419 Nicole Crone on Motherhood at 40, a Two-Year Fertility Journey, and Rebuilding Business Boundaries

**Episode 419:** Rain or Shine Podcast
**Guest:** Nicole Crone, Co-founder of My Aligned Purpose and Podcast host

Duvet Days, Divine Timing, and Becoming Well-Paid: Nicole Crone on Motherhood, Business Resilience, and the Art of Slowing Down

Episode 419: Rain or Shine Podcast
Guest: Nicole Crone, Co-founder of My Aligned Purpose and Podcast host

Quick Summary:

Nicole Crone — co-founder of My Aligned Purpose and host of a podcast with over 600 episodes — joins Rain or Shine for a candid conversation about becoming a mom at 40 after years of not wanting kids, surviving a two-year fertility journey, and navigating one of the hardest eight-week stretches her business has faced. Along the way, she shares the systems, mindset tools, and rituals that keep her grounded — from "duvet days" to yearly word-of-the-year necklaces.

In This Episode:

Nicole's go-to rituals for decompressing after an overloaded week
How she uses Claude and Cowork to organize her to-do list into an Eisenhower Matrix
Her lifelong love of learning — human design, astrology, Kabbalah, and yoga
The surprising vision that changed her mind about wanting kids
A two-year fertility journey, including a pregnancy loss, and what it taught her about compassion and timing
What she wishes she'd known about postpartum boundaries as an entrepreneur
Navigating the hardest eight weeks in her business's six-and-a-half-year history
Her personal toolkit for processing hard emotions (solo drives, audiobooks, trusted masterminds)
Her philosophy on what to share publicly versus keep private as a personal brand
Why My Aligned Purpose builds yearly themes, challenges, and rewards into its coaching programs

Key Takeaways:

Name what your nervous system needs, and ask for it. Vocalizing a specific need — like a full "duvet day" with zero plans — is more restorative than defaulting to "productive" rest.
Trust doesn't mean things happen on your timeline. Nicole's fertility journey taught her that "the universe delivers when you know what you want and why you want it" — but not necessarily on schedule.
Take the time off you think you don't need. Plan for real postpartum (or any major life transition) downtime rather than assuming you'll want to keep working — you likely won't, and you'll regret cutting it short.
Process alone before you process out loud. Solo time (a drive, a cry, a walk) before bringing a hard situation to trusted people helps you find your own direction before outside opinions can sway it.
Build structure your community can buy into. Yearly themes, challenges, and rewards — borrowed straight from a teaching background — deepen engagement and retention in a business or program.

Memorable Quotes:

"It's like it does feel really big right now, but it's not going to feel really big if I decide that it's not gonna take any more of my focus, and energy, and attention."
"As Dan Martell says, '80% done by somebody else is 100% awesome.'"

Resources Mentioned:

Nicole’s Website: myalignedpurpose.com
Podcast: My Aligned Purpose Podcast
Instagram: @myaligne dpurpose
Kelsey’s Website: KelseyReidl.com
Kelsey’s Instagram: @KelseyReidl
Time as a Tool — Benjamin Hardy
10x Is Easier Than 2x — Benjamin Hardy
Who Not How
Human Design, astrology, numerology, Kabbalah (as ongoing personal studies)
Claude + Cowork (for task organization via the Eisenhower Matrix)
Melanie Auld (Vancouver-based jewelry brand, for the annual "word of the year" necklaces)
Dan Martell (quoted concept: "80% done by somebody else is 100% awesome")

About the Guest

Nicole Crone is the co-founder of My Aligned Purpose, a coaching and educational company she runs alongside business partner Kayla, and host of the My Aligned Purpose Podcast (600+ episodes). A former junior high and high school teacher, Nicole became a mom at 39 to her son, Cruz, after a two-year fertility journey. Her upcoming book, Aligned CEO Method: How to Stop Trading Time for Money and Have Your Most Profitable Year Yet, releases September 18th.

Kelsey: Nicole, welcome to the Rain or Shine podcast. I'm so excited to have you on today — a bit of a role swap, since I was on your podcast a few months back and we got to know each other there. We met at a High Vibe Women event, sat at tables chatting through strategies, and started following each other on Instagram. We share a lot in common, so it's been fun getting to know you in small doses. Now I get to selfishly learn more about you and all the different hats you wear — with My Aligned Purpose, as a mother, and as someone navigating this crazy transition. So officially, welcome to the show.
Nicole: Oh, thanks for having me. I'm so looking forward to chatting again, and just being here in your energy.
Kelsey: I know you're a pro at podcasting — you've hosted over 600 episodes on your own show, so I don't need to warm you up. But I do like to start with a rapid-fire question: when you've had a super busy week — momming, working, traveling — how do you wind down at the first opportunity you get some breathing space? What rituals or routines help you decompress, whether you have a minute or an entire evening?
Nicole: Oh my gosh, this literally just happened to me last week. We hosted an in-person VIP day at a client's home instead of our usual co-working space, so that ran from 9:30 to about 3:30. Then Thursday and Friday we hosted four-hour, back-to-back training calls for our mastermind — we do that every 60 days — and wrapped the final call of a smaller mastermind. It felt so full on, especially coming off the week before, when I'd traveled to Toronto for the High Vibe Women Yacht Day.
Then this past weekend rolled around and we had guests over Saturday. When they left Saturday night, I told my husband, "I want tomorrow to be a duvet day." That term comes from my mom, who's really into the British show Coronation Street — it's been on for something like 65 years — and they talk about having duvet days on it. A duvet day is literally where you've got your duvet on the couch, you're propped up and cozy, and there's nowhere to be.
I told him, "That's what my nervous system needs. I don't want to get out of bed for anything — can you handle the baby and the dog, and just bring me my coffee in bed? I don't want to make any plans." My husband's a planner, so that was a big ask, but that's what I did on Sunday. I went out briefly to get some skincare, but by 3 p.m. I felt so rejuvenated — I'd listened to an audiobook, closed my eyes, laid in bed longer than usual. In this season of life, that was exactly what I needed.
Kelsey: I love that you shared that — good for you for asking your husband to handle the little things, like the dog walk and bringing you coffee, because so often we'd just get up and do it ourselves. What a luxury to vocalize what you need in the moment. It really speaks to the fact that, especially as new moms and entrepreneurs, there are seasons that feel really busy and stretched, meeting all the demands — and hopefully on the other side of that we get the contraction, the duvet day. Maybe things won't be in balance for a few years, but that's okay. It's kind of fun to either be full gas pedal or fully resting, and knowing when you need which.
Nicole: Absolutely. If you'd asked me this a couple of years ago — before having a baby — my downtime after a busy week looked different: a yoga class, then a hike in the woods. It was still "doing," still outing and going. I'm a generator in Human Design, so if I don't force the slowdown, I literally won't stop. This time I just knew I had to lay in bed and do nothing, and it was exactly what was needed.
Kelsey: I love that. You describe yourself as a student for life — I pulled that from your Instagram. Is there anything you're currently studying, reading, or obsessing over?
Nicole: So many things. Right now I'm really into learning the deeper ways Claude can help me organize my life. I'd also say that while I'm a student for life, I think I'm undiagnosed with some sort of ADD or ADHD — I'll have spurts where I think of fifty things for my to-do list and then don't activate them or forget about them. I've been working with Cowork and Claude to figure out how to just voice what comes up for me, and it organizes everything into an Eisenhower Matrix — urgent and important, not urgent, not important, that sort of thing — and then plugs it directly into my Reminders app. So I get a nudge like, "Hey, remember you had to book this appointment." I've been doing a deep dive on Claude, which has been super fun.
Beyond that, I don't teach what I haven't mastered, but over the years I've dived into human design, astrology, and Kabbalah — those three feel really intertwined. In my mid-20s to mid-30s I was really into yoga; I did 200-hour and 500-hour trainings, studied the sutras, all of it. I put that down when COVID hit because I couldn't teach in person and teaching online wasn't for me. But there's a deep part of me that craves studying spiritual practices — not religion, but spirituality — really trying to understand what I believe in. Right now I'm also deep into baby-led weaning and getting my baby to hit certain milestones. So: human design, astrology, numerology, Kabbalah, Claude — those are at the top of my list.
Kelsey: It's fun that it spans the whole spectrum — from AI and time management all the way to spirituality and baby-led weaning.
Nicole: It's funny — I was at the chiropractor recently and started writing one of those viral-style Instagram posts: "Dear Instagram algorithm, introduce me to the woman who…" I wrote about feeling the vibrations of nature and loving strategy, data, and helping people rank on Google with SEO. It was funny to see the duality — you can be this, and you can be that. I love that we're at a stage where we can openly declare it: "Do you like all of me? Because that's all I can be."
Kelsey: Yeah, and I think the more people like us — with a platform like a podcast or social media — vocalize that, the more others watching or listening realize you can be multi-passionate. You don't have to have it all figured out.
Nicole: I'm 40, and I feel like I'm going to be a student until my days are done. It doesn't have to end when you get a diploma or a degree — you can still choose to keep learning, if that's something you desire. It's not for everybody.
Kelsey: I think a lot of entrepreneurs listening will resonate with that hunger to keep changing and growing — that's part of why a lot of us got into business, because we couldn't keep following the same fixed mindset and office culture.
[TIMESTAMP: Motherhood Journey]
Kelsey: So you're in your new-mom era — you have an eight-month-old named Cruz, and I believe you had him at 39. Did you always know you wanted to be a mom, or were you more head-down working on your business? What did your 30s look like on this front, and what's it been like moving into motherhood at 39?
Nicole: I love this question. I never thought I wanted to be a mom — except for a page my mom pulls out from when I was in kindergarten that says, "I want to be an artist and a mom when I grow up." But by the time I was a teenager, I'd developed a very deep fear of childbirth. I felt like I'd be the statistic of someone who doesn't survive it, that I couldn't handle that pain, so I wrote off having kids entirely.
In my 20s I traveled a lot and lived a nomadic, free-as-a-bird lifestyle, always thinking, "Why would anybody want to have a kid and settle down, buy a house, be tied to one spot?" My belief system was the opposite of the life I'm living now. I was engaged to someone for six years and don't recall us ever discussing kids. We broke up when I was 30, and I started to panic a little — friends were having kids, moving up in careers, buying homes — and I was newly single, quitting my teaching job, planning to move to Australia. I felt like I wasn't fitting the mold of what society said I should want, and that messed with my mindset. I moved to Australia at 30 for a year, came back to Canada, still not wanting kids — I liked sleeping in, my own time, yoga, slow and quiet living.
I met my now-husband at 34 or 35 — we'll be together six years this fall. On our very first date, he asked if I wanted kids, and I told him honestly, "No, and I never have — if that's a dealbreaker, I understand." He said it wasn't; he was more just looking to find his person. We fell in love fast, got engaged, got married. About a year and a half later, I was doing a guided meditation with two women in their 70s, twin sisters and NLP practitioners. During an exercise about putting down the past and picking up the future, I suddenly had a vivid vision of two kids in Christmas pajamas, lanky, standing in front of a fireplace — maybe four and six years old. I'm a vision-boarder, a journaler — that vision had never included kids before.
I sat with it for a day or two before telling my husband, Jeff, "I think I want kids." He was even-keeled about it — "Okay, great, I'd love to have kids with you" — though I said I still wanted more time together first. In March 2023, for my birthday trip to Las Vegas, we decided to try, figuring it would happen quickly since we were both healthy. It didn't. That began two years of testing every cycle — ovulation tests, negative results, fertility clinic visits, bloodwork, egg testing, his testing too — everything came back fine; it seemed to just be a timing issue. I started to worry, since we were both approaching 40.
In February 2025, on Valentine's Day, I got my first positive test. We were thrilled and spent five days dreaming up a whole new life before I lost that pregnancy. That loss taught me two things: that I really wanted to be a mom, and that I wanted it now — all my fears about what it would do to my business, body, or bank account stopped mattering. After one more cycle, in March 2025 we went to Mexico for my birthday, and when we got home, I tested positive. That's Cruz. I had him in December; I turned 40 in March. I'm in my new-mom era now, and specifically as Cruz's mom, I feel like, "This is why I'm here. This is my purpose." Five years ago, I never would have believed it.
Kelsey: There's so much to unpack there. First — that whole trying-to-conceive season can be emotionally exhausting, living in two-week cycles, plus loss on top of it. What did that season teach you? And, a bit of an odd follow-up: did it teach you anything specifically about your business you didn't expect?
Nicole: On the first question — I started to feel a lot of guilt, maybe not quite regret, for how I'd shown up (or hadn't) for people close to me who'd struggled to conceive before. I remembered every time I'd said things like "just take a vacation" or "lower your stress," trying to be supportive, then thinking, "I don't need a vacation — that's not going to solve this." I felt guilt for the lack of compassion I didn't know I was lacking, similar to becoming a new mom and realizing how differently I'd show up for friends now, knowing what they need — but I just didn't know before. We do better when we know better. It deepened my compassion and empathy on a whole different level.
I've always loved affirmations and the idea that the universe has your back, divine timing, and so on — but I really had to lock into believing that this baby would come when he was supposed to, not when I wanted. That built a deeper trust: when you know what you want and why you want it, the universe delivers.
On the business side — everything I've ever wanted in business, I've wanted fast. My business partner Kayla and I move at lightning speed; every team member we've brought on comments on it. In the trying period, I wanted to get pregnant now, now, now. Now that I have Cruz, I want everything to slow down — even if that means slower business results, if it means experiencing more of the little moments with him instead of each day feeling like a year passed, I'd take that. It showed me my relationship with time needed to change: just be present, know that everything you want, wants you back, and it arrives in its own timing.
Kelsey: I love studying the concept of time — why it seems to fly, how we might slow it down, or even "birth" time and stretch minutes into hours. Such a fun topic.
As we wrap this segment, I'm curious about postpartum as an entrepreneur — we can plan and strategize for mat leave, but so much shifts once baby arrives, in our desires and how we need to structure the business. What's one thing you wish you'd known going in?
Nicole: My business partner Kayla, who's had two daughters during our time running My Aligned Purpose, told me going in, "You're going to want a few solid months of nobody messaging you, nothing on the calendar." I insisted I'd still want to take our weekly Thursday mastermind calls. She warned me I wouldn't feel that way once the new year rolled around — and I was due Christmas Eve but Cruz came December 1st.
I didn't understand it until I experienced it — the insane expansion of love and heart that happens. I could stare at him for 24 hours a day. Suddenly I didn't want to take those calls I'd promised to take. I wish someone had told me more seriously: you think you'll want to keep working, but you don't know that yet — just take the time off. I would have been far more intentional about it: not checking DMs, not checking email.
I'd had a year-ahead astrology reading in fall 2025, and the astrologer — who knew I was expecting — said that come December and January, what mattered most would be expressing my needs and boundaries, and raising my level of receiving and trust in my team. Kayla and I have had trust issues with team members before, promising things they couldn't deliver. But after having Cruz, I realized — as Dan Martell says — "80% done by somebody else is 100% awesome." I didn't want to touch podcast editing; I just wanted it off my plate. We actually have a client whose due date was yesterday, and she's told me she wants to keep working through it like I did. My advice to her: give yourself a few months first. Plan for the time off — you likely won't miss work as much as you think, but if you truly do after a month or so, then take some calls back on.
Kelsey: Such a great reminder, especially as I head into this transition myself. There's always pressure — people wanting to squeeze in calls — and it's hard to hold boundaries and go a little quieter for a few months. But you'll never regret taking the break. For me, I found I entered a different creative space during mat leave — thought about my business less, but differently, and came back with fresh sparks I'd lost.
Nicole: For us, six and a half years into the business, there was no option but to say: if we're going to keep this pace, or scale, we have to automate and delegate. It forced us to genuinely hand things off instead of just doing everything ourselves because we could. Yes, as women we're amazing and can do it all — but you don't have to. Find what you can automate or systematize without a human, and for what you can't, get the right people in. I love the book Who Not How — thinking about who can help rather than how I can figure it out alone.
[TIMESTAMP: Business Resilience]
Kelsey: You've been in business six and a half years — running your own company is a rollercoaster, and motherhood adds a whole different playing field. You mentioned in an Instagram post a crazy hard eight-week stretch this past spring where you had to cut ties and draw boundaries. Can you reflect on how you navigated that season, and what tools you called on?
Nicole: Now that I'm on the other side of it, I can look back and say, "Okay, that's what I did" — but May and June were the hardest eight weeks we've had in our business in years. It all came to a head around a 100-plus person event we sold out, where we launched our upcoming book and revealed the cover. It was supposed to be an amazing weekend, but we had a very off-putting interaction with someone at the event that led to complications I can't get into for confidentiality reasons. It left me nervous about what it might mean for our reputation — could someone twist the story? We always knew we were taking the high road and would be okay, but it was unsettling. It also clarified that we don't want to work with, or attract, people like that.
Around the same time, we had a few clients who weren't a great fit, and a team member who'd been with us since 2026 who kept dropping the ball — we finally said, "This isn't working." All of that came to a head while Cruz was going through his four-month sleep regression (at about five months), and my hair started falling out. It was a lot.
What got me through: I reminded myself I've been in hard situations before, in business and in life — this isn't the first, and won't be the last, so just ride the wave. I've learned to actually sit in the discomfort instead of rushing to solve it, something a past version of me couldn't understand ("just be with your feelings" used to baffle me). During those eight weeks I took a lot of solo drives — something that takes me back to being a teenager in rural Nova Scotia, driving to clear my head after something hard. I'd pack the baby in the car, he'd fall asleep, and I'd cry for two hours and let it all out — a safe space where I wasn't putting any of it on him.
I'm not someone who processes things in the moment with other people, because I don't want anyone else's opinion steering my direction — I know I can be influenced easily. So I take solo time first, then bring it to a friend, my husband, or my mastermind. I'm part of a Canadian mastermind of eight women, all successful, seasoned entrepreneurs, and being vocal with them — "here's what's going on" — got me real, level-headed support, because they'd been through similar things. I wouldn't take that kind of concern to a friendship that doesn't understand entrepreneurship; it just wouldn't land the same way.
I'm also a big audiobook listener, and I kept listening to reminders that this is just a blip in the grander scope of life and business. I've been really into a book called Time as a Tool by Benjamin Hardy (who also wrote 10x Is Easier Than 2x) — about Newtonian versus quantum time, and how to expand or collapse time to set big, seemingly unrealistic goals. I kept asking myself, "In five years, will this matter? No. In a year? No." It feels big right now, but it won't stay big if I decide not to keep feeding it my focus and energy — the more I ruminate on what I should have said, the more it lingers. It's already happened; now it's my choice to process the emotion and then decide I'm past it.
So: I listen to audiobooks, go for drives, feel the emotion, sit in it, cry, and then bring it to people I trust.
Kelsey: Great tips. As someone with a personal brand, a creator with a podcast and social presence who also processes on your own rather than reflecting off others in real time — do you share hardship, whether in business or your fertility journey, with your audience as it happens? Or do you protect it until you're through to the other side? What's your creator philosophy?
Nicole: I'm more of a go-with-the-flow, organic person about it. For personal things that don't impact anyone else but me — or me and my husband — I was more apt to share the fertility journey's highs and lows in close to real time. But with business, I'm much more mindful of who else is involved in the hurt or the pain — we sign contracts and NDAs with clients, so there's always a question of what I can and can't say. And since Kayla and I are 50/50 in the business, if she's not ready to have a conversation with someone publicly, I don't want to open that door for her. So there's a bit of a lag on the business side, whereas with my own personal journey, I'm an open book.
Kelsey: Last question before we wrap. You claimed a theme for 2025 of "becoming well-known," and I saw on your Instagram that for 2026 you've claimed "become well-paid." Where does this thematic practice come from, and why does it keep you motivated?
Nicole: I love that you researched that. A lot of how we run My Aligned Purpose and our masterminds — the themes, the structure — comes from my teaching background. I taught junior high and high school through my late 20s into my early 30s, and when you have a theme and structure that students can buy into, it makes everything more enjoyable. As a teacher you submit a year plan, unit plans, lesson plans — you're always better off prepared. We took that same teacher-education lens into building My Aligned Purpose; we call ourselves a coaching and educational company.
We run visibility and bingo challenges and incentivize people with rewards, because adults like to be incentivized just as much as kids do — we give away gift cards to hotels, spas, and restaurants when clients do the work we ask. We tell them: you might be entered to win a prize, but ultimately you win because you'll have your marketing plan in place, and we win because your results reflect our program's results.
We've run our mastermind for six and a half years and have people who re-enroll year after year, because we get people to buy into a movement — building a business while being a mom and having a lifestyle that's actually fun. Every year we ask all of our clients to choose a word of the year, and every January we have Melanie Auld — a Vancouver-based jewelry brand — engrave everyone's word onto a necklace and send it to them. Some clients have six pendants by now, one for each year with us. It gives us something to anchor back into — if someone's word was "evolve" and they start drifting, we can tie it back: "How is this part of your evolution?" It helps anchor us as coaches into our community, and having a collective theme is just fun to work toward.
Kelsey: I love that — the gamification, the incentives, the rewards — it makes business more fun and brings a lighthearted energy. If people want to learn more about My Aligned Purpose, about you, and your upcoming book, where can they go?
Nicole: Thank you! We keep it simple — it's My Aligned Purpose across the board. Our website is myalignedpurpose.com, our podcast is the My Aligned Purpose Podcast, our Instagram is @myalignedpurpose, and our book releases September 18th across all Amazon platforms — it's called Aligned CEO Method: How to Stop Trading Time for Money and Have Your Most Profitable Year Yet. I spend the most time in Instagram DMs, so that's the best place to reach me with questions.
Kelsey: In a future episode, I'll have to ask how you found time to write a book on top of everything else in your full life — you're so impressive, and I'm sure we could have talked for hours about your whole journey. Thank you for being open, honest, and transparent with the Rain or Shine community.
Nicole: Thank you.
Kelsey: We wish you all the best — thank you, Nicole.
Nicole: Thanks, Kelsey.

419 Nicole Crone on Motherhood at 40, a Two-Year Fertility Journey, and Rebuilding Business Boundaries