KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• When it comes to raising a family and running a business, everyone is trying to find their own way. Whether it’s finding value in nurture, in security or in finance. If people are doing something different to you, remember it all comes down to how you feel valued as a human being.
• Guilt and sadness all comes down to believing you are making a good decision. If you are being made to feel that you’re not making a good decision, you will start to feel that guilt.
• Naturally women want to multitask, which shows when it comes to both our family-life and work-life. Although it’s natural, it results in burnout.
• Try to see it as an opportunity to involve your children in your work.
• You can teach them about the world of work and the importance of earning money. It’s also important to teach them about problem solving and the things that they enjoy.
• Give your children a chance to do something else whilst you’re working.
• Whether it’s filming a video or drawing a picture for your client, if they have something to focus on it will make time away from them that little bit easier.
• If you don’t have time to create a community, it’s important you’re creating a ‘sense of community’ instead.
• People want to feel as though they’re protected in a community, so creating a space where people feel as though people are protecting them, you will gain trust. Once you put trust with the authority you have, you will gain loyalty.
• One of the most important aspects of having a community is responsiveness. You need to ensure you’re responding to everyone that takes the effort to reach out to you.
• A Movement Manifesto is designed to help you discover your true values as an entrepreneur.
• To build your own community, you need to become micro-famous in someone else’s. To do this, join Facebook groups that are relevant to what you’re known for and search for keywords and start answering questions that you know you can help with. Spend 20-30 minutes a day becoming known.
• Don’t feel as though you need a huge community in order to benefit your business. Love and nurture the people that are already in your community. Work on the things you can control and the outcomes will happen.

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…

Work doesn’t have to be a negative word and can be incredibly positive if you find the things that light you up. This is what you need to teach your children as you run your business.

HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS

• Introducing Dana Malstaff – 11:50
• Struggling as a New Mum and an Entrepreneur – 16:21
• The Biggest Challenges and the Benefits – 22:00
• Building a Strong Community in Business – 36:30
• Your Movement Manifesto – 44:00
• The First Steps to Building a Community 49:09

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S EPISODE

• 5 Places to Use As Opportunities To Build Your List
• How to Produce A Webinar (Blueprint)
• Creating A Good Sales Page
• Boss-Mom
• Dana’s Instagram
• Dana’s Twitter

Transcript below

Hello and a super warm welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How the devil are you? Have you had a good week, has it had a good start? What have you been up to? Well, my week has been pretty good. I'm actually recording this on a Friday and I'm quite looking forward to the weekend although very absolutely for today's podcast interview. I'm about to talk about my daughter and you'll see what it's apt in a bit.

Anyway, tomorrow, my daughter is performing in a carnivore. So she does dance at school and as part of that, they're going to walk with the carnivore and probably do a little bit dancing and then we have this big sort of park area where we live and lots of events happen in that park area. And afterwards, they will all commune in there and she does a performance. And the horrible mother that I am just thinks, "Oh man, it's going to rain tomorrow and I don't want to be stood out on the street watching all these kids go by and clapping." Is that awful? Am I honestly the worst mom?

Like I said, it's really apt that I should be telling you this today because in today's interview, we talk about what it's like to be a working mom. Anyway, I'll get to that in a second. I got a few things to tell you about it before we get to that bit. First thing is, I wanted to let you know that in a couple of weeks time, I'm going to be doing a live masterclass. In fact, I'm going to be doing three in one day. I've done it before, I thought it was going to be really hard work because I don't know if you've ever done anything live like a webinar or a masterclass. It takes a lot of energy but you know what, because I love teaching and I love answering questions and I love helping people, it actually just seems to like completely give me energy.

So I thought to myself three in a day is too much and everybody said too many, do one every day for three days. And I was like, "You know what, I think I'm going to be all right." And they were adamant that I couldn't deal with it and I'll be exhausted and I wasn't, I was absolutely fine. Honestly, by the time I got off the third webinar, I was buzzing and it took me a little while and a few gins and probably a glass of wine or two to calm me down before I could then go to bed but I loved it. It was so, so good.

So I'm going to be doing, like I said, another masterclass. Now, the details are coming together, I don't have them all because I'm recording this, as always, quite in advance. So I'm having to really work out my diary and it's really tricky. Because first off, I don't want to announce something and then decide I need to change the day. That wouldn't be ideal. Or I don't want to ... I'm obviously not sort of planning the details yet because I'm not close enough. And I try and keep these things fairly fluid because I really want to understand from you guys what you need me to teach you on.

But to give you a bit of an idea, I have been working on a formula that I feel is a very easy and simple way in which to sell and market products online, as in digital products or yourself or a brand that basically use digital tools and tactics in order to market and sell yourself. And I've decided to call this formula the MTC Method, so Marketing That Converts Method. Tell you what, it took my assistant and I a little while to come up with that because I was trying to think of these different cool names and I'd seen an example of something method and it worked really well and it was their sir name. And I thought, the Heath-Wareing method is not going to cut it. I'm not happy with that.

So anyway, we did a bit of going and digging around, a bit of thinking and we decided obviously we have this whole brand now around marketing that converts so why are we not using this? Marketing That Converts is too long so we abbreviated it to the MTC Method and I'm much happier with that. Anyway, so I'm going to be talking through that method but I'm also going to be giving you in section of that method, some really good tips and tools and some strategies that you can use in order to market your business.

It's going to be a really, really good one. We're going to include some social media stuff. And you know me, I love to add value so I promise you, if you sign up for this masterclass, you are not going to be wasting your time. There's going to be some good stuff in there. And obviously, totally straight up because you know I'm very honest, at the end of it, I'm going to offer you my new academy which also is going to be really cool. I am personally very excited about this. Like I said, one of the things I love to do more than anything, is teach and train and help. And I kind of can't help myself.

So I'm really excited about that. I'm going to be talking about that on the masterclass. But please don't feel like you're going to come on to the masterclass and I'm going to see to you for now because I promise that is not the case. I've had really good, lovely feedback from the stuff that I've done before because I don't want to waste your time and I want to make sure that I'm giving you some good value. If you're like me, I've done a tonne of webinars, a tonne of masterclasses and some of them are really good and I'm so glad I spent that hour doing it and others I just think, "You've told me nothing and you've just sold to me the entire time." So I don't want you to feel like that and that's definitely not what I'm going to be doing. I'm definitely going to be teaching you some really cool stuff. And I'm going to be showing you this new method which I'm really excited about.

Anyway, if you do want to find out more about that, you can go to my website teresaheathwareing.com/masterclass. So just search that, I'll obviously put a link in today's show notes. And by the time this airs, I would have figured out all the details and it'll all be on that page so you can have a proper look about what we're going to cover, what I'm going to teach you and why you want to come along to that masterclass.

Anyway, let's get on with today's episode. Today I am interviewing the very lovely Dana Malstaff. She is the CEO and founder of Boss Mom. She's a mother, an author, a business strategist, a podcaster, blind spot producer and movement maker. She is the author of Boss Mom: The Ultimate Guide to Raising a Business & Nurturing Your Family Like a Pro. She has over 20,000 students in various courses and a 30,000 strong community with over 10 years experience in content creation, marketing, sales, community building and business strategy. Dana grew Boss Mom brand into a six-figure business in less than a year.

Her Boss Mom movement is all about losing the guilt when it comes to raising babies and business at the same time. And she believes that pursuing our passions and building our dreams while including our children in the process is the best way to build a thriving business and families. And you know what, it was a really good on actually. I really, really enjoyed talking about it. And one of the things I think I've said before on the podcast, is when I first started my business, I was in ... It's a local networking where it's a lot of men and we didn't talk children.

And therefore, I almost acted like I didn't have a child which sounds really bad. And it wasn't that obviously I was trying to exclude her from my life, it was just the fact that I genuinely thought I wasn't going to be taken seriously if I suddenly then talked about having child care issues or having to go to a school play or working what I was going to on a weekend when I've got her or whatever it was. I just didn't want to talk about it because like I said, I honestly felt that they would think that I was not as good as them or I couldn't manage my business and raise a child.

And then suddenly about two, three years ago, I realised that actually what am I doing hiding away the fact that this is part of me because it totally is and it's a big part of me obviously. So it was really nice to talk to Dana about this, to discuss what it's like raising a family or having other commitments because it just doesn't have to be that you've got children. It could be that you've got parents you're looking after or animals that you look after or other commitments in the community or whatever. So it was just really, really good to talk about the balance between the two.

One of the things I loved about this is she felt like when she started the business, she was the only person or the only mamma there that wanted to work and have a family and have her children and that obviously there must have been something wrong with her or she was being really selfish or she wasn't doing a very good job because she wanted both. And that really resonated with me. I don't think I've ever said before but when my daughter was born, she was born in November and I was back at work by the February. Now, I'm not saying like go me brilliant, I went straight back to work because actually that wasn't the intention.

What happened was, we couldn't afford for me to be off. My ex husband and I couldn't afford to not have my salary because I had a good salary. So I then had to go back to work fairly quickly. Now, I did go back part-time for a little bit and then I returned full-time. But my daughter was a teeny-tiny baby or I certainly felt that way when I went back to work. And everybody told me, "You're going to hate it, you're going to be in tears. It's going to be awful." And the funny thing was, I wasn't. And I thought, "Oh man, I must be like the worst mom in the world because of the fact that I'm not sat here sobbing."

But I actually quite enjoyed having those roles where I was being mom and then I was being work person. And I still enjoy that and I've said before that my daughter does a week with her dad and a week with me and that allows me to be mom when she's here and focus more on her. And then when she's not here, I get to really knuckle down and get work done and focus on the business. So it was great to talk about that, to talk about the guilt that we feel because man, do we feel guilt.

I always feel like I'm doing one thing probably okay and the other thing terribly. So if I'm feeling confident in the business and things going right here, I immediately think I'm doing a terrible job being a mom. And if I'm doing a good job being a mom, I immediately think, "Oh God, I'm letting my business fail." So we talk about that and that was great to talk about that.

But the other thing we talked about which was really important in terms of Dana's world, is that she has built this amazing community. And one thing that she's really good at is building communities. So half of the podcast is focused around how she built that community and what advice and tips she can give us when we want to build a community. So it's not just about the mom stuff, it is about also community building. And like I said, she gives some great advice around how we can start to find our tribe, find our community and some of the key things that we need to be doing. So she says some great stuff in here actually. I think some of the stuff you're really going to resonate with and also some of the stuff you're going to be like, "Oh, do you know what, yeah, you're right." Because there was a couple of things she said and I was like, "Oh, I probably don't do that enough." So I think you're going to love this one so let's go.

Introducing Dana Malstaff

So it's my absolute pleasure to introduce the lovely Dana Malstaff. Dana welcome to the podcast.

Oh, thank you so much for having me.

Thank you for agreeing to come one. I'm really excited about today's episode. We were just-

Me too.

We were chatting before we came on and I just said that talking about kind of being a parent, a mom, in business is not something I've done a huge a lot about because I came from a corporate world. So I'm really excited to talk a little bit about that and a few other cool stuff. But in case my audience don't know you, can you give us just a really brief update as to who you are and how you got to do what you're doing now.

Yes. Well, I'll give you the short version because obviously I could talk about it for days. So I quit my corporate job six or so years ago. Everybody took me out to celebrate and got me drunk and I got pregnant by my husband at the time. So I became a mom and entrepreneur literally on the same day. And basically I'm not built to be a stay-at-home mom. I was in director level when I was in corporate, I've always liked to lead teams, leadership positions, always knew I wanted to run my own company, always worked for startups. And so I knew I wanted to work and I very much grappled with the fact that I didn't want to be a stay-at-home mom. And once I got pregnant, wondered if that meant maybe I wasn't a good mom and found myself wanting my kid to go to daycare so that I could work and establish my business.

And trying to figure out this balance which is no longer really a word I use anymore but at the time, trying to figure out a balance between the two was isolating and sad and scary. And I didn't know what I could tell people because they judge me about it or I didn't know who to talk to. Fast forward a little bit, we were in Columbus, Ohio, we decided to move to San Diego and San Diego became this place where all of these women were starting businesses and it was full of entrepreneurs. And I started to open up and realise I wasn't alone and I wasn't crazy for wanting to have a business and babies and do all these things.

And I ended up writing a book called Boss Mom, which is The Ultimate Guide to Raising a Business & Nurturing Your Family Like a Pro. And I created this community that I wish I would have had that is about really not being judged and really about what now the Boss Mom brand is truly about, is finding a place where we all belong where we just don't feel crazy. Whether that's for Boss Mom or whether that's what ever other community you need of with people who love to rock climb or people that love to bake weird things. That the thing is that we just all want to feel that the things that we like and love and who we are naturally is not a bad thing and we want to be creating communities where we all feel like we belong in a very judge-free space and that we could all help each other like a think tank.

And that's what I wanted for Boss Mom and it just caught on like wild fire and we are now four years in to having Boss Mom. I just put out my third book, the community is growing continues to grow. Now I go out and speak about how to build community through Facebook and other ways that we do it. And we're Boss Mom and we slap Boss Mom on all the things we can. Why not?

Brilliant. I love it. So I want to pick up on a couple of small things that you said though, which completely resonated with me. When you said that you just realised you're not a stay-at-home mom, for me I was exactly the same. When my daughter was born, I went back to work fairly swiftly. I was very lucky that I had to kind of part-time my job where I could work from home, so that helped as well. But for me it was like I always knew there had to be something other than ...

And it's not saying that obviously if that's your thing and you want to do them then absolutely fine and great but for me it wasn't. But I felt that there was something wrong with me. Like I remember someone saying the first day you get back to work, you're going to cry and cry and cry and I didn't. And I thought, "Oh God, I'm not a proper mom. Like I should be absolutely sobbing and I'm literally like, 'Bye, see you later.'" So I'm so glad that you said you felt like that because I did too.

Oh yeah.

Struggling as a New Mum and an Entrepreneur

So obviously you start the business and what is it in particular or what do you think it is in particular that's about the difference for moms compared to dads? Obviously we'll have both listening to the podcast but what do you think it is that we struggle with as moms that really kind of mean we need that community?

Yeah. Well and interestingly we started, last year, we start the Boss Dad podcast because I wanted to start hearing from dads as well and make sure that I wasn't so in my woman bubble as somebody had told me I was in my woman bubble. Which is funny because when I joked with a friend we asked what's the last book you read that was written by a man? And I was like, "Oh, that's