The Overlaps Between Motherhood and Empathpreneurship

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About the episode:

I’m currently spending a lot of time supporting my 5.5 month old in learning how to sleep in his crib, and what I’ve noticed is sleep seems to be something that moms lack, and oftentimes first time or seasoned entrepreneurs lack as well. This thought is exactly what I want to talk about in today’s episode – the overlaps between parenting and empathpreneurship. So many of my skill sets and the lessons I’ve learned over the past decade as an entrepreneur, have helped me being the older first time mama that I am. However, I recognize that there’s so much to learn and work through and it can be incredibly overwhelming, but it’s not something you ever have to do alone. So, listen in to hear the most common overlaps and struggles along with some practical tips to help you manage both effectively, and hopefully get a little bit more sleep in the process!

Topics discussed:

• How learning to be adaptable and lean into self-trust has saved Catherine the past few months and allowed to lead with her heart and listen to her intuition
• Focusing on managing yourself and your energy levels rather than trying to master “time management” and how Catherine has learned this from motherhood and especially podcasting
• Developing and innovating your own rulebook as a parent instead of trying to follow someone else’s to find more joy and creativity in parenthood
• Becoming a team player as an entrepreneur and a parent while learning to be vulnerable, ask for support, and improve openhearted communication

Episode Resources:

• Ground Yourself in 2025: Choosing a Word of the Year

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[expand title=”Click here for a raw, unedited transcript of this episode“]

Catherine A. Wood  00:01

Hey, friends, welcome back to the podcast. Cat here. So I have had sleep on my mind of late, both because I’ve been working real hard over here on helping my five and a half month year old son learn how to take crib naps, and I’ve also been mindful of my own sleep or seeming lack thereof, sometimes. And I don’t know about the other moms who are listening, but I think that how are you sleeping? How’s the baby sleeping? Is probably one of both the most frequent questions I get from folks, and the one that annoys me the most, like it’s a work in progress. I don’t really want to talk about it. And what I’ve noticed is sleep seems to be something that moms lack, and oftentimes first time entrepreneurs, or seasoned entrepreneurs lack as well, maybe for differing reasons. And I think with time, with practice, with the willingness to be resilient, adaptable and take more self leadership. You learn how to master both both as a mom and helping your baby get more sleep, as well as an entrepreneur, and that is exactly what I want to talk about on today’s episode. I want to talk about the overlaps between motherhood and parenting and entrepreneurship, because I have noticed so many of my skill sets, of the the lessons I’ve learned over the past decade as an entrepreneur, and just how much they have helped me being the older mama, the older first time mama that I am, and I’m so grateful for the role that my entrepreneurial journey has played in helping me in my first year as a first time mom, because there’s so much to learn. There’s so much to work through. It can be incredibly overwhelming. Just how many questions you don’t have answers to as a first time mom as well as as an entrepreneur, but learning how to sit in that liminal space of the unknown, the willingness to get supported quicker, to ask for help, to ask for partnership, to put your process on loudspeaker, to ask for the validation or normalization that you need, both as a first time mom as well as an entrepreneur, has made so much of The difference. So I remember I was listening to um, so I was remembering that I was listening to one of Rachel Hollis books on audible a couple years ago. Honestly, I don’t remember which, and she talked about the importance of a morning routine. And as a first time mom, how if you think you don’t have time for yourself in the morning, then you need to get up an hour earlier than the kiddos to take time for yourself. And I remember that when I first had my son, I really I had that wisdom in the in the back of my heart, I just thought, Oh, that would naturally happen. And what I quickly realized as a mom of a newborn is that I really needed my sleep and being willing to be adaptable and flexible, being willing to trust my nervous system and my needs was so important in those first months of motherhood, because honestly, I really did need to sleep in, which is something I haven’t done in years. And I didn’t go crazy. I probably slept in until like, eight or 9am but that’s a big difference than the five to 6am that I’ve been. And getting up, gosh, for the past five plus years to empower and prioritize my morning routine. So being willing to be adaptable and flexible and learning that skill through entrepreneurship has been such a game changer in my early months as a first time mom, because I think that if I had been trying to do it perfect, if I’d been trying to do it right, if I’d been trying to adhere to all the advice that I’ve read about in the parenting books that you can imagine I’ve read lots, then it would have been so much harder to trust my my gut, to trust my body, to trust my intuition, because my head would have won over my heart like absolutely prior to entrepreneurship, my head and the tendency to get it right, to do the right thing, to do the thing that you read about that Far, would have outweighed what my body and my own internal wisdom was telling me. So I think that is one of the first key overlaps that I’m present to in motherhood, and has been incredibly supported by my years of experience in entrepreneurship. The second one is the ability to problem solve and make swift decisions. There’s so many in the moment decisions you need to make as a mother and as a first time mom that can be incredibly overwhelming because of how many questions you don’t have the answers to. And you know there’s this tendency, especially for empathpreneurs, to people please, to default to do what you’re told, whether it’s by your parents or your in laws or your friends, and learning the skills to solve your own problems and also your own approach to how you make decisions on your own has been a skill that is incredibly useful as a mom and incredibly useful as an entrepreneur. So honestly, this is why I am really sensing that entrepreneurs make natural mothers and moms make great entrepreneurs, so just keep that in your in the back of your head or heart, if you’re not yet an entrepreneur, or if you’re not yet a mom and you’re wanting to be one or the other, I think that you likely have so much more of the skill sets than you give yourself credit for another skill set that I’m immensely grateful for is learning how to manage time. Time Management and multitasking, that is something that entrepreneurship has helped me master, something I share in the unbounded mastermind all the time is that really time and management is about self management, because we all have the same number of hours, minutes, seconds and a day, so we can’t manage time. We can only learn how to manage ourself with the time that we have. Now I think that is so much easier said than done. I think one of the practical interpretations for that is learning how to focus on your energy. Because when you’re focusing your energy on things that are energy providing energizing you will naturally manage your time better, because you’ll be more excited. You’ll feel more internally resourced to show up for the tasks at hand, whereas when your energy is low, or the tasks at hand feel energy draining or energy sucking, then those tasks are naturally going to take so much more time. You’re going to have less capacity to multitask, and you’re likely going to have to put it down at some point and come back later and finish it. I honestly think that’s one of the that is a lesson I’ve actually learned in podcasting, because I do not naturally have energy at all times of day to record positive podcast episodes. My thoughts don’t come in a coherent fashion. I don’t speak authentically, organically at all times of the day, and sometimes, if I try to muscle through, I’ll notice that recording an episode might take me, gosh, like, an hour and a half or two hours, whereas if I just put it away and come back the next day, oftentimes in the Morning, when my thoughts are clear when my nervous system is centered and grounded, I can oftentimes record or batch record episodes in one take. That is a golden lesson I have learned over the past two plus years of podcasting that has helped me so much with a. Motherhood and learning how to manage all the tasks that there are to do when you have an infant. So the next, the next key overlap is um. The next key overlap is around resilience and perseverance. As a mother, you have to learn how to build your own internal sense of resiliency in the face of so much, in the face of your children not napping, in the face of them crying in the face of them not eating or not nursing Well, or all the other challenges that come up with newborns, like, oh my gosh, like all the the diapering Challenges, all the oh my gosh, all the diaper changes, all the laundry, all the dishes and the bottles and all the time. I think in those first couple months of nursing, I was nursing almost sometimes three hours a day, and it was like wild to just imagine how much time was instantaneously sucked from my schedule and and you really have to learn how to build your own internal sense of resiliency and the capacity to persevere in the face of setback, setbacks or challenges. And I think the same is true in entrepreneurship. As entrepreneurs, there’s so much we cannot control. Clients come and go. Business opportunities come and go. We have ebbs and ebbs and flows in our in our income in our we have ebbs and flows and seasons of abundance and seasons of less, and you really have to learn how to trust the long game and build resiliency along the way. I think motherhood and entrepreneurship require so much creativity and innovation, because you know you have to find your own way, your own authentic voice, your own authentic approach, both as an entrepreneur and as a parent, and if you’re if your default is to focus on the right approach or what other people tell you to do, you will be constantly trying to follow someone else’s rule book rather than develop and innovate your own. And there’s so much more fun and joy and creative inspiration along the way when you follow those creative nudges, when you really innovate based on what works for you, on what brings you joy and fun. One of the things that my husband and I have been doing with our son is we have a calendar on the wall in the kitchen, and anytime our son reaches a new milestone, or he does something funny, or he does something for the first time, I’ll just make a note on the calendar, and for me, that has been such a creative way to track his own progress and to be able to recap some of his own journey and my journey with him later, because the idea of doing a, oh gosh, those those parent books, right? Like maintaining an album with the pictures and the lock, the first lock from their first haircut, and the handprint and the footprint and keeping track and notes of all of it like that sounded incredibly overwhelming and immensely stressful for me, which had me know I wasn’t gonna do it. I wasn’t gonna be I wasn’t gonna be consistent in updating it, and so having this calendar has just been so much more of an accessible way for me to track and it’s something I enjoy doing. So that’s been really fun. I think the next sense of overlap is you have to gain your own style of leadership and team management in entrepreneurship as as well as in parenting, like in parenting, you have to learn how to be team with your partner or your family, because you literally cannot do it all on your own and as a high perform. And a natural giver. I think that that has something that I have consistently had to break up with in parenting, and this is something that we talk a lot about in the mastermind as well, is that as you reach new levels in your life, whether it’s personal or business, you reach, you experience new facets of similar devils. So the saying is new new level similar devil. And I think as I’ve stepped into parenting, I have re met some of those familiar tendencies of mine to be an over giver and to kind of like default to this idea that I can do it all, because you literally cannot. I have realized I literally cannot. There’s not enough time in the day to run a business, to take care of my son and my home and all the other things that I do and love about my life, and so learning how to be a team and ask vulnerably for what you want and take more leadership over your own priorities and response. Being responsible for what you need and asking for the support is something I’m so appreciative for my entrepreneurial journey that’s really given me voice and the communication skills to be able to partner and to be a team player. All right, a couple more of the overlaps. So these are really juicy. I think another key overlap is you have to gain a sense of emotional intelligence and a capacity for intimacy and vulnerability in motherhood, as well as in entrepreneurship, there is so much emotional overwhelm and chaos being a first time mom, and if you don’t develop the skill set to be able to share your feelings, to emote, to ask for what you need around your emotional well being, you will feel truly isolated and truly alone. And I really appreciated all the work that my partner and I have done for so many years in being able to really meet each other’s emotional needs and validate our each other’s feelings and and I absolutely appreciate the The the muscles that I’ve built in that arena, in my own business over the past decade. Because running a business is very scary. I think learning how to welcome fear, embrace fear, and take that risk anyway, has been so much easier by by being able to vocalize it, and that is a skill set. I think that fear is oftentimes one of the greatest points of resistance that gets in the way from would be entrepreneurs, from taking that jump and learning how to embrace the fear is something that every entrepreneur has to face at every new level of scaling their business that they step into. And I think there’s a lot of that present in parenting too, because there’s so much to be scared of, right? Like when your infant gets sick for the first time, or they don’t poo for a couple days, or they’re not sleeping and you’re literally exhausted. There’s so much fear around what do you do and how to manage it all, and gaining that skill set around sharing those feelings and and being willing to vulnerably ask for what you need is a game changer. Now I think the last overlap that feels really relevant for me right now is reconnecting with your why and the purpose for why you wanted to become a parent or why you wanted to go into business in the first time, reconnecting with that purpose or that internal north star can help you reground yourself and reorient yourself towards your commitments. In the face of overwhelm, in the face of fear, in the face of resistance, in the face of setbacks, in the face of stress, anxiety, and I am so grateful for. For really the learning that that my coaching work has, has helped me navigate, gosh, since 2014 and it’s this idea that if you’re not being on purpose, you’re being off purpose. I remember when we planned our wedding that that purpose around how I wanted to experience my wedding made the wedding planning process so much more joyful and fun, and it allowed me to make decisions so much more naturally. And the same has been true in my parenting journey. A couple episodes ago, I recorded my favorite episode of the year, which is my word of the year episode and my word of the year for 2025 is presence linked to the episode in the show notes, if you want to tune into it. And so often, when I lose sight of why I wanted to be a mom, or the joy that’s available for me, reconnecting with my purpose, with my commitment to be, the possibility of presence has allowed me to navigate and weather, the storms of motherhood with so much more grace and self compassion and also a lot more humor. So the next time my son’s not napping, or I spend 75 minutes like I did earlier today, trying to put him down for a crib nap, you can you can bet, you bet your bottom that I will be reminding myself of my own commitment to be present in the face of hardship or lack of sleep. I hope you found today’s episode whether you’re considering becoming a parent or whether you’re considering entrepreneurship. I hope you found today’s episode helpful. See you next time you.

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