4 Easy Steps to Using Cava Like a Pro

Welcome to this episode of The Determined Mom Show. I am your host, Amanda Tento. And I have the lovely Brenda Cadman, who is a Canva-verified expert with us. So today we are gonna be talking about four steps to using Canva like a pro. And Brenda has already blown my mind on our precall. So I’m gonna go ahead and let her tell you all about her.

Tell us about you and how you got started in Canva. Like we all. Use Canva, but not experts, definitely not verified experts. And I didn’t even know that existed. And to know that you’re like one of like teen seed queen seafood, few people in the world that are verified are awesome. So tell us about it. 

That is a new, newer program that only came out earlier this year. And we’ll get into that in a moment, as far as background goes. You and I also chatted about the fact that I’ve been an entrepreneur for over 22 years and the majority of that time was spent running a website development company.

I finally made it. The difficult and very overdue decision to let that business go so that I can focus on the new Canva training consulting business instead, because we cannot do it all as much as we think we can, as much as we want to try. Even though I was downscaling all of my clients and my offers and the website development company, I found that.

There was always a piece of my brain that was on it and the bandwidth was being eaten up and I just could not accomplish the things that I wanted to accomplish on the Canva business side of things. But I did run that company, in one form or another part-time or part of that time as co-owning a digital marketing agency.

Eight years of it was the version of it that I just closed. And I found Canva back. I think it was early 2014. When I had a graphic designer who had been creating all of my graphics, all of my marketing materials, and anything visual that I needed, she would create for me. And then she decided that she wanted to leave freelancing and go back and take a full-time job.

So I was going to be without that resource. And while I was trying to figure out who to replace her with or what. The process was going to look like I came across it. I’d heard people mention this program canvas which I could use to create my social media graphics. And I started dabbling with it and playing with it.

And as you do, you start, when you start learning a tool, you make all of the mistakes, all of the mistakes I teach people not to make now. But I found that I just got very comfortable using it over the years. And when I went to create a course in 2019 about building your website and not how to build your website, but more taught you all the little things to create a more user-friendly website. 

The details don’t matter there. But the point is that when I went into that program to build that course, I found that in all my other courses, fellow course creators were asking questions about using Canva. And I would answer the questions.

I would create little demos and training to help them create their course materials. And they started asking if the course I was creating was going to be about Canva. And that was such a pivotal moment because I had never, until that moment, considered that this might be the thing that people wanted to learn from me.

I just assumed because all of this time had been spent in the website industry. That was the thing I was equipped to teach people about. And when you take a moment, you actually, take a beat and listen to what people are asking you for your advice on. Sometimes there may be something completely different.

I switched gears at that point. That’s when my attention started going to learning everything I could about Canva. What sort of certificate, not certification programs, but what sort of ambassador-type programs did they have? I started creating content about Canva and then Canva took notice and I became a canvas-certified creative.

And when they closed that program and launched this new Canva verified experts program earlier this year in the spring, I was one of 26 that was selected. To hold that title by Canva zone community managers. 

So that is the whole thing in a nutshell of how we got from there to here. Isn’t it so interesting how? We, if we listen to other people, they’ll tell us what we should be doing. What are we good at? Oh yeah, you’re good at Canva. Like we wanna know.

Please tell us more, everything you need to know or everything we need to know about Canva. So I love that you use that point to pivot and maybe it’s a blessing in disguise cuz now you’re on a completely different path than you were. It sounds like a huge help.

It lights me up too, in a way that I was not feeling with that industry anymore. And it’s just, I think the other thing that I came to realize, and a lot of people will be in this position is if something comes easily to you, you tend to think of it as not holding as much value, or everybody must be able to do this.

And you don’t see it as a thing that people want to do. From you. I think I just, get so close to it. You don’t see your zone of genius I guess. And it was something that I was able to offer and provide value in, and I didn’t even realize it was a thing that people needed help in.

I know. Zero other Canva experts like zero. There’s none that I can even think of that I’ve encountered in my meeting, thousands of marketing experts along the way, zero. So it’s very useful, and I don’t know, I think it’s an amazing niche for you to be in.

I guess maybe just because of the position I’m in. I know a lot of can experts, those who have the actual title and those who are, while they don’t have the title, definitely have the expertise to provide design services in it or teaching in it. It’s, I’m, it’s not necessarily something rare in my opinion. But again, you, when you’re so close to something, you have a very different vantage point on it than everybody else does.

And regardless, the way I teach it is probably different than how everybody else teaches it. And we all have our areas of expertise. I don’t know anybody else who specializes in teaching people how to get organized in Canva. If they’re all focusing on how to use it as a design tool. Great. That’s what the tool is meant to be. 

But I wanna. I wanna help people use the tool more efficiently so that they’re not wasting a ton of time when they’re using the tool, because we all have a lot of more important things to do. I love Canva. It is important to me, but everybody has a lot more important things to be doing than going down the Canva rabbit hole.

Spending hours designing one graphic or something is not what we need to be doing. We need to be like them. That’s the whole beauty of that tool I think because it makes everything so much easier, so much quicker. You have so many options at your fingertips and there are so many ways to customize it, to make it look like not a template, yeah.

I think it’s amazing, but so let’s go ahead and talk about these four steps that we can use to use, or that we can utilize to use Canva like a pro.

The first step, the first place you need to start is to figure out which plan is right for you because they do have a free plan that is incredibly robust. And for a lot of people, it is more than enough. But I do find that if you are using canvas specifically for business, rather than for personal use, there are some key features. 

Come on a pro plan on the paid plan that is going to make your life a lot easier. It’s gonna allow you to create content that looks more professional, and more consistent on the brand in a way that you cannot do on the free plan. So for example, a key differentiator between the two is access to the brand kit feature. 

You’re not going to have the brand kit feature on a free plan, and you’re going to need it to be able to quickly and efficiently, and consistently create your graphics in a way. Always look uniquely belonging to your business, because if you are just choosing templates and you’re not customizing them to fit whatever your company or your business’ visual branding is, they’re always going to look like cookie-cutter templates. They’re never going to look uniquely yours.

And then also features like the resize feature that comes. Canva pro you’re going to, if you are using Canva for business, you’re going to be using it to create every variation of social media graphics. You’re probably gonna, you might use it for podcast promotion.

You might use it for Facebook or Instagram advertising. There are a lot of different materials in different sizes that you’re going to be creating and to have access to a tool like resize, where you can take something.

Look the way you want it to and quickly resize it into other dimensions. You may have to tweak, the layout a little bit. If you’re going from something that’s really, narrow and tall to something wide, you’re going to have to move things around, but it’s going to be a huge time saver for you.

So again, these kinds of workflow things. When you are using Canva for business, sometimes the time that you are not sometimes, really most of the time you’re going to save, by being able to take advantage of some of these paid features is going to, it’s gonna save you a lot more money in the long term if that makes sense.

Oh yeah, definitely. And resizing is my favorite feature. By the way, because I just love being able to oh I don’t think that quite fits, especially even with websites and if you have an image you wanna put in there, and then you’re like, oh, what about this ratio? And that kind of thing. I love it for that.

Interestingly, you’re talking about the plan because I remember five years ago when I started my business, I was like, oh my God, $10 a month is so much like that’s so much, and so if you are starting. It can feel like a lot when you don’t have that income coming in, but it’s worth it once you do get a little bit of income coming in, and investing in that Canva business account is huge.

At a certain point, you do, you have to invest something in yourself as a business. And this, I do find consistently speaking with other business owners. Really without fail. They’ll say that this is one of the, as far as the expenses they have every month, their canvas subscription gives them some of the most value for the money they spend.

Suddenly $10 a month does not look like a lot. When you look at how much time it’s going to save you to free you up to focus on the more money-making activities in your business, rather than trying to save a few dollars here and there, I will throw $10. Anytime, it’s something that’s going to save me an hour of work.

A lot more than $10 an hour for my time. I would anticipate most people listening do or want to as well. So yeah, it is worth it. And then at the same time though, if you’re not sure if it’s. If you’re going to see the value in it there, Canva offers it. I, as a Canva-verified expert, have a 45-day free trial that people can use to test it out. It costs them. Nothing. 

If you go directly through Canva, you’ll get 30 days. It’s one of the little perks of being well. Having the position we have that we can extend an extra 15 days, but you don’t have to. Sign up and hope that you’ll get value out of it. I do encourage people to test it out and see if the value is there for them, but make sure you take advantage of that trial time to see what those features are and see if they’re going to give you the value that you need to continue to pay for it.

The second thing is the importance of that brand kit. There are a lot of features that do come on a paid plan, but I would be hard-pressed to be able to create what I create in Canva without that brand kit because otherwise there’s a tendency to let me step back.

So the brand kit feature, what is it? It is something that is going to allow you to upload your visual branding assets, specifically your logos, your color palette, and your brand fonts. Into an easy-to-access feature inside of Canva, where if you are looking for your brand colors, it’s just there at your fingertips.

You’re not having to go grab a hex code from somewhere else and paste it in. You’re not having to guess your colors. It’s right there for you to click easy peasy every single time and the same thing, your fonts are right there. Also, if you have. In your brand fonts, you use a font that is not available on the canvas-free plan.

You not only will have access to a wider variety of fonts on the paid plan, but you’re also gonna be able to upload custom fonts into the canvas brand kit. And that consistency is so important. If you wanna have graphics that are easily consistently recognizable as belonging to your brand, that’s important.

So you can build that kind of consistency in. That low trust and loyalty, you have to be recognizable for people to be loyal. And you want to have graphics that when they come up in somebody’s social media feed, they are instantly recognizing it as belonging to you, perhaps even before they see your name attached to it.

That’s why recognition is important. And this brand kit feature, know that you have your logos at your fingertips, you have your brand colors, and fonts at your fingertips. That’s going. Help you to create that kind of consistent visual content that you’re after, throughout the various marketing materials that you’re creating.

One thing that I’ll note about that is that I realize that, like I have a couple of businesses that I work for. Like some of them are mine, some of ’em are my husband. Some of them are, like our nonprofit. And you can create more than one brand. I think that is true.

People may not realize that okay, if you have multiple businesses or if you’re a social media manager and you have different clients and you can create more than one,

That was an update that was introduced. I don’t remember one, I think it was 20. It was 20, 21. I’m pretty short. Previously the multiple access to multiple brand kits was only a feature that was available on their enterprise plan, which was a more expensive plan.

They make a change to that. And they rolled it out, I believe last year to the pro plan. So now you can create up to a hundred brand kits and it’s easy to switch between them and search for them when you’re working on a design and it allows you to keep all of that segmented. There were workarounds.

You could have multiple color pallets in it. You could have all the logos in there, but. That makes it a lot more overwhelming to find what you’re looking for. And you also could not have different sets of fonts in there now you can, and you’re right. A lot of people don’t know that it’s there because they got accustomed to it not being there.

So they aren’t even looking for it. I had a pre-planning call this afternoon for one of my upcoming VIP days. She didn’t have her brand assets organized into multiple brand kits because she didn’t even realize that was an option. And we were able to tick that one off right. In the pre-planning call.

Now she can set that up and it’s already gonna make things easier between now and when I get in there to work with her. So that multiple brand kits, especially if you do work with a lot of different clients where you’re creating content for them, it’s a game changer. It’s an enormous time saver in terms of just being able to access all of that brand information.

So set up your brand kit. That’s what Brenda said. That’s what number two does. All right. What about number three?

Number three is the one that has my heart. It is. That’s my sweet spot. It is the thing that I will spend all day doing if I can. And that is you need to get organized in Canva.

You have to set up an organized system. If you want to be efficient with your time. I want you to be using custom folders and creating some sort of Canva filing cabinet so that when you go looking for the images you need if you go looking for the designs that you need, you are not spending. 

15, 20, 30, 45 minutes scrolling, looking for that design that you created eight weeks ago and you need now to duplicate it. And it’s probably at this point, it takes you less time to recreate than to find it in the first place. But just look at all the time that is being wasted there. And if you bill for your time, that is costing you money.

So creating an effective filing system inside of a can is an absolute must-have if you want to use this tool effectively. And if you’re not, I don’t know about you, but if I go into a cluttered space or a clutter. Virtual space is not gonna do a lot for my creativity and my inspiration and my excitement about creating content.

If I’ve got an idea I wanna get in there, I wanna go find what I need and I wanna get to it while the excitement and the creativity are flowing and. What an absolute soul crusher now I have to spend an hour looking for something. So folders are absolute of paramount importance to use this tool effectively.

I am so guilty of this, and this is a part of the aha moment that I had on the pre-call with Brenda. Because I was like, one thing that canvas still doesn’t have and that no one else, like I, everybody that I talk to wants candida have, and I’m like, it’s that on?

When you’re on the home screen, you cannot see, like I put things in folders, and then they’re all still there. Like, why don’t they go into the folder? Why don’t they stay in the folder? And she’s cuz you’re looking at the wrong screen and I’m like, what. So tell us about that.

Let me introduce you to your projects tab. So when you are opening up Canva, I’m a strong advocate. Get off that home screen, and don’t look for whatever, unless it was the last thing you were working on and it’s right there for you. You wanna skip right over the home screen and in your left-hand navigation under I believe it currently goes, and this will probably change by the time this episode airs, but it should go home templates.

Projects are where you want to go. This is your filing cabinet. This, if you’ve never created folders before, it’s just gonna look the same as the home screen in terms of a list of all of your designs, but you can create your custom folders here. You can drag your images in, or your images in your designs into folders, or you can batch select by when you hover over a design.

There’s a little check box that appears. You can check that off and you can check off as many as you need. And then at the bottom middle of the screen, there’s a little folder icon and a little trash icon. If you click on the folder icon, you’re going to be able to specify which folder you want to move.-

All of those designs or images that you have selected or if you want to delete all of them, you’d click on the trash icon. So that gets missed a lot because people tend to, if they see the checkbox, they’ll select a bunch of them and then they’ll try to drag them in when they can’t. They assume that functionality just isn’t there. You’re doing it wrong. You can do this.

To be honest, it is not very visible. It is a user interface update that I would like to see made. More noticeable, but once you select multiple items, you just wanna look to the bottom, or middle of your screen, and look for that folder icon. And then you’re going to be able to move it directly into a folder, but this is the page you wanna be working on because when you do select items and you folder them, they are going to be removed from that screen.

So you will get to the point where you have nothing on that screen, but your folders, and you can just drill down and find what you’re looking for. And to start with a clean slate like that every time. It does require some maintenance to stay on top of it, but it’s just, I don’t know, there’s a sigh of relief.

I don’t feel overwhelmed when I go in. And I’m ready to get started because I know I’ll be able to find what I need right. When I need it. And it’s just a change in how you use the platform. 

A question that I do have about this is can you create subfolders within those folders? Yes, you can.

You can nest 10 levels deep. Oh my goodness. Okay. This is. So yeah, encourage it. I hope everybody listening is excited about that particular topic as much as I am because that’s going to change my life. I think I’m going to actually go on my iPad and just sit there while I’m watching TV with the kids or something and just start organizing because I need to do it away from my desk.

When I’m at my desk, I can find 3000 other things to do other than organize can folders. So I’m gonna have to figure out another alternative for that. But I think that would be a great time to do it.

I think the first step is before you even start creating folders, to have a little walk down memory lane through your account. And there’s probably a lot of stuff in there. You just, don’t need anymore. Delete the stuff that you don’t need. It, I like to liken it to the experience of organizing a physical filing cabinet. 

You’re if you pull all of those papers out, there’s gonna be stuff in there that is garbage, that you don’t need to be worrying about where to file it because you don’t need it anymore. So get rid of the stuff you don’t need and then create. 

Kind of reference or archive folder where there’s probably a lot of stuff in there that you’re not ready to let go of either because you wanna keep it for nostalgic purposes or you think you might need a reference to it later, but you know that you don’t need this right now and it’s cluttering up your space, archive, all that stuff into a, just a general archive folder.

Get it off that screen. After you’re done that you’re left with what you need to create a filing system. And it just reduces the amount of work. It reduces the frustration when you’re trying to figure out what am I gonna do with this? I don’t know what home to give these chances, if it can just go into an archive folder, you do not even have to make that decision.

Awesome. Are there any other basic folders that we should have, like archives like I three kinds of folders, I don’t know?

Every business is a little different in terms of the kinds of content they’re creating. But if you are a typical business owner that I have worked with, you’re probably going to have at a top level, you’re gonna have folders related to your business.

You might have a folder called personal. If you maybe are creating content for your church, if you’re creating content for your family, I have used it in Canada to create birthday party invitations and things like that. I don’t need that mixed up with my social media content or with my report documents.

I separate that into a personal folder. I always have a folder called templates, whether, and then that’s broken down into templates. I’ve created myself. And also folders for the templates that I have purchased from other providers. And then there’s the archive folder we talked about. But I also like to see a folder called either photos or images and create your image organizing system in there as well.

Most people are using the uploads folder as a catchall. For all. Do of their images. Yes, you can. I want to encourage you to use uploads as a temporary holding place for things that you are planning on organizing, or, they’re just there temporarily for one purpose, and then they’re being deleted because you are going to spend so much time looking for images in that space.

If you are not careful, you can create the same sort of custom folders for your images as you can for your designs. So create some sort of structure. If you have. Images from, let’s say, three different styled stock websites, create and have your photos folder. And under that, you might have a folder called styled stock imagery.

And under that, you might have a folder for stock photo website B, and another one for stock photo website B under each of those, they may be broken down into. Either color palette or subject matter. However, you would look for that information, but get your images out of uploads and you can access them from the projects tab as well.

There’s a folder already there called uploads. But you don’t even know, you need to go into that because on your main project screen when you scroll down, if you have images that are in uploads, it will show all of them. So you can organize them straight from there. Get them into their image filing system.

Okay. It’s almost like you’re like behind me when I’m working and watching me just scroll through my Canva mindlessly to find things that are good for you.

Here’s the thing, Amanda, as unique as we all wanna think we are, we all suffer from a lot of the same things and very good company. Most people struggle with this. I would say, most of the folks that I am doing organization days for are not only. Are they comfortable with Canva? 

They are Cana power users because they’re creating content. They are Canva designers. In some cases. So it’s just, it’s an area that has a lot of people, and this is taken back to that conversation about being so close to something that you don’t realize.

It’s something that other people don’t have the same ability to automatically do. I am naturally an organizer. I see the structure. Where there is none, and I want to impose folders on things and, even those who are really comfortable using Canva are struggling with this as well. 

Number four is, and we touched on this a little bit. It is to use templates. If you are a natural designer, May not need templates. You can probably create something from scratch that is going to look professional, but there’s a large percentage of people using Canva who are using it strictly.

They wanna create great-looking content without being a designer. And I do think that starting with a template and canvas own template library is enormous now. And there are also all these third-party template memberships and template shops where you can purchase something specific. If you’re not finding what you need inside the canvas-included library.

But because these have all been created by people who are designers, who are going to factor in things like. White space and hierarchy and balance and all these kinds of design principles and approaches that a typical user may not know to look for. If you’re starting with a design, with a template that was designed well, and you’re able to use that brand kit that we talked about earlier to customize it, to fit your brand fonts, brand imagery, and colors, then you’re going to have something that has been Desi designed well.

If you’ve customized it with your branding it is going to feel unique to you. So if you’re feeling overwhelmed and staring at a blank canvas design and not sure how to get started, often the best use of your time is to not go that route. It’s to find a template that has the look and feel that you’re after and all the components that you’re after, and then start with that and customize it for your needs.

I love it. I think that’s amazing. I love starting with the templates, like you said I just love all of these things and I’m dying to go into my Canva account now, but I can’t because I have some other calls, but yeah, you’re making me wanna get right into Canva. I can’t wait to start organizing my folders. I’m gonna make sure that my iPad is charged after we get off the call as well.

So that’s a good thing to do. Grab a beverage of choice, toss something onto Netflix that you wanna binge, and then get started. It doesn’t require a ton of brain power to do. It’s just one of these things that we tend to say we’ll do later, and then we just never get around to it. You will feel so much better on the other side of doing it. 

I love it. Thank you so much, Brenda, for being here. And what do you have that we can get started with or how can we get started with working with you or, whatever is the best way that we can utilize you and your amazing brain power and your organization in Canva? To fix what we have.

I guess the best place to look for me is just on my website @brendacadman.com and there’s a section called free vs on there. There’s a guide and a couple of guides there. There’s a training called time-saving tips. Time-saving tips. That’ll walk you through some of the ways to save a lot of time and use it more efficiently.

There’s a link to our Facebook group there. And then there’s a lot of information around many available courses, larger programs. And then also, if you are interested in having me just do the whole thing for you, organize your entire account. There’s an option under V IP day as well.

That’s awesome. I love it. Thank you so much for being here and sharing your amazing expertise with us. We truly appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Definitely.

Stop Relying on Social Media to Get New Clients-Complete this 2 Minute Test Now

Welcome to episode 223 of The Determined Mom Show. I am your host, Amanda Tento, and today I want to talk to you about something heavy on my mind lately, as I see so many people just. Continuing to focus on social media. So many marketers out there are just heavily talking about social media and why you must be on social media and why you must be doing ticks and reels and all of these things, which I do believe that they do have their place in a marketing plan.

However, they are not where you should be relying on getting new customers and clients, especially if you’re a service-based business. Because if you have a local business and you’re a service-based business and you serve a client in some way, shape, or form, they’re going to be searching on Google for.

They’re not going to be searching on social media for you. They may happen to, somehow, by the grace of the algorithm, the skies open up and they see your post on a day that they’re thinking about it. maybe. But you have to do a lot of posts for that to happen. You have to have a lot of followers for that to happen, and you have to have the right messaging for that to happen.

 For all of those things to align and for those people that follow you to get that very clear message on the very day that they’re thinking about it, it’s very unlikely. I hate to say that. But it is, it’s very. What should you be doing instead? You should be focusing on Google. Google is where people go to not only search for your services, but they search for your services when they’re ready to purchase, right?

They’re not going to go spend hours on TikTok trying to find a hairdresser near them that can do the hairstyle that they want. No, they’re going to be going to Google, trying to find a hair salon, trying to find whatever that service is that you offer on Google, not on Facebook. Not on Instagram, not on TikTok, not on any of those places.

They’re always going to be going to Google. If they do happen to get a recommendation from a friend or a family member on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok, they’re still going to go to Google. They’re going to look up your ratings. They’re going to make sure that experience, that was fabulous, that their friend.

Family members, coworkers, and neighbors with your business were not just a one-time occurrence. They wanna make sure that you have a good reputation. They wanna make sure that other people have been satisfied with your services.

They’re going to go to Google and check you out. Please make sure that you have a Google presence, make sure that you have a Google business profile, and that it’s filled out, and completely optimized. Make sure that everything is accurate. Make sure you have products, and services, Whatever you offer should be on there with links directly back to you.

And that link directly back to the page that they can purchase that product or service from, and make sure that you are optimizing it. Make sure that you’re posting to it regularly. Google wants you to post at least one update per week.

That doesn’t fly with us because we’ve seen that three updates per week hit a sweet spot with our clients and their profiles and make Google Understand where they should be showing up and get traffic to their websites way quicker.

So three times per week is what we recommend. And you also should be making sure that your website is optimized for search engines. Make sure that Google can find everything they need, they understand what your website is about. Your website is technically sound.

All of these things are way more important and way more important than your spending. On social media, if you invest that time that you’re spending on social media, reinvest it into making sure that you have your Google updated regularly, making sure that it’s optimized, and also making sure that your website is optimized as well.

This will go way further in terms of hours and sales than anything that you could do on social media. except for ads. If you want to make an impact on social media at this point, unfortunately unlike 10 years ago, you need to be paying for it.

The other way around relying on social media is that you can pay for those ads, which then you will get traction, but it’s coming at a cost, which is a monetary cost.

Right now, I want you to go to your Google Analytics I want you to look at where your audience is coming from and if your audience, when you look at that, if they’re not coming from any of the social media platforms that you’re posting on regularly, then you need to stop posting on them.

Reallocate that. And if those people that are coming to your website from those social media platforms are not converting into appointments, booked into products, or sold into new clients, then you need to stop posting on those networks.

It’s not how you’re going to make it. The difference in your revenue, it’s going to be a revenue suck because you’re either hiring someone to do those things or you’re taking time away from your business and your business growth to do things that are not serving you. I want you to do that little checkup right now.

Go to your Google Analytics, find out where people are coming from, and find out which social media platforms are working for you if any. and stick with only those. I don’t want you to delete the other ones because you still need them for search engine optimization purposes or SEO purposes but just do that little checkup.

Do yourself a favor, and buy yourself a little sanity as we go into the end of this year and the rest of next year. It’s going to be the best five minutes that you’ve ever spent looking at your Google Analytics. If you don’t have your Google Analytics set up. That’s a whole nother thing.

You really should have your Google Analytics set up because if you don’t, you can’t do simple checks like this to make sure that what you’re doing in your marketing is going to work.

 Please make sure your website is being tracked Using Google Analytics. You can see who’s coming, where they’re coming from, how long they’re staying there, what pages they’re visiting, what things they’re engaging in, and what they’re clicking. , all of those things. If you need help with either one of those things, by all means, reach out to us.

You can listen to Episode 209. To understand a little bit more about Google Analytics and why you should be tracking with the new Google Analytics version. I hope this lesson slash episode hits well with you and or sits well with you, and I hope that you get something from it.

How to Set Healthy Boundaries to Strengthen Client Relationships

Welcome to this episode of The Determined Mom Show, and I have the lovely Julie Moe with me, and we are gonna talk today about how to set healthy boundaries to strengthen client relationships.

I’m very excited for you to be here, and I’m excited to talk about this topic, but of course, we all are dying to know more about you, so tell us about you and how you got started, and what you’re doing.

My name is Julie Moe. I am a multi-passionate entrepreneur. I have a few different businesses. My first is a web design business called Zu V Media, where I am building Squarespace websites specifically for most entrepreneurs and people within the music business. I’m very fortunate to live here in Nashville, so the music business is a big part of my life.

In a lot of different ways. And then I also have a coaching program and a course called the Gutsy Mama Project, where I help moms do the same thing that I do. So I built a business-building website while my baby was napping. 

I wanna help moms do the same thing and overcome that mommy guilt that Is a very real and true problem, and I think that most mothers on various levels struggle with it, whether it’s working too much, whether it’s cleaning too much, whether it’s just not having enough time to do all the things we think our children need.

I created the Gutsy Mama Project really to help moms overcome that while still being able to build a business that they love and maintain a true sense of self. While they are outside, that’s something outside of their families. 

That’s awesome. It’s so needed. I wish there was something like that when I was getting started five years ago. Trying to figure out my journey and that kind of thing cuz it would’ve been very helpful to have some sort of structure and base and foundation. And also it’s so hard to guide you right. 

In the community too. It’s such a big part because I was among the first of my friends to have a child.

So all of a sudden, all my single friends are single and they’re wonderful people and I still love them very much, but they don’t understand what it is to be a mom and they’re. Other coaching programs or other courses teach score space and that’s fine, but there’s nothing mom specific.

I said, Okay, this is a niche that is underserved because when you are a mom running a business, and especially when you’re just starting, you have a specific set of challenges that someone without children or even a dad does not have. Having people who understand and you can jump on a coaching colleague if you don’t even need anything and you’re just there for the juice and you might just need to complain for a minute.

Like sometimes you need that. And especially running through the pandemic because I launched my program in 2020, January 2020, right before the world shut down. It was such a blessing. For me, I hoped it was a blessing for the monster in it, but it was a real blessing for me every Wednesday having a coaching call and having people to talk to and help and it felt like my world was very much expanded, even though physically it had contracted, so it was a wonderful thing. 

That is perfect timing. I know. During that same timeframe, I decided that I was gonna run a summit for moms, and business owners, and, It launched on April 6th, which I think was like our launch date.

And so it was like right after everything shut down.

So luckily, 90% of the world was at home, so it turned out to be successful. But I know exactly what you mean about that timing. It’s okay, is this gonna be good or is it? Bad and then it turned out to be good. So that was. ,

I mean it, like I said, it was a real blessing. It was interesting though, launching a course and having to pivot and learn how to pivot. Because, before that my marketing was very aspirational, and after that, you got to the point where are you selling the yacht or are you selling the life raft and going into Covid? I think a lot of people were looking for a life raft.

They’re like, Okay, I don’t just need a job. I need a job where I can work from home and homeschool and keep my kids on computers and all of these things. So, how can I do this? I was like, Oh, you can design websites. Here we go. People still need websites. Businesses are launching, billionaires were made.

It was a really interesting time to start a business and a really interesting time to run a business. And I think going into the next few months, it’ll be interesting to see what happens with the American economy and the world economy and how I think a lot of marketers are trying to figure out, Okay, do I need to pivot now? How am I trying to pivot my business now? But really, the thing I love about web design is I didn’t need to leave my house either. 

That’s the biggest thing. Like you can do it in your pajamas, you can do it, there’s no requirement. Other than client meetings, of course, you’re gonna have those client meetings, and you what?

I do everything on Zoom now, and I think everyone is just used to doing it on Zoom or Google Meet or however you wanna do it. And it’s just become such the norm that even a lot of my clients who are here are based in the same city. We’re still on Zoom. Because it saves everyone time, like going to meet somewhere, like going for coffee.

All these things. We’re still on Zoom and it’s still totally fine. And like I said, I can do it at 11 p.m. if I need to, or I can do it, while my daughter is sleeping or heaven forbid watching Octas or whatever it is. It’s the kind of business where I’m not stuck at being a nine-to-five, which I love.

It allows you to choose when you want to do things with your daughter versus when you have time to do things with your daughter. I think that’s a big differentiation, at least for me.

That’s a perfect segue into boundaries. And how important it is to set boundaries in your business, especially when you are a solo entrepreneur. It can be a little bit difficult cuz you wanna do everything for everyone. 

And especially when you’re just starting. You wanna take on all the work and all the business and all the clients and you wanna do as much as you possibly can. And when I first started my business, I first started my business in 2015. Before I was a mother and before I was married before I was a mother.

I very much bought into the culture of the hustle. That’s what in 2015, that’s what everybody was still in the hustle, the yacht, standing in front of the big, fancy car like all of these things. Hustle hustle. Fake it till you make it. And all of that’s nonsense. Absolute Bs, right? Complete and total bs. 

And so I bought into that and I did okay, but I was doing everything for everyone. You needed a website, great. You need social media management and great influencer management. I got you photo shoots. Let me take your photos. All of these things. Graphic design was a lot, but at the same time, it was single. 

So I was like, No big deal. I can handle this. You need me to go and have drinks at 11 p.m. Okay. And then, 2016, in the fall of 2016, I was in Canada on a business trip with my biggest client and I took a PO, my very first positive pregnancy test and I was like, Oh, snap.

I do not have, I don’t have anything in place. To make this happen. I don’t have anything in place to set this up so that I can do this mom thing. And then at the same time, I was like, You know what? Other moms do it. I can have it all. I can do this, but. I couldn’t, and so I didn’t have those boundaries set even then with my clients.

Like I didn’t post any of my pregnancy photos. I didn’t post my maternity photos. Most people didn’t know I had a baby until my daughter was almost a year old. Because I was scared that they would think cuz I was, I was scared they would think that I wouldn’t be able to do my job. When I had a baby.

Let’s talk about how scary it is that’s actually like a real thing. That is like literally the reality that we as women have to deal with. That sucks.

100%. It’s known that I was emailing in while I was in labor. I’m like on my phone, sending emails. Luckily I had an epidural, so it wasn’t the worst, but I was emailing when I was in labor, I was back at my desk six days postpartum. With that iteration of my company as it was.

Because I hadn’t set up my systems, I hadn’t set up my boundaries. These are the times I’m available. This is what I’m unwilling to do for you. I’m not going to do everything. This is what you are paying me to do. These are, so I hadn’t set those boundaries and it wound up being a massive cluster fuck for me.

I wound up having tremendous mommy guilt. My daughter was about four months old. I guess that’s probably about when they start rolling over, sorry about that. And she had just, Rolled over and my mom had sent me a video of doing cuz I was at a client meeting with a client I did not because I wanted their money.

I hated the work. And when I got that video, the mommy guilt was so intense. Like it was the summer in Nashville, so it’s 8 million degrees and I’m sitting in a hot car, not a car, not turned on crying hysterically. Deep tears like real hurt inside tears. And I called my husband, and I said, I don’t think I can do this anymore.

At the time I had two staffers, so I. Responsible for people’s jobs and health insurance and all of these things. And I said I don’t think I can do this. I felt like I had to choose between Working and my family. And so I thought this is my only other option.

I am going to be a stay home mom. And luckily I had the means, and my husband and I figured it out so that I could stay home with my daughter for a while. So I gave my staffers a severance and said, Hey. Sorry. This is what has to happen. My kid comes first. And then I tried. I tried being a stay-at-home mother, and at first, it was amazing, right?

You’ve got this beautiful, perfect little human who’s just. You’re so in love with it, and it’s amazing. And then you realize, your days blend into one another. And then after a while after baby music classes and all these things, you start to realize that there are whole groups of people who did not know my name. I was Roxy’s mom or Jeff’s wife. 

Like as an entity. In and of myself, I lost who I was. And I had gone from Julie Moe, badass CEO, hustler boss lady to And not that I’m not proud to be Roxy’s mom or Jeff’s wife, but my identity. A human as an individual had just gone. And then on top of that, you add into that point where it got to the point where none of the money in our bank account was brought in by me. 

For someone who’s been working since she was 16 years old, you start to feel guilty like, Oh, I wanna go get a pedicure. Is that weird? So I went from having mommy guilt to feeling guilty because I wasn’t happy being a stay-at-home mother when there were so many moms who would love that. And then also adding in that mommy money guilt. Which is just absurd because it was not like I wasn’t working. 

So you just had three guilty players? That could be a guilt trifecta there. And the guilt that I didn’t even know was a thing. And cuz my mom always used to say, My mom worked when I was young and I never blamed her for it. She was wonderful at her job, but she still to this day feels mommy guilt. I’m in my forties and her youngest, so my mom has money. 

My mom has mommy guilt that’s been living with her for decades. So how, what did I need to do to break that generational cycle of mommy guilt? That is my job. What sets boundaries, right? And partially that is setting boundaries.

I lucked into building a square space website when a friend of a friend called me and he’s Hey Julia, you know I’m the south. I’m gonna use an accent. Matt tells me you’re building some websites and we like to look at these Squarespace websites. Can you build me a couple of them for some clients of mine?

I was like, sure. Never built a website before. But I wanted the money and I needed the challenge cuz my brain was atrophying and full of nothing but Moana and so I needed that. So I jumped in, and I said. I’m smart. I can figure this out. And I haven’t looked back like one phone call changed my life.

In there, and in the year subsequent, I have had to learn to set those boundaries because I have things in my life that are more important. So the first thing that I had to do to set those boundaries was to get crystal clear on what those boundaries were going to be like. The things that are going to be important for me if you want to make sure that you are home for dinner every day, set that boundary.

Me, I have to be available to pick up my kid from school. She’s five, just starting kindergarten, but I have to be available at three o’clock. My husband travels for. Pretty significantly. So he’s not available. There is nobody else but me. So in my calendar and my proposal from the very beginning, I say my office hours are between 9:00 AM and 3:00 PM and 

I get the occasional client who will call or text after that. And I say I’m at the park with my daughter. And I let them know is this was an emergency and that I need to jump on the phone right. While I park with my daughter? 

Yes, exactly. And, I think one thing. At least I’ve learned that they’re still going to work with you. They just have to work with you on your terms instead of whenever they want to. And that was a really hard thing for me as a business owner to learn, is that they’re still going to hire you.  They’re just going to have to work around certain parameters.

I think as I said, I love websites. One of the reasons it’s, cuz it’s that it’s not a daily turnaround project. Very rarely. I need a website tomorrow. In which case, I’m happy to turn on a website tomorrow, like my fee is doubled because I have to work 20 hours straight or something. But like it gives you that time like, Hey, I need a website in the next two weeks.

I’m like, cool. It gives me the time to be creative and build it and send it and then have that time, whether it’s it, whether I can’t sleep and I’m doing it at two in the morning cuz I have insomnia or whether it’s, I’m at nine in the morning and I’m feeling creative, whatever it is. 

And I find, I had a client call once and they could, they were on the West Coast and I’m here in Central and the only time we could make it work was after my daughter was home from school. It’s fine, this needs to get done. But I said, but Roxy was on my lap for the whole call and he said to me, there was a time when you’d be fired for that.

I was like there was a time when I would never take on a client who would do exactly that. My boundary, I’m very honest with the fact that I am a mother. That is important to me. And if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t think being a mother is important, I do not wanna work with you. Yes, that’s so true. I’m okay.

I will find other work. I will find another business. But if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t understand that being a mother and raising a good human isn’t important, then no thank you.

I agree. I love that. It’s also freeing that ability to say no, to those types of people or those people that push your boundaries or just flat-out disrespect them.

Ignore them. There are clients of mine who don’t even have my phone number, and it’s not because I’m actively hiding it from them, but it’s more so that there are ways to get in touch with me that are just as fast as the phone. Here is my calendar link booking at your leisure. Here is how you know, I put it in my proposals. This is the way we are going to communicate.

 Here is the link to book calls with me. You get this many calls with this project. Additional calls will be this much. We get this many rounds of revision. Additional rounds are this much and I’m very clear and I’m very honest and I had to learn that the hard way. 

About, I was too scared to be clear. About what they were getting, what the scope of work was, and how long it was gonna take. I was scared that they were going to not accept it. And then I got in trouble when I sent the final invoice and of wtf.

I’m like, oh. So now I’m just crystal clear. Right up front. It’s in writing and that’s the best way to be. I find that most people appreciate it. And if someone can’t afford it, that’s okay. That’s somebody else’s client. So that’s not my dreamy client. I have used data and reverse-engineered my dream clients. And my dream clients can afford me. They pay quickly. 

And they respect boundaries and they book in when they need to talk to me and things like that. They appreciate it when I say no, I’ll have one of my clients who’ll be like, Hey Julie, I need to create a quiz for my website. Can you help me with that? I’m just like, probably, but no, I don’t. 

Yes, some people can do it cheaper though, cuz I’m gonna charge you for the two days of research that I need to do to make it amazing. So there are probably people who can do that better and faster for you. And I don’t need you, I don’t think you wanna pay for my learning curve. 

Exactly. So I think it’s a great boundary as well as knowing what you’re able to offer and what you’re not.

And what brings me joy? Like I can do graphic design, and I can use Adobe, but I find no joy in graphic design, and some people do it far better than I do. And I will happily be direct for you, but I will not design. Your logo. I don’t wanna design your canvas templates. I don’t wanna design any of those things.

Because there are better people and I find no joy in it. And setting that boundary of you know what? N I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s for me. Or if they have a larger project, they need a complete rebrand, I’m like, Great. I would love to help you with the web design portion of your rebrand.

I will happily help you with the copywriting portion of your rebrand, but this is not for me. And that’s hard. And I have this conversation regularly with the moms that I coach, because they wanna do everything, They want all the money. They want their clients to be happy. They wanna do everything.

I’m like, Listen, it’s okay for you to say no to them. And oftentimes, if it’s something that you don’t know how to do, they’ll ask me like, Hey, do you have any experience with this? And be like, I’m sorry I don’t, here’s what I know that could work for that. But this isn’t a course for how to build.

Forms and air table. Or any of those things, and I say, Listen if they are going to pay you a decent amount of money and you are comfortable with that, great. If you think that’s an important skill for you to have moving forward, great. Otherwise, it is perfectly all right for you to say.

I’m a great web designer and I will help you with that. If you need me to look into sourcing something else, I can happily do that too. But this is not My forte. The chances are you’re not advertising, Hey, I’m building out fantastic forms and air tables. No. So it’s okay to say no to those things. It’s okay to say no to pieces of projects. 

So my question for you is, what are maybe the top three to five boundaries? That we need to set with a client to have that great relationship with them.

I think time, your time boundaries, and being honest with them. Like I said, I put it in writing, I have time. My calendar is blacked out between three and eight 30 and I don’t, no one works after that. So like my calendar is blocked out between three and eight 30 is Roxy time. That’s my daughter. That’s it.

I think you’re, that, I think it, you’re, for me, my, my time boundary is my biggest, my other one is like getting, like I said, really clear on what you’re doing for them. Because it’s easy for scope creep to happen, especially like on a web design project. Oh, they need one more page or we need a little This. Oh, can you make this happen for me? Oh. Can you source all of my images? Can you write this copy? Oh, can you do this for me? I’m happy to do that.

My rate is $95 an hour to build a half hour. Oh great. Sorry. Oh, we’ll do that ourselves. Okay, great. No problem. Cut that scope. Creep off. Be like, Oh yes. This is out. I have never had a client who I’ve gotten to say and say, You know what? We’re getting into some scope creep on this project.

I agreed to X, Y, and Z in our contract, and this is what’s happening. And that’s the other boundary. Put it all in writing. Have a rock-solid contract. I don’t want any, like part of what I do in the Getsy, my project, you get a rock solid contract in there that I paid thousands of dollars to have written because I was working with big companies.

So I was going to a lawyer because they had big lawyers and I had a, So I needed to have a lawyer too. Making sure that I wasn’t being screwed over, but Rock solid. That other boundary is having that rock solid contract and putting all this stuff in writing and being explicitly clear to the point where it’s almost overkill of clear.

How many pages is your website gonna be, how is it’s gonna look, when is it’s gonna launch, what your dates are, and when they are expected to give you feedback by being Super rock solid on those dates? With people. So if they’re late, if the web website project is late being delivered, you can say, here we go.

This is why. That’s why. And like I’ve had a project that’s just launched today that’s been dragging for months, and it’s not my fault, it’s just, it’s a big project and there’s a lot of people involved in making decisions, but they understood from the beginning because I said, This is how long it will take me to do these things.

If I have all of the information that I need, right? Like I’m just, I’ll wait weeks for feedback cuz the CEO’s busy and I understand that. But at the same time, when they come back to me with feedback and be like, Okay, I’ve moved on to another project for now. I will have time for this at the top of next week and I will make those revisions.

You’ll have them tuned by the end of next week and be honest and be like, Hey, this is when I can get to this because you guys are dragging and I’ve never had. Once you speak about it intelligently and your boundaries with enthusiasm, people are okay with it. And I think more and more there are more old school people who expect you to work 24/7.

We’re coming into a world where we just can’t. It just doesn’t work anymore. It’s the thing that everyone’s talking about. The quiet quitting. I’ve heard a lot about that later. So there’s been a lot of that in the last few months. I noticed that even when I had my last corporate job, I had a CEO who would email me on Friday night.

We used to call it drive-by emails, and I was the head of marketing, so there was nothing I can do on a Friday night. What am I gonna do? Send a press release. So I would often draft the email response and send it first thing Monday morning, cuz that was my way of saying, these are my boundaries.

Not going to reply during, I’m not going to reply to this until Monday morning, and I do that now with clients as well. Cuz there are no web design emergencies. No. I’ll add it to my task list for Monday morning, or maybe if I’m feeling risky Sunday night, so I can get a jump on the week.

I might draft the email, but I will still send it Monday morning. And just setting those time boundaries for yourself as well, because you need to set those in your own heart too, and accept that this is okay, and get comfortable with those boundaries and say, I’m quitting at three.

Because you will finish the job by three. Then if you don’t give yourself your time boundary, you’ll let that job Yep. It will take, It will expand to take the amount of time that you give it.

Yes. That’s so true. I can get all my work done in two days, like for all of my clients, and have three days off, but I never do it. Okay. Because I have five days. I’m like, Me too. Why not? I have five days to do it. No. Drives me nuts.

That’s part of the reason I send emails too, that I will have this to you by the end of next week. It sets that boundary for me too, cuz if it can drag if nobody’s in a real hurry okay. So it’s frustrating. 

That’s awesome. These are amazing tips that you’ve shared with us, and if you’re listening and you are newly setting up your business, or you want to newly set up your business, or whatever the case might be please listen to what Julie is telling you. It will change your life.

It will make your life so much easier. Yes, and you’ll be so much happier as a business owner, not just if you’re a mom, whether you’re a man or a woman, whether or not you have children or not. Setting those boundaries early in your business will set you up for success. And happiness in your business much more.

Exactly. And your clients will respect you. And you will avoid burnout, exactly. I love it. Thank you so much, Julie. Where is the best place for people to get in touch with you online?

If you are a mom and you are interested in setting up your own business, you can find out more information about The Gutsy Mama project@gutsymama.com, or you can find me on Instagram at Gutsy Mama Project, I would love to connect with anyone interested.

Awesome. Thank you so much for being here, Julie, and sharing all of your amazing wisdom and boundary-setting. Oh, thank you so much for having me. I loved it. Thank you.

The Top 5 Lessons I have Learned After Five Years in Business

Welcome to episode 221 of The Determined Mom Show. I am your host, Amanda Tento, and I am very excited to be here to talk to you about the top five lessons that I’ve learned after five years in business. I will tell you that being in business for five years is a huge milestone. 

I did not know that I was going to make it this far, and frankly, it’s been a very difficult five years. Many people will tell you that. It’s easy that you just have to keep going, keep persevering, keep doing this, keep doing that. Stay consistent. 

You hear all of these things, especially on social media. It’s not that easy, but I wanna share with you today some of the I should say, I wanna share with you today five things that I have learned in my five years that have had I been able to stick to these things from the very beginning would have probably made my business accelerate in a much faster way and allowed me to focus and have the time that I.

To start, When I started my business, I started my business because I did not want to go back to work at nine to five or nine to seven as I was working before. And I didn’t want to miss out on the baby years of our third child, which we thought was going to be our last child. And here we are expecting baby number four, but I am so happy to be in a position.

I have my business established. I have a team. I have everything in place that will allow me to enjoy the babyhood of our fourth child and our final child, and just. Allow me to have what I envisioned five years ago when our daughter was born, and when I thought that’s what I wanted.

It’s taken five years to get there. If you’re just starting, you’re discouraged, you’re tired, you’re whatever, definitely do not give up. I will say that, just take the five things that I’m going to say. 

Now and resonate with them, ruminate on them. Think about them. Think about how you can do this in your business for each of these five different topics that I’m gonna talk about Number one is to do what works for you. It’s really important. To have a reason for starting your business, that reason should be what you build your business around.

For, I started my business so I could be there for our kids for Girl Scouts, for all of the different activities that they have at school, for chorus concerts, for musicals, for parent-teacher conferences, all the things that I couldn’t be attending when I was working five days a week, nine to seven, on a rotating schedule.

That is why I started my business. You need to sit down and think about why you started your business and make sure that whatever you’re doing in your business is working for you and not against the reason that you started your business, cuz eventually.

You have that you are going to resent your business and you’re not going to treat it as a business, you’re gonna trade it as a hobby. It’s very important to make sure that you do what works for you.

Number two is to set boundaries. Set boundaries with your clients. Set boundaries with your work hours. Set boundaries with your family. Set boundaries with your friends. Set boundaries with everything. You are a business. You are not a hobby.

And I think a lot of people when you tell them that you own your own business and you work from home, will either try to take advantage of that. Oh, can you pick my kid up from the bus stop?

Can you watch them after school? Can do all of these different things that people think just because you’re at home and you’re. They don’t necessarily understand what you do. Like literally no one in my family still after five years has any clue what I do in my business, which is fine.

They don’t need to. They don’t understand the internet or the interwebs or whatever. They might call it, but it’s really important that you set these boundaries with your neighbors, with your friends, because you need to have that time dedicated to your business. Block it out on a calendar, make sure that those boundaries are set, and if that particular pickup wouldn’t work for you, if you were working in a regular business, then it shouldn’t work for you in your business.

Now, okay, I know that may sound mean or harsh or whatever, but if you don’t set those boundaries for the people around you from the very beginning, they’re going to walk all over you and they’re going to encroach. All of your business time is extremely important.

The third thing, number three is not being afraid to break up with clients. I’ve had clients that were paying me $5,000 a month that I was just like, I cannot work for you anymore, because their demands are. Way more than that. $5,000 or whatever it is worth, your mental health is more important than any amount of money, and you must recognize those red flags from the very, very beginning.

There are many of them and some of those red flags are, they’re extreme. urgently trying to get started. Like they want you to start yesterday. They’re willing to pay you top dollar because this means that somebody else dumped them and they don’t know how to do what that other person was doing necessarily.

It sounds great at the beginning, and you’re thinking, Oh yeah, this is gonna be great. But there’s a reason that they know that they have to do that because no one else is willing to work with them. Very important.

Don’t be afraid to break up with those people that are pushing your boundaries, those clients that are giving you headaches and nightmares, and all of the things like those are not your people. You can find a better client that has just as much work for you, for the same pay, but they’re not giving you those headaches.

It’s very important to not have those headaches in your business. Especially because being a mom and a business owner, we have many other headaches in our lives just from getting the kids off to school, to packing lunches too. Doing dinner means that we don’t need that extra stress in our business. We can find a way to organically find and attract those clients that are not going to drive us nuts.

Number four. Don’t buy every single shiny course that you come across. I am, this is one of the things that I’ve struggled with over the last five years, and I have so many courses that I’ve purchased, and 90% of them I have never finished, never completed. I do have a lot that I have completed.

My advice would be to stay within your niche with those courses. Make sure that they’re going to produce income for you if you take them. I would stay away from coaching courses like group coaching and things like that. If you want to hire a coach, I would hire a coach one on one. So then that way you can get your questions answered.

You feel like you’re connected to that person. I would definitely. Do not waste money on something that you don’t know for certain that is going to bring you in revenue or increase your income.

Number five, this is the last one, and I’m glad that I finally did this, although I did it a couple of years too late, it took me a couple of years to figure out what my niche was, right? I figured it out. Early on, but also late. That Google business profile was what I wanted to focus on.

It was my niche because very few other people in the SEO industry were talking about it. It’s almost like they didn’t realize how important it was, four years ago. And it took me a whole year of trying to figure this out, trying to figure that out to get to the point where I was like, Okay, this is the only thing that I wanna focus on.

And even after that, I tried to focus on other tools and other areas, but I always came back to that and I figured out that I just needed to stick with that, only talk about that, only help people with that because that is where I started gaining my traction. Started getting clients and started seeing the results for those clients.

Whatever your instinct is, I would say stick with that. Stick with your niche and do not distract from that. Just keep building content around that. Keep building sales around that. Build your audience, build your name, and your success will come if you stick to that niche.

I know this is a short episode, but I don’t like my time being wasted, and I don’t like yours being wasted either. I hope that you have enjoyed these top five lessons, and I promise you that if you stick with these five things and create your boundaries, principles, and. Niche and all of those things that we’ve talked about in this episode that you will have success.

How to Determine Your Current Parenting Style

Welcome to this episode of The Determined Mom Show. I am your host. I’m Amanda Tento, and I have the amazing Tanya Lopez with me. She is the owner of Full Circle Hypnotherapy and she is also a parenting coach. 

Today we’re gonna talk about how to determine your current parenting style. She’s gonna walk us through some of it. Current parenting styles or the different parenting styles, and you can help to determine your own.

I’m very excited that you’re here. This is something that we haven’t touched on too much in the podcast, and I love it because of you. I think everyone has their quote-unquote parenting style that they either aspire to or that they feel that they are on good days and then on bad days, the one that they’re like, Oh no, that’s not me, is it?

Did I just do that? I love that you’re here to help us clarify this and walk through it and maybe even see how we can try to shift into whatever one that we are more called to. 

Thank you. Shall I start a little bit by talking about conscious, self-conscious, and unconscious parenting? Okay basically these are just three ways of being, I’ll start by talking about unconscious parenting. I think a lot of people will have heard of conscious parenting. I’ll start by talking about unconscious parenting, which is really when we’re unaware of our past programming, our trigger.

And all the kinds of experiences that get played out in our current relationships, especially in the context of parenting. Many of our reactions are automatic or they’re set at a default position. When we are triggered, which can then impact our relationship with our children.

Now, I would say that unconscious parenting is quite a powerless state. We may feel that we don’t have a sense of internal control because we are not even aware that we’re being triggered. And we may end up blaming children for what they’re doing and how they’re being. 

That’s unconscious parenting in nurture. Okay, now I’ll talk about self-conscious parenting. Now I would say that this is probably the parenting paradigm that I’ve come across the most. When I’ve been delivering my parenting program, self-conscious parenting is when we are super aware of other people’s perceived opinions or views about us.

We may feel constantly judged and feel that our parenting skills and our parenting decisions are constantly being evaluated as good. Now what can happen is that when we’re in front of other people, we might change what we normally do because we want to please others. And when we fall into that trap of pleasing other people, what happens is that we abandon ourselves.

We abandon our beliefs, our principles, and our values, and also we abandon our children’s needs because we’re trying to. Society’s expectations and other people’s expectations. Now again, I would say self-conscious parenting is quite a powerless date because we might feel like victims and we may blame other people for our behavior.

And what I would say is that for sure, when we’re out in public, we can feel judged because all eyes are sometimes on us, and this can trigger a fight, flight, and freeze reaction, and they’re so automatic and really hard to interrupt. 

Now fights can look like shouting or yelling or giving bribes and threats to our children. Flight can look like, just leaving where we are, or completely avoiding somewhere freezing can look like confusion and being unsure about what to do next.

Now, it’s worth remembering that self-conscious parenting, really it’s about us being the story maker. And us being the storyteller, we’re only guessing at what other people are thinking about us. The story and the subsequent feelings are really of our making.

And that’s not to, that’s not to diminish the impact of the judgment that people do make about us. And because they do. I think that’s why I’ve come across self-conscious parenting. And I’m sure this is probably resonating with a lot of people because being judged is such a horrible position to be in.

Now the third parenting way of being is conscious parenting. Now, this is where we’re aware of our past programming. Or we’re aware that our past programming is having an impact on our relationship with children. I would say with conscious parenting, we know that there’s more going on than just our children’s behavior.

And the thing I like to stress about conscious parenting, it’s not about being perfect, it’s just about being aware of what’s not working and taking responsibility for making change. It’s not about making yourself wrong, It’s not making your child wrong, and it’s also not about blaming external factors.

Now, when we are in that state, there is the possibility of change, whereas when it comes to self-conscious parenting or unconscious parenting change can be a lot harder. Now when the possibility of change exists, it helps us to parent the child in front of us rather than the child we hoped for, or the expectations that we put on children because of our past programming.

And this is the beautiful thing about conscious parenting because we can start to change. You. Generational patterns that don’t serve future generations. They’re the three parenting ways to be in a nutshell. 

I love that. I love that it’s so easily defined too. Like it’s not like you’re questioning like, Am I doing this one right now or am I doing that one right now? Like you’ve defined it okay, you’re doing this one or that one. And I wanna go back to self-conscious parenting because I’ve had. experiences, just, with moms, like other moms are very judgy, in general. 

I had an experience when our middle daughter was in preschool and there were lots of other moms, they’re like, there’s a whole class full of moms. Right? There were only two women. Really when their child would act up or when their child would do whatever, like they just didn’t feel, or like when my child or anybody’s child would act up or do anything. 

They didn’t judge. They didn’t have that like judges, mc, Gerson hat on, whatever you wanna call it. And those are the two women that I resonated with. And we’re still friends to this day I don’t know, six years later because. We didn’t have, we all were like, you know what kids are gonna do. 

Like I can’t control them. It’s just what it is, and we were like, Neither can you. It’s that letting go of that self-conscious parenting in an open setting and also not judging others that kind of drew us together. I think it’s interesting cuz that was a. Like a bold example in my head of that, of that, ‘s how I met Kelly and Nella. I think it’s interesting.

What I would say about the three parenting ways to be is that it’s quite fluid. A lot of parents will probably recognize all three of them. There are times when I’ve been completely unconscious and I’ve parented in a way that hasn’t made me completely happy with, the actions I took, with the words I used.

And then there are other times when, like you’re saying, there is a lot of judgment of parents out there. Self-conscious parenting is probably something that everyone’s familiar with. You just have to read the papers. Anything that you read, parents get blamed for a lot. That’s

Then conscious parenting is, again, I would say lots of people probably have conscious moments, it’s almost like we have moments and they’re all fluids. Moments could be unconscious, some moments could be self-conscious and some moments will be conscious. It’s not to beat yourself up about any of them.

And it’s not to say I am just going to be a conscious parent all the time from now on. Like an easy button. I wish there was, And I think what I would say is really that conscious parenting can only really happen when we change our relationship with ourselves.

And what I talk about a lot is compassion. That to change how we are with children, we’ve gotta change some of that. We’ve gotta do some of the work on ours. How are we with ourselves? Are we compassionate, and kind, or are we judging? Judgment with ourselves? We sometimes don’t need other people to judge us. We’re sitting there judging ourselves. 

They’re just like, Oh, that lady’s doing some kids. Whatever. And you’re over there thinking, Oh my God, they think I’m like the worst parent ever. And you’re like creating not only your internal dialogue but the internal dialogue for people that probably aren’t even realizing what’s going on.

Because we’re so critical of ourselves. Just to say a little bit more about conscious parenting, it’s that to be conscious and compassionate, none of us have a blueprint for it. We didn’t have role models for this way of parenting. And to just think, Oh, I’m going to become a conscious parent.

A lot of this is outside of our comfort zone. It’s outside of our known experience and knowledge. So really if you are striving to be a conscious parent, you are a trailblazer. It is. And if you think about our past programming, if we’d had compassionate and conscious parenting, how differently would we show up?

Because we would first and foremost, be kind, loving, forgiving, and gentle with ourselves. Instead, the kind of parenting that we’ve probably all experienced means that we are full of feelings of failure, guilt, and shame, which arise out of unconscious and self-conscious parenting patterns. 

That’s very true, and especially, Being of that, what is it? Millennial, Gen X generation, like it’s I don’t even know, honestly, it’s a weird thing like our parents just a, let us do whatever. Like we weren’t monitored as closely as our kids are monitored. But then at the same time, They didn’t let us do everything.

I don’t know, it’s just like a weird, like there’s just, at least in my mind, like I think about my parents and my friend’s parents and that kind of thing, and it’s just there’s just like a weird don’t even know what you would call it, like a paradox or something.

I don’t know. It’s just a very odd combination of overall generational parenting, they wouldn’t let you do this, but then at the same time, you could go and do that. And it’s what? That doesn’t make any sense. Like, why would you let me do that if you, Anyway?

That’s a really good example, isn’t it, of unconscious parenting. As a child, you are so much more aware of going, That doesn’t make any sense. There are lots and lots of unconscious things going on in our past, and it then becomes really hard for us to consciously parent when we’ve never had that. I think we are at such a different time, aren’t we? We’re more conscious of everything. 

And just also, another thing that I see a lot of challenges with is people being on the same page, like couples, like parents not even, I wouldn’t even say couples, but like parents or co-parents. I see a lot of conflict in that like the dad sees things one way.

The mom sees things another way. The parent is one way on the weekend, and they parent one way during the week. Like how do those kids put all that together? Like for anything, and I think especially our generation.

We grew up like that. , like most of my friend’s parents are divorced and everybody had two sets of rules for everything. Two, two sets of everything. And here we are coming into parenting ourselves or being parents ourselves and finding these challenges. Did we like dad’s rules better? Did we like mom’s rules better? What do we do? I find it very interesting.

I suppose another point to make is a lot of people say that there’s no parenting manual, which is true, but we’ve all had this parenting download from our parents. And like you’re talking about when people, parents, co-parents come together, they both had a different download.

And it’s very, very difficult for two people to have the same parenting manual in their heads because those parenting downloads we’ve had, probably contain lots of viruses. They need rebooting and cleaning. You’ve got these two downloads with lots of viruses going on, and lots of things that need clearing up.

And it’s very difficult for two people to be exactly on the same page unless they’re being conscious of their relationship. Yes, it’s about conscious parenting and then conscious parenting. Partnering as well and probably conscious parenting and conscious part partnering are two very similar things.

When you’ve got that consciousness in any relationship, It doesn’t mean it’s perfect. It means you can work through all the kinds of kinks, all the kinds of different things that are going on, you may have different ways of doing things, but you can still come together and support each other.

I agree. I think I find it in our relationship, my husband and I, are not only from completely different backgrounds but different cultures. He’s from Africa, that is a whole nother parenting style, in itself. Like just culture and just how they do things. And then I’m from here in the United States and from a conservative household, but one where my mom was like newly divorced and just wanted to do her own thing, she let me do what I wanted to do, it was like, like free range, but with limits. And it’s just a very interesting contrast.

But we, my husband and I have these very similar core values and core beliefs that we know, like this, is how we want our children to be raised. And we work hard to work together and to try to. Instill those values in them, talk to them about all of those things and all those things. We are not perfect by any means.

And I have a question about that as an example. But I think it’s really difficult to overcome some different types of being raised. But if you work hard and communicate, and if you have those same values, I think it’s possible.

I think values are the things that bring people together, it’s been clear about your values and when you are clear as a couple on your values, you’re clear as an individual on your values, then you can share them with your children.

About conscious parenting. Let’s say your kid does something and then you flip out and yell or something, but then you go back and you correct it. You explain to them why you were upset, and why what they did, wouldn’t be good for them in the long run.

Why? All of those things like. Talk about the developmental part of it and this is why you know X, Y, and Z could be better for you to do in the future. Is that still conscious parenting or is it like a combination of I was unconscious and then I switched to conscious?

That’s a good question. I suppose what I would say with conscious parenting is to bring compassion. If you have shouted at your child, it’s to, first of all, if you’re feeling bad about it. And I was going to talk a little bit about this. When it comes to feelings of guilt. What happens?

I might just talk about it now as part of this question. When we’ve shouted at our children or behaved in a way that we’re not very happy with, we then might be filled with guilt. And then what can happen is when we are feeling guilty, we can overcompensate. We might give them treats or extra time on the computer.

The one thing we want is to have a good relationship with our child. We think that’s because that’s so important and it’s an instinct to want to make sure that we’ve got a good relationship with our child, but the overcompensation can confuse the child and it can have an impact on the power dynamics of that relationship.

When you’ve, when you’ve shouted or you’ve, you’ve behaved in a certain way that doesn’t make you happy. Guilt as overcompensation doesn’t work. But when we try to repair it, that does work. That’s the key, is that guilt. We feel guilt when we’ve moved away from our values.

When we’ve shouted, we must talk to children. And we do try and repair, but we don’t put any of the blame on them. We don’t say I shouted at you because you did this. It’s, I shouted and that’s, that’s on me. And I’m for shouting. But then when it comes to addressing their behavior, it’s again, using compassion.

And saying, I can see that you were struggling with this. What can I do to help you? It’s one of the things that you’ve probably heard about its connection before correction. Because quite often what happens is that we go into correction mode very quickly, and we always want children to follow the right path or go not, this can affect your future and all of that.

Before we do any of that, we’ve gotta get that connection back. As part of the process for repairing, it’s really to build on that connection. And I’m here, for things like, I’m here for you. I want to help you with this, and I can see that you’re struggling with this particular whatever it is, whatever the context is.

That way you’re doing the connection and then naturally you can help guide them a little bit better. The correction doesn’t have to be telling them what they should be doing. It’s really about guiding them and encouraging them to come up with some of their solutions; they’re not always reliant on you to tell them what they should be doing.

Because when we correct children a lot, We’re always telling them this is the right way. This is how you should do things. Connection and then you be the compassionate guide for them to conclude what would be good for them for the future, or even for the, even for the now, really just.

Shall I talk a little bit about, whenever I talk about conscious, self-conscious parenting, the emotions that come up are feelings of failure, guilt, and shame? Shall I talk a little bit about those emotions?

Yes, that would be great because I. Anytime anybody asks me like, what the hardest thing that I’ve ever done is parenting. It’s always parenting. It will always be parenting. Enmeshment of so many things, isn’t it? Parenting? It is. And if you have more than one child, every single child is different.

They react differently to different things, to each other, too, it’s just crazy. It’s just like a boiling pot of I don’t know. Grease that’s like constantly flying out, like and you’re like trying to figure out what temperature I keep it so that way everything gets done nicely, and like nobody gets burned.

That’s a really good description, I think what I’ll do is I’ll talk a little bit more about guilt as well, but I’ll talk about failure first. And I think when I’ve been delivering parenting programs, I’ve heard parents talk about, I feel like a failure. I feel like I’m failing so often.

And why does it feel so bad when we think we failed? And usually, it’s because it reminds us of. Past hurt or an experience when we were made to feel that we weren’t good enough or we weren’t enough. And this was something that can solidify in us. 

And then every time we have a new failure, that feeling gets reignited. One of the things I say to parents is that again, it’s to bring compassion into all of these feelings that we have. When they’re talking about failure, if you think about when we were toddlers and we were learning to walk, we fell over hundreds of times.

We just got back up and started to walk. I always said, at what point did it become not okay to fall or to fail? Because when we were little, it was okay to keep failing, but obviously at some point, we’ve learned that failing is not okay. I tend to ask a few questions of parents. When they feel like they’re failing or they’re a failure, it’s to ask questions such as, is it okay to fail?

If not, why not? And what is it about failing that’s wrong? Does it say something about you? Does it say something personal about you? And when we think back to the point at which it became not okay to fail, that’s probably the point at which we stopped learning to our full capacity where we stopped experimenting because we became afraid to fail.

And we started to associate failing with something concrete about us. Instead, I’m struggling with this because it’s new or it’s a difficult skill to master, and it’s a process of learning, we draw a conclusion. I am a failure. 

And what is the average age that you’ve found that this happens for parents? I’m thinking of elementary school. I don’t know cuz like that’s when you learn like you get a good grade or a bad grade or you get a positive point or a negative point or like to me that’s like the natural point, but I’m thinking like, wow, that’s early in development.

I think it does happen very early in development because when you think about it, very young children are not scared to try so many different things and then. They become afraid, they don’t want to try things. They’re afraid of not being good enough. And you, that whole testing thing impacts them. I would say it probably starts happening from quite a young age.

I’m thinking like second or third grade probably. I feel like second graders are still that adventurous kind,

Sadly, it does happen at such a young age. Rather than, what I encourage parents to do when I’m working with them. Rather than making these really broad generalizations about themselves, is, again, this is something that I do encourage people to do, is to get curious before making conclusions.

Again, asking smart questions. For example, every time you’ve experienced failing, it’s to ask, what did I. What did I learn about myself? What can I do differently next time? Can I take a different step? Can I take a smaller step? Can I take a step in a different direction? And especially when it comes to parenting, it’s to ask questions like, Can I ask for help?

Do I have to do this on my own? Because, when it comes to parenting, no one is meant to be doing this on their own. And when we are in the questioning mode, in curiosity mode, even if we don’t know the answers will come. The more curious we get, the more the answers come.

The more we open ourselves up to new possibilities, new perspectives, and new insights, when we only conclude ourselves, like I’m a failure, we are closed off to new learning and getting new insights. And then the other thing that I do say to parents is that whenever we fail, That’s just a reminder that we’re moving out of our comfort zone.

Whenever we move out of our comfort zone, we are not gonna be as competent or as capable, and it’s only at the point of failure that actual real learning can start. Now a lot of people see learning as failing. But I failed and was upset that actually failure is the launchpad of new growth, awakening, and new learning.

I always encourage people to embrace failure as a starting point rather than a full stop. I thought we would talk about shame next. These are the emotions that come up a lot when I’m working with parents. Shame is personal. It’s about giving ourselves a label. I’m a bad parent or I’m a bad person. And again, this was probably rooted in our childhood. Maybe we did something and we were ashamed. 

And the way to deal with shame is to take, to create a compassionate observer who views you without any judgment. I always say that it’s, rather than suppressing emotions or dismissing them, it’s really about being with our emotions, but taking a compassionate, objective observer position where you’re just with those emotions and this observer is just, has a kind, loving presence and in their eyes, They will never abandon you.

There’s nothing that you can do where they would withdraw their love. And when it comes to guilt and shame, this process can help to repent. And that is the process that I would also recommend for guilt to almost imagine that you’re being re-parented. By this observer.

And the observer could be a character from a book or a film, or it could even be a creature, but somebody who would never, ever think badly of you. Somebody who’s just full of love and it’s allowing that love to travel to the parts where you’re feeling the shame, where you’re feeling the guilt. And it’s the process of reparenting yourself. And that’s when you reparent yourself. That’s when you can become more conscious. 

I love that. It makes so much sense because you’re reprogramming yourself from like your inner thoughts out, right?

And so many parents say to me, Tanya, I know better, but I can’t seem to do better. I always say it’s not about knowledge. It’s only when we feel better. That we can do better. And the only way to feel better is to be kinder and more loving and more compassionate with ourselves. And when we can feel good, we will, we can do better. And again, it’s not about being perfect

Not in every sense. And because life will throw things at us all the time. And it’s kinda our darkest, worst. Can we still be loving toward, ourselves? Because when we can also offer that to children in their darkest, hardest moments.

That’s awesome. I love it. How can people connect with you? I know that you have an empowered parenting program that you offer. Tell us a little bit about that and how people can find you.

I have my website, which is for psycho-hypnotherapy. The Empowered Parenting Program is a four-week one-to-one program. It’s four weekly sessions. And I use a combination of coaching and hypnotherapy because I feel that hypnotherapy is a great way to start reparenting ourselves. 

That’s the program that I’m offering. I do have a link that I can send to you, if people want to book a 30-minute session with me, we can see if this program is a good match for both of us.

That sounds great. Thank you so much, Tanya, for being here. Truly appreciate you and all of your insight into parenting and the different parenting styles and how we become, I guess what you would call the parent that we want to be, right? Awesome. Thank you.

How to Get Your Business Expenses Paid For

Welcome to episode 219 of The Determined Mom Show. I am your host, Amanda Tento, and today I wanna talk to you about how you can get your business expenses paid for.

This may sound easy, and it also may sound difficult to some, but it actually boils down to something very simple and something that you can implement in all of your marketing, in everything that you do, and it will help you to reduce the amount of money that you spend monthly on expenses, and it will also help other people around you to find tools and software that will work for them.

The method we’re talking about is called affiliate marketing, so think about yourself. Five favorite tools that you use all of the time? Maybe one of them is Canva. Most people use Canva. There could be a segment of the audience that doesn’t use Canva yet. But we could put that Canva link or our Canva link in the notes, and then eventually someone clicks on it and purchases Canva.

That Canva monthly subscription will be paid for in some way, shape, or form, whether they give us the money directly, or apply it directly to our account. A good example of this, if any of you are familiar, is Dubsado. They have a pretty robust affiliate program where you get one month free, I think for every person you refer.

Something like that, but that’s a great way to get your expenses paid for. Some examples of this are the social media platform that you post with. Any tool that you use regularly in your business if you’re promoting that within your marketing and just to people that you know, somebody’s like, Oh, do you know a good tool for. Yes, I do. And then you post your link. Very simple.

 And I get surprised occasionally by how many payments that we receive for affiliate marketing just based on people listening to old episodes of the show or finding an old blog post, or there are just so many ways that people happen upon your affiliate links.

If you’re just conscious and you’re putting them everywhere, then you can get your monthly expenses reduced greatly, or paid for all together. One of the things that I’m a huge proponent of is SocialBee, which is ours. Social media platform of choice that we post with for our clients and ourselves.

And it is just such a great platform. It has so many different little bells and whistles built-in, and I’m always promoting it and I’m always getting paid for promoting it. I would definitely recommend that you try to set up an affiliate tracking sheet, and I have a sample of one in the show notes, that way you can just keep track and you can just, it’s a Google sheet.

You just download it, copy it, and just keep track of what you’re. Things are what your affiliate links are. So then that way you have them all in one place. You can just type in your Google Drive affiliate, you’re gonna pop up your affiliate tracking sheet and you’re gonna know exactly what link you need to share, where, when, and why.

You also can keep track of the discounts that are offered. Many vendors will offer your affiliate. I guess customers, I don’t know how to explain that. They’ll offer the subscribers that subscribe under you a discount so you can mark the discount there. That way you know what to tell them and then if anything changes, you get an email, you can just go in and change that in your tracker and make it easy to find and easy to update. Very easy, very important. 

If you’re looking for calendar software, for example, you can go there, and try to find something to replace it. They have a money-back guarantee that’s 60 days. If you find something, you can try it. If you don’t like it, they’ll give you your money back via your original payment method, instantly no questions asked, as long as it’s within that 60 days.

 It’s well worth trying out different software. Then that way you can eventually replace all of your monthly subscriptions. At this point, I don’t think we have. Any monthly subscriptions left beside the software or the podcast editing tool that we use? We’ve replaced pretty much all of our monthly subscriptions.

Socialbee, we have lifetime access to Traff on our calendar. Link. A calendar scheduling tool. I can’t remember the name of these things. For some reason, Traf is our calendar scheduling tool. We have lifetime access to that. Zero is the software that we use for Bookkeeping. We do not have lifetime access for that, and we don’t have lifetime access for AWeber.

We only have two things that we pay for monthly in the business now, which is great because it streamlines expenses. We’ve already paid for those things, we don’t have to ever pay for them again. Those are two ways that you can very easily get your business expenses paid for.

How to Maintain Your Identity When Relocating for Your Partner’s Job with Cindy Marie Jenkins

Welcome to this episode of The Determined Mom Show. I am your host, Amanda Tento, and I’m here with the lovely Cindy Marie Jenkins. I’m very excited that you’re here and I would love before we get started to hear about you and how you got started. 

I know you have a very interesting background from what I heard on our pre-call. It’s very unusual. But it’s so cool. So tell us about it. 

Sure. Long, very long story short. I grew up in theater but was always writing and always creating. And about the time that I became a mom and moved, I was switching to writing full-time versus marketing and I’ve lived in New York, Los Angeles, Orlando, Beijing, and back in Orlando now.

Wow. And the interesting part about all of that is you moved because of my husband’s job. Interesting. 

Yes. Something that I don’t think I, I never considered would be the case and I don’t think he did either.

And it’s not when you think about it. Position. There are some positions that, like you go into and that okay, this is a job that I’m gonna have to travel a lot, or I’m gonna have to relocate and you already consider that.

But then there are some positions where it’s a surprise or a better opportunity or like another level or something, comes up. And I think that might be the case with your husband. Is that true? 

Yes. He had been working in theater and then theme parks. Right after my son, our son was first born. He went on a two-week trip that turned into a four-week trip. And when my son was like four months old, not right after, but that was a really big wake-up call for us.

And he really had to adjust, how he looked at his work and me. Had to realize how difficult that was with a child while continuing to work with me and then how to relate again when he came back. Cause you have to factor jet lag into that mix. 

There’s actually a lot to factor in. It seems a baby changes so much in that four-week period, especially when they’re only four months old. The difference between a four-month-old and a five-month-old is huge. So that’s interesting.

So let’s talk about what we’re gonna get into today, and that is how to maintain your identity when relocating for your partner’s job, which it seems that you are definitely experienced at. I’m glad that you’re here to talk to us about that.

So how do Maintain that identity? You’re working, you have the baby, you have kids, you have whatever is going on, but you’re here, and you are following your spouse in your case, around the world. 

So one thing that was really challenging for me was that when I lived in Los Angeles, that’s when we got pregnant and I really shifted motherhood. Like I just expanded my identity into motherhood and I worked in social media, so I am in the family theater. 

So it was so easy to be like, Hey, even my baby can see this show. What I heard from people was very, was empowering and showed them that it was possible to still work and have a baby. And what was fascinating when we first moved from Los Angeles to Orlando I was murky about what I wanted to do. 

So I leaned into motherhood and we also, and got pregnant with our second child quickly after the move, but it wasn’t until after he was born. My second child is me. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough for me. I wasn’t able to talk to my husband about anything except for diapers and what I had to do first was find some kind of community.

So one of my friends that I had been working with on marketing was a writer. And she found out that’s what I wanted to do. And she introduced me to this entire online community of freelance writers. It really changed me and changed my ideas because it’s one thing to want to write.

It’s one thing to write, but then to know how to become a professional writer is completely different. And because I wasn’t able to. Pursue it as much at that time with two kids under one or two kids under the age of three, which is ridiculous. I just leaned into the research. 

And so by the time I was offered the chance to be a freelance writer and to work with a business on their blog, I knew the business. I knew how to work with an editor and I knew what I needed to do to take their idea and say, but you actually need three blogs a week. And at the same time, I found an in-person community in Orlando, which was massive for me. 

I had figured out the parenting side of the community. But there was this group called the writers until here. And they are just so welcoming. I could bring my still nursing child and they loved it. And there were workshops and that was mostly fiction writing, which isn’t what I was really doing, but it just helped me see another side to the business side.

The community was really huge. Like when I moved to Beijing I wanted to do nano Remo, the national novel writing month, and they didn’t have an active chapter. And I found people to create an active chapter. Like made deals with cafes so that we could stay there without paying the like coworking fee and stuff. It was really wonderful and introduced me to some of my best friends. 

That’s awesome. And that sounds like what has been a key to keeping that identity and maybe even finding your new identity after that first move, that’s awesome. I think that’s a great tip.

It was interesting cuz after moving there was when friends would visit, I remember how. My husband and I had a new outlook on even our own identities because we were in context with our friends. If that makes sense. Being with our friends that we’ve known for years really helped us. Remember who we were and what we wanted to do.

And those are people that you can talk to about other things other than diapers. So that is very important. They knew us way before that. So having those people in your life who know who you are at your core is also amazing. 

I think that I can see how that could really help to solidify that and maybe even sort through the mom. The mom identity, which we all seem to acquire and either, cling to, or, just allow to take over us.

And it takes a lot to, it takes a lot for a person to be able to just say, I’m a writer when people ask. I used to qualify for it, but I do marketing and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I just stopped. And if they wanna know more, I can tell them more.

That’s awesome. You’re right. It does take a lot to give that broad statement and make sure that people understand that this is what I do. I’m not gonna fluctuate out of that. 

I think if you move abroad, particularly, there are a lot of assumptions that are made because you’re an ex-pat. You’re probably there if you’re an ex-pat and you’re married, you’re probably there either to work or because your spouse is working.

And I remember my Mandarin tutor who was lovely, she was so amazing. And she would teach me the first word. She tried to teach me where my husband was at work. He works very hard. He’s very busy. I have two kids. I’m so tired. oh my goodness. I know. 

That’s an interesting choice. Let’s just back that up a minute. She had trouble figuring out how to say I work from home. And I think we ended up on, I work on my computer. That works. Let’s see. That was a major revelation. 

That’s awesome. One thing that I’m gonna mention, I’m gonna go back to what you said about finding a community where you were able to bring your still breastfeeding child.

I had a challenge with that myself when I got back into it well when I made that decision five years ago to quit my credit union job. And, go ahead and start my own business. I started going to these business networking meetings.

I couldn’t be away from my daughter for that long, cuz she was so little, I mean she was under six months and she was still breastfeeding and she would breastfeed whenever. Like it’s not like she had a particular schedule because I was with her all the time. 

Going to those meetings was really hard. I found one that they said they would, no problem bringing your baby. That’s fine. And then. The next meeting after that, they were like, no, we cannot allow children at our meetings anymore.

And I was like, okay, you know what? I’m gonna create my own networking group just for mom business owners. So screw you on that one. So I did that. So it’s just, you just have to really search and really dig. If there isn’t a community. Like you did with the nano Remo, create it.

I work with the national women’s theater festival who’s based in Raleigh and them. I just went to their conference a couple of weeks ago. And for me it was like, my husband literally said, I am buying you a ticket. Don’t do it virtually go have you don’t get to travel for work. You should. And, but if I wanted to.

I could have brought my kids because they had thanks to a grant from pal, which is the parent artist advocacy league. They had an onsite child-like nursery for the smaller ones and an arts camp for the bigger ones. It was incredible. And they really they’re. One of their goals is radical inclusion in that way, because. So often parents can’t go to conferences. 

And I feel like people are finally starting to get it in general that, our kids are important to us and we don’t wanna just leave them at home or we don’t wanna just neglect their needs just because we also want to do this other thing called making money and running a business and helping other people like we shouldn’t have to sacrifice those too. So I’m glad you brought that. 

I’m glad that with the prevalence of zoom now, I feel like it’s become a bit more acceptable that if your child comes in, it’s just okay, talk to them, give ’em a snack you’re done. With certain meetings and having that Liberty has been really nice that you don’t even have to explain it anymore.

Yes, that has changed a lot since the pandemic. Thank you, pandemic. I do think that the pandemic and zoom have become like the zoom is one of the best things to come out of the pandemic in zoom etiquette and things like that. 

Things have gotten a lot more relaxed and a lot more real like humans, they were before. Awesome. So what else can you share with us about maintaining that identity? 

When I was really thinking about it, one thing that helped me so much is when I still had young kids, even when my oldest was in preschool. I eventually figured out how much nap time really gives me.

And it’s not a lot. And I normally just wanted to watch Netflix, but I realized that if I started with writing topics and started pursuing writing for publications that I really knew. That had editors that were willing to work with a new writer in a way. So I’m an editor now, but I knew grammar, and I knew AP Chicago styles.

I did not know writing in terms of essay writing and making your point as well. And I started writing for a theater magazine that was just incredibly patient and wonderful and taught me so much. And that helped me cuz I was also writing about theater for young audiences and quick things.

Sometimes when the Tony awards didn’t have a sound designer category. And because I didn’t have to think too much about the topic and didn’t have to do that much research. I knew the context, it was easier for me to experiment and really find my voice. Even things like, how do you make sure you get pictures that can be cropped to the right size?

Do you want the landscape or horizontal, that kind of thing? And something that I’ve always been good at, but it took me a minute to really do for writing is not waiting for permission. And once in a while, my husband will catch me on this and be like stop waiting if you’re pitching it.

And it’s a good idea and people aren’t taking it, just write it. And I did that for theater. I was self-producing right out of college because that’s what you do to get your work seen. And so I started using Facebook and Instagram as a bit of a blog. Which is not new. It’s not a different idea, but I was writing about being a work-at-home parent and I had worked from home for years before being a child.

So like working before being a child before having a child. So working from home was one of the topics that people would think of me for, but then to add kids and people were always asking how I did it and I made so many mistakes. Found so many ways that it could work sometimes. 

And I just started every Monday posting, making it work Monday and just trying to help people understand that it’s okay to go to the library and bring them to the playroom of the library and just have your laptop there. And you know that you have to take advantage of nap times if they’re in the car.  And it might mean the drive-through at Starbucks and then just parking for a little bit to write. 

But it, is just that short-term gratification of people enjoying it, even if they weren’t parents, even if they didn’t work from home, but just like understanding a little insight into that life that helped keep me going that for me I have long term projects, but the short term gratification of just writing something, spending some time editing it or someone editing it and then post just posting it, just having it out there.

It’s just so exciting. And it’s so nice. And even if the comments are bad, they are like, don’t agree with you, which I’ve had quite a bit. It’s just exciting that people care. And that maybe I’m helping. Maybe this is helping. Maybe somebody feels a little better. Feels like they can do it a little more. 

Like I started writing about relocating. Specifically as with a family. And that helped a lot of my friends understand what I was going through. And it also helped me process it and helped me feel like my experiences could be helpful to people.

That’s awesome. And it probably also allowed other people to find you and to be able to ask you questions and things like that. If there was a question about relocating, cuz relocating is no joke, relocating to another country is like, crazy, I got a job because of that.

Like because I’d already written about it. And when we got back there after COVID I pitched an editor of Beijing kids about having kids in quarantine cuz they were doing like a real two-week quarantine in China before you could go. 

She came back to me and she was like so I looked up and we have a deputy editor position. Do you wanna apply for it? And that job really changed my entire life. Such a good job.

That’s awesome. So keep yours. Options open. Sounds like another great tip. Like you never know what’s gonna come out of that new community that you’re moving to. And just always stay true to what you love to do and what you’re interested in and passionate about.

And it sounds like for you sharing your own experiences over the years has really worked out for you and really opened the door for those new opportunities.

And sharing. When people are listening, just, you never know what that’s gonna bring. Who’s reading it? There are a lot of pitches or calls for pitches where I see people say, it’s okay if you just posted it on your blog, you just wanna see what you, how you write. 

That just continues to work on it even. Even if you’re not seeing, you’re not getting published or you’re not, you’re getting rejected. Cause there are so many rejections

That is very true. And in every field and every business and everything, that’s very much a part of owning your business and doing your own thing. And I think we are all familiar with that, but getting used to those is a little hard, but it’s definitely worthwhile. 

Awesome. So I know that you have a download that people can use to hopefully make things a little bit easier. Can you tell us a little bit about that? 

So before I left Beijing they did the Beijing kids, which is now gen kids international. They had a home and relocation. And they knew that I had read theirs and that’s how I prepared for it. And, in 2018, basically, they handed me half of the relocation guide to writing. And the one thing that I was thinking I was looking through past issues and I’m like, no one has what to consider before you move.

And I just sat down and I. It was such a long checklist. They were, I went over my word count, but, it was, it’s everything from, do you get, are you asking for a relo fee? What are you usually doing with relocation? You get some kind of cost of living increase. If that’s the case, what are you gonna do with that extra money?

Okay, so you’re moving as an employee. How do you feel about the fact that you’re uprooting your family as the spouse? What are you gonna do? And then other details about finding schools, things that you need to really look at and that we had the time to look at before we moved to China before we even took the job, cuz we moved to Orlando to move to China.

So before we accepted the job in Orlando, we thought ahead to what we were gonna do in China. And how was it gonna work out? So really considering it from everyone in the family’s perspective and being okay with not having answers sometimes. I feel like it’s just that, the downloadable checklist is just one of the ways that you can really make sure you’re making a good. And that everyone understands what the choice might mean. 

And also those choices that you make are not permanent, but sometimes they’re harder to undo. So making sure that you think about them a little bit more ahead of time is gonna save you a lot of headaches going into the actual move itself. I love that. That sounds like a great resource. Where can people find them? 

If you go to my website Cindy Marie jenkins.com. There’s a tab at the top that says relo down low and it will be the featured post. And I’m gonna make a, there’ll be a link at the very top that you can just download it directly.

Perfect. That’s awesome. Thank you for sharing that resource with us. Do you have anything else that you’d like to share with the audience before we end our session?

The main, I think, is to just keep at it. What helped me when I was floundering or when the kids would be in bed and I was wired or exhausted was just understanding that this was my dream and I’m still working for it.

It’s still a huge effort every day. But being able to explain to your kids why you have to work and why you wanna do it is so important and that helps them give you time and be proud of you. And I think that’s a really great relationship to build. 

That’s awesome. I love that. And keeping that in mind while you’re relocating for your spouse’s job is. Gonna be, like a key to that whole topic that we’re talking about is maintaining your own identity. So I love it. Awesome. Thank you so much, Cindy Marie. It was very nice talking with you. 

Time to Start Planning for 2023!

Welcome to episode 217 of The Determined Mom Show. I am your host, Amanda Tento, and I am so happy that you’re here listening. And today I wanna talk to you about why you need to start planning for 2023. Now , I know it’s only November, but it is really important for you to get a head start on next year.

I want you to line out your goals, what you wanna accomplish, and in order to accomplish anything, you have to have a plan. So that’s why it is time to start planning today for 2023. I actually am going to reveal that I have finally, just before recording this, booked my last guest for the podcast to take me into March of 2023.

So I’ve already got all of the episodes planned out through the first quarter. So all of March is planned out and I just booked the episode that will air on March 29th and is actually gonna be a Pinterest episode. So that’s exciting. But I’ve already done that. And the reason for that is because I started planning.

A few months back and knowing that I was going to be taking maternity leave, I was going to be out for a period of time, unsure how long that was, I needed to get everything together that I could possibly get together ahead of time. So here I am, the beginning of November. I do have a couple recordings left to record to take me through that, but it’s only a handful at this point.

I think I only have maybe. Four or five episodes left to record. In order to say that I have all of the podcast episodes recorded through March of 2023. That’s awesome. That means that I have literally, here we are at the beginning of November. I have five months of podcast recordings already recorded. My team is working on them behind the scenes, getting them ready to go, getting all the blog posts and.

Episodes scheduled, everything. So it’s really going to set me up for success in 2023 by knowing that I have a little bit of a buffer. So maybe in February I’ll probably do another call to, for guests, and then I can start recording again in March, and then we can start posting in those episodes in April, May, June, et cetera.

So it’s really important to know that you. Plan ahead successfully and execute and give yourself some grace, period. So if we’re not talking about a blog or a podcast or content, . We can also be talking about your income. We can be talking about how much you wanna make in 2023. We can be talking about how to reverse engineer that.

And I  actually do have an episode somewhere. Let me see if I can find it. I think I am planning for 2020 where I actually went through and I did a whole. Maybe it was 2021, I’m not sure. Episode number 75 is all about planning for 2020. And I went through and I really detailed how to set your goals.

And actually it could either be episode 27, which would be, which aired in November of 2019, and it could be episode 75. I’m not sure which one, but you could listen to both of those because they’re both packed with excellent goals. activities and skills. So if you go back and listen to either one of those, you’re going to find out how to reverse engineer your goals.

Of course, you can google this, you can YouTube it, you can do many different things to figure out how to do this, but I highly suggest that you do it. So set an income goal, reverse engineer it, figure out exactly how many people you need to talk to in your business. , get those referrals, get those new clients coming in and hit those income goals for 2023.

We don’t wanna repeat 2020 where everything just flopped because we had some sort of unexpected event. We know how to handle those now. That’s the great thing that the pandemic taught us. We know what to do when things go haywire and we are now wired. For change, we’re wired for adaptation.

Adaptability maybe is the right word. I’m not sure. We are wired to figure things out when. 2020s happen, I’m gonna say , 2020s. That could be a whole new term when the 2020s happen. This is what you do. 

So we’re wired for that now, and we can come out in 2023 to be bigger, better, and more flexible, more resilient, and we can let a lot less things bother us than we did before.If you are in theros of planning for 2023, the things that I want you to focus on are going to be business. So you’re gonna wanna plan your financials, you’re gonna wanna plan your team, You’re going to also want to plan your content. And this doesn’t necessarily have to be social media. 

Then you hear me talk all the time about how social media is so overrated, and I do believe so.I’m talking about Google content. I’m talking about blog content. I’m talking about things that are actually going to bring you new customers and not waste your time. You can also Plan out your personal life. Are there any personal goals that you have? Do you have any health goals? Do you have any fitness goals?

Do you have anything that is really going to make you feel better in 2023? I know for me, I will be having a baby at the beginning of the year or the end of this year. Either way. I’ll be having a baby soon so I know that I need to get my health back on track. I’ll be breastfeeding, I’ll be doing all of those things.

So I need to take all that into account, but I can start planning for that now. So that is the beauty of knowing what’s coming, at least having sort of a strategy for when that time period does come, it’s gonna be really helpful for you. The other things that you can plan for.

Obviously vacations, holidays, birthdays, all of those things. But you can also plan your self development if you have a goal of reaching, of reading, sorry, X number of books this year. If you have a goal of taking x number of courses, learning this new skill, any of those things fall into that self development category.

So make. that you’re taking that into account when you’re planning to. Don’t let any of those things fall off and just really sit down and think about how you would love to feel at the end of 2023. Here we are almost at the end of 2022. Maybe you’re feeling like you wanted to, maybe you’re not, but planning into the future.

And planning out your next year is going to get you into that mode. It’s going to get you into the zone that you need to be in, in order to really. accomplish and feel in December of 2023, how you want to feel about how the year went. So I will share with you my favorite planner in the world called the Law of Attraction Planner.

There’s a link in the show notes, it’s on Amazon. I use it every year religiously, and I absolutely love it. It’s just a very robust planner. It’s one of the only planners that goes from, I think it’s 5:00 AM. Until 10:00 PM which is very hard to find. And , I hope that you find something that works for you if you don’t use that one.

Three top actions towards your goals at the top, and it has a very small list of tasks that take under two minutes to accomplish.

Then it has three less important tasks, space for notes, a space to check off how much water you’ve drank. That’s it on every page. Then there is a little weekly calendar that you can use and it’s all filled in the blank. If you’re off one day, you don’t have to use that space. You can just skip it and use it for the next day that you are working.

But it’s really amazing. And I’ve gone through probably at least six of them so far, and they last about 90 days. So 90 days off, I don’t use them for Saturdays and Sundays unless I’m working, which is rare. I would say they last probably a couple, I don’t know. I wanna say maybe four or five months, depending on.

How many days you take off, but I really only use them when I have tasks that I’ve got to get done. So I hope that this episode inspires you, encourages you, motivates you to get started now, because planning out what is going to happen next year or what you want to happen is going to help make it happen.

If you have any questions, you can always reach out to me at Amanda. At The determined Mom.com and I will look forward to talking to you soon. Thank you for listening.

Let’s face it. Piecing together a marketing plan with the things you hear, watch or read online. While tempting is never a good idea, the truth is people don’t search on social media for your services, and even if they do, they will still be going to Google to check your ratings. By not having a cohesive, proven marketing system, you are leaking clients and customers through giant holes in your customer.

Don’t forget to download my favorite planner!

Don’t forget to download your FREE guide to the 6 Marketing Musts Guaranteed to Get You More Customers!

Subscribe and Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts so we can reach and help more mom business owners!

If you have any questions, let us know! Reach out to us!

Email us at: amanda@tdm-marketing.com

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How to Go From Struggling Single Mom to Mompreneur with Emma Ferrick-Trigger Warning-Abuse

Welcome to this episode of The Determined Mom Show today, I have the lovely Emma Farrick with us, and she is going to talk about how to go from struggling single mom to mom so welcome, Emma. 

And this is your second time on the podcast, which is very exciting. You were on episode one 70 talking about the importance of having a virtual headquarters to grow your remote team. So I’m very excited to have you back. And today we’re gonna talk about a more personal issue, personal slash business. 

So I’m very excited about that. Before we get started. I know you’ve already introduced yourself last time, but this time you can introduce yourself in a little bit of a different way and explain how you became a single mom and kind the story behind that.

So it’s related to my business but in a different sense. So almost three years now I was, I found out. I guess four years, cause my daughter will be four here in a couple of weeks. That I found out I was expecting, but it was not an ideal or planned situation. And I was just about to graduate college, I was on top of that, a young mom and in a not-ideal situation.

When I found out I was expecting and I wanted to do what I thought was best for our daughter. And that was with her biological dad at the time. It wasn’t until after she was born that I realized like there were red flags before she was born, but I just told myself. It’s not what it is, everything that you say to yourself to make it seem not so bad. 

And it wasn’t until after she was born, the physical abuse started there had been emotional, mental, and financial abuse throughout the whole relationship. And finally, when she was about 10 months old, I went to the hospital for a broken nose and just a bunch of bruising. And I knew from others. Personal experiences because my aunt had gone through a similar experience growing up. 

So I knew to go document it. How, and what kind of processes needed to happen? Like calling the police to have witnesses and things like that. So I went to the hospital to get everything documented, and that was life-changing. Point in my life where I was like, I can’t keep this up. 

I had to do something better for my daughter and that’s when I became a single mom. I decided after I left the hospital, went to file a PFA, went to file all the paperwork to charge him with assault, and everything like that. And that set off the chain of events of, putting on going through this struggle as a single mom, realizing I didn’t want to.

Be financially controlled by someone because he was the type of person who, if I send you child support, I expect this and this. I want this time with her. I want this. Or, still trying to use money as a manipulation. Because he constantly would tell me, you’re not good enough. You’re not smart enough. You’ll never start a business.

 Cuz that was something I’ve always wanted to do. And fresh outta college, I was in no position. So I thought about starting a business. It was a single income and I was drowning in bills, drowning in expenses. And I didn’t want to have any ties with him. So I was like, what can I do to provide an extra income for me, for us, and not have to sacrifice time with my daughter? 

And that’s what led to my business. Discovering the online space and how incredible it was. And at first, I was like, oh, maybe I’ll do blogging. And then I was like, no, I’m a terrible writer. So I picked VA work because I already had a background in corporate life and it was the easiest way for me to start my business and. 

Then my business started to grow and with COVID everything that happened, I went full time and I just continued to niche further down and to get to the point where I am today, where I’m operations and system specialist. So have you heard of the last episode? I won’t get into that part, but that’s the series of events that led to it. 

Okay. That’s it. It’s a very brave story. I think that’s the best word to describe it because the things that you’ve gone through obviously have been very difficult. And for you to know at that moment, when you’re in the hospital, like this is never going to happen again. 

Takes a lot of bravery to front, if that makes sense, because a lot of women think, oh, he’s not, this is just a one-time thing. It’s not gonna happen again. And then they go back and it keeps happening repeatedly. 

And then, it’s just harder and harder to leave. Yeah, that was the hospital one. The first time. Okay. So I wanted audience members to know. Sorry. You guys can hear the baby’s coughing.

We love this. exactly got a multitask. But that wasn’t the first time, and I had actually moved out of our house once before after an argument and him basically throwing me and my daughter. 

When she was only a couple of months old, we heard the promise of I’ll change. I’ll change this, that, and the other thing. We went to two therapy sessions. He manipulated the therapist into, basically, he heard the one thing that he wanted to hear that the therapist was like, you have postpartum, you need to get help. And I was like, I’m already seeing a therapist myself. 

This is, there’s more to this conversation than just my postpartum and you’re not carrying his side or what, anything, so as soon as he heard The therapist say, you, you need to get help. You’re postpartum depression. That’s just all he needed. And it was like, I’m not going back. You’re the problem. You need to get help. 

And I was like, I’m already going. I’m not the one who’s throwing us out of the house. I’m not the one who’s making it difficult. And there was another time where he almost left me in Cleveland and took my car like, wow. Left me stranded almost basically. And that was like one of the other times that was like the first physical piece. Gonna like left marks and everything. But once I went to the hospital, I was like, I can keep hiding this. 

Cause everybody, no one had known really up until that point And it was so hard for me to even like the nurses at the ho in the emergency room were just the kindest women. I wish I remembered all of their names because yeah. They were like, you need to report this cuz they see this kind of stuff. So they were like, you need to report this. You need to call your parents.

Cuz at the time I was the only one. 22 and no one in I lived on my own, I just graduated college in this city. My parents were two hours away. And I think that was the hardest phone call. Having to make that phone call to my mom and say, this is what’s been going on. Can you come to pick me up from the hospital, basically that’s because you don’t want anybody to know. You’re experiencing this. 

And I think that’s also a very common thing that happens is that nobody does know, and people are like, surprised wow, that person did this to you. No, I don’t think so. And then it makes it harder to believe and it, yeah, it’s just a very vicious cycle.

Yeah. And he, his, it didn’t help that he liked financially. Control over his family cuz they always needed help with money and he was always the one helping them. But then when it came to everything that happened, they of course took his side even after seeing the proof they were like, you’re just, you’re the one who’s causing the problem I was like, but no, I don’t think so. 

I’m, you cuz of gaslighting and mental abuse, you start to believe that, especially if you’re in this situation, they isolate you. That’s the biggest thing. And I didn’t even realize what was going on until I took a step back objectively months after we had been outta the relationship. I did. I realize that’s what was happening. 

Yeah. Wow. You mentioned some red flags. Do you wanna just mention a couple of those just in case anybody that’s listening is experiencing this right now? Or thinks that they might be so that way they can maybe catch it early before that physical abuse starts because it is an escalation.

Yeah, it’s an escalation. And one of my favorites, there’s a book. I’ll have to send you the name of it, so you can put it in the show notes that it’s all about narcissistic abuse. And AF I read that because of my therapist. It’s about surviving a narcissistic narcissist abuse. 

That’s why the title is something more specific, but I’ll send you the link after because the name is escaping me, but it, when I read that book, I was like, these are all the red flags that I noticed but didn’t have a name for and it wasn’t until after that I could pinpoint it, but it was, two months in, I had found out I was pregnant and then after.

When we got into that discussion, I was like, I’m keeping the baby. This is what I want. I found out he had been lying about his aid. It’s a huge red flag. Number one. That’s a really big one. yeah. So he told me he was 27. Cause at the time I was 22, not that big of an age gap, he’s 30. There’s a huge big age gap. 

So like they build you up and then they like to completely knock you down. And just to see how far they can push you. So he would cause these big blow bites and make it my fault.

And I never realized, looking. He was just blowing these things out of proportion. And then they would get followed up with ex like extremely nice gifts. So those were some of the big red flags.

And when I was pregnant towards the end, he was like, never home. Never I was, could have been due any day. He would be gone, I don’t even know. I don’t know where. And so like those kinds of red flags, just not being treated properly, at all or showing any kind, kind of respect.

And I had so much else going on in my life at the time, not just only being pregnant, and graduating, I had other personal family stuff going on. So I was so just blinded by it. Everything that I couldn’t see. Cuz there, it was the least of my focus at that time. 

You were busy and it was, the busyness was keeping you from actually analyzing your situation and evaluating and feeling probable.

Yeah. And I was like, what am I supposed to do? Eight months pregnant or seven months pregnant. Like I wanna leave, but I can’t like, I just, there was all these. Practical factors and the pressure of society of I just was so under my head, in my head of, I don’t want my child to come from a broken home.

That was what I would tell myself because I just didn’t want to be that stereotype. But then when all the abuse started happening, it finally clicked in my head. I was like, it’s better. And somewhat I forget who said this means she should have a split home than see her mom. Be abused or put down constantly and did not have that like level of self, not realizing his worth like that. Wasn’t what I wanted to model for her.

That’s very true. Very true. So we’ve gone over the red flags, you mentioned financial abuse and for someone that’s giving you extravagant gifts for them to withhold money from you seems contradictory, especially knowing that he’s supporting his family. How did you overcome that or did that get overcome? As, when you left okay, now I’m gone and now I have control of my finances. Yeah.

The financial peace was a, it was like when I left, I realized, I constantly would think I didn’t, and I was not good at budgeting too. Cause I was so young and it was my first time dealing with normal bills and I had some in college. But then on top of that factoring in, child expenses, and daycare, cuz I was working full time. All the extra stuff. I just didn’t think I could afford everything. And he just could keep reiterating, you can’t afford this by yourself.

You’re not gonna be able to afford the rent by yourself. And I just thought, you’re right. I can’t like having to keep everything split. He would have, he had money and would just I was always a point of argument though, for us, yeah. And making me feel bad. Anything and everything, or just making me feel bad for buying groceries or in access.

There are just all these random things that would just make me feel bad about anything. But the finance piece was, he would always say you’re not gonna be able to support yourself or you need me was always the underlying message. Because you’re gonna be stuck. Like you were gonna be stuck at this corporate career.

And then once I finally left, I had to get serious about my finances by writing all of them down. What did I have to pay? What was just like a necessity? How much was I making? I knew how much I was making monthly, but what kind of discrepancy was there, and how was I gonna cover it?

And for a long time, I lived with my aunt. Thank God. So she didn’t charge us rent or anything like that. And she helped me get on my feet. So we didn’t have to live in a shelter. Which would’ve been the other option. But I didn’t realize how many resources and I was so blinded that I just asked for help because I didn’t, it was really like pride and thinking, I don’t want people to know that this is happening.

And I think that’s a very common human condition. Like anything that happens in your life, you’re like, okay. I would rather, no one knows about this, but yeah. If it comes out, then it comes out and you just have to go from where you are.

And it was really like the fears of my home head. So after starting my business, I’ve noticed. This is a lot more. Cause like when you’re an entrepreneur, you have all these fears of what people are gonna think and you have to address a lot of mindset issues. But those mindset issues were also playing a part in a lot of those mindset issues.

The abuse is like making it public. It was the same thing. It was a fear of how other people were gonna respond. I was so worried about what other people were gonna think. And half the time, the response that I thought they were gonna have wasn’t that at all, even close, like they were super supportive. They were understanding all of this stuff, it was just all the fear that had been made up. In my head, trying to. Keep me, I don’t know. It was all the subconscious. 

It’s trying to keep you where he wants you and where he has told you that you belong all that time, and yeah definitely not good for you. One kind of question that I have is if there is anybody listening because obviously, the goal of this episode is to help other women that may be experiencing the same thing right now.

How. Did you go through that process of leaving? Did you just leave all of your stuff? Did you just never go back to the house after you left the hospital, how did you separate finances? I think those are logistical questions that are never really addressed, but I think they do need to be addressed.

So yes. So luckily we weren’t. My situation is different from some people’s. If you’re usually a little bit different once you’re married, luckily we were not legally. We didn’t have anything legal finding us together in no official finances together. Like we kept most of everything. Like we knew our joint bills, but we didn’t have any accounts together, or like I wasn’t.

So he didn’t have access to my money, which was good. That’s a lot harder, I think. And I’ve talked to women who’ve experienced it. Where it’s a different circumstance in that it takes a little bit more. Cause my now mother-in-law is an advocate cause she went through something very similar. So now she’s an advocate and we’ve talked and talked about a lot of her cases.

It requires a couple of weeks more planning sometimes to get some people out, depending on the situation But there are resources like that where women’s advocates are. The women’s shelter is somewhere I called after everything happened. So the logistics of what, when I left was to go to the court.

File protection from abuse order, emergency protection of abuse order, cuz it was the weekend. So in our county, it was something called a night court. If you’re listening and you might have something different in your county or you might be able to go to the police station and file some type of report so once you got that, you.

Since I put our house, our shared house in the protection of abuse, he wasn’t allowed to come there. He was arrested. The night before, when everything happened, there was physical abuse shown, like I was physically injured. In Pennsylvania, they have to arrest on the scene if someone is physically injured and then you can decide if you want to continue pressing charges, which I did, which was a whole year-long process.

But He was, he had to leave so I could stay there and collect and figure everything out. And I stayed there for probably about a year or so because once he got outta jail, he could still find me and the police didn’t do that. Like much, cuz one it was a couple of days after he had gotten outta jail, we were at the house and he was like circling the house, trying to get ahold of me.

I had blocked him on stuff. But he had tried to message me and was trying to find out where I was and I called the police at, I don’t know midnight. And they were like, you have to go to night court. And I was like, okay, thank you. I’m still alive at eight hours when the night court opens. I will go there.

There are Difficulties. And it always depends on the county and what they’ll do. And the police are always their entity. There is a lot of police that help me, but there is a lot of police that don’t wanna get involved cuz it’s family. So I was like, okay, I have to leave.

I can’t stay here. We, I left a bunch of stuff that would’ve caused a bite, like anything that was shared or bought during anything that wasn’t. Clearcut mine or clearcut Charlottes. I took it, and I left. So I took whatever I needed. My mom and dad were like, don’t even think about it. We can buy you new stuff.

Don’t worry about the money. Just like we need to go. Then I went and moved in with my aunt, but I did call the women’s shelter a lot. Cause they have support groups for women who are transitioning through that. And most counties or states have some type of version of this or multiple kinds.

Private, some are government funded, but they have resources and support groups to help you through shelters. So if anyone’s listening and they’re like, how can I help? I always advocate donating to the shelters because there are so many kids and so many moms, who don’t even get the chance to pack, or pack their stuff up and have to leave with nothing.

So that was the logistical aspect. Getting protection from abuse was like being able to stay in the house and collect my stuff. And if he needed to come and get anything that like the police had to be there but it just depends on the situation, but there are those resources, like the women’s shelter or some type of female advocate groups that can and will help you.

If you have to leave with nothing and then the finance piece is. I had been saving for a while, putting some money away to have a nest egg. Cause I knew it was coming, but I didn’t know how, what, like how it was gonna happen. I just knew I was trying to save this money so that I could leave after she turned one.

Like I was like, okay, if I make it to one, she had a year with us both, but I can’t keep doing this so you can store some money away. Not gonna get you in, like in trouble or put you in a dangerous circumstance. Like you can hide money or give money to somebody to hold onto for you. Or start a name, bank account in your name, or something. That’s usually a good way to do it. So if you’re, if you have signed a prep or worried about finances.

Yeah, that makes sense. And it makes sense if you’re married, I think the holding of the money by another individual, like a, I guess a friend or a family member or someone that you trust would probably be a good idea because I don’t know. I guess you get online bank statements now. I don’t know. I guess it depends on everybody’s situation and how involved they are. Everything is, like you said, every day. 

Not holding onto the material piece and that money, you need the money, but there’s a lot of groups and people out there who can help you because I know of a group locally to us that I just talked to. They. Started to go fund for someone and were able to like, or they had donors and they were able to raise six or $7,000 for this woman and her child who were homeless and the air, like just to help them get their life back on track. 

So there are resources out there for any of the situations. So don’t hold onto it. They don’t let the material aspect of it. Hold you back. Some people will help you. It’s just getting in touch with them. There are so many that wanna help. 

This is amazing advice and amazing that you’re sharing your experience with us and I truly appreciate it. So how did you use this experience? Build your business. That’s really where it started, right? 

A lot. And I always say my business is what helped my healing. Like I did go to therapy. I was going to therapy before the relationship ended. That was the crazy part. Not even my therapist knew. Cause because I didn’t wanna bring that kind of stuff up, even though we were in therapy. So she didn’t know about the abuse.

After I had left, which was like a whole can of worms, I started the business. When I was like that, I ran out of options. I can’t keep staying in my company. I liked my corporate job. It was safe, and it felt good, but I was like, I need something more. And I had, no, I felt no control over my money. In corporate.

And so I had found all these books, all these podcasts, and it led me on my journey of self-healing and self-love and self-acceptance. Cuz I met so many other women. Who helped me on my journey. Like my first VA client was a life coach and she ended up helping me with a lot of my business. Helping me with that self-love and self-acceptance piece, because I had felt so crappy about where I was at.

So the journey of my business got me in contact with so many women and so many other people that were gonna help me on my journey. And I didn’t realize it yet. And I’ve met so many women. Who’s gone through an experience like I have because I’m so vocal about it because that was also part of the healing? 

If I’m making it through this, I’m helping other people get through this because I listened to so many stories like this on podcasts or books. And I could, I was like, okay if they can do it, I can do it. Like we just, it’s just one step at a time. But I would, I met so many life coaches or healers of different sorts. There were so many healing tools that I didn’t even know about until I met them at a networking event or some type of other business event or through a friend like rapid transformation therapy.

I’ve done that, and that helps wonders with just some subconscious fears. That was still holding onto me. Like I thought I had, out, I was over everything with him. I was out of it. Like I had met my now fiance and, I felt good, but it was really like the fear of him and his, my ex and my abuser, his repercussions were holding me back.

The thought of it was holding me back at the beginning of my business of success. So I was so afraid to get big and so afraid to like, actually do what I wanted because of what happens if he finds out and what happens, this, that, and the other. So that was like a huge part of the journey, but Yeah, rapid transformation therapy.

I worked with a coach. She’s not a coach. She does inner healing, but it’s very spiritual, very niche, not like mainstream or talked about, but she has her way of doing it through religion and I am religious. And so it was crazy how much one of those sessions helped because of me. Pregnant at the time.

And I was so stuck on all these subconscious things. Not only with my ex, but, yeah. Just another living thing that I was stuck on and pregnancy alone is one of those, one of those life things. So it was crazy how after we went through one of these sessions, my morning sickness, Totally cut down because I was holding so much tension in me that it was causing extra morning sickness.

It’s just, there’s all these things that these people don’t know about until they know, but that my business became a way for me to meet all these women and help other women who also experience this. And they were like, I had to start my business because. A similar situation or, and then it grew and now we’re working together because I’m helping them streamline and take back.

Their life is almost in a sense there are again because the business overran it and they’re like, they love their business, but it was taking up almost every hour of their day and they wanna be home with their kids. So what kind of tools can we put in place to help them do that? So that’s where the message stems from. Because of connecting with so many women who were in similar positions as me.

That is amazing. And I think for me, that is one of my favorite parts of being an online business owner. And I’m not even gonna say business owner because I connected with business owners. I had a brick-and-mortar like 15 years ago and I connected with people, but it’s not the same.

Like you make such deep connections online. Are impossible to make in person. And I don’t know how to explain it. You spend more time with people online. I think that sounds weird and backward, but especially since the pandemic, I’ve. Met some of the people that I’ve made friendships with online and it feels like I’ve never I’ve just known them forever. Like in person, it’s just so interesting.

I wouldn’t agree cuz I talk to my clients or potential people on my mastermind people, I talk to them a lot more like even my fiance. My one client, who’s you talk to her more than you talk to me. And we live in the same house and we’re always slacking on Facebook messaging and tagging each other and stuff.

You do get to know them because you’re talking to them every day. On a very deep level. Where I think you don’t talk like this. I know I never talk like this to people in my corporate job, when. An online business owner. I think the mental piece is so much more talked about.

As well. Yeah. And I think that’s the other part, one of the parts that are so restrictive about being working for someone else and having that. The expectation of, you can talk about this. You can’t talk about that. That is a very freeing part of it. 

Not only the time you can control, but also what you do with your time. But you can also control who you’re around, your environment. You have so much more control of so many things being an entrepreneur. And I think that’s huge. 

And I think that’s a double-edged sword in a sense. I was thinking about this the other day. Cause I’m. I finally deleted slack off my phone and I’m like, cuz you can work anywhere. But it’s the boundary of not working all the time. And like whenever you have a free moment. Yeah, and I was like, I had let slack overrun so much, and like my email overrun so much because of it. It’s like setting up those boundaries as well, in a sense too. 

And I’m sure that you’ve created a wonderful system for that. So I do not doubt checking and keeping up with it and, I’m sure you have some sort of system in place for that. 

It’s getting perfected because things look different now with having two kids, instead of one before my maternity leave, it was different. And I was definitely on the verge of burnout just from saying yes to too many projects and not bringing on enough help right away.

But now it’s at every stage of your life. And this is, I do this with business owners too. Your life changes. So your processes are gonna change with your, when with your business, as it grows, you’re gonna have different needs. Then when you start up and then when versus when you reach 200,000 or 500,000 things like that.

That’s so true. Thank you so much for sharing your story and being brave enough to talk about it. That’s a huge deal in itself. And going through it is a whole nother aspect. That’s not even, measurable. 

Thank you so much for being here. Is there anything else that you wanna share with the audience that is listening? About, if they’re going through this what would you have wanted to hear at that moment?

I feel like I’ve heard so many things that did help and I’m trying to pinpoint the one that just resonated the most, but it’s hard to believe that you’re going through this, that you are strong enough to get through, and that there is light at the end of the tunnel. 

If you take it one day at a time, do not let the anxiety affect the next year. Just taking it one day at a time. And do not let what you can’t control bother you because it gets better with time. honestly. That’s a great message. 

That’s awesome. Thank you so much, Emma, for being here. If people wanna get in touch with you, what is the best way to do that? 

If you follow me at El underscore operations, and if you’re going through this and need someone to talk to, my DMS is always open in a safe space and I can help you find any resources that you need.

That is wonderful. Thank you for that resource. You’re a huge resource then. So thanks. 

I try as I’ve connected with so many different kinds of programs and people which has been great yeah. To get that kind of network building. And we will put the link to the book that you’re talking about in the show notes as well.

If you’re going through it, I recommend cuz it’ll be an eye-opener that you’re not the, it was so weird to see the parallels that you’re not the only one going through it. Cause you feel like you are. 

Thank you for sharing everything with us and thank you so much for being here. 

Connect with Emma Ferrick

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Join My Favorite Networking Group for Mom Business Owners

Welcome to episode 215 of The Determined Mom Show. I am your host, Amanda Tento, and I am so excited to be sharing with you all about Mob Nation. What is the Mob Nation? It is my favorite business networking group, and it is literally All about moms and business owners. So M O B stands for mom-owned businesses.

So all of the business owners in this networking group are moms and a lot of them focus on moms, being a mom in their business. But a lot of them are just, like real estate agents and contractors and anything that you can imagine, they are here and it is such a huge and diverse group.

I love it. And they’ve been featured in many news organizations throughout the country. But to be honest, the thing that I love the most is you really get to know these women like family. I’ve been involved in the MOB in some way for probably about two and a half years. And Aria, who is the founder, the original founder.

It was on the podcast in, I think early 2020, and a lot of the guests that have been on our podcast are actually women that I’ve met in the mob. So such a great networking opportunity. I have resources out of the wazoo from being involved in the mob and knowing this person does that, and just getting to know these women over the last few years has been amazing.

So I wanna take a minute to read their mission statement so you understand what is going on with the mob. The MOB Nation is an anti-racist organization.

We are a safe, inclusive space that welcomes anyone that identifies as a mother and owns any size or type of business. We protect our members of the LGBTQ IA plus community. No hate, bigotry, or racism is ever tolerated in our community. This is such a great group of women.

There are many things that you can do in MOB One. Things that you can do right now are you can create a free directory listing and I’ve included the link to that in the show notes. So you can just go and grab your free listing and at least be listed on their website. And this will give you some SEO juice as well.

So that’s another bonus there. So they have a very popular website so you can get some SEO juice there. They have a free Facebook group that has a lot of resources in there where you can find others. Mobs or MOB own businesses to solicit. So if you’re looking for something in particular, you’re looking for a copywriter, you can jump in that group and say, Hey, does anybody know a mom’s own business or MOB, as they call it, that does Copywrite and.

People will chime in and say, Oh, this person. And then you can go and find them. They also have a LinkedIn group, a Discord server, and so many different things. They have a subreddit. And there is also a podcast. They have a lunch information kind of thing, like where you can listen to different speakers at lunch.

I started as a director of the mob in Olympia, Washington in 2020 and the very day. That it was March 17th, 2020. I’ll never forget it. The very day that I was supposed to host my first networking event, it got canceled because of Covid. So that is how it goes. And the company, the organization has transformed and gone with the. Networking, like the virtual networking event.

So now you don’t ever have to worry about missing an event and you don’t have to worry about going in person. They do occasionally hold in-person networking events, and those are primarily in the Pacific Northwest. However, I think they’re up to about three times per week for virtual networking events.

It is. Worth it to join the mob even if you are just for right now, to get started, create your free directory listing and join the free Facebook group. See if it’s for you. If you like, kinda like the vibe and enjoy the people and those kinds of things because. It is a business changer if you are a mom-owned business.

So I hope that you join us in the mob and I just wanted to share it with you because I know a lot of the audience is moms, who own businesses and moms, business owners like you, I wanted to make sure that you have the access to that resource. I would love to see you as a mom. Talk to you soon and have a great week.

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