The Boss Mom Podcast

Many of us would love to make a bigger impact on more people, but we aren't sure how. The great news is that our habits and choices as consumers are some of the biggest ways we can be impactful today. There are emerging businesses that are becoming the supplier and marketer for amazing products made by talented people in third world countries. How can we adapt our consumer behavior to make a bigger impact? As entrepreneurs, what can we do to bring about meaningful change in people's lives? And how can we reward good work? In this episode, Founder and Executive Director of Purse & Clutch, Jen Lewis shares how she is making a difference in the world one purse at a time. We are connected to the people that make our stuff, even if we don't know it. Shouldn't we have a story attached to our belongings? - Jen Lewis 3 Things You'll Learn in This Episode The importance of taking baby steps: We might not have the resources to impact 100 people today, and that's okay. Focus on helping one person at a time and ultimately, all our efforts will add up. How to create positive change as a consumer: We're all connected to the people who make the products we buy. When we support "slow" businesses that prioritize expertise and quality over mass-produced items, we're contributing towards someone's sense of purpose. Why we should focus on celebrating good work:For entrepreneurs thinking of partnering with local artisans, it's important to remember we're not doing so for charity. Instead, we're doing it to support skilled craftsmanship and amazing work. Guest Bio- Jen Lewis is the Founder and Executive Director of Purse & Clutch, a slow fashion brand working to create sustainable jobs for men and women in developing countries - starting from the raw materials and ending with the consumer carrying the most beautiful bag in the room. Jen holds a degree in Chemistry and a Master's degree in Leadership & Ethics, and in her spare time she enjoys vegetable gardening from seeds with her 2 ½ year old daughter, despite mixed results. To find out more, visit: www.purseandclutch.com www.instagram.com/purseandclutch www.pinterest.com/purseandclutch www.facebook.com/purseandclutch

In over ⅔ of US families, women manage the household budget. While we're good at the budgeting aspect and making sure everything is good month-to-month, we struggle with long-term planning, thriving, and creating financial freedom. Money is tied into absolutely everything we do, and when we have kids, this is amplified. We have to provide for them, but we also have to teach them to nurture a healthy view of money. This starts with us and what we believe and put into action financially. It's impossible to teach a healthy financial mindset and be effective at our financial planning if we have underlying limiting beliefs and a scarcity mentality around money. If we can get control of our money mindset and align our money with our values, we'll be able to afford the things we want in our lives and plan for the future. How do we overcome the financial hang-ups, fears, and mindsets that hold us back? What are the things moms need to know about money and how we talk about it with our children? In this episode, I'm joined by the founder of Smart Money Mamas and the online summit, Mamas Talk Money, Chelsea Brennan. We discuss the upcoming 2020 summit, and how we can cultivate a thriving money mindset. When our kids grow up hearing "we can't afford that", it creates a scarcity mindset. -Chelsea Brennan 3 Things You'll Learn in This Episode How to create an empowering, thriving money mindset: Many of us feel a sense of helplessness around money, and that we aren't in control of it. Even if we aren't financially stable yet, it's important to remember that we have autonomy in our choices with money. If we feel like our financial circumstances just happen to us, we'll never be able to empower ourselves or our children. Why money is a form of self-care: On a societal level, women have been conditioned to not value things that benefit us because we're often so focused on taking care of everyone else. The side effect of this is a deeply ingrained scarcity mindset around money. By overcoming it, we can get rid of our mental and emotional blocks around money and allow it to be a positive in our life, not a negative. The impact of a negative money mindset: Our budgets won't work if we're still viewing and relating to money through the lens of scarcity and struggle. No money strategy can overpower an underlying limiting belief. If we want to improve our money situations and teach our children the right lessons about it, all our strategies have to start with how we think and feel about money. Guest Bio- Chelsea is the founder of Smart Money Mamas and the annual online summit, Mamas Talk Money. An ex-hedge fund manager turned financial educator, Chelsea helps moms connect with all aspects of their money in a way that lets them overcome emotional blocks, identify what they most want, and create the healthy money habits that will help them achieve their goals while modeling positive money relationships for the next generation. For a free ticket to Chelsea's online summit, Mamas Talk Money visit https://boss-mom.com/money Check out Chelsea's money quiz here http://mamastalkmoney.com/quiz/.

Building Boss Mom over the last 6 years has been an adventure, to say the least. I created a video a little while back that shared how I built Boss Mom and the lessons I learned along the way in hopes that it helps you see that anything is possible and to help you reach your goals faster than I did. I walk you through the different decisions and phases of building the community and business and what worked and what didn't. I want you to come away from this episode feeling empowered to build a life and business that aligns with you and your dreams. Successful entrepreneurs don't worry about the 80% that doesn't work, they leverage and scale the 20% that does work. -Dana Malstaff Things You'll Learn in This Episode: When you give people permission to be who they are and create a feeling of belonging for them, you build trust. The only difference between you and the people who seem to have it figured out is that they keep going and never give up, even when things don't go according to plan. You have what it takes to create a business that you care about, a well- run space where you can nurture people and create a community and sense of belonging. When we create a system and everyone who comes into our world takes the same journey, that creates consistency. Once we have consistency, we can scale, track results, and see what's working.

The past few months have forced us to deal with major instability, and it has thrown many of us into a flat spin. However, it's important to understand that even when we're not facing a pandemic, uncertainty is inevitable. Any time we go through a life-changing event, be it a pandemic, a relocation, or even a divorce, we're faced with a lot of external factors. As a result, many of us end up feeling powerless. Is there a way to change that? When we change the way we think, we can change the way we feel. We may not be able to control events unfolding around us, but we can decide how we'll deal with them. How can we stop reacting to issues beyond our control and start responding to them instead? In this episode, Certified Life Coach and author of Create Your Calm: A Guilt-Free Journey to Peaceful Motherhood, Stephanie Nichols shares how to use life-altering moments as a catalyst for growth. We can't change what's happening around us, but we can make decisions about how we think about it. That's where we get our control back. -Stephanie Nichols 3 Things You'll Learn in This Episode: How to get better at managing emotions in a difficult situation: It's easier to manage the way we feel when we know how we feel. We have to check in with ourselves more regularly and acknowledge our emotions. The importance of acceptance: When we resist accepting what's going on around us, we end up allowing it to affect us even more. The sooner we accept reality for what it is, the sooner we can move on. How to turn life-changing events into a win: When faced with uncertainty, we need to think about what we want to create for ourselves. We may not always have the power to control what's happening around us, but we do have the power to use the situation to our benefit. Guest Bio- Stephanie Nichols is a divorced mom of two young boys, author of the book Create Your Calm: A Guilt-Free Journey to Peaceful Motherhood, and Certified Life Coach for Divorced Moms. She works one-on-one with moms who are ready to flourish after divorce by helping them create a future they can look forward to. Stephanie is known for her passionate personality and telling it like it is while using a gentle approach to help clients get unstuck and make sense of the world. She helps her clients overcome the natural self-doubt and despair they experience trying to navigate life alone, parenting solo, making decisions on their own, feeling overwhelmed, and worrying about their future. Stephanie is passionate about creating a world where divorce is not viewed as a failure, but as a catalyst for growth and a source of resilience and strength. To find out more, go to https://www.stephanie-nichols.com/ https://www.facebook.com/StephanieNicholsCoaching https://www.amazon.com/Create-Your-Calm-Guilt-Free-Motherhood/dp/1733623817 To take advantage of Stephanie's 1:1 Coaching Program 'Flourish After Divorce' - 6 month package 24 weekly sessions, head to: https://www.stephanie-nichols.com/work-with-me/ And to join Stephanie's safe, connected space for divorced moms, go to: https://www.facebook.com/groups/FlourishAfterDivorce/

When the whole world was put into quarantine, parents were thrust into homeschooling literally overnight. Taking on the job of educating our kids full-time can seem nearly impossible at first, especially alongside running a business. However, these last few months have shown that it's very doable, and something the whole family might prefer. Our assumptions and suppositions about homeschooling have been shattered as we've discovered various benefits and advantages of it, so much so that many parents have considered switching to homeschooling completely. What are some of the positives of homeschooling that our kids miss out on in conventional schools? How do we balance being a teacher, parent, and business owner without burning out? In this episode, I'm joined by entrepreneur, homeschooling expert, education consultant, and the founder of Surviving Homeschool, DeLise Bernard. We talk about why so many families are seeing the benefits of education-from-home. 3 Things You'll Learn in This Episode How homeschooling expands the opportunity for learning: The school curriculum can be limiting for kids, especially those that are gifted in unique ways. Through homeschooling, we get to build on what our kids are good at or interested in and lean into that outside the confines of class schedules. How kids can still have social interaction while homeschooling: Homeschooling our kids isn't as disconnected and isolated as people think. There are opportunities for them to connect with other kids through learning pods and groups, and to get taught by people who are experts in their own respective fields. Our kids can still have a strong social aspect to their lives without going to school. Why homeschooling can actually be better for entrepreneurial parents: For many boss moms, our concern around homeschooling is the worry about not having enough time to balance parenting, our businesses, educating our kids, and taking care of things at home. With the right resources, tools, and scheduling techniques, it's doable and it can actually work better for our families. Guest Bio- DeLise Bernard is an entrepreneur, homeschooling expert, education consultant, and the founder of Surviving Homeschool. While she and her husband have co-led their health management company, Beyond Excellence, for over 15 years, she's also the founder of Surviving Homeschool, a community that supports working families thrust into schooling from home. Providing practical "survival tips", cataloged educational resources, and ongoing encouragement to over 6800 members, the team offers community and connection in a time of social distancing. Her advice has been featured on ABC, CBS, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, and The Washington Post, as well as various podcasts, education websites, and popular parenting blogs. Her family's homeschool was also recently showcased in a George Washington University student-produced documentary for the school's Masters program. For more information, visit https://www.survivinghomeschool.com/ and https://www.facebook.com/groups/1116125115410985.

Keeping kids entertained has never been easy, and COVID-19 has only added fuel to the fire. How can we keep our children busy while we're working from home, without adding even more to our plates? While increasing screen time may sound like an easy fix, that comes with its own challenges. We want our children to be learning valuable skills, and for that, we can't rely on screens alone. Is that even possible when we're already juggling homeschooling and our businesses? Luckily, we don't have to do it all on our own. With the help of subscription boxes, we can simplify almost every area of our lives, including keeping our kids entertained and their minds nourished. In this episode, Founder and CEO of Peaceful Play, Stephanie Anderson explains how to keep children engaged with educational activities while we work from home. When kids are bored, we often end up giving them screen time to entertain them, but if we want to teach our children problem-solving skills, they need to be creating. -Stephanie Anderson 3 Things We Learned From This Episode Why we need to create creators: The world we live in thrives on consumerism, but our kids shouldn't only be consuming. We need to encourage them to create through educational activities. How to keep kids engaged for longer: Children lose interest easily, so we can't just offer them a box of activities hoping they stay engaged. Link the activities to a story so they're fully involved in every creative task. What children learn from interactive activities: When our little ones do hands-on activities, they're pushed to think outside the box. These problem-solving skills are helpful well into adulthood, so by encouraging them to be creative from a young age, we're setting them up for a lifetime of success. Guest Bio- Stephanie Anderson shows moms who work from home creative ways to keep their kids playing so that they can make time to work from home. As an entrepreneur's wife and mom of three, Stephanie is obsessed with raising creators, not just consumers. She is the founder of Peaceful Play, a community and resource full of tools to help parents who want to raise entrepreneurial-minded children, and Peaceful Play Box, a subscription box of creative, independent activities for children ages 3 - 7. To connect with Stephanie, head to: https://www.instagram.com/getpeacefulplay/ https://www.facebook.com/GetPeacefulPlay/ https://www.youtube.com/c/peacefulplay?sub_confirmation=1 And to order the Peaceful Play Box seasonal subscription box of independent play activities for kids ages 3-7, head to: https://www.PeacefulPlayBox.com/

We're guaranteed to hit a ceiling at some point if we're just trading hours for dollars. We have to stop limiting ourselves to just one income stream, especially if that stream depends on our constant attention. Online courses are a key way for entrepreneurs to make money with relatively little input, because once they're created we can continue to sell them for years to come. That being said, for the best results we have to think about our marketing strategies. How can we promote our courses effectively, so we can make money from the same content over and over again? Is there a way to make our launches more seamless? In this episode, CEO of Collaborate.Work, Bevin Farrand shares the secrets to a successful course launch. Have an overarching plan. It's easier to shift things around when you know what you're going to do. -Bevin Farrand 3 Things You'll Learn in This Episode The importance of knowing what we're working towards: When creating a product, it's vital to have an overarching goal in mind. Be conscious of what's being created and what we can expect to see as a result. How to stop leaving money on the table: Every piece of communication we share about our products brings in revenue, so by forgetting to send even one email, we're losing money. To combat this, plan communication strategies in advance. Planning doesn't mean we'll never miss anything, but it does make it less likely. How to build a buzz around our courses: To generate attention for our launches, the content we share in the build-up needs to tell a story. Seeding the product hooks our audience so by the time we launch, we've already got willing customers. Guest Bio- Bevin Farrand is the CEO and Head Cat Herder of Collaborate.Work, which works with small business owners, entrepreneurs, and mid-size corporations to get their ideas out the door and into the world. As the former Brand Director of Boom! by Cindy Joseph and Smart Marketer, she's led dozens of product launches and promotions generating 20MM+ annually. She's also developed online courses and summits, as well as executed launches, for I Will Teach You to Be Rich, Evolving Wisdom, and several entrepreneurs. She is passionate about supporting her clients to create businesses that enrich their lives. Her favorite and most demanding "clients" are her three-year-old daughter and one-year-old son. To find out more, go to: https://www.facebook.com/collaboratework https://www.instagram.com/bevinfarrand/ https://www.launchsecretsroadmap.com/special-offer40699042

The feeling of being busy fills most of us with a sense of accomplishment, but we need to remember that constantly being busy doesn't always mean our businesses are growing. In fact, most of the time it's the exact opposite. The momentum trap tricks us into believing we need to work round the clock to see results, but that only holds us back. When we dedicate all our business hours to client work, we lose time that could have been spent building authority in our markets. How can we pull ourselves out of the momentum trap and get to a place where our businesses succeed without needing constant tweaking? Can we ever reach a point where our businesses generate revenue without our input? In this episode, I share how to escape the momentum trap that keeps our businesses in one spot. The momentum trap is sustaining what you already have. Spend your time growing so you systematically get bigger results. -Dana Malstaff 3 Things You'll Learn in This Episode Break the cycle of spending hours coming up with one-on-one solutions for clients. Acknowledge that tons of consumers are facing the same challenge and create one piece of content to serve them all. We're never going to be the only entrepreneurs in our space, but that doesn't make what we do any less valuable. Once we believe our uniqueness is what separates us from others in our areas of expertise, we can work on creating something sellable. Date-driven content limits the reach of our products. Instead of creating solutions to date-specific problems, focus on finding a frustration people experience all year round.

For many of us, the idea of blogging professionally feels like a distant daydream, or something that we're too late to the party for. Thanks to the increased number of people online at the moment, it's more attainable now than ever before. The perks of blogging might not always include living the life of an Instagram influencer, but it does offer a lot of freedom and financial reward. With more than one way to monetize content, blogging gives us the opportunity to design the lives we want to live. What does a career in blogging look like, and how do we know if we're a right fit for the job? Do we need to have a writing background to create successful content? In this episode, Founder of the Root + Revel food and wellness site, Kate Kordsmeier shares how to start a successful blog. If you enjoy providing service and value to the people who come to you for advice, consider a career in blogging. -Kate Kordsmeier 3 Things You'll Learn in This Episode How to know if blogging is a good choice for usThere are no specific requirements for a career in blogging, but there are clues that tell if we'll be successful or not. As a general rule, if people regularly ask our opinion on particular topics, we have some kind of expertise they want to learn from. Seize the opportunity! Why we need to shift our perception of what a blog isBlogs are traditionally done in a written format, but there's no need to limit ourselves to one medium. Whether we're writing a post or sharing advice in a video or podcast, the most important thing is to find what works for ourselves and our audience. How to grow our audience While instagram is a great place to draw attention to our blogs, be careful of spending too much time on social media. To make sure content is seen by as many people as possible, focus on SEO and Pinterest. Guest Bio- Kate Kordsmeier is a writer, educator, and creative entrepreneur. After almost a decade as a freelance journalist, Kate founded Root + Revel, a holistic wellness blog with a focus on mind-body-soul health. Once the blog blossomed into a 6-figure business, she started the The Six-Figure Blog Academy, a digital course dedicated to helping others start their own profitable businesses. Kate is also the host of the Success with Soul Podcast. To find out more, head to: https://katekordsmeier.com/ https://rootandrevel.com/ https://www.instagram.com/katekordsmeier/ https://www.instagram.com/rootandrevel/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/katekordsmeier/ https://www.katekordsmeier.com/6fba And to sign up for the free webinar mentioned on this episode, head to: katekordsmeier.com/bossmom Other products mentioned on this episode: https://katenorthrup.com/

Chronic illness and regular health issues can make our lives feel unstable, especially when it comes to our work, our businesses, and our ability to create things that are meaningful and impactful. It can seem like it's impossible for us to build something that supports us while we're contending with bouts of illness. Many smart, capable, and creative ladies feel defeated by this, but health issues don't have to get in the way of our dreams. It is possible to work for ourselves, earn income even during downtimes, and run an operation that fits into the rhythm and flow of our lives. By building a simple business that runs on evergreen products, we can have success without compromising our health. How is an online business a great solution for dealing with health issues? How can creative people turn their passion into a successful, simple business? In this episode, I'm joined by the owner and the designer of Oksancia Textile Design Studio and School, Oksana Pasishnychenko. She shares her inspiring story and how online businesses empower people with chronic illnesses. More people should seek to build simple businesses that they work hard at, but can also have flexibility and freedom with, because life is unpredictable. -Dana Malstaff 3 Things You'll Learn in This Episode How your creative passion can turn into a great businessMany people wonder if artistry, illustration, and creativity can be turned into a business with stable, recurring income. Through coaching, training, and course content, we can leverage our creativity, teach and impact others, make money, and scale what we do. The danger of a launch-based business Going from launch to launch is incredibly draining and stressful, and if you're already dealing with a health issue, or even the stress of lockdowns alone, they aren't a good idea. An evergreen model allows you to work on perfecting and honing in on that one thing which gives you stability. How online businesses are great for working with health issuesA scaled up online business that's based on selling evergreen course content allows you to build something that won't suffer instability when health issues cause downtime. It also means you won't have to compromise on how much much you earn, and you won't have to force yourself to work when you're not feeling well. Guest Bio- Oksana is the owner and designer of the Oksancia Textile Design Studio and School. Her passions are to design unique fabric and products and to teach fellow artists how to start and grow a lifestyle business designing and selling digital repeat pattern designs. Oksancia illustrated 2 published children's books, and the products with her designs were for sale at Best Buy, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and CVS pharmacy. She created a portfolio of more than 10,000 vector illustrations and designs, and collaborated on more than 100 client custom design projects. Oksana is a happy wife of an amazing man and a mother of a sweet little girl. Together we love to cook, make arts and crafts, read funny books, and travel while collecting creative inspiration and adventures. For more information and to access Oksana's free webinar on starting your own creative business visit www.oksancia.com