Doña Bumgarner - Clear Values, Clear Decisions

Welcome to the real people real business show where we are talking with business owners who are in the trenches everyday . People who are working hard and have relevant and inspiring stories that you can relate to. Everyone we speak to is actively busy building and growing their business and is here to share their experiences, their lessons, their wisdom, and their guidance. So you can be inspired to take action towards your own goals. Now, my guest today is no exception. She has an amazing story and some awesome experience to share. So without further ado, I am so excited to welcome Donya bump Gardner Donya is a life coach for frustrated moms who are exhausted living in a culture that doesn't support them as bums , Oros women. And she helps them get in control with all of the different parts of her life, of their lives. So being who they are makes sense. Again, and I just love this. Don't yet . I've known you for a while. I, I am so excited about what you're bringing to the world. So welcome to the show and thanks so much for taking the time to share your story today. Yeah. Thanks. I'm super excited to be part of this series. Yes, yes, yes. I think everybody's going to love what you have to say. So let's jump right in. Give me, give me some background. Like how did you get here? What was your journey to becoming a business owner? Right .

You know, I have realized recently that my whole life has been the journey to be, so I'll give you the short version. So , um, I am a late life mom. I had my daughter when I was 38 and up until then I , I worked for a little over a decade at Apple. So I was deep in the corporate world. I was managing a team of project managers. I was exhausted. I knew that wasn't the life I wanted to live and I definitely did not want to be a mother under those circumstances. So when I found out I was pregnant, I left that job. And then I pretty much dove into parenting the same way that I had been working at Apple, which was really, really unsustainable and not fun. And I realized that as much as I thought I wanted to be the hippie mom who stayed at home and made bread and had chickens in the backyard , um, before I was that mom, the reality of it was really not feeding me. Um, I love, I love being a mom. I don't, I didn't want to give up that part, but being home full time with my little tiny baby and having no work to do that fed my brain was really, really hard. A lot harder than I expected. So , um , a whole bunch of other stuff happened. But eventually I ended up signing up for a coaching training and I graduated from that program two years ago and started coaching women. And when my daughter was a baby, she's eight now. When my daughter was a baby, I had started a blog that was about mindfulness for mothers and finding more peace in your home. And it was really talking to myself at the beginning. Like I just needed to process that stuff and I needed to figure out my own path. It was about self care. It was about trying to find , um, the parts of myself that felt like they got lost in those early years of motherhood. Um, and even though I was mostly talking to myself and I probably would've continued writing it even if no one was reading. Um, I got a lot of really interested mom .

I was definitely not alone.

So that was sort of where I continued as I started coaching is I wanted to work with moms who were feeling that discomfort with mothering, like they'd lost themselves or that they didn't know how to fit parenting into the life they had before. And um, I have, I mean, you've known me for awhile and my coaching focus has shifted over the time. Over the two years that I've been coaching. I've, you know, I've sort of focused on productivity and time management. Like I dug into my old project management background and sort of pulled that out and I experimented with working with moms who are entrepreneurs and how to build [inaudible] , balancing their lives and those, none of those really quite fit. And it wasn't until I really honed in and with a lot of your help really honed in on the part that really lit me up, which was the feeling that motherhood is not supported in our culture and that's just wrong. And that I want moms to be really happy and that I really believe that happy moms can make a happier world because our kids are happy and our partners are happier and we do more effective work in the world when we're lit up and happy. That's where I started focusing

and that's where I got excited and that's where my business is , um , really started to feel like an extension of myself instead of just something I was on a treadmill with. So that's been a really interesting shift for me and I remember that I, I, your energy shifted so much. Yeah. And I resisted it so hard. I mean, when, when we were working on that shift, I was like, no, nobody's going to want to hear this and everyone's going to think terrible things about me. And you were like, no, keep going. Keep going. So thank you for pursuing . So there's a , like there's a, there's a whole piece I want to talk to you about in terms of like finding that right positioning for yourself. But before I do, there's also this, this other, this other piece that is really resonates for me and this is why it was so easy for me to see this in your business was because I'm one of those moms that always wondered why I have to give, why a Kent can't have both. They're like, why? I have to give up who I am and that whole part of myself in order to be a good mom. And

so is that definition of a good mom

changing in our culture, our parents to my parents, a good mom. And that that was kind of their generation is someone who stays home and fully themselves to raising their children in doing. And there's nothing wrong with that, but our world is changing. And yeah, to me a good mom is someone who sets an example now to their kids that you can exist in this society, in this culture that we have right now, which is very different than 40 years ago. So, so is that changing? Is that shifting or are we still in this place where it's real, but we have these older values?

I think that it's in a really murky place right now. My sense of it is that we have a lot of women who are really fighting for what you're saying to , to really feel like they can be whole people and that they can have really , um, powerful careers and be doing really impressive work in the world. Whether it's a full time job or it's volunteer work or whatever it is, or their , you know, their own business, whatever it is that they're working on. Um, in addition to parenting. But the struggle that I see is that we still have an ideal, a cultural ideal that sure women can do at all. But we're also supposed to keep our homes looking like we're home full time and our kids are supposed to be super happy, which by the way, our parents didn't actually care whether we were happy or not. That kind of just wanted us to be safe. So we have this additional weight on us to like be the caretakers of our children's emotional world in a way that's kind of new in our generation. Um, there's emotional pressure to like bounce back after you have a baby in a way that's totally unrealistic, you know, get your baby body back. We see , um , celebrities doing that with the benefit of nannies and trainers and a lot of money. Um, but then we take it on like we're supposed to do that, like the average person. And so I think that there is both this idea that women can have a lot of choices and we can do a lot of things and we're not expected to stay home, but also we're supposed to do everything. What staying home, being a parent, working our job out 100%. And of course there's not 100% for all those things. There's may , you know, maybe, maybe 20 or 30% if you've got four or five things on the list. [inaudible]

yeah, and I mean too , to our generations credit, there have been a lot of initiatives to empower women and into power girls and, and so much , um, so much in place in order to make sure we get educated and that we have access to everything. But then I w my experience was that I'm highly educated. I have way more education than I need, but then as soon as I became pregnant, there was this, this big like weird question Mark. Like, Oh, all of that will be there when you, when you go back, I'm like, I don't know. This has been my identity and this has been so empowering. And I like, I didn't even second guess whether I should be educated, but now I'm supposed to throw all of that away. So there's this weird conflict of, of empowerment and pressure, which is, you know, none of it's bad, but it's all, it's like we're , we're , we still need to adjust, right?

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And that's why I say it's murky. I mean, I do think it's shifting and that's why I'm really excited to be part of this conversation in the world right now because I do think there , you know, if no one was interested, if we were just stuck in this old way, then no one would be interested in what I'm saying. And lots of people are interested in what I'm saying. So that's why I think it's shifting, but we still have an awfully long way to go.

Yeah, I agree. And I think one of the things you expressed to me too, when we were first talking about your business moving in this direction, was this kind of overwhelmed with like, well, I can't change the world, right? I can't change everything. So sometimes it , and I think a lot of people feel this regardless of what their business is. I can't make everything better. I can't affect everybody. So why bother trying.

Yeah. Is that true? Well, I think it's true that we feel that and I think it's something we need to fight against because , um, you know, it's interesting, I was having an email conversation with someone this morning about climate change and she, she sent out a newsletter that was talking about how she feels so overwhelmed with the climate change conversation. I mean, she's so glad it's happening, but also it just feels so scary because it's just in her face all the time right now. And what can you do about climate change? Right. That feels way too big to manage. Um , but what she came down to and her newsletter was , she was talking about, well, these are the five things I'm doing in my house. What are you doing in your house? And so I emailed her back and I was like, here are the 10 things I'm doing in my house, you know? And that's really empowering when you can get down to the level of, well, what am I doing about this? Um, because yeah, it is too big to change the whole thing. I can't change what you know, celebrities do or how the news represents them, but I can stand up with my real woman body that had a baby and had cancer and say this is what it looks like to be a woman. You know, this is what my health looks like and be really open about that and that's what I can do to combat that message.

And what would make you feel good in terms of the impact you've created?

Um, I think what makes me feel great is when I hear either friends or clients or people I've connected with or people who've heard my podcast say, I made this change because you inspired me or you got me thinking about something and this is the impact it's had on my life. Um, I had a friend, an old friend reach out after I had had after I did a podcast episode about self care about, and it was about, that particular episode was about radical self care. I was talking about the kinds of self care that I used when I was recovering from cancer treatment. And my partner and I were separated. And so it was really intense time in my life and I couldn't go get a massage because I didn't have enough childcare or money or energy to do that. So it was things like, you know, automating all of my bills and ordering blue apron boxes every week so that I'd have to go the grocery store. You know, it was like, it was like this was that still self care. It doesn't look like the self care you see on Pinterest. But what she told me a few months later was that she had listened to that episode and she declared that January was going to be herself care month. And so she just experimented with all the things she felt like she made a list, all the things she felt like she needed in her life, more sleep, a little more time off. She negotiated stuff with her husband. Um, and she said that the totally unexpected change that she had was that she began to really enjoy being with our kids in a way that she hadn't in years. That she felt so much calmer and happier and rested, that all the things that had felt like , um, were put upon her where suddenly she was enjoying them again and it was, that wasn't what she expected. And that wasn't what I talked about in the podcast. You know, I was just talking about surviving, but she had this really amazing change in her life just because she tried something. And that makes me want to just keep talking about all the things I'm trying in my life. Cause maybe you'll try one thing and it'll be amazing for you. You know?

And so not everybody has an like so explicitly an impact driven business. Right. Um , some of us are doing our freelancers that are doing creative work and some people are business coaches. Yeah. That, you know , that are maybe down down the line. But I think everybody's really wants to have that feeling like they're contributing to something. So how, how do you recommend people ,

um ,

are able to, are able to get that same kind of feeling of, of contribution even if they're not totally directly related to sort of an impact driven business?

I don't know . I think that even those fields our impact impactful, like if you're a freelance graphic designer, then your clients are getting support in a way that allows them to do work that's pro . They're probably better at, you know, you're , you're taking something off their plate and giving them space to do something that they're arguably more skilled at, whether that's working directly with clients or putting together some other kind of a product and you're allowing them to be represented in the world in a way that makes them feel fantastic. Where if they were doing their own DIY designs, they might feel terrible about their stuff. Or if you're a business coach, you know, maybe you're helping someone shift a business like you did for me. You helped me shift, shift my business into a way where I could fully show up in my business and be really excited to do my work every day. Like that's huge impact. So I , I would say don't discredit what you do. There's always, you are exactly people. Yeah. You are impacting people. So I want to , I want to drill down a little bit on the shift. You did make sense since this is a business podcast. Yeah . You, you, how you started out and I think this is very, very typical, right? Um, you started out focusing on something that was quite , um, quite tactical, right? Quite, yeah . Quite obvious, quite aligned with the very specific problems that people were having, which sounds like great business sense, right? It sounds like you're really good idea, but you weren't aligned necessarily. This wasn't, yeah . Your heart. So I think it's totally natural and I think it's perfectly fine and we should go through those transitions because it makes us clearer when we finally do get to the place. But talk to me a little bit about what that felt like to make that transition from the time management to the productivity to the something else, to the something else, to finally getting to this place that's really lit you up. Yeah. Well, so this has been an interesting journey for me because I started coaching in a, in a way that looked a bit more like what I'm doing now. Although it was less clear, it was more sort of a morphous . I didn't quite know how to talk about it. And then I moved into the more tactical stuff. So the reason I moved to the more tactical stuff, it was because I was not getting clients and I was having trouble articulating what I was doing and what the benefits were to my clients. And I just felt like it was just too Marquis and I didn't know how to clarify. And [inaudible] several people said to me over the course of a couple months, you have these project management skills and it's like you're just throwing them away. You know? It's like you're just not using them and these are super valuable. Lots of people don't have these skills, you should totally work with that. And I was like, well, this other thing's not working. Maybe I'll try it . And it was interesting because I did get a lot of attention. I did get a lot of people really interested in that work and I did get some clients , um, because like you say, this is what people are asking for people. They're saying, I want more time in my life. I want to know how to organize my tasks better. I want to know how to make my, to do list work. I need, you know, I want to figure out how to have time to do all the things I want to do in my day and I could answer those problems. Um, but what I was seeing is that just below that was all this other stuff was all this, like, I don't actually feel worthy of asking for time for what I really want to do. I don't feel like I deserve to have my choices in my home and my family and I don't know how to set boundaries. So people's , you know, to do lists of overwhelming because they were volunteering too much and they were doing too many things. I didn't know how to say no to that because I didn't think they were worthy of choosing their own things over somebody else's requests . And so I was noticing that what I was doing was sort of scratching the surface. So that was one thing I noticed. The other thing I noticed is that I was dreading [inaudible] content production. Like I, I have a podcast and I have a blog and I was just like, every week when I went to make that content, I was just like, this is so boring.

Okay .

Even though I knew exactly what to say and I knew, but people wanted to hear and I knew how to solve their problems, I was just not lit up. And so I was just dreading the work and I got to a point where I realized that if this was gonna be my job, if this was going to be my work, I didn't want to do it. I'd rather go get a job at Starbucks. And you don't want to feel that way about your own business because it is too freaking much work

to not have fun doing it.

So that was kind of where I was when I started working with you and I didn't know the answer. I mean, I think I came into our early sessions like, I think I want to quit this job. Please help me figure it out. Please, please help me figure out how to love it. Again, I think was how I came in and you were like, yeah, maybe you're never going to love this. Let's find something else for you to focus on.

Yeah. And I think that's a real good lesson to a lot of people and I think you have to go out there and you have to make that mass, right? You have to, yeah . You have to sort of navigate that stuff first. But what, what I think it does is it forces you to be really honest about how you feel. Now I am not a Wu type person, although arguably getting a little bit closer to that, but I, you know, and I really would've been been more focused on the logic, but in this case, your, your body is going to tell you when you're there. Yeah . And yeah . What kind of advice do you give to people who I know , and I know there are a lot of them out there because everything I deal with first is alignment. Right? And so what kind of advice do you give to people who are in that place where they're just like, yeah, I'm kind of running this business cause it feels like there's a need, but I am not excited about this at all.

Yeah. Well first of all, really give yourself credit for noticing that because I think a lot of people go through careers like that for their whole lives and never make a change. Um , but I , I think my advice would be to give yourself permission to take a step back. Even if that means dismantling something. Like it's looking like it works really well. Um, just give yourself a little space away from it and then look for the things that either light you up or feel really fun or really bring you joy or also the things that feel so scary, but you just keep back to them. And that was what it was for me is I kept coming back to this idea about the world is not fair for women and for moms. And I was really pissed about it and I didn't even know how to articulate it. And I didn't know what that meant as a coaching practice and I didn't know what that meant in terms of what content I was going to produce cause I was just so like, like I couldn't even talk about it yet. I didn't have any words to talk about it. And it took me months. It took me months to figure out what I wanted to say and I'm still figuring it out. I mean, I don't, I don't even have it nailed now, but um, and it , it was terrifying. And I think that that was what was interesting though, is that having made the mess, I knew that I didn't want to go back. Like I knew it was better to be scared every day than it was to feel dread every day. And that was what kept propelling me forward. Okay. That's, that's your quote for your life. Totally.

He did. Right. And, and you, you know, you fought it

for sure. Yeah, I did. But I think, I can't even tell you how many times I got off the phone with you and I was so mad. I'm like, this is not what I'm going to do. I don't even know what she's talking about. So how are you serving them ,

your clients now? Like what, what, what was that final transition where you were like, you know what, actually I'm gonna do this.

You know, I think that it was, I don't know that I could even tell you where that line in the sand was. I think it was just a series of, I'm going to try this and it's really scary. Oh, people really like that. Um , I'm going to try this other thing and it feels really scary. Everyone's going to hate me. And then I would get all these emails like, yes, me too. I totally feel that same more. And I was like, Oh, I think I'm hitting a nerve here. Um, and then just getting really curious, like just talking to a bunch of women, like what are you frustrated about? What is it that really makes you mad and your life? What is it that you're struggling with? And starting to see the patterns. And that's what [inaudible] is really powerful from my past. I mean that's my project management history coming in to serve me is that I can see patterns so I can look at it as a big problem and break it down into solvable pieces. So even though I'm not teaching my project management skills, I'm totally using them.

Yeah, I mean this whole conversation around alignment is so, so important. And like I come from an it background, right? I'm, I come from it. I come from technology, I come from a very, very analytical, logical, [inaudible] , very startupy type of environment. And although I don't want to do that work anymore, boy, does it ever serve me. Everything that I have learned about building systems and creating systems has served me a lot. And I can bring that into the coaching work that I, I do with my clients. But I know this is my calling, right? This is the work that I really Excel at and where I feel really good. So , so we were talking a little bit about the way that you serve your clients now. And so you've had a bit of a transition in, in the kind of the offers that you have for your clients and the way that you work with them because of the of you going out there and experimenting and getting curious. And I think that's really important for people to hear, right? It's important for people to hear and to know that you had to take that action in order to be really clear on what you're doing with your clients.

Yeah.

Yeah. And are you, and are you, is that still in transition right now or are you feeling pretty good about where you're at with your offers?

I'm feeling pretty good about where I'm at. I still feel like as I work with more people, I will learn more and have new offers like, but I hope that that's going to be a years long process. I mean, I think that as this conversation shifts in the culture, as women have different expectations for their lives and their families and the balance of gender roles and their families, my work is going to shift in relationship to that. And that's great because I'm actually someone who doesn't like to do the same thing forever. That was one of the things I loved about working for Apple is that every month it was like a new job. You know? I never knew what I was going to be working on. Um, so I think that the fact that my work will probably shift and grow a lot over time is great for me

and I think that's real. Right. And I would encourage most business owners not to feel like what they have right now has to be the be all end all. I think you have to give yourself permission to shift and to change and you and you should be curious about what's happening with your clients and with the work and the results that you're giving them. Yeah. Okay. So let me, let me ask you, you know, th in a, in a, you know, my field is saturated with people who call themselves business coaches and there's every manner of them, right? There are like people who have never run a business before to really experienced and , and sort of authentic business coaches. You're in the life coaching space and I, and I think you're sort of facing the same thing. There are a lot of different types of life coaches with a lot of different types of focus. What makes you kind of uniquely positioned in your industry?

Well, what I'm noticing is that there are not a lot of coaches. There are some out there, but there are not a lot of coaches who are working with women specifically on their lives, like how to make their lives better. So there are mindset coaches that kind of position themselves that way. And there are lots of coaches who are about , um, productivity and time management or business or like one aspect of life. But I don't see a lot of coaches who are like, let's make your life as a whole feel better for you. Um, and I've , and I've talked to some people who say, Oh, you're, you're a parenting coach. And I'm like, no, because I don't really give parenting advice. I mean if needed, you know, that's certainly something we can work through. But I do a more than that, but I'm a coach for moms with whatever moms are bringing to the table. And that can be parenting, that can be time management, that can be communication. It can be a lot of things.

And what's your big hope for your clients?

I really want there to be more happy moms. So whatever it is that's going to make them happy in their lives, that's what I want to help support them in . You know, that's where I want to help them shift. So whether that is that they want to be more confident in their parenting or whether that is that they want to have more egalitarian workload in there, their relationship or whether that is that they want to go back to work or start a business , um, or just develop the habits of taking care of themselves and putting themselves first a little bit more often. All of those things are on the table.

And, and how do , how do they know when, how do you know when that's something that they've achieved? What's the big shift that you see in people when they have kind of reached what you would consider them to be happy?

Um, what I, I'm thinking of one client in particular who I've been working with off and on for a couple of years. What I see in her is that she knows her mind. She knows when something's wrong, she knows when she needs to make a change. And it's not like her life is all perfect. There's still stuff she struggles with. She still has difficult relationships. She has kids who are about to leave home. And so there's that whole struggle of like becoming an empty nester and struggling with one kids failing to launch and one's launching a little earlier than she'd like them to. You know, there's stuff, it's not like her life is perfect, but she knows what's important to her. She's really clear on her values and her needs and she knows when something's off. And you know, some clients would reach that point and be like, great, I don't need coaching anymore where she is. She's like, I know I still struggle in these places. So when I'm at the point where I know I need help, I need support for that. And so she still comes back and gets coaching. And so I think that that's an interesting balance too, is that you can be fixed, you know, at the end point and still want support. And that's amazing.

I have the same experience. You know, I have clients who have kind of, they feel they feel good, they have reached this sort of next level in their business, but the really smart ones are like, okay, well let's keep going here. So maybe I don't need to work with you every two weeks. Maybe we do, you know, monthly check ins . Maybe we do some sort of arrangement where I've got you on speed dial. And that's, that's really smart because I've seen a lot of those people who are engaged that way. Now there are sort of, they're actually getting the results that they want. But the reason I asked you this question is because you are in a business where results are not like cut and dried, right? It's not like I can say I made you this much more profit or I delivered a website or something like that. You've got this very sort of in intangible goal and I think other people are in that same position where they , they, they aren't sure how to quantify or qualify or describe their results.

Yeah. And I have to say that has been something that I have really struggled with in this business and that I still struggle with. I feel like it makes , um, sales conversations really difficult because I can't say, you know, if you invest in this and then you will get, because I don't know for sure what they're going to get and everyone's results are going to look a little bit different. Um, but I have seen the changes in my clients and now that I have worked with enough people that I have, I have a range of those things that I can talk about. You know, I can say, well, this person achieved this and this person did that. And um, that's much more compelling than just saying, well, I think you're going to feel better. I think you'll be happy because happy is so intangible, you know, and you can be happy in a moment but not happy in your whole life.

Right. And what, how does that affect your marketing? Like you, you have to focus on slightly different things to convince people that they're going to have those results. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. And in fact, I talk a lot about the pain points as a result. I talk a lot about the discomfort of where you are. Like, wouldn't you like to not feel like this? And then there's a whole range of things you might feel in instead, you know, which is not like, here's the one goal. You have a profitable business, which, you know , business coach might be able to talk about, or a weight loss coach might be able to say you lose 15 pounds. Like that's the one really clear goal. Um, I have a whole range of goals that I talk about. So what I tend to do is I talk more about where they are right now and then possibilities for what, where they might end up.

I like that because I think a lot of people who are listening are in the same position where they're like, I, you know, and, and I can't talk about weight loss if I'm a weight loss coach because it's actually illegal. But you know, it's still kind of in a box. It's something understandable. But where's you're in this, like you're in , you have this extra risk because you are in this place of not being able to offer something really in a box. And that's very emotional and, and dependent and very personal on the person. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. And another thing that I think is really interesting about my particular field is that because my clients and I work on things that are so personal and [inaudible] private in some ways that I feel really careful about not talking about my clients without their express permission. Um , and so I ended up talking about myself a lot. So

one of the things that really strikes me about you and your business and that I know about you and your business is you have really strong boundaries about the way that you will work and the that you will and will not do and what you will or will not compromise in your business. So can you talk a little bit about that? Like what's really important to you and, and what kind of boundaries have you given yourself to work within?

Um, so I work part time. I only work 15 or so hours a week and that limits the kind of opportunities I can take advantage of. You know, I can't actually have that many clients at a time, which means I have to be really strategic about the ones I take and how I work with them. Um, and how I market. You know, I don't have a lot of time to go out and do ton of networking events or go to conferences or, you know, so I have to be really strategic about the choices. But that is also one of the things I teach my clients, which I think is really interesting, is that when you are really clear about your values, then a lot of your decisions become a lot easier. So when you're really clear about you, what you will and will not do, then lots of questions get really easy to answer. So I think that it's so interesting that I have this parallel between how I run my business and also how I teach my clients to be in their lives.

Yeah, I mean that's, and that's a great example of you bringing your own , um , your own strengths through to the work that you do with your clients. I think that's super important because our , our businesses really are quite personal, right? They're very aligned with who we are. They should be. Yeah. We'll be aligned with who we are as people. Um, and, and I , I have always admired that about you, that you have stood so strong about your own boundaries and your business. Um, so let me, let me shift gears for a second. Uh , one of the questions I like to ask all of my folks is, you know, maybe a little self serving because I have, I have opinions about , um, this online internet business world that we are in. So what do you think the biggest gap is between kind of what's real versus what we see out there in the online business world?

Okay . The biggest gap. Well, I think that we're all out there hustling the vision of our business and making it look like we're all super successful and most of us are struggling a lot more than we're making it look. Um, I actually had lunch with a friend of mine the other day and she's like, Oh my gosh, you business must be booming. You're everywhere. And I was like, well, right now I'm not doing so great . And you know, things are growing. It's not like it's not growing, but it definitely, I definitely think I put out of view of how my business [inaudible] is running that doesn't necessarily match the reality. And partly that's on purpose, right? I want people to think I'm a successful coach so that they know I can help them and I know I can help them. Whether I have 10 clients right now or two clients right now, but their perception of who I am is going to shift based on how successful they think my business is. So I'm on purpose putting up [inaudible]

a little bit of a facade. Yeah. And I think everybody does that. Right? I don't think that's absolutely the whole point of this show is to be super real. Right. And we are kinda continue to talk about our work in a way that feels really good for us. Um, I wouldn't feel good about going around and parading skills that I might not have or work that I can't do, but I'm certainly going to talk about the outcomes that I know can happen and whatever's happening on the back end is kind of my business. But I think there's a real difference between that and , um , some of the fullest claims that we see out there .

Absolutely. Yeah. And there's a difference between me, you know, showing my business as a well oiled machine and someone saying, well, how many clients do you have? I will tell them how many clients I have, even if it's a small number. Um, and I, and I think the other gap that we have is that there is a perception that people hit their one big idea and then they're successful with it. And like we've been talking about with me, I've gone through iterations and it's been super frustrating and I've torn the whole thing down two or three times. Um, and I may yet, you know, I mean, I feel great about where I am now, but who knows where I'm gonna be in a year on some new thing. Yeah. So that's another like gap that I see in the perception of how people look at other people's businesses. And I think that this is most dangerous when you're feeling like you're doing it wrong because you haven't hit your one idea that has hit the ground running. That doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. It just means you haven't hit the thing that's gonna Volvo for you yet.

Totally. And being a business coach, I get to see the back end of that all the time and I can tell you that is, that is actually a process I make some of my clients go through. If they're not clear yet, I will make them, I have one client who I have just like run through the ringer. Okay, go do this now. Okay, go do that now. What'd you learn? What'd you figure out? All right now. Now we have hit on where you need to be, but you just simply the , the backstory doesn't exist for a lot of those people that are out there that we're seeing the stories from. And to me that's like, that's a huge shame because I would love to have a show where everybody gets to come on here and air their dirty laundry and be like, this was a shit show. And I, I don't think there's any mistakes. I don't think there's any failures. I like, I really don't. And that's not like me being motherhood and Apple pie and stroke stroking your face and saying it's okay. I honestly think every single thing that we screw up, we are getting further ahead and I run headlong [inaudible] risk now because I know I'm going to be further towards my goal. If I do that, then if I sit back, wring my hands, clutching pearls and going, Oh my God, but it's not quite right yet. Right, right.

Yeah. And I am a risk adverse person, so that has been a hard thing for me about learning to run my own business is that I have to make mistakes. There is no way I'm going to get around making mistakes and I just have to figure out how to learn from those mistakes and not take it as a sign of my failure. Yeah . And that's been a learning process for me, and it's been hard. One.

It is. It is hard for everybody. I can tell you that I have a lot of perfectionists in my, yeah, yeah. Personal hair , and they have to unlearn that behavior. I had to unlearn that behavior. Yeah . The biggest perfectionist, right? Yeah.

And the other thing is that sometimes something that feels like a failure isn't actually a failure. That's another one I've had to learn is like sometimes when I put something out and there's kind of no response to it, it doesn't actually mean I, it's wrong. It made me that I marketed it wrong. It might mean that I didn't get it in front of the right people. It doesn't mean the idea is bad. So sometimes it's also like really pulling apart how did this fail and why did it fail? What was my part in this? Did I, you know, did I get too caught up in fear? And I only told people once about the thing I'm launching. Well, no wonder nobody signed up. You know? So they're there. There's the piece of being brave about failing. But then there's also the piece of like really being analytical about failures and understanding why something failed that may or that's not emotional, right? There's a , there's a phrase it

my clients that I forced them to use and instead of seeing something failed,

I teach them to say that's good information.

Because it's all good. Exactly. Yeah. Right. And the this and it helps take that personal, you know, identifying edge off of what the outcome was. Right. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So I have uh , one more question for you. Um, what's the one thing you wish you had known before you got started in this big adventure?

I feel like there's so much I wish I know. I don't know if I could identify one thing. I guess the one thing which is not that I didn't know it, it's just more that I didn't believe it was that it takes a really long time. It takes a long time and especially when you work part time, it takes two or three times as long and you have to be so patient and just count every success, you know , celebrate every success like crazy because it might be a long time and they do start to snowball after a while , but it takes, it can take years and that's really exhausting. And it wasn't that nobody told me that because they did. I was just like, Oh, I'm going to be a special snowflake. It's not going to be like that for me. And it totally was.

Oh man, I have stories. I have stories. So, so Donya what's next for you?

Well, right now I am launching a self care challenge that I'm gonna kick off next week, October 9th, and um, that will lead into a self care class that I'm gonna run a live self care class. So the self care challenge is free. Anyone can join. And if that is great for you, you loved it, there's gonna be another more in depth class that'll follow. Um, I am really loving my podcast right now. That's been a really big thing for me. I'm, I have a biweekly podcast called nurturing habit and I do one interview a month and one solo episode a month. And so that's been a really fantastic balance for me. We talk about all the way, all the kinds of habits that women can build in their lives so that they can be happier and more enlivened by their lives. Um, and I interview the most interesting people and that's one of my favorite things to do is just get on the phone and talk to people about what they do and how that work benefits women. And, and I've had some really interesting guests recently and have some really interesting guests coming up. So that's a really fun thing that's happening. Awesome. And what kind of support do you need in order to get to your next goals? What can this community do for you? Well, I would love to get interviewed on some more podcasts. I love being interviewed on other people's podcasts and I've been on a lot lately, but they've all been quite small shows. So I would love to be on your favorite parenting, podcasts , whatever that is. So , um, if people would tell me what they're listening to and if they have any connections to those hosts or , um, any way they can connect me, that's what I would love to hear about. Awesome. So in this community, if you guys can connect Donya with some great podcasts that obviously need to hear her story and what she's doing for the world , um , please reach out to her and help her out. So thank you. I know that you're really busy. Thank you for taking the time to chat with me today. I always love talking to you and we need to do it more often. Can you tell everybody where they can find you? Yeah, absolutely. I'm at nurturing. Sorry, I'm giving you the podcast name. I'm at nurtured mama.net . That's my main site. You can get to the podcast, my how to work with me. Sign up for my mailing list there. If you're interested in the self care challenge, you can find that@nurturedmomma.net slash self care with no dash or anything, just self care. And right now there's just an email sign up , so get on that list and you'll get all the information as it comes out in the next few days. Awesome. I bet a bunch of people in this group would love a bunch of, our listeners would love to take advantage . It's going to be fun. That's us fun and it's fun and lightweight. Wait , it's all about figuring out what self care works in the life you already have. It's not about any big work, bubble baths and and candle it, anything . Yeah, you have time for that. Great. If not it can be small. Awesome. Well I have loved talking to you and um , I'm so excited to see where you're going. Such an amazing conversation. Go and check doing yet out and

jump onto her self care challenge and I think I know she has some awesome other freebies on her site and thank you for tuning in today to hear this story. These episodes that you're listening to are all featuring members of my free private Facebook group called the real deal business coaching group where we have daily prompts to keep you focused on building your business and sharing your everyday challenges. Biweekly virtual coffee chats, open coaching members support. And you know what? These are all people who are doing exactly what you are doing. So it's a really incredible community. Um, if you'd like to join that community or if you want to be featured on this show, I'd love for you to come and hang out with us in the group, the links in the show notes or search us up, real deal, business coaching and Facebook to find us. And finally I would love for you to join us for our next episode where we're going to be speaking to and the blend new who is a, who is at a Florida and she is running a um, gift curation. So very similar to our last guest but also very different. She is , um , doing some really, really beautiful stuff with her clients and she's going to be sharing her story and I think the story is what you're going to be really interested in because she went from, she went from nothing to something really, really quickly. So tune in next week and listen to that episode. So thank you again for being here. And if you have enjoyed today's content, I'd love for you to give us a review on whatever platform you're on. This helps us share these stories with an even bigger audience. And so until next time I am over here cheering you on and so as our group and we can't wait to see you with us. Okay .