we shouldn't. They need to see that we have a life outside of their needs and wants and lives and that we are full people outside of our children.
That's how we teach our children to be their own parents who can have a life outside of their own kids and think about things like their relationships and their career and their whatever those other things are outside of kids. So I think it's, we really, really have to balance that stuff and be thinking about what's important for our kids in the long term and what's important for us in the long term.
Absolutely. And as I think about what you're sharing, I'm thinking to myself, okay, so this was like a, a little moment that became a huge learning opportunity, lifelong benefits for your daughter. And I'm curious about for yourself and just like, is this now something that you never had to think about again?
Like, how did it like. Wouldn't that be nice? Wouldn't that be nice if I never had to think about it again? No, it was fourth grade and you know, this, she continued to be the kind of kid who needed more supports, especially for executive function stuff. And for those people who don't know, executive function stuff is frontal lobe stuff.
It's adulting stuff. So the brain develops from the bottom up. We start with like the ability to breathe and the ability and reflexes and the ability to see our heart. But the higher up in our brain, we go, the more we're thinking about like time management, resource allocation, how we segue from one thing to another, starting a task, finishing a task, all that kind of like adulting stuff.
That's all frontal lobe stuff. And that is the very last part of the brain to come online. And many, many. Kids, fourth grade, middle school, high school, that part of the brain is not fully online yet. It's not fully online until the early to mid twenties, which if you read my other book about substance use, it's the reason that using addictive substances is so much more harmful to the adolescent brain than it is to an adult brain that's done forming.
So for me, I constantly had to think, okay, where is my kid along this continuum of developing executive function? And she's 20 now. Is she fully cooked yet? No, she, her brain won't be fully cooked until the early to mid twenties. My older kid happened to get there a little bit sooner and my younger kid is getting there a little later and that's totally normal.
But how I react to one kid might be a little different from how I react to my other kids simply because. I know, I have a pretty good sense of where they are in terms of what they need, and it's when we start assuming that they need help all the time, when we start assuming that they're not competent enough to do stuff themselves, that's when we start sort of stepping in, doing too much, being overly directive, and possibly fostering what's called learned helplessness, which is teaching our kids Oh, no, I don't think you can do that thing.
And then they start to believe it too. And so their immediate reaction becomes, Oh, I need help with this. I can't do it myself. There's no way I could do this on my own. And I see it from the classroom side as a teacher. And I see it at home from my own kids, it still pops up, but it still rears its ugly head sometimes, because is it easier to pretend you can't do it?
So mom will do it. Absolutely. And that goes from laundry to loading the dishwasher to pretending that you didn't know that if the dishwasher is already clean, then you can unload it before you drop your stuff in the sink and just walk away. There's that learned helplessness thing is a really tempting thing to fall into for kids until they're done developing and sometimes beyond.
What's so what's so interesting, Jessica, in terms of just like my own experiences, is that. This dynamics of like an overly involved parent doing things for you is alien territory to me. I'm like, oh, that's so fascinating. I, I have a totally different life experience. So here's the challenge that I want to just share with you.
Like how, How would a listener who has the opposite experience where she had to grow up very quickly because she was raised by a mom with manic depression? Like, how does someone like me and you, Jessica, teach our kids without breaking them? Because I don't know what they're capable of, but I'm really trying to figure out what are the edges and like, how does one before?
For already, like what one kid could handle or not, how do you start like testing this just like, Oh, I think they got this or, Oh no, break them. If they do that. Yeah. So I love this question because I hardly ever get this question. I, I was raised in a home with an alcoholic parent. I was raised along with some other stuff that I choose to keep private that I had to grow up really fast and I was in charge of all my stuff.
But part of that was really wonderful because part of it was that my parents trusted me to make good decisions and they, and I, you know, Very much wanted to fulfill that expectation. And so from my perspective, some of that was really great. Like they trusted me to navigate the world and be able to speak up for myself.
And they expected that I would speak up for myself and that I would be able to navigate the world. But there is, as you mentioned, so there's, There's a really interesting divide between kids who have, there's this thing called self efficacy, which is the feeling that if you take action, that you can change things.
Like, let's say for example, I'm. I really don't like my college roommate. We're just not getting along and I really think we should switch roommates. And so I know that I could go speak to an advisor or go talk to the college or talk to the roommate and either resolve things or change things up. That's a feeling of self efficacy.
I know I can do that. So I tend to have a fairly high level of self efficacy, but there are two kinds of kids who have very low levels of self efficacy. And not only is that. which is terrible for them emotionally, but it's also a really big risk factor for substance use. Kids who grow up in the foster care system, group homes, homes where they're being neglected or abused, where you want to change the fact that you're getting hit or that you don't have anyone to turn to, but there isn't much you can do.
Do to change that situation, a kid in foster care may have no control whatsoever over where they're living next week. And that can cause some kids to have really low levels of self efficacy. Like no matter what I do, nothing will change kind of thing. But then there are also kids who grow up with every support and financial support and parents doing everything for them.
And even those kids can end up in a situation where they're like, well, I don't need to make decisions about things because all decisions are being made for me. Someone is going to figure that out for me. And that's also can foster a really low level of self efficacy. And these are the kids that I saw in my rehab classroom a lot, these two kinds of kids.
And so I think One of the best things we can do is really get to know the kid that we have really well. What are their needs? What are their wants? What are, what are the things they love? And let them know that we love them no matter what the outcome is That we're, that we're really interested in the process of becoming, learning, practicing that when we focus overly on the end product, the trophy, the score, the grade, the points, that what we're saying is we don't care how you get there.
We just want you to provide these results and. The way we react when they do or don't provide those results. Can make them can make a lot of kids feel like they are loved more when they get high grades and less when they Get low grades. And in fact, I poll kids on this when i'm in schools And it's really stunning how many kids say?
Yeah, I really do believe that i'm loved More when I get high grades and less when I get low grades so doing a lot of this sort of process talk will also get at the topic of Well, do you need support here? Do you want me to step back a lot of Parents don't think to ask those questions, especially when your come kids, your kid comes to you and they're really upset and like we go into that defensive mode and we just want to fix it for them because it's so horrible to hear about our kids being in distress.
But a lot of teens will tell you that they don't want the problem solved. They just want to talk about it. They just want to be heard. So. Making sure your kid feels heard is the number one thing that we can do to make sure that we're not under parenting or over parenting because they're going to tell us if they trust us and if they feel supported in the process of becoming and whoever it is, they're going to be, as opposed to just in the end product, then they hopefully will trust us enough to tell us when they need help and when they need support, and that's when you can get to know Are they asking for help because they're being helpless here, or are they asking for help because they really, really need help?
And it becomes fairly, it's different with each kid, but if I can learn it in a classroom of 30 students, I knew when my students needed real help or were just copping out for the day. And I knew when a student was in distress and not asking for help. That's a matter of looking and listening, listening, listening.
And paying attention to who the kid is. And there's one thing I say a lot when I'm talking in schools, talking to parents about gift to failure stuff, which is that we have to love the kid. We have not the kid we wish we had, because when we love the kid, we have not some imaginary version of our child.
We really do get a feel for their emotional state and their, their levers for what they want and need from us. And, and that's. Knowing the kid you have and, and not just the kid you wish you had is sort of the most important thing that I think we can do as a parent. Yeah, I would agree totally. I think some kids can handle more than other kids, which is an obvious point.
But I think as a parent, it's the onus is on us to really like understand, like maybe what are their limits and challenge them a little bit. I mean, I have several anecdotes, which I'll definitely share in the show notes a bit more, but. Yeah. Thank you, Jessica, for this. I think this is important. And so one final question before you share all your socials and where we could get your books and such, but here's the question.
So you personally, as a mom, as an author, a New York Times bestselling author, help us understand how you personally have bubble wrapped your sanity along your journey. Yeah, at the, my ability to say no to things has gotten better. When I first sold The Gift of Failure, I was working full time over more than full time as a middle school teacher.
I was teaching six, six class. So I was teaching six individual different classes out of seven periods a day. And I was also working part time as an education journalist. And then I sold my book and I did not want to stop teaching. But I also. I had to weigh sort of what I wanted from my career, and I had always wanted to be a writer, and this was my big chance to sort of do it or not do it right.
And I had to, I, the day I quit, I was just Weeping. It was awful. I luckily was able to find a part time job teaching so that I was able to juggle everything, but I couldn't do everything I wanted to do. And granted, this isn't from a perspective of, Oh my gosh, I have choice. That's a place of incredible privilege.
And I totally understand that. But being able to say no to some of the things that are shiny objects that I would love to like have on my CV, or that I think could sell a couple extra books, or that might give me, give me another opportunity. I've had to realize that I can't be all things to all people.
I can't do everything. In order to be the parent that my teenagers needed, I couldn't also. Teach full time. I just couldn't do it no matter how much I wanted to stay. And it was really sad, but it was a decision that was really, really good and allowed me, as I said, to find a part time job that did allow me to have a taste of this and a taste of that, and still be there for my kids when they needed me to be.
Thank you for that. I think that's helpful. I think saying no is ultimately saying yes to the thing that you really want. So it makes, it makes sense. And I know it's really, really hard, especially when those objects are extra super shiny. So Jessica, share with us where we can continue to follow along your journey and buy your books and support you and learn more about them.
Your gift of failure. So everything is at Jessica Lahey. com, including the daily videos. I was putting up for a while and I'm hoping to return to both on the addiction inoculation and the gift of failure. I do that on Instagram but they're all indexed in the little table of contents on there. You can find out about more about.
Possibly getting me to come to your kid's school or some nonprofit organization in your area to speak about either topic. But again, everything is at Jessica Lahey. com and I'm on all of the social places at, at Jess Lahey. Thank you so much. Or at Teacher Lahey, sorry, at Teacher Lahey. Someone over on Instagram took at Jess Lahey, so I couldn't have it.
So I'm at Teacher Lahey over on Instagram. Thank you so much, Jessica. I appreciate this. Thank you so much. This is such, such a fun conversation. Absolutely. Thanks again. What an amazing conversation with Jessica, and here's why I was so smitten to have a conversation with her. First of all, I think it's so interesting that the topic of over parenting is such a big deal these days because I see it, I'm a witness, I understand it visually.
But personally, and maybe you too, I wasn't over parented. I don't know if I would say I was under parented, but maybe right sized parented for my personality and my abilities. So, it's something for you to consider. I think there's two ends, two ways of approaching parenting, probably several. But ultimately, it's something important to understand as far as For each individual child.
So here's my quick recap. Number one, kids do need to see that we have lives outside of our kids. And I think that is even more important and possible with the internet, making it more accessible to us. Second point, we have to give kids more credit. We can't assume that they don't know how to do something.
I will even add this point. Not only can we not assume that they don't know how to do something. But dare I say, and I'm just saying this cause it's easier to say than to do. What if they actually can do something more simply and better? Right? So that's an opportunity that I think is really helpful.
Here's the third one, self efficacy. So for different kids, there's different quote unquote. Levels of abilities, right? And capabilities. So it's beyond just the age because you could have two 12 year olds that have totally different ways of handling the exact same stressful moment. And I think. You see that in one home where you have siblings who see certain situations favorably, potentially, and others, not as much.
So it's really important for us as moms, even at the helm of really growing businesses. To really pay attention to the different parenting style needs that our individual children have. And as someone with identical twins, that goes for me too, and maybe for you too. So hope you enjoyed the conversation.
I definitely want to invite you to learn more about Jessica. She shared how to reach out to her. And I also want to invite you to head on over to fertile ideas. com. When I say that I am beyond, beyond excited that I am sharing. You know, everything that I've learned over these four years on how to rediscover my own imagination so that this way I could actually have a business that thrives and something that I'm excited about and I feel fully aligned to, which is supporting mom entrepreneurs.
It is not an understatement. Your imagination is something that you might not even know has been paused for a decade. And once we hit that play button. And that is a little bit of a pun because that is part of my framework playing with your imagination. There's no telling at how many wonderful ideas you could activate and turn into reality and actually make an impact in the world and on your terms.
So head on over to www.fertileideas.com
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Ever think to yourself, "Sure, I can network with strangers confidently... as long as they go first?" Do you ever wish you had the chutzpah and perfect words to break the ice as a mompreneur, even if you're introverted? Want access to my frameworks and easy-to-use follow-up insights – the exact ones I've used to land big-name podcast interviews with people like Suzy Batiz or GaryVee?
Welcome to episode 222. Bookmark this episode to learn exactly how to go first to strike a conversation with a contact and find your most authentic way to turn them into a real connection!
Free Resource: From Contact to Connection: The Go First Networking & Follow-Up Playbook for Mom Entrepreneurs
SIGN-UP for playbook: https://bit.ly/hypernetworking
• Easy to follow steps to craft your networking outreach goal
• Research necessary to not ask silly questions or feel awkward
• Unconventional follow-up ideas and timing that will not come across as thirsty/ pushy
• Templates that you can tailor based on your business goals and personality
• Worksheet to uncover ways to add value to contacts and make everyone feel goodThe urgency stems from the fact that many of us, as I coach moms who are entrepreneurs, have been out of the market for a while. Some of us have taken a hiatus, perhaps due to a recent child or the pandemic keeping us home and away from others. But mompreneurs are back, and we need to catch up! This can naturally lead to a dip in confidence when re-entering the scene and engaging with people who haven't experienced a similar break. Right? That's why I wanted to equip you with some language that's practically copy-and-paste ready, like Mad Libs, allowing you to tailor it to your specific outreach goals.
So here is a real-life question that I got from a mom business owner. She said: I just got back into networking after a pause from having two kids. I don't have a problem talking to someone if they talk to me first? It's usually the opening, the conversation with a stranger, that isn't about the weather or something irrelevant. And then after the meeting, I want to know what to say afterwards to follow up with a give and not just "taking".
Tune in for my answer to her question, which I suspect is on your mind too, if you're reading this. And while you're here, grab this free resource I made specifically for my fellow mompreneurs, founders, and creators who need to be more strategic about their networking efforts. These skills can take your business to the next level, whether you're looking to find new partners, build corporate relationships with decision-makers, secure podcast guests, or find mentors who can open doors to the right rooms – where the real conversations happen and where, if mentioned, you could transform your vision.
TRANSCRIPT
Now before I answer that question, I just need to ask you, like, do you have outreach goals as a business owner? Because if you don't, I think we just need to like level set right there. Here's where I'm going with this right now in my nine week group coaching program, fertile imagination in access, which is what I'm going to rename it from action.
What we're going through is how to actually knock your business goals out of the ballpark, right? So let's just imagine that you want to bring in an extra 50 K and you're figuring out how to engage with the right stakeholders, be in the right rooms, have the right conversations. That is what needs to happen.
You need to really be specific. Like who do you want to talk to? And to be very honest, you could absolutely use AI and get some ideas, but coming from someone who tried that pertaining to just pitching podcasts, for example. AI wasn't as helpful as I had hoped. It really is something that requires your own personal touch because you're going to have the wisdom necessary to understand how can I look through LinkedIn, for example, for precisely the person I need on my team or I need to speak to.
So have an outreach goal. That's like step number one. And that is where I come in and I support mom entrepreneurs who may have never approached their business in this way, through the use of hyper networking, which I'll get into in this episode. Now let's go back to the language that this person might use in order to strike up a conversation with a complete and total stranger.
So let's imagine that you are, On LinkedIn, right? So that's one way that you're conducting this outreach efforts in order to build strategic partnerships or find mentors who are light years ahead of you, not individuals where you feel like you both are in the same boat. And just kind of feeding each other information that you've gotten online.
So here's one way that you might want to approach this. So as this person is sharing, she wants to get back out there. It's been some time. Step one is you need to know who you are. Like you need to realize and rebuild your confidence, right? Like, who are you to talk to person A, B, or C? So as an example, let's imagine that you wanted to get in touch with Sarah Blakely.
Now, I'm not saying you have to talk to someone that is a billionaire or someone that might feel so out of reach at first. There is a way to build up your confidence to get to that level, but here's the reality of it. Someone like Sarah is getting all these inbound LinkedIn messages that are totally ridiculous.
A lot of them are like copy and paste pitches, invest in my business, or, Oh, I admire you so much. Can I work for you for free? Like these are the sort of messages someone like Sarah is getting. So if you are genuine, sincere, and you honestly approach someone like Sarah, and then of course, there's other things that need to happen to get her attention.
Then you will stand out. That's just like the first step there, right? So step one, what's your intention? I think intention really matters. So before you put pen to paper or fingertip to keyboard, definitely, what is your intention, right? Are you looking for a relationship with someone like a Sarah or whoever, Whereby you really want to not just take from them, but you want to give them a sense of like either admiration, appreciation, or just like a real conversation.
I know this might sound like not of value, but do you know how valuable it is to have a real conversation with someone who gets pitched all the time and you're there being yourself and you're there being your mom self? Like. I tell my clients all the time, let's imagine you wanted to engage with Warren Buffett, right?
You're not a billionaire. Okay, fine. You're not Warren's cousin or nephew or son, but imagine that there was like a baby in a room. Tell me that that baby is not going to make someone like Warren Buffett giggle and tell me that just providing an opportunity for Warren to giggle is not a value. Like really, really take that in.
Like someone who is pitched all the time by disingenuous people. Is actually having a real chat with someone that's like a mom who gets the struggle, who gets how hard it is to pursue her outreach goals or her business goals. So really figuring out like who you are and the value that you bring to the table upfront before typing anything is step one.
And it's really hard for moms because a lot of the value that we might bring to a conversation with someone who has these financial markers of success, a lot of the value that we bring is not quantifiable. It really isn't. And so it's really on us to reimagine what actually matters in terms of like authentic human engagement.
So that's the first piece of the puzzle. The second one is the following. So if you're reaching out to someone, what's really, really important, and I'm thinking LinkedIn, because that is how I helped a client just yesterday. But if you're reaching out to someone, you need to understand, like, why exactly are you reaching out to them?
And we've got to cut through the bullshit, like for real, for real, for real. Why are you reaching out to that person? Okay, because if there's any sort of like hint or tint of I just want to reach out to you because I want you to give me money, like someone's going to smell that on you, even though you can't technically smell LinkedIn, but they're just going to tell like certain phrases that you might use will feel kind of like icky or weird or whatever.
So you got to be really like clear on what, like why are you reaching out to this person? So let me give you an example, let's imagine that like legit, you want someone to be on your board of advisors, like strategically, that is something that you can bring to the table. If you're having a conversation with one of these very amazing human beings.
It might not even be someone that's like billionaire light years ahead of you. It might be someone who just has visibility into a new sector that might help you achieve your outreach goals, i. e. your business goals. So in the case of my client just the other day, for her, she really wants to reach out to people that are in the health insurance space, right?
And what was really interesting is that she has a board of advisors. She has a board of advisors and she knows that she needs someone who is a medical professional. So what is it that she did or I guided her to do? I said, okay, great. So name a health insurance company, whatever it might have been in her case, it was Kaiser Permanente.
And now tell me the actual job title of the person who's a medical professional that you feel would be like the perfect bulls eye pick to serve on your board. Now, I didn't connect those dots up front, but after the fact, that's where I said we were going. Here's the thing. People like to feel special.
Everybody has an ego. And if you have an opportunity to really cater to someone's ego, like let's say you have a podcast, let's say you have a blog, let's say you have a vlog, a YouTube channel, or A board of advisors, or you could like literally make it up and say, and now I have a board of advisors and a spot that's enough of a reason for someone and you to engage.
Right? So that's what we did. We're like, okay, great. So let's be real specific here. So you want to have a relationship with someone at Kaiser Permanente and you want it to be a, and it's so hard for me to say this, a neonatologist person. Right? Right. So that's what we did. He was like, all right, let's find exactly the bullseye target that we would like to engage with.
And the invitation would be to serve on the board. That's not what you say out of the gate. Instead, what you might say out of the gate is the following. So you're looking at someone's LinkedIn profile and you're saying to yourself, okay, this person, I don't want them to ignore my connection requests, right?
So that means that you have to write an actual note. And that's probably obvious, but what do you put in that note? So you got to lead with something that is like about them. If you start with the, thank you for your time, happy to connect. Saw you the other day. That is so boring. I want you to connect with someone and say, Hey, I saw that you are a Neo blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Cause it's hard for me to say. And I noticed that you have spent some time in the ex care unit, right? So this is all based on. What someone writes in LinkedIn, or I noticed that you are a, and you could name the job function if you want to make it really easy on yourself. And I noticed that you went to Berkeley, which is definitely a place where women's rights was really like.
Top of mind, right? So you got to make it specific. It's like, no, this person isn't like making a mistake and reaching out to me. They actually want to talk to me because I very specifically have a certain experience or I wrote something in my LinkedIn profile that this person read. So if you up front in your LinkedIn outbound first connection, say that, that's going to automatically get someone's attention, right?
And then when you could say, as an example, so you're saying like, Hey, essentially you're saying I am reaching out because you are this based on your experiences in that it leads me to believe that you might be interested in a conversation pertaining to this other topic, whatever that topic is pertaining to your outreach goal.
And your company vision next sentence would be something like, I felt encouraged to reach out to you because that's another way that you might want to lead. Right? And again, you're saying exactly what you're reading on LinkedIn, right? Or maybe you heard a podcast where they were on, or maybe you saw them in the media.
So that's actual language you could use to strike up a conversation that has zilch to do with the weather. All right, great. So now you have this like first point of connection. And so someone accepts the connection. Then what? Here's the reality of it. Chances are, although you wrote that information in LinkedIn, that person didn't read it like with any sort of level of depth.
So they might not respond to that initial like three sentences outbound. But if they connected, what I suggest you do is go on to LinkedIn, go into their contact info and specifically email them. Okay. Here's why, why do people go on LinkedIn? They're looking for business relationships. They're looking for a job right now.
We're all mom entrepreneurs. So what's important is that you reach them somewhere that they're actually checking all the time, which is email. So you are going to email them. Follow up. So then the follow up might be as simple as, thank you for the connection, and you might wanna like say a little bit of what you said in that original note.
The reason why I reached out to you was A, B, or CI would love to have a conversation with you. Here's my calendar. And then of course, if you wanted to, you could say, having been at the helm of my business, we've been able to do this, whatever that is, bring millions of dollars in donation or sell all these different charge keys.
But what we're looking for right now is a thought leader who can add. Some sort of fresh insights in the medical community who would be interested in learning more about organization and potentially serving on our board, which has a minimal, minimal, minimal level of time requirements, right? So you might literally go ahead and start painting the picture, nothing about the weather there, right?
So that might be the next step. And here's the thing you're putting your link. To your calendar what I noticed if you're not confident in making the first step from a networking perspective you tend to put extra steps in front of you and that irritates me beyond belief like I would only put extra steps in front of me if I'm nervous like Sean was saying you're not going to Crazy, right?
So if I'm talking to someone and like, I don't really, really, really want them to email me back because I'm scared, then yeah, I won't put my calendar link. I'll be like, maybe you'd like to connect with me, let me know. But if I really, really, really, really am clear on. My outreach goals, my company vision and who I really am and how I could add value irrespective of the human being I'm talking to, then I'm just going to cut to the chase because that's what you really, really want.
And what I have noticed is the higher you go up in job titles and levels of seniority, the faster those individuals are to just jump on the phone and get to the point. Right? It's not about being too direct or being presumptuous. You could absolutely in that second note say, I understand you're busy and you are under no obligation to respond, but I wanted to just ask you because I felt like I had to.
My mission is that important and I know that There must be alignments or synergies. You could literally say this, like, it is okay to wear your heart on your sleeve. Again, all of this is assuming that you really want to talk to this person and you have a very specific ask in your mind. If you don't have a specific ask in your mind, this is what I suggested my client do the other day.
She brainstorms a bunch of reasons, a bunch of ways that. The person she connected with, this was her follow up strategy, could actually work with her, how she could help that person, how that person can help her, and how together they're better off, let's imagine, right? Not necessarily in those words, but she had to brainstorm this, so do yourself the favor of preparing, brainstorming.
On that note, I want to help you. With a great deal of specificity, I want to be sure that you have the actual language you need to have conversations with people that might intimidate you, right? And so what you will find, and you could absolutely see in the show notes, is Is a link, it is bit. ly, so bit.
ly forward slash hyper networking, you can actually go to that link and you can download for free a playbook in this playbook. What I have done. Is really tried to make this like plug and play pertaining to those like first outbound connections. It is called from contact to connection. It's the mompreneurs followup playbook.
And I give you my exact networking language in terms of the emails that you could send out the DMS that you could put in and even openers for cocktail parties. So you know how you're like in a cocktail party. And then people are like in these circles that seem Impenetrable. Well, you can absolutely like join in those circles.
Okay. Unless you're noticing that like people are like super, super tight and like blocking you from every direction. There are ways for you to insert yourself into existing conversations. And so I've included in my playbook, a couple of ideas as well, but I don't want to overwhelm a mom entrepreneur. I just want to be sure that you have some language.
That will get you from feeling intimidated to totally excited about talking to strangers because the generosity of strangers is a real thing. So go ahead and pick up the playbook. It is again called From Contact to Connection, The Mompreneur's Follow Up Playbook. You can pick it up on the link that is in the show notes, wherever it is that you're listening to this episode.
Bitly, so bit. ly forward slash hyper networking. It will be in the show notes and you can pick it up for free today and absolutely have some language that you can use and edit pertaining to your outreach goals, pertaining to your company vision for this very year so that this way you don't have to feel like people have to talk to you first.
Because here's what happens. If you're the one to initiate a conversation, it puts you in a position of power. It's been said the person that actually like creates the agenda in like a networking meeting or any meeting, that's the person that's controlling where this conversation gets to go. So if you have the chutzpah, the confidence to actually go first during networking, engagements, then it is a hundred percent better for you because then you get to lead where the conversation goes.
And notice, I didn't say anything here about the weather at all. Like, let's, let's go to this other topic. So let's say that you want a little bit of help pertaining to Having a conversation in a live setting, a live setting. Again, I will have some language for you, for a mom business owner specifically, because I'm a mom.
I'm an entrepreneur and I a hundred percent know what it is to be. What is, is, what is the word? I don't know why it's escaping me. Not undervalued, but like people just don't expect me. And I'm little too. People don't expect me to have the audacity to go up to like the people that are on panels or the speakers at the end of an event.
So people just don't assume that I'm going to go and just like go in for the, for, for the quote unquote kill. Right. In a very positive way. So that is why I wanted to have this playbook for, for us, for mom entrepreneurs, because I'm going to tell you If you have decided to nurture a human being, Through any method, be it adoption, birth, be it as this loving and doting like auntie, like you've got, you've got guts beyond, beyond other people, like to take in like another human being and to like help them grow is one of the most courageous things.
I mean, it's the most courageous things. I've ever done personally, and let me be honest, I've got to ask for that courage every single morning, right? So, for us to be held out of these right rooms, right conversations, and right contacts, I'm gonna call bullshit on that, and I want Us as mom entrepreneurs who have had to like start, stop, pause businesses to catch up and exceed outpace anyone who didn't have to step out, pause, or iterate based on growing or having a family.
So that's why I want you to pick up that playbook today. Go to bit. ly forward slash hyper networking. Okay. So then now you're in a live networking event. And here's the thing, I was having this conversation with a mom who has a product. And I asked her, I was like, right now you and I are on a 15 minute zoom conversation.
So you just said that you are not so into networking, which I don't know. I had to ask, I was like, well, what do we call this? Like I had reached out to her. I didn't know her. She didn't know me. And we're on zoom in my mind. I'm networking in her mind. It's connecting. And I don't see it as so different when you're in a happy hour setting or you're in a venue with a lot of people.
So let's just get to that place, right? One to many networking. You're at an event. I'm thinking to myself when I went to Podfest actually in Orlando, Florida. So. For me, I get off the plane, I'm a mom, I have three kids who are at home, I gotta make this count. Like, my husband is on call for childcare, I spent a lot of money to get to Florida, and it's time away from my kids.
So how can I make this count? The moment I stepped into Florida, or landed, I just started networking. I will be networking on a plane if that is okay. I have an opportunity for me and I have, I've actually gotten a podcast guest on a plane. So beyond that, let's imagine that now you're going to an event, you're there and it's like a bunch of people, it's buzzing and people have already established their like circles, right?
Impenetrable circles. So what is it that I did that has nothing to do with the weather? Well, I approached a group of individuals who I thought were part of a meetup for authors. That's just what was on the schedule, so I was like, oh, maybe they're the meetup for authors. Here's where the really big point of differentiation is.
I approached that group of total and complete strangers already having conversations. And I said, hi, my name is Melissa. You guys look like you're having a really interesting conversation. Is this the author meetup group? Now that was like an honest question, but thinking back, maybe I could have made that up as an excuse to start.
Engaging with these humans turns out this was not the author meetup group. I could have been like bright red tail between my legs. Oh my God. Oops. I'm sorry. Bye. But I said, you know what? No, there is value in conversations with every single human being. This happened to be the group of neurodivergent podcasters.
And so for me, I was like, Oh, this is really cool because I strongly believe that I can learn brand new things and apply them to my business from people who have done things differently, especially if you think differently than me, as an example. So I was like, Oh, I'm sticking around. And then of course, I started talking to the different individuals who bring a completely fresh way of looking at the operations of business, of making marketing simple.
And as I was having conversations, the group kind of like fizzled out and so it was just me and one other person who happens to be neurodivergent. And so I was just asking her questions. Be curious. It is okay. This person was also a mom. So that's a shared experience for us. But what was not shared was that she had an approach to marketing that was super, super linear.
And I was like, Oh my God, this is like mana from the heavens or mana from the heavens. So I just asked for more information around that. What's the point? Here's the point. The excuse that I had was not something that was inauthentic or a lie or anything that was like, Oh, I'm here to just take information from you.
The excuse was like legitimate. It was like, no, no, no. I'm literally here to talk to the author meetup group. And that's okay. And I want you to feel so confident and bold in who you are and the value you bring to the table by way of your personality, your life experiences, to have the audacity to be real.
I think that is how you build the confidence to go first in a networking conversation. Again, you will want this playbook. It is in the show notes. Absolutely. Grab it immediately. So you have a better sense of the openers that you can use, whether you are online or whether you are offline, right? In this universe, it is so important to gather as much power as humanly possible.
And one way is by actually Going first, you want to set the agenda. You want to establish who gets to go in your room. You want to establish where the conversation goes and how you would like to follow up. There's so much that's not within our control that as a mom entrepreneur, you have got, you have got, and I feel like repeating this a thousand times.
You have got to find ways to set up. This game in a way that you're going to win, right? And this is one way, this is one way. Has this ever gone wrong? Hell yeah, it's gone wrong. Let me give you an example. I was in Australia pre pandemic. We were living there for three and a half years. And I remember. I was at an event where there was this leader of an organization that is for authors, right?
I'm not going to name the organization because someone from Australia might be listening, but the CEO of this organization, I wanted to talk to her. And so I was part of the crowd and I went up to her, and I don't know if she was like on her way to the bathroom, but Who cares, right? Like as a mom, we have all held our pee.
So I went up to her and she was surrounded by some other people, but who cares? Because again, I know that I have value to contribute. As an example, I have a podcast. I could have her as a guest. That's an example. And so she was trying to escape, not just me, but like the whole crowd. But then I was like, Hey, my name is Melissa.
I really love what you do. And I would love to have a conversation with you. And what she went and attempted to do was pawn me off to her assistant. So, how is this going first gone wrong? Well, because if I were to say, oh, okay, I'll talk to your assistant, then that puts me at the same level as everyone else who's trying to reach out to her.
Like this person who's the actual decision maker and actual human bullseye target I wanted to talk to. To actually just suggest that I talk to her gatekeeper. You see how that takes me away from my outreach goal. Okay. So what did I do? I said, Oh no, no, that's okay. I wanted to speak to you. See, I know that takes guts.
That takes, that takes confidence. And like I said, I think she was off to the bathroom, but for me, it just establishes the idea that no, if you want to talk to some, some, some person that might feel out of reach, like be clear on why you want to talk to them and why you deserve to talk to them and how it can be a positive outcome for the two of you.
Okay. Be clear on those things so that you have the guts to just step through the BS that might be thrown at you. If you're trying to talk to a specific person. So, did it go wrong? It did! Like, the pandemic happened afterwards anyways, so we were all distracted, but ultimately, if I really wanted her on my podcast, I certainly would have made the ask, but once I noticed that she was also, like, more soundproofed, How can I say this?
An employee, as opposed to an entrepreneur or founder. I realized that her incentives and her, her motivations might not be in alignment with my own, right? So if someone's the employee of an organization, they might not be as open to being a podcast guest on someone that they don't know, right? Cause there's a lot at stake in terms of.
Stakeholders and blah, blah, blah. That's what I've noticed. But if they're a founder, if they're an entrepreneur, if they're someone that own the business, then they get the hustle. They get it. They get it and they're all for it. Okay, let me stop. Can you tell I'm like crazy excited about this? I really, really am.
But what I want more than anything else is for you, mom, entrepreneur, mom, founder, mom, creator to go to my link and get the actual playbook, right? It'll include, like I said, some language that you can use and also some followup strategies as well. B I T dot L Y forward slash hyper networking. Can I just say something to be super, super honest?
I suspect that some moms who have businesses already, I really suspect that, and it would be so amazing if you shared this with one mom friend who has a business, one mom friend who you believe in so much, who you think has so much to offer that might just not be comfortable making the first move in a networking conversation.
So please share this episode specifically with that mom. I would be so, so, so appreciative. And thank you for listening to Unimaginable Wellness. I really do appreciate you. And damn, I believe in you so, so, so, so, so, so much. So grab the playbook. It's my free gift for being a beautiful listener and for being a mom.
You're freaking courageous as heck. So absolutely enjoy the playbook.
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What if you don’t want to be a solopreneur forever? What if one day you want to exit from your business or you want to run a fully functioning business that can operate without you in it? Welcome to Episode 221. This conversation is perfect for you if these are the questions on your mind as a business owner, especially one who is a mom (or mum). Meet today’s guest Angela Middleton, MBE. Angela is the chairman of The Limitless Group, comprising several companies in the workforce and careers development space. A detailed bio is below.
This Episode Covers:
· Unexpected strategies for achieving peak business success: Learn unconventional approaches to reach your full potential as an entrepreneur. · The connection between health and business: Discover how prioritizing your well-being fuels your entrepreneurial journey. Delegation mastery: Explore effective strategies for delegating tasks and hiring the right people to support your business growth. Risk-averse hiring: Learn how to build a strong team even if you're cautious about taking on big risks. · The importance of a flexible vision: Gain insights into why adapting your business vision is crucial for long-term success in a dynamic market.Key Takeaways:
· Prioritizing your health is crucial for long-term business success. This episode emphasizes taking care of yourself as the foundation for building a sustainable and thriving business. · Delegation is essential for scaling your business. Even if your product or service directly stems from your unique skills, you can achieve greater success by strategically delegating tasks. · Adaptability is key. Your initial business vision may need to adjust over time due to market shifts or evolving client needs.Excited to hear about these topics? Start listening…as my personal thank you please grab any of the free resources below and of course learn more about today’s guest.
Resources:
Is your business stuck? Take this quiz for moms to maximize your potential - https://quiz.tryinteract.com/#/64fb50ebd9dce900148cdff8
Grab your seat for my free webinar focused on your 2024 ultimate business success Mom Mogul Makeover - https://witty-thinker-2643.ck.page/7e884a0f0a
Download the 3 questions every visionary mom entrepreneur, founder, or creator must answer for yourself before daring to build new relationships with the moguls, market makers, and/or powerful players who can take her business to the next level.
Grab the 3 questions sign-up HERE - https://witty-thinker-2643.ck.page/21e52edb87
This episode is brought to you by my 9-week group coaching course: Fertile Imagination in Action.
This is a high-touch coaching immersion program designed exclusively for visionary mom founders, entrepreneurs, and creators.
Do you crave a simple, straightforward, and laser-focused approach to expanding your professional network? This program equips you with the tools to connect with individuals who offer:
· Access to better opportunities: Gain exposure to ventures that can build your credibility, push your boundaries, and enable you to forge connections with influential figures (moguls, market makers, mentors) who can guide your professional journey.
This episode exemplifies my own successful networking strategy, saving me significant resources and yielding substantial benefits.
As a busy mom of three, I understand the value of time. This program eliminates the guesswork from your path to success. You won't waste time connecting solely with individuals at your current level.
Since launching my coaching practice, I've prioritized connecting and learning from accomplished individuals like Angela. I can teach you this same non-traditional networking approach too!
My book, this podcast, and the success of my own mom-life are testaments to the effectiveness of the principles I teach in my program.
Want to learn more? Email me Melissa [at] melissallarena.com and I’ll send you my calendar link. These spots are very limited. Email me your business website along with why you want to extend your networking community to express your interest in this opportunity and so I can send you free resources that can help you today.
Official Bio For Angela Middleton
Angela is chairman of The Limitless Group, comprising several companies in the workforce and careers development space.
She is host of the ‘IWant2BA’ podcast and the author of the 1st Job Book Series.
Dubbed ‘The Careers Queen’, and a regular commentator in national media, Angela teaches a holistic approach to careers for all ages, combined with physical fitness and mental health.
After completing her own fitness transformation at the age of 55, Angela created the ‘Your Body Means Business’ programme that reveals how you can start your career, optimise your health and grow a successful business.
In 2019, she was awarded an MBE for services to business, employment and apprenticeships, and regularly works with other leading entrepreneurs such as Richard Branson, Tony Robbins and Gary Vaynerchuck.
Angela is a sought after public speaker, regularly appearing at large scale careers and life strategy events.
She is currently the subject of the Limitless Weekly Vlog on Youtube – an online documentary series highlighting behind the scenes of running a business and also hosts #AskAng a business and life Q&A show on Instagram.
Links for more information
https://angelamiddleton.com/
https://www.instagram.com/angelamiddleton/
TRANSCRIPT
Okay, so today's guest is Angela Middleton. Angela is the chairman of the limitless group comprising of several companies in the workforce and careers development space.
She's the host of I want to be a podcast. You could check out the spelling in the show notes for her podcast, and she's the author of the first job book series. Dubbed the careers queen and a regular commentator in national media, Angela teaches a holistic approach to careers for all ages, combined with physical fitness and mental health.
After completing her own fitness transformation at the age of 55, Angela created the your body means business program that reveals how you can start your career. Optimize your health and grow a successful business. She has worked with other leading entrepreneurs, such as Richard Branson, Tony Robbins, and Gary Vaynerchuk, who was my 10th guest on this very podcast.
She is also the subject of the limitless weekly vlog on YouTube. You could check out all her information in the show notes, but for now, if you want to get the guts to talk to people like. Angela Middleton or Tony Robbins or Richard Branson for the, for that matter. I highly suggest that you reach out to me, Melissa at Melissa Llarena, and I will give to you my three questions.
So this way you get the guts to talk to anyone and you network effectively so that you can actually take your business to the next level as fast as humanly possible, because that's what we need as moms time matters for sure. Enjoy the conversation. Gillette Middleton, welcome to the podcast. I am delighted to have you all the way from London on this episode.
Hi, Melissa. And lovely to be here. Thanks for inviting me. It's been years. I think we met at the Tony Robbins Business Mastery in Florida. And so this is, I know it's been a long time. It's I feel like you've lived several lives since then.
Well, that I've been in 20. I went to a lot of Tony's things from about 2015 up till about 2018 or 19, the live things anyway.
About 2018 it was, I believe. Oh right, yeah, yeah. Although I started going to these events, I think the first one I ever went to was in about 2006. Wow. Yeah, I remember being, thinking it was a business event, having heard of Tony Robbins. turning up in a suit and high shoes and then being flabbergasted that everybody was standing on chairs.
He'd not even come on stage by then. So yeah, it was a whole new world for me, I must say.
Absolutely. It's high energy, high enthusiasm and all actions. So I mean very much so inspiring.
Very inspiring, very inspiring. And so Angela, let me, let me just ask you, Like a number of questions in terms of business, in terms of business growth and scaling.
And the reason why these questions I feel are so appropriate, given your experiences and everything that you've kind of accomplished is you bring so many different perspectives, right? Having worked in a corporate setting, also having had at minimum two businesses, maybe you have even more than two and I just don't know.
So I thought we could just get started in terms of a little bit about. The businesses that you currently have, and in terms of the sort of questions you get pertaining to business growth and starting a business, and then we could dig into delegation because that's top of mind for mom entrepreneurs. I did.
I worked in the corporate setting and I worked in lots of different departments, everything from HR to it, to sales. marketing. I was very much a sort of business hybrid. And then after that 20 years in two different companies, an oil company and a bank, I set up my first business, which was in recruitment.
And after that I had lots of different businesses, but I was always transitioning businesses, bringing them together in groups, selling businesses, acquiring businesses and, and bringing them into sort of the overall group. So I was very interested in building things as opposed to just being in the business.
And I guess I did learn that from going to events such as Tony's business mastery very much was it was in creation mode. And, and then, I think through, uh, the, the financial crisis, when we, we obviously were impacted by it, like many others. And my philosophy there was very much while we have some great clients, they really like us, but they're not hiring staff at the moment.
So what else do they want? And that took me in all sorts of different directions, training their existing staff, helping them restructure. I had finance company that I acquired to help them with their financial planning and events company. Which we started from scratch and was really successful. And it meant that we really created great networks of clients for when things improved.
So, and then I got very interested in the link between health and fitness and how that would actually influence business. Cause I sort of went through a bit of a fitness transition myself in 2018, actually, when we met. And I was really astounded that some of the things that I I'd found difficult in business to sort of get to that next level, because I think you get to a level in business where you're sort of comfortable and you plateau a bit. And I, I'd found it quite difficult to go beyond a plateau and it seemed like all of a sudden the fitness and the mindset work that I'd been doing really sort of, it wasn't a coincidence that at the same time that that was happening. We sort of exploded through that plateau and went on to achieve a lot more things.
And I was just so prolific as well. I was doing loads of other things. I felt like I was less busy at work. It was funny. And so then after that, I started to coach performance. I became qualified personal trainer. I was, uh, I became qualified as a life coach, a relationship coach. I then did some work in with neuroscience with Joe Dispenza and qualified as a consultant, teaching some of his staff.
So there's been many things that I've sort of brought together and now I do. Individuals business owners and do coaching with them but my main focus is going into corporates and working with their management team and approaching business from a way that there may be is very new to them so I coach their management teams in a body then mindset and then we go back to business and we introduce all sorts of other things as well like manifestation and energy and longevity and just basically try to help them create a team of super beings that's what they tend to want.
Sounds like it. And so it's interesting in terms of the body first and then mindset, was that intentional or is that something that I guess they asked for because they want to see visible results right away?
No, I think it really came from my own experience. Because I think there's a lot that we can do with our mind alone and we sort of can succeed and mum, mothers will obviously relate to this and we're really busy and we're sleep deprived and we're putting everybody else first.
And still we managed to do great things, especially in business and we sort of, but we end up because of the power of the mind. Even if we're not treating our bodies as well as we could and nutrition and everything, we still end up achieving, but it's almost despite our body, not because of. And once we add in the physical side and we start to feel, I always call the body a taxi.
Once we, a taxi for the brain. Once we start fueling it properly, looking after it properly, maintaining it, it's amazing because now we've got this taxi, which will ferry the brain about so much more effectively. And of course the brain is just as much as part of our body as a bicep. So you may be able to see the impact of training and so on in your body.
But you can feel it in your mind. So that's why I always approach body first. Excuse me. Although these days, sort of simultaneously, I try to do, do them hand in hand is a bit like chicken and egg. I'm not quite sure if you can do one without the other. But for me, yeah, the body, we get started on the body because people start to feel better.
And so then they're more inclined to want to start to think a different way naturally. Hmm.
I love that. That's kind of like the baseline. Just once, once the temple is tended to, then it's like, okay, now we could move up to the brain. I mean, it's, it requires so many calories, so much energy. So absolutely.
Yeah. And so of course, if we're feeling. I mean, I had many, many staff in about 2018 when that was a time when I had a big sort of bricks and 14 offices and about 130 staff. And I used to definitely see a pattern, a link between business performance and individuals that were interested in sport, wouldn't move their body, had like a clear routine.
And yeah. So I knew that there was something in it. I always used to, I started looking when I was interviewing people, I started particularly looking out for individuals, had those other dimensions to them and it wasn't all about just career credentials. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, we are, we are a machine.
I mean, why do we expect to perform using only one aspect of ourselves, the, our sort of academic capability or our skills? Why not use all the other pillars of performance?
I think, I think for a lot of people, it's almost like, It feels like it requires so much just to think clearly and I know that we're forcing it if we're not tending to our body.
I know that if you start lifting weights, like for me at least, there's a lot more clarity when I'm at the gym and I'm lifting weights. It's almost like the clouds in my head just kind of like clear up when I'm lifting weights, which is fascinating.
It really is. And there's all sorts of biological explanations for it.
I, because If we are constantly feeling that we're stressed, then we don't have the energy to do anything else. We do get brain fog. We do, we are switching off or about anything mentally about anything other than what we perceive is the threat. We're, we're not, our body isn't at rest, it's not renewing, it's not performing all the vital, all the non vital functions.
And ultimately Our health starts to deteriorate. So coming out of stress mode, and there's lots of ways to do that, but meditation is another way or going into a gym and just focusing on the present moment and just counting the reps or just sort of doing something on a treadmill or whatever it is, whatever the chosen modality is, will definitely take.
Increase our ability to sort of de stress. A hundred percent. And so I wanted to ask you this question from the perspective of someone that wants to add, for example, going to the gym, self care rituals, other ways of, of releasing that cortisol, right? Healthy ways of doing it. But her calendar is currently.
Packed for now, right? I know about prioritization, but I want listeners to just hear this and really make changes. But right now her calendar is packed. And as a lot of moms, she has all these to do's and for some reason, she wants to get it all done and she's operating or launching a services based business.
Like how would you approach that, that idea of getting it all done and adding a workout?
Yeah, I mean, well, I'd sort of start to question some of those philosophies in the first place, the whole concept of getting it all done. It is never all done. So I think we just have to be a bit, step back for a bit, encourage them to, and everyone's the same, we're all the same whether we're new mums or not, we have that tendency to, to, to, to want to be like this, but just questioning, do we have to get everything done? What's the priority? And then that whole concept of putting our own mask on first is very helpful. Because if we push ourselves to the brink and end up literally not being able to do anything one day through illness, or we just, we stop, then that's not going to be good for anybody around us.
It's not going to be good for our children or our partner or our colleagues or our clients or anybody. So it's almost like a responsibility to them that we have to do something about our timetable because we've all got examples of busy days. But if you look at the heads of state, they've still only got a certain number of hours.
So there has to be some form of discipline over when work stops. and creating some sort of boundaries around, well, I've done the priority task that I've had to do. But now I have to do some things for myself that doesn't have to be an hour to the gym, an hour in the gym and an hour back. We don't have to spend all of this time.
People think that they have to, but you can do very short workouts from home. During lockdown. I ended up training people all over the world over zoom and we would do it in half an hour slots and people would have their pajama bottoms on. They would be. The using, if they'd never, they didn't have any equipment, they'd be using two bottles of water as weights to start with, or a rucksack or something like that.
And eventually they would start to equip themselves as the months went by. But so many people got into weight training and they'd never, ever done it before. And they did that from home and I still do home workouts now. And we sell online courses where people can follow those workouts. But we used to do it face to face.
I used to train people even up until the end of last year. I still have some private clients that I trained online. You can, once you know the basics, you can work out from home. So you can basically start to look at the structure of your day and get up half an hour earlier and do this half an hour workout.
But obviously that that's going to require you to try to get to bed. Earlier in the evening, so consciously trying to shift your timetable, but just prioritizing it in the same way that we prioritize our children and we prioritize our clients. If we are not at our best, then we're not going to be able to look after them in this, in the way that we really want.
So ultimately we're not going to make ourselves happy either. So it can be done. It can be done at home. Also incorporating movement, sort of standing up when we, when we're on the phone, making sure we always walk wherever we can, taking the stairs whenever we can. That's a very underrated way of, of getting, utilising energy.
If we want to lose body fat, then using up calories. If we just want to feel better, just keeping the mind active. But yeah, so there are things that we can incorporate. And then of course there's the nutrition, there's the other side of the nutrition, that's We can time how frequently we eat, being strict with ourselves about we must eat a breakfast, we must eat lunch, and we must, must have something reasonable for dinner and make it high protein based and being organized about when we shop so that we've always got something there so we don't reach for the refined carbs and things that are going to fuel us just in the moment, but are not going to be long term fuel to make us feel good.
So there's, that's the things normally I would recommend to. to people who are just starting their fitness journey and are in this situation where they think they don't have time because they do, but there are clever ways of amalgamating it.
And there's always time for like that last minute report that's due to a client always somehow, right?
We make the time, don't we? We make the time and if you, if you really think about it, I mean, this is the only vehicle that we're ever going to have is like, I sort of turn up with a car on your doorstep and say, okay, there, there we go. That's yours for life. Now you need to look after it because you're not going to get another one.
And yet people, people won't. I mean, it is crazy, but until they start looking at it like this and think, actually, it is worth me spending a bit of time and money and effort on this vehicle, because this is what's going to carry me all the way through the whole journey. Every client. Every interaction with another person, every relationship, I need to have this vehicle working fit and strong.
And in terms of just getting to the next level in your business, as I think about a mom entrepreneur, so let's say year one, she was able to make some profit in her services based business. And now she has to make a decision like, okay, should I continue to outsource? Should I hire a new employee? All these things like.
What are some considerations a mom might want to think about or anyone that does want to get to the next level and maybe now she started incorporating some fitness so she has the endurance. Add this to her to do list of find the right hire. Like how do you think about what to what to delegate and what not to.
Well, there is that mindset piece to do, which is trying to think about the new version of her, the version that she's creating. And what does that person look like? And what's that life look like that she's creating? I mean, is it continuing as a, as a solo? Entrepreneur, or does she see herself ultimately running a business where she is actually, she's built the thing and she's running it in terms of she's leading it, but she's not actually in it doing it because that is a big transition to make, but it's a big difference.
And sometimes people end up with staff, but it's never really where they want it to be, or they end up doing everything because they've just, they Never thought about hiring others. So being clear at what you're trying to build is so important. And then if you are, if you've decided, yes, I do want to build a business that's scalable and that I'm leading and I'm the face of it and that sort of thing, well, then drawing out what that business ultimately is going to look like, what are the growth goals is things, a lot of the things that we picked up when we were on business mastery, if you think about it, it talks about growth goals and there's considerations there as well is the thing that she's doing. actually capable of achieving those growth goals that she has. So if she's doing something, are there enough clients? Is the, is the price per service or the price per product high enough? Is it going to, what volume is that going to dictate? So getting really clear on some of those metrics of what she's trying to achieve.
And then, like I say, if she decided that she wants to achieve something, which is an entity on its own, which has people, then she has got to start thinking about hiring. And so then what do you do? What do you hire? Who do you hire? Well, You've got the typical cornerstones of any business. You've got the sales and marketing, you've got the operations and you've got the finance.
So there's a combination of what's the thing that she really loves doing. She can keep that for a bit, but what's the thing that she really doesn't like doing or that she doesn't feel she's very good at, or that always gets left behind and deprioritized. Well, maybe hire someone to, to do that because it is, it may not be Quite so urgent, but it is important.
So maybe she outsources for that until it becomes a full time job. And then she can start to gradually transition to employing someone full time, but I would try to minimize overheads at the beginning and do things like outsource on a price per hour or a price per day or a price per job. And, or even on sales, you can do commission only base.
I don't know if you can in the U S but we can in the UK, we can do contracts like that. So I would sort of just. That's the steps I think. Be clear on what you're trying to build, then identify the area you need to help with right now, and then try to do it softly. Freelancing to start off with, minimum cost, testing the waters really, making sure it works, and then eventually moving to either a team of freelancers, Or one person who's like a full time employee and then on to the next one.
It's hard when you are the face of the business to start off with and all of your clients want you. I mean, I definitely was like that in my recruitment business where I went from a one man band to 130 staff and I used it. very, you know, sometimes turn around and think, how did this happen? How is it that I now have people working for me that I don't even know them?
They bump, I bump into them in the street and they work, they work for me. It's really very strange transition, but that took a good few years, but it does happen. But it being clear on where you want to get to makes it easier to get there. I think.
Yeah. And I could see where the mindset work is gigantic there.
I was having a conversation with someone that co founded a mom magazine that has like 40 million views every single month. And her vision of what she wants to do now with her lifestyle business is totally something I didn't even consider. Like she wants, she does not want to be the only coach in a group coaching experiencing community based sort of solution.
And for me. I just, I was like, wow, what an idea.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, well, that's the other thing we have to leave room for ideas popping up as we go along because we can never really see the ultimate, the ultimate goal does change. I mean, for me in the end, it started off as a recruitment business, but.
When I exited, it was a very much more, there was a huge training arm to it, so much more. And that was never the intention, but you, you go with what you're interested in with the opportunities that come up, the skills that you start to acquire as you go along. And there are moments in business where you can often only see when you look back, where there was a moment where you went to a meeting or you met someone, or you took a, you won a contract, or you took a particular step.
That sends you in a different direction to the one you expected. So you have to have a little bit of an open mind. It can't all be, well, in my experience anyway, totally planned. You, you, you get to, there's many ways to get to where you want to get to, and it needn't be exactly the way you think. So you have to give a little bit of leeway there.
We don't know, do we? We had lockdown, we've had financial crisis, there's things looming now. So we can only make decisions based on the information available to us right now and then continue to go in the right direction. It is a marathon. Not a sprint.
That is, that is definitely true. And, and to add on to that, also, our kids are going to have completely different needs.
My kids are little kids. They're 10, 10 and 12, and you have two adults. So totally different life experiences right now.
But they were, when I started, they were something like eight and 10, I remember. And yeah, I mean, I remember thinking sometimes they were sick. And so then it's, We didn't do working from home then, because my children are 30 and 31 now.
So. Yeah, I mean, it was just trying to find child care and your weighing it. Is he sick enough that really he needs to stay home? Or can I sort of dose him up and bundle him off to school? Do I need to be there? Or can I get some child care for him? It's stressful because obviously we love our kids dearly and they are our priority.
But you've got that client who you're supposed to have a meeting with and you've really worked hard to get that meeting. So we just have to do our best. There's never going to be a perfect scenario, but I do think the mindset and the body stuff really helps because it keeps us clear. We don't waste energy.
We shouldn't waste energy on beating ourselves up that we're doing it all wrong, but equally feeling sorry for ourself as well that poor me, it's so difficult. I can't do it. But it is what it is. And you've got to have a little bit of that mentality of just getting on with it and dealing with the circumstances.
I always used to have a bit of an attitude that there was always going to be something going wrong in the day. And I didn't used to think like that in terms of being a pessimist, but it was almost like to help me manage my expectations so that if it did, I could sort of say, Oh, well, I thought I knew there'd be something and this is it today.
And sometimes nothing would go wrong. It'd all go right. And then I'd be really super happy. I mean, I was lucky. My, my husband has got his own business as well. So he had, there was a bit of flexibility with him. However, in the same way that I have my business, he had his, and so he also sometimes couldn't help out and was not there when I wanted him to be.
We just have to deal with things and, but it is worth it in the end, if you are that way inclined and you want to build something and create an impact and feel all the benefits that we, that we feel when we run businesses.
Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you so much, Angela. So where can listeners find you and follow your journey?
Yeah. Well, I'm at Angela Middleton on LinkedIn. If they're interested more on the business side and if they're interested in seeing my daily routines in, in the gym and hyperbaric all that stuff, more lifestyle stuff and Instagram, but both at Angela Middleton.
Thank you so much, Angela. This was amazing.
And this is going to help a lot of business owners.
Oh, well, so, so lovely to share and, uh, yeah, I hope it does any, any questions delighted to answer.
Here are the three things that really stood out for me from the conversation with Angela. Point number one, your body can absolutely play a huge role in your business strategy.
So I highly suggest you consider Angela's wisdom and really think through it. through how you might be potentially a better decision maker after a workout, or how you might feel a little bit more level headed and focus after a workout. So really think about how you might add a physical practice to your busy life.
The second point is this, when it comes to building out your business, going from a forever solopreneur to someone that has a fully functioning business, it is important to first be very clear. Is that what you want? If the answer is yes, proceed forward and really think through what you might need in the immediate time.
The third point is this. I want you to feel encouraged by this conversation between me and Angela. Angela is so amazing. She's had so much business success. And yet as a mom with three little children. Who has been in a 12 year entrepreneurial career. Yes, I have gotten the guts and the courage to speak to someone like Angela, who right now taught us both how to actually think about bringing our business and scaling it.
This wisdom is the kind of wisdom that I want you to have access to in your own sector. In your own business, in your own life. And I want to really teach you how to get the confidence, the guts, how to ask the right questions to people just like Angela Middleton. So go ahead and email me, Melissa at Melissa Llarena.
com. And I will give you a link to the three questions that. Every mom entrepreneur has to ask herself before approaching anyone that might feel a little intimidating. I don't want you to feel intimidated by conversations like this. And I want you to realize, think about the value that Angela gave in this conversation on this podcast.
Wouldn't you want access to people in your world just like that? Wouldn't you want to know how to confidently? Network with people that are in these circles that have better opportunities and just a lot more insights that you can take and act upon immediately. I want that for you. So what I'll do is I will email you the link to the three questions you need to build your confidence.
So here's the last point. I promise. So what Angela said pertaining to really putting the mask on first is something that we have heard so often. Um, But I want you to really, really consider this idea today, this very week, in the most actionable way humanly possible. I want you, when you're presented with an opportunity to not put on your own mask versus putting on your mask, I want you to choose yourself.
And those were actually the words of another podcast guest, someone else that I networked with, James Altucher. He was my guest number five, put the mask on yourself, put the mask on yourself. Reach out to me for the worksheet. Also in the actual show notes, I'll even put in a free link there. So you could just reach out and download the link yourself
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It's starts with a vision and if yours lacks any of these criterium then it will be HARD to stay up as a chronically exhausted mom or leader of any sort! It's also important that you articulate your vision in a way that generates goosebumps, inspired actions, or plants an audacious visual in the mind of someone else....THIS transaction of language is what will mobilize your network. It's WAY easier if your vision is true to you. It's impossible if you don't buy-into a vision....this stuff is hard to fake people....hence I love serving mom entrepreneurs. We are not out here pretending to love our businesses....there's more than meets the eyes behind every single mom LLC....way more!
Schedule a 15-minute chat to learn more about the program: https://go.oncehub.com/ClientSessionMelissaLlarena
Any who, so excited to bring to the world my Fertile Imagination in Action Group Coaching program! SO SO SO thrilled because now what I learned from you (my podcast guests, every boss I've ever had, my angels, clients, mom, Abuela) I'm teaching to my fellow moms in business. Let's talk if you want to learn more this program. My sons have spring break soon and that is why I will be taking only 4 mom visionary moms this round....will one be you?
The Fertile Imagination in Action criteria for a vision that will lift you out of bed when you do not feel like it as a mom in business. You know my bestseller Fertile Imagination? Well, it's time to activate its key principles....this is 1/9th of what I'll be teaching....want to learn more?Sign-up for a FREE 15-minute:
https://go.oncehub.com/ClientSessionMelissaLlarena -How mind-blowing is your vision?
-Does your vision convey urgency?
-Would your vision help you bounce back up?
-Is your vision more powerful than your fears?
-Is your vision energizing? -
Welcome to Episode 219. As a mom, have you ever asked yourself? Am I doing it right? Am I ruining them? Am I going to be responsible for them needing therapy when they grow up? As moms, especially in the early days, we need so much reassurance and being able to rely on our intuition is tough. Yet, that is exactly what today's guest shares with us and helps us to learn to trust! Meet Kanika Chadda Gupta. She is a seasoned CNN television journalist podcaster and mom of three. And in that three, they're twins. Her goal is to give credit where it's often overlooked which is the lasting impact of living your purpose and modeling that for the next generation. She hosts the popular podcast That’s Total Mom Sense.
This episode is brought to you by:
A Mental Health Break for Mom Business Leaders, a FREE 30-minute webinar, for mom business owners who want to be both present moms and focused business owners.
Sign-up today: https://bit.ly/mindmom
Key takeaways:
Listen to your intuition (it's not just for moms!)
Kids are your mirrors (their behavior reflects yours)
Taming toddler meltdowns (practical tips!)
The unique journey of raising twins
This episode covers:
Ditching the self-doubt: Stop asking "am I doing it right?" and start trusting your instincts!
The power of intuition: It's not just a "mom thing" - everyone has it!
Understanding your kids: Learn how their behavior is a reflection of you.
Conquering meltdowns: Practical tips to help your little one (and yourself!) through tough moments.
The joys (and challenges) of raising twins: Gain insights from a mom who's been there!
Head to the transcript for more information and resources!
This episode is brought to you by:
A Mental Health Break for Mom Business Leaders, a FREE 30-minute webinar, for mom business owners who want to be both present moms and focused business owners.
Sign-up today: https://bit.ly/mindmom
Learn the exact process that meditation practitioner, bestselling author, business coach, and mom to three young boys, Melissa Llarena, follows to have a consistent meditation practice despite no longer having privacy, time, nor a meditation closet. You will walk away with a step-by-step approach for designing your own ritual and you will get a mental break to THINK more strategically about your business and mom life too.
Live Webinar
March 1, 2024
10:00am Central Time
Includes:
Instantly receive upon sign-up Free meditation prompts (get centered in two minutes or fewer)
Mindfulness i.e. meditation ritual ideas to become a more present mom and business leader
30 minute Q&A with Melissa
Join LIVE to enter a drawing for a guest spot on Unimaginable Wellness the podcast for mom founders, entrepreneurs, and creators
Led by Melissa Llarena
Top ForbesWomen contributor with 4M+ views. Author of a the #1 Amazon Bestseller entitled: Fertile Imagination: A Guide for Stretching Every Mom’s Superpower for Maximum Impact. Mom to a singleton son who is 12 and a set of identical twin boys who are ten. A Psychology degree from NYU, and an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, she holds a Transformational Coaching Academy certificate and is a student in the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program Class of 2025.
Sign-up today: https://bit.ly/mindmom
Connect with Melissa the host:
https://www.instagram.com/melissallarena/
Official bio for guest
There's no hood like parenthood! Kanika Chadda Gupta, a seasoned CNN television journalist, podcaster, and mother of three (including twins), aims to give credit where it's often overlooked - the lasting impact of living your purpose and modeling that for the next generation. She hosts the popular podcast That's Total Mom Sense, where she interviews public figures on their life lessons, parenting journey, and legacy. Guests include Chelsea Clinton, Kelly Rowland, Bobbi Brown, America Ferrera, Sarah Harden, Rebecca Minkoff, Reshma Saujani, Shannon Lee. She has worked in partnership with the March of Dimes, Mom 2.0, Mother Honestly, and the White House. Her show has been ranked #1 on Goodpods for Motherhood and Kanika has been featured in Forbes and on ABC, NBC, Fox, Cheddar, and CBS.
Guest links:
https://www.thatstotalmomsense.com
https://www.instagram.com/kanikachaddagupta/
https://twitter.com/kanikachadda
https://www.facebook.com/kanikachaddagupta
Transcript
Kanika, I am so thrilled to have a fellow mom of multiple who has three kids in total. And as a podcaster. Like me, on this episode, I'm so thrilled to have you here. Kanika. Thank you, Melissa. It's my pleasure. I was doing my homework, because that's what we do. And I was so curious about your thoughts on mom sense, as it relates to a lot of us that at one time felt like we were on top of the world, maybe we're in powerful positions, and then all of a sudden, we have this like, baby, and we're like,
Kanika 10:53
I don't know what to do, and what to do with them all day. And will I survive? And will they survive? So like, help us feel powerful? Help us feel like we could handle anything, even this child? Yes, yes, I would love to, I think we all need to recognize the strengths and gifts we have. And we all have the power of intuition. It's our North star. It's something that directs us in the right direction. And, and we should just listen to that inner voice because it just it can do no wrong. And I feel when we first become parents, we second guess ourselves because there's so much noise. There are in laws and your own parents and friends and teachers and child caregivers that are all like you have to do it this way, you got to do it this like, and I just I feel like if this is your child only you know how to raise it best, him or her best. So just trust that. And I say this from experience, because I had my three kids in one fell swoop, I had twins. And when they were just nine months old, like just think of baby boy, baby girl, nine months can't even sit up, still swaddled all of that, I got pregnant with my third. And so I was just thrown into the deep end, I was not expecting. And it was really by the grace of God that I had the kids. So I just thought, Okay, God gives you what you can handle. And I am up for this challenge. And as much as I tapped into my kind of skill set as a journalist, I would ask everybody I knew questions, including the Amazon rep. I would be like, Do you have kids? Which bottle did you use? Which one Dr. Brown Ma'am, you tell me. And so I just was like I'm doing all this data gathering, I read a ton of books. And then I started listening, listening to podcasts. And in the end, as much as I learned so much from everyone's stories and experiences. I knew that only I can chart my path for what I want to do for my family and I can glean from everyone else. But I know what's up, and I'm just gonna do it my way. And I want everyone to feel that. Agreed totally. And I think the novelty at least for me and my family of having twins almost made it like a requirement. It's like, hey, we don't know how to handle it. So you definitely need to figure this out on your own right? Like, is that something that maybe was common for you? Were there a lot of like, oh, I have twins too. And I have triplets too and or did you have to like chart your own path? Because he were like one of the first? Yeah, yeah. So I do have friends who had twins before me and I leaned on them. But even that I feel like we all had our very different journeys. And there's something so beautiful in that like there's certain things that I was I learned where I had boy girl twins and I didn't want to buy pink and blue of everything. And brides were telling me you don't need to buy two of everything. It's just as much as you can obviously double stroller, car seats and high chairs. But other than that the toys that they play with like their swaddles their whatever it was, it was like just make sure it's gender neutral and like everybody we got to share. So I was just like, Okay, we're gonna go gray, gray and yellow. That's fine. So that's something that I did learn. I did end up nursing the kids for a year and then my youngest also. And so that was something that I kind of figured out on my own and everyone has their own like journey there. But I wanted to do it I was able to produce so I did it and I had a twin Z pillow that I used where they get to just kind of fit in each nuk and in a football hold. You can feed them Sam
Kanika 15:00
I'll take it slowly for the first three months, and then they get a little big, and then you just feed them one by one. But I did that, and then I found a lactation consultant to support me. And so there's certain things that I was like, I'm going to do this differently. I don't have to just take a cue from everyone who's had twins or multiples before me. Yeah, I think yeah, tandem nursing, for me was definitely a unique adventure that distinguished my entire mommyhood experience, I will say, amongst others. And I would say, you're right, everyone out there that's listening right now you you get to choose, right, like how you nourish your babies. And that's a very viable use of your mom's sense, right? Your intuition. It's like, wait a minute, does this feel good for me? Like, is this possible, given my life goals and the realities of my support system, so there's so many uses for for mom sense. And your mom's sense, is starting to really remind me of a fertile imagination. So when I wrote my book, fertile imagination, it's being able to cast a vision for your life that you may have never seen ever before, in the history of time in the life of another mom. And so it's really interesting, because you have to, you need almost like an inner stillness, both in the case of accessing your imagination, and what I'm hearing from you, in the case of like listening to your intuition, your inner guide. So stillness, and mom have multiples or three kids like that seems like an oxymoron. Like, how do we do this? How do we achieve stillness in the most chaotic of homes and situations, especially those early days? So you can listen to your mom sense and be like, I know the answer. Right, right. Yeah, no, you're so right. I mean, there is so much action, entropy. Just know, it's everything. When you have multiples, and as a twin mom, you know, this. So I, I feel like it's in those moments, oftentimes, like, right before bed, when I am by myself, I keep a notebook by my bed. And it's like, a place where I can use as a gratitude journal and write what I'm grateful for, or things that I'm thinking about, or ideas that I have. And so that's like my brain dump. And that's what I do when I when I know I have the stillness, and that's like, literally, I'd say, around like, 838 30 to nine, the kids are fast asleep. And I have my time. And it's not like wee hours of the morning when you're still like groggy.
Kanika 17:44
Yeah, I get that. I mean, I personally have a really early bedtime. But I mean, priorities change. If we're up at dawn. You can't stay up late. It's just we need our sleep. And I rather actually get up at dawn, then stay up late. Like, I don't know, I feel weird that way. But like, that's just like my thing. So okay, so here we go. We figured out that we have this like inner guidance, this inner GPS, right. So mom's sense. And I know you've mentioned even dad sense, like, that's also a thing as well. Okay, we figured it out. But let's say we're like stubborn. And we're like, what? This one time I rather consult with an expert or this one time, I'm going to do the opposite. Have you ever found yourself in a situation like that? Is there like a story you could kind of share? Ooh, yeah. And I think it's still you're trusting your intuition to tell you to do that. So it's, it's stemming from somewhere. But yeah, I would say it's, I guess, something that I made a mistake on. And my mom's sense, tells me this, and that's why I changed things around for my third. So we did have childcare help with the twins. She was amazing. And so she taught me how to make pureed foods for for them. So we did pureed everything like it. And they started with rice cereal, and being from the same South Asian background, a lot of the foods were things that were kind of ancient and like, tried and tested for our cultural, like cultural background. So there was like a rice dish with turmeric and lentils like all that stuff. So my kids basically got used to that what Khichdi Khichdi, oatmeal pureed fruits and veggies for their from one to two and onwards. And when I saw other moms doing toddler led weaning where they're like giving their kids little pieces of carrots and cucumbers and snap peas and like everything to pick up on their own, it's like it's a straight up mess underneath
Kanika 20:00
That highchair I get and it just makes me shudder with because of my OCD. But the good side is that the children actually get a feel for different textures, different flavors, different, like fragrances to food, and they get to manipulate it. They love all things sensory. And they're actually using their fine motor skills, their pincers to be able to pick up like a small grain of rice or green B. So I didn't do that with the twins. I was like, No, we got up here everything. And with my third eye was like, No, we're flipping the script. I want him to be able to pick up his food. And even though not as much as gonna get in, we can supplement that with some spoon feeding after. But my mom said said to like, listen to the moms who are doing that, and the experts that I had on pediatricians and kind of culinary experts when it comes to toddlers and toddler led weaning, and I was like, I'm gonna do it this way. That's fascinating, because I'm thinking about it for me like, okay, so I'm Latina. And certainly I could have been like rice and beating up my kids when they were little, little little. Yeah, I did. Yeah, they'll do. nourishing, that's a no brainer. There's iron in there. Okay, I'll stop with that. I could do a whole episode on the value of lagoons. Anyway. Yeah, the whole point is like, culturally, it's really interesting. Because culturally, and I call it almost like a cultural glass ceiling, again, in my book and for imagination, but it's like a certain way of mothering, right, and a certain way of like translating tradition, heritage, culture, and all these things, and having the palate right for the different foods that exist in our cultures, I find is so fascinating. And like, these are like acts of bravery. When you opt to do something that is very different than then a culture like we're talking like DNA different. Did you get any commentary from anyone when you decided to change the script there? Of course, of course, I mean, I just I feel like everyone's so opinionated, and especially those from previous generations. So they're like, why would you do it this way? This, this doesn't seem right, you know, and like, I raised all my kids on this
Kanika 22:32
ad, so I know what's going on. But it's just again, it's like, you trusting your built in sixth sense to be like, yeah, I get that I see you. But I want to do it this different way. Because I see that there's a greater value in this. But yeah, you're gonna get the pushback, and you have to stand your ground, you know, because again, I always feel like, even though we're second guessing ourselves, and we're unsure, Am I doing it right? Am I ruining them?
Kanika 23:01
The fact that we care is like a testament in itself. Secondly, it's like, best you really, really do. Yeah, and there's this philosophy out there. And I don't know your thoughts on it. But like I was, I heard through the grapevine that our kids pick us to view their parents. I'm just wondering, like, I'm thinking to myself, Okay, my kids definitely are teaching me a lot of the things that I need to learn, right, like humility, patience, everything, keeping it in holding my tongue. All these things are being taught to me and I'm wondering, I'm like, did they pick me to like, teach me everything that I think get a chance to learn as a little girl? Like, right? What do you think about this? Because also, you said, God only gives you what he knows you can handle. And I've had questions. I'm like, God, like, are we serious? You really think a lot of me like, like, Please, please. Right? So you tell me, what's your philosophy? What's your thinking? Like? Are these like many teachers, many sages, like in our midst, or Paul, I really do think so. I think that they're, they're put on this earth. They are the personalities that they are to guide us and sometimes that's to challenge us. And they're, as much as they're so different. I don't feel like kids are supposed to be the extension of you and they're not supposed to live out your dreams or anything like that. But they are your mirror. And it's like when you see your five year old self in their face. You just come back to how would I have wanted to be parented and I find that a lot I find this most with my daughter because I have she's one of the one of the twins, and then my and then I have my two sons, but with her she is an empath to her core.
Kanika 25:00
are just like me, she really feels for people. And she can cry really easily. She's sensitive. And, and she's also a perfectionism. She doesn't get her way, she gets really frustrated about that. And this was me, this was always me. So when I think back to like, she's seven, now my seven year old self, I was exactly like that. And so if I don't validate where she's coming from, it's really disenfranchising, you know, and I just think, okay, if I were, what would I want to hear, and, and means for self regulation, when it comes to just social emotional, like something that we have learned, we did, we do two things. One is, name it, claim it, tame it. So name, kind of what the scenario is why you're upset, claim that you're feeling frustrated, disappointed, angry, and then tame it. Now let's find a way to let that anger out or let those tears out. But like, let it go, in the end, be able to let it go and not hold on to it. And so that's just really, really important. That's like an exercise that I do for myself now. And it's so important. And then another one is, the five senses, that's a that's a way to tame, if you will, so when she's like, in the middle of like, let's say she, she used to get so upset when she like messed up on artwork, she'd be like, Oh, my God, I made a mistake I was or over like, I was coloring this rabid art. And she, like, totally, just just get so emotional about it. So we'll talk about how that's frustrating all that. And then it's like, let's, let's bring it back. Let's bring it back to this present moment. So we'll do our five senses, tell me five things you see. And then she'll be like, my water bottle, the crayon, the paper, the Chair, I'm sitting on this room. And then it's for tell me four things that you hear three things that you can feel. So feel around you. Two things that you can smell, and one thing that you taste, and all of a sudden, it just diffuses everything. Because you're like, where am I right now? What's around me? What's going on, and your feelings don't get the best of you. Yeah, and I think it's funny because it's, it's like a body scan meditation, basically,
Kanika 27:37
I'm becoming like, this is where this is where it's gotten me being a mom of multiple, I'm literally literally becoming a meditation practitioner, like, needed, how needed it is in my life with three boys. So what you just described is exactly that which I teach, which is a body scan meditation. And it's so interesting, because oftentimes, we live our lives outside of our bodies, and we disassociate instead of really making some sort of peace with how we feel, and then bringing to our awareness, where these sensations are, and just being really, really present to it so that this way we could work through it. And so what I'm hearing kind of going, I don't know if this is on purpose, or it may be it's your mom's sense, leading the way. But it sounds to me like you're forming some sort of connection for your kids to their kids sense. Yes, 100% 100%, I want them to have this tool, it's in your back pocket. And it's something that like, I think of like how we talked about just being able to rise to this challenge. I knew I always wanted to be a mom, when I was a kid. But there were certain things that I saw my parents doing that I was like, Yeah, I wouldn't, I would do this differently. And I didn't get my needs met. And I think I had to learn how to deal with my emotions and my sensitivity and everything like much later in life like 30s. And now that I'm in my 40s, it's like this, like, just kind of reckoning and attitude where like, I see myself, I can call it out, I know how I feel when I feel it, and I'm going to just be able to like, deal with it. But I never really had that skill. And I think my kids brought that out in me, because I was like, I have to see some of the skill.
Kanika 29:32
I'm teaching myself and, and really breaking cycles, because it's not something that I could turn to as a kid and my parents were immigrant parents and just moved from India.
Kanika 29:46
They moved with me I was two years old. They were just trying to put food on the table and survive. So they weren't being like let's sit down and do a meditation session and everything's like Kumbaya. No, you know, and so I had to like raise myself and I had
Kanika 30:00
This history was seven years or younger. And I and my grandmother raised her. And so I think just a quick like, aside to that, I remember when she was born, because it was like having this little doll, I took care of how you would take the bottle and test it on your wrist to make sure I knew how to do that. When I was seven, I was like, give me the baby.
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Learn the exact process that meditation practitioner, bestselling author, business coach, and mom to three young boys, Melissa Llarena, follows to have a consistent meditation practice despite no longer having privacy, time, nor a meditation closet. You will walk away with a step-by-step approach for designing your own ritual and you will get a mental break to THINK more strategically about your business and mom life too.
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Instantly receive upon sign-up Free meditation prompts (get centered in two minutes or fewer) Mindfulness i.e. meditation ritual ideas to become a more present mom and business leader 30 minute Q&A with Melissa Join LIVE to enter a drawing for a guest spot on Unimaginable Wellness the podcast for mom founders, entrepreneurs, and creatorsLed by Melissa Llarena
Top ForbesWomen contributor with 4M+ views. Author of a the #1 Amazon Bestseller entitled: Fertile Imagination: A Guide for Stretching Every Mom’s Superpower for Maximum Impact. Mom to a singleton son who is 12 and a set of identical twin boys who are ten. A Psychology degree from NYU, and an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, she holds a Transformational Coaching Academy certificate and is a student in the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program Class of 2025.
https://bit.ly/mindmom
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In this episode you will uncover why this is an important change in perspective: The answer is not always about taking things off of your plate. It depends on what drives you. Ever wanted to gain self-awareness around what makes you go, stop, or bounce back up faster? Listen with an open mind to this episode.
Some moms with their own businesses rise to the occasion when a business challenge arises. Going after worthy goals clears up a busy life like no other thing has for me. You might be the same way? Have a think about it.
Other moms implode when a business challenge arises. Your anxiety hijacks your thinking brain and you go into a perpetual fight or flight. Dishes crash to the ground like a traditional Greek wedding except with little dancing. Is that your truth?
The key is in knowing who you are and what makes you do things that you may have never witnessed another mother do ever in your lifetime.This week I am seeking 5 visionary mom entrepreneurs who rise up when put in a position to accept a business challenge. You'll know this is you based on your most memorable business days last year --- have your best days been when you astounded yourself and met a challenge or declined to step up your game in business for your own reasons. Neither is wrong.
There are seasons in motherhood and in business. However, I bet you have a preference? Let's talk for 15-minutes if you are the riser. https://go.oncehub.com/ClientSessionMelissaLlarena
This is an official call for 4 fabulous women. I'm prepared to share the insights that have built my relationships with powerful and genuine humans over the last 12-years. On our Zoom call I can shed light on why 9-weeks is all it'll take with me as your guide.
If you are committed to doing what it really takes to change how you approach your business and mom life then you might qualify to be one of my fabulous 5 group coaching participants.
If you have a fight in you for YOU then you might be the right fit. If you have not yet given up on all the power and potential other people see in you then we should talk. It's time to rise up. Reclaiming your power is a daily choice. If this resonates be sure to choose the best time on my calendar. Rise up!
Book your time on my calendar today for the soonest slot you can snag.
Let's talk: https://go.oncehub.com/ClientSessionMelissaLlarena
Thank you,
Melissa Llarena
Bestselling Author of Fertile Imagination: A Guide for Stretching Every Mom's Superpower for Maximum Impact
Is your business stuck? Take this quiz for moms to maximize your potential - https://quiz.tryinteract.com/#/64fb50ebd9dce900148cdff8 Grab your seat for my free webinar focused on your 2024 ultimate business success Mom Mogul Makeover. - https://witty-thinker-2643.ck.page/7e884a0f0a -
Welcome to Episode 217. Did you know that February 17th is Random Acts of Kindness Day? My plea is to count yourself in! Moms can perform random acts of kindness and be the recipient of them too! Did you know that when you are kind or generous to others that you can feel a helper’s high? I bet you have oodles of ideas of things you can do with your kids and today’s guest shares her thoughts on those too. However, what I found fascinating is that, despite being a busy mom of two, Jennifer Klein a seasoned philanthropist and author on the topic of giving, has cracked the code on how to be an everyday philanthropist and reap the rewards of exuding a generous spirit! She’s getting that boost in her mental health every week and as a mom I’m know you can use this unstoppable feeling on any given day to change your energy for the maximum! In today’s episode, there are also a ton of practical insights and giving ideas fit for a mom with her own business. You’ll hear about your options – should you go all in on cause marketing, strategically partnering with a nonprofit, or donate company funds to support a cause that's on your heart? Listen for fresh ways to consider these options.
This episode is brought to you by my #1 Amazon bestselling book, Fertile Imagination, A Guide for Stretching Every Mom's Superpower for Maximum Impact.
· You can find a link to the Amazon website here: https://www.melissallarena.com/fertileideas/
Ask me anything about this episode, my book, or mom in business life on Instagram
· Follow me: https://www.instagram.com/melissallarena/
Free resources for mom entrepreneurs!
· Are you a mom entrepreneur with a big vision? Sign-up for a free 30-minute Business Goal Progress Analysis & Course Correct session https://www.melissallarena.com/sessions/
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· Grab your seat for my free webinar focused on your 2024 ultimate business success Mom Mogul Makeover - https://witty-thinker-2643.ck.page/7e884a0f0a
Jennifer Klein Official Bio and Links
Jenn Klein, CFRE, CHC, is a world-class and highly respected nonprofit fundraiser, speaker, coach, and one of the most brilliant minds on philanthropy. She is the founder and CEO of You Are A Philanthropist merchandise shop and podcast, a major gift officer for a Catholic school, an independent consultant with Arbonne International, and a proud mother of two boys. For more than 18 years, Jenn has helped nonprofits grow through best fundraising practices and strategies. Jenn also coaches individuals to make healthy lifestyle choices, which, at their core, include giving to charity. Jenn is on a mission to share the benefits of generosity, not just for others but also for yourself and our world. She just published her first book "Giving is Selfish", which can be found on Amazon.
· https://www.youareaphilanthropist.com
· https://www.instagram.com/_jennklein/
· Giving Is Selfish: https://www.amazon.com/Giving-Selfish-Change-World-Yourself/dp/B0CLK2STJT
· Type unimaginablewellness for a 20% off coupon code for any merchandise on youareaphilanthropist.com
TRANSCRIPT
Jen Klein, welcome to unimaginable wellness. I am so excited. You won the drawing from my Mom Mogul Makeover webinar!
Congratulations.
Thank you, Melissa.
I'm so excited to be here. I'm so excited to win this opportunity. I am excited to have you here just for anyone that's listening and catching this in January, I had the opportunity to deliver a talk for mom moguls and Jennifer won the drawing of appearing as a guest on today's podcast. And so I am so excited to have Jen here.
I'm also really excited for this very, like. Secret sneaky reason so not only does Jen Klein have an amazing like business, but it's also in the art of generosity, the spirit of giving, and I was like, holy cow, how perfect is that right to like. Have a lucky winner. Be like a giver and generous human and nonprofit expert.
So Jen share with listeners a bit about your background. Certainly share a bit about your book and, and we could just like get into this conversation. I'm excited. You are so kind. Thank you for saying that. I've been a fundraiser for 20 years in nonprofits and it's my passion. And when I became a full time mom about eight years ago, I wanted to continue to stay in my field of fundraising, but found myself a fundraiser without a nonprofit since I became a full time mom.
And I decided to start blogging and I blogged about, like you said, the general, the, the good feelings. Of generosity and it was really inspired by a quote that I heard from Denzel Washington and he said giving is selfish and I was shocked. I had to replay it. I thought he said giving is selfless. And that is always what I internalized and believed giving was about was being selfless and he turned it on a dime and made me realize that giving feels good.
And so I wrote my book called Giving is Selfish that recently I published on Amazon and it highlights how good it feels to give. I love that. And I think what's, what's really, really compelling and something that I want to just grab onto that you just said, you said that you're a nonprofit professional, but you didn't find yourself having a nonprofit.
And I was thinking to myself, well, I will say this. Having three children of my own, there is no profit making in my family. So that's really nonprofit in terms of just the family structure. But, but I get what you're saying. I get what you're saying. And so it, it does flip the thinking on his head as far as giving is.
Selfless to selfish. And so I'm sure your book garnered a lot of attention because of its title. I'm wondering, as someone who wrote her own book, myself having written a book, was there something that you learned about yourself as a mom through the actual process of having written this book? I think that's such a great question and something I do discuss in my book about how much I learned about being a mother when I became a mother.
As many new moms, I didn't know what to expect. I didn't know what I was in for. And I found myself struggling to work on myself and, and be a good mom. By taking care of myself and so when we practice self care, we are giving to our Children when we are taking care of ourselves, we are inspiring and giving to our Children and I think that was such an important life lesson that I learned from being a full time mom and I to this day and for the rest of my life will balance my giving scale, which is what I mean by that is taking care of myself so that I can take care of others.
That sounds like a really important thing to become more self aware of. I know that a lot of mom founders, creators, and entrepreneurs, they have it in their heart to give and having created a business that might be one avenue through which they give. And, and this balance that you mentioned, I'm sure it plays a role also, even in the world of commerce, where someone might want to do some cause marketing, or someone might want to strategically partner with a nonprofit organization.
So here's the question that I have and the context that I provide is that I actually started a nonprofit and this was several years ago. But I also had my coaching practice. And so the thinking was, well, let me create a nonprofit so that this way I have full ownership of who gets a scholarship or not, because that was part of what I was going to be contributing.
And then of course I spoke to an expert who said, well, Melissa. That's a lot of extra work. It's like having an entire other business. So my balance would have been totally like topsy turvy. I would have been so lopsided. It's not even funny. Jennifer, Jen, as an expert in this space, a mom that wants to have, wants to be mentor and like exhibit to her child, what giving looks like and the benefits, how can someone that's a founder think about doing good through the avenue of their business, but in a way that.
They don't end up being so lopsided. I think that was really wise of you to seek counsel and to realize that you don't have the time to commitment that is required to start a non profit. Starting a non profit is something that I also realized. I wasn't able to create, even though it's a wonderful thing to put into the world and that the world needs more of, but I think that there is, especially for mothers who are in business, there are other avenues to pursue in order to give back one could be giving in your example, through a nonprofit for scholarship, or could be giving back in their business.
To, to charity. So for me, for example, I give back some proceeds of mine to charity so that I feel connected to my mission, connected to my community and, and I reap the benefits because that feels good. That makes a lot of sense. So then in terms of making that decision, right. And in terms of really having not just a business, but then also a family, like for me, and I'm sure for other listeners, it's like, you feel like you just are giving 24 seven and now we want to add on our long list of to do's another act of.
Help us see the social rate of return, right? Or the nonprofit rate of return. I think it's the SROI. I don't know why I'm not getting the exact acronym correctly. You correct me when you answer the question, but how can we get the benefit and not out? Like just drain ourselves to no avail. Like I want to add giving, but at the same time as a parent and a business owner, you give a lot when you're marketing your business.
Like you don't get paid for the marketing necessarily. You give a lot as a mom, like for me, three meals a day, I'm giving those out. And now we want to add giving. So why is it that that would make good sense from like an energy perspective, even like Biological perspective. What are some benefits? What's the SROI on giving for a mom entrepreneur who gives all the time?
I think it's, I think you're so spot on to recognize the unrecognized work that mothers do giving back to our children is crucial to making the world a better place. So I think starting with the mindset that. What I'm doing at home is really important and feeling successful in that area of your life is, is really an important component to ensuring that you feel good about what you're doing.
And really, my message is I want people to feel good about what they're doing at home in their business and in their community. And. If they feel like they have the time to, to donate in some area of their life to a, in their community, they will reap the benefits of better social connection, better mental health, better physical health.
It's been proven science that giving back. lowers your blood pressure. So there are physical benefits that we know from science that giving back feels good. So it's not just as Denzel Washington said, something that is. It's intangible that we can't quantify. It's also something that we have quantified through science.
Is there like a story, maybe it could be a personal story or someone that's included in your book that you can share with listeners that might be thought provoking or just kind of helpful as far as giving us some sort of next steps, like choosing the best way for us to give, not just so that it bubble wraps our sanity, but that it aligns with even like the business that we might have.
Yeah, so I think first of all, I have a podcast called you are a philanthropist where I interviewed 30 philanthropists who I have deemed philanthropists, even though perhaps by society standards, they aren't the millionaires. Giving lots of money to, to charity, but in their everyday lives, they're committing some sort of their time commitment to a charity of their choice.
So for me personally, I like to be a soccer coach, which is what I'm doing later in the day today. And I also like to give to my local food pantry, which is about two hours. Every other month I go around my neighborhood, pick up bags from people's porches and deliver it to my food pantry. So that's something that I'm really excited about and something that my children actually do with me now.
So I love teaching them about how we have so much and how we can give back. Some of the guests that I interviewed really are inspiring. I encourage your listeners to check it out wherever they find a podcast. For me, I was really inspired by a friend of mine who has a child who is severely disabled and he needs a full time ventilator, full time nurse at home, and yet she has found a way to give back to the Ronald McDonald house.
She does a run with him in his wheelchair every year and raises money through, through that run. And she also It gives back through stocking the pantries at the Ronald McDonald house. And her name's Daphne bird singer. If anybody wanted to listen to that episode of the you are philanthropist podcast. So she, she really inspires me in her everyday life.
She's giving back to her, her children. She has three children and I'm privileged to know what a great woman she is, how committed she is to her community, her family, and her business. So let me ask you this question as far as personally. So when you actually go through your day and you insert an act of giving, however that might take shape for you, explain to listeners.
How you feel after doing that act or during the act, like really get vivid into it, because I want to understand just like what it feels like to give, even as a mom that already has her own like podcast and practice, wrote a book, has kids, like, how does it feel to give for you personally? Yeah, that's a great question.
I think for me, I do feel really good about. Doing work in my community and feeling inspired by those who are also doing work in my community and feeling like together we're making a bigger difference. I think sometimes we overlook little acts of charity, little acts of kindness, and, but these little things add up and do make a difference.
For example, just holding the door at the Dunkin Donuts for the person behind you, that's an act of kindness. Being kinder to the cashier when maybe someone was not kinder before you. So these everyday acts that I do are, are something that I say to myself, you put some good into the world. You made the world a better place for at least one person.
So it sounds to me that anyone can be a philanthropist. That's what I believe. Yeah, that's what it sounds like. And then here's the other thing. So back to someone that has a business, back to someone that has to make a decision, like strategically partner with a nonprofit, donate money in some sort of other way, I don't even know, I can't even imagine right now, maybe like participating in someone's Kickstarter, for example.
Or creating their own nonprofit. Is there any sort of wisdom that you can share with us, with listeners who have a business, we want to do good and we want to make a decision, the right decision for us, like choosing path a B or C, like any sort of question that we can hold on to and really just ask ourselves before moving forward in any given direction.
So I think finding what you're most passionate about is the key to. Your success with giving back for me, that's my local food pantry and for others that might be a mental health organization or a cancer research organization, whatever it is that you find yourself that you want to commit your time to, you should pursue that.
Because if you're not passionate about giving back, it is going to be draining and it's not going to be fulfilling and where your passion leads you is where you should go. Got it. That makes, so that makes sense because it's the same in terms of a business, right? Like if you're not passionate about it, even if the market opportunity is gigantic, it's going to feel more draining because it's like you need a lift.
Like as a mom entrepreneur, like we need every lift that we could possibly imagine. And this is so not about plastic surgery, even though the thought just popped in my mind, but maybe I could use a lift there too, but I choose not to at this stage of my life. But I think. Any opportunity that a mom has to go in the direction that excites her beyond belief, like we're talking like giddy, like, Oh my gosh, I cannot believe I had the opportunity to do this today with them.
Like, if you feel that, then I would say that could be like the next step, right? So you have this like for profit entity, let's imagine, let's say you're a coach or whatever. And it makes sense for you to somehow be involved with dress for success as an example. Well, maybe the way that you participate does depend on what you can give.
Like you might have old suits, right? And right now we're like Zoom culture, cozy culture. So do you really need like that suit? I know. Don't so that's like one way, but then the other side of it is having tried it myself, just as like heads up sort of thing for anyone that's listening and Jen Klein, like your own sort of experiences, like the option is there to create like your own nonprofit, but be mindful that it actually does feel like a whole other business.
Yes. So. I would say personally, as my own guidance, I know that organizations I've worked with, they've been successful with cause marketing. And for them, the tie in is that there's some sort of connection between the brand promise of the for profit product and the actual organization with which you partner.
So like Dawn is a great example, the dishwashing detergent and like cleaning ducts in some oil water way. And so that makes sense. But I think Additionally, you know what Jen said as far as the passion side of the house, I think that's absolutely important because specifically as a mom, you need that lift.
And so Jen, this has been really helpful. I think your perspective as anyone can be a philanthropist is like the big takeaway that I'm getting. And I also think that If we think about motherhood, not so much as like straight up philanthropy, but it kind of is in its own way. I really do think it kind of is in its own way, but it's a way that is legacy building, right?
Like your DNA gets passed on. So you, you certainly reap the rewards. So Jen Klein, where can people continue to learn about you and your book and what you do? You should go to my website. You are a philanthropist. com. They can find more information about me on there, as well as look at my book, giving a selfish on Amazon.
And I did give a discount to your listeners. If they type in coupon code unimaginable wellness, they can get a discount, a 20 percent discount on my merchandise, which celebrates philanthropy. I'm also on Instagram and I love to connect there as well. Underscore Jen Klein. Beautiful. Thank you, Jen. So as far as bubble wrapping your own sanity, your own sanity, like you've got soccer going on, you've got work within your local community, like.
What's like one tangible thing that you do in order to stay sane? That's such a great question. And I am excited to say I'm getting a massage later today. So I have a monthly subscription to my local massage and I am very excited about that. I'm excited for you. I am like, like now I'm inspired. I'm like, okay, yeah, I should, I should do the same.
And I think it's. The funny thing about a massage is that it is self care for sure. And it does feel good, but there's like these benefits that somehow are additive, even to like business owners in a super tangible way, as far as like the stress levels that we have, I was reading the five o'clock 5 AM club.
I don't know if you know that book by Robin, I think it's Sharma or something. And that's part of his protocol. It's like two massages every week, and that can help make you like tip top performer. And so I think what you're doing is, is self care. It's self it's giving to yourself and it makes you a happier giver to everyone else.
So thank you for that tip. You're welcome. And if you don't schedule it monthly, it'll never happen. Amen to that. I totally know I have zero massages in the whole 2024 right now. So now you've got me going on that. Thank you, Jen, so much. Thank you, Melissa. Thanks for having me. Here are the three things that really captured my attention with regards to the conversation with Jen.
The first point is that you can be a philanthropist. You do not require an inordinate amount of time, nor millions or billions of dollars. And I think that is refreshing because even a Random act of kindness today, again, in light of February 17th is something that is going to give you those giving benefits that Jen spoke of.
The second point is that Jen did say that giving has biological benefits. And I think if you want to really think about ways to bubble wrap your sanity as a mom, entrepreneur, founder, or creator. This offers a very productive solution. So if you actually intend to give in any sort of way, whether it's your time or even your skills, please be aware it might be selfish and that is okay.
The third point is that Jen and I really talked about this idea that should you start your own nonprofit? Let's say that you have a for profit organization or business or consultancy practice, and you're thinking about a nonprofit. Is this a path that makes sense for you? Is this going to make business sense?
Is this going to be in alignment with the amount of time you have to give on a weekly basis to your business? Well, from my perspective and Jen's, it's really important to understand that creating a nonprofit is an entire business in and of itself. And if you feel like you can be at the helm of leadership in both entities at the same time and be a mom, then God bless you.
And I definitely support you. So let me know how I can help you really make that true. Otherwise, there are options such as cause marketing and donating actual money from your business to an organization that makes sense, given what Jen said. So given your passion, which that is going to help give you the lift you need and be invigorated by your donations or your giving, or given in alignment with the services that you offer and your main value proposition.
Please be aware, this is really strategic and it's something that I could absolutely support you with. Reach out to me on Instagram at Melissa Lerina. This is in the show notes at M E L I S S A L L A R E N A. Let me know if you would like some guidance pertaining to the very next step with regards to your business.
Oftentimes we don't know what we don't know. So get on the phone with me. Let me know how I can be of service. What question is on your mind? So I could help answer it or point you in the best direction. I am someone who truly believes that through networking, we can each find our angels. And in that way, I want to support you this very week.
So go ahead. Do not be shy. Get on Instagram at Melissa Llarena. Hope you enjoyed this conversation. Be sure to share this with one mom entrepreneur in that very way you are actually giving. And again, February 17th is a random act of kindness day. So celebrate it as Jen suggested. And I hope you do get that massage just like Jen shall be doing.
Thank you again.
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Would you consider yourself to be a visionary mom entrepreneur? If you are then I'd love to talk to you to better understand your unique perspective on something I'm working on. You can pick the best 15-minute time ( https://go.oncehub.com/ClientSessionMelissaLlarena) that works for you if you currently have a vision that you are working towards this year. Or you can email me melissa (at) melissallarena.com
I'n 15-minutes, we'll go through this NEW offer based on 12-years of mothering while in business. Sign-up: https://go.oncehub.com/ClientSessionMelissaLlarena
Fertile Imagination In Practice – A 9-week group coaching program where I guide you, a visionary mom entrepreneur, on the use your Fertile Imagination ™ to establish, earn the trust and gain the support of the mentors, moguls or market movers in your space. The movers who can help you to take your business to the next level (without feeling awkward or pretending to be someone other than your playful self). A Fertile Imagination ™ has the ability to cast a big vision that they may not have seen done by a mom; the vision is energizing enough to fuel the mom as she executes on making it her reality.
How is this program different? The tools, coaching, and approach consider your business longevity which means endurance is key. Expect to learn how to ensure that your creative juices flow so you can be nimbler than others. My approach is also energy-centric so you can run sprints as needed. The big difference in this program is also that your personal /career narrative will be vetted so that it reconnects you to the ambitious woman you once were and to the greater world so that having a maximum impact with an income that makes you proud AF is inevitable. These insights helped me create incredible opportunities during my 12-year entrepreneurial career and motherhood journey. I took the long road but you can easily learn them and put them into action in only 9-weeks with my guidance. 9-weeks or 12-years? Your choice.
What is my method for results?
A Fertile Imagination has the ability to cast a vision that no other mother has ever turned into reality before; a vision that is so potent it fuels her. The Imagination to Impact to Income Method™ helps you rediscover your Fertile Imagination.
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Your turn
Schedule a 15-minute Zoom call using this LINK for details about the 9-week program. Alternatively, email me for more details melissa (at) melissallarena.com - this program will roll out with 5 visionary entrepreneurs. Will you be one in the first cohort? Seeking the first fabulous five.
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Welcome to episode 216. This is a story of a single mom who has been battling chronic illness, Crohn's, and has also been in the hospital for at least 13 kidney related surgeries. in spite of her doctor appointments and uncertain health status every single day, she continues to go all in on building a business that expresses this: we are all that we are all champions inside. Today's guest is Elva Treviño. Elva is an entrepreneur with a passion for fitness, leadership, entertainment, and making a positive impact as a celebrity trainer and public speaker. She captivates audiences with her motivational talks, drawing from personal experiences and providing actionable advice to empower individuals to overcome challenges and achieve their goals. Elva is living her mission. She's an example. An example for anyone that is finding themselves constantly in the hospital or constantly facing failures and challenges. And also an example for those of us who frankly are not. Yes, to be human is to struggle but some of us at least we have our health and this episode, I would really encourage you not just to hear Elva's words and see that she's super passionate, but I want you to feel, feel the sense of urgency that Elva has with the way that she is approaching her one life, despite being a single mom and having a chronic illness.
Let's connect: https://www.instagram.com/melissallarena/
Let's talk about your business: https://www.melissallarena.com/sessions/
Grab a free chapter of Fertile Imagination: https://www.melissallarena.com/fertileideas/
HIGHLIGHTED QUESTIONS
1) Share any stories you have of single parenting with a chronic illness (Crohn's) to help listeners with health concerns
2) What are your go-to self-care practices to combat business and/or single motherhood fatigue?
3) How have you navigated having a chronic illness to spread your message of building a community of champions? Any practical tips?
4) What single most important life lesson are you hoping your daughter takes away from seeing her mom move forward despite a chronic illness?
This episode is brought to you by Fertile Imagination, my book, a guide for stretching every mom's superpower for maximum impact. I share in this book also an example of a mom who was facing a major illness. Esther, who's a DJ in Amsterdam, big shout out to Esther. Serves as an example of what the mind is capable of when a mom is facing a really big health scare and is able to have so much confidence in herself to take the onus on herself to heal so that she can be the best mom she possibly can, and then also live out her dreams.
Totally no BS dreams, just like the ones that are on her heart, even if that includes playing Tupac at a former cathedral in a nightclub in Amsterdam, just like Esther. So that is in my book. And if you're inspired by Esther's story, I have other stories as well of humans who have thoroughly Used and express themselves by using a fertile imagination.
A fertile imagination is the ability to cast a vision that is so big that you may have never seen a mom accomplish it ever before. And Elva is also such an example of that. So take all her words to heart because they are, they have the potential to really set you on the path of deliberate action. Deliberate advocacy in your community and deliberate mommying to, to your kids. Enjoy the conversation. And if you're interested in the book, just go to ..
www.fertileideas.com.
About Elva
Elva Trevino is an entrepreneur with a passion for fitness, leadership, entertainment, and making a positive impact. As a celebrity trainer and public speaker, she captivates audiences with her motivational talks, drawing from personal experiences and providing actionable advice to empower individuals to overcome challenges and achieve their goals. Additionally, Elva serves as a charismatic spokesmodel, effectively representing and collaborating with brands/non profits while leveraging her engaging presence to connect with a diverse audience. Her multifaceted approach, encompassing fitness advocacy, entertainment, charity work, community engagement, mentoring emerging leaders, owning her own businesses, and being a sought-after celebrity trainer, positions her as an influential figure across various domains. She's also been recognized for her visionary contributions, having been nominated as one of the top 100 visionaries in healthcare globally in 2021.
Follow her journey
https://www.instagram.com/advo_elva/
TRANSCRIPT
Elva Treviño, I am so excited to have you on the podcast. Thanks. I'm excited to be here. So this is something that listeners might not know.
So I am actually, which is unexpected, interviewing someone that is also in the big state of Texas in the United States. And you're in Houston, right? Yeah. Growing more every day. Yeah, I think the only time I've been there was to Minute Maid Baseball Park. So that is my impression of Houston thus far. And my little boys really enjoyed it.
So it was a really good time. And I wanted to just learn about you, your experiences, a little bit of your background, a bit about your champion mindset. I'm very intrigued by that. And also just. Tell us a little bit about what, what it is that you're looking to accomplish in Houston and the greater and the greater world.
What is your vision?
I love it. I'm really excited to be here. And just a quick shout out to Sev when you hear this for connecting us. And it's always great to connect with like minds in so many different ways. So, but to kick off that question, my name is Elva Trevino. I'm 38. I'll be 39 in April this year.
And I'm just a woman who has had a lot of. Dreams and visions, but has persevered through a lot of challenges that most people feel like they really wouldn't be able to get through to me. It's just a way of life, but it's always been the driving force of why I started pursuing entrepreneurship, why I started pouring into community and why I always just looked at my story as a backbone of something that could unlock others.
So in 2019, I started a brand called Champions Club that was actually built from my garage. And at the time I was marketing two different brands, working for others, seeing a need here in Houston for just helping people to wake up with health, personal training and things of that nature. But growing up severely asthmatic and having so many challenges when it came to my asthma, even as an athlete, I didn't realize how much mindset training that that actually.
Created throughout my life to get to a certain point where, as I was helping people in those years, marketing those two other brands prior to champions club, I noticed that there was something in the mindset that there was a gap that was needing basically being needed to fill. So when I say that you take the person who wants to lose a 50 pounds or race in a marathon or iron man, like I did, you see the bodybuilders and the athletes from teenage up to professional sports.
But what drives those results was always. And when I started getting to the average people, the stay at home moms, which are really not average, but just the everyday type of goals, I noticed. Why do we, why can't everyone feel like a champion at some point in their life? So fitness really became the gateway for me to really pour into others in my community.
And I never would have imagined back then that the pathway that took me on. Being that I just stayed relentless in my pursuit of my own personal health challenges that it would turn into this massive brand that's been able to serve clients in 15 different countries online, where we were able to open our first brick and mortar here in Houston that we're currently franchising a concept for, that we were able to spin off dreams like music and entertainment and community work and leadership and mentorship all through the walls of my gym.
So since 2019, we've basically created an umbrella company to actually, and we're working on a couple of sister concepts that have really aligned to the community in terms of leadership and just helping people to pursue their dreams. Now, when we look at those commonalities, the mindset's at the root of all of it.
So before champions clump came into existence in 2019, I'd gone through years of having so many health issues with my asthma, but it was the need for 13 kidney surgeries and having two tubes out of my left kidney that really put the fire in my heart and just my mindset to use my voice in a larger platform to really help people to wake up before they found themselves in shoes like mine.
And I know that we won't always all be here, but When I say I want to leave everything out here before anything ever were to happen, being that I'm a single mom and my daughter's entering her high school years. I've done just that over the last five years. It's really just been about the pursuit of making sure that we're leaving our mark behind so that The future of my daughter's being raised in is going to look a lot better than the way it's been And I think there's there's so many people that you are impacting by demonstrating just how How anyone can, can continue to like go after their dreams, even if they have a chronic illness, even if they are a single parent.
And, and I thought it would be really, really helpful to just share with the listeners a little bit about maybe like a story about a time when having a chronic illness for you or any of those surgeries. got in your way, but then you use the power of mindset to not let it stay in your way. Oh, there's some like, as you were speaking, I had like a flash of pictures and it's interesting because when I first started doing podcasts, it was typically the testimonial of this very thing.
So I think it's actually pretty cool that I'm coming full circle to come back into that health story as I still battle health. Issues every single day, basically. So taking it back to when I first started to find my voice, they always say, if you want to give, give some, get something done, give it to a busy person.
But when it comes to business too, when you have a parent or just someone who is waking up, hitting the floor, running for, for a mini them or nieces and nephews or siblings, just something that's bigger than them. There is no stopping. There are people who are relying on your efforts every single day. So back to those days where I was finding that voice inside of me and having to quietly go to my doctor's visits.
I ended up having about 13 different doctors towards the end of the two years of my surgeries. And most people didn't know what was going on at the time. The people I worked for at that time, there were a handful of people like a dot of people outside of my parents and my daughter who knew what I was experiencing, but I, in those days, it was really a time where I knew that I needed to isolate.
Myself away from the noise to stay clear and stay focused. You can probably compare it to someone who was told, Hey, you made it to the Olympics. You have three months to train. Like what kind of mindset would that take from someone? So taking that picture of the Olympic mindset, that's how I felt back then I was standing on stages, dolled up with hair and makeup.
Wearing a beautiful dress, speaking to people in the thousands at times, training on fitness and health and business and leadership. And all the while, when I had my two nephrostomy tubes out of my left kidney, which at that point, the doctors in my hospital had never put two tubes, two incisions into one kidney before.
They had no clue that I had these bags. That were taped to my ribs under my dress. They had no idea that I couldn't see sometimes past the first couple of rows. In fact, actually, after the last surgery. My mom was in the stands on that one. And it was supposed to be a big weekend. I had just gotten the tubes out.
It had been a long 22 months, financially and all those things. And I remember almost blacking out on stage. And if I showed you the picture, you wouldn't be able to tell. I'm sitting up there, going on a panel for 22 minutes, and as soon as I walked off that stage, I looked at my mom in the eyes, and she came from the medical industry, so she knew something was up.
And I grabbed her by the hand and I said, Take me to the hospital right now. Post surgery, I had a blood clot the size of a golf ball, but what they don't know, before I spoke, was that I was violently ill in the bathroom, vomiting, and just dizzy. But it was my pursuit of the people who needed to hear my story that day that didn't let me say, I can't talk today.
And there were so many moments through my career where I pushed through. There's another where they were going to first put the tube in my back, but I was doing my first gala that I was organizing for 250 people at Univision Studios on behalf of the brand that I was representing. And I looked at the doctor and I said, you can't do that.
I have a gala that's my gala for 250 people tomorrow. This is revolutionizing health in Houston for Latinos. You can't, you can't put that tube in my back. I have a backless dress. I have to wear it tomorrow. And I left the ER. Before I should have. So it's so many moments like that where we can find ourselves maybe being a little bit on the brink of, Tim Grover always says, a little bit of insanity.
And sometimes you have to have just a hint of that for you to truly make things happen. And I firmly believe that if we, if we test our mindsets, far enough, our bodies will always follow. So no matter if it's a health issue or a bad day, if it's a business idea or a family challenge, we all have moments like that.
Maybe mine come with medical records that are through the roof, but I feel like everyone listening to this can relate to those pivotal moments in themselves where they found a fight. They couldn't always explain where it was coming from, but they knew that they had to listen to that. So, like I said, there's so many moments I could go over, but those are two that I can recall right now.
Yeah, I think it's, it's, it goes back to what you said earlier, which is just that people are relying on your efforts. And it reminds me of, you know, The book that I wrote, Fertile Imagination, I have a chapter there that's dedicated to a woman who decided to become a DJ in her fifties and like play every kind of song you could possibly imagine.
And at one point, her daughter was six and her daughter had cancer. And of course, being a mom, she completely let go of herself. And some years later, she contracted cancer. And Esther was able to, with the same inner resourcefulness that you exhibited over the course of three years, not even knowing what kind of issue was going on.
She was bedridden for three years, right? She was able to like stop her own medications and, and, and feel her tailbone again. And it's like. I mean, anybody that's going to be able to go through all of that is going to know that, you know what, I'm going to light the world on fire with my passion. And I'm going to, now that I get a second chance, third chance, 15th chance, however many chances you feel you've been given, it's kind of like, well, what are you going to do with it?
Pardon for the tiny little interruption, but I wanted to tell you something that's so important. I wanted to tell you that I have created a program to help visionary mom entrepreneurs through the use of their fertile imagination. You know, that book I was talking about a little bit earlier where I'm helping you cast this vision that maybe you've never seen a mom accomplished before a income generating impact making business that you can actually do while being a present mom.
Yeah, that I'm going to teach you how to use that capability, that superpower of your fertile imagination so that this way you could accomplish whatever vision you have more quickly. I'm going to help you establish, earn the trust and gain the support of the mentors, moguls, or market makers who can take your business idea to the next level, all without awkward, nor having to pretend to be anyone else than your playful self.
Actually, your playful self is going to distinguish you and become your competitive edge. I want to talk to you. If this sounds right up your alley, if you're committed to really, really. Seeing your business idea and making it come true. Then I want to talk to you on a free consultation, 30 minutes over zoom confidential, so that this way you can articulate your precise vision, which is.
Huge, a lot of us have a hard time doing that. And second, we could come up with a clearly defined road map. One that takes into account the stage of motherhood in which you find yourself. I did that the other day. I was actually speaking to someone who wants to build out an HR consultancy practice. And in that 30 minute free complimentary session.
Complimentary and free being repetitive, we were able to figure out that what she needed to do right now in light of her kids school schedule was build relationships on the East Coast, a whole different time zone than where she is in the Rocky Mountain area. And she had it to, she had to figure out who would be the centers of influence so that this way, once her schedule cleared up in 2025, she could run, just hit the ground running and build out her HR consultancy practice.
We went through other things as well, but I wanted to just give you the nutshell so that this will, you have a good appreciation for the fact that these free 30 minute consultations, they will be limited because I really want to understand the business challenge that you're facing in the moment in not seeing your vision through.
And I also want to take a really, really keen. I and see what you might not be able to see or what is right under your nose and doable at any stage in which you are in as a mom, I E, maybe you're at that stage where you don't want to hop on airplanes and meet all these strangers in order to network. So I'll meet you where you are.
Just go to the link, melissalarina. com forward slash. Sessions, there is an application because it is really important that you are committed to the process of building out your business. And the application is so easy. It's absolutely insane how easy it is, especially in relation to everything that needs to happen in order for you to see your vision through and be a mom.
So I invite you to join me. On a free breakthrough session, let's go through your vision, articulate it, and I will help you with a roadmap so that this way you have a really good idea of your best next step. Meanwhile, if you do want to hire me as your coach, so that this way you can actually leverage the support of mentors, moguls, Or market makers who can actually take your business to the next level, then absolutely we can do so and have a conversation about what that might look like for you during those free consultations.
No pressure. This is really in service to you, a podcast listener. And I want to make sure that everything that you heard today, you're able to put into action in your real life. Again, melissalarino. com forward slash sessions. Enjoy the rest of the conversation. And this will be in the show notes. Exactly.
And, and, and honestly, it takes some of those moments for ourselves for a lot of times for us to feel like our backs against the wall. There is nothing else to do, but fight and fight. When we say the word fight, people take it as a negative thing. We're fighting for what we have every single day. And whether you feel like that's you're on the offensive side or the defensive side of it.
People don't realize they're in a fight every single day for their families and themselves, their mental health and all these things. I mean, the world is changing every single day. So when I look back, all those challenges were absolutely necessary because for it to have grown me into the person it's grown me into and what it continues to do.
Had I not had all those dark, crazy internal Courageous moments and moments that could have passed me by all the people I've impacted that we've impacted together. It never would have happened. So we have to embrace those moments and we need to actually sometimes want a few more of them because it helps us level up a lot faster when our backs against the wall like that.
I completely agree. And I think as I think about my own history and I think about My mom, right? So she has manic depression. She's had it since forever. She was a single mom, but there's so many inside the psych units, outside the psych units. And she told me, she said, Melissa, I do it for you. Like, and it's like, holy cow, like little me, like when I was like five, six, seven.
And what that did for me, just to give you perspective, cause I'm going to ask you about your daughter. But what that did for me was kind of like, I was like resilience. I was like. I eat that for breakfast. It's like that, that's who I am now. It's like, there's no one to tell me who I can talk to. Cause I've spoken to everybody I've needed to talk to.
And as a kid to survive. So what do you think this witnessing of you and how mommy's handling all these adversities and challenges, what do you think this is doing for your daughter? What do you anticipate? When she was three years old, I made some conscious decisions to start doing things in a way that were not normal.
And what I mean by that is traditionally not always looking at working for someone else. And I knew then that these years that she's walking into, I had a full circle moment last week when we had parents night for her high school, which is in a great district here in Houston. I fought like hell to make sure that that that vision never stopped.
And for me, it's not about her living vicariously, me living vicariously through her to the way that I would enforce these, these responsibilities on her back. But as a first gen myself, as well as her because of her father, it's a responsibility where we've been able to embrace and empower our family lineage and say, how can we honor what's been done for us?
And how can we take that even further? So my daughter, when I see her spirit, her character, her work. willingness to learn both traditional education and to be open to the wisdom and the real talks and the very deep talks at such a young age. It's, it's being put into action every day. And now with her eyes set on being the first kid, uh, the first person in our family to hit Ivy league, whether or not that's going to happen for her is ultimately up to her.
But it's, it's already happening and I'm so proud of her more every day. And I know that her seeing me, mommy in the hospital up and down those early years where she was in elementary school, it just makes me appreciate the people who were around her in those days from teachers to counselors, to some of our family and just people that really created that support system, despite the term single mom.
Yes. I did a lot of this on my own, but for her to. Have seen that witness it that strength is already embedded in her at the same time I feel blessed that God gave her to me in this time frame because a lot of the things that came out of her mouth While those years were happening Well, she was sent to me for a reason and those words were a lot of affirmation and things I needed in those moments where it got tough and she's a little Champion.
So I'll let her continue to define that in her own identity. But until then she knows character over anything else. And I'm, I'm really happy to see how that continues to unravel in her life. Yeah. And I, and I'm wondering as a business owner and a parent and a leader and, and, and advocate for Latinos, I mean.
How do you, how do you incorporate this, this notion of, of self care so that every day you give yourself a chance to get back up and do it again and then do it again and then do it again because it can't be like a runaway train, you know what I mean? So like, what sort of practical tips can you give someone that.
Also has chronic illness, but, but the vision and the dream is, is, is so freaking big that they have to keep going, but you've, there's gotta be something in check, you know? Yeah. It's interesting because I spoke to a thousand, uh, teens this, this Saturday and the same question came up without the health part in there.
They didn't know all of that. And they're like, mystery, what can I do? And the same exact question. And so I broke it down to them. I said, give me three things. And I was like, well, there's not just three, but What's helped me is, oh, and we hear it, but we need to really live in it. We need to submerge ourselves in it.
Gratitude, whether you're in a high or a low in that day to everyone listening to this with respect to what they believe. For me, my faith has grounded me through all things, especially since those days of my illness took over. I mean, it threw me into that in a whole different level, and I'm grateful to be able to pass some of those things on psychologically, physically, this.
Having to stay in this constant state of alignment really does help. So we can have weeks and months where we're great. For me in this season, I experienced a lot of flare ups. Those flare ups can come in so many different ways. When I say they're debilitating, it can be debilitating at times. I remember waking up last year out of my bed and I couldn't even walk on my feet every morning just because of the inflammation and chronic disruption from head to toe.
It's not always easy to kick flare ups out like that, especially when you do your best to do things holistically. Every morning I would wake up and every night I would go to sleep with gratitude, whether it was in tears, whether it was a productive day, we have to set that intention and keep that intention first.
And we have to mean it. We can't just say these things or look at a couple words and affirmations and just run through that. If you are not in love with your processes, it's time for you to fall back in love with your processes. And those processes have to be a formula that works for you. Now, I also mentioned that having a great state of like a stress maintenance in your life is so important.
And take it from me, you, you juggle all these things, whether you run businesses or not. We have to make sure that the way that we are understanding ourselves in each new season, stress management needs to be in there because if not, it's going to continue to make us sick because it does. We have constant things that are distracting us.
We have tech, we have the air quality going to crap every day. We have food working against us. We have family stress, emotional distress, COVID stress, all these things. And if there's nowhere to put it. There's no outlet. Yes, working out is a good stress reliever, but I'm talking about what works for you.
Is it writing it? Is it talking about it? Is it breathing techniques? Is it yoga? Is it music? Music is a great healing process or maintenance thing for me. There's, there's certain frequencies to music that help heal the body naturally. So there's so many different things that we need to find in that formula.
But for me, having a state of gratitude, making sure that each season, whatever I choose to be my stress maintenance, that I'm attaching it to my every single day. And then making sure that I'm staying around great people in this season of my life. I'm just not willing to put up with the things that are toxicities.
I'm just not willing to put up with the people and things that could try to intentionally or subconsciously pull me down. I don't have the capacity for it. And if anything, it makes me sick. So I've removed a lot of things that it's probably taken a decade for me to really get to this point where there's no people pleasing.
Elva says no more. Elva preserves her energy more. She makes sure she gets her rest more. She's not going to take any invitation to a social, because guess what? Her body and her mind need rest. And if we don't do those things, all of it will catch up to you. I promise. What is it that, that you wish someone who's listening to this, who is completely healthy, completely healthy, completely resourced, they have a dream in their heart, and they're just Scared as hell to jump and take a leap.
What do you want them to hear? Right now, and I just got chills as I heard you say that, you know, there are so many things that you can look up on Google to see what Elva's involved in, and there's a reason for that. A lot of the mentors that I follow, um, they're in stages of duplication. And to me, true success isn't just about hitting a mark financially or career wise or with family.
I can always tell someone who's successful because they, they, they know it's their responsibility at a certain point to pass that knowledge and wisdom down, to duplicate that into others and to, to keep that success rolling. There are some people who are not. as open and selfless to helping their community up.
That's okay. Be who you want to be and do what you want to do. But for those who feel like fortunate and that they've got some of those things together and they're, they're trying to make a leap into something unknown. We don't have the luxury right now in our society for everyone to not step up to their full potential and to be in their A game.
And when you're in an a game, it doesn't mean rigidly working your days and hours in the calendar like you're maximizing what you could be doing in those hours that requires taking a step back and really looking at how am I serving my. community, and how am I leaving an imprint in our society?
Accumulatively, because to be honest, at 38 years old, some of the things that I've done, yeah, they've been pretty cool. They, yeah, they've gotten some attention. Okay, great. The top 100 visionary in healthcare globally. Cool. Okay, great. The mayor's Hispanic Heritage Awards for community activism. Great.
Honestly, I feel bad that there's a lot of room at the quote unquote top that people feel this inspiration towards some of the things I've done because in my head I'm just over here waving my hand saying, Hey guys, you see me over here? I really need some help because you have the knowledge of this and you have the wisdom of this.
And we are leaving behind a tainted future for our children. We are in this, I'm in this generation where it's parents, health and getting older and children and looking at what we're leaving behind for them. Um, if you care about what's been given to you, whether it was in a great way or in you did it in spite of what wasn't given to you, we have to keep coming together to pour in and to lift up our communities.
We have to, there is no, any person can sleep. We can't afford that right now. And I just really want to inspire you that whatever is on the other side of that fear, once you take a step into courage and you commit yourself to always having courage to pursue those things that are whispering at you every single day.
Whatever is on the other side of that there is something that you have been Limiting your potential with because you just won't answer that call. So answer that call and take a step of courage because everything else you'll eventually figure out what to do with and how to do it. Thank you, Elva. So Elva, where can people continue to follow your journey and, and help you out?
How can they reach out to you? Well, for one, stay tuned on to this podcast because we know that she's going to continue to bring great people on trailblazers and people all over the world. As far as communication in this season, there's so many things that we are driving very, very strongly in our community.
So I've been warning everybody that the best form of communication is just my email. If you have a testimony or some, some sort of organization or anything that we can walk arms with, whether it be in Houston or some of the outside communities we're working with, We have our hearts set on some really big activism coming up this year in DC.
We've got a lot of things happening down here in Texas, which is the eighth largest economy in the world right now. There are so many displaced leaders, quiet, silent warriors who are looking for communities and people who can just understand them to lock arms with. Just email me info at championsclub.
global. I love connecting with pioneers. I mean, we're living in a history book every single day right now. So if it's not a connection to something, it could just be a, Hey girl, I see you across the country keep going. And if everyone tells you, you can't. Text me in a month and I'm going to tell you the same.
Keep going. Besides that, my Instagram and LinkedIn, Elva Trevino, Elva underscore Elva. I've been a little less quiet there the last 90 days or so, but it's because we're working really hard behind the scenes on some big things. So that's, that's pretty, the easiest way to get ahold of me and for. Most of the things that we've done, you can Google and kind of research some of the work that we've done, but we're just getting started.
And let me tell you, mistakes and making mistakes is a lot of a large part of that process. So if you're in a season that you're still trying to get some clarity, it's okay. I've been there too. And I promise you, I've gone through more challenges than most of you guys had. So if I can do this, so can you.
Thank you, Elva. No problem. You could feel Elva's. Enormous sense of urgency. And I want to really express these three thoughts to you. And I would encourage you to immediately think about them for yourself. The first one is who's relying on your efforts. Really have that person in mind. Every single time you feel like quitting.
The second is about community. Elva doesn't have to be thinking about other people. As a single parent, she has enough to think about for her daughter and of her business. But she wants to leave the world better off than she found it. And she's finding it within her to also want to impact the Latino community.
What about you? Might you want to impact your own community? Third one, what dream are you deferring? And why do you assume that you're going to be around forever in order to see it through its fullest execution? What dream are you deferring? This one hits home because Elva is facing death every single day and so are we.
Except we might not physically feel it. We might not be going to hospitals every single day. We might not be in physical pain every single day. But at the same time, life is risky too. And so with that I really hope that you feel inspired to do something, even a little thing for yourself today or your community or your loved ones, and really just take to heart the fact that even if you have a chronic illness, even if you feel, feel ill, there's a value to your story.
There really is. And that might be enough. So I hope you enjoyed this conversation. And I urge you share this with someone who's a working mom. With her own business, her own vision, who is experiencing a chronic illness today. Elva has the potential to really turn her life around.
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Tune in to learn how to leverage the three pillars of positivity to build your success by Silicon valley entrepreneur and business strategy John Hagel III. Consider this THE change management guide for mom entrepreneurs. If you are exhausted by the fear, uncertainty, and emotional gunk of change then bookmark this conversation. My take is that John offers a fresh and much needed reframe (it's more than a reframe) to help us get more out of our business ideas.
Becoming an entrepreneur is an exciting venture. But when you're a mom juggling the demands of raising children while also launching a business, it can be a challenging journey fraught with fear and uncertainty. On an episode of Unimaginable Wellness, management consultant, author, and speaker, John Hagel, delves into his latest book, "The Journey Beyond Fear," and shares how mothers can harness their imagination to turn fear into an avenue for opportunity.
Hagel suggests that by unleashing the boundless potential of your imagination, you can navigate the psychology of change more efficiently. He points out that emotions, especially fear and excitement, have a profound impact on our actions. The trick, according to Hagel, is to shift our perspective of fear from being a threat to viewing it as an opening for growth.
This episode is brought to you by Fertile Imagination: A Guide For Stretching Every Mom’s Superpower For Maximum Impact – My book is now available on Amazon in its paperback version and Kindle format. Grab a free chapter on www.fertileideas.com.
DM me on Instagram @melissallarena just type the word FERTILE and I’ll share the link if that’s easier to get to fertileideas.com for all the details you need to celebrate your own Fertile Imagination! Here’s that link: https://www.instagram.com/melissallarena/
About John Hagel
John Hagel is a management consultant, author, and speaker with over 40 years of experience in his field. After retiring as a partner from Deloitte, he wrote his latest book "The Journey Beyond Fear," which addresses the psychology of change and how it can help people navigate through life changes. John is currently developing a series of programs to help people navigate change at various levels through his newly founded company, Beyond Our Edge.
By harnessing your imagination and drive, you can shape your own narrative, focus on the future, and tap into the limitless potential of excitement and opportunity. This conversation provides mom entrepreneurs with practical tools and lessons to embark on a fulfilling entrepreneurial journey.
In this episode, you will hear:
Exploring the power of imagination in overcoming fear and achieving success in entrepreneurship for mothers
John Hagel, shares insights from his book "The Journey Beyond Fear". The discussion revolves around the psychology of change and its impacts on mothers in entrepreneurship.
The relationship between fear and excitement is examined, highlighting how these emotions can either hinder or drive us towards success.
John shares practical tools on how to shift our perception of fear from being a threat to an opportunity for growth.
The power of personal narratives in shaping a more positive future and methods to optimize them
The importance of rebuilding self-trust and granting ourselves permission to play
Understanding how to stretch your imagination to achieve big goals and impact is explained.
The crucial role of sustainability in maintaining long-term influence in entrepreneurship.
Insights on the importance of curiosity, accountability, and shared excitement in achieving our ambitions are given.
Tips on using your imagination and drive to craft a fulfilling journey as a mom entrepreneur are shared.
Identifying common threads to guide personal narratives towards a more fulfilling future
How to turn fear into an opportunity and drive for more significant impact
The balance between passion and impact in entrepreneurship
The power of positivity and optimism in overcoming challenges and resistance in entrepreneurship
John’s personal journey of changing his narrative at the age of 54
The role of excitement in achieving limitless potential and a desire to connect with others
The importance of shaping our own narrative and focusing on the future for sustained success
Understanding the three stages of optimizing one's imagination for maximum impact, including rebuilding self-trust, granting permission to play, and stretching imagination to achieve goals
SHARE this episode with mothers who are entrepreneurs, aspiring to be, or anyone looking for strategies to shift their mindset from fear to opportunity.
Supporting Resources:
John’s Book: https://www.johnhagel.com/book-the-journey-beyond-fear-by-john-hagel-iii/
Subscribe and Review
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About Fertile Imagination – www.fertileideas.com
You can be a great mom without giving up, shrinking, or hiding your dreams. There’s
flexibility in how you pursue anything – your role, your lifestyle, and your personal and
professional goals. The limitations on your dreams are waiting to be shattered. It’s
time to see and seize what’s beyond your gaze. Let’s bridge your childhood daydreams
with your grown-up realities. Imagine skipping with your kids along any path – you,
surpassing your milestones while your kids are reaching theirs. There’s only one superpower versatile enough to stretch your thinking beyond what’s been done before: a
Fertile Imagination. It’s like kryptonite for impostor syndrome and feeling stuck when
it’s alert!
In Fertile Imagination, you will awaken your sleeping source of creative solutions. If you
can wake up a toddler or a groggy middle schooler, then together with the stories in
this book – featuring 25 guests from my podcast Unimaginable Wellness, proven tools,
and personal anecdotes – we will wake up your former playmate: your imagination!
Advance Praise
“You’ll find reality-based strategies for imagining your own imperfect, fulfilling
life in this book!” —MARTHA HENNESSEY, former NH State Senator
“Melissa invites the reader into a personal and deep journey about
topics that are crucially important to uncover what would make a mom
(and dad too) truly happy to work on...even after the kids are in bed.”
—KEN HONDA, best-selling author of Happy Money
“This book is a great purchase for moms in every stage of life. Melissa is like a
great friend, honest and wise and funny, telling you about her life and asking you to
reflect on yours.” —MAUREEN TURNER CAREY, librarian in Austin, TX
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Welcome to episode 214. Feeling pulled in a million directions as a mompreneur? Juggling tasks, battling overwhelm, and chasing those next-level business goals seems like a constant tightrope walk. But what if you could harness the power of focus to turn your hectic days into laser-sharp productivity? In comes today’s podcast guest Severine Naessens a seasoned entrepreneur and mother to a teenage daughter.
Say hi on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melissallarena/
About Severine
Séverine is a mom, multilingual effective communications coach, consultant and trainer, university lecturer and keynote speaker. Born and raised in Belgium, she moved to Mexico at age 24, where she worked for the Belgian Consulate, built out a Digital Marketing company, and became a life coach and communications trainer, and consultant. Over the years she has participated as a lecturer for La Salle University in Cancún and as a speaker at different events that promote the development of women and responsible communication. She has also been a guest on various international podcasts and has been invited to Radio and Television shows throughout Mexico to speak about topics related to parenting, business communication, and female empowerment. Recently widowed, she decided to once again reinvent herself and moved back to her native Ghent with her teenage daughter, after having lived a fulfilled and exciting life in Mexico for 23 years. Tapping into all of the knowledge and experience she has gathered over the past decennia, she currently serves as lecturer on diverse and inclusive communication for the Artevelde University of Applied Sciences for the students of the bachelor’s in international communication management. Besides teaching at the university, she is serves and supports high-achieving professionals in creating clarity and establishing responsible communication with their loved ones and teams alike. She does so by providing personalized consulting, training, conferences, workshops, mentoring and one-on-one coaching sessions to identify the obstacles and provide practical solutions out of the wide array of tools and insights she has gathered over the years.
Links for more information
Instagram @coachseverinenaessens
https://www.facebook.com/CoachSeverineNaessens/
Websites
https://www.severinenaessens.com
https://www.highachievingparents.com
LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/severinenaessens
About Melissa the host of Unimaginable Wellness
Hi there! I'm Melissa, an executive coach empowering mompreneurs. Tired of imposter syndrome holding you back? I help moms like you transform that doubt into fuel for success. Feeling overwhelmed? Let's nip that bud together and unlock your productivity superpowers. And forget chasing milestones solo - I'll show you how to leverage the magic of networking to reach those seemingly distant goals for your business. Because with the right connections, anything is within reach for a mompreneur. So, ready to ditch the overwhelm, amplify your voice, and take your business to the next level? Let's get started! Say hi on Instagram and I’ll send you gift via a link to a free chapter of my bestseller Fertile Imagination: A Guide for Stretching Every Mom’s Superpower for Maximum Impact: https://www.instagram.com/melissallarena/
Additional links:
How to get unstuck in your business quiz? https://www.tryinteract.com/share/quiz/64fb50ebd9dce900148cdff8
Mom Mogul Webinar Replay: https://witty-thinker-2643.ck.page/7e884a0f0a
Schedule a free breakthrough 30-minute call: https://www.melissallarena.com/sessions/
TRANSCRIPT
Melissa. This is impromptu. Love it. Yes,
Severine: I love it too. I appreciate you having me. I've been following your journey and I'm super excited about everything that's going on and everything that you're sharing with the world. Thank you, thank you. Thank you for doing that. All the moms, all the mompreneurs, we can use that piece of advice and yeah, that backing voice going, you're doing all right, girl, doing it. All right. So happy to share this space with you.
Melissa: Thank you. Thank you, ine. So why don't you share a little bit about yourself and then also in terms of your motherhood stage, because I have little boys and my twins are 10 and 10, and my eldest is 12, but I'm at a different stage than you, so that can be included in your little about cine portion.
Severine: Well, about me, I was born and raised in Gant Belgium, a wonderful medieval city, which I left at age 24 because I moved to Cancun, Mexico. Quite a bit of a difference there. I did that straight after I graduated from university as a business translator, and I went out to venture for a good six month sabbatical, which turned into 23 years of building up a life in Cancun, Mexico. I absolutely adore the country, the people, the food, the whole thing, the culture. And as I was in Mexico, I developed into a communications coach, trainer and consultant. That being said, it's not about marketing, but it's about interpersonal communication, and I've been able to also put a focus on diverse and inclusive communication as I've been asked by the university to create courses on that for the students on international communications management. So it's full. I'm coming full circle, leaving school, I went out into the world, learned from the world, learned from the experience of being married to a Mexican wonderful man, the father of my daughter, who is now 16.
Severine: So we're in the midst of our teens. It's all good. We are having a great time, wonderful relationship. I've been able to build up with Iati as I have learned to communicate as a mom. So it's like the full package of becoming a communications coach is thanks to the struggles I had with my four-year-old child back in the day when her dad and myself, we split up. So I learned to communicate, and that comes with a lot of breaking of patterns, a lot of breaking of paradigms, and shifting into a healthier relationship based on clear effective communication, respectful communication specifically. So I've been able to take that entire experience and now I can share that with other moms, with other dads, with other leaders as such, because as moms and dads, we lead our families and in business, we lead our teams. So pretty much the same from a communication standpoint.
Severine: So I'm really blessed that I can bring my passion for communication to the world and do that professionally. I get a lot of fulfillment out of sharing this with others and guiding others into a better communication, better relationship with the people around them. So that's in a nutshell, and I've come back to Belgium after 23 years in Mexico. We've been here for a good year and a half. It's been a challenge to readapt to my own culture, and I think you can relate after being away from the US for quite a while and then coming back. That story of becoming immigrants and then reintegrating into your own culture brings a lot of struggles, but a lot of interesting wisdom as well. So it's been quite the journey.
Melissa: Yeah, I mean it's interesting because then it's different cultures, different languages, different, and when I think about, let's say from a Spanish language and Spanish that's so generic because I don't know, I guess Mexican or even the precise province where you were in Mexico culture, I'm pretty sure that your experience coaching leaders has been quite varied, and I am sure as far as the way that you've had to adapt as a mom, entrepreneur has been just as rich in terms of the different things that you've had to incorporate in your practice and how you are as a mom for some time, and in terms of just a daughter and being a single mom, right? I'm sure it's shaped a bit of how you've organized yourself. And so in terms of your background and in terms of your journey as an entrepreneur, I'm very, very curious about how you have bubble wrapped your sanity through the different stages of motherhood. But then I'm super curious if you just shared a bit of what was going on during those moments as an entrepreneur. So maybe early on setting the foundation or when you had a change or disruption in childcare, curious how you decided to bubble wrap your sanity. I think that would be so valuable for other moms.
Severine: Obviously it has grown a lot and I've learned a lot over these past 16 years. In the very beginning, I was miserable. In all honesty. It was hard because I was running a digital marketing company at the time, excuse me, and at that time I was doing full-time job as a leader, as a business owner. That's a 24 7 thing, and then you become a mom, and that's another 24 7 thing that comes along and struggling. I had a lot of struggles figuring out when to do what I mean as a baby. She was with me in her crib next to me in the office. I mean, I was carrying the kid along with me. Luckily, I got into decent and good daycare very early on. So I was able to hand her over to the experts on childcare, and I go into my office and do my thing, but it was hard to incorporate the motherhood into the professional me.
Severine: I'm very driven and I can get very laser focused on working, and I would forget I have a child. I mean, it happened that I forgot to go to daycare to pick her up because I was so focused on working. I had totally zoned out on the motherhood part, and I would get a call, ma'am, already 6:00 PM we closed at four. Is everything okay? It's like, oh, shoot, okay. I'm on my way on those little things. After a while that I came to the understanding that I needed to rearrange everything that I was doing, and that's where I learned about focus management and focus management has been through the years I've become more and more proficient in, it has been a life raft for me to bubble wrap my focus, and I will schedule walks into my calendar. I will schedule everything that has to do with my child into my calendar and plan my focus for work around that.
Severine: And that has helped me to bring my child, my family as a priority, but not dropping my professional activities because I am who I am and I keep going. So I think focus management has been the key for me to learn to be present when I'm working. I'm present working. When I'm with my child, I am present as a mom, even though those chunks of time, not necessarily, they're not necessarily large chunks of time, especially now as a teenager, that kind of stretches out into two adults cohabiting because 16 is almost adult and she has become very independent, which I am super grateful for. So it has keeps changing over time. But I do try and I say try because sometimes I do fail at that to be very, very present with my focus. So focusing is one thing that did help me kind of get out of that mayhem that was going on because motherhood as a professional and motherhood in all forms can be mayhem because there's a lot going on. Whatever it is that you do, whether you're a stay at home mom, because that's a 24 7 job as well, whether you're a professional, whether you're an independent, whether you're a freelancer, whether you're a public person, it doesn't matter. Mayhem happens when you have kids around.
Severine: So finding a way of dealing with everything and having that clarity of what is needed so you can set your priorities has helped for me to work my way through motherhood, and then those terrible first two years, that was really, really hard for me to adapt to motherhood. I mean, I can adapt in any professional situation like that because I've got quite some experience, but as a mom, it was very new and it was very hard because it's never what you've expected. You think motherhood's going to be something, and then you become a mom and it's completely different, nowhere near what you thought it would be because all our kids have their own personalities, they have their own needs, and it's a lot of impromptu stuff going on. So yeah, learning to be flexible, that has also been, I mean, the flexibility factor of motherhood I think is key as well, to understand that you will have to be flexible at certain times because things happen with kids and allowing yourself to step out of the rigidity of an agenda and working. And that's why working with focus management has helped me because I'm stepping away from time management
Severine: Because knowing that I need a block of focus for a certain task, I can move that block of focus around in my agenda, but I know I need to focus on a specific task, so I'm not stuck to, oh, from that time to that time, I need to do this because if something happens, I am flexible to move things around. So that has been a couple of the key things for me.
Melissa: The way that you bubble wrap. So my question just because, let's see, here's where it's really hard for me, and maybe other listeners can appreciate this or listeners can appreciate this idea of focus management for me, let's imagine I say, okay, three hours, I don't know when or where on my calendar this moment, but for three hours I'm going to write one email, and I know it might sound like, that's crazy, Melissa, three hours for an email, no joke. Sometimes an email will take me three hours. Okay, so there's the three hours. I put them on a Monday and I have them from 8:00 AM when my kids are in school until whatever, three hours later, right? 8, 9, 10, 11:00 AM not a problem. I'm sitting down, I'm typing away. I'm like, yeah, I got this. Then the school calls me 10:00 AM in the middle of the fricking email as I'm actually putting it together and it says, oh, your kids stepped on poop on the way to school. You might want to spare them from embarrassment. I literally got a call like this and bring them a second pair of sneakers or whatever, or trainers, depending on the country that you're in.
Melissa: How in your history have you thought about those interruptions of your focus? Because that's a chunk, right? So you just said as my example, that's three hours. Here's a block. So then what do you do in that moment? What do you do? What did you do as an example?
Severine: I would evaluate, first of all, how urgent is the situation? I mean, speaking about needing a decent pair of sneakers, I would ask the teachers, are you able to wash them on the spot? Is there a solution you can do without needing me to go to the school? I think there would be some kind. I mean, in this case, if your child is fallen off a tree, falling out of a tree and hurt their head and they need to go to the hospital, obviously you drop everything in that instant and you go, that's a non-negotiable. Leave everything and go mom situation. But in your situation, I would just ask, okay, is this very urgent? What time do you need to be there at school? And I would say, yes, I will bring a pair of sneakers when I pick 'em up at noon, and that would be for me, the end of the phone call and I would go back to focusing on what I was doing.
Melissa: So for me, it's hard to then get back into that focus point. Are there, it's
Severine: The being disrupted.
Melissa: Yeah, because sometimes my experience has been like, I'll get angry. So a lot of moms, for example, they'll say something like, and it depends on their situation. They've complained about this notion of default parenting. So let's just imagine it's two parents and it's always the mom that gets that call. So there's also this emotional residue that I might now bring back to this fricking email. So I'm trying to be really, really practical based on what literally happened to me. So I'm just wondering, okay, so now being skilled in focus management, what might be one tip, actionable tip that a mom can employ when her focus is broken due to an interruption like the one I shared?
Severine: I'm going to speak for myself and share what works for me. I cannot speak for you or anybody else, but what works for me is whenever I'm pulled out of my focus for whatever reason, first and foremost, I try to plan my focus moments smaller. I will break a big task up into subtasks, for example, in your case, a big email that needs a lot of investigation. And because if it takes three hours, it means that you're looking up stuff and you're picking things out of different angles and you're crafting something. So I would break that project up into smaller chunks so that I can work in pieces of maybe half an hour, an hour at a time. If for whatever reason in the middle of a focus moment, I am interrupted by an emergency or by something because first and foremost, when I am focusing, I will put my phone away and the only phone calls that can come through are from my family and from school.
Severine: So if that happens, which is a very small chance, if that does happen, I evaluate the situation, I look at the urgency of the situation and I see, do I need to act now and leave everything as it is and go If yes, I do so, and there's not much you can do about that. If it's not a huge emergency, can somebody else take care of it? Can I count on somebody around me? In your case, it could be your husband. In my case, it could be my brother, for example, or my mom. If I could ask them to step in and take care of the situation, that's the second thing. And then the third thing to go back to my focus, I will get up, walk around, do a breathing exercise and set my mind back on the focus. But I literally get out of my chair because I can understand the feeling of frustration. I was on a roll and they interrupted me, and it's like, I can't get back into it. Just snap out of it if need be. Go outside for a little, walk five minutes, come back, breathe, drink some water, sit down and continue. That's what works for me to get back into my just snap out of whatever is troubling me and to get back into the focus.
Melissa: That makes a lot of sense. And I think anyone that's listening is going to totally appreciate the fact that you also said that you break up the task into smaller steps, but then on top of that, the time that you allot to them is way smaller. So it's kind of like you're setting up the game so that you win. It's like, how can I make this favorable? So I'm sitting here, I can't control outside factors or the world, so how can I make it so that today or this moment is going to feel like a success? And being super honest, I haven't done that in a lot of instances. So there's so many different frames of thought that I have read. For example, Cal Newport Deep Work, his book is about having extraordinary deep, deep focus in big increments of time. And it's interesting because while that might work for someone that does not have to take care of their kids, I have three kids.
Melissa: Each kid is a variable. We're talking exponential potential for interruptions in the course of a day. But point of the matter is, I think what you just said, for me at least, and anyone that's listening, I would love to hear your thoughts, what you're getting out of C'S wisdom. But for me it's like, okay, there might be many ways that you can, what is it? Slice up an onion, an apple, whatever. But if you're a mom, I think it's really important to understand, depending on what your kid needs from you, it's important for you to tailor what's going to make you feel like you have the greatest chance of success. To be honest, you don't want to end your day looking at your to-do list and saying, and again, I didn't get through it.
Severine: And that's the main idea. If you do work with a to-do list, and I have for many, many years, and I tend to go to to-do list for certain things, but I always make it bite-size, make the task. So you get to tick off a whole bunch of things on the list because that makes mean it's a human thing to tick things off and feel good about it. It's like that little spread of, yay, I did it, and if the yay I did, it means that I don't know you were able to read 10 pages in a book. That's great. I mean, I've got a whole stack of books I need to read, and I'm being gentle on myself setting smaller goals. I'm a big goal girl. I love big goals and I love big challenges, but I always break 'em up into smaller pieces so it's manageable and I can shift away and be flexible if needed.
Severine: But I always, obviously you need the discipline to get back to what it is that needs to be done. No use for you to break up a huge project into 10 bite-sized pieces and not start, you have to go tackle piece number one to move on to piece number two and be disciplined in making sure that over, for example, you set your goals for the week, but you're flexible on moving things between Monday and Tuesday, for example. It's not, flexibility is not from, oh yeah, I'll do it next month. It's being disciplined and having those goals, but being reasonable and taking into account all those factors that can interrupt. I mean, life will happen with kids, it certainly does. So there always may be something impromptu. And also one of the main things I want to share is make sure you plan for me time. One of the things that I've seen as a mom, and I did that in the beginning as well, is I would forget about me. It would be the kid and work the kid and work the kid and work. They didn't work. And then, oops, I have a husband.
Severine: So I would start planning a little bit of meet him because unfortunately my marriage did break and we didn't make it past four years with her in it. We spent 10 years together. But one of the reasons was I was so focused on work, work, work, work, work, and also, oops, the kid, the kid that I had forgotten. I had a husband. My marriage went down to drain because there was no time to focus on that. There was no way for me to manage all things together. But anyway, it is what it is and it was all good. And that is something that in my later marriage and my second marriage, I did plan on spending quality time with myself, quality time with friends. And it's not that I would see my friends every day, every week. It would be maybe once a month, but it would be quality time because that as well as a woman, as a mom, like they say, it takes a village to raise a kid or kids, and it also takes a village to support each other and building your village, having your support system there for you to listen and to speak with and to have fun, got to be something fun in there.
Severine: Doing that also helps balance out everything else, specifically me. Time, time with friends and time with your partner. If you have a partner is super important so that you can fill up your cup to then give it to the kids. You can't run on empty, right? Because if our car runs low on gas, we go get gas. Or if it's an electric one, you plug it in. But we forget to plug ourselves in to that source of joy, that source of energy that is our friends, our family, our spouses, and have some decent me time to recover. So you can keep pouring into the kids' cups.
Melissa: Agreed completely. And I think it's interesting because for me, I feel like, okay, I hear that message, I hear that message, I hear that message. It's exactly the same idea in terms of nutrition and health and dieting and exercising. I've heard that message, I've heard that message, I've heard that message. But I want anyone that's listening right now to just look at her calendar right now today and just see, did you put anything that is going to be remotely fun or restful for yourself today? Absolutely. That's something that's like undeniable because if it's not on the calendar, oftentimes it doesn't get done. So that for me is a huge, huge point of advice for anyone that's listening, that's like a quick little check mark. And you know what? If you do have something on your calendar, then put a check mark there so you get that high that Severine was talking about because that counts too. That is totally just as important ing. Where can listeners find you, learn more about you and send you a dmm if they got value out of this conversation.
Severine: You can find me on LinkedIn with my name, nonsense. I'll share all the links with you as well as well on Instagram, coach ens and on Facebook, same thing, coach ens. It's easy to go find, and right now my website has been translated into Dutch, so for the English speakers, it won't be much value on that website unless you want to learn Dutch. Come on over ine na.com. We'll be back online in English later this year. But for now, social media is the easiest to reach out and send me a dm and I'm always open for a talk.
Melissa: Thank you, Severine
Severine: Pleasure.
Melissa: Severine is so generous. I wanted to just share with you three points that I know you can apply immediately to your life and feel way less overwhelmed. Point number one, chunking down your projects, chunk them down, almost making it as if it's impossible for you not to be productive in that increment of time. So what does that mean? For example, as pivoting was saying, if you're going to write an email and there's different elements to this email, such as the research phase or the writing phase, maybe chuck it down so that this way you're only spending 30 minutes on researching during one point of time on your calendar. Really being generous with yourself as far as giving yourself ample time to accomplish that one thing, but setting yourself up to win is key. The second point is really about making sure that you are absolutely giving yourself some grace.
Melissa: If you are a new mom or if you will become a mom, you need to understand that you have no idea what is ahead. I think Cine said it best. Nobody really knows what it's like to be a mom until you are a mom. So this uncertainty, the same uncertainty you might feel if you're making an investment in your business. Think about it, magnified 10 times as a mom because the stakes are that much higher because it's your child. It is a piece of your heart, so give yourself grace because you do not know what's ahead. And that is, again, why being nimble, which as an entrepreneur, you must be as a mom. It's just like this non-negotiable characteristic that anyone who has been a mom has had to embrace. Third point is the following. Reach out to your girlfriends who are mom entrepreneurs. You can share this episode with them and use it as your excuse to reconnect with a mom, entrepreneur.
Melissa: A lot of us need connection. This conversation with Cine really originally started as a check back in get back in touch conversation on a Saturday morning for me. But I wanted to then really capture ING's wisdom for you, and it became a podcast reconnect with your mom, entrepreneur, friends. I think it is so important you can create connection opportunities for you all the time, and that is something that I wanted to just point out. Cine is an amazing person. She's ahead of me in terms of her motherhood journey and her business journey, and it is for that reason that I will say this conversation is going to help me very specifically as I plan out my upcoming week, I'm going to chunk down my projects even more aggressively. Hope you have the best day ever. Share this episode with your mom, entrepreneur, friends, and reach out to me on Instagram.
Melissa: I want to hear from you. What about this conversation really landed. I'm at Melissa Laina, Emelia ssa, L-L-A-R-E-N-A. This information will be in the show notes. I appreciate you immensely. Have the best day. Reach out to me on Instagram. I want to hear from you. I want to be sure that I'm putting content out there that is going to apply to your life and is going to help you feel sensational and just more focused and clear on what needs to happen so that you can build the biggest business of your dreams, have the most impact, and still be a present mother.
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Welcome to Episode 213. Are you a mom entrepreneur who struggles with impostor syndrome, wants to nip overwhelm in the bud, wishes to realize the power of networking and/or wants to turn her business and mom life AROUND in 2024? If yes then hit PLAY.
Say hi to me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melissallarena/
This is a recording from my free webinar that I conducted on January 9th, entitled Mom Mogul Makeover. You’ll hear how you can put the insights enclosed in my bestselling book Fertile Imagination into action as a mom with a business. This conversation goes beyond any expected insights on productivity, goal-setting, and motherhood. It’s for moms who seek a fresh perspective that's plugged into reality. It’s also perfect for you if you know entrepreneurship is the journey you wish to pursue wholeheartedly for more than three years. Oh, also listen to the end, there is a free opportunity for those listening until the end exclusively for moms with their own businesses.
To take advantage of that opportunity here is the link: https://www.melissallarena.com/sessions/. This link is for you to secure your free 30-minute breakthrough call with me, which I will invite you to at the end of this webinar. You’ll hear me reference it.
As further context, this webinar is focused on the game changing five insights that have helped catapult me into success which I want for you too in 2024. So please enjoy the conversation, enjoy the webinar, and let me know if you have any questions. You can ask me your questions on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melissallarena/ And yet another reason to go to Instagram is that I'd love to know who got value out of this; let me know you are here so I can see who's listening ti keep you in mind as I’ll be running future drawings for listeners. Thank you so much.
TRANSCRIPT
Hello there. My name is Melissa Llarena and I'll share with you my little bio a little later on, but I wanted to just be sure that we are optimizing this time as we are moms in the thick of it.
Even if you're a mom who has. Her kid is an adult. You're still in the thick of it because you still care with all your heart and soul. And so this is time away from them, but it's time on you and your business. And so I honor that. And I respect that. And I just want to invite you to really pour into yourself during this webinar.
Take what feels is going to serve you in 2024 and really consider how you will embody some of these insights. So that 2024 is. As successful as you, as you deserve it to be. So this presentation, I'm just going to jump into it again. I will introduce myself later on, but I just want to be sure that I optimize our time together.
So mom mogul makeover. The makeover is really going to be about mindset shifts that you will want to reflect upon. And flip so that they work in your favor. So I'm going to share with you the five lips, and it's really going to be important. If you've ever struggled with imposter syndrome, or you have felt overwhelmed, or you don't feel like you have the right connections to catapult your business success.
So here we go. Here's the plan. So M. R. O. Y. What is that? I will share with you. I want to also share with you a little bit of what might be going on in your psyche just to see if any of this lands. Then we'll go through the real problem as well as who I am. I promise I would tell you. And then we'll go one by one through the five mindset shifts.
And then at the end, you'll be able to make a decision for yourself. I really like new vocabulary, but I'm not so into equations, but this is my equation. And this is something that I'm sure you have considered. So for a mom, it's not just about investing money and energy and time in her business, but it's also coming at a cost of you being away from your kids.
Also, it comes at a cost in terms of just the psychic energy that you have and the bandwidth that you're able to leverage at any given time, all of that to say, again, that's why this is 20 minutes and not 45 minutes. So what I think about when I think about what success means to a mom, I don't think about just an ROI.
I really do think about a mom's ROI and I see them as completely different. And I also, if you've ever worked in a corporate setting, I also want you to consider that if you have ever asked for a raise, you are not just thinking about your ROI, but your mom ROI. And it's not just tangible like childcare expenses.
It's also the fact that you're not with your kid and you miss them. Okay. So that is why this is 20 minutes. Moving on. Can you relate? And as I go through these, I want you to really think about 2023 and if you've ever experienced some of these ideas, have you ever felt intimidated, yet crazy excited about an outrageous business idea that you never pursued?
A realistic, outrageous idea. So not something like putting someone on Mars, but an idea that you thought to yourself, holy cow, like if I could pull that off, I would be so thrilled and excited, and I might even have what it takes to pull it off, but maybe I'm not ready yet, or I need a lot more resources in order to pull it off.
Have you ever had something like that happen to you? Has imposter syndrome ever caused you to opt for smaller steps when a bigger step was available? And here's the thing, we want to achieve a lot in a small amount of time. And so this could be seen as self-sabotage. But has it ever happened to you that it's been imposter syndrome?
And you knew that you could take a big leap, but you decided to just go baby steps ahead instead. What about overwhelm? Is that like your go to emotion when you can't complete your to do list, maybe due to an interruption? What about this one? And this one I've heard consistently from clients. Have you ever felt disappointed because you couldn't push yourself hard enough to bring your best self to your business or your kids, or have you ever not networked because it felt like you're being needy or maybe it just felt awkward?
Or embarrassing, like you're going to say the wrong thing or put your foot in your mouth or sounds silly. Like you just didn't know enough. And here's the last one. Is it hard for you to articulate your secret sauce as a professional? Because maybe you don't want to set up expectations too high because you know your shit would be one reason.
Or you don't want to let others know the real you. Like there's something there that you don't think is as professional or qualified. So you don't want to reveal something about yourself that's still relevant, but feels a little too sensitive. Okay. Last one. Do you secretly punish or beat yourself up by overworking because you feel that you should be much further along in terms of your business goals?
And this one is a hard one because it's celebrated, right, by society. Working hard, busting your ass, going above and beyond for clients. But could this be the reason why? So while all of that feels heavy and some of that feels relevant, and maybe there's one of those things that was the reason why you're here, I want to just share that there is good news on the other side of this.
Like those are just symptoms. The real problem is that you haven't made what I call the shifts. Okay. And so here's what happens once you make these five shifts that I'm going to share with you in a bit. You will have an opportunity to cast a bigger vision than you have ever cast it for yourself before as a business professional.
You're going to confidently seek shortcuts and straight paths to achieve your five year goals in one and pardon the language, turn imposter syndrome into your own bitch. I know that's so bad by taking bigger steps than those smaller ones. Okay. You will have greater self-awareness to identify when it's you who's making things harder for yourself versus the stories about being a good mom or a successful business owner.
There's so many reasons things feel way harder for us, depending on where you are in your life stage as a mom and as a business owner too. And you will feel comfortable sharing and showcasing your secret sauce. You're going to feel good about your uniqueness. You're not going to feel like standing out is like a terrible thing to do.
You're going to feel good about using your superpowers and telling people what they are. And you're also going to have a tool, an unexpected tool to help you enjoy the process of motherhood and growing your business. And if you've been around the block a couple of times, you have to enjoy the process in order to keep going along the process.
Tenacity is not just something that I grin and bear. It's something that I have to embody and I have to make it enjoyable for me. I would not be here for 12 years if it has not been enjoyable. So who the heck is this person with the hat? So here's the thing. I'm a normal human being. I just want to say that because as I wrote my book this year, fertile imagination, and it became a number one bestseller in two categories, mother and women in business.
I had to take a step back myself and just reevaluate, like, who am I, why am I so blessed? What is it about me that really is drawn to serve you, mom entrepreneurs? And so I wanted to just share just a couple of highlights. But again, I am a very normal mom, but I will say that I do have a particular switch turned on, which I will absolutely share with you.
Okay, so I mentioned it before bestselling author of fertile imagination host of a podcast called unimaginable wellness And here's my specialty It's helping ambitious moms really confidently put themselves out there right to achieve their meaningful business goals Meaningful is a really important word to me.
Otherwise I could stay in corporate and make a lot of money in corporate. But if I can help you do something that's meaningful to you, your family society, then we all have one. And here's the thing as moms, we have such a rough terrain emotionally in terms of both of our roles, both as businesswomen and as moms.
And in order to achieve anything that's difficult, you have to keep going during the ups and downs. And emotionally, you can totally self-sabotage. You can totally be slowed down if you let yourself be completely barraged by the emotional realities of both being an entrepreneur, which has very high expectations and a mom, which has very high expectations, both of which are very important to you.
I've worked in a lot of places. So, all this to say. There's a Swiss army knife perspective that I bring to the world and to any client, whether you are in one vertical, in one country, or you have one child or multiples, I most likely have a very specific approach and framework that can help you. And we can tailor.
I have degrees. Two of them here, but after I pursued my education because I wanted to be a good girl and in the eyes of my parents, I pursued more education because I wanted to be a good mom. And good coach. So I do have a coaching certificate and I am becoming a meditation practitioner and I'm a mom. I have been for 12 years, which parallels the length of time that I have also owned a business, a coaching practice.
So everything that I'm going to share with you is based on firsthand experience, and it's also based on client experience, having worked with working moms and also working dads, which is interesting how you don't hear that phrase too often, for a very long time and through very different economic cycles, the good, the bad, the middle.
So this is who I am, and I've been featured in a lot of things. What I want to just say in terms of all of these credentials and all of these features is this Everything that I’ve pursued it has not been on everyone else's timeline For example being featured in the wall street journal I believe that was like year two or for example getting a degree at nyu or getting one at business school It was done.
So in a way that I had to earn my degrees and earn full rides to them. So everything that I've done has been things through the work of angels, which I will share with you in a bit, but I promise I'll keep this grounded and useful for you, a working mom. So here's the thing. The five shifts they come to me from completely Various experiences I've had in my life and in my career, and really, they are the keys to accelerating any goal that is meaningful to you.
And again, I say that word over and over because I could say that I want to make seven figures. But I got to be honest, it's not meaningful enough, but if I say I want to build a treasure trove of networking contacts for my three little boys, so that this way, when they have a business idea, when they grow up, I have someone to refer them to, that means something to me.
And that's also why my podcast has amazing guests. So here's the five shifts. Alrighty, a crazy goal can keep you sane. I know this sounds opposite and these shifts are all meant to really have you think, is she crazy? And that's okay. I'm totally, totally okay with that. So this is one out of five, a crazy goal can keep you sane.
I recall there were several opportunities in my business where I could have gone for incremental lift in my business in terms of sales goals, or I could have gone for the expected next distribution channel, creating a product for like, I don't even know. 49 or something, but that was totally rational, but not emotionally driven.
It wasn't enough to be like, yeah, I'm going to skip nighttime reading with my three little boys in order to go after building a 29 product, like it just didn't do it for me, but what did keep me going and made me way more sane during a rough patch of my motherhood experience was going after a crazy goal.
So quickly, here's the goal. The goal that I pursued was launching a podcast and having Gary Vaynerchuk, who has millions of people that follow him, and James Altucher on my podcast. That is a crazy ass goal. The reason why it kept me going was because I decided for a hundred days to write a thousand words every day, and I don't know if it all adds up mathematically, but a thousand words or so a day on Medium.com in order to get their attention. Every single day. That was the choice that I made. Let me write this out so that this way I could get either of them on my podcast. Right? These are entrepreneurs. These are multimillionaires. These are people that are above my weight category. That was the most exciting thing and exciting time for me in my life.
And I will say that when I would then wake up my little boys in the morning to go to school or to go to pre care, whatever, I was the world's most excited mom. And it kept me going. It energized me. Had I said, I want to sell this HR screening toolkit product. For 29. 99 and have a million people buy it, if that was my goal, I think I would have been toast.
And so it's the opposite, but it's an insight that if you embody it, if you know emotionally what's going to pull you, and if you take it to, if you take it to the bank and you really execute on it, then it will absolutely keep you sane and happier than a boring run of the mill goal. And that's the reason why a lot of the things that would have taken me five years or forever Didn't take me five years or forever and they made me a happier person ultimately So yes, I got Gary v on my podcast.
I got James alerted on my podcast It took about a hundred days 67 000 words. I did count But damn, is it a story and it was in my book too, and I wrote it in my book Okay. So that's the first shift. Okay. If you don't get this right, you are not going to feel as energized. You will feel drained. It would have felt draining for me to say, let me sell this HR screening toolkit product to a million people.
And I literally have the product in my store, but it's just not as exciting to me. Next one, imposter syndrome is an asset. You might think to yourself, how is this an asset? Well, you have to make a decision to use it as an asset. And if it's been your habit for decades to see it as a sign that you should like step back or warning that there's something that could happen to you, maybe you're acting beyond your years of experiencing, if that has been your habit.
Then it is going to take work in order to flip it on its head. You're going to have to learn how to actually feel imposter syndrome in your body and take the opposite action. When I interviewed the CEO of giving Tuesday, Asha Quran, she herself said, whenever she felt like an imposter, she would then be Fierce, like totally fierce pursuing that particular task or situation.
That is not the normal sort of approach, but we're not going for ordinary results. We're going for extraordinary results because as a mom. This operating in sprints is something that you have to embody. As an example, I had a holiday break. My children had holiday break and I couldn't work consistently, persistently towards one goal.
I had to like pack it up in a particular timeframe and then basically just go at it in a sprint. Same thing here. So imposter syndrome can be used as an asset. It can be taught for you to use it as an asset, and if you don't use it as an asset. What's going to happen is you're going to feel really insecure, not just about approaching someone that is famous or asking someone for a big sale, but you're going to feel insecure about your story.
You're going to feel insecure about the good, the bad, the ugly about your narrative as a business owner. And chances are that narrative. Has your secret sauce that where I came from, what I've done to get here that has your secret sauce. And if you don't feel that you can share this sometimes vulnerable message with other people, no one's going to know anything about it.
And you're going to sound just like every other person out there who has this amazing way of adding value to someone else's life and just using the same language at that. So turning. Imposter syndrome into an asset is essential and it has to be practiced. And if it's a habit that you've had using it as a stop sign, it needs a lot of practice and guidance too.
Cause we could pretend that we're using it as an asset, but if we're not taking demonstrable action, you're not going to get the numbers you need at the end of 2024. Third one. Okay. Network and share half baked ideas. This one is intimidating. Let me explain why. So let's imagine that you're networking with someone and you're in the beginning of a business idea.
Some thoughts might pop up in your head. They're going to steal my idea or they're going to think I'm silly or I'm sharing something and really I should wait until I have it complete. Well, here's the thing. And this is going back to what I mentioned earlier, angels. This is so weird, but I'm going to share this first time in the history of share this.
I believe, I believe that there are angels out there that have accomplished what you want to accomplish. And in 2024, it is your business to find those people network with these people and tell as many of many people. You're half baked ideas so that this way, a, you're not as fully invested in the wrong idea.
And then B you get people who want to join you on your journey and help you. For me, how did I become a bestseller in terms of fertile imagination? Well, here's the thing. I decided to attend a podcast conference last year in Colorado, and I decided to make it my business to talk to as many people as humanly possible.
And this was during a casual interaction that I approached this lady, chewing on a big conference, yummy sandwich, aka those sandwiches are not very yummy. And I remember telling her, I've got a book, I'm writing it, and I don't know what the heck to do. And I was really, really forthcoming. She happens to be the president of the Chicago Marketing Association.
And she has her own podcast and all of that more than that. She took a liking to me and she shared with me, gave me on a silver platter, a plan. This is how you become a bestseller. That plan was meant for 25 people to execute. I am one human being and I have a virtual assistant, but she took a liking to me and she helped me become a bestseller.
What does that mean? I promise you that there are rules to the game that you're playing in your vertical. I promise you that someone else has figured out what to do. And, and sequentially at that, this person gave me the plan in a way that if I, if I organized it in another way, I would have been ineffective and unable because it was meant for 25 people network and share half baked ideas.
Yes. You will be vulnerable. Yes. You will be looking less. I don't even know prepared, then you want to feel, but honestly, it's better to be less prepared and have someone give you feedback early on an ideas journey. Then later on when you're totally invested and it happens to be the wrong idea. So this is about seeking angels and I'm calling it that because this has been a consistent pattern in my life.
And it's something that I believe in with all my heart and all my soul. And I will tell my children to do as well. So that's the third point out of five. And if you don't do this in a way that's strategic in a way that is consistent and in a way that unpacks value, when you network with individuals in a generous and authentic and bilateral way, then you're going to miss the whole point.
Because that person that helped me, I helped her to that person who helped me. I know her son wants to work with the Green Bay Packers. I'm not a football person, but that's in my head. And if I find someone that's in that organization, you sure bet that I'm going to mention her son. So it's not about using people or just transactions.
It's about having people in your heart and in your mind for the rest of your life, and they will do the same for you. And that's how you can speed up the process. And if you have a meaningful business goal on your heart, that matters. Third point, fourth one. Playing is profitable. So oftentimes as moms, we think about playing as a to do that happens after you do all your to do's.
And while I appreciate the sentiment because I was there, what I will say is that your results will look very different if you played before versus if you held your breath until you had the time to play. And oftentimes you don't play, right? It's almost like, let my partner play with the kids. Let someone else play with the kids.
Mommy's got to get this or that done. Right? And if you are unaware, playing can be so profitable. And this comes from a podcast guest, Beth Comstock, who was the CMO of GE, GE, one of the most serious businesses you could possibly think about, right? Jet turbines and stuff. So at the end of the day, she challenged herself and her executive team to go where the trends are.
She challenged herself to go, for example, a K pop concert in South Korea, and that is where she garnered some insights that changed the course of the way that GE approaches. Storytelling, loyalty, building, et cetera, et cetera. What does that mean for you? Well, if you're a solopreneur in a market that is competitive, how do you intend to distinguish yourself?
You need to be ahead of the trends. Playing is profitable. On top of that, when we think about overwhelm, overwhelm, rather than be bamboozled by overwhelm, rather than not have a plan for overwhelm, which if you look at your 2024 goals right now, are you setting yourself up for overwhelm? Rather than that.
Why not think about playing in terms of a way to nip overwhelming the bud. I'll give you an example. Maybe I'm an alien, but maybe this is you for me in the past, before this insight, I would, for example, work really, really, really hard and then earn a bubble bath, what I'm suggesting is. Take the bubble baths first, and then maybe you won't have to work as hard.
It really changes the tone of your effort, and you'll be a happier mom. Period. Oh, and guess what? You know what your kids want? They want to play with you more. So that's another opportunity right there to reduce the mom guilt. All right. Fifth one. Overwhelm has to be addressed at its roots. So, overwhelm.
Sometimes I've noticed when I've coached working moms, some of the most bad ass working moms in the universe, we're talking about, for example, a CFO of American express in Canada, bad ass mom. She became a mom. All of a sudden, insecurities pop up. Am I really good? Do I deserve the CFO spot? What if the person that's taking my position during maternity leave takes the actual job?
All of these insecurities really pop up because our emotions are so raw, especially early on. And depending on the stage that you are in as a mom, what happens is That you then just start second guessing yourself and other categories of your life. And then you overcompensate because you really don't want to get it wrong.
And that's at the root of overwhelm more than that. It's also figuring out as a mom in that role and figuring out as a business owner in that role, what a success look like for you. Or have you been playing the rules that someone else wrote, maybe your mom, maybe an entrepreneur you see on Instagram, might their rules just send you off a cliff.
Like if you don't get this right, you could pretend to be like chilling out at the end of every day and catching up on Z's. But if in your mind, you feel like you're doing less than you should, or you're not enough, that's going to keep nagging at you. And it will slow down your progress as a business owner.
And it'll make you less happy as a mom. So this is something that has to be addressed at its root. And it's really hard to see. It's kind of like a jar with a label on the outside. If you're inside the jar, you cannot read the label. If you have someone outside that understands that there's symptoms here and can help you work through them, then you'll be way better off to actually avoid a train wreck.
So I, I think this one is just. Pretty urgent. Okay, so here's what you need in order to achieve a five year goal in one year. So five things all together, these have to be practiced and embodied and done swiftly to knock out big goals. Why is that? So at the end of the day, you're not going to be faced with challenge only one time.
It's like, Oh, it's 2024 and it's January. And here's that one challenge that I can't convert a particular sales lead or something like that. No, you're going to get that over and over and over in different sort of flavors. And so it has to be something that when you get knocked out the first time. Maybe it takes you and these numbers are totally not based on reality, but maybe it takes you like three days to get back up.
And then the next time it takes you, ideally, if you've practiced these five, two days to get back up. And then the next day, 20 minutes. And then the next day, it's a two minute rage session or something. That's what we're going for. And that's why these five things are not just. Intellectual conversations that can be had.
There has to be an actual immersion in this entire process. There has to be a guide who can tell you just like the jar metaphor when something is not going well as a business owner, so you could then make some change. So now you have a choice. Now you have a choice. I just shared with you five insights, some of which might sound woo woo because of the angel thing, some of which might sound like they would be impossible for you to do by yourself.
And I've attended webinars just like this. When I have said to myself, first of all, maybe I was double dutying, maybe it was multitasking, right? I was looking at my email. I was looking at another sort of conversation, but these, these conversations and these insights, they're proven. And they're not just proven for a Beth Comstock or Susy Batiz or an Asha Curran.
They're proven for someone like, like you, like me, like someone who constantly has to, in their mind, toggle between, okay, this is what needs to happen at home. Okay, this is what needs to happen in my business. Okay. What about me? Am I even on my list? Like they're proven for individuals who have a meaningful business goal on their heart.
And they're also proven for individuals who have a meaningful and want to continue a meaningful relationship with their kids. And I know that to you, I just know it. I know it. Why else would you be here? Why else do you want to be successful in both realms of this, of this life? Right? So what does this mean?
This means that I can help you. And I can help you in the next 72 hours. So this is what I've done because I anticipated that this webinar might bring up ideas that you've haven't heard before, that you might want to learn a little bit more about. So the next 72 hours, I will put up a link very shortly and you can actually schedule time with me for free 30 minute breakthrough session, and you can share with me your 2024 business goals.
What I would love the honor of doing is helping you filter through these goals based on these insights that I shared with you so that this way any blind spots are addressed up front before you run in the wrong direction of your dreams, right? So what I've done is this 30 minute private call. It's totally free.
And you could just go ahead and sign up right here, but I will also email you a link so that this way you have a time, some time to breathe. I want to be sure that we both have an opportunity to just have some time to breathe, but I want to just have this here for you so that this way. These insights are not just in the air, but they're really tangible and they mean something to how you intend to approach the rest of 2024 so that this way, whatever happened in 2023 that didn't feel was your best or didn't feel when as, as well as it should have doesn't happen again.
Like you want to take different steps for different results. And so that's why I wanted to do this for you. And that's why I honor you. And that's why I'm a hundred percent going to be taking your questions. If you have any, I'll just save a little bit of time, but then we'll absolutely do. The drawing right after, thank you for listening to the webinar.
Here is that link. So you can schedule your breakthrough session in the next 72 hours, or whenever you actually catch this episode, it's www.MelissaLlarena.com/sessions. Those are free 30 minute sessions for mom entrepreneurs who are committed to navigating imposter syndrome for mom entrepreneurs who are committed to finding what is going to help them nip overwhelm in the bud and mom entrepreneurs who are 100 percent open to a fully immersive experience where they will learn how to network effectively, productively. Elegantly and authentically so that this way, if you have a five year plan, you can knock it out in 2024.
I want to be of service to you. Go ahead and sign up for the breakthrough call. No commitment. Just be sure to show up. Be sure to honor that meaningful business goal that you have on your heart by showing up. And bringing you to the table. I'm so excited and thrilled. Again, breakthrough sessions are free 30 minutes and for mom entrepreneurs.
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This episode is brought to you by Mom Mogul Makeover happening today on 1/9 for free.
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If you are like me then perhaps you are getting ready for your kids to return to school very soon and your plan is to hit the ground running. I know this is my plan as a mom of three. This is why I want to invite you to a LIVE 20-minute webinar entitled Mom Mogul Makeover 1/9 at 12pm CST.
The idea is to share the best wisdom I’ve gathered as a podcaster, bestselling author, and executive coach to ensure that you are running in the right direction, at the right pace, and are challenging yourself to gather more miles with fewer steps. Does that make sense? If this is something that resonates with you then sign-up: https://witty-thinker-2643.ck.page/7e884a0f0a
This webinar is perfect for you if deep down in your heart you wish you could achieve your five-year goals in one. Come to imagine the possibilities even if you struggle with impostor syndrome, overwhelm, or lack the "right" connections to catapult your business success.
🖐Say hi on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melissallarena/
Welcome to episode 212. Let's talk about overwhelm. And then we're going to end with a very actionable insight pertaining to how you can play offensively whenever it comes to overwhelm as a mom entrepreneur. If you don't know me, I'm an executive coach for mom entrepreneurs and what I help you with is turning imposter syndrome into your asset. I also help you nip overwhelm in the bud and realize the power of networking. All of this has to do with something that every single mom entrepreneur has to do, which is putting herself out there. So I wanted to just share that with you. I also wanted to share with you one really, really huge, huge opportunity, which is today.
I have a free 20 minute webinar focused on your 2024 ultimate business success called Mom Mogul Makeover. And during this 20 minute live webinar. And the link will be in the show notes, so you could absolutely grab the link and sign up immediately and just show up. I'm going to teach you the mindset shifts necessary to ultimately turn any five year plan into a one year possibility for you, specifically a 2024 possibility. Sign-up: https://witty-thinker-2643.ck.page/7e884a0f0a
TRANSCRIPT
So here we go on the topic of overwhelm. Some of the overwhelm that you might be feeling could be self inflicted. And I want to share with you a story where I inflicted upon myself way more harm than good and I felt overwhelmed. And it wasn't just emotional overwhelm, but physiological overwhelm. One day when I was writing my book and going through the editing, I had my entire manuscript in front of me and I decided to sit down at my desk for 12 hours straight in order to edit every single sentence.
And the amount of focus that I applied to every single sentence was fairly extraordinary. Because for me, if I miss out on a fact, or if there's a typo, or if there's a misunderstanding, I feel it very personally. And I'm sure that if you have a book on your heart and you have yet to write the book, maybe that's something that you think would happen to you, or maybe that's why you haven't written your book yet, because it feels so personal.
So ultimately that day I sat there for 12 hours and I was saying to myself, okay, I want to get this out to my book interior designer and they might close up shop for the holidays. So I've got to sit here and just grind it out. Right? And so that's why I say it was self inflicted. Ultimately this was a vendor of mine.
I was paying this person and for some reason I wanted to punish myself to meet her deadline. So there's that in terms of just, um, how irrationally I was behaving in that moment in the moment, I felt like a fast moving train. I was not operating rationally. I was emotionally driven. which is something that is very, very common when you attempt to do something on your own without a third party to see what's really going on there and help you avoid a train accident.
Okay, back to the story. So I sat there for 12 hours and all of a sudden I felt like my central nervous system was lit up like a Christmas tree. And that is when my own figuring out what went wrong journey began. So in the middle of an overwhelming season of my life, I added more to my plate. I now had to add in the middle of that moment.
Visits to doctors, blood tests, figuring out specialists and booking appointments with them. So there was a lot that I had to do because I did not respect and honor the fact that as the CEO of my own business, I was able to actually nip overwhelm in the bud. By actually splitting up my time in the review of my manuscript or hiring more help in order to be sure that my deadline was met.
And so there were a lot of things in hindsight I could have done differently, but in that moment I had to now add doctor's visits to my plate. So isn't it funny how when you feel overwhelmed, oftentimes you will then have to add more things to your plate in order to overcome that feeling of overwhelm.
I've seen this as a coach for mom entrepreneurs where my clients have felt extraordinarily overwhelmed. And ultimately they've had to add to their calendar therapist visits, or they've had to add to their calendar more workout regimes. And so it's, it's a little ironic, right? As far as how productive we really are.
When we decide to ignore the signs of overwhelm. So, in that moment, I had to make a couple of decisions. I had to really honor the fact that I wanted to know what was going on with my health. And it really behooved me. And I thought to myself, well, if this was one of my kids, I have three little boys, would I have just sat there for 12 hours just continuing on the path of editing my book if someone came over to me and said, Mommy, I feel weird?
No, if you are overwhelmed, if you have been historically overwhelmed with your business, so just go through 2023 and 2024, you have a more ambitious goal. I would invite you right now to really, really comb through that goal. Really comb through that goal. I want you to think through at a very micro level.
What are every single, what are the steps you need to take on a daily basis in order to accomplish that goal? And do you have to do them all at one time? Might any of those steps be avoidable? Might you want to outsource any of those steps? Might you want to completely toss any of those steps? Because what you don't want to do is feel overwhelmed because you put it on yourself unnecessarily.
That's something that I think a lot of times gets lost. There's this externally focused sort of blame. Like, I feel overwhelmed because I have to wash all the dishes, or I feel overwhelmed because my client has these unreasonable expectations, or I feel overwhelmed because my social media strategy is not working for me.
And oftentimes you want to just take a step back and say to yourself, wait a minute. What part of this is self inflicted and what part of this is totally outside of my control based on my revenue goals, right? And again, we ask ourselves, what part of this is self inflicted because those revenue goals, are they based on the fact that you have extra costs that could be avoided?
Again, really think through what part of your overwhelm is self inflicted and also understand that you're not a robot. And ultimately, what's important here is that if you do have a goal on your heart, the importance is actually in seeing it become real. Will you still be alive after achieving this goal to actually see it become real?
Something to ask yourself. So on that note, I think what's really important for today's episode is for you to have a really good understanding of how to actually nip overwhelm in the bud in 2024. And I want this to be interactive. I would love for you to reach out to me on Instagram. At Melissa Lorena, I want to understand what are your 2024 goals.
I want to understand which ones intimidate you, which ones feel like they're going to be overwhelming in order to accomplish, given your life experiences in 2023, which ones might be. Unnecessary. And that's a question we could actually discuss on DM. But I want to understand, like, how are you setting yourself up for overwhelm in 2024?
Like, how are you making it harder for yourself? How are you inflicting upon yourself this extra ness that is then going to put you in a place where you will then have to add more to your plate? Such as doctors visits, therapist visits, or whatever else might make sense for you. So really consider this as you think about your 2024 goals, really consider what you think it's going to take in order to see them through.
Really consider. Are they totally aligned with who you want to be in 2024 and really consider if they bring out the best in you. I will say if I'm feeling any degree of uncertainty with regards to my physical wellbeing. I'm not like the happiest, most joyful mom. I'm more like scared and nervous. I'm hesitant to do things because I'm just like, Oh my God, am I going to break myself?
So consider that too. I know that you have really big dreams in your heart. I know that you want to serve amazing human beings. But I also know that oftentimes, You, me, all of us have blind spots and in order to more healthfully navigate our blind spots, we need someone beyond ourselves to let us know when we're going a little too far.
We need someone on the outside of us to be brave enough to tell us, you know what? It's your fault you put yourself in that situation. We need someone outside of us to give us a totally different perspective on how we approach our goals. And how we might want to approach our lives too. And so I want to invite you to reach out to me on Instagram with just simply sharing your 2024 goals.
If you're a mom with a business, if you have been at this rodeo before, like I have for 12 years now as a coach, I invite you to just be honest with yourself. Are you setting yourself up for overwhelm in 2024? Might you be making it harder on yourself and how can you ensure that you bubble wrap your sanity so that this way you can use your imagination when you need to When you need to compete in the market when you need to be nimble and change your strategic approach When you need to actually be that present and loving and playful mom There's so much that is on the table for you And it is so important that if you're setting yourself up for overwhelm in 2024 You understand that a lot of it can be resolved by just taking it off your plate.
So, why not start out the year in a way where things feel a little lighter, things feel more clear, and things feel more near also, right, to just go with the rhyming there. I invite you to send me a DM on Instagram. Let me know your 2024 goals. I want to help you think about whether you are making it harder on yourself. @melissallarena
I want to help you tease out whether some of them are self inflicted. And I also want to just close this off by saying you are totally invited. To participate, join me live in terms of today's webinar, Mom Mogul Makeover. It is at 12 p. m. Central Standard Time, and we will be going through some insights that have absolutely helped me really accelerate my business goals and really figure out how to use imposter syndrome as an asset.
How to nip overwhelm, although I am human, there will be times when it will absolutely affect me especially if I don’t have a mentor who can see its signs early on. Hint: the irony is that I can spot the signs on others and yet it’s hard to read a label on a jar from its inside. Funny how that works?
I digress: But at the same time, I'm here setting out to do something about it. And I also want to use it as a learning tool for you. I want you to absolutely just open your eyes and know that you might be setting yourself up for overwhelm, but you also have the power to change this before it happens.
To actually nip it in the bud and part of the strategy is networking because you don't have to do everything on your own and you don't have to guess as much as you might think other people have already accomplished your business goals. So why not find them, leverage them in an authentic, genuine way and enjoy that connection too.
Alrighty. 2024 definitely really important for you to figure out if you're setting yourself up for overwhelm. It doesn't have to be.
I hope to see you at the Mom Mogul Makeover webinar today at 12pm CST! It’s free. It’s 20-mnutes! Sign-up: https://witty-thinker-2643.ck.page/7e884a0f0a
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Welcome to Episode 211. It's 2024. So now you've got to hit the ground running. You've got to go towards your ambitions and everything seems to be in sync. And I want you to feel energized. We all do. I am so on your side and I'm thrilled that you're here to celebrate 2024. So this conversation is with Meryl Cook and she is a creative person whom I admire. She's a writer, an author herself, and she does something called hooking. Now get your mind out of the gutter. It has to do with yarn and creating beautiful designs. What a wonderful woman and conversation that might be best enjoyed with a mom friend. That was a hint because we’ll get into some thoughts on making more mom friends and what to look for in them too. Ultimately, think about this episode as a helpful reminder for 2024. What if you had mom friends that were ahead of you? And what if you had a handful that also reminded you that you get to play too? That is what Meryl and I talked about in this conversation. This is the last chat in my series that involved my book launch of Fertile Imagination. It was maybe like one of my first IGTV lives with a mom who was ahead of me. Also an empty nester. And what I love about the conversation is that 2024, you may have not considered it, but what if it's the year that you make friends?
If you love parties then please do say hi on Instagram which was where this party took place: https://www.instagram.com/melissallarena/
Shop/gift/review - Fertile Imagination: https://amzn.to/3F6AgMu
TRANSCRIPT
What if it's the year that you find a group of women who emboldened you and inspire you and give you the inspiration that you need to actually go after what is on your heart? On that note, I wanted to share a review from an empty nester who is also ahead of me in her motherhood journey. So Meryl Cook, as I mentioned before, is ahead of me in her motherhood journey.
All her quote-unquote kids are out of the house. And the same is true of this Amazon reviewer, Kathleen Ryan. So Kathleen Ryan is someone who worked at Ogilvy & Mather and has had an amazing career that I completely admire and Kathleen is a great-grandmother right now. This is what she says about fertile imagination, my debut book for moms who want to rediscover their imagination, especially this year in 2024.
This is your year, like legitimately if you choose it to be, she says, fertile imagination is a virtual powerhouse of real-life scenarios that will help any woman. Moms, especially navigate today's workplace. I wish I had been gifted this kind of access to smart women back in the seventies when I was raising my boys as a single mom.
I wanted to point that out because Kathy Ryan also shared with me the idea that now that we have access to technology, we can be always on 24/7. It's like an extra hurdle that working moms have to really overcome. How can you take back your time? How can you hold sacred time? And it's something that I hadn't thought about until Kathy Ryan actually told me over text.
And that's the value of having moms who are ahead of you. They have a really good appreciation for what they were able to accomplish, but they wish they had greater support. And I think it helps us in the modern time right now within any season of motherhood that you're in, to reconsider what's necessary and what's superfluous.
So I hope you enjoy the conversation with Meryl Cook. It had to do with the book launch for imagination and it's about celebrating, right? So January 2, if you got through the holidays unscathed, if you got through. Everything that needed to happen, like, why don't you celebrate? Why don't you do a spa day?
Why don't you throw yourself a dance party? Right. And that's what Meryl Cook and I talk about this idea that oftentimes as moms, we don't celebrate. So again, there are benefits to having moms that are ahead of you in your season of motherhood and 2024 might be the year of friends. It might be the year of friends.
It might be the year of Mom friends who are ahead of you. So I appreciate you both Kathleen Ryan for leaving your Amazon review and also Meryl Cook for reminding me that it is important to celebrate. And I suggest that you do the same too. Okay. Enjoy the conversation. Thank you. So how's your day been going?
Ah, it's been going. I feel like I have, it's overwhelming with the support that I've gotten from people. And it's interesting because maybe for other people also like taking compliments feels weird and different. So when people tell me that they're proud of me for having this book out in the world, I feel so, it's like unusual.
You know, yes. Good for you. I really think it's just soak it up and enjoy it. It's, it's a fabulous way that you've launched and I'm so pleased that, that you called on so many different people to help you. And, and I mean, that's what being a mom is about, right? Is, it calling on your tribe and saying, can you help me?
I need to do this. Yeah. Yeah, it's wonderful, wonderful. And so one of the questions I wanted to ask you, Melissa, because I've just started my new podcast called Renegade Conversations, and I started out with a really great cast of people, but now I'm searching around for other people, and I wonder, how did you get so many really really top-notch people on your podcast.
What, what was your, what was your magic that you did? Do you know what my magic is? It's it's being very authentic and sincere. You can actually, you will be surprised. Like for example, now, as you go on your own sort of audio journey or visual journey, cause I've seen some Instagram too, you will be surprised that.
Individuals whom you might feel are hard to reach are not as difficult to reach if you approach them from a place of sincerity. So if you want to have a deep conversation on your channel and you want to talk about something that is truthfully, On your heart, like it really matters to you. Then someone like Suzy Batiz, who was a founder of Poo~pourri, or David Meltzer an entrepreneur, and philanthropist.
Like they're willing to have a conversation with you. And I think it's for a couple of reasons. Like, I honestly think, first of all, they must think to themselves, well, if this person has the guts to ask, there's gotta be something about her, that's a little different. And then the second side of it is.
These individuals are approached so often with people who have agendas. So you are refreshing if you truthfully want to have a deep conversation, but you're very refreshing. When I interviewed Susie Batiste, for example, Who's in my book, fertile imagination. I approached her from the position where I knew her background.
Like I knew that she had family members who had mental illnesses. And then my mom has a mental illness. And I also saw that she really cared about spirituality and the universe and all of that. And for me, it wasn't a leap really to approach her and say, Hey, I've been looking at you on this channel and that channel.
And I feel like we're vibing similarly. May I approach you? Yeah. No. So. That's the key. Sincerity. Cool. I've been doing that and that's been working for me so far. A few people are a bit hard to reach and hard to get past, their managers, for example, or, their media people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the funny thing.
That's the funny thing, Meryl. I actually don't ever approach, the managers or PR people. Like, that's a nice, that's a nice consideration and I'll respect it if it's a requirement, but I talk to them actually like individually. And so I think that makes the difference because when I was putting together the book, there were so many approvals that I had to get.
And ultimately, some of the individuals that are in the book, you can literally reach out to them one on one and they'll get your approval or whatever. But for other individuals, you have to be more strategic. It's like who was the audio guy behind this person who I physically saw at the comedy club?
Like that's how I got James Altucher's approval. Like I had to really be like sleuth work, you know? And so you got somebody to give you an introduction then basically is how you did that. No, I showed up to his comedy club is how I did that. Awesome. Good. I've been doing some similar things.
Yeah. Yeah. So it's a lot of fun. Actually, I really enjoy it. So I was so excited to see you putting your opening your book video and all those kinds of things because I think that's I think that As women, as mothers, especially, we need to celebrate these, these milestones, right? We need to because they are a big deal.
And, I think often, what we do is rush from one hurdle to the next hurdle to the next hurdle. So we accomplish something and we don't take time to really have fun. And so today you're, you're doing your big launch and I hope tomorrow you're just going to celebrate and say, hey, what did I do?
And really, really take time to acknowledge the hard work that's gone into this launch. I mean, you've, you've been on this for months now, right? Even before, as the book was going to the printer, you were already planning your launch. So that, that's really. Really impressive. Thank you. I, it's funny because I, I was thinking about how a lot of typical book launches, like you go to a bookshop and you're signing stuff, selling the books.
And I thought to myself, I was like, honestly, for me as a mom, a slumber party where no one's invited, would be the best book launch party for me. It's like, can I just like sleep? Like, is that like on the table? And, and it's like, like, I get it. Like I get wanting to like to spend time with other people and make it a big party and celebration.
But I also get to be able to use my fertile imagination and think about how I want to truly celebrate. Like I want to celebrate online with women from around the world who have different viewpoints and I want to do it and I want to be home to then take my three little boys trick or treating.
Wondering about that because yes, you do have to go trick or treating tonight, and uh, but you're on the West Coast, right? So you have a bit of time Austin, okay the middle of the U.S. Yeah. Okay. Wonderful. That's great. And so what's been your biggest surprise about today? well For me, I guess it's like, I thought, I thought that things would be a little bit more like real-time from a technology perspective, but apparently they're not, there's like a lot of lag in terms of the world of Amazon.
So that's more like, but it's, what do you call it? a rookie kind of thing. Right. I just bought one thing and I got another in terms. You know what it is too, in terms of seeing people reshare the stories that I put out there and like share with their community about me and the book, and then also like the reviews.
So honestly, for me, it's like the reaction of everybody. And, and I see it so visually, visually for me, it feels like people are like, like hugging me like, like virtually we are. That's so cool. Wonderful. Oh, wonderful. Do you have any new, stats yet? Or is Amazon still calculating everything that's where we get tricky.
That's right. Could you believe it? Like static, static. So how it's like as someone, like when you're in the thick of it and you're like in a launch or whatever, you always have obviously like two paths, either be like what deflated or forget it, but, but, but, and for me, I'm just like, I don't know what's happening on the logistics end and all of that, but I'm going to keep going.
When I was giving birth and I gave birth to the identical twins, like there was all this, like a SWAT team in the room looking at me, right? Like a miracle or something. And, and I'm giving birth and I'm like, ultimately everybody was telling me, Oh, push all this or that. And like, who was in charge? Me, it was just me.
And so it's like, okay, the same thing with a book. It's like, I have to keep up my energy. I have to keep up the faith. I have to keep this up because ultimately here's what I know for sure. Like you, you have a book, you have books, plural, like. You had them inside of you. You had books inside of you. And do you know how many people say that and don't do it?
So for me, like that in and of itself, it's an accomplishment. It's a huge accomplishment. It's really huge. And what will be really nice is five years from now when you find your book is still selling. People are still benefiting from it. That's a really big deal. And your book is the type of book that will be evergreen.
It's not something that's going to go out of style. It's the kind of advice that all mums need. Yeah, I think, I think you're going to be five years from now, we're going to be having this conversation saying, Oh, I'm still selling on Amazon. And here's where I sell most of my books and it'll be awesome.
So my son was just on Keegan is one of my boys. He said, Hi Mom. I'm just about to leave for work. How cute. He lives in Vancouver. He's a tattoo artist. So. How cool is that? That's what I love, Meryl. I love, I love being around moms who are at different stages of motherhood. I think it's so important.
Yeah. It's important to have intergenerational friends, especially among mothers. When I first moved to the Northwest Territories, my son was just on Keegan was three weeks old and the nurse at the nursing station said, the best thing you can do is to make fun. Make friends with a woman who has kids in school who has sort of been through the early kids stage and has some advice to give you and it was really good advice.
Yeah, I think it's important for sure, for sure. Yeah, nice, nice. So, is there anything else you'd like me to ask you? Is there anything else? I don't know how our times are, we have about four minutes left. No, I think right now, It's funny because you and I were talking about the title of the book. Yeah. I think you did a great job.
Thank you. I remember. So that's something that's kind of like the backstory, right? The amount of pressure that I felt to come up with like the world's best title was something that I couldn't even like. Put my finger on it like it's that it's like that last thing that matters the most and it's like, oh great but yeah, I remember when you and I were brainstorming and you were sharing your opinion and you like the fact that it had something about playful and it was like play playback no playbook and playful Yeah, right Yes.
Do you think that more than one meaning to and yeah, and that it's um, yeah. And so that idea of playfulness, I'm just curious about your stage of motherhood. However, you define that for yourself. How have you remained? I think I have not only remained playful, I've become more playful. My kids are all launched.
The youngest is 30 now and mostly doesn't live in our house. The occasional weekend he lives with us still. I would say that I take more time to be playful and to make sure, for example, that I work on my art every day, no matter what else I'm doing, I'm crazy, crazy busy. If I don't take time for my art or I don't take time to play.
I noticed that I started to make mistakes. I start to kind of fall apart. And when I make time for play, it regenerates me and gives me the enthusiasm and the energy to keep going forward. So. Yeah, so I'm more playful, see, and that's something that I think as, as a mom who has three little boys who are nine, nine, and 12, it's like, I see them play and in the book, I even talk about how, like, my husband is like, he'll go straight for like the chess set.
Meanwhile, for me, if I see the chess set, I will pick up everything from the floor on the way to the chess set, and then I'll forget that I intended to play. It's like adding a to-do, right, in your list? I was actually writing about that this morning. I just published a blog on creativity and midlife and beyond and, and, and I was exactly like that.
I would, I would always do all my chores before I would do my creative process. What I discovered is, is that The chores are never done, and they're never all done, so it was more important to really take the time to play and to do the creative process, and that would help me to get more done in the end, but I think as women, we're so conditioned to taking care of everything else and everyone else, and we think of our creative process as frivolous, or as something that's kind of stuff for the day.
A nice thing, but, but maybe we won't get to it. And, I think that for me, having had breast cancer, I realized that I really need to focus on myself. And, I think that young moms also need that, I wish that I hadn't waited until I had a big health scare to focus on myself and to make time to play because I think in general, I mean, my husband is, is a very.
He's a good father, he does a lot around the house, but he's, he doesn't, he doesn't think twice about lying back on the couch if he's tired. He'll get things done, but whereas I'm like 30 at night, then I'll sit down. And so I'm, I've really worked on that in the last eight years to, uh, to work on, okay, now's the time to do work, and now's the time to just let the dishes sit there or let, let something else sit there because it never will be done and, uh, yeah, we need to play as mothers.
Yeah. No, I think so as well. And I think you reminded me. So one chapter in the book is exactly what you're saying. And it's basically this DJ who is in her fifties DJ yo Mama Esther. And she had also felt like. She was focused on helping everyone be happy and she was losing sight of her own happiness.
And so she had her health scare and her daughter also had a health scare when she was a little girl, but ultimately like the message in the book, I have a chapter. Dedicated to this is that it's like your body doesn't know why you're neglecting it. Like neglect is neglect. And you've got to be really mindful as moms.
And I would say if there were a way to help us prioritize ourselves, I think, I think the art of playing might be the answer. Like our kids want to, they want to, I mean, maybe not your son since they're adults, but Oh, I don't know. I think they still play. They have their hobbies, they have the things that they love to do and they prioritize them.
Some, someone is saying, uh, make time for what matters most. Your relationships, your tribe of people, that's the prize of life. Yeah. I think that that's true, but you have to include yourself in that tribe. So make time for what matters most, including me. Right? Mm-Hmm. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Cool. Thank you so much.
I wanted to tell people that the book is available today. The link in my bio, and I would be honored if anyone in your community, Meryl actually got the book and got enjoyment out of it and felt that sense of play. Excellent. Well, I'm, I'm sure that people will take a good look at it and I would highly recommend it.
So. Thank you so much. Have an awesome one. I appreciate you. Let us know, let us know how the stats go when they finally tell you what they are. Thank you. Thank you again. Thank you, Melissa. Bye. Merrill is so amazing and a big shout out to my Canadians, honestly. The book is available to you as well. You could absolutely get it in Kindle format and you could go on Amazon. And purchase the book as well. If you have already purchased Fertile Imagination, I would invite you to write a two to three-sentence Amazon review today. Here's why there are about 3 million moms who are logging into Amazon every single day around the world. I surmise, that they are shopping. And right now they're getting recommendations in their shopping cart.
That could be things like lipsticks, or it could be things like sneakers, or it could be things like. Tie detergent. What if instead, Amazon noticed that Fertile Imagination was getting all these reviews and put it as a recommended product for them to imagine being recommended, being recommended that you go after your dreams?
Imagine if someone told you, you know what, there's this book out there for imagination that I think you will like to, that can actually take what's in your heart and bring it out live. To whatever market you so desire. That's what we want more of. Like, I would love to see shopping carts filled with a fertile imagination and then filled with whatever tools are necessary to execute whatever dream you have in your heart.
That's what I want to see more of in 2024. And I need your help in order to do that. The more reviews we get on Amazon.com, the more likely 3 million moms every single day will see Fertile Imagination, my debut book. Online is available to them and for them and that is so important every single day. That's 3 million missed opportunities. It is not yet really buzzing with Amazon reviews.
Thank you so much for choosing unimaginable wellness, and this is going to be the year of friends, the year of seeking friends who support you so that you don't feel lonely so that you don't feel overwhelmed and unable to ask for help. I want all of that for you for 2024.
Happy New Year. Thank you so much again for all of your support for shopping, and fertile imagination for activating the ideas for making sure that you're reawakening. Reawakening, playing with, and stretching your imagination for maximum impact. Thank you so much.
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Welcome to Episode 210. We're going to talk with Margot Bisnow, who wrote the book, Raising an Entrepreneur: How to Help Your Children Achieve Their Dreams - 99 Stories from Families Who Did. What I love about this conversation is that there are so many moms behind us, and there are also moms ahead of us. This includes moms who have authored books too! Moms to young men as well. The available mom mentors are truly plenty and for that I’m grateful to have had so many book launch conversations like today’s. In this one, Margot Bisnow asked me what I personally learned about myself, about my family, and about writing. If you think you have a book in you and you really mean it then tune into our conversation as it will astound you in terms of what I learned and you could too in 2024!
If you love parties then please do say hi on Instagram which was where this party took place: https://www.instagram.com/melissallarena/
Shop/gift/review - Fertile Imagination: https://amzn.to/3F6AgMu
TRANSCRIPT
When I wrote Fertile Imagination. So this is a snippet from the conversation on book launch day for Fertile Imagination. And I'm so appreciative of Margot Bisnow. I wanted to share an Amazon review that really hit close to home because I'm a mom of multiple. This was for the book Fertile Imagination, which you can purchase on Amazon.com.
Rose Elizabeth says this, as a mom of triplets, I know firsthand how easy it can be to lose yourself in motherhood. This book Fertile Imagination helped me reawaken my imagination and start to create the powerful impact I want to have on the world. It's a must-read for moms who need inspiration to live their lives for themselves, not just for their kids.
What I love about this review is that Rose Elizabeth, a mom of triplets, who also might have her own business, if I think this is the Rose that I know, took the time to go on Amazon.com and share two to three sentences on how the book really resonated in her own life. Amazon reviews are so important.
If you have ever, ever written a book, ever uploaded your files on Amazon and hit the publish button, then you know, but most of you don't. You might have never, ever understood the logistics behind what it takes to Have a book become number one in the motherhood category and number one in the women in business category on Amazon.com, both of which Fertile Imagination was able to do on book launch day. So I wanted to share that. I'm so grateful and enthusiastic.
So if you have already purchased the book Fertile Imagination, I invite you today to go ahead on Amazon.com and write your two to three sentences. If Amazon sees that this book keeps getting written reviews and notices that there's activity on this particular book, it will show it as a recommended product to moms.
And there are about 3 million moms. I would argue even more in December, especially today, December 26. They are shopping on Amazon, so could you imagine if a mom is going in there and is looking to purchase something like paper plates or something like, you know, I don't even know, a new battery for her cell phone, I'm making that up.
Imagine if, in her recommended product area, she sees fertile imagination. What if she decides that day to invest in herself? Buy a book that can help her figure out what she wants to do in the next chapter of her life, figure out how she can actually live out her dreams in a very practical step-by-step manner, whereby she gets to actually take back control of her dreams.
That is what I'm asking of you. I'm asking you to potentially do something that is way out of your comfort zone, which is to shop the book on Amazon today. If you have not yet purchased Fertile Imagination, gift it to someone in terms of an option to them so that they can get ready for the new year. And write a review.
If you've already shopped it, you can absolutely just go ahead on Amazon.com, write a review, and I will leave the actual link in the show notes so that this is super easy peasy for you. Look, this is the last episode before 2024. 2024 is coming rapidly and quickly. And all of those words. And I want to just say this, whatever happened this year, really learn from it.
Whatever happened this year, be sure that it is helping you build the life that you need and what you want to see in 2024. Nothing magic happens on January 1st, but what does happen is that you have the benefit of seeing other people. Yeah. Make some new decisions, decisions, and choices in their lives. So why not use their inspiration to inspire yourself?
So I hope you have the best New Year and I really hope that whatever it is that's on your mind or in your heart becomes reality. And it's going to take work. I'm not going to lie. So I'm here to support you. But what I would love again is to write a review. That is the way that we can support more people as they enter into 2024.
Wow. I cannot believe we're here. Thank you again for all of your support in 2023. Thank you again if you were one of these women who interviewed me and thank you again for just being gracious and generous with your time. I appreciate you and I hope that you feel appreciated. I hope you feel really, really appreciated.
Hello, Margot Bisnow. How are you? Am I in? Yes, you are in. You are in. Two months going wild. Yay. Well, congratulations on launch day. I'm so happy for you. I'm so proud of you. I know you worked so hard and you deserve all the wonderful things that come. Thank you so much. Margot. I'm like, wow, this is so much work. But it's so worthwhile.
It's so funny. Like my little boys are looking through the glass pane of the entrance way store. They're like, can we come in that from years behind, right? I know, but I can't believe you're doing this on Halloween. There's so much other stuff on Halloween with costumes and candy and treats and decorations.
See, I got me, pulled my pumpkin. Yes, they do. Very nice. Well, Halloween is the day of imagination. Today, people are pretending to be whatever it is they wish to be. Ghosts and goblins and all that good stuff. So why not Halloween? It's like, let's all be playful, you know? Absolutely. Or even let's be a famous author.
Yeah, that's, that's the costume today. It's a famous author right now. The famous author costume. very, very much. Oh, this is so cool. Where are you? You feel, I feel like you are always traveling with the band. I am always traveling. And, uh, today I'm in Washington, D. C. and I'm excited to be here and life is good.
That's good to hear. That's really good to hear. I think it's been like writing a book for me as a mom in the middle of My motherhood season of life has been quite the adventure, quite the adventure and being surrounded by moms who are ahead of me in terms of seasons of motherhood is a source of inspiration for me.
It's like, you know what? That's really cool. Like you going. to concerts with your son on stage. It's like really, really cool stuff. So you give us a lot to look forward to, but don't you feel that you learned a lot writing your book? Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's funny cause I was thinking to myself, I didn't intend to get a PhD.
But apparently, I got a PhD and I didn't even know it. There was so much research that went into it. I had to research, of course, some of the things that are just like basic, right? It's like getting legal approvals from everybody that's influential that's in the book or figuring out what plus content is on Amazon.com.
I have to share this because it's like the biggest misstep. So I thought. Because I'm a nerd, right? Like you get your MBA as you got an MBA, right? From a top-flight school. And you're like, I thought a plus content was actually like the quiz that I did for my website for people to come and take, or like the opt-ins that I did for my website for people to come and take.
And in the publishing world, it's not any of those things. It's like creative stuff to put on your Amazon profile page. I was like, wow, what a, what, I'm like overthinking this. But don't you think you also learned a lot from the other moms that you talked to? Well, yeah, I think when I interviewed different moms in the book, so like Susie Batiste, for example, like she's a grandmother now, right?
And she had invented her poo~pourri. I don't know how old her kids were, but what I do know is that I still see her on social and everything, like having a good relationship with her kids. And that was a question I got from the early readers of my book, fertile imagination. It's like, well, how can a mom go after her dreams and not feel guilty about it?
How can a mom go after her dreams and still have a positive and good relationship with her children? Like when they become adult, right? And so for me, when I was talking to moms for the book, that became a question too. It was like, okay, so if our priorities are to be like the best mom or to be like a present mom, it's like, how can you be present and also pursue your dreams?
That was a big question. Yeah. So that was so interesting to me when I was doing my book, as since you helped me. I interviewed 70 entrepreneurs and their moms about how they were raised. One of the things that surprised me was there was absolutely no correlation between how much time the mom spent at home and how good a relationship they had with their kids.
And some of the moms were full-time moms, some of the moms worked outside the home, and some of the moms really worked outside the home, and it didn't matter because when they were home, they were present. They gave their kids their, all of their love and support. When they were with them, the kids knew that the moms were following their dreams and the kids respected that.
I personally worked all the time. My kids were growing up and I'm so glad I did. I also think in a way it's almost. I mean, for some, you know what, there's not a right answer. It's whatever works for that mom and that family, but I would not have been happy being home all day. And kids want a happy parent who, it doesn't matter if you're there all the time or not.
What matters is that when you're with them, you're with them. Yeah. Yeah. And you know what our kids, they feel the mood, right? So we're like the barometer in our home. It's like, we don't even need to say it. Like if we're, if we're happy, our kids actually like. And so even if you're masking a brave and happy face and you're doing things that you don't enjoy our kids know that they notice that too.
So being present, I have found is not just like literally staring into their eyeballs, although I've done that for fun, like playing the staring game, but it's also, it's also. Just like having them involved in what you've got going on. I literally had my three little boys pick out the final design of my book cover three little boys who do not agree on things, except this is my video game.
Stop touching it. I asked the three of them. I said, Hey, what do you guys think about fertile imagination? Do you like this option or this option? When the three of them agreed on a cover. I took all of my aesthetic sensibilities and I said, it doesn't matter. They agree. I'm going with that. And so that's the other side of it.
Like, let's say you want to go after your dreams and you want to be present. It doesn't just have to be being present, and doing things that they want to do. They can enjoy and join you in the things that you are doing. And that counts too, as being present. Yeah. So I've never. I've never done one of these before, but I'm just so excited that someone I love just joined us.
Hi, Alex! This is so fun! Hello, Alex! I'm so curious about where Alex is located. She's located in New York, but she grew up across the street from me. And I'm going to go to her mom's house tonight. And it's just fun to see her there. She's now, I've known her since she was born, and now she's a wonderful mom of two gorgeous little kids.
Wow. Amazing. So she's in the thick of it. He is in the thick of it. And she's also someone who follows her dreams. She is a full-time doctor. Wow. That's outstanding. Yeah. Can you imagine during COVID? Oh, no, I can't. That's intense. That is very intense. I can't imagine either. Anyhow, she's wonderful. And it's, this is so fun.
You've got to do these more often, Margot, I, I, I expose you to things you don't. Great. Great. Anyhow, no, this is super fun. I'm used to doing more just on TV and I just did another one like 15 minutes before you, but it's just, they're like more boring and they're not as, they're not, they're not more boring.
I shouldn't say that. They're, they're more traditional and you don't get as much sort of back-and-forth interaction. That's true. That's also the difference between like a podcast and just a blurb. Like when you're on TV, I remember like super early on, I was on the Varney and Coach show on Fox News.
This was 2013 or so. And I got maybe Five sentences in that's about it. But then long form IGTV, it's like, you can then really like express yourself, explain yourself, you see the person's reaction, adjust your message. So I think it's, it's. This is also the use of imagination in terms of a book tour, because traditionally book tours, right?
Like you'll go to a bookstore and you'll sign copies and you'll do a little talk and all of that. But for me, I was like, as a mom, I needed to be virtual. Cause again, I got to go trick or treating. I have three little boys who are all about the candy tonight. So. This was another option for me, like just being sure that I can do what I want to do, but honor the fact that today is also a special day for my little boys.
But even when I do book talks or, or any talk, I'm so much happier when it's a conversation rather than just a speech. I'm, I'm so much happier being, having a back and forth with someone on a stage and then even questions from the audience rather than just giving them some sort of rehearsed statement.
So what do you think that you've learned from writing the book that's the most important thing in how you deal with your boys? That they, they have a lot that they can teach me. Like that's, that's the big thing. It's like, I don't think, I don't believe that our kids are, are random. I feel like we have them for quite a precise reason and it's not just unilateral.
It's not just like the parent teaching the kid like the kid does a number on us. I think when it comes to teaching you or me how to be more patient or teaching me how to, Imagine bigger for myself be more playful, see things in a different way, or observe life with a more present sort of way of attention.
That's the biggest thing. It's like, wait a minute. I'm literally with imagination experts in residence. Like they're in my house. They are so inventive and they see things that I could have never imagined. So it's like appreciating the fact that. They are like mini teachers for me, that was a big aha for me.
Yeah, no, I've learned so much from my kids also. And I mean, one reason is that kids. Your kids aren't afraid to tell you, like, how you're screwing up. It's true. That is true. But, my kids give me a lot of, how shall I put this, positive feedback, about ways I should change, that most of my friends won't tell me, but for example, my younger son, and this is, I think important for every woman actually. Cause I think we're all, we hate to ask for stuff. And my younger son says you deserve to ask for what you want. And that's true. So like I'll be in a restaurant and they'll all have asked for something to be cooked kind of rare and they bring it well done.
And I'm like, and he'll say, give it back. And I'll say, I don't want to bother them. He'll say, Mom, you deserve to ask for what you want. Like I do. Yeah. Yeah. My kids also made me for my New Year's resolution. They made me say that I'm going to try to stop saying that's so annoying. Yeah, I think, my children definitely have a bone to pick with me as it relates to like my food situation.
And I told them, I said, look, you are more than welcome to cook these meals yourself. I'm not like this. Cook that you can then tell me all your preferences and I'll execute on them because it's three little humans. They all have their preferences, but at the same time, it's like, okay, yeah, maybe I should put in a little more effort.
But with the writing of the book, with having a coaching practice, with having a podcast, like I am going to like for sure, oftentimes just be like lost in thought or like focus on work. And I burn so many. Pots of rice and beans. So that's like the one thing it's like, that's the one place where I've just been, like, I give up at least we're eating food and I'm sorry, this is part of your childhood memory experience.
Yeah. You just do the best you can. That's I mean, I think that's the bottom line is you do the best you can and you don't get everything perfect. Nobody gets everything perfect, but as long as you do the best you can with people, people appreciate that. People respect that. I like to think so. I totally think so.
And I think when I was putting the book together, I was like, okay, I have a couple of options. Either I could finish it to perfection and 10 more years, or I could get this out in the world now because there are a lot of moms who feel like this. They've lost a sense of themselves or they don't feel like they have the same enthusiasm in terms of what they want out of their life as they believe they should have.
And so I was like, this is my best foot forward. It's like these conversations I had with the individuals in the book, they're very, very raw. They're very real. And they're also very relatable because I think. The more that I tried to hold on to this book idea and just guard it, the, less valuable the book could ultimately be.
So like your point earlier, what did I learn about myself, let's say with writing the book, I had to get this book out to a lot of early readers. Very early, like I knew, I just knew it. I was like, there's just no way that I've got some sort of like a final answer on imagination for moms. I'm one mom with three children.
My editor is a mom in Tasmania with two grown adult children, but I know that there are certain situations that I don't know about. So I asked people that have completely different motherhood experiences, like a single mom, or I asked a mom that she gave up her career, but she's still in a career.
It's interesting, all the different variations of a working mom like that's something big. I didn't realize Margot, like for me, I always felt like kind of in the middle, like, I didn't feel like a working mom in the sense that I would go to a corporate office and leave my kids until 8 PM. Like, that's my imagination of a corporate mom and a corporate living in Connecticut with like a Metro-North commute.
And I also didn't feel like a stay-at-home mom in terms of Purist, right? So like I'm home and I'm schlepping kids from point A to B and I'm part of the PTA or whatever it is that different people call it. I always felt like I was in the middle I was like, okay, I have an LLC, so I have a business, I have a practice, but at the same time, my income.
Quite honestly, really does look a lot like the patterns of my energy, because if I have a lot of energy and I'm not in a season of nursing, my identical twins are nursing my firstborn or moving globally, relocating. That was when I was able to tend to my business. And so for me, I felt like when I was looking at business books in the past, I would always see the perspective of someone who didn't have those things going on.
It was always someone who was oftentimes the breadwinner, who was a male who would write his perspective on how to like be successful in terms of entrepreneurship, for example. Right. But for me, I was like, well, Where, where does, where does the fact that I feel conflicted in my mind? Like, like, like, where does that come into play?
Like, what if I want to be at home with the kids, but then I also want to be doing a head talk or something? Like, how do I make that real? Or how do I make real wanting to go and be an expat in Australia, but I have a podcast where most of my guests are in the United States, how do I make that time zone situation and family time sacred real, and so that was what.
I thought was missing. That's why I wanted to write the book. Yeah, I always tell women that we're thinking about having kids and working and what should they do, I say, well, it's easy. Women have so many choices. You can have kids and not work and feel guilty. You can have kids and work full-time and feel guilty.
And you can have kids and work part-time and feel guilty. So it's like whatever we do, we're going to feel in the middle like we're not doing it right. Like we're not giving our all here and we're not giving our all there. But All you can do is your best, and like when you decided to put your book out, the perfect is the enemy of the good, right?
I mean, you, you, you just, you put it out, you do your best. You can redo it next year if you want if you've learned a bunch of stuff. I mean, it's a mistake to keep trying to get to perfect, because nothing will ever be perfect. And I think you did exactly the right thing to put your book out when you did.
so much. And, I also think that in business, for example, you actually learn more from mistakes. Like it's like, you, you have to actually try something like someone who doesn't make a mistake is cause they never really tried. Anything is what I have realized like there's just no way around it. Right. And I think also that now that the book is out in the world, I also realize that now.
The book is no longer like, just my viewpoint, people now interpret it in their own way. And I'm not going to be there right next to them saying, Oh, but what I really meant was, or what, you know what I mean? And, and that's something else that's like, it's a point of vulnerability, but it's also a point of freedom.
Cause it's like, what? Make it your own, tailor it to your situation. I believe in moms so much. Because I know that if I tell him to go and like, I don't know, run a marathon. I believe that she can for herself decide whether she wants to, or she doesn't want to run the marathon. But at least, I want to encourage a mom to consider the idea that they could do something that's astounding and they could astound themselves.
I think with the book, my ambition is to give people examples of people who are moms, but also people who are not moms who have thoroughly expressed themselves and use their imagination to the fullest. And from that collection, you decide what makes sense for your specific family and based on what you want out of life.
Yeah, I think, you know, that the reason I ended up writing my book, Raising an Entrepreneur, is because I'd meet all these young entrepreneurs at my son's organization, his conferences, and I'd ask them, like, how did they turn out the way they did? And they all said the same thing to me. They all said I had a mom who believed in me.
And so the important thing. Is that you do your best, you love your child, you believe in your child, you let your child know that they're going to be successful if they put their mind to it, you let your child know that failure is fine, as Billie Jean King says, failure is feedback, and you're there for them, and they're willing to take risks, and they love you, and they know you support them, and you know you're there for them, and they, It's a, it's a, it's a wonderful thing to be a mom and you, you, you, you give it what you can and you put in the, the time you can and, but as long as you do all these other things, as long as you're there for your kids and believe in your kids, it'll be fine.
I thoroughly believe that I think being raised by a mom who has manic depression, the one thing she would say to me is, and, and I'm just going to say it as my mom would say it, she would literally tell me that I'm a genius, like, like that's a big and tall order. But let me tell you how that hit me.
So like, for me, I would be like, I would question myself. I'd be like, wow, my mom thinks I'm a genius. Like, like, and then you, you hear it enough and you're like, well, maybe I ought to try being a genius, or maybe I ought to go for like that hard school, or maybe I should go for that full scholarship, or maybe I should go for some other crazy goal, all based on something that came out of my mom's mouth.
Right. And for me, it's like, whether she was well or not, well, as she was saying, it was something that for me, didn't even matter because, for me, it was like, hope, hopeful. It was like, if I'm a genius, I could figure this out. If I'm a genius, I could really do something extraordinary with my life.
If I'm a genius. And, it's funny how like little whispers that we tell our kids when they're sleeping or on at night, like for me. Tell my little boy secrets and I have it in the book. I have it in the acknowledgments. So I tell them secrets every night and they get three, one secret that's unique to them every single night.
So I might tell like one son of mine, Noah, who's really good at asking questions. I might like it. Flip it a little, I might be like, you are an incredible athlete. As you did so well in Jiu Jitsu today, which is actually not what he would have imagined me saying, cause I might talk about his brainiac skills, but I like flipping it a bit or I'll tell Nicholas, I'll be like, you are an amazing question asker or I'll tell Gabriel, as you have, there's such a kind heart or whatever, even if he was bugging his brothers all day.
And I feel. At night, if I'm telling them these positive secrets, I feel like I'm planting a seed, kind of like my mom planted a seed in me, right? Whether it's true, whether it's not, it's kind of like, I just want them to at least imagine something incredible about themselves and go to bed with that thought.
And I think, I think for me, it's like, like it's, it's important. It's just important. And I think for moms. I think for moms, we need the same. I think we need encouragement. I think a lot of us ask for reassurance from other people, but I think a lot of us just don't give ourselves enough credit for the inner resilience, the inner resourcefulness, and the wisdom that we actually have.
So my hope is that the book helps a mom find that out for herself again, and it's through the pathway of our imagination. Yeah, that's so sweet. And it's, it's lovely that that worked what your mom said to you. But I have to tell you these studies actually show that it's much better for kids to praise them for their work ethic, rather than for being smart.
And to say, not to say you're, you're so brilliant, you'll do well on the test, but. I know you worked really hard and that's why you'll do well on the test. The effort. Yeah, I think, I think effort, you're, you're totally right. I think effort makes a difference. I think, but I, but here's the whole thing, Margot.
I think that all depends on the mom having clarity of mind, right? So if a mom is not well, it's like, yeah, you've got to know what's going on there. But yeah, no, it's nice that you took that from her and that you came out so well. I'm sure she's so happy. Yeah, for sure. Thank you so much, Margot. This was so much fun.
I so enjoyed talking to you and I'm so happy and proud of you for your book. Thank you so much. Oh my gosh, when is the next concert you're going to with one of your sons? I'm so excited for you. I don't know. Aren't you in Austin? Yeah, I'm in Austin. Oh, I should have told you they played at the F1. Oh, wow.
Oh, that's incredible. Magic giant. Wow. Yeah. That's so cool. Yeah. There's so much energy that your son has on stage. My gosh. Was he energetic as a kid too? Yeah. He always liked to perform. That's so cool. That's so cool. Thank you, Margot. Good luck. Shop the book today. Just check out the link in my bio Amazon.
Okay. Bye bye. I love how Margot Bisnow asked me to think about the book in terms of my own personal learned lessons because a lot of what gets lost during podcast interviews or IGTV fireside chats like this is the deeper meaning. Like, how did it feel to actually, like, have my stories out in the world? Or how did it feel to hear that a podcast guest was willing to have their episode featured in my book?
How did it feel to choose to go to a cafe on a Saturday morning instead of hanging out with my kids so that I could finish up this book and get it out to the world? Those are the things that are not really discussed on podcasts. So I appreciate Margot's notice in really pulling out in me some of the lessons that I've learned.
If you have a book in your heart, I really hope this gives you some courage and encouragement to actually start putting pens to paper. I promise you, no one even has to see your first draft. You didn't see mine. So be aware. Fertile imagination is try number three, and it took two years and a SWAT team of support.
So please, if you enjoy this conversation, if you got some value, and if the review resonated with you, go ahead to Amazon.com and shop the book today. Fertile imagination, Melissa Llarena. This will be in the show notes. If you shop the book, I would be so smitten if you took an opportunity today to write two to three sentences about the book that makes a big difference.
And every single day, there are 3 million moms that will shop on Amazon. This is back-of-the-envelope math. And I would love the opportunity for Amazon to help me, help me get the word out. And here's the reason why. The reason is this. I want more moms to understand that whatever they have in their hearts, it's there for a reason.
It's because they have what it takes to actually execute this idea. And this is a global conversation. And so that's why the Kindle format is still available. And that's why this is available in a slew of stores. But Amazon is where the reviews are. And so that's why I would love for you to have an opportunity to visit online, share your thoughts, share the book, and let me know.
Let me know if you go ahead and write a review based on this conversation. I would love to know that this is helping you. This is encouraging you to step outside of your comfort zone and leave a review. Thank you again. And Oh my God, until January 2, 2024, may you have the best New Year's. May you be safe.
May you and your family be safe. I'm gonna tell you what I tell my little boys when I drop them off from school. I love you. Be safe. Please do. Be safe. Thank you.
- Visa fler
