How can or should entrepreneurship change in order to meet our changing life needs? What does it look like to be a business owner as a person without children versus one with kids? And what does it feel like to go through unexplained secondary infertility?
Today we get to hear from Reina Pomeroy, coach, business owner and mother of two, across a breadth of experiences. She shares everything from her experience starting multiple businesses, to her multi-year infertility journey, to how sometimes our professional paths only make sense in hindsight. Through it all, Reina’s openness, vulnerability, and deep passion for her work shine through.
Reina Pomeroy is a focus coach for creative entrepreneurs and the founder of Reina & Co. What began as a side hustle is now a business with six team members that can offer her fully paid maternity leave. That being said, her journey, like so many of ours, felt scattered and non-linear as she lived it but now it makes sense in helping her learn important skills.
Her signature program, called The Dreamy Client Magnet, helps creative entrepreneurs get laser-focused on who they want to serve and who they want to work with and what their boundaries are so that they can book more dreamy clients with ease, get paid to do what they love, and have the freedom and flexibility to enjoy it all. The program covers how to stop doing things just because you’re good at them, and instead how to focus on what you love doing and creating space for freedom and flexibility. If you want to know where you can focus your business, that’s what today’s chat is all about.
We then get to dig into Reina’s very thoughtful and simple Social Glue Strategy, which is all about how to connect with more people one-on-one and how to use connecting authentically with other people as a strategic tool in your business. This is especially useful if you’re an online or a digital entrepreneur and you may be don’t run into a lot of people, because your office happens to be your bedroom, or your closet, or a co-working space.
Along the way, Reina also tells us about her own journey. She shares what it was like to be an entrepreneur without kids (hint: you have a lot more time to “hustle” and are a lot less tired), to switching professions after having her first baby after realizing just how precious her time and energy are. And while she is now planning out her fully paid maternity leave, there was a multi-year period in her life where she and her husband dealt with unexplained secondary infertility, or infertility that occurs after having already had a successful pregnancy. Along the way her son tried to ask Alexa for a baby, she and her husband prepared for IVF, and then ultimately conceived just hours before their first in vitro appointment.
IN THIS EPISODE WE TALK ABOUT
- How Reina helps creative entrepreneurs get laser-focused on who they want to serve and who they want to work with and what their boundaries are so that they can book more dreamy clients with ease, get paid to do what they love, and have the freedom and flexibility to enjoy it all.
- Her non-linear path to entrepreneurship that might not “make sense on LinkedIn” but helped her gain the skills she needed to run her current, very successful coaching business.
- How Reina’s natural inclination to check in with and connect with people has become her most valuable trait and a skill she teaches others as “Social Glue Strategy.”
- That she believes showing up for people, being supportive, and curious is the foundation for all meaningful relationships and a helpful way to build a professional network but also to simply make adult friends.
- The differences in her experience being an entrepreneur before children, with one child, and how she is preparing for the arrival of her second child.
- How hard it can be when you’re in the winding down process pre-maternity leave to connect with other business owners who are in a hard-driving period in their own businesses, and why it’s so valuable to connect with other mothers going through the exact same phase of life as you.
- Her experience with secondary infertility and she felt betrayed by her body that was once able to do something so easily and then struggled so mightily the second time.
- The pain of having her first child desperately want a sibling and struggling to know exactly how and how much of the infertility journey to share with her son.
- How Reina ultimately got pregnant with her second child the day before beginning IVF.
- How she created a maternity leave policy for her own business that allows her to take much needed time with her baby and family without sacrificing income.
The Startup Pregnant Podcast Episode #114
SOME QUOTES FROM THE EPISODE
- “I found it really difficult in the past few months to feel like my biggest priority being I want to get my body and my brain and my business ready for taking maternity leave and to kind of become a little bit dormant so to speak. Other people are in a phase of, ‘I am leveling up. I just got to a level that I’m happy with. I’m really excited to scale. I’m excited to take on the world.’ There’s nothing with wrong with having either of those goals be your reality, but I think it’s challenging to have friendships where the goals are a little bit misaligned, I guess.”
- “I think that it’s never like a ‘balance’, but it’s sort of a juggle and some seasons are more heavily leaned on in one category.”
- “The first time I had an entrepreneurial career with my wedding planning business, I kind of did whatever the heck I wanted, because I didn’t have a child. I was my own priority and I could kind of call the shots for myself and I would tell my husband, ‘Hey, I’m working this weekend. I’m gone,’ and he’d be like, ‘Okay. That’s fine. I’ll go be busy too.’”
- “It was incredibly important for me to start with the filter of my priority is myself, my family and building my business. Because if I don’t have those three kind if intact, I’m going to be a miserable human being.”
- “I think that it’s never like a ‘balance’, but it’s sort of a juggle and some seasons are more heavily leaned on in one category.”
- “Infertility is an emotional journey, like just not knowing and the doctor saying, ‘We don’t know what’s wrong with you essentially. You look healthy. Your husband looks healthy. Everything looks fine, but we don’t know why nothing is happening for you.’”
- “I felt like my body had betrayed me, and the first around, it went so smooth that I was like, ‘Why can’t I get this done again? Why can’t my body naturally conceive?’”
- “I think the thing that was most challenging for me towards the end of our [fertility] wait, so to speak, is like my son would say, ‘Hey, mama. Would you ask Alexa to order a baby sister for me?’ I was just like, ‘Oh my goodness!’ I mean, one, that’s super cute and funny, and also like devastatingly sad, because, ‘No, I can’t do that for you.’ Clearly, that’s something that you want.”
- “So often, I’ll go and research something about ‘how to talk to your kid about infertility’ or whatever, and we just didn’t know how to talk about it, because there wasn’t really a diagnosis or an answer. I don’t really know what I was supposed to tell [my son] either.”
LEARN MORE ABOUT REINA POMEROY
Reina Pomeroy is a Certified Coach and Founder of Reina + Co. Through Reina’s Signature Program, Dreamy Client Magnet, creative entrepreneurs get laser focused so they can book more dreamy clients with ease, get paid to do what they love, and have the freedom and flexibility to enjoy it all. She is a ICF Certified Coach, Speaker, Educator, Author, and Podcaster. When not fully immersed in her company, you’ll find her supporting students at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. Reina’s work has been featured on the top charts of iTunes Podcasts, the Entrepreneur.com, Influencer Podcast, Entrepreneur on Fire Podcast, Brit + Co, The Huffington Post, and the Rising Tide Society.
RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
IF YOU ENJOYED THIS EPISODE, CHECK OUT
- Honest Conversations About the Hard Things — Episode #081 With Co-Host Cary Fortin (The Friendship Series)
- Prepping for Maternity Leave — Episode #086 With Co-Host Cary Fortin (The Friendship Series)
- Trauma, Sex, and Somatic Experiencing: How to Better Understand Birth and the Postpartum Periods — Episode #094 With Kimberly Ann Johnson
- The First Weeks of Parenting: What Nobody Tells You — Episode #104 With Vanessa Van Edwards
EPISODE SPONSOR & SPECIAL OFFER
One of the biggest challenges we face in business is developing focus, figuring out how to do less and gaining clarity around what’s really important. I have developed a three-step process that helps me simplify and make decisions about when to say no. Get the free guide at https://startupparent.com/stop.
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