The Modern Moms Roadmap to Balance Podcast

Episode 22: The Courage to Leap: From Corporate Exec to Entrepreneurial Educator with Special Guest Anita Anello

• Kayla Nettleton • Episode 22

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Have you ever felt caught between the relentless pursuit of professional success and the deep yearning to be there for every moment with your family? Anita Anelo, a coach and entrepreneur who's navigated the tumultuous waters of work-life balance, joins me, Kayla, for a heart-to-heart on thriving amidst life’s contradictions. We laugh, we get serious, and above all, we get real about the daily rituals that help us manage everything from Bible study to business, and how these practices can anchor you during life's unexpected storms.

Anita doesn't hold back as she shares her journey from a high-powered exec to a homeschooling wonder woman and, eventually, to a fulfilled entrepreneur. This episode peels back the layers on the restless desire that transforms a stable career into a leap into the unknown joys of entrepreneurship. We talk about how trusting in your abilities and recognizing your personal and family rhythms can lead to not just financial success, but a life rich with education, reflection, and rest.

From the value of verbalizing thoughts for clarity to the importance of networking and utilizing free resources, this episode is a goldmine for anyone looking to manage their time effectively while growing their business. Anita and I invite you to not just listen but to connect and harness the tools we discuss for achieving that elusive balance and nurturing your entrepreneurial spirit. So, grab your headphones, get comfortable, and let's explore how the courage to embrace change can pave the way to a life you love.

Helpful Links

Website: https://www.therippleaffect.net/

Social Media Handles

https://www.tiktok.com/@anita.rippleaffect.coach
https://www.linkedin.com/in/anitaanello/
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https://www.facebook.com/therippleaffectdotnet
https://linktr.ee/the.ripple.affect

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About the Podcast Host
Kayla Nettleton is a licensed therapist based in TX, business owner, mom of 3 kids and coach for therapists who want support and guidance in their journey in creating an aligned business model so that they can live the freedom based life they've always dreamed of without sacrificing their own needs.

In her private practice as a therapist Kayla specialize in helping women overcome anxiety, perfectionism and people pleasing tendencies so that they can lead a more fulfilled and authentically aligned life


Find Kayla on IG
@kaylanettleton_lcsw
@themodernmomsroadmaptobalance

Email: kayla@kaylanettleton.com

TX Residents can Schedule a Free 20 minute therapy consultation here.

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Speaker 1:

Hello everybody. I hope you've been having a fabulous day. Today. Our guest is Anita Anelo. She is a business owner, coach, successful software executive and mom dedicated to helping fellow women of faith enjoy more time, money and freedom. Welcome, anita.

Speaker 2:

Hey Kayla, how are you?

Speaker 1:

today I'm doing well and I apologize if I said your last name wrong. I was about to say Anelo and then I said Anelo, so I apologize for that.

Speaker 2:

Anelo's it, it's good, it's Italian, not Spanish. Ok, ok, cool.

Speaker 1:

That's awesome, Yep, yeah. So the first question that I always ask everyone is what is your definition of a balanced life.

Speaker 2:

I like that and I'm going to break it down quickly in two ways. I came from the corporate space and so I always find it funny when you're working in the corporate world and your HR department tells you when you're working in an 80 hour work week, hey, let's talk about work-life balance? And you're like, oh shit, so sorry, I don't mean to offend anybody, those words just kind of come out sometime. So what I have learned over time is that a balanced life for me looks like daily working on my disciplines of Bible study and prayer and exercise and all those when I my mind's like I'm a doer, I love just I love tasks, I love lists, I love all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2:

So I will constantly wake up in the morning thinking I can get like 20 things done today, and yet that's not the reality.

Speaker 2:

So when I take the time to slow down and for me I just pray and ask God OK, what are the one to maybe three things that have to get done today, that actually brings balance.

Speaker 2:

Because instead of feeling overwhelmed and afraid or fearful or just all the things that would normally get me stuck, what helps me bring balance to my life is bringing it down like about 12 notches and just saying, ok, what do I need to get done today? It also actually gives me margin to be able to take care of my people, like I'm a homeschooling mom and an entrepreneur and a wife and a mother and all these other labels and I need time in my schedule to be able to serve my people, and so that brings the stress level and the anxiety down. And when I do that, so it's a practice, it's a habit. So it doesn't work that way every day, it's not always perfect or any nonsense like that, but when I do, then usually by the end of the day I'm looking at going OK, I took care of the kids over here and my husband and I did this. Then I kind of always see things in these buckets and where things overlap, and then I'm able to be like OK, I was both productive.

Speaker 2:

That's always super important to me, but I also made space for people and for heart issues and for conversations, and that's key for me. The conversations and the heart issues are the most important thing in my life, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Are you saying heart issues or hard?

Speaker 2:

No heart issues. Yeah, heart issues yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I know previously you had mentioned that you had gone through a medical crisis and so many other things that happen all at one time. Is that part of the heart issue?

Speaker 2:

Yes, yeah, I would say so. It's kind of just the journey of life, Like you wake up in the morning you're kind of like I'm in a bad mood and I don't really know why that could be a heart issue, your spouse says something that kind of gets you all tweaked and that could be a heart issue.

Speaker 2:

But it's all those things that always come up in our heart and our mind kind of throws like a monkey wrench into the day, instead of those days when I'm able to say I'm just so, I'm naturally optimistic, that's like my normal set point. But on the days that I'm not well, then I have a heart issue and I've got to figure out a way to solve that.

Speaker 1:

OK, OK, sorry, I was thinking like medical, something wrong with your heart in some way, but there are those.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we can talk about that story too, I know you clarified.

Speaker 1:

I think everyone else is clear now. But, we need to ask that to clarify for myself, yeah, ok.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so we did have crisis in our household that happened about. It's been a little bit over 18 months or so and, as you mentioned, there was a very short window of time where we, in about a six to eight week window, we had a big marriage upset than a medical crisis for a member in my household who, coincidentally, did have a heart issue a physical heart issue, OK, and then in the midst of that my husband lost his job in the midst of hospitalization and it was pretty gnarly.

Speaker 1:

Wow.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So let's, I guess, take some steps back, because I know there's a beginning to that story. And so you had this corporate job, you were making fantastic money, and then you decided you were going to leave that job and homeschool your five children. Is that right?

Speaker 2:

We don't have five, but yeah, yeah, so homeschool the kids, ok.

Speaker 1:

Somewhere in the notes the number of children. Yes, the number of children you have, ok, not five.

Speaker 2:

That's awesome, yeah. So I had been an executive in the software industry, built up a career and really loved it in so many ways, and then I started having kids. So I had kids a little bit later in life and I just wanted to be home with them. Like as soon as I held babies in my arms, like I just had such a desire to be at home with them and we kind of had this almost like a little idea. A seed of an idea got dropped into our lives early on, I think maybe I was pregnant with my daughter or maybe she had just been born, and I was like I looked at my husband, I was like how do you feel about homeschooling? And he was like I don't know, I don't know what you mean, because my stepson, who is older than her, our daughter, he was mainstream school all the way. So my husband's like whoa, wait a minute, ok.

Speaker 2:

So then, and I traveled a lot for work, so I had this successful career. I had to climb that ladder. I had the title, the accolades, the money, all the things. But I got to a point several years later after having children that I just wasn't happy. I mean, I really wasn't happy. I was dissatisfied in so many things, but on the surface it looked like I should. You know, when you kind of like go after the goals and you feel like, yeah, this should be it, and I distinctly remember this feeling, it's like tangible to me. I can remember feeling like like choked out, like I climbed this ladder and had all the success and I was looking around going is this it? This can't be it, because I am not happy, right.

Speaker 2:

So in that process we had started homeschooling our kids, our younger kids. We had two that we were homeschooling and a third that was mainstream all the way. And when you first start out homeschooling it's I don't know. In my mind I thought, well, wait a minute, how am I gonna do all this and continue to work my corporate job and all this kind of stuff and you just the demands when your kids are like four and five and your schooling is not all day kind of a thing.

Speaker 2:

But we have kids that when I'm still working a job, I had amazing women who would come alongside me as nannies and just love on my kids like I would. So that journey was about a eight year journey of being in that mix of wanting to stay home but needing to be at work and in that timeframe. So that's a long time. It's a long time to wait, it's a long time to wrestle For me. I felt like I was wrestling with God, like my heart says I want to be over here, but my brain and in that case my husband, was saying no, you have to be over here, right.

Speaker 1:

So we took and by over here you're meaning like your job, your corporate job, that you have, yeah, staying in the job?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely. So. We took we talk about it all the time as a household and really at that point, because our kids were so little, just really my husband and I and I would look at him like I wanna stay at home, I wanna be able to continue homeschooling, like this is where God's called us, we wanna be obedient to that and we would see the fruit of schooling our kids in that manner. And there's lots of different ways you can school. All of them can be amazing, all of them can be super hard, but in that journey of going on that it's really like an adventure of going on, the adventure of homeschooling. And as they got a little bit older, the demands got more like junior, k and kindergarten, not that, not too hard, but when you start getting into the academics of some of the grades and learning them and the time investment that it takes.

Speaker 2:

So I knew I always wanted to stay at home with them. So I had the opportunity because we had prepared. So we had prepared financially for me to be able to leave the workforce. We knew how to have the discipline of getting our finances in order to make the shift. And that was big for us because we weren't going to just say, I don't know. Let's just throw it all up in the air and be like ah sure, let's homeschool on a whim, by the way, don't do that that's a bad idea.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's probably not Plan plan, that's some sort of traction.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah. So I retired early. I retired early at age 43 to homeschool and with my kids and stay home with them and I had about a 10 year stretch of just doing that. And then about five years ago I kind of had this and it was amazing I love it, we're still homeschooling, we're 15 years in. It's been. It's really been an incredible journey. And so then about five years ago I kind of got this stirring, like my kids were getting older, the demands on me were a little bit less. And I would look at my husband. I was like I'm kind of getting restless to do something again. He's like, well, what does that look like? I was like, well, I'm not going back to corporate America because the 80 hour work week and family and homeschooling and all the other like talk about no balance, like that. I'm sorry, I just don't believe, if you're giving that much time to somebody else, that you could have any balance in yourself at all in your life at all.

Speaker 1:

No, not at 80 hour work weeks.

Speaker 2:

No, I'm not even 50. I would even challenge like 50 or above. Like really, 40 is kind of like the ban, right? That's pushing it right there. That's a lot of time to devote to any one thing, right? So then I started building businesses because that's what I had done in the past. I had worked for different companies and I enjoyed that. But I owned a business one time years ago, a software company, with other partners, and I loved it, and that's the only thing I missed about my career. I missed building businesses and being an owner and going through that strategy as an owner, because it's different. You kind of have, it's just different. It's different than if you're working for somebody else, yeah, so, yeah, well, I'll pause right there. What is that? That usually triggers a whole bunch of questions.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so do you remember what that initial seed was? You said you had noticed a seed Like a seed was planted, and how. So if you remember the seed, but if not, how were you able to notice that seed that was being planted? Because I think there's so many women who struggle with just trusting themselves and trusting the things that are put into their heart, of what to do or of things to start.

Speaker 2:

For me it was a consistent acknowledging over a period of time, it was a consistent restlessness, and this is kind of how it worked its way out I'd school, clean my house, do all my errands, all the lists of the chores, and then I'd have all this free time and I'd be like, well, now what I've read everything I wanted to do, like I've had hobbies, like I would do all those kinds of things. But, like I said earlier, I'm kind of a doer, and so I would get to a certain part in my day and I'd start to watch this pattern and then my husband and I would talk about it and he'd start to comment on the pattern of hey, this isn't just one day a week or sometimes when you homeschool. Let me just say this is what happened in our household for many, many years. Homeschooling would be going great until about February and every single year bar none, I would be freaking out, being like everybody's going to private school, I'm going back to work, this is not working. And my husband would.

Speaker 2:

Finally, after a couple of years, he's like what's going on in February, what's the problem? And I'm like I don't know. I just all we needed to do was actually take a little break and as soon as we incorporated the break in February, all that February is like the halfway point in your school year, especially if you school from like an old school traditional models of September to June. February is that halfway point and it's the middle of winter and we're from San Clemente, although we live in Texas now, so you can kind of go to the beach still in February in San Clemente, but you're just, you're kind of at this, they don't really want to school anymore because they're tired and you just come off vacation Like there's just, at least for our household, it was just kind of like a funky little hot mess of nobody wants to do anything, like I didn't want to they didn't want to and so it would.

Speaker 2:

I noticed this frustration. But when we shifted away from oh, this isn't just a February thing, this isn't just like, hey, we need to take a vacation or we need to take a break and just spend the whole week outside or what you know, february can be cold, so maybe we just need like there were times when we could identify that we'd just say we just need to spend the week in our pajamas, not do anything else. You know that kind of stuff. So all those things helped until it didn't. And then, all of a sudden, I started recognizing this pattern of oh, this is bigger than just a week in February. This is like a restlessness in me of no, I really want to do something. I'm really actually made for more.

Speaker 2:

I feel like, in some ways, in order to homeschool my kids, I put certain things on hold and kind of suppressed these qualities and skills that I had in my life and it was like wait a minute, I'm really I'm actually really pretty good at some things. Why don't I go back and do that? And sometimes, let me tell you, ladies, it's hard because you don't get the same kind of accolades and acknowledgement and even thank yous that you do when you're homeschooling, that you do when you're in the workforce. You know in the workforce, at least you get, if you do well, at least you get a paycheck. And you know you don't get that when you're homeschooling there's no acknowledgement. Mom, here's an award because you did amazing this year, so, and that's okay. I don't need that kind of stuff. I know that I'm a great teacher. I'm totally okay with that.

Speaker 2:

But yeah, it was just kind of this uneasiness, that kind of kept building, building, building, building, and so my husband and I would kind of talk about it. And one day I distinctly remember it was a December in, so I started my business in October of 2018. So I think it was the winter. I think it was like right before that I looked at Vince and I was like I don't know, what do you think I should do? And it kind of laid out all these options.

Speaker 2:

He goes babe, I don't know, only you can answer that. And I was like ah, that's like the perfect thing to say to me, like don't tell me what to do, kind of girl. That doesn't really help. But it almost like gave me the freedom, because he said I don't know, but I know that you know what's in your heart. Just try some things. And that gave me also the permission, because one thing my husband and I do really well is we know how to be good partners and team members for one another and champion the other person and say I don't know, like you have those God given desires in your heart. You gotta kind of figure out what those things are, but then go try them.

Speaker 2:

Go try them in a context of yeah, bills are paid, no problem, you wanna try something on top of that? Yeah, go try it. That started a whole new journey for us. It started a completely different kind of adventure as a family and as a couple, and just for me individually.

Speaker 1:

That's awesome. So I wanna highlight a few things here, because one of the things I heard was you were not ignoring that fool to do something, so you weren't ignoring that. You were paying attention, like being curious with yourself. What is this? What is this feeling? What is it trying to tell me? Two you were open with your partner about this feeling and they were also noticing this in you too, which our partners are not always in tune to us in that way, but that's awesome that he was able to notice that.

Speaker 1:

But y'all were in conversation about these things and when we can have the open dialogue to talk about these things, it can make it so much easier to really flesh out what it is that we want to do, because when we're just thinking about things, it's so muddy, there's just so much information in our brains. We just need to get it out there, whether it's writing it down or talking to a partner about it. Whoa, I lost my headphone just a second. Yep, I have no idea where it went. It's okay.

Speaker 1:

And the other funny thing, too, is that you had brought up the whole February thing and we were talking about that, something similar, before we hit the record button. In terms of oftentimes we think we just need to push through. We just need to push through this like hard stuff, it'll be better on the other side, when in reality, sometimes you just need to rest and take that break. And you said you did do that, and I think your chance were probably like yes, we need this break from school and being homeschool. You had that opportunity to do that, which is awesome, yeah.

Speaker 2:

You know another thing that you're actually. What's reminding me is we're connecting. So when I was, I have a tendency to feel like I say when I was just homeschooling, as if that like diminishes homeschooling at all. That's not enough. That's not at all what I'm saying.

Speaker 2:

But when I was focused solely as my number one job as homeschooling, one thing I did learn really well that relates to rest along the process is some you can't necessarily not even your kids, nor you can just go full bore all the time, every single week, no, whatever. So you might be on your period, take a break. You might have a new baby that needs to be nursed, like take a break. Like all the. So what I did learn over a lot of years of schooling is all the academics they all get done, no matter what Like, and then some stuff you just like we're not a, we are not the kind of homeschooling family that says, eh, I don't feel like it, we're just not gonna do it. We always finish well, like that's a theme in our household. We finish what we start, okay, but because I know sometimes in homeschooling you're like oh, you're like that's flaky homeschooling. No, we're not that famous.

Speaker 1:

We're not a family.

Speaker 2:

So it does happen, it does totally exist. But also recognizing like today might just not be the best day, because I might not be the best day.

Speaker 2:

It might, acknowledging like maybe I'm just not the nicest teacher right now, maybe I just need to go have a bath or cup of coffee or go clean something, and then I come back on okay, kids, we're ready to go. So I just want if there's somebody listening right now that's probably feeling like, oh, the pressure. I'm in the middle of the mom thing and my kids are little. I don't care if you're homeschooling or not, whatever, just show yourself some grace and just take a breath, because, especially when our kids are really little, we just need sometimes we just need to stop the madness of do, do, do, do, do all the time and just like snuggle up and read with them or play a game with them or just not do anything or I don't know something. Get outside. Like. There's a lot of value, and I learned a lot of those things from just amazing ladies that came along the homeschooling journey with me, that did things a little bit differently or were older, and they could like reach a hand back and say okay, anita, come on, let me help.

Speaker 1:

You see what's really important, and my heart was always so blessed for those kinds of things Because, as I've already stated like, I am naturally like oh, let's go, let's go, let's go, we gotta get stuff done, yeah so, and we, as moms and as women, we need to stop believing the lie that everything is going to like this unconscious lie, because we're not like telling ourselves it's all gonna fall apart if we take a break, but this unconscious belief that if we take a break, if we do something ourselves, everything's gonna fall apart, because the reality of it is that's not true. Things will keep moving forward. Not everything is gonna fall apart because you gave yourself space to take a break.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, even expand on that, like, yes, I'm sure somebody listening feels like she needs to have that permission to take a break Mm-hmm, and yeah, not everything's gonna fall apart.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, I think that's, I think that's Accurate and I will also add to that even if stuff does fall apart, it's gonna be okay too, yeah, sometimes not doing something does cause a consequence that we didn't anticipate, but when we're resilient, we can figure it out, like we're we're women, we're amazing, like of course we can figure it out. And you go back to it tomorrow, right, or maybe maybe the next day. Look at how many people, too, are suffering with, like chronic conditions or they're raising children that might have something outside of the norm that causes life to be Ten times harder than it already is. Like our life is already challenging as it is, so what we would do is we would recognize kind of like the rhythm of the week and then we would latch on to that. I love that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, because some days.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, some days you just do have more energy. Some days are more productive, some days are Just naturally harder because where they fall in the rhythm of this long five-day work week, mm-hmm, with only two days off, right. So, recognizing that pattern and whatever that pattern looks like for somebody else's household, I think it's good for us to recognize where we are ourselves in that pattern in our household. And then I Mean, I'd say like who cares whatever? Who cares what your neighbor or your girlfriend or anybody else on social media is doing, like you do, what your family needs, mm-hmm, mm-hmm and it takes Really giving yourself space to think about what.

Speaker 1:

Not only does our family need, but what do I want for our, for our family, what do us as a family want collectively? What do I want for myself? Yeah, as a mom, as a woman, do I want more, do I want less? Is this enough right now? And being able to just ask yourself those questions can really help to Be more in tune with yourself and what you need.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, if there's one thing I think we did well as a family and my husband and I early on, is we laid out and talked about and wrote down what we really wanted to be intentional about and that has paid off Individends, and what we actually included, what we would do and what we wouldn't do.

Speaker 2:

So include both things and, yeah, that that really really helped us to stay in touch with our family and I think that's to stay focused on what was important, to like the path that we were on.

Speaker 2:

So then I, then I would come because it Unfortunately, as women, when we get caught in the comparison game Like nobody else is gonna, nobody's married to my husband, nobody's has my exact life Like it's kind of silly, isn't it, that I would think, oh, you know what my next door neighbor, kathy, like if I compare myself to her life, then I'm always setting myself up for failure.

Speaker 2:

I'm actually always setting myself, my, my kids and my husband all up for failure too, because I think, oh, my life has to look like hers and All these different ways. And then I'm like chasing after the wrong things and instead taking a step back and Talking about it and like in our household it's praying about it, talking about it, processing a lot of stuff out loud. My favorite, favorite, favorite line that I use all the time is I'm just gonna say something out loud sounds, see if it sounds like, see if it sounds crazy. And my people know they're like oh okay, mom, no big deal. You know, because when I say stuff out loud, I hear it and my brain catches it in a completely different way than if I just talk about it internally.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah yeah, right, right, because we are ears here, information differently and our brain processes information differently In different parts of the brain, that if we're thinking a thought versus saying something out loud, so I would always say like I'm just gonna say something out loud, see if it sounds crazy, and they'd be like, okay, no big deal, because then they also know it's kind of like the freedom to just be like, let just say something and not really Not really feel like, oh my gosh, a big declaration was just made or something like that, and get any of your.

Speaker 1:

Go ahead, I'm sorry, go ahead, have any of your kids caught on to that, like they also. Any of them also do that Totally.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Yeah, they'll use it in their language, in different words, but We've cultivated a freedom and a safety net In our household To just be like, okay, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna throw something out there. It looks a little bit more language-wise, it looks a little bit more like that to these days, but in my mind I'm like I don't know, it could be crazy. Now my husband he's pretty awesome because I could my other line that I will say a lot to him. I have an idea and he's like hold on, I mean my ideas honestly, kayla, they could be from let's go to the store to let's hop on a plane and go to Europe right now.

Speaker 1:

You know, I mean it's everything in between.

Speaker 2:

My ideas are they can be way out there, but he's I mean that's, he's good at that, he's like okay, what do you got? You know it doesn't cause him like anxiety or fear or anything, or frustration or anything. He just knows she's just gonna throw out something that's a wild, sometimes a great idea, sometimes a wild ass idea, and we're gonna be like what do you think?

Speaker 2:

And so you know, and it's good, like it's. Actually he's turned into something that we have a lot of fun with, because he just never, he never, ever knows what I'm gonna throw out there.

Speaker 1:

That's so funny. So you had this pool to do something. What did you end up doing? Where did that lead you?

Speaker 2:

Oh, okay, so I started an Amazon business in 2018 as a Amazon seller.

Speaker 1:

And for those who don't know what that means yeah, so you can become so.

Speaker 2:

A lot of stuff probably about 80 to 90% of the products that are sold on Amazon they don't come from Amazon directly. They come from other sellers. So there's a whole business model around selling stuff. On being an Amazon seller and building a business around that, there's a couple of different ways that you can do that. There's all sorts of different models. You can buy stuff at low prices in retail environments and resell on Amazon. You can create your own products. You can wholesale. So I focused on the wholesale space and got some clients around that.

Speaker 2:

It was kind of an okay business, I would say. I mean, it was nice because I could kind of do it all on my own and all on my own time and as a homeschooling mom, like that's wonderful because I can take care of everybody all day long and then scoot out in the evening or on the weekends and go find product and stuff like that. The one thing that I did not anticipate I tend to consider myself to be kind of like an extroverted introvert. So by nature I am more introverted. I get all of my energy by slowing down and being by myself. I don't, while I enjoy being around people. My husband is like the polar officer, like he's an extroverted extrovert. He's out all the time, wants to talk to everybody all the time. It's a lot for me, right, and so we know this about one another. So one thing that was interesting to me in the Amazon business is that, being somebody who's a little bit more introverted and not necessarily feeling like I needed to have a job where I was super connected to people, I just found so 2018, businesses going well, 2019, no problem getting clients, all that kind of stuff. Well then COVID hits right. I have product in the warehouses before all the warehouses shut down. So that was like that was a blessing, because then I could still sell stuff at the time when the entire world economy was shut down.

Speaker 2:

But actually in that process I realized I don't really like an inventory business because I kind of miss people, which was a total revelation to me because, like I said, I never really felt like. I didn't ever feel like that. I felt like I enjoyed engaging with people, but then most of the time I felt like I really enjoyed being just kind of doing work all on my own. So and especially you know, when you come from the tech space, you do a lot of just the skill sets that I have. I can engage with clients and then go do client work all on my own. I didn't necessarily need to have that much interaction, and so then that kind of looked like.

Speaker 2:

So I kind of started having these questions like do I really like an Amazon business and just an inventory business? I kind of miss some people which, like I said, like that was a wild thought for me, I never really occurred to me in my life. And then so just kind of having the freedom to continue on the journey, because a lot of times you know you'll see these metrics and it's totally unfounded, it's never been documented anywhere, like the metric that all businesses, certain percentage of businesses, fail within the first five years. That's actually not an accurate statement and it's never been documented and it's never been proven. What typically happens and this kind of like blows somebody's mind because they're like I've heard that forever.

Speaker 2:

What typically happens is the business. You start a business, you kind of try it out, test it on like, try it on like a pair of clothes, and you're like, ah, this doesn't really fit. Okay, let me try something different and you might change the name or the focus or whatever. But a true entrepreneur will try, try, try, try, try, try a whole bunch of different ideas. That doesn't mean that their business failed. It just means that they realize, oh, this is a better fit over here, or I'm gonna add this product line or drop this other, whatever. That's actually the more accurate statement of how the entrepreneurial journey goes Try stuff on, it doesn't fit, take that off, try something else.

Speaker 2:

So in that process of realizing the Amazon business wasn't really my thing, the whole world economy shuts down. I can't get product Like I. You know, so many businesses came to a standstill in the midst of COVID and so I just kind of started digging in again. I was like, well, I did a lot of introspective work, did a lot of journaling, I met with coaches just to kind of like, pull those pieces out. Have these great conversations, chatted more with my husband, cause that's what we do we process a lot of information out loud so that we can kind of get those thoughts out, sometimes even just getting out the silly thoughts, getting those out of the way, so we can get to the you know the real accurate thoughts, kind of getting down underneath.

Speaker 2:

And in that journey I just really discovered you know what actually really good at coaching and I love it and what would be the one thing that I could do no matter what. And so I started refining. You know what I was really good at and who I wanted to help and what kind of community did I wanna create. And so my thing is I love, love, love, love, cause. I did this for myself.

Speaker 2:

I love helping those successful corporate women of faith who have a God-sized idea of a business inside of them and they wanna transition from the corporate world over to the entrepreneurial world. Now my metrics looked like I work a half to a quarter of what I used to in my successful job and I make three times as much. And so in that model I was like I wanna help women do these same things. I wanna help women who want to intentionally raise their own kids or have a reset and a healthier marriage, or they wanna be able to have that money freedom and that and the time freedom, because we can have a lot of money but no time in our life and I dare say, at least for me, that's not necessarily the whole freedom equation. I really wanted to have both time and money freedom, both of those things were important.

Speaker 1:

Oh, absolutely yeah.

Speaker 2:

Especially as a homeschooler, you're kinda like, well, I want both and, by the way, I can, I can't like it's possible. And as an entrepreneur, you can branch out on your own and make, even with great salaries Like I had a fabulous salary and incredible benefits, all that kind of stuff I had been with in my corporate career for a long time, so I was super successful. But to be able to come out and be like, wow, I can work less and make significantly more, like yay, let's do that, that's fun. So yeah, it's been an amazing journey and it still goes on right. It's always a journey.

Speaker 1:

Oh it is. It always is a journey. And going back to the point where you were talking about how, the when you're trying to figure out what it is you want in your business and you're trying things on clothes and you're like, oh well, that's not working for me right now, or that's not, that's not quite what I wanted to do. It really goes back to this quote I hear often, which is action creates clarity. Consistent action creates clarity. When we keep moving forward and trying different things, we're going to figure out what it is that we actually feel lit up in doing. That's right, and it sounds like that's exactly where you are now. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

So I think it actually. I would even break it down a little bit further. I think for some people, the more you try, the more you figure out what you want to do. For others, equally important, the more you try, the more you figure out what you don't want to do, because I think the bucket of the things like you can go build this. Let me give you a tactical, just a practical example.

Speaker 2:

I love gardening. I love gardening, I love taking care of my yard, I love being out there, get my hands dirty, the smell of fresh air, all that kind of stuff. So I could build a successful business around landscaping and gardening and all that kind of stuff. I don't want to do that for somebody else. Yeah, it makes my heart sing when I'm out there doing it for myself, but it doesn't that it wouldn't be a good idea for me personally to build a business around that idea, because that's more of a hobby for me and it helps me to recuperate. It's like it's like a spiritual experience for me to go out in the garden and dig and get dirty and just be kind of lost in my own thoughts and put music on and just just the whole thing.

Speaker 2:

I don't want to do that for somebody else, which is okay, like that's it could be an amazing business for somebody else. But so going and trying things and then identifying, talking to friends, talking to coaches, being held accountable, journaling, all those, all those elements together, I don't think we necessarily only need to do one of those. I like doing all of those because I I process information differently when I write it down or talk about it or hold myself accountable in a coaching environment where I'm paying somebody to say let's work this out together. Oh, yeah, right, like you know from your clients, let's, let's work some of these things out together and you're going to show up every week until it's done. Like there's just something pretty amazing when you engage in a business relationship and and and there's money being exchanged for the value of the service of somebody else, giving you wisdom and giving you insight, sometimes even write questions, yeah, yeah, and then sometimes the person that's not your spouse.

Speaker 2:

Right, like my husband and I will talk through a whole bunch of stuff, but there comes a point where I'm like, okay, that's awesome, I love your insight because what I do affects you, what you do affects me, like, yes, we want to talk about that, um, but there's also value, because he knows me differently than you know my girlfriends or my coach or anything like that. But there's also value in being able to pull wisdom from other people. Right, oh, yes, right.

Speaker 2:

Even scripture says like there's a lot of value in being able to pull wisdom from multiple sources and then making those decisions for yourself and saying, okay, I'm going to try this.

Speaker 1:

Yep, this is my next step.

Speaker 2:

I'm going to try it. I'm going to try it on See if it fits. You might, you know, and so like. When I coach clients, we walk through a process of having a discussion and we do, we figure out. We'll help them figure out what's what I call their specialized knowledge and then walk them through the process. What does it take to build a business? Walk them through the process. What does it take to build a profitable business over a period of time? Because you don't normally jump from I have a successful career over here immediately into I have a successful business. You know, it's that transition. While on the internet everybody would tell us I made a million dollars overnight. Oh, yeah, yeah, doesn't normally work that way. Like the revenue, here's what I say the revenue hockey stick can happen in an overnight manner, but what that diminishes is the 10 or 15 or 20 years that it took to get to that spot.

Speaker 2:

So, sometimes, let's just be clear, Like the overnight, overnight success is is is a total lie.

Speaker 1:

It doesn't work that way, yeah, and from what I've seen, there really isn't any overnight success. It's just when they started feeling confident enough to talk about what they were doing. It really looks like overnight success, but they left out a really huge piece. That happened before.

Speaker 2:

Right, right, that's what I mean. Like you're an overnight success in 14 years in the making or something like that. Right, yeah, because again, the, the, the revenue experience or activity can happen quickly, but it's all the other steps that we took to get there Right and that's that's life. Right, it can. It can be like, hey, I show up, everything's amazing. Well, yeah, but it took a lot of work. It took a lot of blood and sweat and tears and crying out and not wanting to do it and then do it again and errors, and I think that's one thing.

Speaker 2:

The other thing that we we don't really like to talk about a lot is when we fall down as entrepreneurs and make errors. As entrepreneurs, we somewhat some, for some crazy reason, we have this idea like well, so and so super successful, I have to get everything right. No, you don't Like. That's just not how life works. We don't treat our, we don't teach our kids when they're learning how to walk, you gotta stand up and get a perfect the first time. We would never do that Like. That's dumb, right. So you know, our journey as an entrepreneur is not that way and I would, I dare say, anything amazing that you've done in your life. It was a great life. It was never that way. It was a try and fail and learn, and try again and fail and learn and work your way to that next step.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely, absolutely. And if someone here is listening and they think that you all would be a perfect fit to work together, what is the best way of getting in contact with you?

Speaker 2:

So I would love to just gift your audience with a couple of things, and we'll put some links in the show notes. I have a new free download that is all about Time management, and so, when you're starting out with a business, how do you manage those time, the your time? Well, and because? And we're just overloaded, we can be overloaded from information on our phone, and there's just so much input these days that it's really hard to stay focused on what it looks like to take those next steps. And then you could just find me at Anitaanelocom, you can find me at therippleeffectnet, and effect is spelt with an A. So we'll put all those links in the show notes. And so, yeah, reach out, reach out on social, on TikTok or LinkedIn or Instagram or Facebook, any of those we have. We're all over the place.

Speaker 2:

So, my team and I do it, my team does a really amazing job of sharing everything that we have, sharing all of our free resources all over the place. So, yeah, Awesome.

Speaker 1:

Well, thank you so much, Anita, for taking the time out and joining us today.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you're so welcome. And, Kayla, I just want to honor you for what you're doing. The audience that you're reaching and the way that you're doing it is so special and so important, and so I just want to honor you in front of your audience, like I just I thank you from the bottom of my heart for what you're doing, because it's super important.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much. I really really appreciate that. Yeah, you bet.