One Wild Brand

Building Businesses and Babies

• Amanda DeMoura • Season 1 • Episode 7

Share episode

Building businesses while raising babies isn’t a Pinterest-perfect feed. It’s yogurt spills on new sneakers, colicky nights, and figuring out how to keep moving forward when the “work during naps” advice doesn’t cut it. In this episode, I get real about what it looked like to grow (and sell) my first company while becoming a mom – and what it looks like now, building One Wild Brand with a toddler and a newborn.

Whether you’re a fellow mompreneur or just curious how anyone juggles both, you’ll walk away with perspective, encouragement, and a few strategies that made the hard days survivable (and the good days worth celebrating).

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

  • Why I chose to start a business while pregnant (and what fueled my “why”)
  • A day-in-the-life of running a company with a newborn and toddler
  • The role of support systems – from family to outsourcing help
  • Why I sold my first business before baby #2 (and how that opened the door to One Wild Brand)
  • The truth behind “work while the baby naps” 
  • How I’m building differently now – vision boards, planners, and outsourcing
  • Why celebrating micro-wins matters just as much as hitting the big ones

Resources & Mentions

Links & Next Steps

👉 Explore my services & resources: www.onewildbrand.com

📸 Follow along on Instagram: @onewildbrand

Hi everyone. Welcome back to the One Wild Brand Podcast. I'm Amanda Demora. I'm sitting here. It is a dreary, little bit rainy Friday, and we're kind of back into fall vibes here, back to school fall structure, which I really kind of like. My husband is a. A bit of a wimp when it comes to fall and winter. He loves summer so much and he loves to just be hot, and I cannot say that I share the same sentiment. I really like. Oversized sweatshirts, fall socks. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I call that my Olympics because I love to cook and for some reason I just have always really loved Thanksgiving. I don't know why. I think that's maybe 'cause my dad is a. Great cook and he always just put on like an amazing Thanksgiving that I've been trying to replicate for many years now. I'm not sure that I'm quite there, but getting a little better every year. And my son and I had a little mommy son. Today before school drop off, we went to Starbucks and he got a little strawberry refresher thing and a raccoon cake pop that that was actually me that really wanted that. And he got a little yogurt pouch. And here I am dressed, trying to look put together. I don't often. Look put together. Well, that, I don't know, maybe I'm not giving myself enough credit there, but these days with a baby and a toddler, I'm not looking put together very often. So we're there. I've got my brand new white on clouds on that I do not wear very often, but again, I'm trying to give, put together vibes and his yogurt poach falls. Splashes everywhere. All over my new shoes. Oh. And all I could really do was laugh because when you're a mom of toddlers and babies, just trying to wear anything nice or new just goes right out the window. Totally, totally out the window. So. Anyway, I was able to salvage my new white on clouds when I came home with this spray that I bought the other day, and it's called the pink stuff, and it's a stain removing spray, which you gotta have a lot of bottles of those when you have kids and, and babies and not all the things. So that took it right out. Very exciting. So recommend that product. And then on the one wild brand front, right now I am wrapping up a website and social media templates for a friend of mine, Angela. She's also a colleague and she is in the dental space. She's a dental consultant and her website is. One of my favorites thus far. I love it so much. Just aesthetically, it is a very calming and beautiful to the eye. I think when people land on it, her potential clients and things, it's just so easy to look at and it draws you in. It also has, Angela loves color. And, and I do not, which I was very upfront with her Well, that's not true. That I do love color. Not necessarily in my home or on my wardrobe, but there's certain colors that I just don't really love. I don't wear a lot of colors. So, we did incorporate some of Angela's. Original brand colors into a new color palette refresh and new logo refresh. So. I think we successfully did that while still maintaining a very kind of calm and serene color palette. There's just the right balance there. So that has been cool. And her website in general just is very dynamic and there's a lot to it because Angela has a lot to offer and she does a lot. So she's a dental consultant, like I said, so she goes into dental practices and does. A lot of things. I won't get into all those things here, but you know, helps dentists and helps teams with various things. So we have that page, which is kind of selling her consulting services and what's included. She also has a book. And we have some really cool features throughout the site that kind of prompt people to either purchase the book or download one chapter of the book. So we integrated some flow desk, opt-in forms and buttons into her website so people are able to just enter their name and their email address. Click a button and a flow desk will automatically send over a PDF of that first chapter of her book. And then they'll kind of be funneled into other sequences, you know, however she might want those to look. Maybe it's a couple weeks later or a couple days later that they're getting an email with some verbiage and a little nudge to purchase the full book. Or whatever it might be. She also. Has a bootcamp. So that is kind of a course that she offers. So I built out a really cool sales page for that bootcamp. And throughout the sales page there are, you know, reminders to get on the wait list for this bootcamp to open.'cause it's something she doesn't offer year round. She kind of creates a launch for it and only does it a couple times a year. So. People will be able to, again, put their name and email in, and then they'll start getting emails when the course is about to launch. And then, let's see. She also is a speaker. She speaks at a lot of events and things. So we have a page that showcases where she's been, all the exciting things she's done, what she loves to speak on, different podcasts she's been on, just showcases her work and credibility there and. We have some options for people to download her speaking packet if they are interested in having her speak at an event. Obviously she has a great about Me page and I'm just super excited for this website because it is beautiful and I think it's really going to represent her. Better than what she has now. And one of the things that she had said originally in our first call, which really hit me in the fields, I don't know how to say that differently. She said that once she branched off on her own as a consultant, 'cause she was working for a company prior to that. She said she never really took the time to celebrate that or, you know, show up in the way that she wanted to show up on her website. And I think that happens a lot. if you are constantly getting clients and things and getting bookings and you just, you know, you think everything's kind of going great and your website just kind of takes a back seat, and that was something I was so excited to help her change. So I'm really looking forward to wrapping that one up, getting her to launch her website. I also made her matching social media templates, so she has the matching content to just create a. Consistent visual effect across the board. So excited to wrap that up. Okay. Today, I am not exactly sure what I am naming this episode, but it's gonna be something like building businesses and babies. It just the story of being a mompreneur and what that really. Has looked like for me over the past four years, and I'll try not to repeat too many stories that I've already repeated. If you want to hear more about my background, please go to episode one, which is my origin story. But to summarize that a little bit, my background is in the dental space. I have been in the dental space for 20 years, since I was in college. mainly being a practice manager and I started a dental billing company. Four years ago now, I suppose. And that company grew and grew and grew from one tiny little client that I had to, many clients across the country. And I had a team of about 40, and I sold that company a year ago. And through it also while maintaining a full-time job or, you know, I did cut down to part-time eventually. There was a lot going on and there was a lot going on while I was pregnant and also in turn having a newborn and small child and toddler. So I just wanted to talk about really what that all looked like, what kept me going, all the struggles that I faced, and I just wanna give an accurate vision, and I feel like I see a very sugarcoated version of what this looks like. In some other podcasts and things, and that is totally fine if that is people's experience. but it was not always mine. It wasn't just like chipping away at work while the baby naps, which, which I feel like is what I see a lot. So anyhow, that's what today's episode is gonna be like. So, really what prompted me to. Start my billing company and I dragged my feet for a very long time because I thought that that market was particularly saturated and I wish I started sooner. I really do. I, could have grown even larger and maybe even faster, but here we are. So I think when I found out that I was pregnant. I kind of ignited a bit of a fire in me because being fully transparent, I was making a great salary at my practice manager position, and my husband and I financially like doing just fine. but something in me wanted more and I think, not for me, but for my. Soon to be child and like in particular, some things that were important to me that I wanna be able to provide my kids, our travel. I did not get to do a lot of travel growing up, and, and that is fine. and then college, I wanna be able to help my children with college as much as I possibly can. If for some reason they do not go to college, we will deal with that then and roll that money into. An IRA or something, but I, I, I wanna be able to help them there. I have seen family members and even some young kids who have worked for me drop out of college because it was too expensive. and I don't want my kids to be weighed down by that burden. If I'm able to help. So that is really like my motivation along with other things. I just want my kids to know that they can do the things that they wanna do and explore the hobbies that they want, and play an expensive sport if that's what they wanna do, and I'll be able to take care of that for them. That's important to me. So that was my motivation. And I think once I had the baby, had my son four years ago. That's really, I think when things started to become real is because now not only was I still working full-time, I also had this business that was growing and I probably had a small team at that point. Maybe I had five people working for me, but. That's a lot. My days kinda looked crazy. Of course it was getting up in the morning, giving baby a bottle, getting baby ready to go off to daycare. My husband was helping , a lot with this too., I'm not mentioning him here, but he was definitely here and, going off to my full-time job. Picking up my son from daycare, coming home, doing dinner, bedtime, bathtime, all of that stuff. And then getting back on my computer to focus on my business and follow up with the team and everything that they were working on that day and things. And oftentimes it was, you know, working into the late hours, 11, 12 o'clock at night. It was just a lot. And that's, that's all I can really say. it was very, very hard at times and I think some key things to think about or remember if this is something that you are exploring, entrepreneurship of any kind. Because I am again in this boat right now, but it looks a little bit different and I wanna talk about that in a little bit. But support system is absolutely key here. So my husband amazing. At that time, my husband was doing a little bit of a different career. We are both quite entrepreneurial, but I caught that bug from him and for many years He's a general contractor now. Well, he has been for a long time, but he, he would do, you know, construction, building additions, all those things during the day. And then he had a job that he worked from like three to 11 or four to midnight. So a lot of these nights it was just me with our little guy. And after putting him to bed is when I would just jump on the computer and keep working. And obviously after a while that can weigh on anyone. When you're just working, working, working, there are going to be times where you hit a wall and a support system is key here. We are very, very lucky in the sense of having, My husband's family lives very close by. There's only one house in between us and his parents, which is amazing., I don't know how we would've made it through any of this without them, to be honest. They babysit a lot for us. They have been there for emergencies if we needed to drop one or two children off or whatever it might be. so a support system is huge if you don't have one. This could be, you know, an even harder struggle. And I've talked about before, I think that I've done some business coaching over the last year, mainly people with, consulting companies and such. And one in particular, one of my clients is growing her business, but also going through. a not so great divorce that has a lot of emotional components to it, and she's got two young girls and there's definitely been some tear shed on our coaching calls It's hard to see and emotionally, my heartstrings are pulled there for sure. So I'm seeing all these things kind of firsthand and, and what this looks like for other people. So. These are all factors to take into consideration if you're thinking of some kind of entrepreneurial journey. I'm not trying to sound discouraging because looking back four years ago, I'm so glad I did what I did. And endured through the hard times because it was so worth it for me and my family. And to be honest, when you're looking back, like in retrospect. I know that there were hard times, but it's not like I can particularly remember one certain day and one certain incident, and it's all just kind of a blur, right? I'm one of those people in general, when I'm looking back on a memory or a time in my life or people in my life, I'm remembering the good things as opposed to the bad things. that's just kind of my reflection on it now, but there were many times over those three years in which the business was rocking and rolling, that I had what I like to call mini meltdowns and what those were, or probably a couple days of. Self-doubt and you know, just wondering what the heck I was doing this all for. Like why was I working so hard and what was this even gonna mean? I think especially when you kind of have like a startup, the first year or so I didn't pay myself and that wasn't because I. Didn't have any money to pay myself. I don't know why. I really didn't. I just was like keeping all extra money from the business in an account in case catastrophe happened, which luckily it didn't. But then I turned into an S corp and part of that is you need to pay yourself a salary. So that kind of gave me the, push I needed to actually take home some money. And that made me feel, I think, a little bit better, but like. What am I doing this all for? Well, you know, now you have this extra income per month and things, so I think. Those like mini meltdowns were a lot of just exhaustion on how many hours I was putting in and trying to raise this young little baby and be there for them and make dinner and just wear all the hats that moms wear. You know, were so many things, so many different times a day and it's hard to feel like you're on top of everything. It's hard to manage a household and a business and all of those things, so having a amazing support system is really, really helpful. Staying organized and writing down your thoughts. I'm someone who lives by my paper planner. And in it, there's a lot of gratitude prompts, wins and losses, things I just reflect on weekly goals that I have, but also obviously meetings that I've got to-do, lists that I have. Otherwise, I'm just, I mean, I do this all digitally too, but I love having my paper planner, so organization is key. You just can't do this. And, Be too lax about it. so that is what things looked like for the first three years. And then my husband and I, you know, the beginning of 2024, we decided that we wanted to have another baby. And I knew as we were thinking about this, that I could not keep going at the pace that I was going at that time and have another baby. And I didn't want to. You know, I knew that I didn't want to, , I had a tough, not like tough medically where I had medical issues my first pregnancy, but I am what you call advanced maternal age. I was 35 when I had my son. I'm 38 now and had my daughter earlier this year while being 38 and. The doctors like to call you advanced maternal age. I overall like. Like I said, it was okay, but it was hard on my body. It was just hard on my body. I was not one of those thriving pregnant people by any means. I just did not really enjoy being slowed down and not being able to like move the way I wanted to move and eat what I wanted to eat. I felt sick every time I ate and like it just wasn't a really comfortable experience. So I was very envious of all those. Glowing moms who just loved pregnancy so much that just wasn't me. I was really anxious to start sleeping on my stomach again. So, there was that feeling like total crud for nine months and, you know, being there for other children and, working and growing businesses and things. It's a lot. It's just a lot. So I knew that I. Needed to slow down a bit. And also just the timing in my business. It became a good time to think about about selling, and the right buyer came along and. I sold, and I think that was a really, really good decision. Looking back, I think obviously at the beginning I was very nervous because I cared for my team so much. I had a lot of awesome ladies on my team. Just coincidentally, it was all women and a lot of young moms, like me, well, I, I say young moms, and by that I just mean mom to young children.'cause clearly, according to my doctor. I was not young, so, luckily that buyer really kind of felt warm to me. I knew they were gonna treat my team well and things just kind of lined up perfectly there. So that was a good move. But after I sold, you know, some, months down the road. I think as a true entrepreneur I couldn't turn it off. And you know, then my wheels just started spinning about what's next and I didn't have that answer for a long time. I knew I wanted to do something else, but I really wasn't sure what that was. And that took some time to evolve. So. When I owned my billing company, I've talked about this before in my origin story, so you can go listen to episode one. again, if you wanna hear that. But I had taken over all of our marketing and branding and website and things, and after that happened, are my business kind of. Exploded, and that was for many reasons. One, obviously the content was great and looked beautiful and I had this great business and branding that I was proud to get in front of. And I started speaking at conferences and all of these things and, and it all just kind of snowballed and made our business grow. I just happened to be like passionate about design work, you know, web design and Canva and all of that. Obviously, like be somewhat good at it. I had a little bit of a skill. I had the passion though, so I started taking a ton of marketing classes, but also design classes and really leaning into this because. It just interested me so much and I didn't know it then, but I think a spark was really lit at that time. So after I sold my business and I was doing like some business coaching and things, a lot of it just kind of tied back to Me helping them with design stuff. It was like, okay, well you know, your website really needs to be better. Why don't I just help you with that? Or if you're struggling with social media, why don't I just like make you a couple things in Canva? And then one thing just led to another there. And One Wild Brand was born and I couldn't be happier. I've just been loving web design and It's been so nice to have helped the clients that I've helped and really kinda looking forward to the future here. The difference now is really growing one wild brand while having a newborn. I'm actually not sure when babies are not considered newborns anymore, but she is seven months. I think the difference now because there is a lot of energy and things that go into. One wild brand. But I think the difference now is I don't have a team and I think that makes all the difference in stress. Everything is on my terms. I only have my clients depending on me. I would like to have a small team at some point, I think, but I think that will look a lot different than it did before. it was just total different landscape, total different business type. And I think at this point in my life, I'll be able to handle what that looks like in a very constructive way. But I think this notion of. Working while the baby naps you know, having a nanny come over while you work for two hours, like that just did not always work out for me. that is so highly dependent on the baby, and I feel like I see a lot of just misconception or maybe people are talking about this and this is their experience, but, especially with my last baby, I really wanted to take those first few months and not feel like I had to go to my computer when she was napping because I also needed a rest. my daughter was very, very colicky. I have talked about this before for, oh Lord, maybe five months. And by that I mean. Almost all hours. She was awake, she was crying and sleep was interesting during those hours. So, know, working while the baby napped it just like . My husband and I were just exhausted all the time, so I really couldn't have wrapped my brain around working too much during that time. So the notion of working while a baby naps was like right out the window for me during my quote unquote maternity leave. I definitely was still. Brainstorming, getting things ready, doing a lot of talking to chat GPT to help me work out ideas and layouts and future content schedules and things. But all in all, I was taking things pretty easy. So to just kind of wrap up a little bit here and summarize, being a mom to particularly babies and toddlers, toddlers and babies at the same time, there's a lot that. not seeing, I think when you're looking at this on social media, and that is early mornings, late nights, missed moments, those are all the things that you're just not seeing. There's a big emotional side to it too. A lot of mom guilt. A lot of pressure, a lot of wanting to be everything to everyone. I, again, you know, I wanna do all the things that my mom maybe didn't do for me, and that's like, you know, make the homemade Valentine's Day things for the whole classroom and make homemade bread for their sandwiches and all of these things, and leave notes in another lunchbox. And with, with that comes a lot of planning ahead and extra time that. When you're growing a business, you might feel like you don't always have. So really what it comes down to is like a lot less sleeping. And for someone who has valued sleep for the majority of their life, that can be a tough wake up call. I'm kind of like in the notion now that I'll sleep later at some point in my life when the children are a bit older. Uh, but coming back to your why is really, really important and whatever that might be. It obviously does not have to be your children like mine is, I think. Even before I had kids, I had motivators too. And sometimes that was just maybe before my husband and I knew that we were going to have kids. Some of it was just our future for when we retired. We wanted to be financially secure and you know, we wanna live here or there and in order to live here or there, you needed to do certain things financially and business wise. So. It certainly doesn't need to be about kids. It's whatever that might mean to you. circling back to it, thinking about it, I am a big proponent of a vision board. I have a vision board, a little mini one that I keep in my planner. I also have one on the wall in my office that I just look at a lot. I think in the day-to-day hustle, it is really easy to lose sight of your goals and your why, so having reminders of those. Doing your weekly reflection and goal planning, so very important, remembering that no one can do this alone. This is not a weakness. I know I talked a lot about. Our family help, but also just on like the business side of things. When I owned my billing company, of course I had team leads and people underneath me that really had to step in when I needed to take a break or step back a little from the business that. Helped tremendously. There were still times where, you know, as the business owner you do need to step in and put in the time and the work and things. but now. With one wild brand like I'm saying I'm a one woman show, but I still have help. I have an amazing podcast editor, other people that I hire to do miscellaneous tasks, of course, like a bookkeeper, an accountant, all of those things, that's all help and things that you are taking off your plate. You just can't do everything by yourself. Outsourcing tasks, getting a virtual assistant, all of those things are gonna help a lot. So it's not just family support and support from friends, it's work tasks that you can take off your plate. Alright. Being a mom and an entrepreneur is. Very hard for me. It has been very hard, but very worth it. I wanted this podcast to be about trying to normalize the struggles and celebrate the wins both big and small. One thing that I think I was poor at with my billing company was we would set goals, revenue goals and other goals within the company. You know, like we wanted to have X amount of clients by whatever date it was. You know, in Q2 we wanted to hit revenue of whatever it might be, and then, you know, when those things happened. We didn't take the time to celebrate them, or at least I didn't take the time to celebrate them. So setting aside time to do that and make sure that you do and however in whichever way you want to celebrate is great. Otherwise, like things just roll into the next, and again, it's like, alright, what is this all for? If we're not taking time to recognize our hard work here? All right, my last little segment here is just some quick questions and my answers to them. So the first one, what did I imagine entrepreneurship would look like with a newborn? And was that their reality?. Honestly, it looked different with both children with my son, my first child. I envisioned it looking like. I would be able to like get so much done while he was with me, even awake. I really thought I'd be able to like put in an eight hour day and he would just be a baby and like kind of just be like, hanging out next to me. That did not happen. That did not happen. I think what you're gonna find out if you haven't had kids before is yes, when they are sleeping, you can get things done. But for me. A lot of the things were like, okay, now I've gotta go clean all his bottles. Go throw in the laundry, like wipe down these things. A lot of household stuff when you're like home with your baby all day long, like there's a lot of things that start piling up. There's, you know, there food and there's snacks and their bottles and. Their laundry that needs to get done. And those are like chores that are getting done while they are sleeping. So there's not always a ton of time for cracking the laptop open and working. So that was a reality check for sure. Fridays being a, a true work from home day, for me, that was a day that I thought I would have him. Still be able to tackle a lot, but that was not true. So I did end up tacking on a day of daycare on Friday for him so that I was able to, get some things done. Not always a full day, but, definitely dedicated hours in which he had care. Next question was, what's the hardest sacrifice I had to make? And hmm, that's an interesting one, I think. Probably just time spent with my kids. Not always a ton of time, but there were times where, you know, maybe everyone would just be playing, you know, my son and the kids or whatever. And I would have to say, okay, mom's gonna go get some work done and I'll see you in a little bit. And just really time spent away from them. Next question, if someone is thinking of starting a business as a mom, what do I want her to know? And I think I've summarized that quite nicely here, is that it's probably not gonna look like the picture that is painted on Instagram, unless I'm just the anomaly here. But I have a feeling that I'm not, and. It is hard work, long hours, lots of emotional twists and turns, but as I mentioned, totally, totally worth it for me. In the end, you know, I was able to grow a successful business and sell it, and financially that meant a lot to myself and my family. And, For lack of a better explanation, changed our lives for the better. I'm now able to have another company that I'm really passionate about., I can't wait to open up my laptop or turn on my computer and get to work on my client's projects, so that has been really rewarding. And I wouldn't be here if I wasn't there. So, hard work and sacrifice, but totally worth it. What does my support system look like now and how has it changed since my first business? it's pretty similar. I know I mentioned my in-laws help a ton. My husband's parents. And we have my son's a bit older now, so he is in full-time, pre-K, you know, Monday to Friday. My daughter is in daycare and my husband's mom watches her quite a bit. That all looks the same. But we have, I, I do now outsource just more things that, like I've mentioned, my podcast editor, other things I decided recently that we were going to get a housekeeper to help us. Sometimes just taking some of the workload off, even if it's household workload, I think can be quite relieving. So if you're able to. Outsource tasks that just straight up are not getting done. I encourage you to do that if it's within your means. And then the last question, which I really like this question is how do I want my kids to remember this season of my life? Well, I am hoping. They probably, will not remember this season of my life because they are so young and when they are around, I really, really try to be present. usually when I walk in the door, I. Don't have my phone with me. I'm not looking at it. I'm paying attention to them. I kind of leave it in my purse until we head upstairs for bedtime. cause it's so easy to just like be scrolling while you're at the dinner table or you know, kind of be playing with them on the floor. But you pick up your phone and you're looking at something that's just not what I want them to see and I don't wanna get distracted by work things on there. So I try to keep those separate. So I'm hoping that they don't remember too much of mommy working a lot or daddy working a lot. you know, my husband works a lot too. We have always both been. In multiple facets of various businesses and things and just had a lot going on, and I would like my kids to try to just remember us being present. I, of course, do want to instill in them the value of hard work. I would love to show them about entrepreneurship as soon as they are. Able to Actually, you know what's funny is my son this morning, he had all his books out and he was saying that there was a bunch that he wanted to sell'cause he didn't like those books. And I just like, I just don't know where, where that came from. I, I think because, uh. My husband often references selling things on Facebook marketplace. Like we kind of, my daughter outgrew this particular bassinet called the SNOO that, she was in, and that is kind of a, a pricey object. So we were selling it on Facebook marketplace and some other things. And I think that's maybe where he got that. But yeah, so he was saying he was selling his books, which I will not be letting him do 'cause I bought some of those books and I love those books. But I thought that was interesting. So I do wanna teach them about entrepreneurship because that wasn't something that I had any experience with growing up. it's kind of interesting to me now because. I have two brothers and we're all entrepreneurs and I'm not really sure how that happened, with the upbringing that we had and that by that I just mean our parents working for big companies for their entire careers and then, you know, retiring. So I would love to be able to show them about that and encourage that and, see what that looks like for them going forward. but yeah, that is how I would like my kids to remember this season of life and a little bit of what I'm hoping that looks like a few years down the road when they can really grasp working and, and what it even means. So, okay, that wraps up this episode. Thank you so much for listening, everyone, and I will catch you on the next one.