This Mother Means Business | Business Growth Strategy, Sustainable Business Growth & Leadership for Female Business Owners
Are you growing a business but feeling like most business advice wasn't designed for women carrying the responsibilities of motherhood, family, and real life?
Do you ever feel frustrated by entrepreneurship content that either tells you to hustle harder or makes it seem like ambition should take a back seat to everything else?
Are you trying to build a profitable business, make smarter decisions, and create sustainable business growth—but struggling to find advice that reflects the reality of your life?
If that sounds like you, you're in the right place.
The truth is, building a successful business doesn't require you to choose between being an ambitious entrepreneur and being present for the people who matter most. It requires practical business strategy, strong decision-making, and a sustainable approach to growth that works in the real world.
That's exactly what this podcast is here to help you do.
Hi, I'm Laura Sinclair.
I'm a business strategist, entrepreneur, and mother who believes that motherhood changes how you build a business—but it does not reduce what's possible.
Over the years, I've worked with female business owners at every stage of growth, helping them build profitable businesses, make better decisions, strengthen their leadership skills, and create success that aligns with their values and responsibilities.
Like many women, I've experienced the pressure of feeling like I had to choose between growing a meaningful business and showing up fully in the rest of my life. I also discovered that most of the advice available to women seemed to fall into one of two categories: business strategies that ignored the realities of motherhood or motherhood-focused conversations that minimized ambition.
Neither felt like the whole picture.
That's why I created This Mother Means Business.
Each week, I'll share practical business strategy, honest conversations, and real-world lessons to help you:
✨ Build a profitable business with confidence
✨ Create sustainable business growth without sacrificing what matters most
✨ Develop a stronger CEO mindset and make better strategic decisions
✨ Strengthen your leadership skills as a business owner
✨ Navigate entrepreneurship and motherhood without shrinking your ambitions
✨ Grow a business that supports your life instead of consuming it
This podcast is for female business owners who approach business ownership as a profession, not a hobby.
Because you don't need more inspiration.
You need practical strategies that help you build a successful business in the context of real life.
If you're ready to grow your business, think more strategically, and create success on your own terms, hit follow and start listening.
Let's get to work.
Next Steps:
🌐 Join us at This Mother Means Business Live: https://www.thismothermeansbusiness.com/live 💻 Grab Your Seat in Our Free Community. https://www.thismothermeansbusiness.com/community 🚀 Learn more about the This Mother Means Business Mastermind. https://www.thismothermeansbusiness.com/mastermind
📲 Connect on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itslaurasinclair
This Mother Means Business | Business Growth Strategy, Sustainable Business Growth & Leadership for Female Business Owners
Behind the Scenes of Hosting a Live Women’s Business Event (Part 2)
•Laura Sinclair
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In this heartfelt and high-energy episode, I’m bringing you behind the scenes of This Mother Means Business LIVE—specifically, the actual event day! If you haven’t listened to part one yet (where I share the prep, mindset shifts, and lessons leading up to the big day), definitely start there first. But in this episode, it’s all about how the day unfolded, the energy in the room, and the powerful reminder of why this work matters so deeply.
From the emotional moments of the panel discussion to the buzzing networking sessions and the lessons I learned the hard way (like why I’ll never keynote my own event again!), I’m walking you through the highs, the hiccups, and the heart of this transformational day. I also give huge love to our incredible sponsors and share how hosting this live event helped bring the This Mother Means Business community to life in ways I never imagined. If you’re planning to host an event, craving authentic connection, or simply want a peek at what it looks like to bring your brand to life—this one’s for you.
Timeline Summary:
[0:42] - Shoutout to the incredible sponsors who brought this event to life
[3:33] - Why securing event sponsorships is a game-changer for entrepreneurs
[5:12] - The pressure of keynoting my own event—and what I’ll never do again
[7:40] - The emotional impact of our panel discussion and community Q&A
[9:15] - How our networking session exceeded all expectations (so many hugs!)
[11:20] - What it meant to share this event with my husband and kids
[14:30] - A reminder that building real relationships is the real ROI
[16:12] - What’s new inside the This Mother Means Business community (and how to join before April 30!)
If this episode inspired you, reminded you of the power of community, or gave you that little nudge to show up more boldly in your business—I’d love it if you left a review, followed the show, and shared it with a fellow mom entrepreneur. Your support means the world and helps keep this mission going strong. 💛
Welcome back to another episode of This Mother Means Business. Today we are back with part two of the This Mother Means Business Live recap. And in part one, which was last week's episode, make sure you go back and listen to that if you haven't had a chance to do that yet. But in part two, I want to talk to you about the actual event day. Part one, we talked about the lead up, all the lessons that came from that. And but part two, I want to talk about event day. But before I do that, I have to give a shout out to our incredible event sponsors who truly made this event possible. And as a person that for a very long time was part of the I Can Do It All Myself Club, and there were absolutely elements of this event that I did do all by myself, which I will not do again. I am so grateful to the women that stepped up to sponsor our event because without them, it would not have been the day that it was. I would also be thousands and thousands of dollars in debt for running the event, which I don't recommend doing. And so I'm so grateful for the women who sponsored the event. Darcy from Boda Creative, her and her team were incredible when it came to designing the elements that you saw on site at the event. So they did table cards, they did our step and repeat, which I'm so excited to just own forever. The workbooks that were there on the day, so many things that were designed by them. They were the team that actually did the original This Mother Means Business rebrand that happened at the end of 2024. The original logo was something I just created myself. And as this community has grown, it deserved, it deserved a facelift. So Darcy and our team did that, and I was so grateful that they were on board for helping me with the event and bringing it to life. So I'm so grateful for them. Amanda at the Monarch Co., which is an incredible, incredible resource for our women entrepreneurs. They're doing publishing, and I'm gonna have more to come on some of the work that I'm gonna be doing with Amanda and her team over the rest of this year, but I'm just so grateful to her and to her involvement. Laura from Hardy Tales Creative. The florals at the event were so good. I truthfully didn't really give Laura a whole lot of direction. I was like, here are the brand colors, have fun. And I knew that she was gonna be doing centerpieces for the event, which was amazing, and that there was gonna be like something on the stage, but I truly had no idea. And when I actually walked into the event space on the morning of the event and saw what she was doing with the flowers, I just about fell over. She did such an incredible job. And if you are looking for florals in the GTA area, make sure you connect with Laura from Hardy Tales. We'll make sure that we put all of the links to all of our sponsors in the show notes. Emily from Anchor's Way Photography was so fun to have Emily shooting the event because Emily and I connected in 2021 when Emily was hosting a local connection event, a conference, business conference, and asked me to be her keynote speaker. So it was super fun for me to have Emily come on as a sponsor for this Mother Me's Business Live and take photos of the event, of which I am so excited to share. I've had sneak peeks of the photos already, and I cannot wait to share the rest of them with the attendees and of course Kelly from Elevated Designs, who made our very fun support your local mom-owned business bags, as well as the books that we were able to gift everyone with. And so truly, truly, truly cannot thank our sponsors enough. If you are running an event, you're planning on running an event, make sure that you connect and create an opportunity for sponsorship because not only do you get to build incredible relationships with these business women, you get to elevate their businesses too. And so much of why I wanted to do this Mother Means Business Live was so that I could elevate the other incredible women that are in my world. And so I'm just so grateful to everybody that came on board, and certainly those five, Darcy, Amanda, Laura, Kelly, and Kelly, Kelly and Emily, were so so amazing. So when I think about that, what I want to focus on in this episode is really like the day of and the experience of the day of. And in part one, I talked a lot about some of the mindset pieces and the lessons that came up in the preparation for the event. But the event itself, the day of, was I can't even put into words. I think I'm still processing it in a lot of ways. And I've hosted events before in past lives and when I owned my gym. And but this was the first time that I really got to see what this Mother Means business looks like in real life. And I was so excited to see women who had only ever met virtually as part of our community or coming to our community connection calls and getting them to see how excited they were to see each other in person. And so the energy and the vibes of the room were immediately amazing. And I had a lot of nerves and a little bit of stress because the first time you do something, it's a little stressful. And so there were like little things that came up. You know, coffee was supposed to be out at 9:30. It wasn't out till 10. And so I was dealing with that hiccup. I had my keynote to deliver. I was, you know, as I mentioned, that first episode, delivering a keynote was an important part of this event for me personally. And so I will tell you right now, I'll never keynote my own event ever again. Planning the event is enough. I don't need to plan the event and keynote it at the same time because I'm a person when I love to speak, when I like to keynote, I don't like to use notes. I also don't really memorize it. I memorize the structure of what I want to talk about, but what comes out of my mouth is what comes out of my mouth. And so there's some nervousness there for me delivering the keynote for the first time, knowing that it was going to be recorded. It was a new keynote for me. It was one that I hadn't hadn't done yet, not really knowing how it was going to be received. So I kind of went into the day being like, okay, the coffee's not here. My keynote is happening. I hope that goes well. I hope everyone's having a good time. And so there was definitely a little extra stress for me. I won't be doing a keynote again. That was a that was a good lesson. I'll absolutely speak at my own event. Um, and I think I'll probably continue to MC the event because that was really fun for me. Um, and maybe do a welcome address. But tell me, let me tell you right now, I will not be keynoting my own event. And I'm actually planning on uh pulling the audio from my keynote and running it as a podcast episode. So that will be something that you can look forward to in a few weeks when I get that audio back. So I'm excited to share that and to share with you the people that weren't able to attend what that keynote was all about. And fortunately it was very well received. But once I was done with my keynote, it went well. I was able to really relax and just have fun in the day and really get to experience it with you. Because one of the big reasons why this mother means business exists is because I was so lonely in the first few years of motherhood and entrepreneurship. I didn't have any other mom friends. And so being able, or I had mom friends, but not mom friends building businesses. And the isolation of that was really difficult. And so being able to, once I got through the keynote, and then it was time for me to get to have fun with all of you, I was just so, so, so grateful and able to sit in the energy, which was so awesome. And then getting to see Darcy and Kaylee and Pooja and Rebecca on stage for the panel was really great. And the amount of conversation that came out of that panel, I think was really magical. The my favorite part of the panel was actually when we opened up the panel to the crowd, to the audience. And there were some really meaningful and vulnerable questions that were asked, and it made me realize just how important these conversations are. You know, women talking about how do we get through guilt, talking about, you know, expectation. There was one woman that was there with a very, very little baby and had some really emotional questions and some really emotional responses received from the women on stage. I don't think that there were very many dry eyes during that panel. And just really was this powerful reminder for me of how important and how needed these conversations are. And one of the asks at the end of the networking session was actually to have everyone put meetings on their calendar. So, you know, to go back to a couple of people that they met during this sort of speed networking session that we had and actually put a meeting on the calendar to connect before the end of April. Because I think it's one thing to go to an event, it's a whole other thing to build relationships after after. It's so easy to go to an event and not meet people and just hide in the back of the room and listen to the speakers and not actually take the time. But if you spend any time with me, you know that I'm not here for that. I am here for you to meet and connect with as many women as possible. And so being able to know that there are these meetings that are going to be happening, probably even while we speak and while we record this, while you're listening to this, somebody that was at the event is connecting with someone else that was there. And so for that was just so, so affirming for me through the power of connection and being able to be truly reminded about why this work is so important and not just within the context of the this mother means business community and being a member, although I highly recommend you do that. And after seeing these women together in person celebrating together, it's just really affirmed for me why this work is so important. But also just finding your people and knowing what that's like and how how important it is to be in community with folks who understand what it is that you're going through is really, really, really important. The other thing that's always blows my mind when I go into doing something vulnerable like this is the support that I get from my own clients. And I got pep talks from my clients, I got messages the day of saying, Do you need anything? What can I do? And I'm always so overwhelmingly grateful for the women that I have in my world, the women that you know I have the absolute pleasure of mentoring in a close proximity relationship that show up for me and they cheer for me. And so I am just reminded of how lucky, how freaking lucky I am to have so many of you listening to this podcast, so many women coming up inside the community, coming to these events. And like I am just when I say that I am grateful, I mean it to the depths of my soul that I kind of can't believe that this community has these really strong roots that it's created. And it's been something that continues to blow me away. And even 10 days out, I'm 10 days out of the event as I record this, I still am sitting with it in it. I'm still processing how incredible it was and is. And I truly believe that this is just the beginning for this Mother Means business. Personally, one of the coolest things for me for the event was having my husband there. And it wasn't something that I originally was like, I don't know, but I needed a DJ. And so I had to employ my husband to uh be the DJ. And I think sometimes, you know, having gone from running a business together to now running my business individually, it was really, really special for me to be able to have him there to be able to see, you know, what it is that I'm doing. And so on the days where I'm in my office for what seems like hours on end or talking on my Instagram stories and he's wondering, you know, who are you talking to? It was just really cool to be able to show him and have him be part of what it is that I'm working so hard to create. To have him be part of it was just really, really special because, you know, there's a lot of things that I do in silence. And um, while, you know, he may never understand the depths of it fully as a person that's not an entrepreneur. It was just cool to be able to show him, you know, what it is that I've I've been working so hard for. And my kids were were really on board with celebrating the event too and celebrating mom. And, you know, we went out for dinner that night, and I couldn't even bring my phone truly because I was, first of all, just exhausted. And second of all, getting so receiving so many messages of love and support that I think took me about 72 hours to respond to because I just really needed to process and to sit in it. And so we went out for dinner, and you know, I'm bringing everything back in the house uh before we did that. And my daughter's like, wow, mom, you have such a big, cool business, a big important business. And that was just really nice. It was just really a cool experience to be able to take what it is that mommy does here in her office and bring it into real life and allow my husband to witness it and my children to be a part of it and sort of recognize the impact that I that I'm truly trying to create and was really affirming for me on so many levels as far as like this is where I'm supposed to be, and this is the work that I'm supposed to be doing. And truly, if you are a person that have played any role in it, whether it was being a sponsor or donating to the gift bags or showing up to the event or sending me a comment on a note on Instagram to say, hey, thinking of you, good luck. I am so grateful and I'm going to allow myself to sit in these feelings for a while. I have a tendency to kind of just move on to the next thing and be like, okay, well, that was done. That's 10 days ago. Why are you still talking about it? Um, but I'm really gonna allow myself to enjoy this and enjoy this one and be reminded of why the work that we're doing is so important. And if you missed the event, you weren't able to join us, the This Mother Means Business community is open right now. And it will only be open until April 30th. So by the time this episode lands, there's only gonna be about a week left to join, and then the doors will close again until later this year. And it's been so cool to see how many women have joined the community that were at the event, sort of made the decision on the spot. Like, yes, I'm in. And uh I have a I have an incredible friend who runs events, and so she sort of said to me, Are you gonna be selling tickets to another event after this event? And I was like, No, I'm not gonna do that. We will do an event once a year in April. Um, but it was cool to sort of have the event be an opportunity for women to get a taste of what's happening inside of this the Mother Means business community and be in the energy of safety and being supported and really being seen in this sort of journey that you're navigating as a mom and an entrepreneur. And so um we will do this again in April. There's no other tickets for me to sell. Um, but I can share that the doors to the community are open, as I mentioned, and we've changed a few things uh with the community since it was last open in December. We still have the sort of tried and true things inside the community that are what make it great, which are our networking calls and opportunities to really build some relationships, our monthly experts that are coming in to help you learn new skills and grow your mindset and actually add tools to your toolbox as you build your business. We have our monthly round tables, our strategy calls, which really is an opportunity for you to mastermind with the other women inside the group. We do our quarterly planning, our annual planning. That happens all the time inside of our community. But the one thing that I have added that I'm excited about is a sort of 12-week on-ramp blueprint that'll help you create more space in your life and momentum in your business. And we do that through some bite-sized actions that you can take and reflections that are delivered to your inbox every week for 12 weeks when you become a member. And so I'm really excited about helping more women through that process because it is a really, really powerful tool to use to generate momentum when you become a member. So if you want to learn more about becoming a member of our community, make sure you go to this mothermeansbusiness.com and you can learn more about what we're doing. You need to join by April 30th, then the doors will be closing for the next while. Um, and if you are like, hey, you know what? I don't know that I want to do that just yet, make sure you join us for a community connection call. You don't need to be shy. It is such a cool place. There's so many new women that have been coming to those calls since the event. I think on the last call we had, there were 10 or 12 people that were there for the very first time. So you are welcome on those calls. If you are new, make sure you find yourself there. But truly, truly, I love recording episodes like this. I know that they're not always the most actionable for you, but it does give you a bit of an insight into what's going on in my role because I'm the last person that's going to pretend like I have all the answers. But it's important for me that I bring you along in this journey as we're building this Mother Means business together because it is as much for you as it is for me. And I really believe that we are creating a movement for rewriting what it means to be a good mom and a good entrepreneur and re-establishing this whole sense of what is possible for us as women and as mothers. And so that is a wrap on this Mother Means Business Live. We will do it again next year. I don't have dates, so don't DM me about it yet. I will have answers for you soon. We're gearing up for our fall retreat. There'll be more information on that coming in the next few weeks. But truly thank you. Thank you for being a part of it. Thank you for listening. Thank you for sharing this podcast, for even thinking about coming to the event. Even if you thought about coming and you didn't come for whatever reason, I hope that you come next year. I hope that you find ways to connect with other like-minded humans because it is truly life-changing. And the number of people that came up to me after to tell me that this event was transformational or changed changed their life, it's something I will never take for granted. So thank you for listening. We'll see you on the next episode. Thanks for listening. And if you love this episode and know of other ambitious entrepreneurial mothers who would love to be part of this community, it would mean the world to me if you shared our podcast with them. Take a screenshot of this episode, text it to them, or share it to your Instagram stories and tag me so I can thank you for tuning in. Until next time, I love you, I appreciate you, and I am cheering for you. So big
