14. Three Business Lessons From My Third Pregnancy

🎙️ Life, Business & Letting Go: My Biggest Lessons from This Season 💡

Life doesn’t always go as planned, and sometimes, it takes a big shake-up to help you see what truly matters. In this episode, Tiffany shares the unexpected challenges she and her family faced in early 2025, from shutting down her CFO business to navigating Eric’s health scare—all while expecting baby #3.

She’s opening up about real-life lessons in business, personal growth, and why putting yourself first isn’t selfish—it’s necessary.

💡 What You'll Learn in This Episode:
✅ Why putting yourself first leads to better business and family success 🙌
✅ How a major business pivot brought clarity and peace
✅ The 20% of tasks that drive 80% of results in business & life
✅ Why outsourcing small tasks can make a huge difference in your mental load 🧘‍♀️
✅ Lessons from pregnancy, parenting, and learning to ask for help
✅ How to recognize when you’re overgiving—and what to do about it

💡 PLUS: The “Fisherman vs. Businessman” analogy that helped Tiffany reset her priorities!

This episode is a must-listen if you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by trying to do it all—whether in business, motherhood, or life in general. It’s time to simplify, delegate, and focus on what truly matters.

✨ Listen now and start making empowered choices today!

📌 Resources Mentioned:
🔹 Kate Northrup’s Book Do Less – Productivity for Women
🔹 The Fair Play Method – Redefining Household Responsibilities
🔹 Ramit Sethi’s Conscious Spending Plan – Spend Smarter, Live Better

🎧 Next time you're on the go, just ask Siri to play the Energetic CFO Podcast!

💬 Love this episode? Tell Siri to leave a review on Apple Podcasts! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Transcript

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Welcome to the Energetic CFO Podcast, where we empower you to take control of your financial future. I'm your host, Tiffany, an advocate for financial literacy and business success. In this podcast, we'll explore a wide range of financial topics from money mindset and budgeting to building wealth and achieving financial freedom. We'll break down complex financial concepts into simple, actionable steps so you can apply them in your own life. Whether you're a new entrepreneur or a seasoned business owner, this podcast is for you. Join me as we dive into the world of finance and discover the tools and strategies to help you achieve your financial goals. Let's get started. Welcome back to the Energetic CFO Podcast. I'm your host, Tiffany Vogel, and I, this is a different topic than we've been chatting about, and I'm excited to share. I have been reflecting a ton. It's been an interesting season for us. The beginning of 2025 hit us like a freight train. I started the year off in Costa Rica. On a wonderful retreat with my coach and some beautiful ladies. I did a whole podcast episode about it and some of the lessons, but it was wonderful. And then I went to the mastermind retreat for my CEO mama group. And that was great. So I was gone for like 10, 12 days, something like that, focusing on myself. And that was wonderful. And then I come home and Eric and I both get sick. We have snow days in the middle of that. So we're like trying to fight this like heavy flu and take care of the kids, but they're also not in school. So that threw us off. And like, there's not a lot of time to work when you're at retreats and then come home and you're sick and the kids aren't in school. So, we make it through that, and then, I can't remember what happened next. Like, there's so much. Eric winds up in the hospital for diparticulitis that turned into sepsis. And, like, he just now is realizing, like, he actually had sepsis and almost died. Like, it's a mess. It was a mess. He had stomach pain while I was gone, and, went to urgent care. They didn't really know exactly what it was. So they kind of just sent him home with, you know, some meds and said, get better. And then it got worse and just like flared up and he wound up rupturing his colon. And it was a whole thing. So he's in the hospital the week before he went to the hospital, I made a huge shift and shut down my CFO business and let go of my entire team. And just slashed overhead. And I'll talk more about that later on in the episode. Let's see, the kids got really sick. Auto wound up like we had another week of snow days and then auto wound up with a fever for five, six days. So we weren't working that week a whole lot because we're just, you know, had a sick kid and trying to take care of him. Which was a lot of snuggles on the couch, so I'm not upset about that. I was able to work while he sat next to me, but not able to do a ton there. And all of this is happening in the midst of my third pregnancy. So I've just been reflecting on this year and we're about two months in. And like, what are the lessons in business I have from this pregnancy? And I mean, I made some big goofs in first trimester because your first trimester, you're just tired and your energy is going into like building a whole new organ for this baby, the placenta, and literally building all these intricate little pieces of a tiny human. And it's just incredible. And it's incredible how exhausting it is and nauseous. Oh my gosh. The morning sickness and all the things. And then I was like, Oh, second trimester hits right at Christmas. It's going to be great. And it has been, but also like so much has landed on us. And the first lesson that I've gotten in this pregnancy is I have to take care of myself first. I cannot support my husband, my kids, my business. I can't support anything unless my cup is full and I'm pouring from overflowing instead of trying to get the last drops out of my bucket. So it's something I've been working through with my coach a lot. We worked on it at the retreats and just not giving my power away to other people and focusing on my needs first. So. It has been a hard lesson. I think we're programmed to put other people before us. I can speak from the woman experience. We're taught to take care of our family and take care of, you know, all the things that need to happen. And one of the things I've really done is looked at my business, my family, my home life, and like, what are the, 20 percent of tasks that only I can accomplish. And part of that was realizing I'm trying to build this big business and the CFO space. And it just wasn't aligned with my goals anymore, especially after all these retreats where I've had these big realizations. My coach uses this analogy and I butcher it every time, but. She talks about a fisherman and he's out fishing and a businessman comes up and says, Hey, you realize you could reinvest your profits and get another fishing boat and make more? And the fisherman says, Okay, but why? And he says, so that you can expand and scale, and he says, but why? And then the businessman says, so that you can build a logistics company and grow even bigger. The fisherman says, why? So then you can become a transportation company in the, you know, I am butchering it, but you can grow to be like a multinational corporation and be giant and like make all this money. And he says, yeah, but why? And it ends with the businessman saying, you know, So you can sit at home all day and fish or do whatever you want. And the fisherman's just kind of sitting there scratching his head because that's what he's currently doing. And I realized I was being the businessman because I love business and I wanted to build an empire, but I already have a real estate empire. Like, Why strive for this big CFO business? It was my ego. Like, I wanted the accolades of being a business owner of a multi seven figure business. And through all these meditations and being in the jungle and the beach and all these things, I realized even if I built this big company and sold it ten years down the road and had all this cash, like the businessman was teaching the fisherman, I would still want to do some level of financial coaching. So why strive to build this big business when I can just be the fisherman and keep it simple? So that, that's point number two is when you know a decision is right, pivot quickly. So when I just had this knowing this deep in my gut. I knew that building a big fractional CFO company was not where I needed to be. I didn't decide until after I came home, but I just realized like I, in trying to build that company to support the salaries for my team and the overhead that I had to find a lot of clients and grow it aggressively. And now I've shifted it to just this being open to whatever comes. And I'm working with clients I love working with. I'm, Building it on a smaller scale, but it just feels so dang good. And I realized my hesitation and shutting it down was this fear of hurting my team and the two guys that I brought into work with me. And when we started the business, we all knew it was a big risk and that it might pay out. You know, millions of dollars for us, or it might pay out nothing. And I was just scared to make that move. But I just knew in my heart that I needed to be the fisherman and stop trying to be the businessman. So, the second lesson is pivot quickly when you know in your gut, deep down, that the decision is right. I had felt an inkling that was the direction I was going to go. But it wasn't until I came home and just really sat in it and realized it's time. And it was just, it was instant. I mean, I think I made the decision on Wednesday, told my team on Thursday and then like started slashing overhead on Friday. And a week after that is when we had more snow days and our son was sick. I completely like got rid of all of the overhead and then Eric went to the hospital. So. That goes back to my first lesson of taking care of myself. I know, well I don't know, but I am fairly certain that if I had not taken care of myself at the first part of this year, I would not have been able to make that decision on the business. I would have not been able to support Eric in the way he needed, to support my kids in the way they needed, because the way this all played out, For some reason we did date night on Friday that week. I think it was because of snow days or yeah, it was snowing. That's right. So we did date night on Friday and it's normally on Thursday. For those of you that don't know, Eric and I have a pretty hard and fast date night on Thursday nights. So we did date night that Friday. We went to rooms to go and we're looking at some new couches and furniture for my office and he was just not feeling great. And then we went to dinner, and he just told, like, he could barely eat, he just wasn't feeling good. And I just kept asking, like, do we need to go to urgent care? Like, go to the doctor. Like, what do we need to do? He's like, it's fine. I think it's, I just pulled a muscle doing CrossFit. And I'm like, okay. So, we got home, and he falls asleep at, like, 7 o'clock. And I let our nanny go get her situated. And The next, I told him, like, if you're not going tonight, you need to go tomorrow. So, the next day we get up and he just doesn't look good. And my parents were coming over later that morning. So I'm like, just go ahead and go to urgent care. Like, I got the kids, we'll be fine. So he goes to urgent care and this is his second visit there. So they tell him you need to go to the emergency room. So he goes to the emergency room. After a couple hours, you know how long it takes in the emergency room, they eventually admit him and he spent, I think it was five days in the hospital on I. V. Antibiotics. He didn't eat for the majority of the time. They're like, couldn't even have water. It was a mess. So from our kids perspective, dad just went to go get a checkup and all of a sudden he's at the doctor for five days and trying to emotionally support them and just make sure their physical needs were taken care of, making sure Eric had what he needed in the hospital, because initially he thought he was just going to be there a night and then quickly realized it might be a couple nights and then we realized it was going to be like a week. So, the needs shifted. Initially, it was just, you know, toothbrush and a pair of underwear. Then it was, okay, I need full sets of clothes. And then it was, I need some entertainment. So I took his laptop, the Nintendo, like anything to help him because sitting in a hospital by yourself for a week is no fun. And I would go up there to just sit with him throughout the day. So like, I was not working a lot and it just, shifted my perspective in this way of, thank God I have the ability to take a week off from work to support my family. And he was able to take the time off from work. And it wasn't like we were in this position of, we're not gonna be able to pay the mortgage this month because we don't have, you know, income coming in. So there's so much gratitude and having our real estate to support us, but. That's my second lesson is take care of your family next. So all the business stuff fell away in the season. I was trying to give updates to all of our extended family on what was happening with him. And I just started drowning because I'm trying to take care of these little boys that need me trying to take care of myself. And I can't sit on the phone for hours talking about all this stuff going on with him medically. So. I realized I have to take care of myself first, even if that meant, I remember I took a bath while our youngest was napping and our oldest was sitting and watching TV. And I've never done that. I always sit with him. I don't really leave him alone for, you know, extended periods of time. But I realized, like, I need this space to just go sit. So I left him, I think I told him I was going to the bathroom and just took a, you know, really long bathroom break, but. He did eventually call for me and I got out, but I took the space to go take care of myself first. So that's my first lesson is take care of yourself first. The second lesson was then take care of your family. And I realized I have to take care of the two little boys and my husband before I try to take care of anyone else's needs. So I stopped giving updates on what was happening to him because I just didn't have the bandwidth. And emotionally I didn't have the bandwidth. I went to the hospital that Monday, so he went in on Saturday, and Monday is when I realized like how serious this was. And that's when I realized he was in sepsis. The doctors didn't really tell him. I read through all of his charts and his blood panels and like, with the help of some AI, quickly realized like how serious this was. And just got overwhelmed and I realized I'm trying to emotionally hold myself together for him and he's trying to hold himself emotionally together for me and like that's not serving anyone. And that day I just sobbed all day. I sobbed in the cafeteria talking to a friend. I like, it was a mess. I get into the room and I like just start sobbing and the doctor just, it's so funny, like, especially being pregnant. I think people like don't know what to do with that. So the doctor could tell I was like not in a good place. But it just, yeah, it was just a tough week and I had friends send me food, which was wonderful. Eric helped coordinate meals for me because there's not a lot he could do from the hospital, but he could order some DoorDash. So, we had family bringing us food. Like it just, I had to lean on them and that's not something I've been super comfortable with. I've always been the one there for everyone else. So I received a lot of support in a way that I hadn't previously. So I took care of myself first. Then I took care of my little family and let the big family, the extended family and my friends and community support me in that moment. And I've always had this, like, I don't need help. I'm super woman. And it just was such a lesson, especially in pregnancy that I have to have support. And I needed to support my kids and my husband in that time. So anyone that was willing to help support me, I took. And then finally, when you know the right decision, making that move. So I, yeah, I just, I have cut ties and not like cut ties to where I'm like, not talking to my team, but just cut ties of, I am not responsible for things that are not my responsibility. I have this pattern of taking responsibility for things that aren't mine, and I'm just pushing that away. I'm putting myself and the baby in my belly first, and then next come my two kids and my husband, and then comes the extended family and my friends and my network and community. And then comes my business, and that's not the priorities that I have had in the past, and it feels really good to have a clear, defined plan on those things. And I share all of this to say, I have met so many wonderful, beautiful women in the last couple of years, especially, who, Have this similar trend of overgiving to our families and our partners, and I'm just thinking I see all their faces right now and have so much love for them. And I think we're all overwhelmed with the way our life and society has shaped us. And we get in these cycles of distraction. It's Having the drink or the medication or the doom scrolling or the TV or whatever it is to distract us instead of getting to the root issue that's going on in our heart and our body. And we just ignore it and numb it instead of facing the problem. And I see so many women who are Trying to do everything they can to support their husband and their kids and washing a lot of laundry every day for their teenage kids because they go through so many outfits or cooking meals for their husbands, even though they're exhausted and just got back from a business trip. I mean, these are very specific examples from mom, women, friends I have. I mean. Yeah, I just, I've just like flooded with all these thoughts of how we go above and beyond to support the people around us. And when it's coming from a place of we're fulfilled, it's beautiful. But when it's coming from a place of we're exhausted and we're depleted, it just leads to burnout. And one of my good friends, her burnout looked like falling down the stairs and needing emergency back surgery. And I mean, Eric was over giving and not supporting himself and led to him being in the hospital and I see it so many times they talk about first you'll get a pebble to try to wake you up to an issue in your body or in your life. Then you get a rock and then you get a boulder. Boulder for me was the burnout after Eric's deployments and our son and when he was born and all of that. And I spent a couple months in bed, unable to really function. And I realized like, I have to start taking care of myself. And that's what led to me joining the mastermind and then getting in the coaching program with my coach. And Taking ownership of my self care, because no one's going to take care of you. You have to take care of yourself first. And I mean, I see it not just in women, I communicate with women way more, so I see it there more prevalently, and we share a lot more. But I see it in men too, where you're carrying this weight of being the provider and taking care of your family, and trying to be there for everyone. And no matter who you are, like you have to take care of yourself first. And then it's focusing on the people who are truly dependent on you. Your kids, your spouse, we, I mean, we have little kids, so there's not a whole lot they can do for themselves. They're getting more independent. I've also realized, oh my gosh, like there's so much they can do and want to do. So. In this pregnancy season, I realized I, I threw out my back because my hips are out of alignment and, you know, if you've been pregnant before you know what I'm talking about. I started asking the kids to do things for me. So, Otto, can you go get two packs of wet wipes from the bathroom closet? And he rode his little bike down the hall, got the two packs of wipes and brought them to me and then put the other, like gave me one and then put the other one in the kitchen where I needed it. And he had so much fun and I'm just realizing I can ask for help even from my kids. Over the weekend, Eric made a lot of meals for me and would just bring it to me as I'm sitting on the couch with the kids. And. I didn't lift a finger for that meal. And I'm so thankful for him for doing that. We're eating on kid plates, like the plastic ones, cause no one's trusting a ceramic plate around a two year old. I asked her two year old, Hey, can you go throw this in the sink? And he goes, and he'll put the plate in the sink. So it's being willing to lean on my kids as well in a very let's say appropriate way. Like, I'm not relying on them to hold me emotionally. But they want to help and they want that responsibility. So if you have older kids, like what responsibilities that you're carrying, can you put on them? Another thing I love is the fair play deck. There's a movie. I think it's on Amazon. Don't quote me on that. Eric and I watched it a couple of years ago. There's a book and then there's the card deck. And it breaks down how in the seventies women started entering the workforce and leaving the home as their full time work. And with that, the home duties didn't really shift. So now they're trying to be equals in the workforce and carry this full time job of managing a house. And it was a really big eye opener for us. And the way it played out was Eric and I were talking about it. He was understanding and seeing how much I was doing and that invisible labor and just the mental load of like thinking through all the stuff for the kids. And then after all of his deployments, he came home and I was in this burnout season, so he was doing it all on his own. And it was just such an eye opener of how much I was carrying. And. What I love about the deck is you can go through and deal cards of who's handling what. And the idea is that you own the entire card. So if it's making lunches for the kids, you're making sure the groceries are in the house. Or at least that the groceries are on the list. You're planning the meals, you're getting the groceries. You're prepping the lunches and then you're cleaning them up at the end of the day. And that way the other partner is not having to carry the mental load of, is that getting done? And that been such a huge shift for me of coming out of being this superwoman mode. And I'm leaning heavily on my husband and I've realized that's fantastic. And we've outsourced a lot of things, but there's also stuff that we just can't carry as two people. There's more than we're capable of. So we're looking to outsource more stuff around the house. My next hire is going to be someone to come at least once a quarter to reset the closets for the boys because they grow fast, stuff gets dirty. The clothes get disheveled and then to reset the toys. Oh my gosh. Like the toys just get out of control. I try to keep them organized so they know what's what, but it just, it doesn't always work that way. Okay. So instead of me stressing every week about are the toys organized the way I want them to be, I'm just going to pay someone once a quarter a couple hundred dollars to come in and rework my house. And that frees up my mental load to focus more on my business to make that money to cover that. So it's been interesting in this pregnancy because I'm realizing With each additional kid, it's more responsibility and it's not something I or Eric and I can carry on our own. So we are leaning on extended family more for support. We're leaning on some paid support. Having our boys in school was a big thing for us this past year. So don't let a crisis determine for you that you need help. Get the help before the crisis if you can, because having the boulder thrown in your path. I just, I saw Indiana Jones running from the boulder. Like that doesn't look fun. We'd rather catch it before it becomes a huge rock chasing us and crushing us potentially. So what can you look at in your life as a way of outsourcing or having somebody else help with so that you're not carrying it all. And then once you get yourself taken care of, prioritizing the relationships in your life that you're going to put before others, because we can't be everything to all people. And for me, it's realizing that I have like different circles. So the first circle is That is the first thing that's going to get taken care of. And I know that's hard, especially when you have little ones. And I mean, when I have this baby, like obviously the baby's going to come first in a lot of ways, but also I'm going to make sure that if I need to go relax or get a massage or whatever it is, that I'm going to work that into the routine with the baby. So we have ourselves. Then we have our immediate family. Well, this is mine, so it could be whatever it is for you. Then I have my immediate family, so that's my husband and my three boys. And then I have my extended family and my close friends. And then I have my more broad network. And if I wind up not texting someone in my broad network for two weeks, I'm okay with that. I don't feel guilt around that. Because I have my priorities very clear. And that's really the lessons is figuring out who's in those circles for you. And when you know, a decisions right, making the move quickly, instead of sitting on it and waiting and hoping it gets better. Because Doing that just prolongs the situation and makes it harder for everyone in the end. So I, I love the lessons life gives me and in having this third pregnancy, it's really forced me to slow down. I'm reading a book by Kate Northrup. It's called do less. And it's just little exercises to help you start thinking about how you can do less. And I'm really focused on the 20 percent tasks that really move 80 percent of the needle. And, like, for example, in my business I don't need to be doing all the minute stuff. I don't know if you've noticed in the podcast, I had a weekly download for every episode. It was a lot of work. It was coming up with the concept for the download, creating the flyer and Canva, because I got rid of all my overhead, including my VA. So it's just me and Eric doing stuff in this business. He edits my episodes and then I was building the flyer and then I would build a separate form in my email campaigns for the downloads, so I could collect email addresses for the flyer and all this stuff. I mean, it was an extra two hours of work a week just for that. And I realized it's not moving the needle in my business. So I've stopped and I have a couple freebies that I'm giving out in ways to support people. And I'd rather get on a 30 minute call with somebody and talk about their specific situation than trying to send them a PDF that may or may not help them. So that's just how I've pivoted in focusing on the 20 percent tasks in the business. So for me, it's networking and speaking to people to grow the business. And it's doing the client delivery and helping them with their business financials. And that's the two main things I do in my business. If I accomplish something towards those two things, that's a win. And I've gotten really clear on how my calendar needs to be built out to support those two things. And if you want to talk about that, I'd love to dive deep on How I break down my calendar to make sure I'm hitting those two things. I've realized there are things I can do for my kids that no one else can do. Like the conversations that we're having with our four year old, that's something no one else can do, maybe Eric, but sometimes he just wants to talk to me. So I'm making sure that I'm available for that and cleaning up the toys and sorting the toys is something I can have somebody else do. We send out our laundry. And it's such a huge shift for us because we're not spending all this time trying to fold clothes, especially little boy clothes that are take forever to fold. I'm outsourcing the stuff that someone else can do and focusing on the things that only I can do. And it's the things that I love doing. And I'm so much happier for it. So just think through your life and your business, your house, life, your everything, and see, are there a couple of things that you could potentially shift to outsource so that you have more time to show up for yourself and your family and that core group of people? So that is all I have for you today. Thank you so much for joining. And if you want to chat more, send me an email. I'd love to jump on a call and just. Talk through some of this. It is something I've been working extensively on for the last year and building out my life in a way that really aligns for me and my family, but me first, and that's a huge shift for me, but I can tell you, I am happier now than I've ever been. And my nervous system is more regulated. I'm showing up for my family better because of that. And then I'm showing up in my business better. Like everything is better because I put myself first. So if that's something I can help support you in please reach out, schedule a call. Let's chat. And I hope you have a great rest of your week. If you like this episode, please send it to a friend, like, subscribe, all the things you're supposed to do. And I look forward to chatting soon. Thanks for joining me on this episode of the Energetic CFO Podcast. Remember, small steps can lead to massive rewards. By taking action, staying disciplined, and seeking knowledge, you can achieve your financial dreams. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to share, like, and subscribe. And don't forget to leave a comment with your thoughts and questions. Until next time, keep learning, keep growing, and keep thriving.