the bossbabe podcast - 413. CEO Mama: Unpacking The Motherload + Biggest Lessons Learned From Growing a Podcast with Lindsay Roselle

Episode Date: August 31, 2024

Sit down with Lindsay today for another CEO Mama episode about her biggest lessons on podcasting, the “motherload”, creating inner alignment, tapping into your truth + realness, and so much more. From the metrics that matter, communication in partnership, thoughts on excellence, and living a life you truly love - today’s conversation will give you the advice + support you need along your journey as a mama in business! TIMESTAMPS 4:25 - Lessons From Podcasting 16:20 - Insights From The Motherload 39:00 - Things Lindsay Has Learned About Herself 50:15 - Closing Thoughts RESOURCES + LINKS Click Here To Apply For The Next Cohort of CEO Mama. 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 CEO Mama: @ceomama Natalie Ellis: @iamnatalie Lindsay Roselle: @lindsayroselle

Hello, welcome back to today's show. This is Lindsay. Today is another CEO Mama episode, and this one was actually the 50th episode that I released on the Motherlode podcast. And so this episode goes into detail on what I learned doing 50 episodes of my own podcast. And so I cover everything from just podcasting itself and what I learned about the process and how to be consistent and how to systematize it, what to do when guests don't show up or when they show up, but it's a bad interview. There's so much like nitty gritty detail in here that I think can save you so much time if you're interested in starting a podcast or youfulness and honesty and what I learned across so many episodes about the power of a truthful, honest conversation for your audience. And so no matter what your medium is, whether you're a podcaster, you're on Instagram, you're on YouTube, like

whatever is your primary way of communicating with your audience. One of the biggest things I've learned in all of my time as an entrepreneur and working at Boss Babe and everything is that the truth wins. Honesty wins. People want to connect with people. They want to hear you and they know when you're being truthful. And it really deeply affects people when they can see themselves in your honest story. And I think I learned to do that really well through Motherload. And as a result, Motherload was very successful and very helpful to people, which was my goal

all along was I wanted it to help people. I wanted people to see themselves in the things that I talked about in the interviews. And so I talk a lot about not only recognizing that, but how I practice that in this episode. And then, you know, some other things that showed up for me over 50 episodes was that your business grows when you show up in boldness and alignment. And I think this is a huge theme in Boss Babe in general, is that you aligned, you and your genius, you really loving what you do is what magnetizes clients and customers to you. And then you put the systems and the processes and the sales engine behind it. And that's how you make money. But it starts with you. It starts with you being in alignment with what you're selling and making sure that the offer you're selling is truly what not

only you love to do, but what you're really good at doing and that only you can do. You bring a magic to it that people want. So I learned that in the podcast, in the process of doing so many podcasts. And I talk about it in here. And then the last thing that I talk about in here, and I think it's an important lesson. And I say this so much, if you listen to the, to our podcast or you're in society, you hear me on calls, no matter where you see me show up, I'm always going to be the person that says this phrase, which is you'll never outwork a lack of inner alignment. You, you will never outwork a lack of inner alignment. And I cannot stress

that enough, big sister Lindsay coming in here, whether you're a mom or not, that someday it's going to catch up with you if you're out of alignment internally, if you have not done the inner work, if you are running from something that you don't want to face, it's going to show up for you eventually. And a lot of us, myself included, for years, we just outworked it. We burned ourselves out. We found, you know, respite in the overworking and in the addiction to work instead of facing whatever it is inside of us that we needed to face. And, you know, becoming a mother obviously was super confronting in that way. But also having this podcast and having to talk about it so much and really doing my

own excavation work through the podcast and hearing so many about it so much and really doing my own excavation work through the podcast and hearing so many other mothers' stories and other people's stories related to motherhood really proved to me again how true this statement is that you will never outwork a lack of inner alignment. You can try, but someday it's going to catch up with you. So anyway, this episode, if you are somebody who wants to have a podcast, already has a podcast, you're interested in podcasting, or you're somebody that likes to hear about lessons learned in doing something really consistently in your business and how to grow a business by being super consistent with some content medium that you really love and that your audience loves, this episode is for you. And as always, I really appreciate you listening to these episodes.

We love CEO Mama so much, and we are so happy to bring you content related to ambition and devotion with motherhood. And I'm always just a DM away. So if these episodes are resonating, shoot me a DM. I'd love to chat. Hello, welcome back to today's show. Today is episode 50. I am recording this just a few days shy of when it airs so that it's all fresh in my mind and I can really speak candidly to how it feels to get here and everything I've learned. Getting to episode 50 on a podcast, which is, as I've come to learn, very rare that people get this far in and are as consistent as I have been, which now I understand why. I will speak more to that. But today I wanted to do this special solo episode to celebrate episode 50 and do a little bit of a review of what I have learned over the last, it's been about what, seven months, six, seven months since we launched.

So over the last several months and the last 50 episodes, what I have learned about podcasting, about the motherlode, about myself, and what I'm looking forward to from here and what's coming, because there's a lot of momentum. And I think as you'll hear today, as I go through everything I've learned, I am more excited and more committed to this mission now than I have ever been, despite how many obstacles have shown themselves to me over the last several months. So jumping right in, I want to start with podcasting itself, because over the last 50 episodes, I have learned a lot about podcasting. And I don't really talk much about the podcast on the podcast to get meta on you, but I do want to speak

to it because podcasting is hard. And I think a lot of us see how many podcasts exist and go, oh, it must be pretty easy. And it can be, it's a low barrier to entry, but to stay consistent, to keep it really high quality and to have it be something that doesn't take up a massive amount of time or create a bunch of like overwhelm is hard. And I have learned a lot about how to make it easier because I do produce this whole podcast myself other than the audio editing. I do have an editor that does that. So the things I've learned about podcasting, one, you need to have a system. And I learned this early on that the only way I was going to be able to keep up with two shows a week and having an editor and all of the getting people scheduled and prepping and

knowing about them. So I had notes on them before we started and all this stuff was that I would have to have a system. So I built a template right now it's housed in a program called air table that I love and I'm moving it over into ClickUp because trying to have everything in one place. And I mostly use ClickUp these days. But regardless of what platform you build it on, I think it's paramount if you're going to be consistent with anything, but especially content creation, especially a podcast, that you have a system. And my system tracks every episode. So title, what stage it's in, in production, whether it's been recorded or not, and if it's with the editor or not. It has all the links. It has the person who was interviewed.

It has the episode number so that my editors and I are on the same page about which episode is coming in which order. And the clincher is because I have technical expertise with systems and I've built websites and I'm pretty tech savvy, I built it all to be integrated and automated. So anytime someone receives a link to become an interview guest and pick a spot on my interview schedule, they are put into an automation where they fill out a form,

they have to answer a bunch of questions so I know about them, they get follow-up emails automatically so I know that they're gonna show up on the day that their interview is, they get the link to be on my recording software. All of that happens without me. It's all automated. And that's a huge part of how I'm able to do it all because I don't have an assistant right now. I don't really want a big team. And aside from having a professional editor, I want the podcast

to be something that feels easy for me because I'm going to get into this a little bit later, but I love this podcast. I love doing this. And I know myself well enough to know at least a past version of me where as soon as I didn't love something anymore, I became extremely resistant to doing it and gave up on it. And so I want this to remain something that I love. And I'm aware that if I complicate it or make it hard or involve too many people in the process, it may make it that I love. And I'm aware that if I complicate it or make it hard or involve too many people in the process, it may make it that I don't love it anymore. And that would be really sad to me. So I'm really conscious of using automation and using systems to make it smooth, seamless, as easy to manage as possible. And as a result, a lot of my guests and externally people are saying,

hey, that was incredibly smooth process. Like I just clicked on one link and the whole thing was done for me. How did you set all of this up? And you should sell your templates. And so I'm also thinking about doing that now that I've learned how to do this and been really consistent with it. I realize I have some skills in building systems and building out the templates and the structure to make a podcast an easy thing to put into a business, especially for a busy mom. So mental note, if you're interested in starting a podcast, I probably will have something available for you in the near future that includes my templates and my process that

you can implement into your business. So I have learned a lot about podcasting. And the first thing is that you need a system and you can buy mine if you'd like it. The next thing with this is having a good editor really eliminates the excuse of perfectionism. And I know, again, I've learned this about myself that if I had to listen back to all my episodes and edit them and make decisions about, I don't cut parts out, like my editor doesn't take out any sections or anything like that, but we do remove filler words or like if my dogs bark, those kinds of things. I think if I had to do that myself and I was in charge of my own editing that I would probably hear myself say something or hear a guest say something and want to edit it. And that would

cause a different quality or a different tenor to the podcast overall. So for me, having a great editor that can improve the sound quality and make it sound really good and that I trust has kept me out of perfectionism because I just I send them the file and I trust that whatever is meant to come out is going to come out and that they don't do any editing. So what got recorded is what's going to get put out aside from like dog barks and kids screams. So I've learned having a good editor is actually not overwhelmingly expensive and relieves a lot of the mental load around both producing it and the technical side of that, but also getting hung up in perfectionism. The next thing I've learned is that not everyone is a great podcast interview, and I've recorded many that I will never release. complete respect and reverence for people. But sometimes people just aren't, they're having an

off day or they just answer a question and they don't give any color or what's the word I'm looking for depth to the answer. You ask a question, they just kind of yes or no it. And that's okay. And I get that people respond differently to questions or maybe really nervous or things like that. But for me and for Motherload, I really want Motherload to feel like you're sitting here having a conversation with us and that the person speaking and when I'm speaking, you could be my friend and you care about our story and you are in our story. We're telling stories. And the few interviews I've had where there wasn't really any story that came through are the ones that I got off the interview and I was like, that's not quite at the level of connection that I want for Motherload. So that's what I've learned. It's okay that not everybody is necessarily going

to be a great guest and that's okay. You don't have to air every episode that you record. The next thing I've learned is that boldness is really powerful. And you can reach people through a podcast that you may not have thought you could get to otherwise. And I've done this a lot. If you look at who I've interviewed on my podcast, most of these are people that I have personal connections to. And my interview list reads kind of a history of my life and all the

people I've met through my entrepreneurial endeavors and mentors I've had and things like that. And there's a time in my life where I would have thought some of those people that I've already interviewed and some that I have coming up would never even know who I was or care about me or my podcast or want to take the time out of their busy day to spend an hour with me talking about this stuff. And I've never yet had someone deny an interview or say no to me for an interview. And I think one is, you know, talking about motherhood and talking about moms is universally positive, you know, like most people like that conversation and want more of that. But also it's a testament to the network effect and relationships. And when you've had connection with someone, no matter how far back

in your life or what your mentorship relationship was with them, or if they were a peer, most people want to support you, especially when they can tell you're passionate about it. And especially when they see you that you've been consistent with something. And so I've had people say yes to being on the podcast that I never would have thought would say yes. And they do it because they care about me and they do it because they see me being consistent and they see Motherlode getting traction and they wanna support my success.

So I've learned through podcasting that the bold ask is almost always a yes. And the last thing on the podcasting side is that metrics matter. They do. And I pay attention to them just because the podcast is the main product of this company right now.

And I really want it to be good. And it's very important to me that it's good and it gets traction and I see it growing. But ultimately, as is the case with most things, when you really drill in, the metrics only matter to the extent that you're passionate about it. The second that my passion dies for this podcast, because to me, I could have a top 10 podcast that I fucking hated and it wouldn't be a good thing, you know, or I can have a top 10% podcast like I have right now and love it, you know? And yeah, it doesn't get listened to by millions of people

every week. It gets listened to by thousands of people every week, but the purpose of doing it is that I love it. And then it's a creative outlet for me. And as long as it remains that, the numbers are important, but not more important than that. So that's a summary of what I've learned about podcasting. And I just wanted to touch on that because I know if you're a listener, you're probably consuming other podcasts besides just mine. And you may also have a podcast and understand how podcasting works, or you may be somebody that loves to enjoy a podcast and hasn't ever really thought about how much goes into running a podcast or producing a podcast. And I was one of those people that, you know, I listened to podcasts

for many, many, many years and always thought I wanted one and let a lot of the stuff I just mentioned get in the way of starting. And now I understand, you know, there's definitely some validity to some of the things that I thought would be hard are definitely hard, but it's all been delightful. Like having to be consistent, building out these systems, having an editor to help me getting guests on that I never thought I'd get to interview. All of that just has helped create momentum in the podcast that I just continue to trade on. As we get deeper into it and I get more interviews lined up, I can look back and go, man,

all of the things that I used to think about podcasting, I didn't even realize the half of it, how much goes into this. But also I have such greater reverence for people whose podcasts I've listened to for years and years and years because there's so much that goes into this. And at the end of the day, yeah, there's a lot of production and there's a lot of systems and a lot of admin, but there's a lot of love and there's a lot of care and a lot of thought and a lot of preparation and a lot of presence required to really show up on a podcast in a way that lands with people and that sticks with people and has them coming back every week. And I have really, really consistent numbers with this podcast where my weekly numbers are really consistent, meaning people listen every week.

So that's a testament to me that I learned well how to do this and that it's working. So that's what I've learned about podcasting. The next thing I want to talk about is what I've learned about the mother load, because that's why you're here. And some of what I've learned over the last 50 episodes has been things that I feel like I already knew and that have been confirmed through all of these interviews and stories and all the solo episodes, digging into topics and all the feedback I've gotten from people and all the conversations that have been sparked. And some of the things I've learned about the motherlode surprised me in terms of what's really at the root of a lot of what we call the mental load or how it gets portrayed on social media or in our culture as being, you know, invisible and unseen and so hard all the time.

And I think I thought that going in that some of that messaging and kind of that portrayal of it in our culture was really accurate. And as I've gotten deeper into it and studied more and heard so many stories and had all these conversations, some of my opinions have shifted a little bit on what it is and why and how. So the first thing that I've learned about the mother load is I still believe in the mental load of motherhood is comprised of these seven buckets. And the best way of kind of figuring that out for yourself, if you're listening and wanting to explore the mental load, is to do an audit. And those seven buckets are work, money, fun, health, love, kids, and meaning. And I have a

whole episode about those buckets that you can go back to early on. But those seven buckets are the key to the motherlode. And they are a measure of capacity. And capacity is kind of the undercurrent of the motherlode. When we look at, can you be wildly successful and a devoted mother? I ardently believe the answer to that is yes. But it's a capacity calculation and the way to do it yes, but it's a capacity calculation. And the way to do it without getting burned out and without being overloaded and resentful and all the negative things we see is to really understand your capacity. And to me, capacity is those seven buckets and understanding what's in each of them and being able to evaluate each of them with a satisfaction score to say, do I feel satisfied

with what's in my work bucket and what's not in my work bucket? Do I feel satisfied with what's in my love bucket and not in my love bucket? And if there's discrepancy, vast discrepancy between what you want and what you have, then we have a problem. You know, you've got load in areas where you don't want there to be load and you have not enough in areas where you want there to be more. And when we start to look at how to create and manage capacity, we're looking at a calculation of either lightening the load, helping you lighten the load, or helping you grow strength, become stronger so you can hold more. And those two things are the two counterweights of what your capacity is. So the main thing I've learned around that is those seven buckets apply to pretty much everybody. And when we start to do this inquiry and audit around what's in all of your buckets, we can get to this question of overall that I've come to through these episodes and the

work so far is that I'm not trying to teach you how to be more ambitious or be more devoted in your motherhood. I'm not trying to teach you how to balance it better. I'm trying to help you find a way to being happy with whatever that looks like for you so that you love your life. Because where I was when I started all of this journey years ago, a couple of years ago, and what I see so much that makes me sad for other mothers because I relate to it so much is that people, they aren't in love with their life because they're stuck in burnout. They're stuck in overwhelm. They're stuck in a relationship or a job or some pattern or system that they do not feel aligned with and they feel stuck there. They don't feel safe to leave. They don't know how to express themselves. They don't even know themselves well enough to know what they actually want.

And I ultimately want Motherload to help you, the listener and other, anybody that comes across it, know that there is a path to loving your life, especially if you're an ambitious mom and you love to work and you also love to be a mother. You can do both things well and there is a path to loving both things. So to that end, the second thing that I've learned is one of the most potent tool sets that I have that I worked through in myself that has come up in so many interviews and is so relatable to a

lot of people is the prioritization of ourselves first. And I talk about it a lot in previous episodes. I won't go deeply into it. But when I had hit rock bottom in 2020 and really dug into how I got there, I realized that the way I had prioritized everything in my life was businesses, work first, making money, like hustling, then the kids because they needed a lot of support, then my relationship and then myself and because the businesses were so intense and I had so many of them there was basically no extra capacity there's some a little bit of capacity to take care of kids stuff but I wasn't really super engaged there and then there's basically nothing left for my relationship and really

nothing left for me and as you know that ended. That type of structure depleted me to the point where I had no capacity for anything else. And everything came crashing down in rebuilding, in learning and doing the inquiry and finding self-love and really understanding how to separate my self-worth from external validation and work and money. And I rebuilt that whole system to be the complete opposite, which was I've got to put myself first and not in an ego narcissist way, but in a regulation way. Like if I can regulate myself and I take care of myself and I'm good, everything else is good or is more likely to be good. Then if my relationship is good and my connection there and my person and I are good, everything else is good or is more likely to be good. Then if my relationship is good and my connection there and my person and I are good and we're solid, then everything else is better. If me and my person are good and the kids are good, oh my God, then everything feels easier. Then if those three things are great, then business is easier because I don't have to worry about the kids as much. I don't have to worry about my relationship. I know that I'm good in

my body and in myself. And when you build it top down like that yourself first, and then your primary relationship, and then your kids, and then your business, the really counterintuitive thing that I've learned is the business is way more resilient when it is not the top focus. The business learns and you learn how to be more resilient with the way that work or business can move around in your life if you don't always put it first. And that was huge work for me that I would have never thought was possible. And I would never have admitted that was true until everything that happened a couple of years ago. So that's been a big learning for me. And I think it resonates with a lot of ambitious mothers is you've got to figure out how to put yourself at the top of the priority list.

And that doesn't mean every day has to be baths and massages and all of that kind of stuff. It means that there's something that you do for yourself every day. And you know how to get yourself back into alignment, back into feeling good, back into presence with self. And from there, reconnect into your partnership, from there, reconnect with your kids, from there, reconnect into your business. And if you ever do feel it starting to flop around where you are getting pushed down in the priority order, then you've got some work to do to get yourself back up. And you're probably noticing how things are suffering as a result of you not taking care of you first. This doesn't mean like your kid gets sick and you don't take care of them. Obviously,

that's not what I'm saying. This is speaking more at the identity and like existential level of when you look at order of importance and how energy moves in your life, if you are constantly putting yourself at the bottom, you will not have a very balanced system. So that's the second big learning. The third thing I've learned a lot about the mother load is, I think there was this myth, I believed in the beginning that the mental load was mostly task based. Like it's a lot of all the things we constantly have to think about that are things that have to get done. And that's true.

You know, like, where are my kids at all times? What shoes are they growing out of? What's the next size of clothes they need to get? What upcoming milestone thing do I need to get scheduled in on the calendar? And does RT know about that and all that stuff? Yes, all of that is at work in the mental load, in the mother load. And those are things like grief and safety and freedom. And those things show up not so much in the day-to-day task overload. Those things show up in how we are, how our presence feels to other people, how we are relating to our children, how we feel about ourselves as mothers.

And for that reason, they have become my favorite things to talk about and my favorite things to study and understand because I have realized in so many interviews and so many podcasts that those deeper topics are what we avoid. That's what we don't want to talk about. We want to talk about the tasks and the schedules and the calendars and the pickups and the nannies and the childcare and all of that. We don't want to talk about the grief and how we mourn for our old selves that are no longer here because we're now mothers. We mourn for the younger version of our children who have grown up in front of our eyes, but we miss. We mourn for the way our relationship used to feel when it was just him and I, and we didn't have to worry about all this stuff and we could pick up on a moment's notice

and go do something. And it's okay to feel that grief and to be in the discomfort of sadness and to understand that part of being human is having this awareness that there's a piece of us that's no longer here. And we loved that thing or that person or that version of our child. And that's okay to still feel that love and to miss that love and be looking at what we currently have and love that too. So grief is a huge thing that I've become so much more aware of in this process and I think is a very important part of the mother load that I wasn't as aware of in the beginning. The second one is safety and how common it is to hear at the root of someone's story

that they don't feel safe. And I don't mean like physically that they feel like they're going to be physically harmed, but that they don't feel safe to express their truth. They don't feel safe to make the decisions they want to make. They don't feel safe to say they want something to their partner or that they don't want something to their partner for fear that their partner will leave them and disrupt the family. They don't feel safe in the world we freaking live in. Huge topic. You know, like mothers feeling safe existentially and feeling like our children are safe. Huge, huge topic. You know, I've taught

yoga for so many years and studied the nervous system so extensively. I understand safety, like the primal need for your nervous system to understand what is safe because that's how it regulates itself. So I'm aware of that, but I didn't appreciate how deeply a lot of us feel this undercurrent of lack of safety in our lives and how it bleeds out into our relationships, into our work, into our mothering, and into our own relationship with ourselves. So that has been a major topic that's come up that will continue to come up as we continue down the path of growing the podcast and having more episodes, because I think it's something that is becoming more important to speak about.

And then the last one is freedom. And this comes up a lot in conversation with people and myself where I'm trying to get at, like, why do we want to work so much and love to work still so much and also wanna be mothers? And like, what is ultimately what we're trying to feel? Like, what are we getting at? Why do we want to do both? And the word that comes through is freedom. I want the freedom to do what I want, when I want, with who I want to do it,

how I want to do it, all the things I want, right? Freedom. And for me and other ambitious moms and lots of people I talk to, I want to be able to work. I love to work. I want that outlet for myself. It's not about having to make money. It's not about having to prove anything, although sometimes that is a reality too. It's about desire, true, authentic desire to go do something with my life and my identity

that has an impact. I feel that pull very strongly. And I also feel equally pulled to being the best damn mom I can be for my kids and to be there for them and to break the generational cycles of trauma and all of the things, right? Be the devoted mother. And I believe I can do both of those things well. I believe I have the capacity. I believe I have the desire. I believe I have the fortitude to do them. But I have to have the freedom to run my life in the way I want to run my life so that I can do it. If I have to work a certain schedule because that's what work demands of me, I don't feel as free to be the devoted mother I want to be because it means I'm going to miss things because I have to be working at that time. Or if my child care situation means that I have to be with my kids because

they're not safe alone without me and that prevents me from working, then I know I'm going to be out of alignment because there's this desire pulling on me to go create something, but I don't have the support I need to keep my kids safe while I go create something. So this freedom is one of the most powerful undercurrents of the motherlode. And I think money comes into play there. I've done recent episodes about that. Our relationships and the dynamics in our relationship come into play there. There's a lot of subtext to freedom, but I think it's a really important thing to note because I think it's the motivation for a lot of us to want to do this work and to learn these things about ourselves because we want to feel more free in how we navigate our lives. The next thing that I've learned about the motherlode, and I kind of touched on it a minute

ago, is just how common it is that women are suffering in their relationships, in their primary partner relationship, and not violently suffering or anything like that, but that becoming a mother, or perhaps this stuff was already present before becoming a mother, but becoming a mother and thus becoming parents with this person has created a new texture to the relationship that has made communication much harder or has created a lack of safety at some level or communication struggles that make it so that you are not able to be honest with what you need on either direction. And where I see this come up the most is around the hot button topics that I'm going to say them. Money, sex, boundaries with family members, time and whose time gets sacrificed in what way to help the kids, you know, and then all the task based stuff like who does what and the division of labor and like the understanding of each other's identity shifts and each other's needs. But really, honestly, it's those first three.

It's money and every trigger button around money that was never discussed prior to becoming parents or was good until it wasn't as parents that now is something you can't even talk about because one or the other of you doesn't feel safe in the relationship to have that conversation. Huge thing I've learned about the mother load and how much that weighs on women that they don't feel safe or don't know how to talk about money in

their relationship. The second thing is sex and physical intimacy, all the body image issues, all the physical connection stuff that comes up. And God, there's so much to this topic. And I am not an expert on relationships, but I would say 90% of the conversations I've had related to motherload at some level have an element of being out of alignment in a physical intimacy, sexuality way, whether or not you heard it on the podcast or it was, it was said offhand, or I know because I'm friends with a lot of these people personally, but I will speak from my own experience and I will speak from multitudes of conversations and masterminds and all the things. I cannot tell you how many women, ambitious women who are under the mother load, who are out there

following their ambition, living out what they want to be doing, also want to be devoted mothers and are committed to that, are struggling to feel aligned and connected in their relationships. And I know that weighs on them. If we go back to that prioritization conversation, I know that that weighs on them because if the relationship is out of alignment, everything downstream from there suffers. So calling that out, because I think I would not have counted that as one of the top things when I went into this. But now having had so many conversations and learned so much, there's a lot of a lot of us out there who are not fully connected, or in good communication, or even frankly, feel safe in our relationships to

have these hot button conversations. That's a huge part of the motherlode. And then the last thing, a little like philosophical here, but the thing that's come up a lot for me lately around the motherlode in general is, you know, there's so much rhetoric out there and you see it so much on social media, all these like reels and stuff that are showing the negative side of the mental load. And they get a lot of likes and they get a lot of traction because it's relatable to be like, my husband, he just thinks that magically the soap gets refilled and the toothpaste gets bought and all these things.

It's like, OK, yeah, relatable. Like I'm the keeper of the shopping list. And RT probably does just assume that like when we run out of toothpaste, I notice it and I put it on our list, which I do. So, yeah, like it's all true. But I think that one of the downsides of that messaging of everything being task oriented in the mother load and it's all invisible and kind of negative is that it bypasses or it discounts the fact that I think a lot of us intentionally hold on to the mother load. And I see this coming up more and more where we have the ability to delegate some stuff or we have the awareness to lighten our load from a mindset standpoint or a self-awareness standpoint or a relationship standpoint. And we choose not to because we live in a world or we

live in a family system or we live in our own little inner world where we want to know. We want to be the one in charge. We want to have the load on us. And I think this is a very it's a bigger conversation and I'll do more episodes on it. But I think that a lot of messaging is telling moms like delegate, get help from your husband. He should know when the toilet paper runs out where it is or he should watch when the you know the toothpaste is out and he should have to buy it and the magic toothpaste fairy isn't the person always doing it and it's like yeah okay we can joke about that but what that discounts is that I think a lot of us as ambitious women are so trained into

hyper vigilance and so trained into independence and self-management that we actually want to carry the load. And I speak to my own experience. I don't want to delegate the schedule to RT because I like to know what's going on in the schedule. I like to run the schedule. I like to be connected to the home in that way. I don't want him to run the schedule. And is running the schedule a massive burden? And do I have two kids and two nannies and childcare and school? And yes, absolutely. It's a lot. But I don't think it's negative because I chose it and I like it and I don't want to delegate it. And the more that I speak to that kind of stuff, the more that I invite

permission and conversations for women, other women like me to admit that they feel the same way to go. Yeah, actually, like I want to be the one that knows all of that stuff. I want to be the one buying the clothes because I love buying clothes or I want to be the one planning the vacation because I want to know that it's going to be a great vacation. And it's not because my husband's not capable of planning a great vacation. I actually want to do it. And there's layers and layers and layers. And I've had people tell me like that's conditioning and you're blind to the fact that like you're living in a patriarch, you know, like all this kind of condescending pedantic stuff around Lindsay, you're blind to what you're saying. And I would argue I'm not. I just have

a belief that like it's OK if some some of your mother load is intentional stuff that you have taken on that you want to keep. And that doesn't mean that there's not other things that are overwhelming you that you want to get rid of. And we can talk about those too, but there's so much negative messaging and there's so much delegate messaging and there's so much get rid of things and ask for more help and get everything to be equal between mothers and co-parents and dads. And, you know, in all these conversations and in my own experience, I think a lot of mothers are resistant to that feedback, not because they don't have someone to delegate to or they don't know how to delegate, but because they don't want to. And sometimes, sure, is that a conditioned

hypervigilance pattern? Absolutely. But are we overlooking and not giving credit like where credit is due to women who actually are very self-aware and who want to choose to be involved in all of those things? And if so, then how do we help grow capacity so that she can't do that? How do we support her in growing her business or growing in her career and being a devoted mother? Because she wants to do all of that. She wants to run the schedule and be the surgeon. You know, she wants to do the grocery shopping and run a seven-figure business.

Why is that a bad thing if she doesn't want to delegate some of that stuff? So that's a soapbox moment for me. But that is a big thing I've learned that the negative messaging of the mother load is so prevalent. But a lot of us have chosen aspects of it that we want to keep and we don't want to offload. And so I just want it to be clear that not everything about the mother load is negative. Like being under the mother load doesn't mean that it's negative. Sure, it can lead to overwhelm. It can lead to burnout, especially if you're not managing yourself very well and you don't have the practices to build resilience and tolerance to discomfort, you know. But I think that there's a lot of messaging out there that the mental load is negative and it should be 100% equally shared. And I just don't believe it. 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. That's true. So, okay, the last thing that I've learned in 50 episodes is about myself. And these are the things I've learned about myself, which I'm going to be appropriately humble here because I've learned a lot and I've done a lot. And this is, you know, not my first foray into something big and public facing. And in my life, you know, I've had lots of businesses. I've had a big corporate career and I wanted to have a podcast for five years and I waited five years. I got in my own

way to start this podcast for five freaking years because it never felt like the right time or the right business or the right topic. And when Motherload came along last year, I knew it was right. And it still scared the shit out of me to start it. I still cried, you know, when I first heard the intro music with my voiceover and I still got shaky before the first 10 interviews, you know, because it, it still felt very edgy. But I will say what I've learned about myself is that I really, really love this. I love this podcast. I love this medium. I love speaking into this microphone. If you're watching this one, I love the feedback I get. I love knowing that you guys listen to it. And at some level, it affects you, you know, whether you agree with everything I say, or some of what I say triggers you or you disagree. Like, that's the point of this is to be in conversation as mothers, as people who love mothers to hopefully help us all love our lives more. And I think I'm really fucking good at it because I love it so much and because I work

hard to be excellent at it. And I have created systems and structure to be excellent at it. And I have learned about myself that for perhaps the first time in my 40 years of being alive and in 12 plus years of entrepreneurship, I have learned about myself that this is something that I would do for free because I am doing it for free. And that gets me to my next point. But that's an important point because I have habitually for so much of my life been so conditioned to, if it doesn't make money, it's not worth doing. If it doesn't make money, it's not worth doing. And what's so interesting about this podcast and what I've learned about myself

is that the idea of monetizing this thing scares the crap out of me because I don't want to mess with my passion for it. And I'm reaching the crossroads where, and if you're a follower and you've listened to other episodes, you know, I'm doing this 100K in 100 days challenge. I'm at the crossroads where the podcast has enough momentum. It's getting big. It's getting traction. It has a lot of visibility. It has great guests. I could take on sponsors. I can find new ways to grow Motherload. And I am exploring all of that because it is something

that I want to grow for the purpose of having more ears and more eyes to hear these messages. But extremely transparently, this is one of the first things I've ever done where I have freaking loved it every day, every minute of doing it, I've loved. And monetizing it feels scary to me, or doing anything that could make it work feels scary to me, because I know how an old version of me responded to that kind of stuff. Now, I will say I've done so much work on myself in the last couple years, and even in the last six months around this podcast, where I believe that starting to add in sponsors or adding additional things onto Motherload is not going to change my commitment to or my love for the podcast because I've learned how to manage those emotions and those fears within myself.

But I sense those patterns in me and I want to be transparent about that, that because I love this thing so much, I've learned about myself. I really fucking love this thing. I love this podcast. I'm really, really good at it. I don't want to mess it up. It is that important to me. So everything I do is with that in mind going forward.

Another thing I've learned about myself is really living into this excellence versus perfection mantra that I'm trying to adopt in my wise old years here, where I think I used to live in a world where perfection felt achievable to me because I've always been the best at a lot of things. And so why not strive for perfection? If you can be perfect, why wouldn't you want to be? Which is a whole other thing that we can unpack in a different episode. But I've really learned about myself through this process that excellence isn't perfection. Excellence is presence. Excellence is trying your hardest. Excellence is being bold and taking risks and showing up in the discomfort. That's excellence. Perfection is safe. Perfection is boring. Perfection is doing it the way other people do it. And that's just not achievable for me anymore. So excellence for

me as a beginner, podcasting means all the things we've talked about, having the systems, having the editor, but do mistakes still get made? Of course. But excellence doesn't mean lack of mistakes. Excellence means trying your best. Excellence means being present in it. Excellence means weathering discomfort and still showing up. So that's what I've learned about myself there. I have also learned that people need to hear this stuff and they need to hear it from me. And the reason they need to hear it from me and that I meant to do this is that I am for some reason chosen or destined or this is my dharma in some way to be here in this time and speak so openly and transparently and honestly. And I have never felt so called to be more honest in my life than having this show

and being in the motherlode movement and in the energy of motherlode and in the conversations I have with motherlode and just wanting to be fully transparent, not hide anything because the gravity of what we're talking about in our children's lives, there is nothing more important to me than radical honesty so that they, not that I am radically honest with them about everything, because obviously that's not appropriate, but radical honesty with myself so that they are getting the version of me that is the purest, most present, truest, ultimately happiest version of me. Because I think that's the best thing I can do for them is be the best version of me. And the best version of me is the person who shows up real, every fucking every fucking day real not putting on a show

not faking it not making you believe something that's not true not overselling something that is true you know it's just being real and you know I have a whole diatribe about why I think that's so important this day and age with social media and how mom culture especially has made made it feel kind of unsafe to be a mom where if you express that you're happy, there's people being like, you're not giving enough to your kids. If you express any dissatisfaction about motherhood, there's people saying people would trade millions of dollars to be in your place because they can't have kids. It doesn't feel safe to be out on the edges of expressing a lot of joy because you get feedback that people get real triggered by joy

or expressing hardship, people get real triggered by joy or expressing hardship. People get real triggered by hardship. So a lot of us end up in the safe middle place where we don't share a lot of the truth because that gets edgy. And out at the edges is where we get feedback. We get pushback. We get discomfort. We get people telling us we're wrong because of their own issues. And I'm one of these people that's like, you know what? I don't love that either. I don't want to get canceled. I don't want to have a fight with you about differences in belief systems. I don't want to have my joy trigger your pain and have you have to tell me why my joy makes you angry. And I also don't

want me expressing hardship to be met with you telling me that I'm an entitled bitch who is lucky to have two kids because you can't have kids. Like, I don't want to have that feedback. Have I had that feedback from both sides? Absolutely. And I take it and that's part of being who I am and having the show. But what I've learned is that in showing up real and in being truthful and honest, when you get that kind of feedback from people, you can easily put the boundary up and go, you know what? That's your stuff. That's not mine. Because I was truthful. I was honest. I was real. So if you are responding to me being real and me being truthful and me being honest, then that's on you. If your reaction coming at me is

to something that I lied about or I hyped up or I covered up, okay, then maybe there's some inquiry here for me to do around my lack of truth triggered someone and I need to look at that. But when I'm living in my truth and I'm living in my honesty and I am delivering my leadership from a place of my lived experience in as much candor as I can share, then I feel okay to know that I'm safe to be in my honesty and that that feedback may still come and it may still be really uncomfortable, but it doesn't mean anything about me. And that is growth, man. Like that is a growth edge. And I am a growth and performance coach. And that is edgy, uncomfortable shit. So I didn't get there easily. And I it's

taken me 40 years and 10 years of entrepreneurship and 50 episodes of a podcast about a tricky subject to get here. But I can say that I know about myself now more than I ever have before that telling the truth and being real and honest is what people want. And it feels so much better than hiding stuff. So with that, that is my summary of what I have learned over the last 50 episodes, both about podcasting, about the motherlode, about myself in general. And, you know, I think the overarching theme that I can end on and tie it up in a bow is that I still more strongly than ever believe that you'll never outwork

a lack of inner alignment. You'll never out strategy a lack of inner alignment. You can pursue all of those external measures of success for as long and as hard as you want. And at some point, it will reveal to you a lack of inner alignment if you haven't done the work to figure out what inner alignment is for you. And that's why I'm here, ultimately, even if mother load, you know, I'm sure I'll grow and evolve. And at some point in the future, mother load will grow and evolve. And my work will continue in new and different ways. But I will always come back to this theme that you cannot outrun a lack of inner alignment. At some point it will catch up to you. So I invite you, whether it's with me or with any other

amazing coach or leader or person out there to find your path into inner alignment and studying what that means for you. And lastly, of course, I will shout this from rooftops for as long as I'm a mother and I have ambition, which is to say, I believe that you can be wildly successful and a devoted mother. And I will always stand up for the women who are trying to do both things well. And I will always give a voice through this platform to the nuances and the experience and the discovery that we go through in navigating how to bring both of those things into harmony. So thank you for listening to all of these episodes. And if you haven't yet and you've been a longtime listener, the thing I will ask you

very openly and humbly is to leave a review. Those really help me grow the podcast and bring it to new audiences, get new guests. And going into the second half of getting to 100 episodes by the end of the year, having more reviews is super, super helpful. So if you're listening and you can take a second, just scroll down on the podcast app. If you're on Apple, scroll down and hit this five-star rating right there. And if you want to type out a review, that's great too. I always appreciate that. And then of course, I love feedback. I love conversation. I'm always available through Instagram DM to have more conversations about these things. So please share your feedback. If you have any ideas for the podcast guests, you'd love to hear from questions that you want me to answer, formats you want me to explore. Anything is on the table right now as we look at

how to continue to grow Motherload. So thank you so, so, so much for being here and I will 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.