Content, Confidence & the Motherhood Identity Shift — with Monique Forcella

Hi there,

If you’ve ever thought:

• “I can’t go all in yet, I need more security…” Or
• “My business will crumble the second I have a baby…” Or even 
• “Maybe I’m just not cut out for this…”

You need this week’s episode of The Mind School Podcast.

I sat down with the ray of sunshine herself, Monique (aka The Socialista), who went from 100 followers and Canva logos to selling out courses, running powerhouse events, and navigating business + motherhood like an absolute weapon.

Here’s what we unpacked (and trust me, it’s juicy):

✨ Why “job security” is the biggest lie we were all sold

✨ The answer to the question: Do you need to niche to stand out online?

 ✨ How she rebuilt her multi-6-figure business after losing every single client in COVID

 ✨ The real secret behind selling with only 2,000 followers

 ✨ What actually happens when you blow up overnight (and what comes after)

 ✨ Motherhood, mat leave, identity shifts and the messy truth of running a business with a baby on your hip

It’s honest. It’s hilarious. It’s refreshing. And it’s going to give you a big permission slip to do business YOUR way... no niche boxes, no AI-bot sounding content, no “play it safe” rules.

This episode is basically your new fave pep talk.

🎧 Click here to listen now

Love,

 B

P.S. If you’ve been waiting for a sign that you don’t need more followers, a perfect strategy or a “clear niche” to succeed… this is it.

As always, please don't forget to hit Subscribe! xxx

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

I am joined by the ray of sunshine, or the sprinkle and glitter and dancing gold, that is just sunshine personified, that is mon and I'm so excited to have you here, selfishly because I've been wanting to talk to you for so long, but also because you're just a genius with marketing. Now I want to talk to you about motherhood and content and reels and all the things. So thank you so much for being here. And how are you? Firstly, thank you for having me so good to be here. And how am I? I'm feeling good. I am officially as of three days ago, five months postpartum, back in business, doing the things that I've wanted to do. And I and I've really surprised myself coming back into it. So it's really good. It's been beautiful to watch. I have absolutely loved, I was just saying before we hit record, there's not a lot I don't follow a lot of coaches. I don't follow a lot of people in my industry. I just don't. I'm currently watching a lot of like, puppies, babies, pregnancy, that's about it. But I know the algorithm knows what's up. But I every time, like I watched you at your powerhouse event on the weekend, and I see you then the next day, walking around with your pram, and it just looks like you've it looks like you've developed beautiful balance. I know maybe it's not all what as it seems, and I want to get into that, because there's so much that I'm just loving about your journey. Before we do, I want to go right back, which is probably going to be hard to remember. I want to rewind to the version of you who didn't have 100,000 plus followers, who didn't have the big mastermind, who didn't have the weekend conferences, the baby boy. You had maybe less than 100 followers, and you were just starting your business, what does she look like? What did she fear? What was going on for that version of mon so that was mon in I want to say 2018 2019 around that space, and I had just left my full time job. It was in the city, and I used to work. I used to commute to get there, and I remember saying, I'm going to start up this business, because I really want to bring social media and content to the west, because I live in Sydney, and the West is about an hour out. And so I got a part time job, and I worked there for three days a week, and then on the side, I did the social list on the side. And all I did is I opened up an Instagram account, made a logo on Canva one night. And it started all because I was at the gym and a friend goes to me. She saw me for the first time in years. Hey, Monique, what are you up to? And I'm like, I started a business. It just blurted out. I was like, okay, so it's out there tonight. I'm going home and doing it. So I literally that night, went home, made the Canva logo, made the Instagram page, put it out there, shared it to my personal Instagram stories, and that's where it started. And then my first two clients were family and family friends who had seen it. They're like, cool. I need social media. And so I started off as a social media manager doing that two days a week. Then about a year passed, and I was getting more traction my I was booked out with the capacity that I currently had, and so I went down to two days a week in the part time job and three days a week in the socialista. But it still wasn't enough. I was still working on the weekends and still doing late night stuff, and I held on to this part time job for a year and a half, a year and a half, I would say, a year too long, because I was so damn afraid of letting go of the security of having a part time job whilst building my own business, I always thought, what if I lost all my clients? What would I do? I was thinking, what happens if I go all in I had looking back at it now, I had a fear of success, and I was scared of how well it would do, and if I couldn't measure up, and if I couldn't deliver, and if I couldn't, you know, make the promises that I thought I could make. And so what happens? December 2019, I gave my notice to that business, and I said, Hey, I'm done. They end up coming on as a client of mine, which was beautiful, amazing. And it meant that I could work my own hours and charge what I wanted to charge. And so come January 2020 I was like, Woohoo. This is the year that I go all in your on my business. I'm working by myself in my office. It's gonna be great. Set myself my your own like working hours, and it was fabulous. Then march 2020, hit, and my worst nightmare happened. I lost every single one of my clients because covid happened, and I'm and I focus on service based businesses. And so every single service based business, day spas, you know, you name it, restaurants, cafes, they'd all closed, and I was left with nothing. Surprisingly, at that time, I didn't freak out, which I wouldn't thought I would. I was like, Oh my gosh. Like, what I'm going to do? I was okay because I had one client who stayed, because she's like, all these other people, they're going to leave. I'm going to be the one that's. Days, because my marketing is going to be off tap. So when we come out of lockdown, everyone's going to come to me. She was smart, because that's exactly very much what happened. But I ended up using that time to I ended up morphing into what I am today, which is a coach, which is exactly where I wanted to be, exactly who I was meant to be. And so I really believe that everything happens for a reason, and it's proved to me that you can lose all of your clients and rebuild from scratch and be just fine. So it was that March 2020, point where I built my very first course in conjunction with other people, and we sold that course. I ended up being there was eight of us who came on this course together. We built it together, and myself, another girl, ended up being like the highest sellers of this course. And at the time, I had like 2000 followers. I was a baby account. Even though I business for about two years now, about a year and a half, I had made the most amount of sales. I had no website up at this point, zero website. I had only really just got an ABN. I wasn't charging GST. I was so baby yet I was booked out. And then that gave me the confidence to be like, cool. I can raise my prices. I can bring in coaching. I can raise those prices, register for GST, make a course. Then reels came out. My business exploded overnight because I was the only one that was doing it. It pays to be a piney of something. And when everyone was skeptical of like, Oh, it's just a fad. It'll phase out, like igtv did. And frankly, I thought same thing, but I was like, You know what? I'm gonna do this. And I love the video. I came I studied at university communication media. I did digital media, and so video was a big part of what I did. And so I felt like reels allowed me to unlock a part of my personality that you didn't see with study posts. So I was having the best time. I was posting three reels a week, and from August to November, I'd gone from 2000 followers to 10,000 followers because I was consistent, because I was showing who I was behind the camera, and I didn't give up when people said that I was crazy to do so there is so much there that I want to unpack, because there's so many things that I think people listening might resonate with especially you said you were so scared to leave your part time job because of the security that comes with having a job, a part time job, a full time job, what does the version of you now? 567, years on, what would you say to the person that's like, yeah, I need security. You create security. You create that. Why are you relying on someone else to give you security? Because the only thing that you can really, I'm going to say, quote, unquote, control, or the only thing that you can really have impact on is your own actions. And so if you go out and you build your business, and you get those clients, and you make the moves, you have control, and you have a vision for your own security, rather than leaving your security in the hands of someone else who's employing you, where if covid happens again, fingers crossed it doesn't. Your job's gone. If they decide that they want to downgrade their business. Your job's gone. So they're actually having a job is a false sense of security. The only security you really have is in yourself. So true. I love that answer. I remember actually thinking so many people learned that lesson during covid, where it's like, I thought this was my secure job, and businesses shut down, and they had nothing left to go. And all you've got left then is the skill set that you've built within yourself, the confidence you've built within yourself, the conviction you've built within yourself, which is something I want to touch on, because I see that conviction that you have, I wonder if that's the thing that you know. You said you had 2000 followers. You weren't even registered for GST, you were a baby business, and yet your sales were quite high. And now I know you work with lots of different businesses. What do you think is that like magic ingredient, that thing that is actually because sometimes it's not you have to have a big audience to have big sales. What do you think it is that is like that secret sauce you had it with 2000 followers. I'm sure you've seen in other business owners. What is the thing that people might be missing? I think people think they need to go wide in order to get the clients they need or the audience they need. So they need more followers. They need 100,000 they need more views on their reels. They more they need them more than more, when, in actual fact, you don't need more, you need depth, and you need to go deeper in what you're creating. So I don't post really more than three posts per week. I'm not posting more content. I'm actually going deeper in each individual piece of content. So it really is about quality over quantity. Yeah, and so with the audience that I was bringing, even though it was 2000 people, there were quality 2000 people, not just random accounts who were like, Oh, that looks cool. That's fine. These were people who were actually invested in my journey, people who saw my content back then was very Tips and Tricks heavy, because that was what was working. And they saw my content, they resonated, and they thought, Okay, this is the girl for me. Another thing as well was because my content wasn't generic. It really comes down to the content you're creating. So it wasn't generic. And in the copy, the captions that I had, it wasn't just here are five steps to growing your following. It wasn't about that. I really went deep. I shared my personality. I had quirks where I wrote, like, you know, hey, Chica, I get it. I really integrated, like, my my South American heritage into there. And so a lot of people who have Latina heritage followed me were like, wow, we love supporting, you know, I remember getting a message saying, saying, I love, you know, someone who's a woman of color on social media. And back then, I was like, Am I really a woman of color? Like because I grew up in Western Sydney, so multicultural, so ethnic, and so I don't see myself as any different to anyone else, whereas, in the grand scheme of the world, technically I am, but I don't recognize it because of where I'm from, which I really understand the privilege of being in that moment, of being surrounded by black people, which is cool, but yeah, it's all about going deep. Don't go chasing more people, more people, more people. Look at who you currently have in your audience, and how can you convert those people into sales? Because there are at least 10% of people in your full in your following, who want what you need. Oh, no, who want what you have to offer. You're just not selling it to them. So true. So then would you say this is going a little bit on a tangent, but I think it's something that every business owner has grappled with. Is this about choosing a specific niche? I'm going to say no, because up until that point, I hadn't I don't have I didn't have a niche, my niche, my niche was me. I'm the niche, the Socialista, that was the niche. And so I back then, I worked with jewelers, I worked with baby toys. I had clients who were making cupcakes, like it was so broad, the amount of clients that I had cafes, restaurants, etc. And it wasn't until two and a half years, three years into business that I really niche, and that's when I saw a big boom again in my business. But up to that point, I was booked out without a niche and really making sure that the niche was me. People buying me. People are buying a product or a service. They're buying me to do it. And so if I had that buy in through my content, where they could actually see me, especially using Instagram stories. I use them all day, every day. Jump on stories, no matter what I look like, no matter I could just come back from the gym. I had just woken up, whatever might be, I jumped on Instagram stories even 10 o'clock at night. Hi guys, that was my catchphrase. Hey guys, want to do this, whatever I'm talking about, and it became synonymous that I'm going to jump on Instagram stories and I'm going to get value from mon and it became like the Socialista, and value that propels my business forward, and so that that was the niche, and you're also going to see a lot of dancing. That's what I remember when I first came across. He was like, Is that the one that dances? And there's post it notes all over her room, like, That's what I remember. It was like, You're not unanimous, unanimous synonymous. It was like the socialist post it notes and dancing. That's what I was thinking. And it's just this vibe, this energy that is you. That is the niche I love, the way you frame that I want to ask then, leading on from you, you've mentioned how important it is that you're showing you that you are the nation. So you need to show up with your quirks. You know, you brought in Chica and things that showed your background, all of these things. What are you noticing now, with AI and content, I'm hearing so much content is getting harder. It's harder to grow an audience. Followers aren't engagements down, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, my hunch is that it's like, well, yeah, everyone's using a chat bot, and everyone sounds the same. What have you noticed? And what are your concerns for people that are using over, relying, I suppose, chat GPT, or any of those things, in absence of knowing who they are and showing that authenticity. I read a stat that said people who use bots, chatgpt for their business or for their life, they are using 30% less of their brain. So over time, that compounds to what to zero or we lose ourselves, right? We lose ourselves, and we lose that authenticity, we lose that person ability. And you just said to me that I remember you for your dancing and your energy and your excitement. Chatgpt can't convey that. That in a piece of content, it can't and I see now the AI photos and videos where you can make yourself an AI avatar, and the AI does the real for you. I want to pull my eyeballs out, because we are going so far from what your audience is actually craving, and they're craving connection, and they're craving more of you. So if we put you into chat GPT, it's no longer fully you. And so I know it's faster, I know it's easier to use chat GPT, but in actual fact, you can use it for the start point where it's like, I'll be with some ideas, and, you know, brainstorm this with me. Be my assistant. But at the end of the day, if you start to replace your voice with chatgpt, you become irrelevant, because your voice is now blending with everyone else when it should be standing out, and the only way to do that is through your personality, through your energy. I cannot tell you how many times people come to me and they say, Monique, I don't care what I'm buying from you. I just want to buy from you, because I need to be in your energy and chatgpt can't convey that. So glad you touched on that. It's something I've been really it's like a deep philosophical war internally, where I'm like, Oh my gosh, my heart. Like, I'm a creator. I was an English teacher. I love literature, I love art, and I love the productivity as well. Because when you're a business owner, you love productivity hacks, which is what chat GPT brings. But I think it can be abused. And I'm I'm personally feeling really bored on social media, because I can tell it's like you can tell when it's been written or created by chat, and it just doesn't hit the same it just doesn't. You can train your bot to be somewhat like you and understand your things, but it's just you can't replace humanity, and that's what your audience is craving. I think it's so important in this age of AI that the only way you're going to stand out is if you bring your humanity back into your content. That's the only way. Man, amen, I love it. So you mentioned before that baby mon back in the day, she didn't have a GST registration, she had 2000 followers, and maybe on some level, was a little bit scared of success. How do you then handle blowing up quite quickly, your Instagram following just got bigger and bigger and bigger. You became known as the reels coach. That was like your thing you were getting booked for speaking, you had success. Did you notice any sabotage, or any of that sort of or this is actually feeling a lot, I'm afraid of success. What sort of things came up for you on your journey to where you are now, in the moment of when things blew up. I didn't have any of that doubt, which was really interesting, because there was no time to have that doubt. There was absolutely no time. It was just cool. We've created this beast of a thing, which was a real course, and there was so much demand for this thing that it was there was no time it was in out, in out. It was working all day, working all night, creating new master classes, new freebies, creating content. It just became part of who I was. And so I was able to honestly, I worked all day, all night, getting this out there and doing the thing. We ended up welcoming over 2000 students all around the world into our beginner course. Now, advanced course for reels, and really not once up until the end. Did we really have any doubt about were we the ones to do this? What if we got too big? It was just cool, rinse and repeat. It was a course. There's no There's no amount of people that you can have in a course. Great, but it was so awesome to see that. And it wasn't until I would say maybe three years, maybe two years out from having that course and that block like blowing up with reels, that we really started to feel that doubt. As more and more people came on the block, as more people became reels coaches, as more people started to see results with reels that weren't taught by us, and that's when we started to see a little bit more of that competition. And we decided to see a little bit more of that, you know, our results somewhat going down, and we were no longer riding that wave, because it really was we were riding that wave. It was great. It was awesome. And it meant that we needed to change and innovate, which is exciting, but also really scary, because it's like we've spent the last two and a half years building this thing for it to not be what we're doing anymore. So the doubt came in after once we started seeing the results starting to go down. I'm a high achiever, definitely, and I really had to learn not to tie my self worth with the results that I get, because Monique and the socialist star, or, at the time our other business was called rises reels, was quite synonymous. And so I had to learn over the course of that time that if we had a flop launch, it's okay, pick us up. Let's go again. And so I built that resilience over time to be like, cool, this one didn't hit, that's okay. We'll go again. I love that. I think that's really important, because there's so many people out. There, especially when you're learning the Instagram game, you're trying to get new clients, and there's this seeking of virality and like, oh, this reel didn't do good. Should I delete it? This piece of content didn't do good. Now I'm not good. So it's so nice to hear that feedback. Did you ever find that you got into that validation trap of constantly checking your insights, constantly checking and that impacting how you felt about business. Yes, at the start, before reels came out, I remember sitting at the dinner at the dining room table. Refreshing, refreshing, refreshing. How many likes did I get? Oh, I got a new follower. Yes, and I would sit on my phone for 45 minutes after posting, just refreshing, yeah, because I was so fixated on making sure that I was giving value that was yielding a result. And I remember this day that there was a woman online who had a business, and she bullied me. She was not the business owner, and she goes, don't try, don't. Long story short, she sort of kind of was like, don't work with businesses like her. And she basically screenshotted my Instagram page. Why did out my name? But I could see how many followers I had, and how many followers and how much media I had, so the numbers were all the same. It was my account, and I messaged her back, being like, oh, sorry. Like, this is my Instagram account anyway. The whole point was she was just someone who, looking back now, was just so jealous of the fact that other people were coming onto the block and they were getting pushed out. And I guess it's a very natural feeling once you dominate the space and you no longer do, what do you do in that situation? You either hate on the people who are coming up, or you take it as a sign to be like, cool. I need to level up my game. Or you say, Cool, let's all rise together. So in that moment, she chose to belittle me and things like that. And I remember seeing a post that she uploaded saying, if you don't get as many comments as you do, if you don't get as many comments as the amount of time that the post is up, your your post is shit, essentially. So if my post was up for 20 minutes, I needed 20 comments. And I remember obsessing over that. I remember going on my Instagram and refreshing another comment. Great, quickly reply back, great. That's two. It's been up to three minutes. I remember that that constant feast and famine mode that I was in all because this person told me that I wasn't good enough if I didn't get this reach or this amount of comments on my post. Crazy. And that played with me for a long time, until I realized that I had to just let her go and stop thinking that, you know what she said was Bible and all the bits and pieces, and realize that I'm running my own race, and whatever she says is a reflection of her and what she needed, not of Me. And that's when I was really able to stop comparing myself to someone like her and run my own race, which was a game changer. And you've been running your own race for the last few years, and you've been doing so well, and you've worked so hard at, you know, you've launched powerhouse, which is doing incredibly you're still coaching. You've got the social Easter, you've got so many things going on, and it looks like you've been working, I know you've been working really hard behind the scenes, in front of like you do. You're a hard worker, you're a high achiever, and you've spent years doing that, then you get pregnant. Tell me, because this is the season that I am in. What fears, if any came up for you? What worries? What beliefs did you have? What preconceptions about business and motherhood? If you go back to like, obviously, now you've got hindsight, you might be like, oh, god Mon, you were so DeLillo. Like, what did you think when you fell pregnant, or before you became a mum? And where were you at when you found out you were pregnant, in terms of your business? Okay, I remember two people making this comment to me, and it ended up being ingrained in my thought of what motherhood and business look like. So I have a friend who went overseas and she was working with this coach, and she just had a baby, and I messaged her, I said, How was it like, how was like working with her? She goes, Yeah, it's really great, but she's really dropped the ball since having a baby. And that, to me, was like, I wasn't pregnant, and I was probably two years out from having even thinking about having a baby, but it was really punched the stomach where it was like, Oh, so you can't have a baby and take somewhat of a step back from being crazy high achiever without being labeled that you've dropped the ball. So that was the first thing. And the second thing it was, I remember seeing online, someone massive had announced they were pregnant, and the first thing someone said to me was, well, that's her business done. And again, another thing like, ah, like, I don't want that to be me. And so it was, it was constantly like a thought in the back of my mind, I don't want that to be me. I don't want my business. I don't want this six, seven years that I've. Built this business to go to crap because I've had a baby, and I really wanted to make sure that having a baby and a business could be synonymous, but I couldn't see the evidence that it was possible. I'd seen other businesses who were coming up along in business the same time I was so we're doing the same things in the same accolades, and we were cheering on each other. And, you know, like they fall pregnant and then they close their business. And so I saw that happening in real time. And I was also worried in my mind that if I had a baby, would I want to close it? Because I just wanted to spend a whole year with this beautiful, precious baby and not care about business anymore. And so I was also petrified in the thought of, what if I don't love my business as much as I thought I did when my new love, my baby came along, and so this was definitely the internal battle that I had going on. Then I find out I'm pregnant, and just such a beautiful moment, really exciting, and I really just sort of pushed it out. Wasn't pregnant. I didn't tell my team until I was, like, literally, five months pregnant, like I didn't I didn't tell social media until I was six months pregnant, because, again, I was petrified of if someone saw that I was pregnant, they'd think I was incapable of doing my job. They'd think that I was no longer able. I was no longer the person that I was, because I'm now a mum, and I had to work through that a lot, like a lot, to get comfortable to the point of being like, I need to share this, because I've got a bump, and it's not McDonald's, not McDonald's. Mind you, you looked Oh, if there is pregnancy goals, and I'm always like, you're a short person, I'm a short person. I'm like, Please, God, just let me look like mon post baby, even while you were like, heavily pregnant, it's just this gorgeous little bump in your tiny little frame. And you just you were glowing. I mean, you're always glowing, because your personality is that way. But I can see how you were able to hide it for so long, so long. I hid it for a good five months. And yeah, because I'm so little, my friend, he's actually pushed out my ribs, so my ribs now on a slant, because there was no room in my body for him to live, poor thing. But yeah, and so I remember the day of uploading my pregnancy announcement. I didn't share, it's my personal page, and it shares my business page, nothing. And I remember uploading it, closing my phone, walking away. And the funniest thing happened, I got two inquiries that night from people who are like, yep. I mean, send me like they didn't even ask. They just paid. They found a link on my website, and they paid to work with me, and I was like, oh, maybe this isn't so bad. Maybe it's okay. Then I launched my program, and people still joined, even though I was pregnant, and no one asked me, What are your plans for the maternity leave they just joined, and it made me feel so good in the fact that you were scared about nothing, and the people who were not going to celebrate you. The people who were worried about your maternity leave and your capacity and your ability are not your clients. So big lesson for me to learn that it is okay, and I'm definitely learning lessons now that I'm back at work, but the business didn't burn to the ground. Did I lose clients? Yes. Did I gain clients? Yes? Did things change? Yes, but it wasn't as scary as I thought. And what things did you do because you took 10 weeks mat leave, I believe, what sort of things did you put in place, behind the scenes, back end team wise to I suppose, give you that time and space. What was some of your practical tips for, like business proofing your baby, so to speak? Yes. So there's two sides of the business. There's the coaching side, which is relying completely on me. I do all the things the coaching side. Then there's the agency side, which sort of runs on its own. I have team in there and things like that, but still very heavily reliant on me to do the strategy, to do all the checking of the client work, to set the team's goals and do all the bits and pieces. And so in December, I gave birth. In March, in December, I hired a marketing major, someone who had run businesses before. She no longer runs her business, but she had a few extra hours, and honestly, it was a godsend. She had sent me an email before I had announced I was pregnant, and she said, Hey, mon, you know, I've got a few hours available if you ever needed an extra set of hands. God, divine timing. Whatever you believe in, I believe God was saying to me, this is the person you need to hire to get you out of the business so you don't need to stress while you are on maternity leave. So I did. I hired a marketing manager. I created procedures and processes to allow her to think like me, to step in as me for the business. And that was so incredible for me to have, almost like a really, she was like my two IC in the business. I didn't touch agency side of the business the whole maternity leave, and it was bliss. So I had 12 to 14 weeks. Off the 14 weeks off the agency completely, and then 10 weeks off the coaching side. So then once I had so for the coaching, I lined up a business boot camp. I had incredible guest speakers. You were one of them, come into the group and just give so much value and knowledge to my clients in areas that I can't speak on, which really gives a well rounded experience for so many of my clients. And so it was really about finding, how can I make this a positive experience for my clients? And that's what I did. And so I came back 10 weeks later, and for me, coming back in, it was very much. I was easing my way in. I had one call per week for the first two, three weeks. Then I eased myself in because I was so breastfeeding. I am still breastfeeding, and so trying to work out nap times breastfeeding with a 12 week old baby, three week old baby, was very all consuming at that time, whereas now I was like, Oh, this is easy. This is great. I can do this. Yeah. So it's just about easing myself in and having that plan for when I was off and being okay if she hit the fan, because it does, and it's okay. And as I'd like to say, you will rebuild. I just think about it as that meme of the the chair that's fallen over after a cyclone and that's devastated. That's what I imagine. It's that one chair you will rebuild. Just pick up the chair and put it down the floor, and you're okay, yeah. And how have you changed? Like you're back in your business now, you're into a bit of a rhythm again. What have you noticed has changed? It might be positive. It might just be the things that you thought were a problem aren't actually a problem. How has being a mum changed you and the way you run your business, communicate with clients, all of the things massively. So I work full time two days a week in my business, yeah, and then I work one day a week, just sort of like here and there between nap times as I tag team with my husband, but I could not do this without the support of my family. There is no way. I don't know how women or men have a baby, no support and still run their business when they're newborns. Nap times aren't predictable. Nothing is predictable with a baby, and that's the biggest lesson I've learned. Nothing is predictable. Nothing goes to plan. You've got a plan. It goes out the window. But so I have my mum come over on one day a week, and I have my husband's mom come over on another day of the week. And that's created a really nice synergy for me to be able to say, okay, cool, two full days a week, I'm working. Yeah, I see my baby, I feed him, I come back into the business, and I keep working. Three hours later he needs to feed again. I go out, feed him, come back into my office. So it's a really nice system that we've got going on. And then it means two and a half days of the week. I'm mum Mon. I get to play with my baby. I go to baby sensory classes with him, you know, I meet up with friends for coffee and lunch. And so I feel like I'm still having that beautiful maternity leave that other people get when they're working nine to five, but I also still get to run my business, and still get to build my legacy, and I still get to impact my clients, because that's also a really important part of who I am, too. And I feel like in the 12 weeks that I was off, whilst it was beautiful, not having to worry about anything, I missed also being in work. I missed my clients. I missed you know that part of me that makes me me too. So I feel like I found this really great synergy between both. And as you just mentioned before, I ran an event on the weekends. It was a two day event, client event for my powerhouse group coaching program. I had a woman fly from Norway to come from New Zealand, come all over every single major city in Australia had flown in to come to this event. And this is something that has been a dream of mine for so long, to hold a two day intensive event for my clients. And I thought, you know, if I don't get to do it because I have a baby, it's okay. But it took me a lot longer to plan definitely, but I did it. I had this two day event. I made it work. I pumped in between breaks. That's that's a whole other story, right? Because I've got two full days events, from 9am to 5pm is the event, and then we go out for dinner. From 630 till nine, my baby's not with me. How am I feeding? What am I doing? And so I had to schedule in. Okay, they're gonna have morning tea here. I'm gonna pump. They're going to have lunch. I'm going to pump. They're gonna do this. I'm going to pump. And so I was able to do that. You know, Anthony came on one of the nights and brought her baby, and he stayed over one of the nights. I had my first night of six hours of uninterrupted sleep. And it was amazing. That's funny. I'm like, six hours. That's that's limited. You do not know what you can do on six hours of sleep. I felt like a new human, and trust me, you'll learn how to be productive on six hours sleep. It just becomes part of you. But I surprised myself that I was able to still hit the goals that I wanted to hit pre pregnancy, whilst having a baby. So again, just stacking evidence of I can do this, I can do this, I can do this, which has been so beautiful, but they're the highlights no one talks about, the low lights. Tell me, tell me. Give it to me. Be honest, give it to me. It's there'd be moments where it's been difficult to run, like old mon used to run. I used to run like a like a factory, constantly going, constantly going, never burning out. That's kind of person that I am. I've just picked myself up. Keep going. There's a job to be done. I do it. There was an inkling of that before the event as well, which is exciting to see that come through again. But I do a lot of the things in my business. And, for example, my mom messaged me the other day and said, Hey, I can't come because I'm sick on the day that I have scheduled right after my event. It's my first full day of work since the event, and everything leading up to the event was all steam ahead, like full steam ahead for the event. So I hadn't touched anything else other than event work. Now this Tuesday comes along and I no longer have help, and I'm like, What am I going to do? I have calls scheduled. I'm very much a people pleaser, where I don't like to let people down. I say, This is what's going to happen. And I say, I stick to my word. And so I had to get scrappy. I called my abuela, that's a grandmother in Spanish, and I said, Abuela, can you come over please? I was somewhat calm while all this was happening, because I knew if it didn't end up working out how I wanted to work out, there were ways around it. But I said, Abuela, can you come over just for 90 minutes Tuesday morning just to cover me for this group coaching call inside a powerhouse, because it's hard to reschedule 30 people in one call the night before, and she goes, Yeah, no worries. I come over. She's never looked after him before. Bless her. Bless her soul. She and almost 90 and almost 90. Bless her soul. Crazy. Honestly, what a woman. She came over. She's there. She puts a little slipper. She goes, Okay, up here. And she just watched him while he slept, and just calmed him down if he woke up, fed him a bottle whilst I was in my call. And I was like, Cool, I'm done now. Thank you. Thanks. You can leave. And so then I ended up spending the rest of that Tuesday in mum mode, and I had to really like that was the point where I found in myself, I felt really like the plan that I had for the day is gone. Yeah, the old man who was a steam train, who got shit done, who didn't let sickness, I would be sick as a dog, still working, because I knew I could do it mind over matter. I could do it when you've got a baby who requires your attention, and you physically can't just leave them on the floor, they'd be like, Cool. Good luck. Have fun over there. I'm just going to be over here working. No, he requires my attention. He deserves my attention. And so that was a really big lesson for me, because when my husband came home from work that day, and he came home and I gave him our baby, and I said, look after him for just half an hour. I just need to just tie some loose ends. It'll be okay. But I said to him, I'm like, it really made me realize that when someone come look after him, he's not the one that takes off work. Because technically, I was still working. Tuesday is my working day. He didn't stop work. I had to. I think that was a really big realization for me, where it's like, no matter what, no matter what happens, I'm always the one that needs to sacrifice. I'm always the one that needs to give up my dreams. I'm always one that needs to give up my body. I need to give up so much for this human which I love so much. It's not it hasn't to do with him, has to do with the idea of myself, of like my body is no longer my own, my business is no longer just the business, my life is no longer my own. And so coming to terms with the fact that sacrifice is now a part of what I need to do in the daily is a lot. Does that come with any moments of resent or like so, much easier for the men. They don't rely on the men's boobs. They don't rely on the men. Is there any of that sort of stuff that's come up that you've had to work through, particularly this week, when we had the day off and I had to give up, I was just like, Man, why was it not even a question that, Hey, babe, I'll just stay home today and you can work. Why was that not an option? Because it wasn't and not even say anything. Anthony didn't nothing to do with Anthony. I didn't even propose that. I didn't even message Anthony, saying, hey, mum can't come over tomorrow. What am I going to do? I'd actually just found a solution before I came to him, because internally, I knew the buck like I knew it sucked with me. I knew that I was when I had to sacrifice. And so yes, there are more. It's where it's like, Man, why can't they just step in and step up and do that? But I am so lucky, because not all husbands are like my husband, and I'm very aware of that in the sense that he stays home from work on Fridays so that he can look after our baby while I work on Fridays. Yes, it's not perfect, like having a mother here who just does that and is not working because our mum is retired, because he's also working, so he's there on his laptop, answering emails, but he's also looking after the baby in between. So he's worked a little bit more flexible in that sense, whereas he's not on calls, like he can just make all his meetings on other days, which is great. Like me, I don't make meetings on Fridays, so we tag team on Fridays. But I'm just so grateful because I hear horror stories, and it makes my heart absolutely break for these women who they don't have the support from their husband. So Anthony works for a company, and one of his co workers had a baby the exact same time as we did. And Anthony walks into work, and he goes to the guy, let's call him Jerry, goes to Jerry and says, Hey, Jerry, how's four months sleep regression hitting you, man, he's hitting us like a truck. And he said, I wouldn't know my wife does that. Oh, gut wrenching. My stomach just turns like I rolled around in my grave, because this is a human that you both decided to bring into the world together. Now I get it. If the mum of Jerry is a stay at home mom, and she doesn't have anything else to do, and that's okay, and that works for their dynamic, beautiful but in our family, myself and my husband, we're both income producing, both making money for our family, where we both need to work in order to pay our bills. So there's no Oh, you're the mom. You need to stay up all night, you need to resettle. And so we've come up with this really beautiful scenario where it's like, he'll reset, will resettle our baby overnight, and then I'll feed intermittently every three to four hours. If he wakes up between three to four hours and he needs to resettle, I'm not getting up, I'm asleep, and he'll get up and he'll resettle our baby and put him back down. And so honestly, there's no way I could do this without a partner like him who is all in on this sort of life that we've created for ourselves. Is it hard? Yes. Are we both tired? Yes, but I am not burnt out to the fact that I cannot even see. We're both getting sleep, but we're also both putting pulling out in our weight. We're both bringing money to the business. We're both having time off. So it's just, I am so so lucky to have him, and I feel like, if there's any other scenario in which that doesn't happen and you are a business owner, speak to your husband, speak to your partner, tell them how important it is for you to be working in the business, to have that part of your life back. How you need them to become some sort of slack in there, because it shouldn't just be all on you. And that's a big part of what I believe. I believe success is possible for everyone. I grew up in a family where money was used and abused. Money was taken from and dangled over my mum because she wasn't working and she was looking after the kids. And I never wanted to be in that situation. I never wanted to rely on a man for my own life. So it was so important for me to go back to work, it was so important for me to build a business that allows me to work and have a baby, because there was no way that I was going to be reliant on a man no matter how beautiful a man is. Beautiful love him, but I can't rule anyone else but me. And again, that's that security piece. You can't find your security in someone else. It's in you, far out. When you put it like that, it's like it's true, even if you've got the most supportive partner, there is still an element of no matter what, there is just physical things that mean the female is going to have to sacrifice that little bit more, and there would have to be so much communication and self awareness not to let that fester. Because it would like, I can see how it's like, well, you can go for a run today to let some steam off. I'm still recovering. You know, yes, a lot Yes. And I think that communication piece is so important for you know, your partner to really understand what physical health looks like for you, mental health looks like for you, and what you need. Because, like, he'll go off and he'll play indoor soccer. Mm. But then I'll message him, saying, hey, I really want to go to Pilates. He goes, No worries. I'll make sure I'm home so you can go. And he'll make sure it happens. The other day, he was going to be home in time, and he goes, cool. It's 55 minutes to your Pilates studio. Get put him in the car. Let's meet there. We'll swap house. You can go to Pilates and I'll take him home. Yeah, so it's about working together that you both need your time. You both need your physical health. Cup filled. You both need your mental health. Cup filled. You both need time away from your baby and time together with your baby. And that communication is key, like and and just really understanding that the responsibility is on both of you, not just one. And I think that's really helped stop a lot of the resentment that I hear so many people in my DMs talking about, and I just really pray and hope and wish that you know, if you're listening to this podcast, and either you are pregnant, you are thinking about being pregnant, or you do have a baby, just talk and set those expectations from the start before you fall pregnant. Set those expectations from the start, because once you fall pregnant, there's no turning back. And if you're with someone who isn't willing to sacrifice one day a week, or sacrifice part of their sleep at night to look after the baby that you both created together, then you need to have a conversation. So true. Okay, I'm gonna do I'm gonna wrap this up with some rapid fire questions. I feel like I could talk to you all day and all night, and there's just so many angles here. But firstly, before we wrap this up with rapid fire, I want to say thank you, not just for this interview, but also just for how you're showing up and how you actually being that person, especially, you know you said that you were feel full of fear when you got pregnant, because it's like, what's going to happen to me? What if I don't love my business? What if I don't love my business? What if people don't blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's really cool to see expanders in this space, and you are definitely being one of them. And it's yeah, thank you for how you're showing up. And it's that authenticity that you shared in the beginning of this episode. It's like, we still seem on. We still see who you are, the good, the bad, the in between the all of the pieces, and I think that this season has really been a reflection of everything you teach and how important it is that your essence is still online, your authenticity is still there. And it's really cool to witness. Thank you. I appreciate that. There's definitely an identity shift. There's definitely a Who am I now in this world of social media when I'm now a mum, does this even matter as much as I thought it did? Is this even important as keeping a baby alive? And you definitely go through those moments of self doubt and moments of, Am I doing the right thing? You know, who am I showing up as you know, people talking online, saying, Oh, don't dance on your reels, because x, y, z, and so it makes you be like, okay, maybe I won't dance on reels, and maybe I won't do this. And so I've gone through a lot in the last, I would say, two years, actually, to the date, two years, I've seen a huge identity shift in who I am. You know, businesses have closed, business friends have been lost, babies have been born, things like that have happened. And I really had to go through so many identity shifts throughout the whole process. And it's really nice to see that even if you are lost, give yourself the grace and you'll find yourself back up again. So beautiful. So we're gonna do a lightning round rapid fire, which is just a really quick, fun answer the first thing that comes to your mind, okay, let's do it. I'm ready. All right. Is there a piece of content that you wish you could delete or that gives you the cringe? Oh, a a piece of content? No. The reason the answer is no is because every single piece of content that you create makes up the puzzle piece of who you are today. So no, there is no piece of content, no, nothing that is cringe that I find. Would I done it better? Yes, but would I take it back? No. So there's no piece of content, maybe ones that I make mistakes on, like, full on spelling mistakes, and I don't want to repost it, those ones, definitely, but nothing that's super cringe. I get it. The spelling mistakes after you've hit Publish is just this, like, Oh, why? Why? It's so rough, so rough. What does success mean to you now? Success, to me, looks like working part time and making money on days where I'm spending with my baby like I live for days that I'm in my baby class with my baby boy, and a notification from stripe comes up. You've just made $5,000 beautiful. The best that to me, success. I love that that's so good. What is your go to song when you need a hype up, or you want to feel like yourself again? Fun fact, when I did mind school with you this time last year, this was the song and I played it before my event the other day. Oh, did you I did? And I remembered you. It's head and heart. I think every time I hear it now, and I'm like, I can see you moving into the room and like, doing your power. I think we were even practicing an anchor, and your anchor word was powerhouse, and yes, now you're using it at your powerhouse event. So cool, yes, so full circle moment. But it's that song, and I use it every single year for my business anniversary, which is about to come up for seven years, and I have a little dance that goes with it. But it's that song anytime I need a pump up, I'm about to walk on stage. I'm about to even before hitting getting into this interview in my mind, subconsciously, this happened. The song started playing in my brain. So the anchors we did at mind school clearly worked. Shameless plug there. What is a lie about motherhood you believed until you lived it? Oh, a lie that I believed you're a bad mum if you dot.dot.so, replace those dot, dot dot dots with all the things you think are bad. For example, co sleeping. You're a bad mum. If you let your baby have a dummy, you're a bad mum. If you X, you're not a bad mum. You're surviving. You're doing what you need to do to survive. And no co sleeping does not cause them for months not to say that I co sleep. There are times where I'm just like, oh, come into bed with me. It's 5am we've got one more hour until you need to feed. Just lay here. Yeah, he sleeps. And it's beautiful, and it's great. But I think a lie is like you're a bad mum. If you do these things, you're not a bad mum, like at all. You love your baby so so much. You're not a bad mum. And you probably do all those things that you say before, baby, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I I've so many times said to Paul, oh yeah, we won't do screens for the first two years, or whatever, and I can already feel myself being like, you're gonna look back on that and be like, you didn't know anything seriously, even screens, when people are holding my baby and then, like, his head, he's whipped to the screen watching it. I'm like, no screens. And then just turn the baby, turn him around. Oh yeah, but yeah, there's just so many things, like the judgment that you have before having a baby. Before having your baby, versus when you have a baby and you realize, oh, yeah, okay, I take that back. Yeah, that's, that's, that's it. Last question I want to, actually, no, I want to do two more questions. What is the most unhinged thing that you've done on social media, or, like, the most unhinged thing you've done to get validation, likes, virality, whatever, okay, the most unhinged thing I've done, and I would say this in the sense of what I did to get sales, is I hosted a Live video on Instagram at 1130 at night.

11: 53:47

30pm we were closing the doors to our course that night, and I was and we're getting a few DMS of people who had a few more questions. I was like, You know what? I'm gonna jump on live. I set up my tripod, put the light on, had my I was drinking a milkshake at the time, and went on live. And without even doing anything, I was like, Cool. Anyone on this live who wants to join you get a free one on one with me when you join on this call. Let's go. I made 20 sales on that call. I didn't think it would even be up. Yeah, people up, people spending. And it was unhinged, but it worked. Wow. Okay, so for everyone listening, people are up at crazy hours. That's wild to me, absolutely wild. And to follow that up, last thing for someone listening who is like, Instagram's not working. It's too hard. I fucking hate it. It's like it's not working, and something it needs to change. What would be your like marketing, business coach, piece of advice that you would say to these people, to help them feel reinvigorated with Instagram or fall in love with creating content again? Yeah, okay, so if you feel like your content isn't working right now, the main reason is that it's not connecting to your audience. It's not the algorithm, so how many followers you have, it's all determined by how your audience interacts with that piece of content. And if your content is no longer working. It means your audience is no longer a part of your content. So the first step to do here is market research. Do some market research with your audience, understand where they're at, what they're struggling with, what they want to achieve, and so then you're able to start basing your next round of content on these key factors. So you can create harder hitting content, content that actually lands and gets into their mind. I think there's a big difference between Okay, I'll post a piece of content around what to do when you're struggling with x and focusing on the pain points. We want to go deeper. How does that pain point make them feel? Speak about that because online right now, there is so much sameness. There is so much information out there, and your audience doesn't need more information. They don't need more tips, they don't need any more tricks. They need more connection with you. And so the ways you can do that is connecting to them. And what they're thinking, they're feeling that they're they're saying, you want them to think, oh my gosh, she's in my mind, they also want to connect with you on a person to person level, because, again, people buy from people, not from nameless, faceless brands, and just for the sake of buying a service. So if you're you as a person, how can they connect with you on a personal level? So many people say, Monique, I buy from you, again, because of your energy, but also because of your story, because I see myself in you. And so bringing that out into your content is going to be the golden ticket to getting your content revitalized and to fall back in love with creating content again. So good. And if people want to get all of your value, your storytelling, your energy, where can they find you? You can head over to Instagram, at the socialista with an underscore at the end, you'll see me there with all my pink and all the reels and all the things happening there, and you can see all the cool things that I've got coming up, and all the programs that I have, including powerhouse, where I specifically work with service based businesses and coaches to help them three times their Instagram, sorry, three times their business up level their Instagram so they can take their business to the next level. Highly recommend. Mon is just a genius at messaging, and I think she's just great to get a lot of tips and follow the energy. I love your energy online, so go follow Mon. Thank you so much for being here. It's been so great to chat, and I'm sure we'll have you back on here for a part two one day. Thanks for having me. Thank you for tuning in to the mind school podcast. It is a massive intention of mine to continue to grow this show, because the more the show grows, the better the guests get. And I know that is going to be so powerful for you listening. So if I could ask this massive favor, it would mean the world if you could please leave a review, hit the Follow button, or leave a rating on Spotify, so that we can continue to grow this show and bring you the juiciest, most thought provoking and expansive conversations through incredible guests. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'll see you next week. You.