Episode 108 - Leah Boomsma Is A Busy Lawyer And Mom Of Four Turned Messy Baby Food Into Success

I do really believe 100% from every part of me that everyone has the capacity to be able to do the things that they want and not to be held back by the mental baggage that's in our head that we want to push through.

Welcome to the do the Thing podcast. In each episode, we get down and personal with people who go after the things they want to make all their wildest dreams come true. Join us as we unveil and dissect a formula for what it takes to do the thing. Here is your host, Stacy Lauren.

Hey everyone. Welcome to the do the Thing podcast. This is your host, Stacy Lauren. Okay, you guys, I have a treat in store for you. I met today's guest at an investment mastermind run by Ryan Daniel Moran. She has a background in law and is a mom to four kids. And it was by accident that she became an entrepreneur after solving a problem for one of her kids. I love how she started a business with absolutely no industry experience. She had to learn everything from the ground up. But instead of getting overwhelmed, she focuses on reaching her goals one step at a time. I just love how she adjusts her mindset to keep a positive outlook. This guest is the epitome of doing the thing. Please welcome Leah to the show.

Hey Leah. Hi Stacey.

I am so excited to get a chance to talk to you.

Yeah, this is awesome. I am so excited to talk to you.

So we met for the listeners we met at a It's going to NFT investment.

What would you call it, like a retreat? Yeah, it was like it's a meetup of, I guess they call it a mastermind, but a meetup of a mastermind of random people who own an nft.

I know and it's so cool because I got to hear a little bit about your story there because you were able to present your company and your brand and everything that you've been doing and I was just pretty much entranced and immediately after said I would love to get a chance to have my listeners hear more about you and and everything you have going. So I'd love to just start off and have you share your story.

Yeah, I feel like there's so much to it because it starts almost 10 years ago now, but actually a little over 10 years ago. So I'm a mom of four and 10 years ago I was a brand new mom and I was working full time as an attorney. So the full time gig plus kids made life pretty stressful. But I had at the time, about 10 years ago I had my one son and we were traveling to visit my sister and I was feeding him baby food pouches on an airplane. I thought that was definitely the product to have to feed him when he was 1 years old on a plane. And the pouch is flexible. And so he made this huge mess. And I thought, I'm never going to use these pouches again. I'm done. It was maybe a month later I thought, I really want to use these and I really should find a better way. And at that point I just thought I'd be creative. And I designed a holder for these baby food pouches. Fast forward handful of years and I had the design. I had, I had 3D printed it. I had been using it with my first kid, then my second kid, and somewhere after my second son was born and I was using it, friends started asking me, well, can I have one too? And I thought, well, maybe I should find a way to make these. So I accidentally rolled my way into entrepreneurship by finding a manufacturer in Iowa. And I started making these holders and I dabbled my way into Amazon and started selling them there another two, three more years later, two kids later and three more years later in 2020, by just sheer chance, a random customer shared about it on TikTok and the product sort of took off. And so starting in 2020, we've had some rapid growth in the last two years to the point that I'm actually stepping entirely out of outside of my legal practice. And I now run my business which is called the flipping holder. And it is basically the product that is a holder that on one direction holds baby food pouches. You flip it over and it holds all your squeezable juices like juice boxes and Capri Suns and flexible juice pouches. And so flipping holder is now my full time job in business. And it continues to be be a really great way for me to be a mom of four and still work as the sole supporter of my family, but no longer have to practice lawful time.

There's so much in this story that I just think is unbelievable because it's the dream. It's like you have an idea, you create something with it and then all of a sudden it just sort of takes off and evolves into its own thing where then you can quit your full time job and then be able to take on and run with it.

Yeah, it's funny when you call it a dream because that's the whole time I was, I had the idea, I always kind of treated it like a hobby. Oh, this is fun. I like to create things. It's fun to learn new things. So I learned how to build a website or I learned how to sell on Amazon. And I had a lot of joy in just doing the process and doing that in my spare time, which was minimal. But I still found time to do those things because I thought they were fun. But I never really thought it would be something that could actually replace my job. I just assumed it was always going to be kind of the side hobby. It wasn't until it started picking up, I thought, there is possibility here like this. I really could step away. And the benefit of, you know, as I'm on the floor of running a business as opposed to legal practice, is the schedule so much more flexible. So Covid was a perfect opportunity where the business is taking off. Law firm practice went fully remote, and I almost got to try out what it was like to be a business owner and have a flexible schedule running my business and realized that is, as you said, that's the dream. Like, it was just, I have this idea, and now it's. It's going so well, it can sustain my family. And that's amazing.

Yeah. And I was wondering how you were able to, like, get the courage. Right. To be able to even create it in the first place. And I think you sort of answered that with not overthinking it and thinking it had to be this big thing. It was just initially just something you wanted to do. And, you know, it was just fun for you, so you didn't have to overthink anything because it was just something you were doing to enjoy the process.

Yeah, that's. That's actually, for me, I think one of the reasons it was so possible was because I just focused on what was the next most interesting thing I could do that wasn't too expensive. Like, because the investment side of starting a business can be really high if you're thinking the really big picture of a business. And that would have. I think that would have shut me down at the beginning. I think I would have been so anxious about how am I going to pay for this? Or how much money do I have to save up so I can launch my business? If I was worried about paying web designers or hiring a social media team or trying to come up with some fancy brand identity, none of that was really on my radar. I just was like, okay, I can make a functional product. I designed it. I had a friend draw it up in a CAD file and i3D printed it, and then I used it. That's. I mean, that was the first step. And those Kind of low barrier tasks of like, oh, I wonder if there's somebody who could make this for me on a 3D printer. That low barrier task was so easy to accomplish because then I just asked around until I found somebody. And that was for me anyway. Several years of doing all those little steps was amazing. The point at which it became a big jump was when I decided I wanted to manufacture it. I would have to invest, or I did invest in tens of thousands of dollars into tooling. And so that was the big decision point of here I'm dabbling in it, I'm 3D printing some of these. Am I going to make a significant investment and go ahead and make a tool and if I do that, then what am I going to do? But even when I made that choice, it wasn't scary. It was definitely the most money I had spent on anything other than a vehicle or my house in my life. But it wasn't scary because I had enough people ask me about it that I was, I thought, well, I can, if I can sell X number of units. I don't remember what it is now, but I remember thinking if I can sell X number of units over the next four years, even this will be a self sustaining hobby so that I can handle. And that's how I made the big leap. And once I made that big investment and the sales did start, and they did start coming in, it went from a self sustaining hobby to a profitable hobby, which is what everybody hopes for in that situation.

I think that's really interesting too is when you decided to manufacture it, you had to make the investment. I think a lot of people would have been stuck on the investment and what if it doesn't work out? And it sounds like you already did that risk assessment where you were like, okay, worst case, I'll be able to sell this as a hobby. It's not like I'm going to be stuck losing a lot of money.

Yeah, I mean the tool was expensive, but then, and maybe it's just the math person in me, but I, I basically thought, well, it costs me so many dollars to manufacture it and if I need to earn back my tooling cost, I just figured out what is the cheapest I could sell it for and how many would I need to sell to earn back everything I invested. And when I did the math, it really wasn't that intimidating because it was several thousand it wasn't. Which maybe sounds to somebody who doesn't have a business yet, several thousand sounds intimidating. But I thought, well, several thousand and I can sell them for years because they don't expire. If I run them off of a machine, they're a plast product, they're not going to expire. I just, I tried to mitigate the risk in my head so that I wasn't moving forward out of fear, but just out of, okay, we're going to see how this works and just open to the possibility that it will sell. And the downside is if it doesn't sell, I can at least make back my initial investment.

It's like when you change, when you're able to make like the uncertainty certain by you doing that reverse engineering of your goal and figuring out the total amount of dollars that it was and then figuring out how many you needed to sell. Then all of a sudden you had a more certain number, which is then what kind of lessens the fear. I love, I love that.

Yeah. And I, I did my initial order just based on those numbers. I was like, okay, I'm going to order a run of. And I, I can't remember, it was like 4200 or something. But I, I placed that initial order knowing that these are the number of units I need to sell. And if I sell them, I went to market with the price point of. I think at that time it was 11.99 for my, my basic single holder. And I knew I could sell them half off of that and make back my investment. So that was my goals. I was like, well, we'll start selling them at this higher price. If they don't sell and nobody wants it, I'll fire Salem at 50% off. And.

And then let's go back to when you started. So, because, I mean, so many people have ideas for things, right? And then they sort of stay stuck in that idea land. What do you think either in your background or in your current situation got you to actually do that? Where you then were finding the friend to do the 3D printer and kind of make that next step?

Yeah. Interestingly, this is not my only idea I've ever come up with. I've had several ideas I've come up with and I've never done anything with them. So I like to create ideas and I doodle ideas all the time. I have them everywhere. So the interesting thing about this one and the reason this, I actually did something here was because no one else had a solution that worked for me. And so I just sincerely wanted the product. And the joke of, at the time, anyway, 3D printing was actually quite expensive. And so I joked when I started selling These I was like, I actually paid $200 for mine because I had to pay somebody to design the file and I wasn't going to make them do it for free. So I had a friend design the file and run it on a 3D printer. And it cost me a few hundred dollars to run that initial sample purely because I wanted the product and I just really felt it would be convenient for me. And so that was the impetus to actually take action on this idea versus several other ideas I had that are probably easier to make. A lot of them are either fabric related products or other kind of kid related products that I could have made in my house myself. But this one I took action on because this one I actually wanted and couldn't find a replacement for it or couldn't find a substitute out there.

Yeah, it was basically you had a strong enough. Why just even to create the product, not even talking about the business, but just you wanted a better tool for your kid when you're feeding them?

Basically, yeah, because I really, and I mean it kind of goes to the necessity of what I understand my customers to want too is I really wanted the convenience of these baby food pouches. But I. We just had a disaster on our hands every time I tried to use them. And I thought I have this idea and it would work and it would solve my problem. Why does nobody else make this? I mean that's really what was going through my head is like, why isn't anybody else making this? I don't understand. And so finally I was like, well, if no one else is going to do it, I should just make it. And that's, it's. It's funny how that process goes. And for me it was about a month and a half of pondering like having come up with the idea. It took me about a month and a half to finally just pay somebody to make it for me.

So let's say someone's listening and they have an idea and kind of a similar situation. They haven't seen anyone that has it. It's specific pain point for them. What do you think is a good step for them to do?

I. There's. It depends on the type of product. But in my opinion the best thing to do is find what is the lowest barrier to making a sample of your product. I think a lot of people are intimidated by something like 3D printing and it's really not as intimidating anymore as it used to be. Most libraries have 3D printers you can use for free and have resource librarians who will help you learn how to use the drawing software. But we also have like upwork and fiverr, right? So like there's places you can go now that didn't exist 10 years ago. Maybe they existed, but I didn't know about them 10 years ago. Where you can have an idea and go out there and just see if somebody can make you a file that you can get printed. So for durable products like this, you know, plastic product, that's an option. But I think just even, I mean just playing around and creating it out of whatever you can find at home is such a great idea too. Like there's so many ways you can build and construct stuff. So I'd say if you have an idea and you're sitting on it, you're just not sure what to do. One thing is just start creating your sample with whatever materials you can come up with. And then the second thing is take some time to look around online to see about manufacturing, just to get build a connection or a list of potential network people that might be able to help you take your idea and bring it to sample form. And one of the benefits of course, if you deal with company like a manufacturer that does that generate samples a lot is if your idea is novel enough that it might be patented in the long term, then you would be able to at least do like NDAs and other protections to put those things in place so that you're not disclosing your idea. Because I think a lot of people have an idea and then they don't want to share about it because they're afraid other people are going to take it. So there's kind of that layer of protection. If you, if you choose to work with a professional, they'll usually sign a non disclosure agreement of some sort that would protect you from them stealing your idea.

And what do you think as far as the level of learning you've had to do since you created the idea? You came up with the prototype, you started using it, your friends started asking, asking you about it, then kind of walk through that a little bit more. What was that process like? So I'm imagining you're, I mean you already have a really good professional background, right, Being an attorney, but this is a whole new arena for you, this entrepreneur land. So how did you kind of attack those next steps?

Yeah, that was incremental ignorance. You don't know what you don't know until you step into the next problem and then you solve it. So I felt like it's exactly right. Like no matter how much background I had in My legal practice, the business world and entrepreneurship work is so outside the realm of my knowledge base. So I had a lot of, I felt like a lot of learning curves. So one of the first things was I came up with the idea and I was found somebody to help me 3D print it. So that's my first dabbling into what is kind of a product design manufacturing arena. Then I thought, well, how do I bring this to market? And for me, what I ended up doing was researching baby products, launching baby products, how do I sell a baby product? And I ended up coming across the ABC Kids Expo, which is a show in the baby space where all sorts of brands and products are put on display and retailers will come through and decide on products they might buy for the next year. And at that show they had a very specific group called the Invention Connection, which is a corner where only new novel ideas are displayed. And so I was like, well, I guess I'll sign up and go there. So I signed up for that and it was the low dollar cost to be in that invention connection area because I understand new businesses who haven't or even just people who have ideas that don't have a business yet. And so I was able to go there. And from there I made some connections in both the manufacturing side and the brand building and retail side. And so that was another learning stage. I left there with a whole list of to dos, which included, you need to get a website, you need to have social media, you need to pick a brand name. So based on all my contacts at that show, I had this log working list of things I needed to do. So then I had to go home and research all of those things. What do they mean I need a website? How do I build a website or do I buy a website or what do I do? Found an online free online resource for building a website in seven hours. And so I sat down at a coffee shop for seven hours and built a website. Then I went to the next thing on my list. And it's been a huge learning curve and it still continues to be a huge learning curve. But that's just what I had to do, is take every little step. And every time I showed up in one place, I learned five other things that I needed to learn more about. So I take those things and I'd learn about them.

Yeah, that is so cool. I think a lot of times people don't realize just how one simple decision that you do kind of catapult everything else by you finding that invention connection. I think it sounds you Googled it, right? And found it that way.

Exactly. Yep. Yeah.

It almost sets you on this. You got this then path like a roadmap to help kind of streamline everything else or shortcut you to know exactly what to do to bring this thing to market.

That's exactly right. And interesting about that show is that's where I met my first manufacturer. So I used to manufacture my product in Iowa. Now I make it here in Minnesota down the street from me because our volumes exceed my initial manufacturer's capacities. But the gentleman that made my product in Iowa, he had a small shop, and he happened to just be strolling around that show, and he saw my product and said, hey, I have capacity on my machine, and this looks like a type of product I can make pretty easily on my machine. Let's talk. And I left the show, and that was one of the dozen things on my list, was to follow up with him. And if I hadn't made that connection there, I don't know that I could have made it as easily into the market as I did because he was so helpful. So that's a perfect example of. Yeah, I googled. I found a show, showed up at the show, and it changed the entire trajectory of my business.

Amazing. How do you think. I think what happens to a lot of people also is they get stuck in, like, either analysis paralysis or some type of overwhelm. So when you left that show and you got that huge list and you don'. Know probably 95% of the things of how to do on that list, how did you keep yourself moving forward through each thing?

I recognized that that's a hard thing for me because I always want to do all the things. And so I recognized after I left that there's no way I can do all of those things. I just. It's impossible. There was so much on the list. There's so many different ways you can go about launching a business, and there's so many different things you could learn.

Right.

You could spend years and years and years reading resources, just trying to educate yourself. That is when I get most overwhelmed. The way I get out of overwhelm is I just take action on the next easiest thing. So when I left, one of the first things I did when I left that trade show is I was overwhelmed by this concept of building a brand and building a website, and I have to pick a brand name. I thought, well, I'm going to call my product. At that time, I thought I was going to call my product the flip holder. And then I changed the name to Flipping Holder. Because I went to go register a domain and I realized, oh, the domain I was thinking about is not going to work. So I changed the name to Flipping Holder and registered a domain. But that was the next easiest thing I could do. And I didn't know how to do it even. I called my brother and said, how do I get a website? And he's like, you just go to GoDaddy and register a domain. And I thought, okay, I'll do that. It was the next easiest thing. And when you do, you do the one thing like, I registered a domain that I saw, oh, I have to host something on this domain. So now I need hosting service. Okay. So I found a hosting service and that I knew I had to build a site, found WordPress and use that. So doing that next easy step is how I got out of the overwhelm and not looking at the big picture of here's the 30 things that I think I need to do.

So good. I'd love to talk about your mindset. How did you approach things from a mindset level? Because you're learning all these new things, it's easy at that point to kind of get, I don't want to say imposter, but I don't want to put that word on you, but where you may just not know what to do. So how did you handle your mindset through this process? How were you able to get through the hardest things?

Yeah, so the interesting thing for me is I tend to have by default a fairly positive mindset while still running worst case scenarios in my head. So I joke that I always have, in addition to a plan A, I actually have plans B, C, D, E, just kind of loftily mapped out in my head. And it helps me to stay positive because it makes me less fearful of the downside. Because if something doesn't work, there's four different alternatives that I can try. So it eliminates that fear of complete failure. But really, I mean, what it came down to is I didn't know what I was doing, I knew I didn't know what I was doing. And so I had that level of imposter syndrome, or whatever you want to call it. I had that level of I'm not good enough, I don't actually know what I'm doing. I just decided to be honest about that at times. Like I was just with myself and with other people. It's like, well, I'm figuring this out, so it might work, it might not. And in my head I kept saying, but it's going to work. I'm just going to make it work. And I think that was. It's always been my mindset, the actually joke. Often my husband always says, you can't have your cake and eat it too. And I'm like, yes, I can. And I always do. I am so determined when I made up my mind about something that I just have a lot of alternative plans, and I know I'm going to get there. So my internal mindset was, I'm going to figure this out. When the problems come up, it's like, okay, I'm going to figure this out. There are a lot of problems that come to entrepreneurship, and the ability to pivot and use a problem as an opportunity has been some of the best growth opportunities I've had. So running into problems now for me is. While it can be frustrating in the moment, I like to see it as a chance to explore new opportunities or to maybe flip the dynamic of something I'm doing or something I'm working on. And that's. I think, the best way to overcome problems is to not see them as problems at all.

I'd love to see if you have an example of when you've had to do that through this process, when something was a problem and you were able to basically pivot or use it as an opportunity.

Yeah, I can think of two. So one of them is specifically when my manufacturer in Iowa stopped being able to make product for me, I thought, well, I'm done. I'm probably going to have to shut down. I don't really feel like finding sourcing overseas. I'm not really sure what I'm going to do. And I took. It took about 30 days for me to get my head back into it to say, you know what? I'm not done. There's plenty of opportunity here. But I didn't think I could find another manufacturer in the US to make my product at the same price point. And I wasn't sure I wanted to go ahead with overseas manufacturing. And it turned out like after I got my head back in the game and I did my research and I called around, I ended up interviewing 15 different manufacturers throughout the United States. Found one down the street from my house and was able to talk to them, figure out ways that we could optimize my product, optimize manufacturing. So I was able to actually streamline my manufacturing, reduce my costs, and they had higher capacity, volume they could do for me. And that turned out to be what could have been a really dire and negative moment in my business. History was actually one of the best things that came out of it, because what happened after I got all situated with them in the summer of 2020 was when the next problem hit, which is September of 2020. We had some viral posts and we sold completely out of our inventory in three days in September that year. And that was another example of a problem people think of. Selling out of inventory is not a problem, but in the business land, it is a problem because it means something's wrong with your whole planning, your whole supply chain if you're not able to keep in stock. And so I was glad I had a higher capacity manufacturer, and I'm glad they weren't overseas, but instead down the street. Because when we ran into that problem In September of 2020, it was another example of where I was able to then step back and say, okay, something's wrong with my planning system that we didn't, we don't have. Well, frankly, I didn't have any system or plan to how I was going to keep product in stock because I never envisioned it selling at those volumes. So it was a chance to set up a whole system and a planning structure. And we did that in September with this manufacturer being so close and being able to work closely with them to set up pre manufacturing with warehouse space, getting everything stored. Because then six months later, in April of 2021, another viral spike hit. And we were able to take full advantage of it for multiple weeks instead of running out of inventory. So every time there was a problem, we could have been really negative about it, but instead it was an opportunity to refine and improve what I was doing already.

I love that. And so I kind of just made note of some of your mindset hacks based on hearing you talk. And I'm hearing you just have a really huge learning mindset, a very big open mind to like learning and growing and figuring things out and then using a problem as an opportunity, being able to pivot when you need to. The other thing I'm noticing as you're talking, and I'm just kind of wondering if you've noticed this with yourself, is just not having an attachment to an outcome. Being able to just be okay with just the process and not having, even though you have a positive mindset and you're in your mind's thinking, it's going to work out, you do have the alternate angles to go if it doesn't. But it's. You're not having an attachment to it being a certain way.

I love how you just said that because something I've always said about myself is I love the journey and not the destination. And there's actually a few different books and things I've read that get to that same point. And there are kind of two different types of people in this world. There are people who want the destination, and they want to get to the destination as fast as they can. And that's what their goal is and that's what they're focused on. I have been. And I think there are many people in this world who really just find the journey to be the value. And for me, the example that comes to mind historically was I didn't. I went to law school not to become a lawyer. I went to law school to just go to law school because I loved the idea of learning about law. The journey of law school was my goal. And that's the same thing with business. It's like the journey of this process and learning as much as I can. And I don't even know if it's optimizing it as much as I can or being as creative as I can can, but that process is my goal. In the end, I would love to have a valuable business, maybe one that I can exit from, one that sustains my family, all of those great things, but the journey is really the value for me.

Yeah, I love the way you articulated that, because that's where you're getting the learning from and how you're growing as a person. You're evolving exponentially just by you being a part of this process.

Yeah, I. Cause I think we could be miserable every day pursuing a goal that we think is going to make us. Going to make you happy. Right. Like, everyone's like, oh, I'll be happy when I hit this point, or I have this type of freedom in my life, then I can enjoy it. And I really see value in being able to enjoy the days that I'm having right now. And one of the ways I enjoy them. This might not be for everyone, but one of the ways I enjoy every day is using every day as an opportunity to learn. Because I love that. I really do enjoy learning.

It's so good. Something I've been playing around with lately. I just thought I would mention it here, in case you have some thoughts on it, too, is I've been treating myself as a science experiment as I try new things, and I kind of dabble in things.

It's.

It's giving me a different lens, you know, to just be a little bit.

More.

Have a little bit more fun, you know, as I'm As I'm trying new things.

Yeah, that's interesting. I, I haven't called it a science experiment, but I like that phrasing. I was. I've been following various gurus or whatever you want to call them, a mindset type things. And one of the ways they will, gurus will say, to deal with like problems or frustrations or things that you can't change that, that are difficult for you to deal with, is look at them with curiosity instead of looking at them as a problem. And I've been trying that for a few months here and it's, it's tremendously helpful for my mindset. And I think you're right, looking at myself that way too. It's just that, that once you look at things with curiosity, you start to get curious about, well, why am I doing it that way? Or why is this person acting that way? Or what's the, you know, what's the impetus behind what they're doing? And also, oh, if I do this differently, how is that going to change the outcome? Instead of being invested in it, you look at it with curiosity and playfulness. It almost makes, I mean, almost makes life feel like a video game a little bit. You're just like, oh, we'll give this a try and see how it turns out.

I love that. You know, it's making me think too.

We.

When I talked in the beginning about us being part of that investment club, NFT mastermind thing, it reminds me Ryan Rand's the one that runs that just for everyone listening. And he had mentioned, I don't know if you remember, on the first day, I don't think he called it a science experiment, but it was, he called it like a. It's a hypothesis because no one's ever done an investment club as an NFT before. And that just makes me even think. It almost just takes the pressure off of like, what even an event is going to be, you know, when you kind of treat it as like, we're just going to see how this goes. Like, let's just enjoy what we enjoy and we don't need to have an exact path as it's going. We can just have an idea of, oh, this is something that's been real for me lately. It's having a rough draft goal, not having perfect idea of what that goal is. So anyway, that just made me think of that because I remember him saying that and it really hit since this is the thing that has been really kind of prevalent for me right now.

Yeah, I love that the rough draft Goal idea. And, and I agree, like the NFT group is a perfect example. Something I didn't know what I was signing up for. I just, I like Ryan Rand and I thought, well, I'm going to join this club and see what it is. So I showed up feeling almost like an imposter, like, oh, I'm not going to be welcome here because I, I probably don't fit the bill of whatever person was going to sign up for this. And then I think we got there, we found out it was just a bunch of people who didn't really know what we signed up for. But we all have that same creative energy toward, let's just try something new and see where it takes us. And I love calling that like a rough draft goal because that's actually historically, when I've gone to job interviews or wherever, they'd say, you know, where do you see yourself in five or ten years? I hated the question because I don't have an answer. I don't like having a very specific goal. I really love the idea of what you called it, a rough draft goal. It gives you direction, it gives you purpose, but there's no failure in not achieving it. It's just, this is the direction I'm headed and I like that.

So I'm curious. Also, we talked a little bit about how you handled goals with taking action on the next easiest thing through your list. Was there any other way that you tended to approach goals for yourself? Oh, you did the reverse engineering goals when you did the. The bigger play with the manufacturer. But I was just wondering before we moved on to the next one if you had any other thoughts about that.

When it comes to goals, I tend to be more lofty. But one of the ways that in the last few years I found myself being more specific about what I want is to be less about the how and more just about the the general. And I almost hate to use the word destination because I was talking about how much I love the journey but being more like lofty, what. What is the experience on the other end? So instead of having a specific goal like I need to make X number of dollars so I can leave my legal job instead, it's like, what is life going to look like? What do I want to have my life look like three years from now or two years from now in a way that fulfills me And I think about what that looks like. It's me picking my kids up from school every day and dropping them off at school every morning. It's me being home for Dinner every night. And once I think about my goals and visualize them that way, the how just kind of starts to fill in. And so that's more recently how I've been approaching goals is trying to do it through a visualization of. Of what does that end destination look like. So with my business, I do have goals and I would say they are very rough draft goals. I have ideas of products I want to launch, ideas of branding I want to do. But instead of focusing on the how I've been focusing on what does it look like in three to five years to be this business and that's what I'm using to drive my. My actions forward is this very, I guess, almost lofty vision of what I ex. I think life and my business are like three to five years from now. Yeah.

And I think it goes back to you not having an attachment to the outcome. You're focusing on how you want to feel and what you want that to be like for yourself.

Yeah, that's exactly. Yep. It's all about how I want to feel about it. What I. And that it's hard because I think a lot of people want to say, well, you know, what value do you want your business to be at? Or how many dollars do you need? I don't know. I mean, I do kind of know in the sense that I can do some math, but it's the feeling that's what matters to me.

And then I'm wondering as far as accountability goes, because it's hard when you're doing something like this and it can be isolating sometimes, especially as you're having to learn a million different things and tackle each thing that's new and sometimes difficult. I can imagine just wondering, is there anything that you use to hold yourself accountable or to help you with the accountability side?

Yes. And it's. I think it's just the networking community. So I have, you know, a family member as well as a good friend that I talk to about my business a lot. And so they hear about what I'm up to and they check in with me. So that alone is a level of accountability, especially because I'm a verbal processor. So it's really helpful for me to have somebody to chat with it about. But I actually, I joined Ryan Moran's one of his community, which is called the capitalism incubator, specifically so I could have better accountability around running my business. I knew when I was stepping away from law practice and going to be in running my business full time, I knew it was going to be really hard for me to know what were the right things to be doing and how to know that I'm doing, like checking all the boxes that I need to be checking in terms of daily workload instead of just fighting fires. How am I going to be running a business for real? And so I feel like finding your community and your people is the number one way to do that. For me, getting involved in the incubator was the first step of that process. And that's been tremendously helpful in having a level of accountability. Even though I'm the one setting the goals, I'm the one saying what I'm going to be doing in the next two weeks or the next three months or in the next year, they're the ones checking in on me. And it makes me feel accountable. And then I have a business, I guess I'll call her a business bestie. A friend who runs online digital content courses. And she and I check in every week about what we're working on and what our goals are and how we're moving toward them.

I think it's amazing when you can be around a group of people that are doing the same thing as you, that want the same thing, and then you're able to, like, share in that experience together.

Yeah, I think it can be really isolating. I don't know anybody else who's running a product business in my normal network. Right. So my legal network and my legal community was a lot of lawyers. They weren't out building businesses around physical products. I have the one friend is actually a friend from church, but she runs digital content creation, so she has some overlap, but she's not running a digital physical product business either. And so it was really isolating at first to not know anybody else doing the same thing I was doing. And when I found Brian and his community, that was a huge stepping stone for me because I went from knowing nobody who was doing what I was doing to knowing hundreds of people doing exactly what I'm doing. And that makes a huge difference in motivation and moving forward and also being able to see what's possible.

And we talked about how you've been educating yourself through Google and then keeping an open mind, you know, by going to that Innovation or Innovation Invention Connection conference. And it sounds like you joining the incubator and then having your friend, was that the majority of the education component that you did or did you do anything else that you think has really helped you?

I would say that's almost all of it with the only other thing being books. So I did not listen to or read any books for a number of years and definitely overlooked the value of what's out there. There's so much out there. So it can be overwhelming to find things. But I actually ended up reading what really kind of the kick in the pants, I guess, that I needed to make the decision that I was going to do this business and make it a real. A real thing, was I. I can't recall exactly the name, but MJ DeMarco has a book, and I think it's called Millionaire Fast Lane or Fast Lane Millionaire. I don't know which way it goes, but he has a book, and it's all about building financial freedom in five to 10 years. And I read that book and I thought, oh, my gosh, this is a whole concept I was foreign to me. I've never heard somebody talk about rapid wealth building in a short period of time with the idea that then you can live off of your passive income for, you know, the rest of your life and be able to flexibly choose what you want to do after that point. And I thought that it was so expanding for me in my mind that that was the first book I had read when I started getting back into trying to learn about businesses. I read that book, and from there I've just been eating up book after book after book. Ryan Rand's book was the next one I read after that one, and then several. I mean, many. I've read over 50 books in the last year. As somebody who was historically not a reader at all, that's been a huge place of learning for me. Yeah.

How do you think you started reading after not reading? Was it because you realized you wanted to learn more about this space and then that motivated you to be able to do it?

Exactly. I don't even remember what specifically happened, but then my friend who has the digital course content stuff, she said to me, she's like, hey, have you ever heard of this MJ DeMarco? He's got some interesting. I think it was a podcast or something. And I was, oh, no, I hadn't heard of him. And I Googled him and saw his book, and I thought, that's a short book. I can listen to it on audible or audiobooks. I'm much better at audio auditory processing. So I got the audiobook and I listened to it, and I was just outside doing gardening and stuff, and I would just listen to it. And it was the first time I had started reading a book, and that was enough for me. I mean, a couple chapters in, I realized, oh, there's so much value here and that was the start of me reading again. So it's just finding that there was a book that looked interesting enough for me to dig in. But there are so many business related books out there and that one really lit a fire under me.

I love the words lit a fire.

So good.

I was wondering too because there's something really cool about being able to kind of what we're doing today, right where you're by people hearing your story, they're learning from you and you're inspiring someone else to be able to do what you did and then maybe in their own version. I was just wondering if that's been something that's been kind of close to your heart is being able to share what you did and educate others from what you've from, from this whole process that you've been through.

Yeah, it's actually, I'd say more than even my existing business is what I've now called my life mission. I found that as, as a mom working full time, I was miserable and I didn't know how to create a life that didn't make me miserable. And that feeling of being trapped, it's so strong. Like I can feel it when I think about it because it's so strong in my memory. And I see so many other women and other moms in particular who make that leap, have a child and then they just feel stuck because they thought they wanted a career. I thought I wanted to be a lawyer for the rest of my life until I had four kids and I felt I had a divided interest between my career and being present with my children. And it kind of crushed me. And I think there's a lot of women out there struggling with those same emotions. And I've seen so much in my entrepreneurship journey, but also watching my other friends who have built businesses, whether they be online or in person, finding a business structure that fits your life and fits the life you want to have is so possible. And I really want ultimately to bring that message to as many moms as I can to help them find the right fit for them. That doesn't mean everybody creates a product and goes out and sells it on Amazon. That was my path. That worked for me. My good friend who has online courses, that was her path. It works amazingly well for her. I have another friend who does in home organization. She just decided started a business where she spends five hours a day while her kids are in school and she goes to different houses and organizes, cleans them and does home management five days A week for people. And it gives her the freedom and flexibility for the life she wants. There's so many opportunities out there to build that life. And I really hope long term I'm able to bring those stories, that message, just that hope to all these moms who potentially just had new babies and are sitting there stressed out about what probably if they're anything like me, they're, you know, they're in tears, driving to their first day back at work after maternity leave, thinking, how am I going to do this for the next 18 years?

I love how by you doing the thing and creating this business now can. I mean, not only is it affecting people by them being having a more convenient way to feed their kids, but it's also potentially the thing that's going to help other moms get freed, you know, from that roller coaster that we kind of get on as we're raising families and all that good stuff.

Yeah, exactly. I just, I didn't envision that when I came up with an idea and I just did something with it. But the last few years have been transformative for me and I would love to see that happen for so many other women. And so it's. I just, I do love the fact that this one product has given me an opportunity to be in a position that I can hopefully help others get this, you know, build the life they want to live.

So I would love to hear your number one piece of advice for the listeners on doing the thing.

I just say do the next easiest thing. That's always, always how I have to start my day is do the next easiest thing. Sometimes you have to do hard things, but doing the next easiest thing will get you the momentum you need to even do the hard things.

That is a quotable.

So good because it's so easy to get stuck in that analysis paralysis. And when you can just focus on that, it just makes everything open up for you.

Yep.

And please share where people can learn more about you and then also buy stuff.

Yeah. Everything in my world right now is that flipping holder. So flipping FL I P P I N G Holder H D E r dot com and that's where my universe and business live. So everything, everything's there and including my story.

Awesome. Thank you so much for doing this with me. I really, really appreciate it.

Well, thank you for the opportunity to be here. This is a been a really exciting conversation. The thing I love most about these kinds of conversations is I almost feel like I walk away having known more, learning more about myself than I knew going into the conversation. So thank you for for facilitating that.

Oh good. That makes me so happy.

Thanks for listening to the do the Thing podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. But even more, we hope you'll be inspired to do the Thing. Do you have a burning question on Doing the Thing that you'd like answered? How about an inspiring do the Thing story of your own that you'd like to share? We'd love to hear all about it. Just leave us a voice message at dothing callcast co or email us@helloothethingpodcast.com.