Chapter 2
Envisioning Success
Quick: When we say success, what comes to mind? Don’t overthink it. Just say the word to yourself and jot down any thoughts that show up.
Now take a look at what you’ve written. What did you come up with? When thinking of success, did your first thoughts have to do with yourself, your family, and your business? Or did you imagine other people and their success? Sometimes when we ask our clients to do this simple exercise, they realize they don’t even have a clear vision of themselves as successful. After all, when you’re in the thick of raising kids, running a household, and creating or growing a business, when do you have time to ponder what success on your own terms looks like? And to be honest, sometimes the thought of big-time success is actually quite scary. Success inevitably means change—big change—and change interrupts the routines, the norms, and the familiar in our lives. On top of that, being wildly successful as a mom entrepreneur conjures up hard questions such as, How will success affect my marriage? Can I stand the pressure of being the breadwinner in my family? Will I have as much time to hang out with my kids as I’m used to? What will people think of me and my priorities if I put the business first? Fear of success is just as pervasive among women business owners as is fear of failure. If you fear success, well, you can imagine that it’s going to be a challenge for you to achieve it.
It’s also fairly easy to get caught up in living life in the fast lane without taking the time to think about how you are measuring your progress and accomplishments. And yet, whether you realize it or not, you are probably assessing yourself in some way or another: Perhaps you’re thinking about the financial success (or lack thereof) of your business. Or you are gauging your success on the car you drive or the house you live in. You’re not alone if those are the types of metrics you’ve unknowingly chosen. These are society’s metrics, and it’s pretty easy to fall in line and use these outward signs of success to determine whether you’re on track or not. We happen to think that there’s much more to success for a mom entrepreneur than the financial and/or outward successes that are easy enough to see. These simply don’t tell the whole story.
Probably the most common way we measure ourselves without really thinking about it is by comparing ourselves to others. We read about people in magazines and on Facebook, or we watch them heading down the red carpet on TV, or we try to keep up with the neighbors down the street who appear to have the perfect house, the perfect lawn, and the perfect lives, or we envy those entrepreneurial superstars we always hear being interviewed on the radio for their latest amazing business that made them a million dollars. But comparing yourself to another mom entrepreneur, or another parent, or another business owner is not the same as defining success for yourself. In fact, it can be the complete opposite. Have you heard the saying, “To compare is to despair”? That seems to be just how it works out. When you compare yourself to someone else, you usually wind up feeling less than great about your life. Comparing yourself to others ensures that you will never measure up; there will always be someone who seems to be doing better than you are. And the feelings that crop up when you size up your life as compared to someone else’s? You can bet those feelings and thoughts will hinder you rather than empower you to live the life you want to live. When you rely on comparisons, you are not trusting yourself to know what is best for you. Everyone has different backgrounds, different strengths, and different motivators, so trying to compare yourself to someone else really is pointless.
Another way we measure ourselves without even realizing it is by defining success too narrowly. If you’ve always thought that success would look a certain way—living in a certain neighborhood, driving a specific type of car, or vacationing twice a year in Tahiti—or if you have another aspiration that is very specific, you may have unwittingly set yourself up to feel like a failure no matter what you do. After all, until you reach that particular milestone, you’ve automatically fallen short. And, funny enough, even if you do reach it, you just might find yourself feeling disappointed. Setting your sights on one specific accomplishment can be very motivating, but basing your whole idea of success on that one achievement leaves out all of the different facets that go into creating a satisfying life beyond that accomplishment.
Maybe you have thought through this whole idea of being successful and know what it will look like for you. Let’s say you’ve done some personal reflection and even some professional goal-setting, and you are clear on how you want your best life to look. That’s awesome. But how long ago did you set those goals and create that vision? Is it possible that your definition of success is somewhat outdated, or even that it has since completely changed? Does it fit into the lifestyle you’re living now? A vision board you created even two years ago could be way off the mark for you today—just ask someone who discovered she was unexpectedly pregnant, or someone who is now the sole breadwinner for her family since her partner was laid off last week, or the woman whose business took off and grew exponentially in ways she never planned. When it comes to helping you get what you want, an outdated vision of success is no more helpful than not having one at all.
The Path to Success
One of the most common complaints we hear from mom entrepreneurs is that they have spent so much time and put forth so much effort only to realize that they’ve created a business and a life they aren’t all that thrilled with. Things like societal norms, traditions, and your mindset, including making up your own set of rules that you just have to follow, can easily take over and dictate what you think success is supposed to look like. Before you have a chance to realize it, you can let those things guide you down a path that isn’t the one you ultimately want to be on. Years go by. One day you wake up, look around you, and think, This isn’t how I thought it would be. Stress and overwhelm kick in, or you feel disillusioned. That’s not the road to happiness.
That was the case with Trish Morrison of MomCom. Growing up, Trish was lucky enough to have parents who encouraged her to be whatever she wanted to be, but that didn’t stop her from making up rules for herself: she had to get the college degrees, climb the corporate ladder, manage people, and get ahead in business in order to be successful. “I’ve always been self-reliant,” she told us. “Work was my top priority. Getting ahead. Moving up. But since I became a mom entrepreneur, I realize that’s so not who I am. When I had Delilah, everything changed. My priorities shifted. I was no longer willing to be gone 10 hours a day at a job. Some people can do it, but I couldn’t. When she came into my life, I was all in. There was no more just me being who I wanted to be with a singular focus on myself. That all fell by the wayside!”
She had an event planning background, so Trish thought it made sense to organize a conference that would help moms connect with each other. She told us, “My vision of success back then was to have women come, listen to the awesome speakers, and have the experience change them somehow. I considered myself successful just hosting the event, getting excellent speakers who could tell a good story, and getting enough butts in the seats to cover the cost of the event. Oh, and did I make them cry? If so, then I definitely succeeded!” That vision soon morphed into a bigger (and, in hindsight, unreasonable) goal of being all things to all mothers: a Website, an online and offline community, monthly events, and franchises across the country in addition to the annual conference. She gave that vision her best shot, took some huge personal, professional, and financial risks, experienced some setbacks, and learned valuable lessons in the process. But along the way she lost sight of her original purpose and her priorities: to create a business that allowed her to spend more time with her family, and to bring moms together to hear each other’s stories. While she was trying to be all things to all moms, she was working around the clock, eating, sleeping, and breathing her business. She didn’t have enough time to spend with her family. The business took over every aspect of her life. “And that went against all the reasons I created MomCom in the first place,” Trish told us.
This cautionary tale is similar to others we’ve heard from mom entrepreneurs who decided to start their own companies so they could have all the freedom, flexibility, and fulfillment that being your own boss allows. But if your metric for success doesn’t align with your personal definition of success, it’s pretty likely you’ll wind up working just as hard for yourself as you ever did working for someone else. Before you know it, your career can take over your entire life, and we’re guessing that’s the opposite of what you want.
Find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.
—Henry Ford
Although it might have been tempting to quit or give up her business goals when she realized how far off track she was, Trish instead made the effort to figure out what success really meant to her. This clarity gave her the motivation she needed to revise her business model to one that allowed her to be professionally successful without sacrificing her commitment to put her family first. These days she’s living a vision of success that makes her happy. “Now that I think of it,” she told us, “I’m back to my original definition of success, which is just doing what I do best: running the conference so that moms can gather and be inspired through other moms’ stories. But, now I’m clear that I also want to be paid well for it, and I have to find ways to make money without being gone from my family so much that they forget what I look like.”
Trish’s story illustrates that success can look different at different times, and that as you grow and evolve as a woman and a business owner, your vision of success will also evolve. The thing to keep in mind is that your sense of satisfaction and fulfillment will always be a direct reflection of how clearly you determine what you want and how closely you are following a plan to achieve it. You may have started out with a Plan A and then moved on to Plan B—or a whole bunch of other letters in the alphabet—for your company, and that’s okay as long as your vision guided your choices.
Lara suffered for a long time before realizing her vision of success wasn’t working for her. While Trish’s goals became clearer to her in time, Lara simply forgot to update her own vision of success. That outdated vision left her feeling like a failure once she became a mother (and, later, an entrepreneur). Prior to motherhood, Lara defined success this way:
Working long hours
Making a lot of money
Traveling constantly for business and pleasure
Being able to buy the stuff she wanted, when she wanted it
Having a nice car
Owning a nice house
Dating and then eventually marrying a super guy
Completing and delivering a big project at work
Moving up the corporate ladder
Receiving rewards, promotions, and acknowledgement from her coworkers, bosses, and clients
Now that she’s a mom, that list looks a lot different. It took her a long time to realize that her old definition of success simply didn’t work when she applied it to her new role of mother (and, later, to her role as a mom entrepreneur). She was frustrated, sad, angry, and resentful because there was no one around to give her the praise and acknowledgement she wanted for her new work—mothering. “I loved my baby with all my heart. But I hated being a mother,” Lara remembers.
Her Mondays looked just like her Thursdays which looked a lot like her Sundays, and there was no clear way for her to judge her progress or achievements as a mom, other than how far she had managed to get through the mountain of dirty laundry each day. Talk about a useless metric. The strengths and talents she had honed all her life were a blur from her past, and although she didn’t realize it at the time, not getting to use her talents was a big source of the post-partum depression she suffered. And she certainly didn’t make any money at this new job as a mom; in fact, she felt a huge loss of power when she no longer earned an income herself, something she had done consistently since she was 12 years old.
When she tried to apply her old definition of success to her new coaching business, again, she failed miserably. She wasn’t making anywhere near the money she had made working at IBM, she struggled to find clients, and only a few of the clients she was working with felt like a perfect fit. She was certain she could figure out how to solve her business problems if only she wasn’t always so busy being a mother. Her frustrations were seriously impacting her business success, and she felt trapped, unhappy, and exhausted. Working for herself while trying to raise a family wasn’t making her feel successful at all.
With the help of her husband and her coach, Lara learned that the definition she was using to measure her success and to feel satisfied with the life she was creating fit her about as well as a size 5 shoe. (She wears a size 10.) Her way of assessing herself and her work was outdated and no longer applicable to her life. It took some time, but knowing that, she began to true things up for herself. She got to work and learned how to redefine success on her own terms, starting with getting a clear understanding of her core values and priorities (which we discussed in Chapter 1). Here’s how Lara now defines success for herself:
Being healthy and taking care of myself
Having children who are well-adjusted, confident, friendly, and compassionate, and who know how much they are loved
Being committed to my husband and a strong, satisfying marriage
Being loved, supported, and appreciated by my family, friends, and clients
Doing work that fuels my passion and totally satisfies my creativity, ambition, and natural talents
Having an income that affords our family opportunities we otherwise wouldn’t have
Doing work that makes a difference in the lives of others
Having clients who inspire me
Being responsible for my own happiness
So, how can you craft a vision of your successful self that will inspire you to achieve it? With a bit of time and focused intention, it’s not hard to do. Consider for a moment what exactly will make you feel successful. What is it about your desired future that makes you excited to work for it? Is it the things you’d like to own, the lifestyle you’d like to live, the experiences you’d like to have, or the things you’d like to accomplish? Remember, your vision of success has to motivate you. When Andreea Ayers was considering what it meant for her to “make it big” with her soap company, she considered different ways to make the company more profitable. “I could have raised my prices on the soaps by 50 percent,” she told us, “but that would have put me in a totally different market with a brand-new audience, and I just wasn’t as excited about selling to my new audience as I am about selling to my current one. And I have to be super excited about what I’m doing. Otherwise, why do it?” If your vision of success doesn’t get you fired up, well, we certainly don’t see how you can call that success.
A note here about your mindset: If you’re starting to hear those little voices inside your head telling you all the reasons why your vision of success isn’t possible, don’t worry. You’re not alone. We all hear those voices. The act of dreaming big and thinking about what you really want for your life makes those voices loud and clear. That’s just fear doing its job of trying to help you stay safe, avoid risk, and play small. So before you automatically start limiting yourself, we’d like to say, it’s not too late, you aren’t too old, it’s not too selfish, and you aren’t too busy. If you choose to let fear create your vision of success for you, well, you’ll end up in a place that isn’t at all what you want. So, notice the fear, trust yourself, and get going envisioning the life you deserve.
Fear is at the root of so many of the barriers that women face. Fear of not being liked. Fear of making the wrong choice. Fear of drawing negative attention. Fear of overreaching. Fear of being judged. Fear of failure. And the holy trinity of fear: the fear of being a bad mother/wife/daughter.
—Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In
Taking time to complete the exercises in this chapter will help you design both your business and your life in a way that meshes with all you uncovered in Chapter 1 and all that you want for yourself and your family. It will ensure that you are creating a business that is aligned with the life you dream of. The really great news is that by thoughtfully articulating and then working toward your own definition of success, you are much more likely to achieve it—and feel great when you do.
Admittedly, crafting your own version of success can be a complex endeavor when you consider all of the factors that must be included. The following graphic shows some of the factors that you’ll want to keep in mind.
Happy + Successfull Mom Entrepreneur
Your Vision of Success
This exercise will position your business vision smack in the middle of the vision for your whole life, which, for a mom entrepreneur, is the only way to make it all work. By taking the time to clarify your success criteria, you’ll save yourself time and effort, not to mention the potential heartbreak that can happen when you’ve let someone or something else decide what it makes sense for you to work toward. Grab that sheet of paper and get ready to record your thoughts. Write the following bolded questions on your paper and leave some space to answer them, plus the supporting questions underneath. You’ll want to write the bolded questions down first and then come back to each one to record your answers.
Question #1: When thinking about your business, how far into the future can you see it?
Is it three years from now? Five years? Write down a date; be specific if you can.
Now, picture yourself on that date, whenever it is. Imagine that on that date, you are wildly successful. Remember, this is a visioning exercise, so don’t worry about the details or how you will reach this level of success. Suspend reality for a few minutes and just know that at that point in the future you are proud, happy, and grateful for all you’ve achieved.
Question #2: Looking back over the past, between your future date of success and now, what has made you so successful?
What factors have played into your success? Describe your mindset during that time of progress. What does success feel like for you? How would you describe it to someone else?
Question #3: Describe your lifestyle.
When your close friends and family are asked to describe the lifestyle that is so satisfying to you, what would they say? Where do you live? How is your health? How much time do you spend with your family, your friends, or alone for quality “me time”? How are your finances? How many hours a week do you work? How often do you take time off? What’s your favorite way to spend your free time, and how do you fit it in? Answer the questions that seem most important and omit any that don’t resonate for you.
Question #4: How do you spend the majority of the time in your business?
What roles do you fill in your business? What do you most enjoy doing? What do you do best? What’s easiest? What makes the most money or profit for the company?
Question #5: Looking back, what are three to five key milestones that led to your success?
Think of the highlights, the points at which you did something that created opportunities that didn’t exist or weren’t likely to happen before. These are usually those places that felt exciting, new, and/or challenging. (By the way, does this feel a little bit like business planning? Well, you’re on to us! In Chapter 6, we will be bringing these details into your business plan and building a bridge to get from your ideas to your reality.)
Question #6: What were the key growth changes/mindset shifts that supported this success?
As Henry Ford wisely said, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.” Were there some limiting beliefs that you let go of? Did you notice that fear was whispering in your ear, but you decided to ignore it? Did you learn something new along the way that changed how you felt about yourself and what was possible? Or, did you acquire new skills or resources that improved your game? Did someone help you or enable you believe in yourself? Write down what comes to mind.
Question #7: What did you get from this visioning process? Did you have any “ah-ha” moments?
To get the most from this do-it-yourself coaching book, it’s important for you to notice and acknowledge your patterns and recurring thoughts and beliefs. (We will address self-talk in more detail in Chapter 4.) As you continue, we will build on the answers that you’re recording, so be sure to take the time to write them down. After all, you probably don’t spend a lot of time purposely examining your life. This is the place to do it!
At its heart, this chapter is really asking, “Who do you want to be?” It’s worth taking some time to answer that question because who you want to be affects everything in your life and in your business. The day you wake up and find that you have the life you’ve been striving for and that you are the person you want to be is a very good day. We’re going for happy here, so let’s keep discovering what will get you there.
We have one last check-in for this chapter. Wanting something badly is a good way to make sure that you will do your very best to go after it. A strong desire can help you overcome the limits we all unconsciously place on ourselves: “I’d really reach for success if I had more money, more time, more education, more support, yadda, yadda, yadda.” Now that you’ve had a chance to envision success, go back and make sure that what you’ve envisioned is truly what you want and that you are ready and willing to overcome your excuses and get to work doing whatever it will take to reach your vision.
Bottom Line
Your sense of satisfaction and fulfillment will always be a direct reflection of how clearly you determine what you want and how closely you are following a plan to achieve it.
Be sure your vision of success is your own.
Taking the time to thoughtfully answer the questions in this chapter provides the beginnings of a road map toward the success you deserve.