9 Things I Learned As a New Mom That Make Me a Better Business Owner

As my baby’s first birthday approaches, another anniversary approaches as well — my anniversary of becoming a mom, experiencing birth, and stepping into this new phase.

For me, becoming a mom has felt like riding a mountain bike down a steep hill: exhilarating, joyful, demanding of my strength and skill, and only partially in my control. I’ve learned a lot over the past year. And most of what I’ve learned feels viscerally true to me across both my personal life and my work life.

So today I want to share those learnings with you, in case they illuminate some knowledge that you have about owning a business, being a maker, doing creative work, caregiving, or being a parent. Obviously, these are only my experiences. If they don’t resonate with your experience or inner voice, please ignore them.

9 THINGS I LEARNED AS A NEW MOM THAT MAKE ME A BETTER BUSINESS OWNER

1. Do it your way, not the “right” way.
Rather than trying to be a “great parent”, I’ve found it powerful to focus on being a parent in a way that’s authentic to me. And that’s been a powerful reminder to do the same in my business and creative work. Rather than trying to make the “right” choices for my business, I’m focusing on doing my work in a way that resonates with who I really am.

Roe Cummings says, “If you’re going to lead, lead with integrity, spirit, and generosity. In that order.” Integrity (doing things in a way that feels right and is in alignment with who we are) matters most and is the foundation of the rest. So rather than googling how to wean a baby or deal with nighttime wakes or improving my social media, I’m thinking first about what would be in integrity for me. And I’m doing it that way, unless there is a very, very good reason not to.

2. Rest fully and work fully.
Resting fully in the days after Adi was born (as in, doing zero dishes, rarely leaving my bed, losing complete track of my phone) allowed me to return to my work and life much more quickly and fully than if I had not fully rested. Similarly, when I work fully (not checking email constantly or diffusing my attention with personal items), I am fully available to feel present with Adi and Etan and myself when I finish work for the day.

3. Do one thing at a time. And know what’s “up next.”
Moms don’t have a monopoly on being busy. Anyone who is doing something complex will always have more to do than time to do it. And that sense of “never done” can feel overwhelming. So my two practices, whether with the baby, my personal life, or the business are:

• Do one thing at a time.

• Know what’s “up next.”

If you truly do one thing at a time — whether that’s changing a diaper or writing a blog post — you bring your full intelligence to it. And if you know what’s “up next” (the next most important thing), even if don’t have time to do that thing in this exact moment, then when you do have a spare moment, you can hop easily over to it. You have more time than you think you do, as a new mom or a business owner — but you have to do one thing at a time and know what’s “up next” to be able to use it.

4. Have a team you can count on and count on your team.
Etan and I started Wholesale In a Box at our kitchen table, in early mornings and late nights. It was very personal and we did all of it ourselves. Also: we now have a team of 3 core team members and 2 other contractors we work with. And these people are brilliant, deeply caring, powerfully skillful, and incredibly competent.

But it’s not enough just to have a team you can count on -- you have to actually count on them. When I started to think about maternity leave, I noticed all the places I was placing myself as a bottleneck in the company — I had daily and weekly responsibilities that meant I couldn’t take real time off because there were periodic things that “only I could do.” So I changed that. We created systems that made it so that I could take a full 3 weeks off when the baby came, without once checking texts or emails — and the business would carry on as well (or better) as it would if I had been there. This has been crucial to create the space for me to be present with my new baby and my new self as a mom. But it’s also been powerful for the business. The business didn’t want me as a bottleneck. So things function better now than they did before un-bottlenecking myself.

This learning has been powerful in our family life, too. I am lucky to have married maybe the best man in the world. But it doesn’t matter how great he is if I micromanage or snatch things away from him or make myself a bottleneck in our family life. From the beginning, we assumed we’d both be equally good parents and that we’d both do equal amounts of parenting and housework. The key, though, was doing our absolute best at all times to let whoever was “in charge” in any given moment (hint: if you’re holding the baby, you’re in charge of the baby) to be in charge -- and not second-guess them or micromanage them.

5. Nourish the source.
They say we must put our baby’s needs above our own needs — but that wasn’t my experience. The care I give to him seems like an immediate outpouring of care I give myself, in the same way my breastmilk is an immediate and literal outpouring of the nutrition I give myself. Your rest, sanity, well-being and joy cannot take second place, because they are the source of everything else. And that applies to creativity and business, too.

6. You know more than you think you do.

Before the baby came, I had a lot of intuition about how things would go, what I’d need, and how I wanted to do things. But I thought I wasn’t “allowed” to know those things -- that I was probably wrong -- because I didn’t have any direct knowledge of being a mom. Honestly? I was right about 95% of it. So I’ve been trying to really listen to my own intuition with decisions moving forward, assuming it’s probably right until proven otherwise.

Similarly, a lot of people start businesses with a lot of great “gut” about the best ways to do things… but they discount those instincts because they don’t have any direct experience of running a business yet. In coaching makers, I find that they know far more than they think they do… and their gut sense about decisions is usually right. So consider listening to your intuition -- unless or until you’re proven wrong.

7. See the wholeness, not just the problems.

In the early days after Adi came, it was easy to fall into problem-solving mode and see him as an amalgam of issues: his weight and his latch and whether that oozing belly button is normal. But when my mind was in that mode, I could not see him in his wholeness. I could not see him as a person. And when I couldn’t see him as a person, I couldn’t truly connect with him or feel nourished by him or nourish him. I have found all of that to be true of business as well — it’s natural and easy to see your business as a set of problems to be solved — when really it has a sweet wholeness that must be honored in order to know how to nourish it or be nourished by it.

8. No advice is worth feeling like crap.
Our first full day in the hospital after the baby came, the lactation consultant came to help with Adi’s feeding. Good timing, as I had no idea what I was doing! But within minutes of her arriving (with a flurry of hand knits, aggressive energy, and disdain for the way I had naturally gravitated to feeding him) I realized that despite her essential oil perfume, she was making me feel like crap. So I asked her sweetly to leave, and not to return. I needed help with breastfeeding, but not at the cost of my own confidence or peace of mind — and I trusted that Adi, Etan, and I would be better off on our own than with the wrong kind of support.

If someone has “advice” or “knowledge” but they don’t make you feel stronger, seen, and clear when they deliver it, then protect yourself from what they have to say - it’s not worth it. This applies to family members, business gurus, books, lactation consultants, and anyone else who might offer you advice.

9. Do more of what you love.
I wasn’t crazy about breastfeeding but loved sitting in bed with the baby and babbling at each other. So I did what I needed to do to feed him… and I made sure to carve out plenty of time for lounging with the little one. Similarly, I don’t love operational conundrums in the business but I do love making new training programs for our makers. So I fix the ops stuff as quick as I can and make sure that I leave plenty of time for working on training materials. Whatever part you love about caring for the baby — or building your business — let yourself do tons of that. It will fill you up for the parts you don’t love as much.