Creators Interview; Barbara Mighdoll ; Blaze Your Own Trail, do Your Own Thing

Hello, you're listening to the Level Up Creators Podcast. Amanda Northcutt here, founder and CEO. We help creators and digital thought leaders like you turn their knowledge and experience into rock-solid recurring revenue, and we are so glad you're here. Welcome. Today, my special guest is content creator, entrepreneur, podcast host, mom of 2, wife, world traveler, killer marketer, and frankly, just a complete badass of a human being, Barbara McDowell. Barbara has successfully managed the move from a VP of marketing in tech startups to full-time creator and entrepreneur. She is the voice behind The New Modern Mom podcast, whose mission is to empower mothers striving to find that delicate balance between a rewarding career and cherishing precious moments of motherhood. It's all about living a fulfilled, balanced, present, and beautiful life amidst all the chaos. Welcome, Barbara.

Thanks for having me here.

I'm so excited to have this conversation. You and I have known each other for 6 months, something like that at this point. And, um, from our first conversation, I just had a tremendous amount of respect for you. And, um, this conversation I feel like has been a long time coming. I'm so excited to sort of like peel back the curtain, if you will, on what you've been up to. And you've had quite an incredible journey. You have a lot on your plate and you have so much knowledge and wisdom to drop to our creator audience. So, um, with that, I have, um, again, like a million questions, but let's get to know you a little bit more for, for those who don't or who are not yet listeners of the New Modern Mom podcast, which is phenomenal and you should absolutely listen, but If you would share a little bit more about yourself, your background, the journey you've taken to get from where you've come from at the beginning of your career to where you are now.

Definitely. So I live in San Francisco with my husband, 2 kids under 5, and a Bernese Mountain Dog. I am a former tech marketing exec turned 2-time entrepreneur. My first business is New Modern Mom, which is a platform for empowering ambitious moms to navigate the chaos of motherhood alongside finding Finding fulfillment in their careers and their daily lives. This platform extends beyond just the podcast. I also have an extensive website with a ton of different resources on it. I have a newsletter, and of course, I do have a presence on Instagram. And my second business, my husband and I acquired a modern Pilates studio in Palo Alto called MNT Studio about 8 months ago. And then we acquired another studio back in October in Marin County. And we currently are about to open our 3rd studio in the heart of the Marina District in San Francisco. And this is actually a first-of-its-kind concept we're calling a wellness social club, which is combining our Pilates reformer classes with coworking space, luxe amenities, and a vibrant community event schedule.

Holy moly, that is cool. I've not heard of that model specifically, but this sort of like, it's like a modern country club almost for millennials, I feel like. Um, and so that, I mean, that sounds incredible. Oh my gosh, I wish I lived there so that I could just go hang with you and do that all day.

You'll have to come work alongside me in the coworking space.

Um, it's a date. Absolutely. Yes, that sounds like a blast. Oh my gosh. Okay. How in the world did you get here? I mean, you've obviously got some depth in your career. You have a wide breadth of experience. You've had a very impressive career, but this is a little bit of a switch. Obviously, you're leveraging a lot of your marketing knowledge, and that comes in quite handy, right, with both of these businesses. But how and why are you doing this?

Yeah. So currently I kind of have like a portfolio of roles and responsibilities across these 2 very different businesses. But my career path was very linear for 12 years until about a year and a half ago, and it's been anything but that since. So to back up, I've been a very decisive person my entire life. So when I started my career, I was like, how do I get from point A to point B? And it was always about that next move. I started in marketing and events, and then I wanted to broaden beyond events. Then I wanted to broaden beyond just demand gen, which is where I was kind of put in. And I ended up kind of rising in the ranks very quickly and kind of getting to that dream job at the age that I wanted to when I set out at age 22 when I started my career. And all of those kind of straightforward goals very much changed when I became a mom. So, when I found out I was pregnant, I was terrified to tell my CEO. I was so scared. There were I was in a tech startup, very few women to begin with, let alone anybody with kids. And I was very scared to share that I was pregnant and of what that was going to do from an impact perspective on my growth within the company. And so, when I did share the news, I immediately reassured everybody, I'm not going to take that long of a maternity leave. I'm going to still be online. I'll just check in with the team so it won't be like I was ever really gone. And then of course, I had my first baby and I was on maternity leave and I wanted nothing to do with work at all. And I was though kind of bored on maternity leave. I was looking for intellectual stimulation. And when I was pregnant, I had started this extensively long Google Doc. Amanda, I think you'll probably relate to this type A personality, right? I wanted to document everything. All the TMIs of my pregnancy, all the TMIs of my postpartum experience. And I shared it with like 12 friends that were giving birth that year. And they loved it. They loved how helpful it was. And I was like, you know what? There are not a ton of like authentic motherhood resources online. There's a lot of like the big editorial media sites, but nothing that's just like super authentic. So I'm just gonna make this like a little bit more official. This is gonna be fun. And so on our walks, I would brainstorm with my husband, oh, what could I call this? And then of course started tapping into all of my marketing experience. I designed my logo. I did all the SEO research. The name New Modern Mom didn't just come to me. It was very strategic having the word mom in it and modern and new. And so, I started this site and I just started blogging and it was fun. It was tapping into all of my marketing skills but doing it on topics that I actually cared about, not tech. And so, It was just super fun. I quickly got on the radar of a couple of brands because of my SEO background. And I started kind of getting some brand partnerships even when I returned to work, which was just a month after I started New Modern Mom. And New Modern Mom then suddenly had to take the backseat. I was back at work. I had a terrible return to work experience, which is a conversation for another time. But I quickly realized I needed to find a new job. Very, very quickly because I didn't want to stay where I was at. And so that kind of gave me an opportunity to think through like, what do I want out of my career? And I knew I still wanted to go on the marketing path, but I wanted a company that was super energizing and I found it, or what I thought, thought was it. It was exciting. It had that intellectual part that I really wanted, but then it quickly lost its luster and all I could think about was wanting to spend more than 2% of my time on New Modern Mom. And so fast forward, I had another baby. And I was just questioning like, what is the point of all this? Like, I'm not feeling fulfilled. I don't know what New Modern Mom can be. At that point, it was a blog. I think maybe my Instagram handle had been changed to New Modern Mom, but it was still very much like my personal Instagram. I didn't know what I wanted it to be. I just knew I wanted to spend more time doing it. And so, in the beginning of 2023, I kind of sat down and I said, okay, Could I make this a full-time job? I had started monetizing it, so I had some idea of how I could do this. I was like, okay, well, if I have one brand partner now, what if I got 5 brand partners? And I quickly kind of mapped out how many years it was going to take for me to replace my current salary at the time and talked through it with my husband and basically started saying out loud, I'm going to do it. I'm going to leave my job. And So I did. About 8 months later, I took the leap and don't regret it for a second. And then the Pilates studios kind of came about very randomly, and we can get into that, but I'm so glad I made that leap.

So, okay, this is around fall of 2023 that you went all in on your entrepreneurial journey?

Yeah. So it's been a little over a year. Last year, so 2024 was my first full calendar year being being focused on New Modern Mom. And those first few months, I didn't know what New Modern Mom was going to be. It was really my time to have the capacity to think bigger. And I listened to so many podcasts, so many webinars, just trying to immerse myself in the media industry and understand what are the trends happening? Where could I take this? How do people monetize this world? And—

Yeah.

I started painting that vision and I set OKRs for myself for the first year because in this world, there are so many shiny objects and you literally could do anything. And I think what was really critical for me was taking all of those business best practices that made me really good at my job, that made me get to that VP level in an accelerated time period, and then starting to apply them to my own line of work and my own business. And so, I have OKRs. I do OKR planning every year. So, I just went through my second round of OKR planning and I check in on it very frequently to make sure that I'm saying no to the right things and yes to the right things.

Okay. And for those of you who don't know, OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results, and it is a very common framework, especially in tech, for goal setting and accountability, management, leadership, all those kinds of things, keep everybody rowing in the right direction. Insert lots of other corporate jargon, but that's great. Okay, so what we're finding at Level Up Creators as our client base continues to grow and evolve is that we are helping a lot of ex-corporate types create leverage based on their corporate, their past corporate experience combined with sort of what they're passionate about and love and could see themselves doing for the next ten years. But it's it's the seedlings of their. I mean, wide breadth of experience from their corporate job that helps, again, create that leverage to spin up the next thing. And so, you mentioned OKRs, you mentioned SEO. What other things are you pulling from your corporate experience that you're finding to be perhaps surprisingly helpful?

Yeah. I am shocked by how literally every part of my experience from the corporate world applies To my business for New Modern Mom. I mean, literally everything from the high-level strategic, the OKR planning aspect to the actual day-to-day execution, building workback schedules, clear communication, doing async communication, documentation, everything. I will say I've developed a lot of new skills. Mm-hmm. I'm an expert in Canva now. I am very comfortable speaking in a podcast setting. I've had a lot of growth opportunities, a lot of pushing myself outside of my comfort zone and my boundaries this past year, but I cannot believe the number of skills that are transferable in actually both of my businesses. And I think they've set me up 100% for success.

Yeah, I bet so. Okay. Other than Canva, I mean, what other skill gaps have you had to really work hard and intentionally to bridge to get things moving?

So I think this would have been a skill gap even if I stayed in the corporate world, which is the use of AI, right? So when I left in, you know, mid-2023, AI was a thing. And, you know, I, I remember being in meetings with my content team talking through like, what AI tools are we going to be testing? We were rolling out a new SEO strategy, how are we going to use that? But all of that technology is brand new. And I'm really proud to say that within those first few months I mentioned where I wasn't actually building, I was envisioning, I was also immersing myself in how I could buy or build an AI-driven editorial process, which has been fundamental in me being able to grow my organic traffic from around 1,500 users per month to— I just hit 60,000 today. And that AI piece is so critical. And it's not just for editorial, it is literally for everything. I use it for email writing, for pitch writing, for deck creation, for podcast prep. It is, it is like a fundamental piece and tool in my everyday process.

Nice. Okay, that's great to know. And I love that I mean, if at this point, if you're not using AI, you are falling behind, but you are on the leading edge of that in a corporate, you know, marketing application. And so do you have any specific tools that you use that you would recommend, or are you using, you know, one or two LLMs with your specific prompt structures?

Yeah, so a lot of my partners and people I work with always kind of ask like, what are you testing? Because I, while I'm an extremely like Type A person, I, um, I love to do the research and I love to get my hands dirty and understand like Pros and cons of everything. So in terms of AI tools, I've actually tested a ton. I will say my most recent narrowed down tools from an AI perspective, from a content creation need, were both ChatGPT and Jasper. I just shifted actually everything over to ChatGPT because I've essentially built a chatbot within ChatGPT, right, that represents the new modern mom voice and authority and knowledge base. Which when I started again in mid-2023, in my opinion, Jasper was actually much further ahead of the curve. And now I think ChatGPT has more than caught up. So ChatGPT is just my thing now. Of course, you know, every tool you use now says it has AI, but I would say that is first and foremost like AI-driven. And then of course everything else you use. has some form of AI, you know, throughout it, whether it's, you know, I use Zencastr. I know we're on Riverside right now, but, you know, they have an AI clips tool. There's, there's so many things, but from a foundational perspective, like what's really critical, it's in ChatGPT.

Cool. Okay, great. And then you're just building your own individual suite of GPTs within. Okay, great. That's awesome. And a lot of people, we help a lot of people do that and it is interesting to see sort of the comfort level of different people from different backgrounds, like in different corporate backgrounds, basically like evolve in how they're using AI and what the comfort level is. And then, you know, we've got clients in their 60s and we have people in Creator School in their 70s using AI. And it is so cool and so gratifying when you really latch on to that growth mindset and you're like, I can do this, I can tackle this, I can leverage this. So, okay. That's great that you're doing that.

I mean, I will say this, it gets you maybe to 80% if you gave it enough information, right? It still very much requires a human touch. I think one of my biggest pet peeves, right, is when you can tell that this blog post I'm writing, or this, or this reading, or this newsletter I'm reading is 100% AI because, you know, it's using the word game changer. Like, all there's just that AI talk. Um, so it still needs personal touch, but it It gets you 80% of the way there.

That's so funny that you say that. That is, um, I was wondering if I was going to ask you that question, but, uh, about how far ChatGPT, your outputs will get you. Like, what is the human element that's required? And we say that exact same thing. It gets you to about 80% of the way there if you are really committing yourself to learning, testing, iterating, giving the GPT feedback and things like that. But yeah, I think that's a good rule of thumb.

I think what's also interesting in the content creation space with using AI versus in like the more business or B2B world is in the B2B world, right? You can, you can give AI product one sheets, all of this information, and it, it will be able to reference what it needs. With content creation, you're also, you're often referencing your own personal experiences, which AI will never have all of those. Mm-hmm. And so that was actually my biggest challenge when it came to figuring out how can I scale my editorial process when my brain is the one that has all of these personal experiences to it. And so that was one of the things I had to figure out at first, right? Which, which is like, what are the components? And this doesn't mean, you know, this applies to just anything beyond a blog. It could even be like an Instagram post. Like, what are the personal components that need to be infused in this? And how can I deliver those in a very efficient, optimized way so that it's not taking me a ton of time, but it's giving exactly what I need to give to this tool to give me the output I want?

Okay, I have to plug one of our accelerator participants. Christina Flynn has a product called Story Engine. And we're actually rolling it out for all of our accelerator participants. And it is the solution to what you just said. So she has figured out this incredible methodology for drawing out a person's entire life story, and sort of pulling— figuring out what the threads are between different events that are seemingly disparate and puts together this Unbelievable deliverable of like, here's who you are, here's your personal brand, here's how you show up online. I might introduce you to, but it's unbelievable if we had had this in our business. I mean, we've grown to a multi-seven-figure shop in 18 months, and if we had had this nine months ago or a year ago, we would have grown even faster. And so, you know, that is such a struggle for a lot of us is to figure out who am I online in our personal brand businesses are driven by our own personalities and bringing yourself forward in a way that is an effective and accurate, like, reflection of who you actually are and who your best friend would describe you as is, it's a very difficult thing and it's very hard to get an AI tool to unlock that for you and help you be yourself online.

Absolutely. And I mean, if you again go back to the corporate world, doing a, um, a brand strategy and brand messaging exercise, like, I don't Like, that's what you're describing, right? But just for a content creator, like, that is a multi-month, multi-person project. It's—

yes,

very difficult. It's highly strategic. Um, and you have to do the same thing as a content creator but for yourself. And yeah, it sounds like a really great tool that you could utilize for that.

Yeah, it's kind of unreal. Um, okay, I want to back up to the beginning of 2023 when you and Jason, your husband, are having some beginning conversations about like, hey man, I'm gonna leave my job. So I can totally cut this out of the podcast if you don't want to talk about this or answer it. But I know that there are a lot of individuals and women in particular out there who are wanting to get the hell out of their corporate job, frankly, and are terrified on a number of levels. But even to bring that up with their partner is a huge barrier to getting there. So how did you do that? How did that go?

Yeah, first of all, I would love for this to be in the recording because I think it's a really important conversation to have because, yeah, I didn't just like snap my fingers and say, I'm quitting and all's going to be okay. I think there's a lot of layers to this. I think there's a layer of fear and that fear can be broken down into a number of different categories. And I think you have to address all of those in this kind of decision process. First and foremost, life is a series of calculated risks. I love to take risks, but I only take calculated risks. And I would say right now at my stage of life with my husband, we as a family have decided this is an era of us to take calculated risks. And what kind of went into that decision? Um, there are a couple of things. The first is the obvious, right? Financially, like, can we do this? Um, you know, we are lucky enough to both have established ourselves very quickly in our careers and saved, you know, enough money to know that we would be okay. for me to kind of slow down on the income stream to then hopefully ramp back up and even surpass where I was before. So that was a privileged decision and you can't ignore that, right? Not everybody's in that position, but we were. And so that obviously played a part in it. That being said, we also went through what are the things that we're going to cut out of life? I stopped getting my nails done. We stopped buying things as frequently, like Amazon kind of like rolled back on the purchases, right? We're just, we, we cook at home 6, if not 7 days a week, like we barely go out to eat. So we, we made a lot of like lifestyle adjustments in the areas where we felt like it was appropriate. And then there were other areas, which I'm sure we'll chat about later on the travel front, where we're like, we're not stopping that. And so we, we kind of went through and my husband comes from the finance world. I mean, he prepared a whole Basically pitch deck for me on like, here's what our budget looks like. Here's where we're spending money. Here's the areas that we could be cutting. And we literally, we went out on a date and most of our dates revolve around some sort of like group fitness class. So we went to like a hot yoga and then we went and got dinner and looked at his laptop and kind of talked through all of those kind of budget components. So that was obviously step one. And then I think the second factor here was, What's going to make me happy? And a friend of mine, Ashley Gretsch, she is the CFO of Xero, and she was actually on my podcast and she said these words, your kids are not going to remember who packs their lunches, but they are going to remember an unhappy mom. Mm-hmm. And that hit home with me so much. And I think it could not be more true. You need to be happy in order to show your kids what a happy life looks like. And I had to do a lot of introspective work because I internally was battling with me being a very ambitious person, spending 12 years of my life going down this path of being a CMO at a Series D startup, right? That was my vision. And I was suddenly like, Oh, I've made it here and I think I'm okay. I'm No, I'm not going to tap out. And, that was really hard for me to reconcile with. I think the title, right? The title, feeling like an equal partner in the home, those were things we had to talk about. Me becoming the default parent, right? If before, if a kid was home sick, my husband and I, we were like, it was like Jenga, right? Of the calendar, who has a meeting they can't cancel? No, I'm going to take that responsibility because he is now the one with the more steady job. And so, I think just kind of thinking through several of those components and being really realistic on who was going to do what in what situation and what were we going to give up, all of that played a role. And then, I think what really solidified it for me was when I made the decision to start saying it out loud. And that was really scary. I started saying it, like I said, in the beginning of 2023, and I didn't leave for another almost 8 months later. But that helped me realize the extent of what I wanted to do and become comfortable with it, which was part of the battle.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And I mean, I'm sure you're familiar with the research about, you know, if you say something out loud like a goal or New Year's resolution or whatever, You are so much more likely to achieve it because you've put it out into the universe. You have created accountability, whether it's artificial or not. And so that's really cool that you did that and then actually followed it up with action. Clearly, you have a very strong and equitable partnership with your husband, which I think is a really key component that I want to like draw out here. And that's not, as you mentioned, always the case in terms of we have a financial safety net, he has a steady job, and, you know, we were able to take a risk. And so, I really appreciate you laying that out there and also your sort of decision-making framework and the factors that you considered because, I mean, that's all major business stuff right there and that's super helpful. And I love mental models and decision-making frameworks. I mean, just like how to think. I think about how to think a lot and that is super meta, but I love connecting with other people who are cut from a similar cloth and can like nerd out on that. Okay. But let's kind of segue at this point. Okay, we got New Modern Mom. You're getting that established. You've got 60,000 visitors a month, which is amazing. I know you've got more than that.

That's just organic traffic.

Oh, just organic traffic. Nice.

I have almost double including direct and social. So

sweet. You have a thriving Instagram account, thriving podcast. I mean, this brand has achieved liftoff to say the very least. And I know you've got a couple of products launching pretty soon that are going to be amazing. I have gotten to speak under the hood of those and Oh my gosh, I wish I had them so desperately. I wish that I had them. Yeah. Oh man. Um, but you're going to be able to help so many people and you already are, but just like the, the products that you are birthing into the world, if you will, like, oh my gosh, they are game changers. Um, and I love the, the paradigm and the lens that you're looking through with regard to how you want your kids to see you as they're growing up. I mean, I get asked this question a lot because I work a lot like you, um, about like, how does that work with your kid? I mean, you're a mom and like one, nobody Nobody ever asked my husband that question, so that's super annoying. But you know we have one son; he's almost 14 years old, so he's like a man child at this point, and he doesn't want to hang out with us like a whole lot. So that's great. I don't you know he's not like a little dude where I've got to change his diapers or anything like that. I mean we are headed toward launch here, and I love that he is seeing me. a woman thrive, totally kick ass, take names, achieve something like far and beyond anything that he sees, like in our, you know, close inner circle. And I love that. I'm raising this feminist guy who is, you know, an upper-class white male and he has a tremendous amount of privilege and therefore tremendous responsibility to pull others up the ladder. And so I love that I get to model for him. That success is not just for white cisgendered, you know, men. It is for everyone. Um, so I love that. I love that you are doing that. I love that you are empowering other women to do that. And just sort of the multiplicative effect, uh, that you and your brand will have over the years is really, really powerful and it is so needed. And why didn't you do this 15 years ago when I needed it? Um, okay, but let's talk about the Pilates studio and Jason a little bit more. I mean, tell me how the first Pilates studio came to be and give us a little bit of a timeline, and then how we got from 1 to 3, and how you and Jason split responsibilities professionally.

Yeah, okay. So while this seems quite random, it's actually a case of the stars very much aligning themselves. When I say When the saying goes, you close one door and another will open, I mean, the situation is proof that you will never foresee the opportunities that will come your way when you make room for them. So like I said, my husband and I have had a shared interest and passion in group exercise, whether that's yoga, Pilates. My husband Jason is usually like the only guy in the Pilates reformer room. Awesome. And that's been a shared interest of ours, honestly, since our relationship began 15 years ago. I was a group fitness instructor. I started in college. I did it through my early 20s. My husband Jason asked me to go on a date after attending one of my classes, and I probably wouldn't have said yes unless he had gone because I kind of felt like, oh well, I should say yes since he came to my class. So group fitness has been a core part of our lives. Wellness has been a core part of our lives. Like we have videos of during COVID and with my little tiny 3-month-old baby, us doing baby yoga and we used to call them baby workouts where we would work out together. And so, it's always just been a really important part of our daily routine. And so, I spoke on a panel with the former owner of MNT Studio back in 2019. It was a business, a woman in business panel hosted by Bumble. Okay. business, which I don't know if they still even exist, that area of Bumble. But anyway, we kind of made connection then. The studio that she owned actually had a San Francisco location. And so, I had been to it before. I was kind of fangirling because I was like, oh, I love this studio and I'm speaking on a panel with the owner. And so, we became friends on Instagram. And a few months— or sorry, a few years later, so fast forward to Almost a year ago, October 2023, she DM'd me and let me know that she's thinking about selling her studio. And at the time, my husband, who his background is in finance and operations in tech, he actually had been really interested in exploring the diversification of our investments into small local businesses. And so we are huge business nerds. Like when we go out to dinner, we're like analyzing the economics of a restaurant. We love talking about business. We listen to the same business podcasts. It's just ingrained in us and our nature and what we're curious about. And so when she reached out, I was like, huh, this could actually be really interesting. And so, you know, we got into the financials and luckily my husband, given his background in tech and startups, he's led mergers and acquisitions. He knows how to do Due diligence, he like literally has the due diligence list. So this wasn't a foreign concept to him of like how to buy a business. So I leaned on him completely for that, and we kind of leaned completely on me to understand the method and what the actual product was. Like what's the service that we're providing? What what would we want to do with this? And you know, it was a really long process. I would say we learned. A lot of things not to do in the process of acquiring a small business. But it was a really big growth opportunity for us. And when the time came last May, when we closed on it, we were thrilled. And every day has been a learning experience since. So yeah, that's kind of how it came about. And then in terms of the growth, so we always planned when we went down this venture, we said, okay, we want to get to 4. That was kind of of like our magic number because at that point, it would kind of be a strong choice if my husband wanted to continue down the path of working in tech or if he wanted to go full-time on the studios. And so, that was kind of like our 5-year plan, let's call it. But, we took a really kind of monumental trip this past summer. We spent 9 weeks in Portugal with our family. We were working. We were just very much living abroad. It wasn't a vacation. Mm-hmm. And, it really opened up, I would say, our Yeah. And so we really opened our minds to thinking, what's our why? What is our family why? Why are we doing this? I know why I left my job to pursue New Modern Mom, but what do we as a family unit, what do we want out of life? And we realized that Jason wanted to be out of tech sooner. And so we decided to pursue how that could happen faster. And we came across another opportunity in Mill Valley to acquire another studio. We actually put in an LOI sight unseen, signed within 24 hours before we even saw the space. We were still in Portugal. Same thing happened with our lease in San Francisco. That also happened in Portugal. So again, calculated risks. It is that era for us, but it has panned out really well so far and we're excited and we're learning. The divvying up of responsibilities actually comes really naturally for us. us given our backgrounds. I mean, we're kind of like an executive team with both of our areas of expertise. From my perspective on the strategy and the marketing side and his on the finance and operations, it's pretty much like the key areas of business that you need to be able to run a business. So, it's been very clear, but I will say, and he will be the first to say this, I am the CEO of that business and so I make the final call, but It's, you know, we always agree at the end of the day on everything.

Nice. Wow, you did accelerate that plan very quickly. Is there a 4th studio already? Like, do you have your eyes set on one?

There's going to be some more expansion this year. Yeah.

Awesome. Y'all are not messing around. Oh man, I love that. Okay, well, if you would share some learnings with us, some of the more difficult moments. I mean, obviously none of these things are happening super, super, super smoothly. Like, that is not That's not the way life works. That's not the way business works. So, teach us something.

So, I will say this. When I decided to pivot and kind of pursue this path, my goal at the time was to work less. And what that looked like in my vision at the time was a 4-day workweek. I was saying, I want to work 4 days. I went one full day when I have childcare to do nothing but focus on myself. That was what I wanted to leave for. The reality is I'm not working less. I'm actually working way more hours.

Yeah.

But it doesn't feel like work in the sense that work used to feel like. This feels like passion. It feels like fulfillment. It feels like fun. It feels like something I don't want to stop thinking about, and it feels like fuel to get me through any challenge that will come my way. So what I've learned, right, is that owning your own business, while it may afford you a 4-day workweek, doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to have all this flexibility to work less. What it may mean though is that you have extreme flexibility to live your days in life how you want. I spent 9 weeks in Portugal. I take my kids to their doctor's appointments. I do school drop-off without rushing home because I know I'm late for a meeting. So it's all a series of, I guess, giving up one thing and taking else Something else on. What I've learned in the last year is you have to slow down. Even if life feels like it's moving really quickly, you need to set pause every so often. And if you don't do it, life will do it. And being comfortable with that. I would also say I've learned to lower my expectations. I put a lot of arbitrary deadlines on myself because I'm used to doing that. I'm used to having that pressure over me, right? Like to deliver, deliver, deliver. And that innate nature has come through in how I run my day-to-day operations. And I'll give you a really, like a real-life example of something that, you know, I think I've come to terms with it, but it still makes me feel disappointed in myself, which is— Mm-hmm. I wanted to have 2 seasons of my podcast this year. I did 1 season last year. It launched in May. It was 12 episodes. And I was intending to do 2 seasons this upcoming year and I just can't do it. And so I was planning on launching my first season in February for this year and I haven't even started outreach for recording. So now we're looking at May, June time period and I'm only going to do 1 season. And that's okay. Nobody else knew I was planning on doing— well, until now. Nobody else knew that I was going to be doing 2 seasons, right? Mm-hmm. That was my intention. But I think it's kind of letting go and letting life happen to you a little bit and swinging with those punches and knowing that no one is expecting anything from you, but they're very delighted when they get anything, right? And so that's been a very hard learning for me and I'm still working through it. And then the third is getting help. You cannot do everything, whether that's That's in business or in life and not letting yourself be your own worst enemy and blocker and making your dreams come true.

Yeah. Let's double-click on that to use a Silicon Valley phrase. Let's talk about household help and how dual-income families, especially very entrepreneurial ones, manage. You and I have had this conversation before. I was having this conversation on Saturday night over a glass of wine with a couple of my neighbors who are Like incredible professionals. And one of them said, I think I'm finally going to cave and get a maid. And I was like, you don't have a maid? You don't have like any help? No, nothing, none whatsoever. And then she asked me and I felt myself like, she's like, do y'all have help around the house and stuff? And it was almost hard to answer her because I was like, am I going to, is this going to feel weird to her? Like I have a small staff. To help us run our household, and we would completely fall apart without that. There's just no way, given present circumstances and my like major multi-decade chronic health issues, that we would still be standing without spending money to buy back time. So, I know you and I have some alignment on this, but I would love for you to share kind of what goes on behind the scenes at your house in that regard.

Absolutely. Love this topic. This is literally like the premise of my entire podcast on how the F do you do it? Because I agree, I think where a lot of, and particularly women, struggle is taking kind of those core skill sets that make them really good in the corporate world of delegation and bringing them into their own family and household structures. So, I have a lot of And, you know, I've always had some form of childcare. You have to if you work, right? So my help goes beyond childcare. I do have an au pair. Both of my kids are in school 5 days a week, but they get out between 1 o'clock and 3 o'clock depending on the day of the week. So my au pair picks them up, spends the afternoons with them, brings them home at night, works until about anywhere from 5:30 to 7.

Mm-hmm.

So that's kind of covering my like afternoons that I can work. And then I have a house manager. who comes Monday through Friday, 3 hours every morning, so 15 hours a week, and she does cleaning. And it's not just surface-level cleaning, she cleans my whole home. She does laundry. She organizes all the things that get disorganized by living with 2 young kids in a very fast-moving household. And then, she helps meal prep for us because, again, we eat most of our meals at home. Yeah. And, that has been so critical in my own happiness and also Just being able to live and work from home. Before we hired her, I was spending probably an hour and a half on a daily basis either cleaning up, doing laundry, prepping food, and that has bought my time back. And so we talked earlier about budgeting and that financial kind of conversation that you need to have around going this route and this career path. But that to me is a non-negotiable. I would much rather give up so many other things than the help that I have in the household that I literally spend like 80% of my time in, if not more. Um, it used to be like 99%, but now I'm like at our studio, so I'm actually out of the house more than I used to be. But it was definitely a lot more, um, previous to that. So that is kind of my, I would normal weekly household setup. I also have a series of babysitters that I can tap into if we want to go out on a date night or we have plans. And then, my parents and my husband's parents live very close, which allows us to take weekend trips. Wow. We block off my in-laws for a full week every year and we take a trip just the two of us, which I think is been critical in us having a good marriage, um, and kind of moving past that roommate phase, which happens very often when you have little kids. So that has been a massive privilege to live near family, but we also don't rely on them on like a daily and weekly basis. Um, we have to save those papers for special occasions for sure.

Okay, awesome. Thank you for sharing that. I really appreciate it. And again, And like you share and other executives share a lot about this on the New Modern Mom podcast. So y'all definitely need to check that out and consider that you've been given official permission to hire people to help you and to buy your time back. And that you, if you are a woman, even though there is still like pervasive themes in our culture that say that you should be doing all the stuff around the house, that's just not true. And there are no rules and you can really do whatever the hell you want to do. So, pave your own path, make your own way, blaze your own trail. And don't listen to all the noise. If that doesn't work for you and your family and your specific circumstances, screw it, do your own thing, try something. And it's not like, I don't think Barbara or I either hired all the people that work for us, like in one day. I mean, it was kind of an evolution of what need do we need met next? And what is the budget for that? And who's kind of the talent pool that we can tap into? And so, it's an iterative process. And again, Again, a de-risked process as well. And so when you bring somebody in, it's not like you're marrying them and committed to them. Yeah.

And Amanda, can I jump in and say one other thing? Because I, I often feel like since, you know, you are talking to a lot of content creators, I often feel like this gets skipped. Um, and I think it's worth exploring and talking very transparently about the help I have to accomplish what I have with New Modern Mom, because I have not done that by myself. Um, I Got to a position in late fall last year where I was able to hire a 30-hour-a-week chief of staff. So I have somebody who I'm training to be a mini-me who can deliver on a lot of the brand partnership work, who can help run my workback schedules, make sure that I am executing what I need to be doing, setting up newsletters for me. She's been honestly really critical in me being able to stay consistent and show up. I also do have a social media manager who helps me on a weekly basis, kind of content plan. She edits a lot of my reels for me. I outsource a lot on Fiverr. So I have, you know, designer here who will design assets and graphics. I outsource, you know, all the video editing and the audio editing for my podcast. I also have 2 podcast producers who help me kind of create the strategy, create the scripting, do all the post-production work on a podcast, which is a lot of work. So I do have a small team that I've built on New Modern mom that is making the things happen behind the scenes that often does not get seen.

Yep, it takes a village. It's just a new modern term, if you will.

I shouldn't, I shouldn't, uh, forget that. I also worked with Amanda on some of those exciting products, uh, she mentioned that will be coming out soon.

Yes, I'm so excited for those. Um, okay, well, let's touch on— I was hoping we would have a little bit more time to talk about travel, but we're kind of at the end of our, uh, hour here. But if you could just bust right through the myth that you have to stop traveling or you just can't travel when you have young kids because it's going to be a disaster and a pain in the ass? And like, could you just bust right through that for us?

It couldn't be further from the truth. I think the most ideal time to travel is when your kids are 3 to 6 months old. And if I could get one thing across, if you are pregnant or if you have a newborn, book a trip. Do not not do that. Your life does not have to stop when you have kids. And I think, unfortunately, a lot of people and a lot of media make you think otherwise. I actually posted something on Instagram that went very viral, not necessarily the way that I wanted it to go viral. It brought out all of the mean people of the internet, but it kind of proved this point, which is I think a lot of people are scared to travel because they're scared of what other people are going to say to them. Hmm. And my opinion is you don't worry about anything, anybody else on that flight. You worry about yourself. You are being the best parent you can possibly be and you will get through it. It is temporary and is absolutely worth getting to your destination.

Hmm. I love that. And I mean, all of your content speaks to all this and gives so much logistical help, checklists, everything that you need. So definitely check out newmodernmom.com, New Modern Mom Podcast, New Modern Mom on Instagram. What a hell of a brand you have, Barbara. I mean, my goodness, you have it everywhere. Um, oh, and also like, I mean, we traveled full-time when our son was 5, 6, and 7. And so, uh, and then moved across the country from our family because like we found that we wanted to be rooted in the mountains. And so again, it's like forging a different path and it's hard to be away from our family. Yes. But like we're an hour from the Denver airport, so we can burn that thing up and go back and forth pretty easily. But I think the big takeaway here is blaze your own trail, do your own things, de-risk, work in iterations so that you can work toward your dreams, but don't just live the default lifestyle because that's what everybody quote unquote says to do. Like, it's just not, it's not so, I promise you, you were living proof of it. And, and we're not some, like, I don't know, we're, we're just people. We're just 2 women who have decided that we want to do our own thing. And, and it looks a little bit different than traditional corporate life. But anyway, you have a parting shot or anything else you want to say to close this out today? Barbara?

Um, I would say this. I very much believe that you can have it all, but you cannot do it all. And you need to find the tools, the people, and the processes to allow you to optimize your time to dedicate towards what matters most to you. And like we said, time is your most valuable resource and you need to treat it like that.

I love that. Buy back that time. That was a perfect mic drop. Thank you. And thank you all so much for joining us. We know your time is precious and we appreciate you sharing yours with ours. You can find me on LinkedIn. Amanda Northcutt, and we'll see you next time on the Level Up Creators Podcast.