KGCI: Real Estate on Air - How Becoming a Mom Changed Me as a Real Estate Agent and Leader

Episode Date: June 12, 2025

Okay, I think this might be my most from the heart episode yet. So I'm so excited to share with you my innermost thoughts on how becoming a mom has changed me as a real estate and leader. So I'm going to be talking with you about my early experiences of what it was like to be a brand new mom and the insights that brought me about how I have been as a leader and a friend to other people that have had babies, both before my own experience and after. And I'm, I'm, I also share with you about how I've learned to exercise a lot more compassion for myself to better measure the value of not just my time, but my mental and emotional energy and just the overall value of what I bring to relationships and making sure that they're a

reciprocal two-way street. And then also how I came to such a sea change in my mindset as far as where I view the hierarchy of my career versus my personal life and my family life. So can't wait to unpack this with you. Let's get into it. Hey, my name's Tina Beliveau and I am obsessed with all things real estate, growth, marketing, social media, technology, and team building. If you're an ambitious agent who's hungry to grow, work on your own terms, and build a thriving life outside of your business, this is the podcast for you. I got into real estate. date when I was 18 years old and grew my business from nothing through referrals and social media. And since then, I've built a top performing team and I've sold over 1,700 homes and $400 million

in sales volume. In this podcast, I keep it real. And I tell you exactly what I'm doing to sell tons of houses, lead my team, market my brand, grow my social following and database, and maintain incredible work life balance. I'll never shy away from sharing my biggest mistakes as well as the juiciest parts of my secret sauce. Pull up a seat and get ready to learn and be inspired. This is the high-performance agent podcast with Tina Beliveau. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm so glad you're still hanging out with me here. And I am, as I'm recording this, I am actually 39 weeks and several days pregnant waiting for my baby girl to make her appearance. And actually, I'll just say this. I had a huge ambitious goal to pre-record 14 podcast episodes in the two weeks before my due date

so that I could have episodes come out the whole summer while I'm off from work. And I'm actually going to hit that goal, which was pretty crazy. So if you're listening to this, I've already had my baby and I'm hopefully settled in. And yeah, I'm just really proud I was able to kind of pull this off. And as I'm wrapping up all of this pre-recorded batching, I've been soliciting ideas from realtors in my circle, past coaching clients to see what they want to hear about. And one of my dearest friends said, you know, Tina, I would really love for you to share about how becoming a mom has changed you as a real estate agent and whatever else. And I was like, oh, that's such a good topic for like from the heart and reflection. And she even said it best.

And she was like, and it's going to be so different when you're a mom of two. So this is my set of mom of one reflections. So I am just going to kind of dive into that. And if you're a mom or want to be a mom, hopefully there are some things here that will resonate with you. And if you have any feedback or thoughts on this episode, I'd love to hear from you. And I mentioned this on a lot of my episodes. But I just love running this Facebook group I have for realtors.

It's called Relationship Driven Real Estate. The link for it. is in my show notes. So if you want to come have a conversation about anything real estate or definitely being a mom realtor, I would love to have you come join me in the group. So I basically took some time to reflect and think like, how have I changed? And there were a couple things that kind of came up for me first. Number one was realizing that it's been such a gradual process over the last, I guess really like two and a half years. You know, my son is 22 months old now. So between pregnancy and preparing and then having my first baby and then I got pregnant again when he was 14 or 15 months.

So I've also been in this like multi-layered process of continual pregnancy, birth, recovery, nursing, sleep deprived and then pregnant all over again. So it's been wonderful, but definitely a blur. and not the clearest time. So I was like, I really need to sit and think about this. I don't want to give just BS off the cuff kind of thoughts that aren't really deep. And then I reached out to my Facebook group and was like, hey, I'm recording an episode on this. Does anyone want to share how they've changed? It might trigger some thoughts for me of what maybe I'm not even conscious of, but has been kind of happening just organically.

So I got some really great feedback. And I'm basically going to walk you through how I've changed and things I've become aware of. And I think I'll start off with when I gave birth to Austin and realized just in those early weeks, what the heck was really going on. It was such a, luckily I had a smooth birth, which was such a blessing. I was actually induced early. They thought that maybe something wasn't going right with my placenta. So it was actually really scary to, you know, think something might be wrong.

go through an induction and then luckily everything was really smooth. But the early days of bringing home a newborn are just really intense. But one of the things that hit me aside from the joy of becoming a mother and like just realizing that kind of love, it's like I don't even have words for it. It's hard to put into words. Like I'll never forget what it felt like when I saw him for the first time. And then just being like, you know, your whole life changes in an instant. But one of the things on like sort of a business note was as I realized how tired I was and how, like, in pain I was, how hungry and thirsty I was. And people in my life just rallied around me. People come over and drop off food and treats and cards and gifts. And not that it's about what people give me per se, but the way

people rallied around me, everyone who had already been a parent, I actually, I felt a little ashamed. and I don't know what that says about me that I had a shame reaction, but I realized how much I misunderstood the difficulty and the depth of being a new mom, a new parent, but especially a new mom. And it was sort of like a holy crap moment where I was like, wow, I was very, very blind to what the reality of pregnancy, birth, birth recovery, and newborn life specifically. like that earlier part of everything because that's the only part I still have experience with right now. Now I have a little bit of toddler experience too. But I just felt so silly and a lot of regret for when I had had co-workers who were pregnant or have babies. And I supported them the best I knew how with the knowledge and insight that I had at the time. But it was not at all in alignment with their reality.

I think about when I officially started my team, I guess at the end of 2013, I brought an agent on in 2014. Wonderful woman, real go-getter. She got pregnant kind of early on in her joining the team. And I think towards the very end of that calendar year, she had her second. And I feel like she came back to work pretty fast. And then I remember she was like pumping in the office. And I just, I was just like, oh, you know, Kristen's pumping. I just had no idea how hard all of that is and how much work it is and just, I don't know.

Like, I'm like, wow, like I just could have done a lot more to be supportive. I look back and I think about my best friend, Jen, who's not a real estate agent. But like, I remember texting her within a few weeks of Austin being born and being like, oh my God, like, I was such a bad friend. I came over to your house to meet your baby and I didn't even bring you food. Like, who does that now? Like to me, that's like unthinkable. And she was like, don't worry, Tina. Like this is how you don't know until you've had your own baby. And, you know, thankfully I have really loving people in my life. But I definitely just felt some regret of ways that I could have showed up, whether it was like being of use with things like food or being even more generous with my mindset about like maternity leave or even just understanding like how hard it is to rally and keep working at various points of your how uncomfortable you are. I've had two different transaction coordinators in my past who got

pregnant and had babies while they were working with me. And I, you know, at the time, the one further in the past was way before COVID back when I was in my like highest drive. And I'm like, oh my gosh, like, I never offered to her to work from home. And like, we were very office centric at the time. So I do just have to like keep my perspective. But I just look back. And I think you don't know what you know until you know it. And then I also think that pandemic has created such a sea change in our world of family first, work life integration, way more flexibility. And it's a huge blessing. So I think also comparing myself to the yardstick of the past doesn't make total sense, but I still, I would just say I kind of regret it or at least like now I know better.

I would handle things really just a lot more lovingly. But I think even more than that, I just would be a lot more specifically supportive to people in the ways that I know how. And I feel like I've done that a lot with people that have become moms since I know better. So yeah, I just think the awakening of all of the things in those early days and just, you know, knowing when you're so sleep deprived, your brain function just isn't there. Your motivation, your focus. And it just takes a lot of time to recover from birth. And yeah, I mean, just the graphicness of that. And then, and then depending on how your child sleeps at night, especially, and even naps, I think that really impacts how quickly you're able to recover and then start to become a new version of you that is maybe a little more productive than those really early days. And then I will say, like, specifically, this is just like me. But I was really shocked, too. Once I started working after Austin was born, I came back to work when he was like seven to eight weeks old, which in hindsight was a little early.

Like, I kind of felt ready, but it wouldn't have hurt me to take more time to just care for my body and my spirit, which is why it felt so important to me to give myself a full 12 weeks with the second baby. And weirdly, like, I've had some guilt about taking a, quote, whole 12 weeks. like I'll tell you like crazy thoughts that have crossed my mind have been like you already had maternity leave two years ago. Like why are you taking it again? Which is so weird. But like those are the, that's the programming that's in my mind.

Like my natural state is not to give myself a break and to rest and be self-compassionate. It's more productivity oriented. And we could unpack why that is in a different episode. But that's just the way that I can kind of lean. So I've had to regularly hold myself accountable to like, no, like, I'm really taking the whole 12 weeks. Like you're just taking the 12 weeks, Tina. Don't start to negotiate it or worry about if your team members are going to feel a little resentful or if it's going to be harder for people that you're out for like those extra four weeks versus

last time and things like that. So I've just done my very best to prep everything to be as smooth as possible in my absence. And that's really all that I can do. But what I started to say kind of went off track was I started working again. when Austin was about seven to eight weeks. And that was a whole other awakening of realizing how complicated it is to pump. And maybe not complicated. It's, first of all, there's a learning curve with everything with babies and nursing and pumping and sleep and burping them. And like, it's like the learning curve is unfreaking believable in the first three months. So first with pumping,

it was just figuring out like, you know, how often do I need to do it? And why doesn't this pump work? and why is it this way? Why am I not producing on this side? All this crazy stuff. But just realizing that I needed to plan my time around pumping and how many times I would go into a meeting and be like, oh my gosh, I should have pumped before. Or I would put the pumping reminders on my calendar to make sure I at least did them. And then I would ignore the reminders because I never really feel like pumping. I mean, who does? And then cleaning the parts afterwards. So just what the awareness besides the fact that like I didn't find it an enjoyable part of motherhood and I chose to pump and whatever. But just, just.

realizing that anyone that had babies and worked with me currently or in the past that also was doing that, that they just had this whole additional, like, burden in their schedule. And it's not just the time you're pumping. It's storing the milk. It's cleaning the pump parts. It's doing it all over again. So, yeah, I just, I felt like after having my first baby, I wanted to go on, like, an apology tour to, like, some specific people. And I sort of did with some. And even one of my former team members, I ran into her in a park. I hadn't seen her in a long time. And I just, I said something to her. I was like, man, like, I've thought about you. I've thought about how much I didn't get it. And she was so sweet about it. She, I don't even know. She didn't, she was just like, oh, whatever, it's great to meet your son.

But it was just funny to, I don't know, that really took me by surprise. And I think overall as a leader, I've, I've really worked to become a lot more compassionate and less just, focused on productivity. And that's been a real learning curve for me that was not maybe as graceful as I would have liked it to be if I could rewrite my whole history as a leader. But that's been my journey, right? And sometimes we aren't proud of every step along the way, but all I can do is learn and maybe even be honest and share with people so they can learn from me and maybe skip some of those mistakes. So that's my first one, the great awakening of the realities of, what is on a mom's plate, especially in the beginning. And that is really what just ties into the second

thing I wanted to say is just that I was kind of forced to exercise more self-compassion by my circumstances. So my son did not sleep through the night properly until he was about one. And that's a whole other topic. But what that looked like for me was that it took me a lot longer to get back to the way that I like to function than I would have preferred. And there, I just really had to let myself rest. There were so many mornings where I like to spin in the morning. And there were so many mornings where I just canceled my class and stayed in bed because I found that I was often able to catch up from a really bad night's sleep by just going back to bed as soon as our nanny or au pair started working. And I was doing that long after Austin was just a couple months old,

I was so tired and it felt so wrong to get back in bed at 8.30 or 8.45 a.m. and sleep for several hours. But that was really the only way that I could cope. And it was frustrating to also not be out. And not that I was obsessed with getting my body back, but I feel really good when I exercise. But if I miss that mid-morning class, then I wasn't going to work out that day. And that was that. So it was just kind of hard to accept putting rest before work or not just fitness, but for me, really the mental wellness that I get from my daily workouts. But putting rest first, it's just, I don't know what else to say. So not innate for me. And it's funny. And as I'm in this final week or two of my pregnancy, I actually did that this morning. Like, I just stayed in bed a

lot longer than I thought I would. And I felt a little bit of guilt. And then I was like, Tina, like, you're going to have a newborn any day. Like, sleep. Take this opportunity. No one's watching you. No one cares. But you. you. So yeah, that's my thought on like the self-compassion and allowing rest. So the third thing that I have really embraced as being a mom is that family matters to me more than money and achievements and stats and that kind of thing. And it's funny, I outline my episodes and I usually have some like sub bullet points I add. But like for me it was just as simple as that. Like I'm at a place where I I'm just always going to pick my family over money and career achievements.

Now, I will say that is not without some negative feelings. I'm like, what's the, it's funny. How could I name what that really feels like? Inner conflict is what it feels like. Like on the money front, I want to have a sense of abundance in my life. I want to feel like I have more than enough money to live my lifestyle and save and feel totally like psychologically safe and taken care of. So that fear can creep in of financial insecurity or just general like phomo of, oh no, but if I don't do this, then maybe if I don't

show up for this client in this way, maybe she won't hire me again. Or if I don't go to this event, I'm going to miss out on, you know, seeing all these people and having great networking. And I feel like there are these hard decisions that can come up like every single day of where are you going to put your time and energy? And, you know, what are the costs of that? And that was actually something I was thinking about saying at the very start of this podcast. Like, this sea change for me in my mindset of just putting my self-care before work really started back in 2020. And if you haven't listened to my very first episode of this podcast, I talk a lot more about that of hitting a wall of not just extreme burnout, but a lot of things kind of going awry in my

business life that created this huge turning point for me of what I was prioritizing and where I was putting my time and energy. So I think one of the things that kind of helped me transition more smoothly to being a mom is that I had already been changing my lifestyle very, very intentionally for about a year and a half leading up to before my son was born. In fact, I never really wanted to be a mom as like a life purpose. As a child, I was way more achievement. focused. I like to sing, dance, perform. My dreams were about what I would do one day. They weren't about who I would marry or what my wedding would look like or having a baby. It just wasn't in my like, mind's eye in any shape or form. And I continued to feel that way through my 20s and into my

30s. I got into real estate when I was 19 as an assistant. And I loved it. And then my, a lot of my mental energy and minds I was just geared towards my career and also exploring my creativity and a lot of other things too. So all of that to say that like someone like me, it's kind of funny how easily in a way I feel like I transitioned to being a mom given that it wasn't something that I always was like absolutely positive that I wanted for myself. And it's the best thing in my life now. It's so cheesy, but it's so true. There's just nothing I love more than being with my son. And he's, He has really helped me be present. Oh, this wasn't even on my outline. And I feel like it started with, I mean, obviously, like when your baby is born and your mind just blows. But then even in the early

weeks when, you know, you're up in the middle of the night. And I remember just, you know, sitting in the dark, rocking him, trying to rock him back to sleep and just kind of staring off into the black, dark space of his nursery and just being like, oh, is this what it's like to meditate? like just being with myself and him being literally still without a screen, without stimulation, without doing anything. It was this like bone deep presence that doesn't come naturally to me either, but was really, really beautiful. And I feel like there was something about those dark, late still nights where I just had a chance

to be present in my bones in a way. that I haven't always been in my life or certainly not nearly as often and as consistent as that. So that was just very sort of like an unexpected thing of just being able to be and be more comfortable with being. So yeah. And beyond that, like on the family matters to me more than money. I feel like that was just sort of a not even a decision that I've made. It feels more than that. It's like a change to me that happened on a cellular level of my huge work burnout. and just kind of hitting a bottom with all of that. And then realizing like no level of achievement or income or net worth will bring me

the joy and the peace of mind that I get from being a grounded person who is deeply connected to the key people around me. And there's no, you can't buy the kind of piece that you get from really living in alignment with your true values. and with self-care and with being a person of really high integrity and love and compassion. So, yeah, all of that matters way more than money and success, even though money and success can be really gratifying, really fun, and bring a lot of peace in mind when you know that there's sort of that, I don't know if it's Maslow's hierarchy of needs or what, but like knowing that you're

provided for, that you're going to have shelter, that you're going to be okay. I mean, there's definitely something to be said for that. I think there's just sort of a threshold you can get to of earning and achieving where it does start to become a little bit more meaningless, at least in my experience, and it can become a treadmill. So those are my thoughts, my deep thoughts on money and achievement versus kind of those like really core relationships and values. So a couple other thoughts. One of the things that the process of becoming a mom also helped me get even more in tune with is the value of not just my time, but of my energy and the cost of when I spend my time and like mental and psychological energy on

certain things and evaluating that. So like an example of this would be that I've always been aware of my time. In fact, I've always been someone who has sort of a context of time deprivation that there's not enough time. There's not enough time. It's one of the kind of the programs that can run in my brain that is not as healthy or helpful to my goals. So there was never a time in my working life where I wasn't aware of. If I commute here and drive back, I could have been spending that time elsewhere. The thing that changed for me with time was that after my big workaholic sea change, I became less willing to make concessions about time and I became even pickier about it. But then what really took more time for me to tap into and become aware of beyond that

was the energy that would be drained from me when I was doing the thing. So not just looking at the time, but does this give me energy or not, whether it's something as simple as embarking on a project that in my mind is like a small little, like, I'm the queen of throwing events and then being like, Oh, man, there was so much more that went into that than I acknowledged at the beginning and there are the things that cost me. Like, a simple example would be throwing an event and knowing that there's a checklist of all these things that need to happen to have it be good. But then there's this extra piece of half of the things on the checklist exhaust me or annoy me. Or perhaps there's a collaborator that is part of my event who doesn't pull their weight. And then there's also my mental energy of like frustration or feeling like it's not win-win or

whatever the case may be. So basically, like, I've been slowly learning to evaluate the mental and physical energy of things beyond just the block of time it takes in my calendar because the way that manifests is at the end of that little block, I'm not able to necessarily be as productive or happy moving into the next thing that I need to do because I've actually experienced a bit of a drain. So that is an evolution for me. And sometimes the only way, actually, the only way that I've been able to learn is by doing things that drain me and going, oh, okay. So that was more than I bargained for or next time it absolutely has to be this way. And ultimately, it's been really important for me to do less and less and be really choosy about even who I delegate to and how many

people work for me because the more people that I feel responsible for, even if they're the very best people, I feel a duty to be present and available to them to whatever degree I can. And even that is another commitment and obligation. So that's part of why I found that keeping my team the size that it is as opposed to getting into a strategy of bringing on more and more agents has felt like the right thing for me. And sometimes I can see other people out there doing this and that and recruiting or expanding their team. And I could do anything that I want to do. But when I really evaluate the cost of onboarding someone who's brand new to the industry and I'm really in tune with what a heavy lift that really is, I had to learn that the hard way. And anyone who's listening to this who's new,

don't take that as a bad thing. But if someone's really going to mentor you and pour their energy and expertise into you the way that I believe is ideal, that's a huge commitment to each other. So I just have to be in a place where I can commit to that. And if not, I shouldn't be doing it. And I don't want to set you up for half-baked success. So it has at times felt restrictive to me as far as my growth goals. But it's also forced me to be really creative and say, you know what, how else can we be more productive without more of a people commitment? What technology haven't I leveraged? What creative methods to X, Y, and Z have I not explored before because I can tend to just be really comfortable with doing things that are more manual and more, like, I'm used to doing things the

hard way. So for me to say, what's the easier way? What's the more elegant, gracious way? What way could I do this that really honors where I'm at and the energy that I have. And I guess I would end with that is that I feel like I've been someone who always had a decent sense of like self-value and self-esteem and business of like my hourly rate and the worth that I bring to my clients. But I've been in a process the last few years where I realized like I was giving out free advice and free value to people who had absolutely no loyalty to me or absolutely no intention of patronizing me in the future, either as a realtor or as maybe a coach or trainer on the agent side of things. And I really have learned to create some different boundaries and expectations.

It's why I launched my high performance agent academy, not the only reason why, but I felt like I really want to help people. I have a lot to offer a lot. And I'd love to offer it. But I do need to make sure that I'm paid commensurate. with not just my experience and my knowledge, but the value of my time currently. So I'm going to cap this here. I feel like there's so much more that I could say, but I committed to 30-minute episodes. And I think that's good for you and for me because it really helps me stick and get to the

point. So if there's anything that you heard today that you want to share with me or reflect back, again, I invite you to come join my Facebook group, relationship-driven real estate. and let's have a conversation. Let's talk about your journey, your process, and maybe the ways that you've learned to better value your time and energy and expertise. As always, thank you so much for hanging out with me, and I look forward to connecting again soon. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the High Performance Agent Podcast. Make sure to subscribe by hitting the follow button so you don't miss the next episode. And check the show notes for links to all of my good including my newsletter filled with tips for ambitious agents.

You can also find me on Instagram at Tina Beliveau. Talk to you soon.