114: Can You Be a Good Parent AND a Successful Entrepreneur?

Welcome to the Time to Level Up Podcast. I'm your host, Andrea Liebross. Each week, I focus on the systems, strategy, and big thinking you need to CEO your business and life to the next level. Are you ready? Let's go.

Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the Time to Level Up Podcast. This is the third podcast I am recording in one day. The other two I recorded between 7:15 AM and 8:15 AM and now it's 5:15 PM. At the other end of the day, here I am but I wanted to get these three recorded because they go together. In my brain, that helps as I discuss them with you. This is like part three in a way.

Also, I'm going to be honest, I want to spend some time over the next six weeks on my book, and podcast creating is somewhat of the same muscle as book creating and I am finding it hard to do both. So here I am, I am batching. This is a classic batching example. What do you batch? I would love to know what you batch. Tell me because it might help give me some ideas. Either shoot me a message on social media, connect with me via email. Tell me what you batch. Let's get down to business.

My friends, you are all amazing humans. Many of you are also parents. The vast majority of you in that category are moms. But not all, we do have male listeners, can you believe it? I find that oftentimes, our brain likes to make being a “good parent” as an excuse for not being a successful entrepreneur.

Another way to say that is an obstacle to becoming a successful entrepreneur in many people's thoughts is they want to be, first and foremost, a good parent. Good parenting in many books comes ahead of successful entrepreneur. I can buy into that, my friends. Yes, I mean, it is cliche, but it is true, our families come first. It's true. I'm not going to argue with that one. Which is why actually if you go back to the last two podcast episodes, I talked a lot about how the strainer needs to be your life and the business has to fit in those little holes, not the other way around.

But our brain likes to think it's an either-or situation. What I want to propose to you today is that it can be an and-situation. In fact, good parenting and successful entrepreneurship have a lot in common, which we're going to dive into and dissect a little bit today. But when we use this “my kids come first” kind of thing or even when it comes down to investing in coaching, “Oh, Johnny needs to play soccer in the season so I don't want to invest in coaching or we've got college tuition so my business needs to pause with coaching,” really? Really?

This good parenting thinking impacts your entrepreneurship in so many ways. One could be investing. Actually, I don't even have that here on my notes. That just popped into my head, but other ways it affects entrepreneurship: good parenting, we can have thoughts that being a good parent takes a lot of time and that time is time away from our business or time we cannot give to our business. It's probably the best way to put it. Time we can't give to our business.

Also, our kids are our focus, so we can't focus on our business as well. Or “They really need a lot of my attention right now so I can't attend to my business.” These are truly limiting beliefs. When we have these limiting beliefs, our decisions tend to go one way. Those decisions tend to delay our growth or there is a lag in growth. There's a lag time in the growth of the business.

These types of decisions where “I have to do everything for my kids and nothing for me” kind of decision impact our own self-worth, our own fulfillment, our own purposefulness, because although being independent is a noble purpose, it sounds amazing, we also have to have some other purposes to fulfill our higher needs.

Go back to the podcast where I talked about meeting your own needs. A lot of times, successful entrepreneurship is a way in which to meet your own needs. This limiting belief that I need to be a good parent before I can do anything else really impacts the success of our business. I'm here to argue again that you can do both because I will give votes to being good parents, I'm all in on that.

I went to the Googles like I always do and I looked up good mother. What is it a good mother? This is such a loaded question, isn't it? A good mother according to the Googles is someone who is nurturing, caring, takes care of her children, her family, and her friends. A good mom wants to make the world a better place for everyone in it. A nurturing parent is also responsible for the child's well-being and safety. There are many ways in which a mother can be nurturing.

That little definition talks about nurturing, caring, taking care of things and people, wanting to make the world a better place, and being responsible for your child's well-being and safety. Just remember that, the nurturing and the caring, the attending, making the world a better place, well-being, safety, those are all the words thrown in there.

Here's another definition from the Googles. A good mother, often called a good-enough mom, does her best to teach her children how to live life to the fullest. She is there for her children when they need her. She teaches her children the importance of self-worth. She provides food, shelter, and love. I actually like that definition a whole lot better because it's talking about teaching your child how to live life to its fullest.

I guess number one with that one is you'd have to define what its fullest. Then she will be there for her children when they need her. That's left up for a little bit of interpretation because who says when they say, “Mom, we need you,” who's the decider on the needing there? I love this part though, and I have no qualms about it, teach her child the importance of self-worth. In order to do that, she's got to feel worthy herself. She provides food, shelter, and love. If you go back to meeting your own needs, those are your basic needs.

Here's the thing. When I work with my clients, I want them to be good parents. I really believe truly that they can be good parents, good coachees, good business owners, and successful entrepreneurs. I catch people sometimes in consults telling me that they're not sure they can invest in this right now because they need to be the parent. They don't say it that way. But that is what they're saying.

Doesn't that sound so noble though? It sounds so amazing. Sounds like yes, who wouldn't want to do that? Sounds very, very noble. But you can do both. Here we go. Let's look at how that happens. First of all, let's paint a picture. I love pictures. What's your picture of a good mom? I think of a renaissance piece of art where the colors are muted, there are soft lines, and it's more of a tender loving calling with lots of hints of calmness. It is not bad moms. What's that movie? What's that hilarious movie? Oh my goodness. That's not my picture. I picture this renaissance picture. But those bad moms, they weren't so bad.

Moving on. Now, of course, there certainly are moments, like the one I am picturing in my renaissance artwork, that are tender and loving. But mothering is really a job, my friends. Albeit one with ever-shifting requirements, it's a job with shifting requirements. No one likes jobs with shifting requirements. That, in and of itself, is what makes it hard to do at times and impossible to do perfectly.

Here's the thing, because of the ever-shifting requirements, we never quite know what's on the horizon, which our brain doesn't like that because it's not safe, efficient, and easy. We don't know what's ahead, which sometimes is what is the obstacle. That's the limiting belief, you're not quite sure what's going to happen. You need to wait till the time when things are more settled. Guess what? It's never going to be settled with the parent in the parenting job.

Now even though I know we, me included, all try to do things perfectly and we want this job most of the time, I think it's the toughest job around. Today I want to share with you what I see as some of the common thoughts, we female entrepreneurs who are mothers or who are caregivers of any kind, and women who want to be mothers or amazing aunts or friends and supporters, I want to share with you some common thoughts and then we can dive into how perhaps we can shift some of these thoughts to be more in line with who we want to be holistically, which you wouldn't be listening to this podcast if you didn't want to be a successful entrepreneur.

I know you want that. I also know you want to be a great parent or nurturer to whoever you are nurturing. Now, in order to do this, this is one of these times when we really need to quiet down that little voice in the back of our heads which is giving us all sorts of instructions and definitions like the Googles on what good parenting looks like. I want you to right now stop and acknowledge that little voice, say, “Thanks so much for giving me all that wisdom over these last 21 years in my case, but the real Andrea is standing up here, the real Andrea is coming forth. That real Andrea is an amazing mom and an amazing business owner.”

Alright, drumroll, please. Let's dive in. Here is the first general principle I would love to share with you. Number one, the very qualities that might have made you a candidate for the world's best mother when your child was a toddler, your vigilance, your organizational skills, your ability to control situations and chaos, those things may earn you an F at another stage in your child's life.

The problem for all of us is that the evolution of our parenting skills may not keep up with the challenges of the parenting job. I have found this so true now that I have been on this parenting journey for over 20 years. While the words “Let me help you with that, sweetie,” may be soothing for a five-year-old and may encourage her to try harder, they will sound very different to a 16-year-old who hasn't asked for your help.

Being proactive on your child's behalf is appropriate at one stage and not another. A mom who is used to being involved in her daughter's life may go into an emotional anaphylactic shock when her daughter is in her 20s. That's I think why people always say, “Oh, was it so hard when they went off to college?” It really wasn't super hard for me. I don't know. But I just want you to know that little kids have little problems and big kids have big problems, which is why the evolution of our parenting skills may not keep up with the challenge of the job.

My old neighbor, shout out to Wendy Bublitz if you're listening in California, she and I lived next door to each other when my kids were young and her kids were a little older than mine, not too much older but just enough. She always told me that little kids have little problems, big kids have big problems. She was so right.

Now notice that this concept applies to entrepreneurship as well. What you were doing when you started your business is not what's going to fulfill the job requirements as the business grows. What worked on day 1 is not going to work on day 1000. But here is the ironic part. In motherhood or in parenting, somehow we adjust and shift as our children grow so why don't we always believe that we have the same capacity to do this thing in entrepreneurship?

Because if you really think about it, we do all continue along in our parenting journey. These kids don't stop growing so we have evidence that it is possible to shift as things grow and change. We've already probably done it as a parent. That skill is available to us. But we have a hard time extracting it and letting us use it in a business sense to continue to grow the business that we need to adjust and shift. If you're telling me that you don't know what's ahead in your world of parenting, and thus it's getting in the way of your business, I'm going to tell you that you don't know what’s ahead in your business either. Why don't we just all be in this together and evolve?

That's number one. Here's number two. Number two, as we know, there are no qualifications for being a mom, a parent, or a nurturer. You can do it at any age, in any place. There are women who at age 15 are moms and they think they're amazing. Then there are women at age 55 who are moms who think they're terrible. Age or experience is never a factor in how well you do this mothering, parenting, nurturing job.

I want to remind you that this too, my friends, is just like being an entrepreneur. If you listen to last week's episode, on the seven characteristics or keys to being a successful entrepreneur, there was nothing in there about experience or age, just saying. You can be a good parent at any age with any level of experience just like you can be a successful entrepreneur at any age with any level of experience.

When you tell me, “I've never done this before. I don't know how,” you've never done 99% of what comes up in the parenting job but somehow you figured it out. Again, let's borrow on that evidence that “I'm able to figure this stuff out” evidence when it applies to our business. Isn’t that interesting?

Number three. In the same realm, we have a surety about us as mothers as to what we need to do in order to be a good mother. Just like what we need to do in order to be a good entrepreneur, we have a manual for this good mom thing, we have a manual for good or successful entrepreneur, so that's, in and of itself, super interesting. We’ve got manuals for all of this that we wrote ourselves. Many of us have said that we don't want to become our mothers or our mothers-in-law. That one wrong move and our kids are scarred for life.

Both of those thoughts that we don't want to become like our moms and one wrong move and our kids are scarred for life, both of those are fear-driven. Notice that. Notice those two fears that come up. When we say things like, “I just want to do the right thing for my child” as if there is a wrong thing that we could do that we are fearing, we fear these wrong things, notice fear is a factor here, we always do whatever we do and it's always going to be exactly what we should have done.

You know how I know it? Because we did it. This “I want to do the right thing” thing, we can ever have evidence that it's the right thing. It is what it is, but we did. Just like entrepreneurship where we face a lot of fear head-on, we somehow managed to face a lot of fear head-on in the parenting realm.

But here's a difference when it comes down to fear. Once we decide to become a mom—and I'm going to go with “it was a conscious choice”— once we decide to become a mom or a parent, regardless of how much fear we have (we're never ready), we keep going. We are fearful in all stages of parenting. As our kids grow, we have different fears. Big kids, big problems, little kids, little problems, but we keep going. You know why? Because we have no choice. Those kids keep growing and we keep going.

Now, that would be an interesting concept to pull into entrepreneurship. We are committed to being a parent. Are we committed to being an entrepreneur? We might be attached to what we think a good mom looks like. We know from entrepreneurship, we know when we are attached to what a good entrepreneur looks like, that doesn't usually happen. We need to move from attached to committed.

One of the characteristics of successful entrepreneurs that we talked about in the last episode is that we work toward a goal no matter what, no matter how long it takes, and we believe that we will figure it out along the way just like we have to believe in ourselves as mothers and that we will figure it out along the way.

We have evidence that we do figure it out along the way. We adapt. Why, my friends, do we not trust the same sort of evidence in entrepreneurship or vice versa? See how all these things are so similar and how much evidence that you can draw to support being a good parent and a successful entrepreneur at the same time?

Here's number four. As moms or as parents, we are always on a quest to find out what we should do. We're always on this quest. We discussed this two episodes ago, we think that you will actually find the answer to what we should do outside of ourselves. We ask our friends, we read books, we observe other mothers in the line at Target. We are on Facebook groups for members of the class of 2024 (if anyone's ever been in any of these parenting Facebook groups for college-aged kids, woah).

We turn every mothering decision upside down and inside out to inform and shape what we'll do and often what we will do when it comes down to it, what we do is really just informed by what we won't do. We are trying to stay clear of all the bad mothering behaviors and we feel sure enough that by staying away from the bad stuff, we'll get closer to being a good mom or parent. Super interesting.

We often go outside ourselves to figure out what we should do as a parent, then what we actually end up doing is really fueled by what we don't think we should be doing, bad mom stuff. As entrepreneurs, we turn every decision as well upside down and inside out. We ask other people, we read books, we listen to podcasts. But guess what, we do know what to do, I say that a lot to my clients, you know what to do, just like mothers know what to do because you have inner wisdom.

It might just take some questions from a coach, a mentor, or a friend (in the mothering sense) to pull that answer out of you of what you should do. Just like the good friend does for the mother, the coach does for the client. The fourth thing here, to recap, is that when we're on a quest to figure out what we should do, what we should do is really just listen to our inner wisdom. That's it. Because listening to what we should do from all these other mothers is exhausting. We can get lost on Pinterest to plan the perfect birthday party to find out what we should do and it's exhausting. It sucks our energy, just like when we spin in indecision in our business, it's exhausting.

Here's the last point I want to make. Bad is always stronger than good. Bad has more of an impact on us both emotionally and cognitively than good things. Bad has more impact. This is really what's called negativity bias. Probably, it has an evolutionary advantage, caveman advantage because it put this motivational triad that we have, which is what this negativity bias is friends with, it puts those things that are threatening and that are threatening to our survival into a part of the brain where they can easily be recalled and automatically reacted to.

We know when there's trouble ahead. We've already been there. We easily and automatically recall that and go into high alert, just like the motivational triad where our primitive brains want things to be safe, same type of thing. Of course, this bias implies that a child's development is more impacted by the negative things than the positives. This creates our drive to not mess up and it creates our list of shoulds.

I asked some of my clients about what a good parent should do and here's what they said. I’m going to tell you eight things. A good parent should always put the child's needs before her own, always wants to be around her child, should always feel that the most important thing in the world is her child, should always be willing to give up anything for her child, should feel the only thing she needs in her life to feel happy is her child. She had completely defined herself as a person through motherhood, shouldn't feel bored spending time with her child, should be able to handle kids and her own knees all day long without needing breaks.

Let's pause for a second. How does that list make you feel? How does it feel in your bones? The shoulds, the always. I don't know about you, but it makes it hard for me to breathe and makes me anxious. I feel my stress level rise. I can imagine what it might have only felt for you.

The interesting part of this is that moms sometimes view this list as a list of truths, of facts. However, you guys are smart now, you know that all those things are really just thoughts. The shoulds, the always are really just thoughts. They may be beliefs, but they are thoughts. Good news is that we can change our thoughts.

We can think of anything we want to. But to believe that all of these things define a good parent, I think actually gets in the way of us being a good parent. To hold on to these expectations is heavy, exhausting, and sucks the energy out of us like I talked about in a couple of episodes. It gets in the way of us listening to our internal wisdom.

When I mirror back some of these thoughts to my clients and say, “Is it true? Is it a fact that a mother should always put her child's needs before her own? Should the mother put the child's request for a cookie right this minute before her own need to focus on her work?” When I say like that, my clients start to waver.

Part of the work that we do inside coaching is work through thoughts like this. I don't care whether you are one of my clients that's in the beginning stages of their business, the middle, or you're running a multimillion-dollar company, you all have these thoughts. That's why I love coaching along this growth continuum. You all have this. These very thoughts get in the way of you becoming a successful entrepreneur and getting yourself to that next level. They become obstacles.

These shoulds and always create resistance to becoming both the parent and the business owner that you want to be. Instead of choosing to think of them as opportunities to share with your child, instead of thinking about being an example of what's possible of who you're becoming, who they could become, and working toward that, you choose to play it safe and you play it small. You stay in the safety zone of the motivational triad of good mother beliefs. You truly are limiting yourself in your potential.

My friends, why can't you be a good parent and a successful entrepreneur? The skills are very much interchangeable. There's no nobility in wanting to be a good parent. We all want to be good parents. Don't let that get in your way of successful entrepreneurship. Is it really an either-or? Why can't get an and?

To wrap up, I think the three things that you need to be a good parent are just staying in tune to your child, observing, and listening. This can take place without even words. It's just through gaze. Staying attuned as your child begins to grow out of early childhood requires you and all the emotional baggage you have, getting all that out of the way so you can actually listen and hear that adolescent or that young adult. You have to be aware, you have to stay tuned.

Number two, you have to mind your boundaries. This is a tough one, especially in the culture that we live in, which loves micromanaging. No one loves micromanaging in their business so why would you like micromanaging at home? Think about that. This micromanaging thing again applies to both business and parenting. Mind your boundaries. Understand that your child has limits. You need to be there for your child but you also need to be there for you. There gets to be a point where being there for your child may not be beneficial for them.

Then here's the last thing. What is the bare minimum, my friends, what is the low road? What's the low road processing? Low road processing is really the moment when something in your relationship with your child pushes all of your buttons and you experience a tsunami of emotions. Most of them having to do with you and how it's affecting you looking at your past and your own unresolved stuff. It's at that moment that suddenly, even without you realizing it, your feelings are driving the bus. Whatever else you may be doing, you're not listening to your thoughts. You're indulging in your feelings.

On the low road, when you take that low road, it's all about. I want you to take the high road and make it about them, just like you make it about the client. I want you to make whatever is happening in their world about them. It's their journey. They're finding their way just like you as a business owner, it's your journey, you're finding your way. Decide what you need to do just to survive when you're in times like that. What's your minimum baseline and just plant yourself there even if you can't get to that high road quickly.

Let's wrap up. A good mother, a good parent is a good woman or a good guy who is good to herself or himself, who takes care of herself, who pushes her own endeavors, and who doesn't let guilt, micromanaging, and her own plethora of emotions get in the way. The same three things can be said about a successful entrepreneur, doesn't let guilt, micromanaging, or his own plethora of emotions get in the way.

What do you need to do? Do you need to work on this? What do you need to do in order to show up as your best self? What would it look like for you? I want you to imagine yourself as a successful entrepreneur who is also a good mom, all at the same time, not one or the other. Imagine a mother who has the tools in her toolbox to help manage her own emotions and to teach her kids how to live a full life, who sees her own worthiness and reflects that back to her children. Imagine a mother who experiences success, shares that, and teaches her kids how to do that.

If you want to be that mom, if you want to be that successful entrepreneur as well at the same time, I invite you to join me in coaching. We decide what's right for you, where you are in your business, and then we just immediately get down to business. I guarantee you that within one week of experiencing having some of these tools in your tool belt, you will start to feel a whole lot different as a parent and as an entrepreneur.

My friends, what do you do? What's next? I want you to go to andreaslinks.com, I want you to click on Work With Me, and let's set up a strategy call to figure out what exactly you need. Then we take it from there. It's really super simple. You've not hesitated at all once to call a teacher or to call someone if your kid needed help, you'd be on it. What if you need help? What if this is for you? Are you on it or you hesitate? Think about that. We do not hesitate getting help for our kids if they need it. Why are you hesitating if you are getting help for yourself? It's the same thing.

Go to andreaslinks.com, click on Work With Me, let's set up a call and we'll figure out what you need. Alright, my friends. Have a great rest of your week. I will see you next time. Remember, this is the time for you to level up your game. See you soon.

Hey, listening to podcasts is great. But you also have to do something to kick your business up a notch. You need to take some action, right? So go to andreaslinks.com and take the quiz. I guarantee you'll walk away knowing exactly what your next best step is to level up.