What does it look like to take your work from the corporate world to the freelance world and begin the path of entrepreneurship? How do you take the piecemeal career acquired from many different projects, companies and job-hopping and then go into starting a business?
One of the things that I am fascinated with here at Startup Pregnant is the idea that we are in perpetual startup mode in many senses of the word: in our own lives, in our own careers, in our own journeys. We don’t just pick corporate versus entrepreneurship. That is a false dichotomy. Instead, I find that people end up with these really interesting layered careers where they follow projects or purposes or people and they embed their time and their energy in these various different projects whether or not it looks like a traditional tried and true company, or it looks like building a new endeavor on the side as a branch of a company, becoming an entrepreneur, starting a new initiative or starting a freelancing or side hustle career or even starting a company on your own.
Today, we talk to Randi Zinn, who is the founder of Beyond Mom. Randi lost her father when she 25, which affected her emotionally, philosophically, psychology, and also, it set her on a new career path. Her dad was an entrepreneur, and while she thought that she would be going straight from graduate school into a world of media, she ended up on a slightly different path.
Randi is an author, a wellness expert and the founder of a site, company, blog and suite of tools called Beyond Mom. Beyond Mom is a company that provides things like wellness retreats, mindfulness at work, encouragement for women an overall philosophy and ethos supporting women interested in taking back their right to self-love, self-care and community. Randi encourages moms to cultivate a life beyond mom, one that embraces the gifts of motherhood, but expresses all that they are as individuals.
IN THIS EPISODE WE TALK ABOUT
- How Randi’s first pregnancy ended in miscarriage but going through a loss with her husband brought them closer together.
- How as an only child herself, Randi loves to learn about the sibling relationship by watching her son and daughter together.
- The way the loss of her father impacted her career trajectory, leading her away from a traditional path in media to following in her entrepreneurial father’s footsteps.
- How yoga entered her life as a stress mediator through this process, but that once she was a mother, teaching and “schlepping” from studio to studio became untenable.
- Her surprise at meeting other mothers who were using their transformation into mothers to gain momentum in changing their career paths as well.
- The organic origins of Beyond Mom and how by spending time with and serving her ideal customer, Randi was able to create an authentic, deeply desired service and brand.
- Beyond Mom’s focus on supporting the entire woman, both on her journey through motherhood and, above all, on her personal journey as she evolves and grows as a whole person.
- How the inspiration behind her book was to make her message and platform accessible across socioeconomic and geographic lines.
- Why, despite all of the challenges, she commits a large portion of her business to bringing women together in person because that is where the magic happens.
The Startup Pregnant Podcast Episode #120
SOME QUOTES FROM THE EPISODE
- “What was happening when I was teaching [yoga] was that I really able to take all of the things that I’ve been through. The way that I felt like my heart had opened through the loss and through the pain and the sadness and been able to connect to people to their pain and loss and sadness and learned lessons and talk about them and explore them. That was something I didn’t want to lose.”
- “I’m becoming more and more honest and open about the story of [my success]. It’s like people think that things just come out of nowhere. It’s like you see a successful person or a moment and you’re like, ‘Whoa! Boom! Their efforts worked.’ But no. It’s not that linear. And I think the more that we are telling the honest story and the lead up, the more people can see that it’s really such a mixture of all these different parts of ourselves most of the time.”
- “What would an event feel like and look like if women came together and they got to explore all these parts of themselves beyond their mom identity?”
- “We have to be willing to experiment to a point and be willing to kind of get a little messy and explore something before maybe we know exactly what [our business] is. There’s a very organic process that can evolve that way.”
- “Once I started really looking around, I saw just how much attention was put on the motherhood self and not on the self.”
- “I met [my agent] for the first time weeks after my daughter was born. I remember it was one of those meetings where you’re an exhausted mess and your boobs are like huge and leaking and you’re like, ‘I don’t even know what I’m doing at this table. I’m a mess, but I’m here.’ It was one of those.”
- “So much of the confusion that we have as a woman, do we stay home with our kids? Do we go back to work? Do we start a business? What do we do with ourselves? We expect ourselves to know what’s right, but we don’t know how to carve out space to just go inward and to listen in and to have quiet and to hear our inner wisdom. We just don’t have that space, and I believe we must for ourselves to feel actually present and actualize in how we really want our life to look.”
- “It comes down to creating quiet space, and it comes down to the most basic asset of what we all have. At the end of the day, what we all have is our body, our breath and the moment, right?”
- “When women get together, it is magical, and nobody realizes how much they want it and need it until they’re there.”
LEARN MORE ABOUT RANDI ZINN
Randi Zinn is an author, mindfulness and wellness expert, and founder of Beyond Mom. Born from her own experience of motherhood, Beyond Mom is harnessing a movement of women who are taking back their right to self-love, self-care and community as a pathway to fulfillment.
RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
- Randi’s book Going Beyond Mom: How to Activate Your Mind, Body & Business After Baby
- BeyondMom.com
- Randi on Instagram
- @randizinn on Twitter
IF YOU ENJOYED THIS EPISODE, CHECK OUT
- When You Become a Foster Parent and an Entrepreneur in One Year — Episode #003 With Nicole Walters
- Pregnancy, Divorce, and Being Knocked Sideways — Episode #006 With Tamsen Webster
- Reframing the Unexpected as Opportunity – Episode #027 with Bridget Gleason
- Postpartum Depression, Daycare and Whether or Not to Be a Parent — Episode #051 With Kathleen Shannon
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