the bossbabe podcast - 405. Introducing The CEO Mama Series!

Episode Date: August 3, 2024

We have a really exciting announcement today that we cannot wait to share with all of you. Grab a cup of coffee and sit down with Lindsay as she shares a bit more about her personal story, the creation of her podcast called “Motherload” + what’s emerging for the mama’s in our community! TIMESTAMPS 0:50 - Lindsay's Story 5:30 - Motherhood + Ambition 12:00 - Creating The Motherload Podcast 17:45 - Creating CEO Mama 21:25 - Special Announcement 24:50 - Getting Started RESOURCES + LINKS Apply For CEO Mama + Be Added To The Waitlist For Our Next Cohort!  Join The Société: Our Exclusive Membership To Help You Build A Freedom-Based Business. Get Our Weekly Newsletter & Get Insights From Natalie Every Single Week On All Things Strategy, Motherhood, Business Growth + More.  Drop Us A Review On The Podcast + Send Us A Screenshot & We’ll Send You Natalie’s 7-Figure Operating System Completely FREE (value $1,997)  FOLLOW bossbabe: @bossbabe.inc Natalie Ellis: @iamnatalie Lindsay Roselle: @lindsayroselle

Hello, welcome back to the show. This is Lindsay coming at you today with a very near and dear to my heart topic slash conversation that features a little bit of the backstory of how I got to being where I am, sitting in this chair, podcasting on the Boss Babe podcast. And I hope that it resonates and then it's a little bit of an insight into my journey if you don't know very much about it. And so what we're going to talk about today is my podcast that I have called Motherload and how it came to be and why it might be relevant to you, especially if you're a mama, and a special announcement about what we're going to be

doing with Motherload. So I want to talk a little bit about podcasting because I think it's one of these mediums that a lot of us know about, hear about, or maybe consumers of consistently and have dreamed about doing for ourselves, but either feel under-resourced to do it, we're scared to start, we don't know what we would talk about, we're nervous nobody's going to listen, all of the reasons. And all of those are reasons that I waited and waited and waited to start a podcast before starting Motherload back in the fall of 2022. And I do think that there is something to say for not just starting something like a podcast if you don't have the desire or the intention to be really

consistent with it. I do. I can attest both from my own experience doing it on my own and then now inside of Boss Babe where we have, you know, a top 10 business podcast that podcasting really only works for you if you're consistent with it. It's one of those content mediums that requires you show up all the time and really pour into it. And so if it's something that you love, it's an incredible platform. And so for me, for years, I wanted to start a podcast. I love this medium. I love listening to podcasts. I love a microphone. And I, you know, I love a microphone and I felt like podcasting was really something that I would be and could be good at, but I didn't feel like I had the full sacral.

Yes. You know, I'm a generator. Like I needed that full sacral. Yes. On the topic. And it wasn't really until everything that happened to me in 2020, 2021, and then my healing journey in 2022 that really opened my eyes and gave me this nugget that became Motherload. So I want to tell you a little bit of that story today because it's, I think, enlightening in terms of the creative process and how you end up committing to something like a podcast and how a podcast can be a catalyst to transformation and to business growth and to connections that you might not even think are possible. And I can tell you, when I started Motherload, I had no idea I would end up here. And it was one of my wildest manifestations that the conversations on Motherload have led to here. And I just felt really compelled to share this

story. And then there's a reason here at the end that I'll explain that this is now really relevant to you Boss Babe podcast listeners. So if you don't know my history, long story short, in 2020, due to COVID and just all kinds of other things happening, I would say my life hit rock bottom. Late 2020, I had lost two in-person businesses. I was hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt as a result of that. And my partner left. He told me one afternoon that he no longer wanted to be my partner. He didn't want to be a dad. He was done. He wanted to be alone and he left. And we've since done a lot, a lot, a lot of work and we are back together and very healthy and all a lot, a lot, a lot of work and we are back

together and very healthy and all the things, but it took a lot, a lot of work. And there's other podcasts where I talk about that. But I bring that up because that was really the beginning of this question around who am I and what happened here? You know, and I had become a mother in 2017. I'd had another baby in 2019. And in 2020, I had really, you know, six months postpartum, I was all in on a couple businesses and had really strained our family system to go all in on a couple of these in-person businesses I had. And I think they would have worked. They were actually really successful.

But then obviously the circumstances of 2020 made in-person brick and mortar businesses totally unviable. And so a lot of things combined for this collapse that happened at the end of 2020. And one of the main things that I felt as I started to do a lot of inner work in early 2021 and therapy and read and journal and a lot of somatic work, I kept coming up against this question of motherhood and identity. And I'm so ambitious. I have all this ambition. I really want to be Lindsay Roselle. I really want to go do all these things in the world that I want to do. And I want to be a cycle breaker. I want to be the kind of mother I didn't have. I want to be really present. And I want to be really devoted to my children. And I want them to know that I care about their little souls and that

I'm nurturing them in a way that I think our millennial generation maybe didn't get. At least I didn't. And so I kept coming up against this question through that work in 2021 as I repaired my identity. And I really did a lot of work on myself as me and RT, my partner, repaired our relationship and had a lot of conversations that we had never had about parenting, about motherhood, about sexuality and intimacy, about communication and resentment and expectations and bitterness and like all these themes that, you know, he and I actually weren't that far apart on, but it was like becoming parents so soon into our relationship. I got pregnant like less than

six months after we started dating. So, you know, we really hadn't spent a lot of time having expectation setting conversations until, until now, you know, this was like four or five years on that we were having some of these conversations and, and motherhood and, and my response to becoming a mother and my identity as a mother felt so important in those conversations, but I, but so unclear to me. And when I looked around, I couldn't find a lot of examples or people talking about how do you manage the mental load of ambition and devotion. And so I kept coming back to that theme, ambition and devotion of ambition and devotion. And so I kept coming back to that theme, ambition and devotion, ambition and devotion. And in early 2022, I joined a mastermind that was led by Adam Roa and Gerard Adams, who are two incredible humans that were very,

the right people to come into my life at that time to help me lead, um, lead, to help lead me through this, the work and the transformation I needed in 2022. And part of this mastermind was a, um, a trip to Peru into the jungle of Peru to do ayahuasca, to sit with ayahuasca for, um, we sat three ceremonies and, uh, we were there for almost two weeks. So we did months of preparation. We got down into Peru, did the three ceremonies. And then we had another week in Peru and Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu to do integration. And I have a whole episode, in fact, that wink, wink, you might get to hear. I have a whole episode about that trip and the transformational impact of that experience on my life and my motherhood.

But one of the moments that came out of it was this train ride the morning that we were headed from Sacred Valley up to Machu Picchu. And if you've ever gone to Machu Picchu on the train, you know, it's a long and slow ride and it's gorgeous. And I was sitting next to Adam on the train, you know, it's, it's a long and slow ride and it's gorgeous. And, um, I was sitting next to Adam on the train and it was like 5.00 AM and everybody else was asleep, but he and I were awake and talking and we're just sipping coffee. And, and the premise of the whole mastermind for this year of 2022 was around creativity, not even plant medicine, but creativity and how plant medicine is one of the, the ways to approach and, and to play with creativity in your life. And so, and, and Adam is such an incredible coach and mentor, especially around creativity and intimacy and how, you know, to be an artist

in your life. And so I'm, we're sitting on the train and talking and, and I was like, he's like, what do you think? You know, like, where are you at? How are train and talking and, and I was like, he's like, what do you think? You know, like, where are you at? How are you feeling? And, and I was like, you know, what ayahuasca, this whole experience really shows me is that I've got something to say about motherhood. You know, I, I don't want to go deeply on this episode today. I don't want to go deeply into what happened in my ayahuasca journeys. You can listen to the episode about that whole trip to get the deep dive, but motherhood came up incredibly strongly. And my maternal lineage came up very strongly. I'm the oldest daughter. My mom's the oldest daughter, her mom, you know, all the way back. And so there's a lot of like daughter lineage,

a lot of motherhood lineage things that had come up for me. And I said to Adam, I was like, I think there's a conversation that I'm meant to lead around ambition and devotion and motherhood and how these things, like it makes me emotional right now, even talking about it, that I think this is part of healing my mother wound and the wound of my own mother with her mother and the generational wounds around motherhood and this idea that motherhood is meant to be about suffering and that you lose yourself in motherhood and that your ambition dies when you become a mother because now you live for someone else besides yourself. And all these messages that I think I believed innately based on my own experience of motherhood,

what I, you know, my feelings about my mom and how she had mothered me and all these things. And I, you know, so I'm saying this to Adam and I'm saying, I want to talk about these things because I don't think this is true, but I feel like this is the message that we've received, or these are the beliefs that we have as ambitious women. And there's nobody out there really talking about that you can do both and that it's not going to be easy. And that it's a very real and dynamic conversation to be in with your identity constantly as you be, once you become a mother around what season am I in? And how is ambition showing up for me right now? How is devotion showing up? And how am I carrying this mental load, this mother load, if you will. And so we're on the train and we're talking. And

the thing I said to him, I said, and this is relevant to the question of podcasting, it's kind of funny. And I said, the thing that holds me back from starting a podcast around all of this is that I don't want to just talk to mothers. And I said it like that. I was like, I don't want to just talk to moms. Like, I don't want that to be my only audience. It's just moms. And he goes, Lindsay, why not? Everyone has a mom. And I was like, oh, shit. Like, it also makes me emotional to say that out loud because I think part of the mission of Motherload was to bring awareness to perhaps the empathy and the understanding and the humanity of our mothers, mine included, for perhaps the wounds and the unintentional things that they did or didn't do that perhaps they had no tools to know better. And, you know, I don't want to, again, I'm going to lose my, lose my way here and start crying on this episode. You'll hear episodes of Motherload,

a little teaser. You'll, you'll hear more about this, but all of that is to say that in this moment on the train up to Machu Picchu after a week and a half in the jungle and three ayahuasca ceremonies that were incredibly deep and confronting and terrifying and beautiful, I had this incredible moment of just like the beat drop, the sacral beat drop on the train sitting next to Adam that like, this is what I'm meant to do with my life. I am meant to speak to ambitious mothers. I am meant to be somebody that you can look at and go, okay, there is a way to have ambition and be an incredible mother. And it's not easy.

It's not, there's no formula for it. Lindsay's not doing it perfectly. Nobody's doing it perfectly, but it's possible. And it's a conversation that I want to be a part of. So I was like, well, I have the perfect name. I know what the name is supposed to be. And he's like, what is it? And I said, Motherload. And he said, it's perfect. People will get it. It's perfect. And so the rest of the train ride, we kind of mapped out what episode structures would look like, how often I wanted to release episodes.

And part of this mastermind, which also comes back to this secondary topic around consistency with podcasting, part of this mastermind was that once we got home from Peru, which was in May of 2022, we had a lot of accountability to get something launched by September. So he said, OK, once you leave here, what are your next steps? What are you going to do? So I wrote up a whole plan and committed to that. I went home back to Colorado and I joined, um, Keisha Get Mary's podcasters course, which Keisha is an incredible podcaster. She's also a member of CEO mama. Um, and I learned a lot from her and it was, it was the accountability that like week by week

accountability, I really needed to do the tech side and the setup and the graphics and like really understanding podcasting technique and all of that kind of stuff. And so by August, I was ready to launch Motherload, August of 2022. So from August of 2022 until mid 2023, I released 60 episodes of motherload twice a week for the most part. And they are a combination of solo episodes from me where I just kind of riff on a topic and interviews with ambitious mothers. Or actually I interviewed a lot of men to, um, to speak about motherhood and ambition and how that shows up in from the male perspective. And so lots of amazing episodes and a really deep conversation and mother load my podcast did really well, like in terms of podcasting metrics and results. You know, most podcasters, I think I don't know

the exact statistics, but most podcasters don't release more than 10 episodes ever. They, they fall off the map after three, three to six months at max, you know, like 1% of all podcasts in the world have more than a few episodes. So for me to get to 60 episodes was a big deal to have my downloads be really healthy. You know, I hit download metrics really quickly. And, and to have it be so well received, you know, I would get huge, long DMS from listeners saying how I, you know, the words I was saying were the words in their heads and that they, they had never heard it said that way, but that's exactly how they felt. And like those messages kept me going. Those messages

were so emotional for me to read. Cause it, that's why I did it. Like I couldn't find in 2020, 2021, when I was feeling all these things and didn't know how to name it, I didn't know where to find someone like me. You know, I was able to say something that they needed to hear that could change the trajectory of their life and their motherhood and their experience of parenting and all of that. So super, super meaningful. And during this time was also when it was in late, like the fall of 2022, that Natalie and I reconnected on DM and DMs and I had asked her to be a guest on Motherlode and she agreed and she came on and, you know, we had talked a lot about her experience and I, you know, her and I have shared on other Boss Babe episodes that I had this sense when her and I reconnected, I just had this sense that something was going on before anything ever, you know, was announced about the changes in ownership of Boss Babe or that

whole story. And before Natalie ever really like publicly admitted anything about how hard postpartum was for her, which she's now speaks openly about. But when her and I first reconnected, I just had this feeling she was having this identity experience of ambition and devotion and really wanting to be a cycle breaker and be this incredibly devoted mother. And it's so important to her. And she wants to be an amazing mother. And she built Boss Babe and has this hugely successful business. She has tons of ambition. And she didn't know how to reconcile those two things. And it led to a lot of

confusion and a lot of consternation in her life around like, what do I do? And how is this going to affect all my relationships? And you guys know the story of a lot of that, obviously, as, as it came to be that Natalie bought Boss Babe and, you know, became the sole owner and then brought me in and all these things that happened kind of downstream from all of this. But those initial conversations with Natalie and I reconnecting were really because of things that I was saying related to motherload. I was saying on my Instagram stories, I was saying on the podcast that she was listening to and hearing me say, and her words back to me where you're saying things, it feels like you're inside my head. You are saying things that I don't know how to say, but it's exactly how I feel.

And yeah, I'll come on your podcast. Yeah, I'll talk about this stuff. And for me to have Natalie come on was a big deal. She was a mentor of mine in 2020, as you guys know. And for her to agree to do an episode of my podcast was incredibly cool to me. And so as we had more conversations and we're scheduling, that's when we started talking about CEO Mama and that she was creating this high ticket mastermind, high level mastermind for seven and eight figure entrepreneurial mothers who were in the early stages of motherhood and were struggling or having the same identity and like questions that she was having around like, who am I in this new season? Do I even want this business? Do I want this version of this business? What do I want my business to do for me? How do I want to show up

as a mother? How much childcare do I want? Like all the big questions. And so we had a lot of conversations about motherlode and CEO Mama and how they related. Because at that time, all I really envisioned for Motherload was the podcast. And I did want to add programming around it. I thought about having a mastermind or some kind of something around Motherload. And for Natalie, and I was further into motherhood and like certain of that conversation being a big part of my work. She was newer into motherhood and really wanted the peer community, the mastermind that we created with CEO Mama, but didn't know. You know, she was like, I don't want to. I'm so early into motherhood. I just want to peer group like I want to be learning with people. I'm not an expert. And I was like, okay, well, what if we worked together in some way? You know, because I'm really comfortable having these mother was right at the end of 2022, headed into

2023 when we were opening the first cohort of CEO Mama. Natalie asked me to come on board, be a coach inside the program, help her lead the program. I eventually became the integrator of the whole program, like the program director, as Natalie then stepped back fully into Boss Babe. And then just a few months later, in October of 2023, I became COO of Boss Babe. And so, you know, really in one year's time from October 2022 to October 2023, I went from having a podcast that was my soul's work, that was my dharmic conversation to create in the world that then connected me to back to Natalie. We really, you know, had this soul connection around ambition, devotion, motherhood, all

of the things. Started working together with CEO Mama. Worked from, you know, January to August, September of 2023 together in CEO Mama and then had this conversation about me becoming CEO of Boss Babe, which happened October 1st of last year. So, you know, really short timeline for the world to change, the world of Lindsay to change. And I really credit a lot of it to this journey of self-discovery that really came, you know, crystallized in May of 2022 around mother load and around ambition and devotion and around this conversation of identity as you become a mother and reclaiming your

identity and knowing that you're under the mother load, but knowing that you have capacity and knowing that, you know, it's so dynamic and the seasons will change, but that there's other people out there having a similar experience and that nothing you're feeling is wrong. Nothing you're feeling is unusual. It's just that we don't talk about it very much. Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform, Kajabi.

You know I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity which I love not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place so it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year so of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business, you know,

get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students. So if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet, now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial. Go to kajabi.com slash Boss Babe to claim your 30-day free trial. That's kajabi.com slash Boss Babe. So here we are now in summer 2024 and very excited to say that the reason for this conversation today is that we are now going to start featuring some of those episodes of Motherload on the Boss Babe podcast. And we're going to take the ones that were the most popular when Motherload was running live, and we'll start

with those. And we'd love to get your feedback and response and your ideas to some of those conversations. And you'll hear me do a new intro on all of them so that I can kind of update or refresh anything that is a little outdated if there is anything, because most of those interviews are from late 2022, early 2023. But the conversations are timeless because it's talking about the experience of the mother load. It's talking about building a business or leading a business or wanting to grow a business in the context of being in early motherhood. You know, in those first several years of motherhood where your identity is so different and you're experiencing the world in a new way, good and bad. Right. And it changes how

you perceive and feel about your business. And so those episodes will start coming next week on the Bossway podcast. You'll see them labeled as CEO Mama and then colon and then the title of the episode. So you'll know in our kind of weekly lineup of episodes, which episodes are CEO Mama episodes. And so some CEO Mama episodes as time goes on here, the other intention that we have for this is that as time goes on, CEO Mama episodes will be some repurposed from Motherload. I have a big catalog of those. There will be some CEO Mama episodes that are new from Natalie and I that are us having conversations with each other or by ourselves around different topics related specifically to motherhood and its

context and entrepreneurship. And then we will also be doing new interviews with entrepreneurial mothers that have a stronger focus on the motherlode and on harmonizing ambition, devotion, all of the aspects of everything we manage as entrepreneurial mothers. So that's my little story for you today. There's a lot more context on all of this on some of the early episodes of Motherlode. So we'll feature some of those on Boss Babe. And then if you want to go back and listen to all of motherload, you absolutely can do that too. It's still available on all the platforms. Um, and I just appreciate so much that

you're interested. You're listening. Um, even if you're not a mother, I think these episodes are, uh, very, very intimate about the experience of motherhood. So if you have friends that are mothers, you have employees that are mothers, you have family that are mothers, you want to be a mother. And all of those are good reasons to listen because I think the empathy and the understanding, that was really my goal in all the conversations was to give the listener insight that maybe you wouldn't know otherwise, you know, you wouldn't have unless you were in this lived experience. And so the only way other than living it is to be able to speak about it. So I highly encourage listening,

sharing with friends that are mothers, sharing and tagging boss, babe, me, CEO, mama, Natalie, all of us will share. And yeah, And you know, the last thing I want to say is to, to everybody out there who is like me a few years ago, where you have a dream on your heart, maybe it's podcasting, maybe it's social media, maybe it's a business, whatever that thing is. And you, you, you come up with the reasons not to do it. You, you psych yourself out. You, you know, have all the excuses about how it won't work for you or it's not possible. I want to be the light that says, I thought that same thing too. And I held off for years on doing it. And obviously the universe was guiding me and it was all in God's

timing. And once I started, everything unfolded so incredibly magically, like beyond my wildest manifested dreams. And to the point where, you know, I sit here today podcasting to you on the Boss Babe podcast a short two years after this incredible, you know, life-changing trip to Peru and the insights around starting my own podcast and, and the dominoes that that put into motion. So if you're somebody who's always wanted to start a podcast, I can't, I cannot recommend it enough. If it's, if it's calling to your heart and you know, you can be consistent with it, do it, do it. You never know who's listening and who relates to what you're saying and what doors it could open.

And if you're a mother or you're wanting to become a mother and you're grappling with the relationship in your life between your ambition and your devotion, then these episodes, these conversations are for you. And those are stories and feelings and conversations that I love, love, love to have. So I hope that you will listen to the show. I hope that you will reach out on DM. If you're interested in CEO Mama, you can go to CEOMama.com and fill out an application. We review applications all the time for our high-level mastermind that we have. And yeah, thank you so much for listening. I love this work. It's incredibly important to me. Being a mother is by far my favorite part of everything that's ever happened in my life.

And so to share my experience and to have these conversations just feels like the greatest honor. So thank you. And we'll see you on a future episode. Wait, wait, wait, before you go, I would love to send you my seven figure CEO operating system

completely free as a gift. All you've got to do is leave us a review on this podcast because it really supports the growth of this show. This is my digital masterclass where I'll show you what my freedom-based daily, weekly, and monthly schedule looks like as an eight-figure CEO, mama, and high performer, and I'll walk you through step-by-step how to create this for yourself. It includes a full video training from me and a plug-and-play spreadsheet to literally create your own operating system. It's one of our best trainings and it's worth $1,997, but I will unlock access for you for free when you leave us a review. I know, wild, right? All you have to

do is leave your review on the podcast, take a screenshot of it, and then head over to bossbabe.com slash review to upload it. And then you'll get instant access to the seven-figure CEO operating system. Again, head over to bossbabe.com slash review to upload your screenshot and get access. We are so, so grateful for all of your support and can't wait to hear how the podcast has supported you.