Remember a couple of years ago I had a few
episodes that planned out my maternity leave, especially
the one with baby number two. Let's just say reality
had different plans. And in this episode I'm going to reflect a little bit on
what changed with myself, my body, my
babies, my business and what I'm focusing on next. This is your opportunity
to be a little bit nosy, so I'm going to spin ability in this
episode. But first, a word from our sponsor. Riverside is the all
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Honestly, y' all had a completely different episode planned for today,
but I am a week away at the time of recording. Recording this
from my youngest, my one year old going to daycare. If you are
new and this is your first episode, a little bit of context. I have been
in business for 11 years. I got pregnant with my first baby in
2021. Had her in 2022. 2022 was
also our highest year in revenue as a business. We hit almost nearly a million
dollars in business in the agency. That was
great. Baby one, very easy baby. Now that I've done two,
I'm like oh, the first one was the easy baby when she
months old got pregnant with the second baby. Baby two
and second pregnancy was more challenging still,
like technically both easy pregnancies.
However, my body had not
recovered so I do not recommend that. I also had two C sections which
also is very hard on the body. I'm still
recovering to this day and a lot has changed. I'm going to
get into all of those details in this episode. Just wanted to lay the groundwork
because y' all are nosy and I love that for you. I also want to
give a caveat and say I'm just Sharing my experience. There is
nothing in this episode that's actual advice. And that's why this
episode feels a little bit different. But I find it helpful as a
parent to hear other parents talk about what
happened in their business. I did do this before having the
babies, and I got it in my head that, like, I
would be different. I would be, like, the exception to the rule.
I am not. My entire brain feels consumed by these children.
And so I want to talk about that. But also preface this by saying, this
is not advice. I am not a medical
physician. Clearly can't even think of the right
words for that. I am just sharing my experience.
And this is more of, like, a personal episode. So pull up a chair, get
cozy, get comfortable. All right, let's
talk about the difference first between baby one and baby two. So baby one pregnancy
was actually not that bad. At the time, I thought it was terrible. And
I saw a post on Threads recently that said we need to talk more
about the realities of pregnancy because it is so
different than what I thought and also my frame of
reference. The people around me who had kids before
didn't complain about pregnancy. Okay. I never heard people
complaining about pregnancy. It was always a blessing. It was always your glowing
and even things like morning sickness. It's like, oh,
that's so cute. Or like, your ankles are swollen. Here, have a seat. Give your
seat to the pregnant lady.
I did not like it one bit.
I did not have morning sickness. I had all day sickness. It did not
happen just in the first trimester. Happened all the way through. And with both
babies, I didn't like meat. And basically only eight
pickles, which y'. All. I never liked pickles before. In fact, if I went to
a restaurant and it had, like, pickles on the sandwich, I would say, please, please
don't put the pickles on there. Because then the pickle juice, like, gets on the
sandwich. It's not like something you could just peel off. Now I'm like, extra pickles,
please. Like, so bizarre how my taste buds changed after having
kids. But my first pregnancy wasn't as
challenging to me on my body. First of all, it was just the
one. I didn't have any kids and my business was at its
peak. I mentioned that 2022, we had our record breaking
year of revenue. There's over $900,000 in revenue that year
with the agency and the membership. And we were doing great,
y'. All. Absolutely fantastic time for the business. Um,
and it was great. Like, I loved it. I loved it. It was a lot
easier Too, to have my team kind of run things while I was
recovering, and it was fun.
Then I wanted a second baby. I got baby fever. I will tell you
this. Between 15 and 18 months, to
me, is the perfect baby age. That's where my one year old is right
now. It is adorable. She just started saying
little things, but she's just, like, exploring. She's
walking. She's kind of like, she's starting to understand what the words mean.
Like, when she says a car, she says car. You know, it's, like, so
cute. She's not talking back to me. You know, the three year old is like,
we're in. We're in a little bit of a battle because she wants to do
it her way, I got to do it my way, and I'm apologizing to her
anyways. Baby 2
happened so quickly, too. I do not recommend this. I did not expect this
to happen, but apparently we fertile over here. Baby
2 pregnancy happened much quicker than I thought it would, and
my body had not recovered from the first pregnancy, and so
I had a really tough time physically with the way that
my weight was being carried. With my C section scar,
like, stretching out from having the second baby,
I started showing much quicker. And then I also had some
family stuff that resulted in less family support. Okay.
That's my other caveat for this episode. I'm gonna try to be as particular
as I can be, but also, like, boundaries. Y' all don't need to know every
single little thing. Just know that it's like, I didn't have as much
support as with the first pregnancy. And with the first baby, my body wasn't
recovered. I was literally, y' all taping my belly
with reinforcement tape to hold it up because my muscles
couldn't hold up my belly. This baby was bigger, too, and
I was chasing a toddler. Anyways, the
realities of my first baby to my second baby,
totally, totally different. I will also say as
newborns, they were different. First baby, very chill. Second
baby was colicky. And so basically what I
learned when people say their baby was colicky, this is a fun fact, y'. All.
For those who don't have kids, when they say your baby's colicky, it
basically means we don't know. Like, the doctors have no
idea. And they just slap this word on there, colicky,
and they're like, it'll go away. So there's, like,
literally nothing you can do. She was crying all day
for the first three months. She just cried all day and all night.
She spit up a lot for her first year, she would just
spit up almost everything. And so it was really gross. I
think I've talked about this on the podcast before. It was really gross and frustrating
as a mom. Plus you also have a toddler to take care
of when you have to say like baby and toddler.
And it was a lot. It was a lot on me. So July of
2024, I realized that the business
wasn't doing as well. Okay, so 2022, record breaking year,
2024, not only was the business not
doing well, there was just some shifts that
happened. Financially, it wasn't doing well. I had to
let go of some of my staff because of that. The
economic situation we're currently in, like, y', all, we're
in an. Not. Recession's a strong word, but it's in an economic
downturn for sure. The rise of AI means
some of the menial tasks we were doing no longer needed. I love that for
everyone else, but as a business owner, it was like, eek, right?
And so I mapped out this whole plan for my business, like, here's
the steps I need to do to like revitalize it. But
July 2024, I had a colicky three month old
and a two year old and a C section I was
recovering from with less family support. So I decided to sell
my business. I have a couple podcasts on on that. I'll link in the show
notes. So I sold my agency. I sold
it to two of my team members. I sold our client list essentially in our
processes and did a beautiful exit
there. And now my focus for the past year has been on
the Mindful Marketing Lab, the podcast, my
courses, speaking and teaching. So I'm a marketing consultant.
In that time, I also rebranded from savvy social to
mindful marketing to really lean into more holistic marketing
ecosystems. Okay, so that's kind of like
bringing us to today. I want to
highlight a few things though, in that process.
One was that I am. I've learned that I am an
optimistic person. Okay. And this is not necessarily a bad
thing. It's just something I have to be aware of because I jump into everything
with two feet and I'm like, it's going to work out. It's going to be
great. If you go back and listen to my episode, I just listened to the
one where I did my maternity planning before Baby one.
I was so optimistic, so optimistic.
Nothing wrong with that. But it wasn't the reality of my situation.
The reality is that I was sick, I was tired,
I couldn't stick to a rigid schedule because my
life was so in flex and so I needed a business
model that fit with that. Hence what I am working on now, which is the
mindful marketing lab. I can batch create content, I can do
things at naps and when the kids go to sleep. It doesn't
necessarily have to be so structured. I set the pace for
like how often I do lives and teach classes
and if I can't do lives, I do pre recorded. Okay.
So I've learned that that is a business model that fits for me
and it's not something I thought going into it. Right.
I do think if the market hadn't shifted and there wasn't
this rise of AI that I could have very easily
continued the agency. But in the world that we live in, things
change. And as business owners and leaders, it's our responsibility to change for
that. I'll also say emotionally,
I had a really hard time with my second baby. I had
postpartum depression and anxiety, which I didn't realize I
had until my husband actually pointed out, bless his heart,
so helpful, so supportive. He said,
hey babe, you may want to ask the doctor
about this emotional journey going on. And of course nobody wants to hear that. Right.
So I had this like emotional breakdown and then I was like, oh,
maybe he's right. So I went to the doctor, got my diagnoses. I'm on
Lexapro now. It's been amazing for me. And then like looking back
retroactively, I'm able to go, oh, I now see a very
clear difference between my emotional state now than
six months ago. Okay, so I was, I had a really bad
postpartum depression and anxiety for me. Bad for me.
That made it challenging to work. Okay, so that also added
to this. Then we're also adding to all of
this. Like post pandemic fallout. People were chronically
online in 2020, 2021. They're not online
in the same ways right now. In fact, people are
craving more in person community, but their budgets are
different. Their budgets have also changed. So even things like,
I plan to do my retreat again this year.
So optimistic of me. I didn't sell the tickets that I needed in the pre
sale phase, so I canceled it. But now
retroactively looking back, I can also see it wasn't priced correctly
for where people are. There's a lot of things like that. Okay,
so headed into where I am now, we. I
am in a pivot. I would say that
this pivot has been for the past year. If I can say that
I'm like thinking out loud, here y' all are thinking with me because I saw
I started the sale of the agency in July of 2024,
completed it in October of 2024.
And since then I do feel a little bit adrift because I
have been as a service based business owner for
11 years. Okay. So I'm going into my 12th year of business in
March. So I've been doing this for a long time.
And I went through the stages of grief when I sold my agency
because there I had to let go of that title of agency
owner. In that podcast episode,
I positioned it as my Tom Brady moment where I said
this is a goodbye for now, maybe not forever, but that I'm
retiring as a service provider. And
with that, I also lost my team. So I
was so used to working with people that I went from
working with like at its peak, my team had, we had 12 people.
I went to working from 12 people, like half of them full
time, half of them part time down to it's
me and Jamie, my wonderful, amazing assistant, who
honestly I've been working with her since 2019. So we don't really
talk a lot. I think in the past three months we've had one meeting
like, like we just like we send little text based
updates and then that's it. And I'll send her like a podcast level voice note
sometimes to be like, here's what I'm thinking, but that's it really.
And so I felt lonely. This
sounds really sad, but I felt lonely. And so
I was dealing with that as well. And so that is
where I am now. So let's talk about what's next for me. As
I mentioned, my little baby, my little one year old, she's not
a baby anymore, she's a toddler. She's going to daycare.
And so I have an opportunity to go
back to work, which I am blessed y' all with.
I have space to figure this out. I'm in a
season of life where fortunately
it's. It's not urgent for me to
work full time and I am the primary parent.
My husband works a lot. So that being said,
here's what I'm doing next and I'm really excited about it, y'. All.
So I'm maintaining the mindful marketing lab. It is like literally one of
my favorite places to contribute content to. I post in there almost every
day. Day. I have tons of resources that I give my members.
Like, I just created a new custom GPT for
365 content ideas where I spent like a Couple
of days training the AI on my philosophy for
like creating content. What does it look like per platform? How do we
repurpose? You know, if someone said, you know, today's August 22nd, what do
I post today? Then I trained it on how to help
our members. And so that's the stuff that I'm spending my time
on. It's like I get to geek out on
like, how do we fast track this content creation process? And yeah, some of
it feels kind of silly because they don't need me anymore when they have a
custom GPT. But also they need me because I'm the one who built the custom
dbt. So that's what I'm doing in the membership. I have so much
more planned for this year and just loving on my members. But a
big part of what I'm doing as well is producing more free content.
One of the things I've noticed in this market shift is that
it takes a lot more to trust someone
with your hard earned dollars. And so I'm
doing that piece of it. But also, like, I have a deep love for
supporting small business owners. And my
membership is $97 a month, so it's not cheap by
any means. And there is a ton of support. Like all of my members get
unlimited strategy support. Like, you can't get that level of support for less
than a hundred bucks a month anywhere. I digress.
Still people, some small business owners can't afford that.
And so I'm revitalizing my YouTube channel to bring more
free content that can show you what's possible in your
marketing. I'm really living through the values of my
tagline, simpler, smarter marketing for busy
people. Because I've learned in this process the
shortcut. Like, literally, because I'm sick, I'm tired,
I have two kids, I cannot follow the blueprint
that is like the traditional marketing blueprint. Okay? Like, I literally
don't have the time, space, capacity to do that. So I've taught
myself the shortcuts, like, how can I still run a business with this
marketing level of marketing? And it has been phenomenal, like
life changing. I don't think I'll go back to doing it a different way, you
know, and so this is how I teach it in my membership. And then
this is how I'm kind of to teach it for free on my YouTube channel,
if you're watching here. And then my
monetization model. So I know y' all are curious about this. Yes, the mindful
marketing lab. It's still like my primary revenue stream.
But I also teach workshops and do
live classes. So a lot of these I do through incubator
groups or small business enterprise groups, co
working spaces hire me, things like that where, you know, they need
someone with a social media perspective, a marketing perspective to
come in and teach small business owners. Usually I'm paid through grants
or they have funding or if it's a co working space, it's kind
of like your coworking fees go towards, you know, things like
speakers. So I will go into those spaces. And I'm not paid
directly by the small business so they that alleviates their cash
flow. But I'm still getting paid. Right. And so grants actually have
been a fantastic way for me to come into spaces. There's
like a black business group that I work with out in Nova Scotia that does
this. There's a local group here in Niagara region that does
this where they're paid through government grant and government funding. And so I
get paid, the small business owners get support. So that's where part
of my income comes from. I also have a lot of affiliate arrangements with
things. I have sponsors. Like this podcast is sponsored by Riverside.
So that is how I also am able to produce more free content because
honestly I still have to get paid. So I just get paid through a different
means. You get it for free, but there's an ad involved. And
if you click my link, I also get paid that way as well. If you
click my link and sign up. I do get affiliate payment that way.
But that's only if you're going to sign up and only if you're going to
use it anyways. Right. Like don't feel pressure if you weren't.
And so I'm leaning into this slower season of life for
me because what I've learned with having two kids
is that I have to be flexible. So I'm headed into
the season of life where I have more time to work. But and this is
a big but I'm not actually going to work full time.
Gasp. So I have a few things going on. One is I
have a new train your team workshop that
I have launched. Where specifically local business. If you
have a multi location business, think like a coffee shop, a
gym, a cannabis store, things like that,
where you have multiple locations, maybe you even have multiple people capturing
content and they're sending it to someone or each location is responsible for their
own content. You want a cohesive story. I come in and I like
train your team on how to work together with the
marketing. So that's my newest offer. I'm really excited about that. I do
have one or two spots for services as well. But like I
said, I'm being very picky about who I'm working with. And
I'm not working entirely full time because of the
children. The other thing that I'll say about this
is I have started writing. Some of y' all
know this already, but I write romance novels. They're very
spicy, very queer romance novels. If that's
something you're interested in, you can DM me. I can give you my secret pen
name. I'm not sharing it with everybody because I'm keeping this one close to
my chest because honestly, I don't want yalls opinions on this
because it's my thing and I'm having so much fun doing it. It's
essentially creating a second business. And what I'm doing
with this business model is I'm taking everything I'm learning
in a new vertical and teaching it in the mindful marketing lab.
And I'm getting to practice what I preach.
When it comes to marketing in a completely
untapped field, like writing books,
specifically romance books, it's not heavy on the marketing, it's not
heavy on the funnels. There's so much
untapped energy there that I was able to come in and actually get
surprising about a success fairly early and somewhat
easily because of my marketing skills. So it's a
lot of fun for me to practice marketing in that way.
But the most fun part as well is like taking that and sharing
the results with my members and
in my content. So I'm able to say, you know, yes, I know this works,
but I'm not just doing it for me. I have another business that I'm doing
it with and the results are surprising. Like, it. It is.
I'm just. My mind is blown by how much traction I was able to get
in such a short amount of time with zero marketing dollars. Like,
pretty much all, like, boots to the ground, like, guerrilla
marketing efforts. Okay. Like the stuff that I teach, right? And so
it has been so fun to practice in that vertical and then go,
okay, here's what's working on Instagram right now. Here's what I noticed about TikTok.
This is the thing that worked on Threads. Here's how I grew my email list.
Here's what tool I used to. And I only spent $30
a month on this. You know, like, things like that that have been
incredible to go through the process again,
starting from absolute zero. And so
I don't think that I would have ever explored this had I not
had kids and had the market not shifted. Which is why I wanted to come
to you with this episode. And it's kind of different because I wanted to
share what I'm doing in my business in case you're in
a similar spot or thinking about being in a similar spot, or maybe you're a
little bit past this and you're like, now what? Okay, so
with that being said, my core lesson for
this right here podcast episode is that
things are going to change. Life
shifts, business shifts.
Things go up and they go down. This is not about failing.
It is about adjusting and adapting to what's actually happening, the
circumstances around you. And it can feel
challenging. I know so many people who
used to own an agency. They lost all of their clients because of this
weird market we're in, and they got a full time job. I know so many
people who used to own an agency. You know, maybe they sold
it, maybe they just closed the doors and now they're back to freelancing. I know
a couple people who could completely shifted business models, one of which
started a bookstore. And I'm like, hello? That is like my life dream now is
to own a bookstore. You don't have
to grow in the same way in every season of your life.
And I think this is a lesson that I'm saying to myself mostly, but out
loud to you as well. You don't have to grow in the same way in
every season of your life. There was a period in time in my life where
having a million dollar agency was like the penultimate
goal. I was hungry for it, okay? Especially
before I had kids. And even for a while there, in the early days
of having my first kid, especially when we had that
year where we were so close, I thought for sure the next year we'd pass
that. Even my accountant was like, oh, yeah, for sure. Next year you're gonna have
a million dollars in revenue. And then I didn't. Right.
And that, that process of, like, acknowledging things
are different, moving through it anyways and still finding
contentment and creativity. It's a process that takes a lot of time.
I'm not gonna lie and say, oh, it was roses. For a while
there, it was not. It was very hard. And the lesson that
I learned is I don't have to grow the same in every season. The season
of life that I'm in right now is like the season of playfulness
and fun and experimentation and creativity. And
that means my growth are in those areas. Is it's not a season
of life where I'm growing in other ways. And so you can
pause, you can adjust, but then you can rewrite the rules.
However you want to write them, rewrite them. And listen,
if things don't work out, I'm sure y' all will hear about that as well.
I think the most important thing to do is that to move forward with
intention. This is where my optimism
works in my favor, because I get to dive in with both
feet and just figure it out. Just figure it out. Build the plane
while I fly. And I think the most interesting thing, too, is
people trust me more. At least, I've heard this.
People have trust me more because I'm able to be this transparent
in the way that I share things. All
right, that is it for this kind of
different sort of episode. I'll be back with, like, the usual marketing
stuff next week. But as I head into the season of Life where
both of my kids are in daycare, I am no longer having kids. That's
literally impossible. There are no more children coming from this body.
I got my tubes removed, y'. All. That's why I said it like that. No
more children. I'm in a season of my life where
it feels like I'm turning a page, I'm turning a chapter, and I'm really
freaking excited about it. I know I'm talking softly, all because
the baby's napping, but I'm really freaking excited about it, and I just want to
share that with y'. All. So big love if you found this episode very
helpful. Helpful. Come on over to my Instagram DMS and let me know.
I love to hear the feedback. The ahas
from last week. I kept getting people talking about
poop scrolling. Y' all loved the poop scrolling one. Oh, that was two weeks ago.
Poop scrolling. Y' all loved poop scrolling. So I love
what y' all said. We DMS about that. One person even, like, tagged me in
a meme about it. It was hilarious. So if there's anything in this episode
that you're like, ah, come DM me. I mean, I'm on all the platforms, right?
But, like, Instagram is where I spend most of the time. I'll be back with
a new episode next week, so I'll see you all then. Bye for now.