Ep 27 | The Entrepreneurs Mindset with Pame Barba

What does it really look like to grow up inside a business, and then go on to build several of your own? In this episode of In Her Words, I sit down with Pame Barba, facilitator, strategist, and leadership coach, to trace her winding path from a sweater factory in Ecuador to a startup incubator in Atlanta to her current season as a full-time corporate employee who never stopped being an entrepreneur at heart.

Pame shares the honest, unglamorous side of entrepreneurship, the anxiety that drove some of her biggest decisions, the moment she realized she was chasing the wrong metrics, and why she thinks portfolio careers are the future.

Topics Discussed in the Episode

• Growing up entrepreneurial across two countries and industries
• Burning out of tech at 27 and starting a business from scratch
• The mindset game no one warns you about in entrepreneurship
• How anxiety quietly ran her business decisions for years
• Redefining "enough" instead of chasing big revenue goals
• Why different seasons of life call for different career paths

About Pame Barba

Pamela Barba (she/her/ella) believes that it’s up to us to create the world we want to live in. And it starts with you owning your brilliance. (yes, you!) She helps entrepreneurs and creators launch and scale their one-of-a-kind ideas. Her grounded advice has been featured on Forbes and on stages nationwide. As a previously undocumented immigrant, she became an advocate for economic and immigrant equity after her family lost everything and migrated to the US. Now she helps marginalized folks transform their communities by launching brands, businesses, and community-driven projects. After spending a lifetime in the design and entrepreneurship space she learned that safety and self-trust are key in the creation process. She’s obsessed with demystifying innovation and guiding folks to trust their inner fire. Whatever the case wherever the wifi is connecting Pamela is on a mission to help folks start some sh*t.

Connect with Pame Barba

http://www.mspamelabarba.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/pamelabarba/

https://startsomething.beehiiv.com/

Season 2 reflection exercises https://www.learnmindfully.co/store

Grab Consciously Crafting Your Career Path: https://www.learnmindfully.co/store

Connect with Roberta on LinkedIn 

If this episode sparked new insight, please consider rating, following, or reviewing the show. It’s the best way to help more people find and benefit from these vital conversations. Thanks for listening!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

A lot of the narrative around like if you're in your business, you're all in, you're gonna rough it, comes from people that have financial security. Uh, something I discovered is that like entrepreneurship looks different depending on your social economic class background. And that's okay. For a lot of my clients, I'm like, it sounds like the best thing you can do right now is get a part-time job to support you in building your business. Because again, entrepreneurship is a lifestyle. I don't think you're it you're in it or not. It's like if this is the life you want to build, how can you make it work for you?

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Welcome to In Her Words. This podcast is for women navigating through change, career, identity, motherhood, and just figuring out what's next. I'm Roberta Dembrowski, host of In Her Words and founder of Learn Mindfully. Each episode, I sit down with women who are asking big questions, navigating transitions, and trying to make sense of life as it shifts. You don't have to have it all figured out. You just need space to be real. Let's get into it. Today on In Her Words, we have Pame Barba. She is a passionate facilitator, strategist, and leadership coach who brings a unique perspective that combines experience design, leadership development, and communication strategy. She has supported more than 100 leaders over the past decade. By day, she serves as a performance consultant, proudly working with ADP's finest clients. By night and weekends, Pame is a brand coach helping people tell their stories with authenticity and impact. Welcome. Thanks so much, Roberta. I'm so excited to dive in today. We've had this on the calendar for a while. And I really wanted to chat with you about entrepreneurship and your path. You have such a unique perspective. And so I'm wondering if we could kind of start there. You grew up around entrepreneurship. Can you tell us a little bit around that experience?

SPEAKER_01 1:58

Yeah, absolutely. So I thought it was normal to talk about business stuff at the table like all the time because that's how I grew up. I grew up in a highly entrepreneurial family. My grandparents, my aunts, my uncles, all of my siblings have owned a business or own a business currently. And so I grew up in business, right? And when I was a kid, I grew up, I was born in Ecuador. And when I was a kid, my parents ran a textile company that my grandparents had started. Actually, I wore this today because this is from there. They used to make sweaters. And in 1999, the economy in Ecuador collapsed. And so my family moved to the States to start over. And when we did that, my parents started a flower business here in Atlanta, in Metro Atlanta. And so, you know, literally as a tiny kid, I grew up in a sweater factory. Like that's where I went after school. That's where I did my homework, you know, just hanging out there, designing little sweaters for my teddy bears, which they would sweetly make for me. And then, you know, as an adult, not really as an adult, well, as an adult and as like a 11 to now, I grew up around the flower business, which my parents were figuring out for the first time. So they import flowers from Ecuador and other countries and they sell them to flower shops. And, you know, I remember when we got the first box of flowers in our garage. And the reason why they started doing flowers is because Ecuador is has very good flowers. We have really nice weather. They call it the land of the eternal spring. So my parents were like, I guess we should sell flowers. And I remember when we got the first box and we were all just looking at it like, and now what? You know, like what do we do with this? Why is there ice packs in this box? Like they need to be cold, like no idea. And now their business has been around for 20 over 25 years, and that's what sustained our family and continues to sustain my parents. And I continue to help with the business.

SPEAKER_00 4:02

That's amazing. I did not know that I knew that your family ran businesses. I didn't know it was a sweater textile company and then flower shop. I am a huge gardener, so I geek out about the flower side of things. But yeah, I imagine having those two growing up in those two company environments, you probably know an absurd amount around textiles and then also flowers.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

Flowers, more so, yeah. It's one of my fun facts, I guess. I probably know the name of, you know, whatever obscure flower is sitting at the center of the table.

SPEAKER_00 4:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's awesome. My family actually owns a pool supply company, they're the largest supplier in the United States. So I grew up like similar uh in that type of environment and know the most random facts around chlorine and pools. So it can relate in some way.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

That's funny.

SPEAKER_00 4:59

And so it sounds like that the growing up around this, it got you really accustomed to businesses. And so I'm curious, tell me your experience with your own business.

SPEAKER_01 5:11

Yeah. So I'll back up for a second. So I I decided to study graphic design when it was time for me to go to college. And a big reason for that was I was like, I gotta help the family business, right? Like, what kind of degree can I get that would be instantly helpful for the business? And my my older sister was a designer, and my parents love marketing and creative stuff, and obviously I love creative stuff as well. So, so I did that, and it was interesting, even going through design school because I had a very different lens than most of my classmates. Whereas, you know, they were thinking about what would make the most beautiful design thing. I was like, what about the money? Like, what's gonna help this business make more money? What's the strategy behind this? Who are you trying to influence? So, so from the beginning, I I kind of felt that way. But, you know, as I went on with my career, I was like, I don't want to have a business. Actually, it's funny when I was a kid, if people asked me what I wanted to be, I would say anything but owning a business.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

Ooh, how come?

SPEAKER_01 6:18

Because I was like, this is too stressful. Like they're, you know, my parents are working all the time, they're too busy all the time, they don't have time for me. So anyway, I decided to study design and then I continued, you know, I from there I was like, well, maybe I really like people. So I went into project management, I went into entertainment, I went into tech, and then I burnt out of tech at 27, which was really hard. I was, you know, first generation college student. I was making really good money, all the things that immigrant, you know, families want you to do. And then I did what I like, I had no idea what to do. And so I did what most designers do, which is start a design studio. And, you know, I you know, I designed the logo and the website, and I ordered these business cards. And I kid you not, the day that they arrived, I was just staring at the box and I was like, ugh, I don't want to run a design studio. Like, I'm gonna be stuck behind the computer. I'm gonna, you know, I'm like, I like the peopling side of things, so it was not a straightforward path for me at all to start a business. I definitely was very lost. There are many great skills that I learned growing up and from from my family, but I don't think I was prepared for the how much of a mindset game it is. It took me a minute to to be like, I have everything I need, and then why is this still so hard?

SPEAKER_00 7:44

Yeah, yeah. I'm wondering if we can explore that a little bit because you mentioned being a business owner is a mindset game. Tell us a little more about kind of what that means to you and and what you experienced.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

Yeah, it's a mindset game because you're doing something, you're putting a lot of effort into something where there is no guarantee that it's gonna work or not. In a day job, it doesn't really matter if it works or not. You do your spreadsheet, you do your things, and you're gonna get paid anyway. But when you're running your own business and I had no savings, I was very lucky that my partner, you know, paid rent and I was stable in that way. But it, you know, there is a lot of like, wait, what am I doing? You know, like why am I doing this? Is it gonna work? I put all this effort into something that I thought would work. And, you know, how do you keep going? And towards the end of it, I realized that, you know, really, I think entrepreneurship is a lifestyle, it's something that you choose to do every day, not necessarily because it's easier, but because it's the best thing for you. And you have a really strong reason to wake up every day and to continue doing it.

SPEAKER_00 8:56

Yeah, I agree with you. I have found that, especially when people end up moving from corporate to entrepreneurship, it's kind of rewire. Your approach to work and the things that you're doing is almost rewiring because a lot of corporate is driven by external rewards sometimes. It's driven by things like stability, paycheck, benefits, climbing the ladder. It's like title and recognition. And with entrepreneurship, because the end result isn't so apparent, there's a lot of lagging indicators from it. It's usually like you need to be bought in there. So it's the internal motivation rather than the external that's waking you up every single day and saying, like, I choose this path, I choose this way forward.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

Yeah, and I and I think about it too. Like, you know, when I was still running my business full time and talking to clients, I never called myself a business coach, though I supported people with their businesses. But, you know, I would say to people, like, is there are there people out there that can help you make a hundred K in a year? Like, absolutely. Just like there's somebody out there that can help you lose 100 pounds in six months, you know. However, might it be miserable and not great for you? Like, that's up for to you to decide, but that's just not how I think. That's not how I run things. Like, towards the end of me owning my business, I really shifted at the beginning. I was like, oh, all in, you know, like doing all the coach, you know, the on I call them the online coach babe things, you know, like like put on your credit card because that's how you show that you're like in this, and you just do this program, and after this program, it's gonna be so different, you know. And then over time, the other thing is that I don't know if you know this, but I spent a few years when I first started my business attempting to launch a startup called Vamos Ladies. At that time, I had just learned about the Latino wage gap, and I was taking this class on UX, and then I was like, I could build an app and do something about this, right? And so I joined an incubator and was very much in like the startup world for a bit as a founder, right? So I was in this very competitive nine-month incubator where you really have to like project what you're trying to build, you have to bring people along with you. You know, you have to have the hockey stick and your financial projections and all these things that I was like, I just want to help people, right? And I'm losing my train of thought why I started talking about that. But that's an important part of my entrepreneurial story because when I did that, I like in some ways I like gained recognition and success. You know, I was on forbs, people knew who I was, like, but and I felt really good about what I was trying to build, but I wasn't sustainable, I wasn't financially sustaining myself, you know. And then I realized I don't have the money to just wait to until this thing works. So at some point, my focus as an entrepreneur and with the entrepreneurs that I worked with really shifted into like what is enough? So I went from being the like, let me ban manifest like 25k months, you know, to like actually what is enough? What is enough to get you through and how are you gonna make that happen? Right. And and that's really where this thought of like this is a lifestyle that you're choosing, where every day you're waking up and doing this, and there are things that are really hard about it, and there are things that are really beautiful about it, but you get to choose it.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

Yeah, absolutely. That's so wise of you to go through that learning moment too, around the what is enough, because I think I think when you're in corporate, a lot of people don't ask that question to themselves. It's like, oh, the salary is this, and like you get the pay and the bonuses and the increases, but when you switch to entrepreneurship, you're kind of face to face with that of like, what's my runway? I gotta pay the bills, like what is gonna make me just hit my baseline needs. You talked a little bit about your switch away from entrepreneurship. What was kind of your breaking point to decide to transition away from it, or do you consider yourself still in it right now?

SPEAKER_01 13:16

Yeah, I I will always be an entrepreneur, and right now I am happily full-time employed, but at some point I will go back to it, you know. I think I love education. I am a nerd and I always wanted to do my master's degree, and but I like couldn't figure out master's degree in what, you know. So I I mean, I've had this spreadsheet that is like 10 years old that's like, you know, is it innovation? Is it an MBA? Is it, you know? And at one point, I guess in 2022, I decided I one of my friends did some education at Berkeley for coaching. And I was like, oh, there are master's degree programs on coaching. And I was like, that sounds great. Because by this point, my business had transformed. Like I started doing more branding stuff. Over time, I realized I love the coaching aspect of it, right? Helping people understand why is this hard? How do you talk about yourself? How do you tell your story? What are the stories you're telling yourself that are keeping you from doing things? What are the stories you want to tell yourself? What are the stories you want to tell the world? I very much still lean on that design background of mine. And so part of it was just a drive that I just wanted to get a master's degree. Like, I was like, I I love it, I deserve it, I don't need to explain it. Yeah. And I ended up falling in love with this coaching program at NYU. And so I was like, okay, if I do like, because I was at that point, I gotten to the point where I was like, I like what I'm doing, I like what my life looks like, but I need to make more money. Like coming from a background where I, you know, I am my parents' retirement plan, my brother's my parents' retirement plan. I need to make more money. And so I did this master's degree program, and then I was like, okay, after this, I want to keep the heart of what I'm doing, but I want to do it for clients that have a little bit more coins. I love, like, I love the a lot of the entrepreneurs that I worked with, but many of them, you know, were in the social impact space, awesome activists, artists, creatives, mystics, like all kinds of stuff. And so as I like projected my business, I was like, okay, the only way I'm gonna make more money is if I charge more for my coaching. And then I was like, that doesn't feel aligned with me because the type of clients that I would get at a much higher price is not in my heart what brought me to coaching, right? And so there came a shift in my business where it was like, what part of my business is the part that makes me money? And then what percentage of time does that leave me to do the things that like light up my heart?

SPEAKER_00 15:56

Yeah, yeah. What you're describing resonates so much with me because I have always, at least in my own practice, felt very called to. You mentioned earlier, like I love the people side of things. I love the conversation, the relationships, and I feel very similar to that. And it's almost like a revisiting of your financial model, just like profit model of like what's bringing in the most amount of money and then what lights you up and kind of where's the intersection of all of those things.

SPEAKER_01 16:26

Yeah, or if they don't intersect, like how do you separate your time? And and over time, I realized that a lot of the people who I respect who were running businesses were doing that. They had a retainer client or some sort of client that was like enough financially, and then they had time to play and to do the more fun things that maybe don't pay as well. And so I started shifting my business model to that, right? I started taking on bigger like facilitation gigs, bigger coaching contracts that were sustaining me financially, and then through doing my master's program, I was like, well, you know, might as well like get a job and one, see what I learn from being in a large environment. And again, now I work for a very large corporation. I want to be around, like I loved grad school. I'm such a nerd, and I'm like, I want to be around other people that nerd about leadership, right? And then I was like, also, I haven't had like you know, benefits or PTO like almost ever. So I'm like, that sounds kind of nice too.

SPEAKER_00 17:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that. What how long have you like at what point? How many years ago has it been since you've transitioned to going back in-house now?

SPEAKER_01 17:46

What I just hit my one year anniversary. Okay. Yeah. Still really fresh.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

Yeah. What has the experience been like going from it's like you're a one-man shop, basically, you have your own practice, you're running all the rules to now kind of shifting to a pretty large organization.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

Yeah, it's been hard. It's been fun, it's been a growth opportunity, really. You know, I'll start with, I was thinking about this before this interview. I'll start with how it has benefited my growth. I, as a business owner, and part of my entrepreneurship story is that, you know, I've always struggled with anxiety. That's part of my my life story, you know. And definitely, you know, after 2020, like that anxiety doing grad school, trying to run a business, trying to decide if I was gonna apply for a job, it was a lot. So that anxiety was like wilding out a little bit. And and that was part of the decision too. Like, I was like, I deserve a break, I deserve security, I deserve to not worry about coins for a minute. And and I just, you know what? When being an entrepreneur, especially with my journey, because I was a designer and then I tried doing the startup thing, and then I tried this type of business and this, like it just it felt like I never got to the point where I was like, this is my bread and butter, and I'm just doing it over and over and over. It was always like, what's the new thing? What's the new thing? What's the new thing? Which is fun, but it's also exhausting.

SPEAKER_00 19:13

Yeah, because what you're talking about, it's it's like growth design, basically. It's like, how are you designing your business in a way that you're growing and trying to sustain? And a lot of that is through experimentation. And it can feel it like experimentation is great if you're on a product team and you have like all these people you can experiment with, but when it's you all the time, it expends energy, physical, emotional, spiritual all the time. And doing that for years and years and years, it absolutely can compound.

SPEAKER_01 19:44

Yeah, you know, I I I I joke that my full-time job is my business sabbatical. Like I'm just taking a little sabbatical to recharge. But so one of the things that has been amazing about my job is just one, having the space to breathe, but also like having to do something over and over and over again. Because I, you know, I did that as a project manager, I did that as a designer, but as a facilitator and as a coach, like I would do something and I'd be like, No, I need to shift it, you know. So I wouldn't get those reps in. So I feel like part of my what I do now is I travel to different markets in the country and I facilitate leadership development trainings. And it's the same trainings, the same frameworks, different cities, different leaders, different conversations. And it's been awesome seeing how much better I've gotten at it, how much I've grown as a facilitator, the confidence that I've grown. And I don't think I did anything over and over enough in my business to get to that point of confidence. So I I really feel like I've like I'm growing up in a way that I in a way I wasn't with my business because I I kept switching what I was doing.

SPEAKER_00 20:53

Yeah. The way that I describe it, it's like the proactive versus reactive, or even like a scarcity mindset versus like abundance mindset. When you're taking away the factor of the needing to pay the bills and survive, like the survival around money, you get to then experiment, you get the steadiness in your role, and then you're growing in a different way rather than the experiments. It's like this the growth is like how long can I sustain this? Like transferring the ideas to these different companies and seeing the patterns and themes and and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 21:29

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I would say another way that my job has really helped me is, you know, I started my business when I was 27. And I that's the other thing. I started my business not from a good emotional place. I had a really bad experience in tech, and I like my confidence in my skills and my identity was like on the floor. Like I I I was not in a good place, which is what sucks about job hunting. Or starting a business, like you gotta be at your game in order for it to work. And so anyway, I was 27 and then I took this job. Oh my gosh, now I'm trying to do math. It was like 2017 until like 2023. Because that last year I really just focused on grad school. And over time, I like made up all these rules to protect myself in my business, which are good. We want those, right? But it was like I can only take this many coaching calls per day. If I facilitate, I need to like map out, like you know, block out my calendar XYZ ways to like so that I can recharge. And in a way, the rules that I had come up for myself were like too rigid. Being in this full-time job, like there is no, you know, like you gotta do this, do it, you know. And so in in the last year, I've done things that before I would have been like, oh wow, that's a lot, you know. And then through doing it, I'm like, oh, I can totally do this, right? I can totally thought fly it a completely to a city I've never been to before, be there alone, run an entire event for 30 leaders, do it again the next day, you know. So it's been really helpful to push me out of what I thought was possible. And I think for me that was really important because I quit the workforce as such a baby.

SPEAKER_00 23:17

Yeah, yeah. It's it's like you're reclaiming the corporate environment and space again for yourself, but then it's now it's in this new kind of vertical area that you wanted to be in, which is helping and serving people.

SPEAKER_01 23:32

Yeah, yeah. So it feels it feels very much aligned. So yeah, so that though that and also just where I work, the people are really good. Like people care about each other, and I feel that it's helping heal some of my past experien, you know, bad experiences with working for other people. And at the end of the day, like I'm passionate about what I do. Most of our customers are medium-sized and small businesses, so it still very much feels aligned. And it's just it's been nice being just at a space where I can take a breath and just, you know, do what I care about in a different way.

SPEAKER_00 24:12

Yeah, I love that. It's a gift that you've given yourself, really. This space.

SPEAKER_01 24:16

Yeah, it feels like that.

SPEAKER_00 24:18

I'm wondering if you would be open to sharing. You mentioned a little bit earlier about anxiety being part of your path. And I'm wondering how has the anxiety influenced running your own practice and like being an entrepreneur? Because anxiety can influence things like risk and making different decisions within your business as well.

SPEAKER_01 24:41

Yeah, that's a great question. I I love I'm an anxiety nerd. I love talking about it. Me too. Buckle in. Yeah, I think for me how anxiety shows up sometimes is in the like, I can't do this, I gotta piece out, you know? Like, this isn't working, I gotta piece out. And and actually, like a couple I would say a couple of my jobs, well, really one, I quit from that. Like, I'm anxious, I don't feel like you value me or like you get me, and I don't have the language to communicate that to you. And I'm like testing to see if you actually value me. And so I'm just like, I'm out, right? And I just that job I quit with really like no plan. And then I, you know, went to another job. And so I started as I started, you know, I kept saying, like, I want this kind of support and I want this kind of support. And when I was in that tech incubator, I was also part of a social entrepreneurship community here in Atlanta. All the support that I'd been looking for, I found. And I was like, awesome. This is still terrifying, right? This is still really scary, right? Like the things that I thought would fix this didn't, and I feel like fleeing again, right? So to me, I've been, I mean, I've always been anxious, but then just had really, really, really bad anxiety in 2023. Like panic attacks, like completely shifted my relationship to anxiety. And now looking backwards, I'm like, oh, I see how often my anxiety was running the show in my business. How often, you know, I would like work with a client and I would be so anxious that they wouldn't be happy. Or I would be like, I did this one time and now I gotta do something else, you know? And yeah, it's been it's it's kind of like the sixth sense when you realize that Bruce Willis is dead and you're like, Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was like, Oh, well, that was anxiety. Well, that was anxiety, you know. So really since 20 or 2023, I've been re-relating to anxiety in a different way.

SPEAKER_00 26:55

Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I have a similar experience with anxiety, and then the way that I view trauma as well now is like once I went to therapy for like PTSD, it was like I recognized the signs and I was like, oh, it's everywhere. Everyone's traumatized. Like everyone is like the state of the world, is just try you just start to see it everywhere. They always say like awareness is the first step. But yeah, I really appreciate you you sharing about because I think that anxiety can manifest in a lot of different ways. One of the ways is flight, as you're talking about. I myself was a serial job offer job hopper back in the day because I was just like, I need to get out of here. This isn't it, it's not the right space. And it's funny, coaching actually gave me a lot of the tools to recognize the like the emotional intelligence, the anxiety to sit with it, and then also how to show up in relationships differently with myself and with each other.

SPEAKER_01 27:55

Yeah, it's to me, anxiety in my business, anxiety in my life in general shows up as a voice that says, something is wrong, something needs to be fixed, something needs to be changed. And my the reason why I'm so passionate for with talking about anxiety is because what we are taught, at least what I was taught about anxiety, is wrong, it makes it worse. And a lot of what we see from like the online coach business babes is like it's mine, you know, it's your thoughts, and all of this stuff that like it was trauma. Like I needed a different kind of support, right? And so, you know, what I've learned since then is that like anxiety gets to say whatever it wants to say, like that doesn't mean anything, right? And it's you know, my therapist would describe it as like it's like people that have like tendinitis or whatever that ringing noise in the ear is tinnitus. The treatment for that is you teach people to ignore it because there's no way to make it go away. So you teach people that it's fine, not that it's fine, but that it's there and that it's gonna be there, and that you have to keep living your life. And to me, that's a huge relationship shift that I've had with anxiety, where I'm like, it's there, it doesn't mean anything, it's not a sign from the universe, it's just a part of how I am made, and I'm just gonna stay with the plan instead of like feeling like something needs to be shifted.

SPEAKER_00 29:24

Yeah, I love that. I love that so much. So you've shared with us your journey from growing up in a very entrepreneurial entrepreneurial family to your own journey, and then now this season that you're in back in house. I'm wondering if you could share a word of wisdom for entrepreneurs who may be considering a similar path. What would you tell them about entrepreneurship or your journey? Or yeah, what words would you want to leave them with?

SPEAKER_01 29:51

Yeah, I think, you know, it's it's kind of the ongoing joke with all the entrepreneurs I know that, you know, if you're having a bad day in your business, you're like passively looking at job boards because you're like, or you're like pulling up what it would take to start driving on Uber, you know, it's almost like this like shameful thing, you know, in a way. And in some ways it has been a little bit difficult because it took me so long to build a circle of entrepreneurs, and there is like a a bit of a like shame or like, oh, you're in corporate now, you know. And it's like, I don't, I actually I don't think it's that serious. I think that we have different seasons of life where we need different things, and that it's okay to do whatever you need to do in that season of life. And for me, the best decision I've made for right now is you know, going full time. And whenever the time is right, you know, entrepreneurship is so in my blood. I have no doubt that it'll be there waiting for me when I'm ready. I do want to have kids someday, and when that happens, like I would like to be able to be with them, like I was, like my parents were with me, right? And at the same time, my really nice full-time job insurance just paid for me to freeze my eggs, which is something I could never have done on my own. You know what I mean? So it's like it's okay to just have different seasons and to not make this like being an entrepreneur or your job such a giant part of your identity that it makes it difficult to make what's the right choice for you.

SPEAKER_00 31:31

It's almost black and white thinking, I feel like that kind of goes in the entrepreneurship community. It's like, well, if you were dedicated a hundred percent, you'd be you'd be doing this a hundred percent. You wouldn't even be kind of just even considering going back to corporate when it's like, no, it can be both and like it's not just black or white, you're all in, you're all out. Like there's a gray in the middle and figuring out what you need.

SPEAKER_01 31:57

I I think portfolio careers are the future. And I think being entrepreneurial and knowing how to flex, I can tell you a lot of the things that I thought that I could work in corporate, now that I'm in it, I'm like, oh, that have never would have worked. So even like, you know, I just think with portfolio careers, we can flex up and down and make moves and choose what's best for us. A lot of the narrative around like if you're in your business, you're all in, you're gonna rough it, comes from people that have financial security and comes from people that don't need to worry about financially supporting their, you know, their parents because that's already taken care of in a way. Uh, something I discovered is that like entrepreneurship looks different depending on your social economic class background. And that's okay. For a lot of my clients, I'm like, it sounds like the best thing you can do right now is get a part-time job to support you in building your business. Because again, entrepreneurship is a lifestyle. I don't think you're it you're in it or not. It's like if this is the life you want to build, how can you make it work for you?

SPEAKER_00 33:05

Yeah, and so many considerations that we've talked about throughout, like how it's gonna be how you support your family as well for their retirement and stuff like that. Things like benefits, retirement are all things to consider as part of your lifestyle as an entrepreneur.

SPEAKER_01 33:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:20

I have loved this conversation so much. How can listeners stay connected with you?

SPEAKER_01 33:26

LinkedIn is the best way. I also have a newsletter called Start Something. And yeah, those two are probably the best. And then my website is ollapame.com.

SPEAKER_00 33:38

Amazing. Well, make sure to drop those in the show notes so folks can keep in touch with you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks for being here. If something in this episode landed with you, feel free to pass it along to someone who might need it too. You can leave a review, subscribe, or just keep tuning in. We're figuring it out together. And remember, your story, your voice, your becoming. It all matters.