From quitting business for 2 years to more momentum and clarity than ever

How I went from quitting my business the minute I became a mom TO finding myself again, building a simple and profitable business in my zone of genius, and feeling more bold and confident than ever before... while also being a present and confident mom. 

Transcript

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Welcome back to Mommy Knows Business, the podcast where we are talking all things business and motherhood. I am your host Meg. I'm a mom of two. I am an online business coach for busy moms. And today we're going to talk about how much has changed for me since becoming a mom when it comes to... Life and definitely business. So when I became a mom in January of 2021, everything changed for me in more ways than I ever could have expected. So. So, at that point in business, I felt like there was so much momentum. Things were going really, really well. I had a six figure group coaching program. New clients were signing on. I had full time employees for the first time. My team had done like a launch without me while I was on maternity leave. And there was just so much forward progress. So much was happening. I was creating content. There was just a lot positively going well in the business. And I think that's why when I became a mom and things shifted for me, I was just so caught off guard and I was just unprepared. I really thought I would do what I saw everyone else do on the internet, where like you have a baby and you take a break and you come back and like you're full throttle. And I wasn't prepared for the shift from zero to one, which everyone's different. For me, it was a very jarring shift. I found myself. When it was time to come back to business, just totally overwhelmed. I was ready in some ways to start doing something for myself again, but I didn't have a lot of mental capacity. I was totally overwhelmed. I had no idea who I was anymore. The business I had built seemed very unappealing to me. It felt like it was a very mentally heavy business and emotionally heavy and It felt like I didn't want to go back to it. It felt too hard. I didn't know how to do both. I didn't understand how other people were doing both. I no longer understood if I even wanted to have a business or what I wanted from it. And I really can look back at it and say, I was in the new postpartum era. You know what I mean? The transition of becoming a mom and you have a baby who's not sleeping and you're going through so much physically and yet I didn't have any mom business owners then to tell me that what I was feeling was normal. I didn't have that kind of relationship with any other mom entrepreneurs. I wasn't in community with any of them. My best friends had not been through that transformation yet. And then my best friends in real life who were moms are not entrepreneurs. So I just thought something was wrong with me. I literally thought I'm just not cut out for this. Being a mom has changed me and I no longer want to be a business owner. And I really just thought I couldn't do it. So I shut down that coaching program. I ended up refunding clients and I let my employees go and I began what would turn into a two year break from my business. I didn't know it then, but I, I didn't really know anything then. I was so confused. I just really, really struggled. Um, I ended up getting a job with one of my clients at part time job. And, you know, I think. 2021 Meg made the best decisions she could with what she had. Now I sit here, 2023 Meg, and feel like everything is so different. I'm a mom of two now. We had our son in January of this year. And I feel so confident in my motherhood. By no means am I perfect. By no means do I know everything. But I definitely feel like I've... Got my bearings and love being a mom and, and I think I had to go through that transition where at first I really mourned the loss of independence and now I've adjusted. I've expanded. This is my life. I love my kids. I love being a mom. And so there's a totally different feeling there alone, let alone everything else. But I did come back to business this year. I'll talk a little bit more about what those two years were like in just a second in between then and now, but just to paint the picture of the difference here. Thank you. I am back in business. I've been back in business since May and I am more clear on my purpose, who I help and how I help them than ever before in my business, in the past, in my business, I have had. A ton of variations. My business has evolved a lot since I started it and I always had like moments of clarity, but always felt like I was seeking the bigger picture. So even when I had successful products, successful programs, it never felt like it was what I was meant to be doing, if that makes sense. And now I actually, for the very first time. I have so much clarity and passion and excitement and enthusiasm for who I help and how I help them, and I'm sure I will continue to evolve and that could evolve with me, but I've never ever, even before as a mom had the clarity I have right now, I don't just have the clarity, I'm also like living it out. I'm working with my dream clients in my zone of genius. I am lit up. I am so much more ambitious. I am more ambitious and more passionate and more lit up than literally ever before. And I feel like becoming a mom has allowed me to really become unapologetically me. I'm not perfect. I'll never be perfect, but the level of confidence I have and self love and self acceptance is unparalleled. I am showing up on Instagram stories doing like silly dances and I'm, and I'm making mistakes on podcasts and I'm just like showing up anyways. And I'm finally starting to let my personality show through, which has always been something I felt like I've struggled to do. And just the momentum I feel now. Is incredible. I feel like I finally tapped into the potential. I always knew was there. And I also feel like I'm on this incredible journey and I'm just at the beginning, like the un like. Um, I'm tapped into the potential and what is possible from here on out is insane. Like I just know it. I can't wait. I'm so excited. It's so much fun. It feels so good to be operating from this space and I've never, ever felt like this before and I know 100 percent it's because of becoming a mom and what has happened over the past two years. So obviously big difference between 2021 Meg, 2023 Meg. What happened? I will be completely honest with you that all of 2021 and all of 2022, I was lost. None of the transformation happened in those two years because I was literally lost. doesn't mean it was all terrible, right? Life was certainly good. There were good moments, but when it comes to personal satisfaction and personal dreams and ambition, I, I really keep. I'm using the word lost because that's just the best word to describe it. I felt like I was trying to find my place and I never really could. I went from shutting my business down to being a part time employee to then a full time employee and just pouring my blood, sweat, blood, sweat and tears into that and falling into old patterns of being a workaholic and burning out and putting too much emotion into my work. Going through multiple miscarriages and health issues. And just like I was enjoying parts of my life, but this deep inner purpose and fulfillment was just not there. So I started trying to YouTube and do stuff on the side. I thought I would maybe be a lifestyle influencer or. You know, just I'll be a tick tock person and do mommy content, or maybe I'll have a digital product shop or yada, yada, like. I, I think I had a hundred different business ideas. I, I thought about bringing the podcast back. I'd record videos, record podcasts, create products, spend so much time building out a Shopify site, and then just, I'd keep shutting it all down. I never took it to the next level. Finally, I had my third miscarriage between Kelly and then my son who was born in January of this year, and I quit my job cause I just realized I was so stressed and that I still continued down this path of seeking and searching and being unsure. Um, and I went through a phase where I just was like, you know what? I'm just going to be a stay at home mom. Like this is the dream, right? Like I'm just going to like focus on my family and focus on my health. I was pregnant with my son at the time and was just like, I'm just going to focus on the personal side. And that was an amazing experience for me to have. I think it really taught me a lot about myself. It taught me a lot about. How good it felt to prioritize my personal life and I think for the season of life I was in it was really good. I even told one of my friends I didn't know if I'd ever go back to business because it did feel so good to just have None of the business stress none of the work stress But I ran into an issue after Before and after our son was born in January of this year Where it just it still didn't feel like enough I didn't enjoy being a stay at home mom when it comes to the day to day responsibilities. And I'm not really speaking to the mothering piece, more so all the ancillary stuff. You can be so good at dishes or laundry or tidying and organizing a house or doing projects around the house, but like it literally doesn't matter when you're doing it because there's always more to do. You can have the cleanest kitchen and there's always going to be a new mess. You can tidy up and there's always going to be a toddler running around shredding toilet paper everywhere. And... You can have all the laundry totally clean, and then you're still going to have more laundry pop up. And I just found myself really, really struggling with that. I went from being in business and in a career where there were projects and goals and accomplishments that amounted to something bigger than me. And by being in the stay at home mom spot where there's none of that, Obviously, there's the big one of being a good mom and raising good children, right? So, I mean, um, that's important, but on a day to day level, it really started to weigh me down. I really started to feel defeated. I started to feel very frustrated. I had applied all of my best systems and productivity knowledge to house management, which was great. It helped, but I still found myself seeking more and just finally realized and accepted. In March of this year, that being a stay at home mom just was not enough for me personally. And I'll be honest, I had a lot of guilt around that. That made me feel so selfish. That made me feel like I was ungrateful. And I kept wondering, like, why can't I just be, like, a lady who lunches? Like, why can't I just enjoy this? Um, and, and around March of 2023 is where I finally was just like, you know, Maybe that's okay. And I'll be honest, I kind of sat with it. I didn't really talk to my husband about it at first. I think I was like dropping hints here and there, like maybe I want to. Do business again, but I think I was like still feeling unsure because at that time we didn't have child care for my three month old. So there was, there would be a lot that needed to happen. I'd have to really make some time during nap time and evenings and weekends to come back to business. If we wanted child care, I'd have to like, really be serious about this. Right. And so, um, I was kind of hesitant and I was kind of nervous and it wasn't until, um, May of 2023 when I was the MC for a conference called the pinnacle conference. My sister is Dr. Natalie Crawford. Um, you may have heard of her podcast as a woman. She is a incredible fertility doctor. She's, you know, a big educator on Instagram. She is also a co founder of pinnacle conference and I was the MC for their event this year in May. Thank you. And I will be again in 2024, um, which is really fun, but all that to say, going into that trip, I did make the decision going into this, my first trip out of town since becoming a mom of two, I was like, okay, this is where I'm going to decide if I want to come back to business for real or not, because I'm either going to go do this event where I'm not in mom mode and I'm speaking and I'm showing up and I'm being public public. And I'm either going to. I'm going to immediately know that I want to do my own thing again or I'm going to immediately realize I don't. And it turned out to be completely true. I absolutely knew without a doubt that I wanted to come back to business after that trip. And I think for me. It really boils down to a theme I've noticed throughout this entire journey, which is being in community with other women and especially their moms. Because I was at this conference with all of these female physicians who, um, I have not only like actual physical medical practices and also huge personal brands and social media accounts and also are a part of nonprofit organizations and also our moms. And it was so inspiring and expansive for me and showing me that I can do this. I can be a mom and do all of these other things. And I, it doesn't mean it's going to be easy and it's certainly not going to be effortless, but like the inspiration that came out of it, the conversations I had with other moms who are doing the thing. And it was just so, so powerful for me. And I look back at where I was in 2021 and I know without a doubt if I had had some business besties who were moms or, or had been in a community where people were talking about motherhood and business or even just like witnessing dialogue about it, I think. I would have understood that I was at the very beginning of, of my motherhood journey. I was deep in the thick of postpartum and that you should not make rash decisions then. You are going to be on the biggest transformation ever and that is not a time where you need to be making huge decisions. That is a time where you need to be You've got to be taking care of yourself and you've got to like, let the journey unfold a little bit more. I don't look back at, at that season and say I made mistakes, but I know without a doubt, I would have made different decisions. Had I known then what I know now, and that's okay. I totally believe my journey turned out the way it did for a reason. I wouldn't be able to tell this story otherwise, but I've noticed a theme for me. Thank you. And for many of my clients that there's just not a lot of spaces where moms are talking about moms and business. And I really wanted to create that space. So when I decided to come back to business after being an MC at that conference, I knew I was going to lean all in to my true passion. Which is coaching. I've always loved it. I've been coaching in different capacities since 2015. I've been a co coach on client group coaching programs, I've had my own programs, I've done short term programs, long term programs, have always loved it, but never really, really claimed it. Never really claimed it as the thing. It was always kind of like a side thing or a thing I did as a part of a course and, and this was like, I'm, I'm just like literally going to own what I know I'm good at, even if I don't know where it's going to go. Um, I literally was like, I'm just going to have some private coaching clients and I don't have a clear, uh, like unique selling proposition that like makes me different. You know, it's just like, I'm just going to like, this is it. I'm going to own being a coach. I'm going to let it be what it is. I'm going to show up how I can. I'm going to validate this. I'm going to get three clients. And once I get these three clients, then I'm going to be able to like, Get some childcare. And like, here's the goal and here's the budget. My husband and I actually sat down on a date and made a budget on a spreadsheet on our phones together for like what this needed to look like. And that gave me the clarity and the motivation to come back to business. And I knew not only am I going to sit here and. Um, like coach the hell out of these clients and really operate in my zone of genius, but things have got to be so fucking simple because I didn't have childcare at first. And so it's like, okay, all the things that I used to fill my time with or think I had to have, like, no, I'm not going to have a, like a website that's like good. I am not going to worry about that. I'm not going to worry about having beautiful sales pages or a new logo or a new brand or updated photos. I'm literally going to like talk about it on stories and then like sell in the DMs and like send a link and like that's it. And I will say now months later, like my business is pretty much still there. You know, I've had some really great collaboration opportunities. Where things like a brand and, um, photos have unfolded, which is really cool to see. But I certainly didn't need it and did not have those things to make the bulk of the sales that I've made so far. Um, and so I really knew things have to be crazy simple, which has been a wonderful challenge and like such a fun way to do business. And I knew that I was gonna go all in on my zone of genius. I knew I was going to. Also just like embrace the season of life I'm in. I'm not going to be able to do everything I want to do. That's okay. What are like the most important things I need to do? And it's just been a beautiful lens to make all of these decisions through. And to be able to help my clients do the same for them. So many of my clients have very similar stories to me where they took a step back when they became a mom and want to come back and, and they're trying to figure this out and, and they need a community and they need to see what's possible and brainstorm. And since creating my program, rich mom club in particular, it has been. So powerful to witness the combination of motherhood and business and literally to be in a space where we can talk about the challenges of making time for client calls when you have an exclusively breastfed baby, or where we're sharing the chore chart we have for our three year old. Maybe not a chore chart. What was it as a morning checklist? I think like, um, for habits. Don't worry about it. But it was like, we're sharing that in the same thread that we're talking about how we're going to book some new clients this week. And we're having conversations where we actually get to talk about business through the lens of our actual. life as moms. We don't have to pretend that that's not there or take someone's strategy where they have um, endless time during the day and like we don't, right? It's just like all within context. We're all in the same journey and it's been so powerful and I'm so glad I created the space I needed because Rich Mom Club and what I'm creating with Rich Moms to Society and what I have with Rich Mom Mastermind, this is what I needed. This is the community. The rich mom community is what I so desperately needed in 2021. And so I made it and I created it, and it's here and it's been amazing to witness. It's been amazing to witness the self love and compassion, the release of mom guilt, the clarity in business and business strategy and showing up and making big moves and getting clients and the momentum that's building. And it's been incredible. And I just really think that having a community of other mom entrepreneurs who get it has changed the game for me. Just being a part of the space I even created has changed the game. I look back at my story. I see where it would have benefited me so much. I wish I had had it. I see moments where in community with other moms did make a difference, but this is why I created the rich mom movement. This is why I have created the rich mom club, rich mom mastermind. And what is. It's opening now, rich mom society, because I really believe that as mom and business owners, we need this space where you're going to get some fucking amazing business strategy and it's going to be simple and it's going to be effective and it's going to be potent and it's going to be through a realistic lens of the season of life you're in. And we're going to be able to have that conversation where we all get it. All the people on the call get it. And you, and literally on one of our first rich mom club calls, it was someone was talking about, um, There are kids sleep regression, how they aren't getting sleep and, and we were all like, oh yeah, that eight month regression, man, it's a doozy. And they were like, that's normal. You know what I mean? Like this is a business strategy call, but that is so relevant to how we're able to show up and we're able to speak to both. And it's just so incredible to witness. This is why I do what I do. And. By being in a space like this, not only can you get the like connection and community and create the village you so desperately and we all desperately need, but to also get the business strategy that makes sense to get the mindset shifts, to let go of the mom guilt, to really finally believe in yourself, to give yourself permission to embrace the season and do things differently. And you don't have to follow someone else's strategy perfectly. And here's how we can make it your own. And this combination of. Really intentional strategy and mentorship that gets it and a community to support you along the way and cheer you on and brainstorm with you is so, so, so powerful. And that is really, really what has shifted things for me is, is the release of guilt, embracing it, using my life. And season of life as a mom, not as a point of contention or resentment or frustration, but instead letting it be my superpower and say this, I'm going to embrace this and we're going to make it work within this context and that's going to be great. And there is room for us to do more later and we can always add on in this season of life is short and it is sweet and it is temporary and we can do more later, but we're going to lean into this now and we're going to. Help each other prep businesses for maternity leaves, right? We've got clients who are still growing their families. And so we're going to be going through these seasons together of. you know, loss and pregnancy and maternity leave and evolving and growing with every kid. And as your family grows, your business gets to grow with it. And when you have that moment, whether it's postpartum or when you're pregnant or when you're trying to get pregnant or years down the line. And wherever you're at, when you have that moment where you just don't know if you're cut out for it, you don't have to go through that alone anymore. You get to be with women who get it, who can not only give you the like cheerleading support you need, but who can also say, I have been there and I went through it and you will too. And they can help you get through it. And we can help you shift your offers, change your marketing, get really, really clear and focused in your efforts because we. Get it. Oh, I'm just so honored to work with the moms I work with. And if you're not a mom, trust me, I work with a lot of clients still who aren't moms and you can be a rich auntie in the rich mom world. That's totally cool. You just got to know we're going to talk about mom stuff, but like if you're along for the ride, like you are welcome to be in the rich mom. Era and vibe with us whether you're already a mom want to be a mom never want to be a mom like it You're all welcome but this is a space we're like we are talking about motherhood and business and I'm just So thankful. And if you aren't following me on Instagram already, you should, because I'm dropping some great content over there every single day right now. But I'm just so excited. I'm excited about what's to come. I'm so honored for everyone who is already in the Rich Mom world. I'm excited to invite you into it in the Rich Mom Society. And I am here and Rich Mom Society is here to help you learn how to prioritize yourself without guilt so that you can show up as a happier, healthier, happier mom. I'm here to help you have a business that makes meaningful money for your family and also brings you personal fulfillment and personal satisfaction because you deserve it. And I want you to feel on fire for life. I want you to have your cake and eat it too. I want you to feel like you're really, really living and enjoying your life. And I want you to be making these big, bold moves. I want you to feel like the spiciest version of yourself. I want you to feel alive. And all of this is why I'm just so, so, so excited to be opening the doors to Rich Mom Society. You should go to heymegking. com forward slash rich mom to learn more, but rich mom society is a monthly membership program. You can cancel at any time where not only do you get. Mentorship for me, you get a live Q and a with me in the group every single month. You're also getting a brand new training every single month, a brand new topic and theme for each month where we are all coming together and focusing on one aspect of being a rich mom. We're growing your business. We're simplifying your business. We're taking care of you as mom. And so these topics and trainings are going to be so, so, so potent. So you're going to get access. to one of those each month, you get access to the rich mom community where you can actually communicate and collaborate and connect and ask questions and get support and celebrate wins with other rich moms who get it, which is amazing. And there are so many other wonderful bonuses too, especially for our founding members. So be sure to go to HeyMegKing. com forward slash rich mom to find out everything you need to know. Um, about rich mom society, what's included, if it's a good fit for you. And of course, to go ahead and join us, I would love to have you in rich mom society. I'd love to help you step into your rich mom era and really help you be in community with other rich moms. And I hope to be in community with you in that space. So I hope to see you inside of rich mom society. Thank you so much for listening. And I will see you in the next episode.