The Peaceful Mompreneur
Encouraging and equipping Christian Mompreneurs to have peace in their lives and business while staying grounded in Jesus Christ.
The Peaceful Mompreneur
Saying NO Creates Success: Magnifying Focus in Your Current Season
Ever felt like you're chasing an impossible dream of "balance" while juggling motherhood and entrepreneurship? Throw away that tired concept and embrace something more attainable - harmony.
Marianne Hickman knows this journey intimately. An international public speaker who's graced over 2,400 stages worldwide, she's built a multiple six-figure business while raising six children. Her remarkable transformation from single mom on food stamps to successful entrepreneur offers a refreshing perspective on creating harmony between career ambitions and family life.
The key starts with defining what success actually means to you. Marianne guides us through a powerful exercise where we envision our perfect day in vivid detail - from when we wake up to what fills our calendar. This clarity becomes the compass for making small, intentional adjustments that bring us closer to our vision.
One of her most liberating insights? The phrase "No, not right now." These five simple words create boundaries without permanently closing doors, allowing us to focus our energy where it matters most in our current season. As Marianne explains, our biggest enemy isn't evil - it's distraction. When we learn to focus our efforts like a magnifying glass concentrating sunlight, we become exponentially more effective and fulfilled.
Her mission to "make good people crazy wealthy" stems from a conviction that positive messages deserve amplification. The world needs more ethical voices with resources to create good, and Marianne helps business owners monetize their messages through the power of stages.
Perhaps most powerfully, she challenges us to reconsider the purpose of our stories: "Nobody cares about your story. We tell our story so it changes someone else's story." This perspective transforms our narratives from self-centered experiences into meaningful tools that serve others.
For the mompreneur struggling in the trenches, Marianne offers this encouragement: your voice matters, even when you doubt it. The challenges you face today are preparing you to help someone tomorrow, and the most powerful being in the universe has your back.
Ready to turn your story into impact? Download Marianne's free guide at MarianneHickman.com/freegift and discover how your experiences can become the message someone else is desperately waiting to hear.
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Welcome to the Peaceful Mompreneur. We are flipping the script on balance, because balance is a myth. Instead of chasing perfection, what if you started searching for harmony? We're going to talk all about creating harmony with your schedule, aligning your choices with your values and making decisions with clarity and confidence in your God-given calling. I'm excited to introduce you to Marianne Hickman. She is an international public speaker and personal speaker mentor who specializes in inspiring. I can talk business owners and coaches to monetize their message through appearing on stages. Marianne has been featured on over 2,400 worldwide stages focusing on enriching and cultivating the development of your story, message and revenue. Her life's motto is to make good people crazy wealthy. Marianne was a single mother who brought her family from food stamps to multiple six-figure income. She is married to her best friend, richard Hickman, and together they are raising six children. Marianne, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Elise In the pre-green room. It's just like we were talking about it the energy matches. I love what you are doing and who you stand for For everyone that's listening. If you're not subscribing and following, hit the button right now because you want to be part of what this woman is building. Thank you for having me on.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. That's so kind. I appreciate that. So like we're talking about right, where balance is not a thing, it's you're just figuring out where you are in the season that you're in Right, and so in your bio it says you've spoken at on twenty four hundred stages. That is a lot. How do you stay grounded and present while you're like doing all of this career stuff and managing, you know, being a mother to not just one, but like six kids and you have a husband and got all the things so like? What does that look like for you?
Speaker 2:Oh man, okay. So, and I could go into practical tools and all of the how to's, and I think, first of all, it's different for everybody. We have to decide for what our own lives look like, what success actually is For different moms, for different women in general, success is going to look like different things for you. So you can't really tools are meaningless if we don't know where we're going or what we're using them for. So the first tool, I guess, is to decide what success looks like. I really like to do this activity with people that I mentor with, with students of mine, with members of my community, where we sit down and we say what would be a perfect day for you, and immediately the limiting thoughts come up. I'm like, shove those aside, you can pick them up later. But what would a perfect day be like? What time would you wake up? Who would you wake up next to? What would you eat for breakfast? What would be the first thing you wanted to do? On your calendar and every day, once we know where we're going, we try to make little tweaks and adjustments to get closer to that perfect day, right? So in this, how do you keep things crazy? You know the schedule from being crazy. It is crazy and it is hard. It is challenging, challenging, and it's meant to be.
Speaker 2:I I don't I don't know if I'm an authority on perfection, because I'm so far from that. There's only one person that's accomplished that and his name is Jesus Christ, right, so the rest of us are just trying to figure it out. And so the the how do you do a career in business? Well, you, you get good at something by sucking at it long enough. So the times where it was ugly and I know I still have those times the goal is to say how did it get this ugly and what can I do to contribute to more beauty and more harmony? And a lot of the times that means changing the approach but staying determined on the goal. That's why I want to know where I'm going. That's why I want to know what a perfect, successful day looks like, because then I'm going to change my approach on how to get there.
Speaker 2:I might have to zigzag a little bit, you know, and it is involved, especially recently, saying no to a lot of travel, which I love to do. So that's really hard, but it doesn't support, you know, raising a toddler right now, and that's that's the main question is what supports? How does my motherhood support my passion, which is what I chose to do for work, and how does that support Marianne being Marianne, and how does that support everything else? So it's kind of like the opposite of rock paper scissors where something kills something else, it's. It's how does something uplift something else? And in any time it doesn't happen. That means I'm out of harmony and I need to adjust the schedule for next time.
Speaker 2:One of the phrases that I have really come to adopt I heard it just a couple of weeks ago, but this is a phrase that has brought me so much peace over the last couple of weeks especially is increase your tolerance for mistakes. Increase your tolerance for mistakes that you make, increase your tolerance for mistakes that other people make, because that's, that's the mental gym, that's where we're getting stronger, that's where we're getting better. So I mean it's. I don't know if that answers your question specifically or not, but I'm by no means perfect at this, but do I have a lot of experience in it? Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and I love that, because the thing is, we never arrive at you know whatever. That is right. Every time we learn something, there's something new to learn. Every time we know more about God, there's more to know something about parenting, there's something else that you got to learn. Your kids change, and so I love everything that you're saying and, yes, I think you answered that. It's basically it's it is. It depends on who you are and where you are and where you want to go.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I know that's not the answer that everybody wants, but it's the truth. Like there's no cookie cutter, there's no like. Here's the model do this thing, you'll be happy, not a not thing. So one of the things that you did say was that you have to say no to things, and obviously right now you're not traveling as much because you have toddlers, and so how do you determine what is good and what is not necessarily bad, just not good for you?
Speaker 2:Well, that's a good question, because the power of choice is the most powerful thing that we have. And you're right. And the choice is not always easy, because if it were choosing between bad and good, the choice would be very easy. We would always choose the good thing, but more often than not, we're choosing between good and better, and absolutely best it's. That's when it gets hard, because there's all of these good things are in front of us and one is going to be good and sue this for a little while, but one thing is like the best thing for us, and how do we know and understand the difference? This principle is a principle that marketers use. It's a principle that salespeople use. It's a principle that fulfillment teams use. It's a principle that companies use and it's a principle that influencers use. It's very common.
Speaker 2:It's probably going to annoy a lot of people when I say it, but it's niching down and here's what I mean by that. I know I've already lost some people by saying that because we are so sick of this phrase, right, but I think about it in terms of like a magnifying glass. I don't know if you've ever had like a magnifying glass in your hand right, and if you're like me. You go out on the sidewalk and see what you do with the light and how you can bend and warp the light and how you can make a spotlight out of it or you can make a little pinpoint of light out of it that actually you know you can burn the weeds in between the cracks in the sidewalks and stuff like that. Focus is so powerful. I think the enemy's biggest tool against us is not evil, it's distraction, because that's when he can get most of us is this distraction, and it's distraction with the good that keeps us from the best. And so when I was first learning about this, it was when I was actually doing photography.
Speaker 2:I studied photography in college, had a business before I went to college, and when I first started doing photography, I would say yes to every photo shoot possible, because I didn't know this, but I didn't know what I wanted to do. So I said yes to the family shoots. I said yes to the traveling photography. I said yes to newborn photography. I said yes to puppy photography. I said yes to maternity and graduation and and prom and and anyone that needed a photo. I said yes to it. Weddings, you name it. And I remember my first windfall. I was like I had the best problem Any business owner wants of having too many clients and not enough fulfillment. It was a struggle because, man, I remember I had, I was driving down I-15.
Speaker 2:A lot of thinking happens in my car. I don't know about you, but that's where, like I chew on stuff right Driving down I-15, and uh, this I'm talking to God Cause he's, he sits co-pilot lots of times and I was like, listen, I have so much to do. I have three photo shoots backed up overdue on my computer. The clients are starting to bug me. They're late. I'm.
Speaker 2:I have two shoots today. I'm getting backed up on them and one of them is a wedding, which means really high pressure. I only get one day to do this right, because we don't get to redo the wedding if the memory card fails or if the batteries die or if something malfunctions. It's very high pressure. Usually, everyone else is feeling that high pressure of the wedding. We've got mom's ill as bride's ill as groom's ill as the screaming toddlers Right and we have to make it perfect. And so all this high pressure came in and in this conversation I'm praying for help to get these shoots out the door. I'm praying for help to be a jovial person on these, these productions, and I'm sitting down.
Speaker 2:At the end of that day after all, my prayers went up and I got all the feedback and this is what God told me. He said you're allowed to say no. There's this abundance of chaos when we say yes to too many things. And God said guess what? You are allowed to pick and choose what you want to do. So I started saying no to weddings, even though I was really good at it. I started saying no to weddings because I didn't have fun. And then I started saying no to pet photography because that'd be crazy. And then I started saying no to newborn photography because they're crazy too. They're just as crazy as the puppies. And then I started saying no to the large family shoots with 50 people because it wasn't fun for me.
Speaker 2:And I really started honing in. I only said yes to couples travel photography and that was so fun, it was so fulfilling and it was so relieving to say no to everything else and be able to say, no, that's not what I do, that's what somebody else says. I can refer you if you want, but no, that's not what I do. And that laser focus, just like we get with the magnifying glass. That magnifying glass, that beam of light, is so much more potent and powerful when it is focused on one thing, and I've learned it in my photography business and I'm continually relearning this lesson over and over and over again with my kids, with my parenting, with the different seasons of life that we go through what's the focus right now? What's the focus right now, and as long as I know the focus right now, oh my gosh, what a relief it is to say no, that's not for me right now. No, not right now. That is one of the most powerful phrases.
Speaker 2:I learned it from my friend, hope Zavara. She's one of my favorite people. When I heard her say that, I was like, oh, that huge sigh of relief and the burden just fell off. I get to say no, not right now, and sometimes that means saying no to the dishes, and sometimes that means saying no to the laundry or whatever it might be. No, not right now, maybe later, but no, not right now is one of my favorite tools. For any mom If you've been struggling with juggling everything when struggling for balance, look at your list and just analyze what can I say? No, not right now too, and then put it off.
Speaker 1:I love that so much. I love that saying um no, not right now, because for me I get really ants antsy about saying no, because I don't want to miss it.
Speaker 2:Right, it has nothing, it's very little to do with the other person.
Speaker 1:I just don't want to not do something, and so not right now means maybe one day, right. So let me put it on a list. I literally have a list that I call parking lot is. I have an idea that's not for right now. It can go in there, but it's not gone right. So I like that. No, not right now. So it frees you in the moment so that your mind is clear, so you can be focused, like you're saying, and it also doesn't mean everything you're thinking is for never, right, right? Yeah, I really liked the way that you broke that down. Everything about that was wonderful, and so how do you know what to focus on? Because we are being pulled from a million places. So if you were going to sit down with someone who is a young mom and she's starting a business, either as a brand new or it's in the very beginning, how do you, what do you tell her? What do I do?
Speaker 2:Well, that depends on where you want to go right, it's the Cheshire Cat principle. It's I don't know what you want to focus on, unless you tell me what you want to focus on. And I remember being at a seminar. I mean, you've probably been to your fair share I'm a seminar junkie, you can call it that. But I remember being at a seminar and the facilitator said you're going to get in a partnership, a dyad, and for five minutes each of you is going to take a turn, so a 10 minute focus session, and you're going to take five minutes and the other person in front of you is going to take five minutes and everyone that's listening. I encourage you to do this with your partner, with your business partner, with your spouse, with yourself, with your God in prayer just someone where you can bounce this idea off of. And our job was to talk about what we wanted for five minutes straight. We couldn't stop and we couldn't end the timer early. The first thing I noticed when I was doing that is I really didn't know until I was asked right, like I the easy answers of I just want to be happy. You can't say that for five minutes without coloring it in Right. And I watched my listen to myself develop this idea. I remember I was sitting there and I was like, oh, you know what I really want to do. I want to create a retreat center for women and have it have a equine modalities and art therapies and talk therapies, and I want a peach orchard in the back with border collies running the sheep, and I want there to be an aviary and I want Spanish moss up on the driveway with a double-decker porch wrapping all the way around it with the French Southern Louisiana ironwork. That'd be so pretty. And the more I talked about it, the more detailed it got. And I surprised myself because I had never listened before to what I actually wanted.
Speaker 2:And when we really understand what is the destination, what is the goal, what is the milestone, a lot of people shy away from this right Because we're so afraid we won't get it. We don't want to describe it in detail and I'm telling you that is one of the biggest mistakes you can make, because if you don't know where you're going, you're going to be lost and meandering. And that's when we get ourselves into trouble, that's when we get distracted, that's when we forget what we're made of, that's when we forget whose daughters we are. That's when we forget our potential and our possibilities and our divine fibers of our being, that we're actually made from this ingredients that we've been given, as women, to multiply and create. You give me half a human cell I'm gonna make a full human out of it. You give me a house, I'm gonna make it a home. We, as women, we are the great multipliers and we are always multiplying. But what are we multiplying? And if we don't know, we're gonna be multiplying something. That's not good. It's a law of entropy, it's basic physics, guys.
Speaker 2:So when I'm sitting down with that mom and she's a new mom and she has a business and she has a passion, maybe she's thinking of starting one I'm saying where do you want this to go? What milestone do you want to see? What measurable? Ok, I know you want to be happy. We get that. But what's going to make you happy? What? How will you know when you're happy?
Speaker 2:I was talking to one of my members just this last week. I said how will you know when you're happy? I was talking to one of my members just this last week. I said how will you know when you're there? She said I'll know I'm there when I've helped a hundred thousand moms and I was like, oh, this is getting exciting, how will you know that you've helped them? She's like, well, I don't know. I'm like that's the next thing to get clear on. How will you know when you're there? Because everything can be reverse engineered from that. And what's cool about it is this big goal. I'll just take Susan's goal and I know that she's public with this one, in case I say her name. Her goal is to help 100,000 moms know themselves better. Now that we know that goal, we can ask ourselves how can I experience a measure of that today before I go to bed? Just a measure of it, not the whole thing, just a measure of it. Can I help one mom today? Can I do this today? And and that's that's worth getting excited about I once time, one time, did a ropes course.
Speaker 2:You know ropes course are meant to be like team building and all this stuff, and I didn't have a team. I was freshly divorced, so it was just for my team, for me. So I went and I did this ropes course and they had me climb to the top of this telephone pole, scary as all get out, and I'm standing there on top of this I don't even know how high telephone pole it was high enough to that where, like the wind moved, you swayed with it and you're like I'm feeling like I'm hula hooping on top of it. This is really scary. And of course they have you do something really scary On top of that. You have to jump and catch a trapeze that looks impossibly far away. But before you do, you got to decide why you're doing it and I said to myself I was looking at the beautiful view, trying to distract myself from the precipice of falling I said I deserve to be excited about something every day.
Speaker 2:Whether or not I catch that trapeze, I deserve to be excited about something every day and this is how I know where you're going. And then, before you go to bed, do something that looks like that. That's what I would tell that young mom is, is that you deserve to be excited every day, Cause you're going to go through hard. We get that, but you deserve to be excited every day.
Speaker 1:I think that's great advice. I love that so much. I'm in this mastermind group and we ask each other what can I do for you? Which makes that person have to really decide like, what is it that I need and what can I ask somebody for? So it makes this. There's this vulnerability about what you're talking about which is, you know, I have to dream big and be willing to tell someone about it, right and so, and start making these decisions and then also, on top of that, start asking for help to get there.
Speaker 1:I love that, yeah, so it's beautiful, I love it so much, that's all wonderful. So you have this saying which I really I, you know, I've never heard, because it's yours and I just met you not that long ago. I wrote it down a second ago. I'll just read it off your bio man see, look, not prepared.
Speaker 2:Oh, you're a second ago.
Speaker 1:Um, I'll just read it off your bio man See, look not prepared. Oh, you're a good girl, Okay, so to make good people crazy wealthy. So what does that look like? What do you, what do you do?
Speaker 2:So this is really fun. Um, and I put the qualifier of good people on there because, I mean, you and I both have enough experience in this world to know that, first of all, money is neutral. It's just a tool, just like a hammer. It can be used to build or destroy. So I want good people to have that money, because good people are going to create foundations, they're going to put the money where it needs to go, they're going to do service opportunities. They're going to use it to do the good in the world that needs to be done.
Speaker 2:So I put the microphone up in front of someone whose message I can't get behind, because I mean, we're all raising kids here in this world, right, we're all trying to figure this day out. None of us have ever done this before, but we want the best influence for our kids, because you and I both know that it doesn't take a village to raise a child, but your village will raise your child. So the more people that are good people they don't I don't even have to agree with them on everything, but if they are light, seeking, good doing, moral, ethical people, then those people deserve to be wealthy so that they can spread more of what I want to raise my children in. They can spread more of what I want to raise my children in. Not everyone deserves the microphone. Everyone can have a microphone. I'm not going to limit free speech or anything like that it doesn't misunderstand me but I am not willing to put the microphone in front of people I don't believe in. So when I say make good people crazy wealthy, I do that through the power of stages. I want as many good people to share their messages on podcasts, physical stages in their own businesses on social media as I possibly can, because we are hungry for it. The world is hungry for it. You might create an Instagram post that maybe saves someone's life and you'll never know, but you need to be compensated for that so that you can keep doing it.
Speaker 2:People don't know this, but Jesus's mission was funded. It was funded. How do you think he took three years off and just go traveling? You know you've got to pay the people who run the boats. You have to pay the people whose restaurants you use. All of that it deserves to be funded and that doesn't deserve to be inhibitor.
Speaker 2:My sister once said something to me. She said never let money be the reason you don't do something. And so I, my hope and my goal is to remove that barrier. So I have a list on my phone of a hundred people who've all told me they want to make a million dollars, and I have to tell you that list is full of people who are, who know what they said yes to, and there are some people on that list who don't know what they said yes to.
Speaker 2:It's like if I said how many of you want abs of steel, everyone would raise their hands, right, but if I said how many of you want to do a hundred crunches for a hundred days, not as many people would raise their hand. So it's a goal of mine, it's a passion of mine. When we built the studio, we literally wrote that with the Sharpie on the studs of this room. Because it is a passion and for the right people, we get to work together and I get to watch them light up as those dreams are realized. And and for some people you know they they come in and they get what they need and they leave, and that's okay, um, but I just I want to leave a mark on the planet that says, when I get back to God, I can say, I multiplied the talents that you gave me and I did responsible things with the gifts you gave me.
Speaker 1:That's beautiful, I love it. So that's so much. So you are offering everyone a free gift. Can you talk about that? It's the take your first steps towards building your signature presentation.
Speaker 2:Oh, and that's, that's a really beautiful thing. On on my website I have a little guidebook for turning your story into a message of impact. So if you go to MarianneHickmancom forward slash free gift. It's a little. It's a very chewable, biteable 12 pages of how to convert your story into a message. And this book isn't a magic wand. It's not going to be the thing that says poof you, now you're an amazing speaker. It's just a framework that then you can go out, use it, practice it, get feedback and learn how to do it so that when you get the opportunity to have the microphone in front of you.
Speaker 2:Here's the thing I want everyone to know Nobody cares about your story. I know that sounds mean, but hear me out. Nobody cares about your story. We tell our story, so it changes someone else's story.
Speaker 2:You're listening to this podcast because you want your life to be better. You're listening to this podcast because you want your life to be better. You're listening to this podcast for the same reason that people go drink themselves crazy drunk at a bar to enrich their lives. But you're doing something productive with it. You want to enrich your life in a really powerful way and when you go and use your story to change the lives of other people for the better. Now your story has meaning behind it, now it can serve somebody. It's not a laundry list of everything that's gone wrong and all your traumas in your life that's not interesting to anybody. Your audience, the people that are waiting for you, literally praying for you, to show up, they're begging. They're begging God for you to get your stuff together so that they can be helped, so that they can be saved, and God's going to use you to do his work.
Speaker 1:That is beautiful. I love that, and so we will link that gift in the description of this video. So if you had one like one minute to tell this Christian mom and your young kids any advice that you want to give her, what would you tell her?
Speaker 2:Your voice matters, even if you don't think you have one. I've seen public speakers and even comedians who are mute deliver an amazing speech and make people cry. It's pretty incredible. Your story matters because it can change the lives of stories. It can change the stories of your audience. You matter as a mom. When you're crying alone in your closet at night, hang on just a little bit longer. When you're frustrated with your business because you don't know if it's going to be successful, if you don't know if you're going to make it to next month's water bill or next month's rent, please know that the most powerful being at the universe has your back, that there are people praying and waiting for you and you are paying the necessary price to be the legitimate person, to be the legitimate mentor, to be the legitimate help who actually can help someone, because you are going through the refiner's fire that brings you closer to representing the face of God.
Speaker 1:Awesome, wonderful. Thank you so much, marianne. I'm so glad that you joined us today.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me. I hope you guys have been blessed by being here.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.