70. Why Stay-at-Home Moms Make Great Entrepreneurs
Being a stay-at-home mom is like running the most complex organization in the world. You’re managing tiny humans with unpredictable schedules, big emotions, and endless to-dos, all while being on call 24/7. And even though you love your littles fiercely, it’s exhausting.
The tricky part is that the skills, expertise, and capabilities you’ve spent years building can feel like they’re gathering dust while you pour everything into caregiving. But you can love being home with your kids and still crave a space to grow, contribute, and create something uniquely yours.
Join me this week as I show you how that longing for something you can call your own is pointing you toward the possibility of building a business that fulfills you and works around the life you’ve already built. You’ll also learn the four biggest obstacles that keep stay-at-home moms stuck in the dreaming phase, and give you practical strategies to overcome each one.
If you’re ready to stop waiting and start building your business right now, you need to join my *FREE* webinar, Start a Business Before Winter Break. It’s happening on September 19th, 2025, at 1pm ET/10am PT. Click here to register.
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
How to build a business in 1-2 hour weekly pockets instead of waiting for the “perfect” time.
Why treating your business as part of your weekly responsibilities changes everything.
A simple strategy for turning everyday observations into viable business ideas.
What really happens when you reframe failure as learning.
How to present your business plan to an unsupportive partner.
The three major advantages stay-at-home moms have when starting businesses.
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Join my free webinar, Start a Business Before Winter Break!
2. One Mindset Shift to Change the Way You Think About Failure
40. When Your Spouse Has Doubts About Your Business with Michelle Purta
58. Stop Wasting Time: How to Achieve More with Results-Oriented Language
68. Starting a Business Later in Life: Thyme Sullivan’s Reinvention at 48
Full Episode Transcript:
Today we're going to dive deep into the reality of what it's like to consider starting your business as a stay-at-home mom. I'm going to walk you through the four biggest obstacles I see and more importantly, I'm going to give you concrete strategies for overcoming each of them. By the end of this episode, I want you to feel energized and equipped with everything you need to move forward and move from dreaming to doing.
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job, the podcast for moms ready to ditch the nine-to-five and build a life and business they love. I’m your host, Jenna Rykiel. Let’s go.
If you're a stay-at-home mom who's been dreaming about starting a business but feeling completely overwhelmed by where to even begin and all of the obstacles in your way, I created this episode for you. I know I'm always talking about escaping corporate and quitting your job to build something of your own, and if we've taken on the role of being home with the kiddos, it's kind of hard to quit that job.
But I want you to know that you can have it all. You can start building a business while being an amazing primary caretaker. I want to start by acknowledging something that I hope is obvious for this audience, but being a stay-at-home mom is one of the hardest jobs in the world. You're on call 24/7. You're managing tiny humans with unpredictable schedules and big emotions, and you're doing all of this labor unpaid. Even if you love every moment of being the primary caregiver of your house all day to the littles, it's exhausting.
And I want you to remember that you are running the most complex organization imaginable. And you're doing it with skill, creativity, and resourcefulness that would put most CEOs to shame. I've never been a full-time stay-at-home mom, but I've had those glimpses during maternity leave and sick days and school breaks where I'm home with both kids all day. And I'll be honest with you, there's always this moment of relief when we are back in the routine with both kids going to their respective childcare because I then get to tap back into other parts of who I am.
And that relief isn't because I don't love my kids. It's because as humans, we need to access different aspects of our identity to feel whole. And this is what I hear from so many of the stay-at-home moms I work with and talk to. You love your kids fiercely and you're grateful for the opportunity to be home with them, but there's this part of your brain that feels dormant. This expertise you've built over years that feels like it's gathering dust and really this longing to create something that's uniquely yours.
And I want you to know that longing isn't selfish, it's human. And more than that, it's actually pointing you towards something really powerful. It's the possibility of building a business that not only fulfills you but also creates additional income for your family while working around the life you've already built. Like my clients, there could be a part of you that misses work, but even when the kids are old enough to go to school, there are demands that a 9-to-5 job still isn't flexible enough for. Entrepreneurship and building something of your own where you make the rules can be exactly how you maintain the flexibility that you need for your family while starting to contribute financially.
Today we're going to dive deep into the reality of what it's like to consider starting your business as a stay-at-home mom. I'm going to walk you through the four biggest obstacles I see and more importantly, I'm going to give you concrete strategies for overcoming each of them. By the end of this episode, I want you to feel energized and equipped with everything you need to move forward and move from dreaming to doing.
And also, if you're listening to this live, I'm offering a free webinar this Friday, September 19th, that may just fall during East Coast nap time, 1 p.m. Eastern. And I'll be sharing the four steps to start your business before winter break, before the end of the year. And if your kids are old enough to be in preschool or any kind of school, this is the perfect time to maximize some of the time you've been given to start creating results. And I'm going to show you exactly how to do that in the webinar on Friday, the 19th.
So before we dive into the four obstacles and how to overcome those obstacles, I want to talk about something that makes entrepreneurship particularly complex for stay-at-home moms. And that's the identity piece. When you become a mom, you take on this enormous new identity. It's beautiful and meaningful, but it's also all-consuming in a way that can feel like it swallows up who you were before becoming a mom. This happens to all moms to some degree, but it's exponentially magnified when you're home full-time. When you're working outside of the home, you get these daily reminders of your other skills and capabilities. You know, you talk to other adults, you contribute expertise, you attend meetings, you might have a seat at the table. You have colleagues who see you as more than just someone's mom.
But when you're home, especially in those early years, it can feel like every part of your identity becomes wrapped up in caregiving. And here's the thing, this isn't your fault and it's not something that you should just get over. That's not why I'm bringing it up. It's a natural response to a massive life change. What I want you to understand is that all those skills, all the expertise, all those parts of you that feel dormant, they're not gone. They're just waiting for the right opportunity to reemerge.
I remember being completely terrified when I was pregnant and on maternity leave with my first son, Adley, because it felt like my business was still a baby at the time and I really feared that becoming a mom would change me in ways that would make it hard for me to continue the business, especially when I came back after maternity leave. I honestly thought that I'd lose all my drive and momentum and the skills that I had built so far in my business. I kept thinking that I'd be starting over, and it was a thought I had to really journal about and get a lot of coaching on to overcome. I had to explore this idea that everything I had built before maternity leave doesn't go away.
And I wasn't so much afraid that I wouldn't want to come back. I was afraid that I wouldn't intellectually be able to come back, which was terrifying. Starting a business or returning to the business in my case from maternity leave isn't just about making money, it's about reclaiming parts of yourself that feel lost. It's about proving to yourself that you're still the capable, creative, problem-solving person you've always been. And that's why it can feel so scary and so necessary at the same time.
Now, I want to talk about the four biggest obstacles I see stay-at-home moms talking about and facing when they want to start businesses. And I want to talk very strategically about how to overcome each one. So the first obstacle I hear, and this isn't necessarily unique to moms who are the primary caregiver, but there is a certain flavor that moms who have left the workforce, the traditional workforce, let's say, talk about. So obstacle number one is, I don't have time.
And I want to talk about the myth of feeling like you need large blocks of time in order to create a business. This is an obstacle I hear most often and I completely understand why. Children's schedules are unpredictable. You never know if nap time is going to be 45 minutes or 2 hours. You're managing meals, tantrums, diaper changes, and a thousand other small tasks that seem to expand to fill every available moment. And if you have a toddler and a 1-year-old like me, even though they are supposed to be napping at the same time, it feels like by the time one falls asleep, the other is ready to wake up. So that hour that I thought I had really turns into like 15 minutes. So I get it.
But here's what I want to challenge you on, is the belief that you need large, consistent blocks of time to build a business. This belief keeps so many moms stuck because we're waiting for some mythical time in the future when we'll have more space in our schedule. And the truth is, some of the most successful businesses that I've seen from stay-at-home moms have been built in one to two-hour pockets of time throughout the week, often unpredictable ones. The key isn't necessarily having more time because we can't create more time, right? We all only have 24 hours in a day. It's being strategic about the time you have.
Here's how to make this work. Here's the strategy piece. Here's how I want you to think about overcoming this. The first thing is to do your planning on the weekends. This is when maybe your partner can lean in more, when you might have some quiet time while the kids are watching a movie or playing independently. I want you to spend one hour on Saturday or Sunday when you are not necessarily the sole caretaker in that moment. And I want you to spend that time planning exactly what you want to accomplish in your business that week. Not vague goals like work on business, but real actionable items that direct your brain on exactly what to do in those moments.
I want it to be things like email X person in the industry about the business idea or set up a virtual coffee chat with so-and-so who has done this before, or submit grant application, right? Very actionable results-driven items that you want to create. Also, I have an episode all about how to achieve more with results-oriented language, Episode 58. So if you want more on like how you can word things better, how you can think about planning your to-do list better, definitely check out that episode.
Second, I want you to create or think about items that can be or tasks that can be completed in 15-minute or 30-minute or 60-minute blocks. When you suddenly find yourself with an unexpected pocket of time, you'll know exactly what to do instead of wasting those precious minutes figuring out where to start. So I want you to be thoughtful and intentional about the amount of time things take you.
Third, and this is crucial, I want you to treat your business as part of your weekly responsibilities. So not as something extra. Just like you wouldn't skip doing laundry or preparing lunch because you don't have time, your business tasks become part of what gets done. And this might mean being more efficient in other areas, folding laundry while the kids play nearby or meal prepping on Sundays so weeknight dinners take less time. But the goal isn't to work 40 hours a week on your business, it's to work consistently within the construct of your life and how it's already designed, even if it's just 2 to 3 hours total. Consistency beats intensity every time.
A business built slowly over 2 years is still a business. And it's far better than a business that just never gets started because you're waiting for the perfect conditions or when you have more time. I have a client with 4 kids who would regularly plan coaching calls and work sessions during her youngest son's nap. And on days she had a client call, she'd phone a friend, right, aka her mom to come over for the hour just in case her son didn't nap. She also built systems in her house which encouraged her older kids to play independently, which is actually part of the business she has created and it's amazing the difference this makes. I've picked up so much value just from coaching her on her business and the value that she can offer and the services she offers. And I've seen a huge difference in the way my kids play independently. So I've been so grateful just to coach her and learn. And I'll share a link in the show notes about her business.
But anyway, with these systems that we can be intentional about and implement, I often see her older kids, and I'm talking like 4, 6, and 8 playing in the background during our calls, never interrupting, just independently playing. And I'm always amazed. But this is something that she has created to give herself time and space to work on her own business while meeting the demands of motherhood. And so if it's something that somebody else has figured out, another mom just like you, I trust that you can also figure out systems that help you to gain back a couple of hours of time each week.
That's obstacle number one. The second obstacle of four is I don't know what business to start. So not having an idea. And this is really about reconnecting with your value. I hear constantly that there's this sense of being disconnected from our own experience and value. You know, you may have been out of the professional world for months or years and it can feel like you've lost touch with what you are good at or what people would be willing to pay for. But here's what I know about moms and especially those who are the primary caregivers. You are uniquely positioned to identify problems that need solving. Every single day, I know that you're thinking about and noticing how to make life easier, safer, more efficient, more enjoyable. You're constantly problem-solving not just for your own family but for your community.
You notice when the school pickup system doesn't work well. You see gaps in services for your families. You understand what products would make parenting easier. You have a pulse on what other moms are struggling with because you're living it too. This is business gold. The best businesses solve real problems for real people and you're surrounded by problems that need solving every single day and they need innovation to solve.
So what I want you to do maybe even just for one week, I want you to carry around a small notebook or use the notes app in your phone and I want you to jot down every time you think there should be an app for this, or why doesn't someone make XYZ? Or I wish there was a service for that. I want you to not filter these thoughts, but I just want you to write them down. And at the end of the week, look at your list and I guarantee you'll find at least three viable business ideas.
Maybe it's a service for other moms, maybe it's a product that would make family life easier. Maybe it's sharing knowledge from your pre-kids career in a way that works for parents' schedules. The point isn't to find the perfect idea immediately. The point is to start trusting that you do have valuable ideas and that your perspective as a mom gives you unique insights into problems worth solving.
Any idea that solves a problem that people would be willing to pay for is a good idea. And as moms, we are constantly thinking about problems to solve, not get-rich-quick schemes, but real solutions for real challenges. And that's the foundation of every successful business.
I just sat down with a mom earlier this week who had an idea to create a business that connects people with resources and encourages them to take action in small ways towards their dreams. And she's been feeling so stuck and after our conversation, she said what she really needed was for someone to tell her it was a good idea. And yes, I know we want external validation. I'm also happy to be that person that externally validates your idea or even offers tweaks and shifts to make it even stronger. But I also want you to know that your ideas are good. Let's start from there and then test that hypothesis instead of leaning towards the idea that our ideas will likely fail and so we never get out of the starting gate.
This leads me to the next biggest obstacle. Obstacle 3 of 4, which is fear of failure. This is so important. I've talked about it a lot on this podcast. It's so important to reframe our relationship with failure to be able to put our best foot forward. The fear of failure hits my stay-at-home moms particularly hard and I think there are some very specific reasons why. When you're not earning an income, there can be this pressure to make sure that if you're going to invest time and energy into something, it better work out. The stakes feel higher because you're already making sacrifices for your family and the idea of potentially taking time away from your kids for something that doesn't pan out feels devastating.
But I want to offer you a completely different way to think about failure because this fear is keeping so many brilliant moms stuck. So first, let's get very specific about what failure actually means. I was talking to a mom recently who wanted to create an app for her audience but was paralyzed by fear. And when I asked her, what's the worst-case scenario? She said, the app doesn't work the first time. And so I asked her, okay, what would you do if that happened? And immediately she said, I'd call it a beta version and try again. And there was so much relief that I sensed in her just having that answer.
And this is so important. When we get curious about our fears instead of just avoiding them, when we ask ourselves, what would I actually do if the worst-case scenario happened? We always have an answer because we are so resourceful, right? Because we're creative, you're creative, because you know how to get yourself out of difficult situations. You do it every single day as a mom.
Here's the other thing. If your business doesn't work out, the worst-case scenario is that you go back to exactly what you're doing right now. You go back to being a stay-at-home mom without a business. And that's perfectly okay. It's not actually a step backward, it's just maintaining the status quo.
But here's what I really want you to understand, is that there is no such thing as failure when you're building a business, only learning. Every action you take teaches you something. Every failed experiment, whatever failed means, it gets you closer to what works. Every connection you make, every skill you develop, every bit of confidence you build, that all stays with you regardless of whether your first business idea succeeds exactly as planned.
And there's something else that happens when you start working on something that's yours and something to call your own. You start accessing parts of your identity that might have been dormant. We talked about identity a lot earlier and you cannot put a price on the energy and the excitement and the value that you get from tapping into that part of your identity. You remember that you're an expert at things. You prove to yourself that you can create value in the world in new ways. I see this in every mom that I work with. And this changes how you show up to your family, how you talk to your kids about pursuing their dreams, how you feel about yourself. And all of that, that's never failure. Okay? That's growth, learning, and transformation that no one can take away from you.
So many entrepreneurs will tell you that their business today is very different from where it started. And I know that's true of my business and that was the sentiment in my interview with Thyme Sullivan in Episode 68 that you can check out if you want. There are a couple of episodes that really dive into this topic of reframing our relationship with failure that are absolute gold. And if you want to go a little deeper on this topic, I highly recommend Episode 2 and Episode 67. They're both really great.
The fourth obstacle, and I know this one will hit home for so many of you, so many of my recent conversations have had this obstacle as a sticking point. Obstacle 4 is not having partner support. So, I want to talk about the obstacle of not having partner support, but I also want to talk about what to do and how to treat your partner like an investor.
This obstacle is one that really breaks my heart because it stops so many women before they even start. Here's what I've observed. Most of the stay-at-home moms who end up working with me and investing in business coaching and actually create those businesses because of support and accountability and thought partnership, they have partners who support their entrepreneurial dreams. But I also talk to many moms during the consultation process who are excited about starting businesses, are thinking about investing in themselves and their business, but feel completely stuck because their partners aren't on board.
And I want to address this directly because if this is you, it doesn't mean your dream is over. It means you need a different strategy. First, let's understand where your partner is coming from. They are not unsupportive because they don't believe in you. They're unsupportive because they're afraid. They have all the same fears you have about this business not working out, but their fears are often amplified because they're not in your head, okay? They're not experiencing the excitement and the vision that you're experiencing.
From their perspective, oftentimes they're just seeing that you want to spend time and possibly money on something uncertain and they're worried about what that means for the family, what it means for your availability and what it means for the financial stability of the family. So what needs to happen is you need to treat your partner like an investor. If you were pitching to an investor, you wouldn't just say, please believe in me and support my dreams because you should. You'd show them a plan. You'd demonstrate that you've thought this through. You'd address their concerns. You'd address them proactively, right?
Your partner needs to see that you've considered how this will work logistically. They need to understand that you're not planning to disappear for hours every day or make major financial investments without their input. They need to see the specific steps you'll take before investing any money. The people you'll talk to, the research you'll do. You need to create a simple plan that addresses exactly how many hours per week you plan to work on this and when, what will stay the same in terms of the family responsibilities, right? Provide some reassurance. You need to talk about what steps you'll take before making any financial investments and you need to talk about how you'll measure whether it's working or not.
Also talking about what support you need from them. They have a lot going on too and they might feel like this will require them to shift so much of their time and energy. Maybe it's that you need them to watch the kids for two hours on Sunday mornings. Most partners become supportive once they can see the vision clearly and feel confident that family life won't be disrupted. Your job isn't to convince them to believe in you more than you believe in yourself. Your job is to help them understand exactly what you are planning and how it will work.
In Episode 40, I interviewed a marriage expert and coach on this topic and it's incredibly insightful if you want to dig deeper into this obstacle and topic. Keep in mind you can find all of these links in the show notes. I know I've referenced a lot of episodes, but you can go to Jenna.Coach/70 to get links to all the things that I've talked about.
So those are the obstacles and those are the strategies. But before we wrap up, I want to kind of flip the script entirely and talk about why stay-at-home moms are actually in an incredible position to start businesses. The first thing is there's the financial piece. Your family has already figured out how to live on one income. This means that any money your business brings in is additional, not necessary for survival. Okay? This removes so much pressure and allows you to build slowly and strategically instead of desperately. And I want you to remember you really do not have to hire childcare and spend a lot of money to get this thing started.
I'll be talking about on this upcoming Friday, September 19th, if you're listening to this live, I'll be talking about exactly the steps you need to take and it is not big investments, right? They are all accessible steps that you can do today, that you already have access to and know how to do.
Second, you lived a whole life before kids. You have education, work experience, skills, and knowledge that don't disappear just because you're not using them in the traditional job right now. And this expertise is incredibly valuable. You just might not be packaging it in the right way or thinking about it in the right way yet.
Finally, this situation is temporary. Kids grow up. They go to school. They become more independent. I have a client that I talked about earlier with the 4 kids. When she started her business, all the kids were home. Like it was over the summer. Now 3 are in school and 1 is in a part-time preschool. And the amount of focus time she has to work on her business because the season has changed has exploded. She went from squeezing work in during nap times to having 3 to 6 uninterrupted hours a couple of days a week. The business you start now, during the hardest phase of parenting, will be perfectly positioned to scale once your schedule opens up, once you can spend more time on it.
You have everything you need to start building a business that works with your life as the primary caregiver of your family. It doesn't have to look like anyone else's journey. It doesn't have to follow traditional timelines or conventional wisdom about how businesses get built. Moms do it differently and what I've learned is that's a beautiful thing. Your business can be built in nap time and Sunday mornings. It can start with problems you notice in your daily life. It can grow slowly and steadily alongside your family's changing needs and it can be exactly what you need to reconnect with parts of yourself that feel dormant right now.
The beautiful thing about starting now, even if it feels imperfect, is that small, consistent actions compound over time. The business you start today will be completely different a year from now, and that's exactly how it's supposed to be.
Again, I'm hosting a free webinar this Friday, September 19th if you're catching this live. And that's specifically designed for moms who want to turn their ideas into income-generating businesses. Even if you don't have a perfect idea, we will talk about how to create winning business ideas. We're going to dive deep into creating a strategic plan that works with your current life. And like I said, we'll be talking about what you need to create a truly winning business idea. The timing might even work perfectly with nap time schedules. Okay? It's 1 p.m. Eastern time.
If today's episode resonated with you, if you're feeling that spark of possibility, I want you to join me at that event. And if you're catching this after, you know, weeks after it went live, please email me and let me know and I can definitely get you the recording of that webinar. My email is Jenna@jenna.coach. You can register in the show notes or go to mom.jenna.coach/winter to access the registration page directly.
This podcast exists to help you build momentum one step at a time. You don't have to figure it all out today. You just have to take the next step. And that next step might just be joining me on Friday to turn these insights into your personalized action plan. I'll see you next week with another episode designed to keep you moving forward on this. And hopefully, I'll see you on Friday. Until then, trust yourself, start small, and remember that the world needs what you have to offer.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job, the podcast for moms ready to ditch the nine-to-five and build a life and business they love. I’m your host, Jenna Rykiel. Let’s go.
If you're a stay-at-home mom who's been dreaming about starting a business but feeling completely overwhelmed by where to even begin and all of the obstacles in your way, I created this episode for you. I know I'm always talking about escaping corporate and quitting your job to build something of your own, and if we've taken on the role of being home with the kiddos, it's kind of hard to quit that job.
But I want you to know that you can have it all. You can start building a business while being an amazing primary caretaker. I want to start by acknowledging something that I hope is obvious for this audience, but being a stay-at-home mom is one of the hardest jobs in the world. You're on call 24/7. You're managing tiny humans with unpredictable schedules and big emotions, and you're doing all of this labor unpaid. Even if you love every moment of being the primary caregiver of your house all day to the littles, it's exhausting.
And I want you to remember that you are running the most complex organization imaginable. And you're doing it with skill, creativity, and resourcefulness that would put most CEOs to shame. I've never been a full-time stay-at-home mom, but I've had those glimpses during maternity leave and sick days and school breaks where I'm home with both kids all day. And I'll be honest with you, there's always this moment of relief when we are back in the routine with both kids going to their respective childcare because I then get to tap back into other parts of who I am.
And that relief isn't because I don't love my kids. It's because as humans, we need to access different aspects of our identity to feel whole. And this is what I hear from so many of the stay-at-home moms I work with and talk to. You love your kids fiercely and you're grateful for the opportunity to be home with them, but there's this part of your brain that feels dormant. This expertise you've built over years that feels like it's gathering dust and really this longing to create something that's uniquely yours.
And I want you to know that longing isn't selfish, it's human. And more than that, it's actually pointing you towards something really powerful. It's the possibility of building a business that not only fulfills you but also creates additional income for your family while working around the life you've already built. Like my clients, there could be a part of you that misses work, but even when the kids are old enough to go to school, there are demands that a 9-to-5 job still isn't flexible enough for. Entrepreneurship and building something of your own where you make the rules can be exactly how you maintain the flexibility that you need for your family while starting to contribute financially.
Today we're going to dive deep into the reality of what it's like to consider starting your business as a stay-at-home mom. I'm going to walk you through the four biggest obstacles I see and more importantly, I'm going to give you concrete strategies for overcoming each of them. By the end of this episode, I want you to feel energized and equipped with everything you need to move forward and move from dreaming to doing.
And also, if you're listening to this live, I'm offering a free webinar this Friday, September 19th, that may just fall during East Coast nap time, 1 p.m. Eastern. And I'll be sharing the four steps to start your business before winter break, before the end of the year. And if your kids are old enough to be in preschool or any kind of school, this is the perfect time to maximize some of the time you've been given to start creating results. And I'm going to show you exactly how to do that in the webinar on Friday, the 19th.
So before we dive into the four obstacles and how to overcome those obstacles, I want to talk about something that makes entrepreneurship particularly complex for stay-at-home moms. And that's the identity piece. When you become a mom, you take on this enormous new identity. It's beautiful and meaningful, but it's also all-consuming in a way that can feel like it swallows up who you were before becoming a mom. This happens to all moms to some degree, but it's exponentially magnified when you're home full-time. When you're working outside of the home, you get these daily reminders of your other skills and capabilities. You know, you talk to other adults, you contribute expertise, you attend meetings, you might have a seat at the table. You have colleagues who see you as more than just someone's mom.
But when you're home, especially in those early years, it can feel like every part of your identity becomes wrapped up in caregiving. And here's the thing, this isn't your fault and it's not something that you should just get over. That's not why I'm bringing it up. It's a natural response to a massive life change. What I want you to understand is that all those skills, all the expertise, all those parts of you that feel dormant, they're not gone. They're just waiting for the right opportunity to reemerge.
I remember being completely terrified when I was pregnant and on maternity leave with my first son, Adley, because it felt like my business was still a baby at the time and I really feared that becoming a mom would change me in ways that would make it hard for me to continue the business, especially when I came back after maternity leave. I honestly thought that I'd lose all my drive and momentum and the skills that I had built so far in my business. I kept thinking that I'd be starting over, and it was a thought I had to really journal about and get a lot of coaching on to overcome. I had to explore this idea that everything I had built before maternity leave doesn't go away.
And I wasn't so much afraid that I wouldn't want to come back. I was afraid that I wouldn't intellectually be able to come back, which was terrifying. Starting a business or returning to the business in my case from maternity leave isn't just about making money, it's about reclaiming parts of yourself that feel lost. It's about proving to yourself that you're still the capable, creative, problem-solving person you've always been. And that's why it can feel so scary and so necessary at the same time.
Now, I want to talk about the four biggest obstacles I see stay-at-home moms talking about and facing when they want to start businesses. And I want to talk very strategically about how to overcome each one. So the first obstacle I hear, and this isn't necessarily unique to moms who are the primary caregiver, but there is a certain flavor that moms who have left the workforce, the traditional workforce, let's say, talk about. So obstacle number one is, I don't have time.
And I want to talk about the myth of feeling like you need large blocks of time in order to create a business. This is an obstacle I hear most often and I completely understand why. Children's schedules are unpredictable. You never know if nap time is going to be 45 minutes or 2 hours. You're managing meals, tantrums, diaper changes, and a thousand other small tasks that seem to expand to fill every available moment. And if you have a toddler and a 1-year-old like me, even though they are supposed to be napping at the same time, it feels like by the time one falls asleep, the other is ready to wake up. So that hour that I thought I had really turns into like 15 minutes. So I get it.
But here's what I want to challenge you on, is the belief that you need large, consistent blocks of time to build a business. This belief keeps so many moms stuck because we're waiting for some mythical time in the future when we'll have more space in our schedule. And the truth is, some of the most successful businesses that I've seen from stay-at-home moms have been built in one to two-hour pockets of time throughout the week, often unpredictable ones. The key isn't necessarily having more time because we can't create more time, right? We all only have 24 hours in a day. It's being strategic about the time you have.
Here's how to make this work. Here's the strategy piece. Here's how I want you to think about overcoming this. The first thing is to do your planning on the weekends. This is when maybe your partner can lean in more, when you might have some quiet time while the kids are watching a movie or playing independently. I want you to spend one hour on Saturday or Sunday when you are not necessarily the sole caretaker in that moment. And I want you to spend that time planning exactly what you want to accomplish in your business that week. Not vague goals like work on business, but real actionable items that direct your brain on exactly what to do in those moments.
I want it to be things like email X person in the industry about the business idea or set up a virtual coffee chat with so-and-so who has done this before, or submit grant application, right? Very actionable results-driven items that you want to create. Also, I have an episode all about how to achieve more with results-oriented language, Episode 58. So if you want more on like how you can word things better, how you can think about planning your to-do list better, definitely check out that episode.
Second, I want you to create or think about items that can be or tasks that can be completed in 15-minute or 30-minute or 60-minute blocks. When you suddenly find yourself with an unexpected pocket of time, you'll know exactly what to do instead of wasting those precious minutes figuring out where to start. So I want you to be thoughtful and intentional about the amount of time things take you.
Third, and this is crucial, I want you to treat your business as part of your weekly responsibilities. So not as something extra. Just like you wouldn't skip doing laundry or preparing lunch because you don't have time, your business tasks become part of what gets done. And this might mean being more efficient in other areas, folding laundry while the kids play nearby or meal prepping on Sundays so weeknight dinners take less time. But the goal isn't to work 40 hours a week on your business, it's to work consistently within the construct of your life and how it's already designed, even if it's just 2 to 3 hours total. Consistency beats intensity every time.
A business built slowly over 2 years is still a business. And it's far better than a business that just never gets started because you're waiting for the perfect conditions or when you have more time. I have a client with 4 kids who would regularly plan coaching calls and work sessions during her youngest son's nap. And on days she had a client call, she'd phone a friend, right, aka her mom to come over for the hour just in case her son didn't nap. She also built systems in her house which encouraged her older kids to play independently, which is actually part of the business she has created and it's amazing the difference this makes. I've picked up so much value just from coaching her on her business and the value that she can offer and the services she offers. And I've seen a huge difference in the way my kids play independently. So I've been so grateful just to coach her and learn. And I'll share a link in the show notes about her business.
But anyway, with these systems that we can be intentional about and implement, I often see her older kids, and I'm talking like 4, 6, and 8 playing in the background during our calls, never interrupting, just independently playing. And I'm always amazed. But this is something that she has created to give herself time and space to work on her own business while meeting the demands of motherhood. And so if it's something that somebody else has figured out, another mom just like you, I trust that you can also figure out systems that help you to gain back a couple of hours of time each week.
That's obstacle number one. The second obstacle of four is I don't know what business to start. So not having an idea. And this is really about reconnecting with your value. I hear constantly that there's this sense of being disconnected from our own experience and value. You know, you may have been out of the professional world for months or years and it can feel like you've lost touch with what you are good at or what people would be willing to pay for. But here's what I know about moms and especially those who are the primary caregivers. You are uniquely positioned to identify problems that need solving. Every single day, I know that you're thinking about and noticing how to make life easier, safer, more efficient, more enjoyable. You're constantly problem-solving not just for your own family but for your community.
You notice when the school pickup system doesn't work well. You see gaps in services for your families. You understand what products would make parenting easier. You have a pulse on what other moms are struggling with because you're living it too. This is business gold. The best businesses solve real problems for real people and you're surrounded by problems that need solving every single day and they need innovation to solve.
So what I want you to do maybe even just for one week, I want you to carry around a small notebook or use the notes app in your phone and I want you to jot down every time you think there should be an app for this, or why doesn't someone make XYZ? Or I wish there was a service for that. I want you to not filter these thoughts, but I just want you to write them down. And at the end of the week, look at your list and I guarantee you'll find at least three viable business ideas.
Maybe it's a service for other moms, maybe it's a product that would make family life easier. Maybe it's sharing knowledge from your pre-kids career in a way that works for parents' schedules. The point isn't to find the perfect idea immediately. The point is to start trusting that you do have valuable ideas and that your perspective as a mom gives you unique insights into problems worth solving.
Any idea that solves a problem that people would be willing to pay for is a good idea. And as moms, we are constantly thinking about problems to solve, not get-rich-quick schemes, but real solutions for real challenges. And that's the foundation of every successful business.
I just sat down with a mom earlier this week who had an idea to create a business that connects people with resources and encourages them to take action in small ways towards their dreams. And she's been feeling so stuck and after our conversation, she said what she really needed was for someone to tell her it was a good idea. And yes, I know we want external validation. I'm also happy to be that person that externally validates your idea or even offers tweaks and shifts to make it even stronger. But I also want you to know that your ideas are good. Let's start from there and then test that hypothesis instead of leaning towards the idea that our ideas will likely fail and so we never get out of the starting gate.
This leads me to the next biggest obstacle. Obstacle 3 of 4, which is fear of failure. This is so important. I've talked about it a lot on this podcast. It's so important to reframe our relationship with failure to be able to put our best foot forward. The fear of failure hits my stay-at-home moms particularly hard and I think there are some very specific reasons why. When you're not earning an income, there can be this pressure to make sure that if you're going to invest time and energy into something, it better work out. The stakes feel higher because you're already making sacrifices for your family and the idea of potentially taking time away from your kids for something that doesn't pan out feels devastating.
But I want to offer you a completely different way to think about failure because this fear is keeping so many brilliant moms stuck. So first, let's get very specific about what failure actually means. I was talking to a mom recently who wanted to create an app for her audience but was paralyzed by fear. And when I asked her, what's the worst-case scenario? She said, the app doesn't work the first time. And so I asked her, okay, what would you do if that happened? And immediately she said, I'd call it a beta version and try again. And there was so much relief that I sensed in her just having that answer.
And this is so important. When we get curious about our fears instead of just avoiding them, when we ask ourselves, what would I actually do if the worst-case scenario happened? We always have an answer because we are so resourceful, right? Because we're creative, you're creative, because you know how to get yourself out of difficult situations. You do it every single day as a mom.
Here's the other thing. If your business doesn't work out, the worst-case scenario is that you go back to exactly what you're doing right now. You go back to being a stay-at-home mom without a business. And that's perfectly okay. It's not actually a step backward, it's just maintaining the status quo.
But here's what I really want you to understand, is that there is no such thing as failure when you're building a business, only learning. Every action you take teaches you something. Every failed experiment, whatever failed means, it gets you closer to what works. Every connection you make, every skill you develop, every bit of confidence you build, that all stays with you regardless of whether your first business idea succeeds exactly as planned.
And there's something else that happens when you start working on something that's yours and something to call your own. You start accessing parts of your identity that might have been dormant. We talked about identity a lot earlier and you cannot put a price on the energy and the excitement and the value that you get from tapping into that part of your identity. You remember that you're an expert at things. You prove to yourself that you can create value in the world in new ways. I see this in every mom that I work with. And this changes how you show up to your family, how you talk to your kids about pursuing their dreams, how you feel about yourself. And all of that, that's never failure. Okay? That's growth, learning, and transformation that no one can take away from you.
So many entrepreneurs will tell you that their business today is very different from where it started. And I know that's true of my business and that was the sentiment in my interview with Thyme Sullivan in Episode 68 that you can check out if you want. There are a couple of episodes that really dive into this topic of reframing our relationship with failure that are absolute gold. And if you want to go a little deeper on this topic, I highly recommend Episode 2 and Episode 67. They're both really great.
The fourth obstacle, and I know this one will hit home for so many of you, so many of my recent conversations have had this obstacle as a sticking point. Obstacle 4 is not having partner support. So, I want to talk about the obstacle of not having partner support, but I also want to talk about what to do and how to treat your partner like an investor.
This obstacle is one that really breaks my heart because it stops so many women before they even start. Here's what I've observed. Most of the stay-at-home moms who end up working with me and investing in business coaching and actually create those businesses because of support and accountability and thought partnership, they have partners who support their entrepreneurial dreams. But I also talk to many moms during the consultation process who are excited about starting businesses, are thinking about investing in themselves and their business, but feel completely stuck because their partners aren't on board.
And I want to address this directly because if this is you, it doesn't mean your dream is over. It means you need a different strategy. First, let's understand where your partner is coming from. They are not unsupportive because they don't believe in you. They're unsupportive because they're afraid. They have all the same fears you have about this business not working out, but their fears are often amplified because they're not in your head, okay? They're not experiencing the excitement and the vision that you're experiencing.
From their perspective, oftentimes they're just seeing that you want to spend time and possibly money on something uncertain and they're worried about what that means for the family, what it means for your availability and what it means for the financial stability of the family. So what needs to happen is you need to treat your partner like an investor. If you were pitching to an investor, you wouldn't just say, please believe in me and support my dreams because you should. You'd show them a plan. You'd demonstrate that you've thought this through. You'd address their concerns. You'd address them proactively, right?
Your partner needs to see that you've considered how this will work logistically. They need to understand that you're not planning to disappear for hours every day or make major financial investments without their input. They need to see the specific steps you'll take before investing any money. The people you'll talk to, the research you'll do. You need to create a simple plan that addresses exactly how many hours per week you plan to work on this and when, what will stay the same in terms of the family responsibilities, right? Provide some reassurance. You need to talk about what steps you'll take before making any financial investments and you need to talk about how you'll measure whether it's working or not.
Also talking about what support you need from them. They have a lot going on too and they might feel like this will require them to shift so much of their time and energy. Maybe it's that you need them to watch the kids for two hours on Sunday mornings. Most partners become supportive once they can see the vision clearly and feel confident that family life won't be disrupted. Your job isn't to convince them to believe in you more than you believe in yourself. Your job is to help them understand exactly what you are planning and how it will work.
In Episode 40, I interviewed a marriage expert and coach on this topic and it's incredibly insightful if you want to dig deeper into this obstacle and topic. Keep in mind you can find all of these links in the show notes. I know I've referenced a lot of episodes, but you can go to Jenna.Coach/70 to get links to all the things that I've talked about.
So those are the obstacles and those are the strategies. But before we wrap up, I want to kind of flip the script entirely and talk about why stay-at-home moms are actually in an incredible position to start businesses. The first thing is there's the financial piece. Your family has already figured out how to live on one income. This means that any money your business brings in is additional, not necessary for survival. Okay? This removes so much pressure and allows you to build slowly and strategically instead of desperately. And I want you to remember you really do not have to hire childcare and spend a lot of money to get this thing started.
I'll be talking about on this upcoming Friday, September 19th, if you're listening to this live, I'll be talking about exactly the steps you need to take and it is not big investments, right? They are all accessible steps that you can do today, that you already have access to and know how to do.
Second, you lived a whole life before kids. You have education, work experience, skills, and knowledge that don't disappear just because you're not using them in the traditional job right now. And this expertise is incredibly valuable. You just might not be packaging it in the right way or thinking about it in the right way yet.
Finally, this situation is temporary. Kids grow up. They go to school. They become more independent. I have a client that I talked about earlier with the 4 kids. When she started her business, all the kids were home. Like it was over the summer. Now 3 are in school and 1 is in a part-time preschool. And the amount of focus time she has to work on her business because the season has changed has exploded. She went from squeezing work in during nap times to having 3 to 6 uninterrupted hours a couple of days a week. The business you start now, during the hardest phase of parenting, will be perfectly positioned to scale once your schedule opens up, once you can spend more time on it.
You have everything you need to start building a business that works with your life as the primary caregiver of your family. It doesn't have to look like anyone else's journey. It doesn't have to follow traditional timelines or conventional wisdom about how businesses get built. Moms do it differently and what I've learned is that's a beautiful thing. Your business can be built in nap time and Sunday mornings. It can start with problems you notice in your daily life. It can grow slowly and steadily alongside your family's changing needs and it can be exactly what you need to reconnect with parts of yourself that feel dormant right now.
The beautiful thing about starting now, even if it feels imperfect, is that small, consistent actions compound over time. The business you start today will be completely different a year from now, and that's exactly how it's supposed to be.
Again, I'm hosting a free webinar this Friday, September 19th if you're catching this live. And that's specifically designed for moms who want to turn their ideas into income-generating businesses. Even if you don't have a perfect idea, we will talk about how to create winning business ideas. We're going to dive deep into creating a strategic plan that works with your current life. And like I said, we'll be talking about what you need to create a truly winning business idea. The timing might even work perfectly with nap time schedules. Okay? It's 1 p.m. Eastern time.
If today's episode resonated with you, if you're feeling that spark of possibility, I want you to join me at that event. And if you're catching this after, you know, weeks after it went live, please email me and let me know and I can definitely get you the recording of that webinar. My email is Jenna@jenna.coach. You can register in the show notes or go to mom.jenna.coach/winter to access the registration page directly.
This podcast exists to help you build momentum one step at a time. You don't have to figure it all out today. You just have to take the next step. And that next step might just be joining me on Friday to turn these insights into your personalized action plan. I'll see you next week with another episode designed to keep you moving forward on this. And hopefully, I'll see you on Friday. Until then, trust yourself, start small, and remember that the world needs what you have to offer.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
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