396 This Mother Means BUSINESS! How to Build a Profitable Business as a Mama with Laura Sinclair
This Mother Means BUSINESS!
How to Build a Profitable Business as a Mama with Laura Sinclair
Episode 396: Rain or Shine Podcast
Guest: Laura Sinclair, Founder of This Mother Means Business
You Can Build Big While Building Bedtime Routines: Laura Sinclair on Motherhood and Entrepreneurship
Episode: Rain or Shine Podcast
Guest: Laura Sinclair, Founder of This Mother Means Business
Quick Summary
Laura Sinclair shares her journey from corporate marketing to gym ownership to building a thriving online business and community for ambitious mothers. This conversation dives deep into the realities of building a business while raising children, the importance of simplifying your business model, and why you need mentors who actually understand your season of life.
In This Episode
Laura's unconventional path from corporate BMW to gym owner to online entrepreneur
The challenging reality of being a mom entrepreneur (and why you don't get it until you get it)
How to simplify your business by focusing on what actually works
The power of choosing complexity in the right season vs. protecting your energy
Why expectations create more stress than motherhood or business combined
Building in-person community through the This Mother Means Business conference
Setting boundaries that support your life (like no calls before 11 AM)
Key Takeaways
You can't take business advice from people who don't understand your season of life. Childless mentors may give you strategies that are impossible to implement as a mother—seek advice from people who get it.
Simplification comes from knowing what works. Track where your last 3-5 clients came from and double down on those channels instead of spreading yourself thin across everything.
You can choose complexity—but only in the right season. There are times to simplify and coast, and times to intentionally add complexity for growth. Neither is wrong; it's about alignment with your life.
Most stress comes from expectations, not reality. Define what being a "good mom" and "good entrepreneur" means to you, not what society dictates.
Community isn't optional—it's essential. Getting out from behind your laptop to connect with other moms in business reminds you why you do what you do
Memorable Quotes
"You don't know what it's like to be a mom building a business until you're a mom building a business."
"I really do believe that you can have it all. You can't do it all."
"Do you wanna come over to my house and do bedtime while I host those calls? Because that's not possible."
"Simple was fun, and now it's complexity time. My kids are both in school. I have the time to do it."
Resources Mentioned
Website: www.thismothermeansbusiness.com
Instagram/Threads: @itslaurasinclalr
Podcast: This Mother Means Business
The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks
Great Callings by Brianna Wiest
This Mother Means Business Conference (April 1st, Burlington)
This Mother Means Business Podcast (Mondays & Thursdays)
Kelsey's Website: KelseyReidl.com
Kelsey's Instagram: @KelseyReidl
Kelsey's Podcast: Rain or Shine (350+ episodes featuring Canadian entrepreneurs)
About the Guest
Laura Sinclair is the founder of This Mother Means Business, a community and brand dedicated to supporting ambitious mothers in entrepreneurship. After a corporate marketing career at BMW and owning a successful CrossFit gym, Laura transitioned to the online space helping business owners leverage social media. She now hosts retreats, runs a membership community, offers coaching, and produces a twice-weekly podcast for mom entrepreneurs who refuse to choose between ambition and devoted motherhood.
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CLEANED & EDITED TRANSCRIPT FOR SHOW NOTES
Kelsey: Laura, welcome to the Rain or Shine podcast. I'm so excited to sit down. We're kind of getting to know each other today, which is always the joy of hosting a podcast—we get to record our first conversation. So who knows where this is gonna go, but I'm gonna pepper you with questions because I just love what you're about. I've loved consuming your content on the podcast, on your Instagram, and I was just saying to you, I'm excited to come to your conference in April. So first off, thank you for being here.
Laura: Thank you for having me. I'm excited that we get to record our first chat. Who knows where we're gonna end up.
Kelsey: Yeah, like imagine 10 years from now we're just besties and we're like, remember that time?
Laura: Yep. You just never know what's gonna happen. I feel good about it.
Kelsey: Okay, let's do some rapid fire. So what is your favorite way to wind down after a long week of running your business, hosting conferences, doing your podcast, being on Zoom calls all day? What do you do to relax?
Laura: I mean, I love to read. I just put a sauna in my backyard, so this was my 2025 goal—to be able to put a sauna in my backyard and it came into my backyard first week of January. So that's been really amazing. But I'm also an equestrian, so I have a horse. My horse did pass away actually earlier this year, which sucks. Very, very sad. Still kind of sitting in the grief of that. But horses and animals and things like that are always things that are important to me, and that helps too.
Kelsey: Oh my gosh. Yeah, I'm so sorry about your horse. I saw your post about that. I can't even imagine the heaviness that that weighs in. But glad you have a sauna to spend time in now.
Laura: Now I have the sauna in the evenings.
Kelsey: Let's just start off with like a really positive note on the show. I didn't know we were talking about that today, but you asked.
Laura: Well, this is called the Rain or Shine podcast.
Kelsey: There are shiny moments in our life and there are rainy days and we don't get one without the other. And that's the whole philosophy—even on the rainy days, we still have to show up and move forward. So I think you actually started this show on the perfect note.
Laura: Let's do this. Look at us go.
Kelsey: What's a book or a podcast or a person that has impacted your life or your business over the last decade?
Laura: Oh my goodness. I think so many. You know what, I have so many books that I love. I'm not a person that necessarily puts a ton of people on pedestals. I sometimes struggle with that concept, but I actually just reread The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks, which I feel like is a really incredible book. When you think about the ways that we create upper limits in ourselves, that's one that's been really impactful.
And then earlier this year, I just read one called Great Callings by Brianna Wiest. It's sort of talking about the way that we create and how we create things and who we create them for. And I'm in this season right now of really trying a lot of new things for the first time. And one of the things she talks about in this book is when we put things out there, it has to just be for us. And it can't be for external validation in other people. So those two are really strong ones for me, I think, because they feel very fresh in my mind. But the Big Leap, I think I've read like three or four times at this point.
Kelsey: Yep. Both great book recommendations. I actually haven't read Great Callings, but I am reading a book with maybe a similar theme right now, which is all about a creative practice and how to return to it and how to get back into flow and put things out there without fear of judgment or without worrying about what the outcome is or is it successful and tied to my worth as an entrepreneur. Instead, just ship creative work as much as you can to build that muscle again. So sounds like we're on similar wavelengths.
Laura: Yeah, I love that.
Kelsey: What is one thing you do to get into the flow before you start your workday? Because you know, we have to-do lists as entrepreneurs that are miles long. So how do you get focused?
Laura: Yeah, I actually work out. So for me, I have two little kids. My children are a really big fan of what they like to call family drop off every morning, which I don't like, Kelsey. I am the person that's like, can your dad just take you to school? Like, do I have to be the one? This is not efficient. It's so inefficient. But my kids love it. I mean, even when we drop off at school, my son goes to one school, my daughter goes to another school, and usually families make comments like, wow, all four of you are here. And we're like, yeah. And the teachers are like, you guys are hilarious.
But now in the mornings we get up, have breakfast, take the kids to school, and then once we do the drop off, that's my time to do something for me. And usually it's some sort of moving my body. I am an active person. I've always been an athlete. I've always been into sport. But exercise—I used to own a gym—so I move my body and then I can pour into other people. I mean, a lot of my job is being of service to others and certainly being a mom is also being of service to others. So it's really important that I take my time for me.
Kelsey: On a granular level, does that mean you don't take calls at 8:30 AM, 9:00 AM?
Laura: Correct.
Kelsey: You've blocked that out so that nobody's able to book in and be like, I want the morning slot with you, Laura.
Laura: Yeah, I don't take calls until 11:00 AM.
Kelsey: Yes! Good for you. Okay. And yeah, you're intentionally carving out that 9:00 to 11:00 AM space so you can do the things that set you up for an amazing workday. So I think that's such a good hot tip.
All right. You mentioned you used to own a gym. You're obviously a very active person, and I feel like this is a good spot to start your origin story. So can you take us back, I believe it was a decade ago, what got you into owning a gym? Tell us about that experience and then what led you to now not be owning a gym.
Laura: Yeah. How much time we got?
Kelsey: We got an hour!
Laura: So I have a corporate marketing background, I think not dissimilar to you.
Kelsey: Same.
Laura: Yeah. I started my career in PR and corporate marketing, ran digital media for one of the biggest luxury automotive companies in the world. And then that whole time I was always like, what am I doing? You know, I kind of jumped between jobs, was never really fully settled. I didn't really—entrepreneurship wasn't introduced to me really as a concept as a child. It was very much, you go to school and you get a degree and then you go work for somebody else, and then you retire and you die. Like that's your life. I didn't grow up in a family of entrepreneurs. It was bankers and lawyers and business people, accountants, that kind of thing.
And so I have this really vivid memory of coming home from my job at this luxury automotive company and saying to my boyfriend at the time, man, I just wanna run a gym. I was really just tired of process for process sake. I didn't really understand why. What do you mean I have to get three quotes in on something in order to breathe? Like, can't we just do this thing? Like, what are we doing? And so I really struggled with that and came home—I just wanna run a gym.
And fast forward about, I wanna say maybe 18 months, two years, I had an opportunity to buy one. And so I was working at BMW, at the company that I was working for. And I had an opportunity to actually quit my job at BMW to help a friend of mine build a nutrition coaching company. And this was somebody that I kind of met along the way. She had accidentally started this online nutrition coaching company. This was 2015. And so I quit my job to help her. And everyone around me was like, what? What are you doing? Like, what do you mean? Can she pay you? Like, what's that gonna look like?
Turns out, yes, she could pay me just fine. It was something I was kind of doing while working at my job at BMW, and this was my first kind of introduction to entrepreneurship—being what I would like to call intrapreneurial. So I was really building her business for her. And I did that for about, I wanna say about 18 months. I left BMW. We built that into a multi seven-figure business. It was doing almost seven figures a month. It was pretty wild.
And then the relationship started to deteriorate, which was one of my first really difficult lessons as an entrepreneur. I had nothing in writing, so this was a friend who, you know, we were in our mid-twenties, everybody was besties and we just kind of were like building this thing. It's fun until it really stopped being fun and money changes people and changes situations. And so I found myself needing some sort of exit plan.
And when the exit plan came along, it was actually somebody that was looking to sell their CrossFit gym. I had gotten wind of this and I knew that I needed to do something else because my future with this nutrition coaching company was rapidly coming to an end. And so long story short, ended up buying a gym. I got married to a different boyfriend, new boyfriend. We got married, and then we came home from our honeymoon and we took over this gym.
And so I paid, I think I paid $32,000 for this gym, which I bought it in cash, which is not typical for a business. It was sort of the situation where these people were probably gonna run this thing—it probably would've been closed within four to six months. They were just running it into the ground. They weren't running it well. The owner was a chiropractor and he was really prioritizing his other business and didn't really have much business running this. My now husband was running another CrossFit gym in another town, and so had experience in it. And so originally these people had come to him and said, do you wanna buy this gym? And he was like, no. But I was like, but I do. I would really love this.
And I always thought, I just thought running a gym would be fun. That must be really fun. It was fun, but it was also really hard. It was way harder than I ever thought that it would be. And so, yeah, I got married, came home from my honeymoon in Bali, took pre-possession of the gym like two weeks later, and then a year later my daughter was born. So it was a bit of a whirlwind year trying to turn this essentially failing business around.
And gosh, that first year of owning a gym was such a whirlwind because it was like trial by fire. And even though we were bringing in new systems from, you know, my husband's other gym that was very successful and doing well, I had—I don't wanna say not even a hundred—there was like 85 members and 50 of them hated me because I was now this new person coming in. And what do you mean there are rules now? And what do you mean I have to pay more now? And what do you mean I can't do the things that I used to do? And what do you mean you fired that coach? Like it was just such an insane year of trying to deal with turning this business around and this conflict and all of these, you know, dealing with staff and staff quitting and then having to bring in new staff because it really created quite a sense of turmoil.
And so I ran that gym for five years. By the time pre-COVID, that gym was making way more in a month than I paid for it, and it was really running itself.
Kelsey: Wow.
Laura: I really struggled that first year of my daughter being born. So can't say that I recommend owning a brick and mortar gym for one year and then having a baby with no real plan. Don't recommend that. So I really struggled that first year of motherhood trying to figure this out. I mean, at that point we sort of cleared out the mess and were starting to rebuild this business, but I just didn't—nobody said to me, Hey, Laura, probably you need a plan for this baby. I was like, it's cool. I'll just bring the baby to the gym and it'll all be fine. Like everyone was just along the thread of congratulations, and oh my gosh, I'm so excited for you. Nobody sat me down to be like, by the way, you need a plan. I did not have one. And so really, really struggled.
And then to answer your question, why don't I own a gym anymore? Fast forward—like I said, we had that gym, that gym was very profitable. It was running well. I had team, I was really not there anymore. I sort of in that five-year window, built it to a place where it really ran itself. I was only there if I wanted to be there. But then the pandemic happened.
So March 15th, 2020, I was eight weeks pregnant with my second child. He's now five. And gyms in Ontario, Canada didn't really have the best run of things. We had a lot of restriction and I think pre-COVID we were about 250 members. And then by the time we got sort of back open the first round, which was maybe like six or eight months later, we were down to about 115 members, and I was nine months pregnant at that point.
And so my son was born—my son was born in October, and we made the decision to close the gym permanently at the end of December. Because I had this opportunity to kind of look at my life and what I wanted and how I wanted to show up. And you know, we were talking about how I don't take calls until 11:00 AM. I would be at the gym at 4:30 in the morning, having a nanny at home with my child, having pumped a bottle of breast milk—the logistics of it just didn't feel good for me anymore.
When we made the decision to close, it was really just me saying, Hey, you know what? Actually I want different for my life and I don't want to spend the next five to seven years building this back up to where it was. I want it different. And in that season I had a three-month-old baby, no income, and I think I had $40,000 in the bank from the equipment that we sold off, because fortunately people wanted that.
Kelsey: It was a good time to sell gym equipment.
Laura: And then I started in the online space. I started helping small business owners use social media. I started building a social media agency because that was something that I knew immediately and I knew well and I had as my corporate training, but also a big reason why I was able to be so successful as a small business owner, as a gym owner, is because we were able to use that as a tool to really fill the funnel in our business. And then, yeah, the business was set up in a way that we did good work. We provided good service, so people stayed. So our retention was really strong.
And so I started with that. And then 2023, I decided to launch a podcast, and I called it This Mother Means Business. And this was largely because I was having a lot of conversations with women behind the scenes that were moms that were ambitious in their business, but I wasn't seeing those conversations being had publicly.
A lot of the motherhood entrepreneurship conversations were very fluffy, very pink, very MLM. I just couldn't see myself in these conversations around what it meant to be ambitious. And when I say ambitious, that could be because you wanna make six figures or you wanna make eight figures or 10 figures. It's just this sort of feeling of I want to create something that's bigger than myself or beyond just being a mom. And for some people, that's their calling. They just wanna be a mom. And that's beautiful. But there's a whole subset of women who are wildly ambitious and they're moms and they wanna show up in their businesses and be devoted mothers at the same time.
And so that was where the podcast started. And then from there it became a couple of retreats and it became an event. We hosted our first event last year. It also became an online membership community, and it sort of just evolved from there. And now my primary focus is building This Mother Means Business as a brand.
Kelsey: Okay. So much to dissect there. So thanks for giving us the snapshot and now I feel like there's a few areas that I know our listeners will wanna go deeper on. So you said basically that you weren't really seeing these conversations around motherhood and ambition and having these big dreams, but also wanting to be a devoted mother, and I know somewhere you said you don't know what it's like to be a mom building a business until you're a mom building a business.
Can you talk to us about what do you mean by that unapologetic stance? Like, and I get it, I'm a mom building a business, so I feel like I understand, but I just feel like that statement I was like, oh, true. So I want you to crack that open for us and why this mission is so freaking important to you.
Laura: Yeah. I love—I get spicy about this one because you just don't get it unless you get it. And the way that I like to sort of frame this is I have memories of being in my, even my corporate job before I had kids and my boss had kids, and I remember thinking to myself, man, it must be so nice that she gets to come late and leave early and nobody has any opinions about this. And I was salty. You know, my early 20-something self, salty that my boss, quote unquote, got to leave early because she had a kid and I thought like, that must be so nice. Which is totally hysterical what you think about it.
Like there's so many women that choose entrepreneurship because that's such an insane situation to try to navigate, but you just don't understand what it's like to have to context switch at such a rapid pace or to feel like I'm failing in one area of my life and succeeding in the other, or that you're constantly having to sacrifice until you actually are looking it in the face.
And I have so many experiences of my life and in my career where I have received advice from people that there's just no universe in which I could ever use that advice. I mean, I have sat in—I've paid thousands of dollars to go to masterminds. I have sat in rooms and been called lazy in front of other entrepreneurs because I'm not willing to do more.
I had somebody that was leading a group say to me—I came into this group saying like, I'm just really tired. I'm doing all this work and I'm feeling tired and I wanna create simplicity in my life. And at the time I was doing a bi-weekly free connection call and I had—I ran these calls for four years, actually just stopped doing them at the end of 2025. And this person's advice to me was that I actually needed to run these calls three times a week.
And I was like, I just told you I'm tired and that I can't run these calls three times a week. And he said in front of the entire room, I'm sick and tired of listening to entrepreneurs tell me that they are not willing to do the work. They're not willing to work hard because it's not in alignment for them or it doesn't make sense for their life. You could do it in the evening. You could do it, you know, whatever time.
And I'm sitting there just like, whew, I am glad that I'm a person that's done a lot of work around this. And then this person walked over to me and was like, I hope that I didn't upset you when I said that. And my response was, do you wanna come over to my house and do bedtime while I host those calls? Because that's not possible.
And so I've been in situations like that and I'm a person that has a pretty tough skin. I can take it. And I also know myself pretty well, but I also know that there are thousands of women that would be told that and would absolutely crumble. And would be told that and think, I'm just—this isn't for me. I can't do this. There's no way I can be an entrepreneur. I can't do it this way.
And so part of why I am—and I would love to tell you that's my only story that I could tell you, it's not.
Kelsey: I'm sure there's more.
Laura: There's so many. And I really do believe that you can have it all. You can't do it all. And I mean, if I can do it, anybody can do it. And for me it's, you know, like you, we were just chatting before we got on the recording that I just hopped off a mastermind call where I think half the women on the call were in tears crying and like, these are not—they're crying because they're feeling so pulled in so many different directions and they have these goals and they feel like they can't because they have to do this with the kids or whatever's showing up and you just, you don't get it unless you get it.
Like, this childless man that told me that I'm lazy, it's like, well, please come to my house and let's have a conversation about what that looks like. But it's actually not his fault. Because he doesn't have children, he's not a mother, and so I don't take any of that personally or think less of this person. It's just like you don't, you literally just can't, you don't get it and you're never, you're probably never going to.
Kelsey: I think this is such an important conversation to have because I even found myself in this trap recently. I was listening to two very successful entrepreneurs on a podcast, neither of whom have kids, and I kept thinking like, why have I not created the eight-figure idea and why am I so far behind? We all started in the online space 10 years ago, and I just got in this spiral. And then I had to snap out of it and go, oh my God, I'm in a completely different season of life than the two of them.
And I don't know them personally, but it's like we have to be so careful who we're taking advice from and whose lens we're looking at business through, right? Because I could look at business through that guy's lens who is mentoring you and be like, yeah, like you should show up more. And visibility requires posting a thousand times a day. And through his lens, that's the right move. But then you put on a mother's lens and you realize, well, bedtime, I didn't sleep last night. Kids are home from daycare. I am, you know, my body's recovering whatever. I have to make time for my health.
And you realize, oh, I'm looking through a completely different lens on what business should look like, how it can look like in this season. And I just think it's really important for all of us to just open our aperture to like, who are you taking advice from and are those the right people for this season of life? And sometimes you want a kick in the ass. Other times you just, you don't. And it's not helpful. And so, yeah, I just think it's such an important conversation.
Laura: Yeah. I love that you say that. And one of the things that I always say to my clients, and I'm a person that will push you if you want to be pushed. But I'm also a person that will, you know, honor it. And even just getting off the last call I was on, I will always ask permission. I say, do you want, is it okay if I push you right now? And you can tell me. You can tell me that you don't want to be, you can tell me that you're decided and you are where you are, and that's fine. But if you're open to it, let me know. And usually my clients are like, yeah, fine. You know, do it. But, you know, I'm always a person in my role as a business mentor that will ask and do I have your permission to challenge you right now? Because sometimes when you're a mom, you just can't. It's like, no, you can't be challenged.
I mean, I think about, you know, this was before This Mother Means Business, but my business mentor that I had when I owned a gym, lovely guy, adore him, would give him a big hug if I saw him. But there was a day that we were on a coaching call and I said to him, I'm really struggling. My marriage is not in a good place. I feel like I'm a bad mom. I'm not getting enough sleep. You know, I think my daughter was probably in her high chair in the back throwing Cheerios all over the floor. I'm like, my house is a mess. Like I'm really struggling.
And I think he was like, I'm really sorry to hear that. Now let's look at your spreadsheet and let's look at how your sales calls, your close rates are going and what's your retention? And I was just like, oh, this is not what I need right now. You know what I don't wanna do? I don't wanna pull up my spreadsheet.
And it was part of a larger coaching group that I was sort of paying to be a part of. And I think immediately after that I went and canceled my coaching membership because I was like, this isn't—if you can't hold the reality that I'm coming here and I'm telling you that my business is doing fine, I actually don't wanna talk to you about the numbers. I'm telling you that I'm struggling as a human being right now. And all your response is, let's whip out the spreadsheet. That's not gonna work for me.
And you know, to this person's credit, he reached out to me about a month later and was like, I kind of messed up, didn't I? And I was like, yes. Thank you for acknowledging that. Yes, you did. Like, that wasn't what I needed in that moment, but like, I'm just at this point ready to move on from it. But it was, you know, lovely guy. He was a dad. But still just like didn't quite get it. It was, you know, mission first, money first, and that's not what I needed.
So that's, you know, to answer your question about why I care about this stuff, a lot of it is my own story and the things that I went through myself, but also things that I get fired up about when other women are telling me their own experience too.
Kelsey: Yeah. And you sharing about that chapter of your journey of, you know, wanting to hire a business coach to grow or having a mentor, but then also having this softer side that needs to be tended to and a personal life and emotions and feelings. I feel like, um, you know, a lot of women, we are constantly dancing in and out of this season of, I have energy and bandwidth and I can stretch myself. Give it to me straight. Where's the next coaching program, advice, mentorship? And then there's also days or weeks or months or years where we're kinda like, whew, like I just need a softer approach. My bandwidth is really reduced.
Or maybe it's 'cause it's January and you're kind of contracting and everyone's sick in the home. And then we only have time for less. Like we kind of do the bare minimum to keep up. So I'm curious because I know you talk a lot about simplifying business, which sounds really good. I'm like, yeah, give me simple, simple, simple. But I wanna actually start on the opposite end of that. Like where do you see entrepreneurs, specifically mama entrepreneurs, overcomplicating business? 'Cause I hear this all the time, like it's hard. I'm overwhelmed. There's so much on my to-do list, I can never keep up with my marketing. So what are you seeing in terms of where are we overcomplicating it?
Laura: I think where we overcomplicate it's because we actually don't know what works. This is when someone comes to me and says, like, it just feels I'm doing all these things and it feels over complicated. I'm like, can we actually look at the data on some of this? Sometimes we forget, or they'll come to me and they'll say, well, this isn't working. I'm like, are we sure it's not working? Have we just, can we just look at the information, the data and see if that is in fact the truth?
And so, so often creating simplicity starts from knowing what's working and doubling down on that. Because if you can know like what your minimum viable marketing plan is, or your minimum viable sales effort or minimum viable anything is in your business, if you know that those are the things that work, that in itself creates simplicity.
And it can also be looking at your offer suite, right? Do you have 25 different offers and you have one person in all 25 of them? That's probably not required. And so creating simplicity for me starts with actually understanding what works in your business or what could potentially work in your business.
Complexity for the most part, especially for business owners making, I would say like less than $200,000 a year comes from just not knowing what to focus on. There is complexity in business. You know, I have clients that make eight figures and their businesses are quite complex by nature, right? They have staff and they've got team, and they have all these many, many more moving parts. But for the majority of women, you know, that are trying to make six figures, $200,000 a year, somewhere in there, it really starts with understanding what works and what doesn't, and stop trying to make something that doesn't work work, just focus on what actually does.
Kelsey: Can you give us an example of that? Like how would I look at my business and go what works, and then know what to focus on?
Laura: So for me, it's like looking at, okay, where did your last three to five clients come from? A great example of this is people are like, oh, I'm just posting so much content. I just, I'm gonna post every day on social media. I gotta create, you know, I'm gonna do a 30-day reel challenge. And it's like, okay, can we look and see where your last three to five clients came from? And they'll go referral, referral, referral, in-person event, referral.
I'll say, okay, so if 100% of your—this is an exaggeration, but we'll roll with it—if 100% of your clientele is coming from referral, why are you spending 100% of your effort on social media? And so it's really, and I, that feels like an oversimplification when we say it, but it's actually understanding what you need to double down on.
If it's—and this can be, if you're a person that wants to be on social media, that you're gonna say, Hey, you know what? Instagram's a channel or threads or wherever I am, YouTube is a channel that does really well for me. Great. So let's look at then the types of content that create the most conversions for you. However you define that. Is that people joining your email list, is that people sending you DMs? Is that people that are actually taking action? And looking at the data specific to that and then just doing more of what works. Stop trying to chase a trend. Stop trying to look for, you know, someone else was doing that, so then I should do that. It's really about getting in touch with your own business.
Which can be harder sometimes when you're in early stages, right? If someone says to me, well, I don't have three to five clients yet, sometimes things can feel a little bit more complex in that season, but once you find yourself being established, it's really just understanding. It's all data, it's all information. I mean, we're marketers, so we love data, but looking at what actually is working, what are the things that are generating revenue for you? What are the things that are bringing in clients and then doubling down on those things.
Kelsey: So I'm assuming that you practice what you preach and you've kind of found your simplified business model. And just what works, and I'm curious, what does that feel like for you as a mama, as someone running a business with conferences, podcasts, a lot of output? How does it feel when you have a simplified business? Because I think a lot of people have not ever experienced that feeling. And they're just constantly in the state of overwhelm. I'm not doing enough, I'm not good enough.
Laura: So, okay. So I love this question and I'm gonna answer it, but it's also important for me to give you a real caveat. So I'm in a season actually right now where I've chosen to complicate my business.
Kelsey: Oh, I love this.
Laura: Yeah, this is real. My business, I would say up until about mid-2025, was pretty simple. And then I made the conscious decision to add complexity, some of that for growth, right? For growth. And some of that is my children are school age. Not because I was like, oh, I just wanna do more work. I've added other opportunities for revenue. I'm working with corporate sponsors. We're building out a lot. We're doing things differently, and that is a conscious choice that I have made.
So in this exact moment, I'm not gonna lie and tell you, my business feels really simple and smooth right now because it doesn't. Right now I'm in this growth window, this growth season where I've been like, well, simple was fun, and now it's complexity time. My kids are both in school. I have the time to do it. I have the resources to hire the team that is required in order to make this happen.
So in this exact moment, I would be a liar if I said to you, well, let me tell you what my simple life is at this moment, 'cause I'm not there. So important caveat for me. But in the seasons where it did feel simple, it's really just this strong foundational trust. It's not feeling scattered, it's knowing truly that it's working. And not having to be like, oh, I gotta post this thing and maybe this is gonna be the post. This is gonna be the time that it works. Once you get yourself to a place where you really are building a machine, for lack of a better word, when you know that, Hey, when I do this output, I get this input that then results in this conversion, it feels great. It feels great, and I could have stayed there, but I'm a Capricorn, so I wasn't going to.
Kelsey: Oh, I'm so glad you were honest with us because I can resonate with both. And like for the first seven years of running my business, I was in complexity because I wanted to grow and I was willing to take it on. And then when I had my son and now we're trying to grow our family, I'm like, oh, like I had to simplify everything and now I just have a rinse and repeat formula. And it's easy. And do I feel like I'm kind of coasting, maybe even like sometimes like dying and declining inside? Yes. But I know it's not my season and I'm excited to add in the quote unquote complexity at some point in the future when I have school-age kids or when I have more bandwidth.
And so I just think this is such a cool conversation because it's like, yeah, like there's a time to look at your business, go reduce all complexity, make it simple, put it on autopilot, for lack of a better word, and you're not a bad person because you don't have massive growth goals. It's just not the right time to be like all in, higher ad complexity, invest, but that time will come back and hearing from you in this season, it's like, oh, yeah, because I'm excited for that time to come back, but I don't wanna force it in a season where I know that's not the priority. So yeah, it's just nice to hear both sides of the equation.
Laura: You gotta be honest about it. I was at an event last year and I had a woman come up to me, I was meeting her for the first time and she said, oh, you know, I see everything that you're doing with your programs and your podcasts and your events, and I wanna be able to do that too. And I just feel like I can't. And I said, my first question to her was, how old are your kids?
Kelsey: Oh my God. What a great question to ask first.
Laura: How old are your children? And I think she said like three months and two years. And I was like, well, let me tell you why. Let me tell you why. I could not have done this with a three-month-old and a 2-year-old. There's no way. But my kids are—I'm about to have a first grader and a fourth grader. Like, it's just different. It's a different season and yeah, right now I'm leaning into the season. Do I wanna take a nap? Sometimes, yes, I definitely do, but I still have my business structured in a way that I don't work in the evenings. I don't work on the weekends. I'm still doing it in the confines of the hours that I have this space.
But no, this is my season. When I had younger children, there was no way I was running an event or hosting retreats. I was very happy being at home selling, you know, the digital offers that I was selling, and now I'm just not in that season anymore and that's okay. So it'll come back for you too.
Kelsey: Yeah. And I know you say, well actually from your Instagram, you said most of the stress you created for yourself wasn't actually from motherhood or your business, it was from the expectations you were carrying. I think that perfectly kind of sums up what we're saying, the expectations we put on ourself. I'm curious, in this season of your business, are there any expectations that you've put on yourself that you're still working on releasing or unreasonable expectations that you feel like you're carrying or because you're in this new season, do you feel like you, you know, sky's the limit kind of mentality?
Laura: No, this is a really good question and I'm whew. Okay. So a couple of things. When I think about the expectations, and this is something that I talk about a lot, like when I do keynotes and when I'm chatting with people, I think we have this definition of what it means to be a good mom and what it means to be a good entrepreneur, good at running a business. And those definitions for most of us really hinge on someone else's expectation of what that is supposed to be. Usually that's not something that we inherently land on. Good motherhood to me means—it's usually what our mothers did or what, you know, we grew up seeing or you see in media, whatever that looks like.
And so for me, I am really clear on what it means for me to be a good mom. And that doesn't mean me being omnipresent with my kids. And I also know that in order to be a good mom, I have to do the things that I need for myself because otherwise I'm distracted and I'm not who, I don't show up for my kids in the way that I want to.
And so when I think about expectations, some of it is what does it mean to be a good mom? And that's something that I've for sure released. There are times where, you know, my kids will be like, mom, why do you have to go away again? In my head I'm like, I'm gone 20 days a year total. It's really not that much, but I see I get that. I'm your person that's always here. Their dad is gone for 24 hours at a time. He's a firefighter, so he's gone for 24 hours at a time. So they're used to dad leaving, but mom leaving is weird, but I don't feel guilt about that.
I think when we think about expectations for me, I am a person that wants to help a lot of people. And so I think the thing that I need to let go of, and this is gonna go back to this book that I mentioned earlier, Great Callings, is that what I'm putting out is just for me. And if it's not received the way that I want people to receive it, or in the massive amount of people that I wanna receive it, that's okay. That's something that I'm working through for sure, is this idea of like, what if I don't reach the people that I think that I'm gonna reach? Or what if it doesn't create the impact that I wanted to create? That for me is something that shows up from time to time.
Kelsey: When those thoughts creep in, what do you do? Like when you're just kind of like, oh, like not enough people are gonna see this, or what if this fails or...
Laura: I mean, usually I have to speak it out loud to someone that I love. I actually sent a message to—I'm bringing a business partner in another area of my business and I sent her a message sort of yesterday actually, about this. And we're 71 days away from my event in April, or 70 today. And I messaged her and I was like, I'm panicking. She's like, Laura, calm down, it's fine. So like sometimes I just need someone to give me a little shake, a little tough love. Something that I would probably give myself. But usually I find, like when I share this with someone else, they're like, you're ridiculous. It's not a big deal. You're doing great. So sometimes I need a little pat on the back or a kick in the butt.
Kelsey: You mentioned the conference. So can you tell us why did you start the This Mother Means Business conference? Why is it important to you for you to have a real life event that people travel to come spend the day, et cetera?
Laura: So it's funny that you're asking me this now because I've officially reached, why do I do this to myself?
Kelsey: Planning!
Laura: Because it's stressful, man. Like, it's so stressful and, you know, you know. Yeah, why do I do this to myself?
Kelsey: A clock literally right now.
Laura: So I'm really—so it started last year because people were asking for it, which was—I was seeing this community building online and I was like, you know, I could probably do an event. That could be, that could be fun. Like why not? And people in my community, I'm easily bullied, not actually, but like, I'm easily, people want something, I'm like, okay, well.
Kelsey: You're a yes girl.
Laura: I'm a yes girl. I'm down. Like, let's make it happen. And so they asked for it. And so last year I did it and I planned the entire thing by myself, which I cannot recommend, keynoted. I would never keynote my own event ever again. But we had 65 women show up for our first event, which I thought was pretty darn cool. I just put it out there and they came and it was amazing.
And then this year, our event is taking on, it's kind of become a bit of a beast in a good way, pretty fast. And I have an event planner and I have team to help me with this. I am actually very out of the weeds on the planning of the event, which is also creating some stress, if I'm gonna be honest. Because it's like, oh wait, what about this? I messaged a girl on my team and I was like, I had this thought about this thing, this thing. Can you put it on your list? She was like, it was already there. Done. Got it. I'll, uh, I'm gonna just hang up my anxiety about this.
But April 1st, we're gonna be at the Pearl in Burlington. It is a 9:00 to 3:00 event. We'll be about 150 moms there. And it's not your typical conference. I'll be honest with you, Kelsey, I am not a girl that can go to an eight-hour conference and sit and behave and be talked to for eight hours straight. I can't do it. So it is not that day. This really is about sort of threefold.
We're focusing on three different areas and we're focusing on your human, right, the wellness side of being a human being. Because for me, we can't ignore that when we're building business. I could give three different people with the exact same business the same strategy and only one of them is probably gonna be successful. Because there's so many other things that show up and there's so many other caveats of it.
So we're starting with that. We're doing a bit of like a wellness sort of focused period. We've got a skill section and a tool section. We're doing a lot of really intentional networking. There's a lot of experiential things happening, so you will not be, I don't think you're sitting at any point for more than like 90 minutes. It's amazing. Like, let's get up, let's do some stuff. I'm really excited. We're working with some really cool brands. We've got some really cool giveaways that we're gonna have some incredible speakers, but my, anytime I'm putting on an event, it's because I want you to come and make friends. That's truly the energy behind it.
I don't wanna just come and inspire you and you feel like you just came and got a hug. Like, I want you to make friends. I want you to have things that you can apply to your business or bringing in some really incredible people to help you move the needle in your business, but also make sure you're meeting the right people. So that's why, why do I do it again? Why do I do this to myself?
Kelsey: A clock. You know what? I think it's because we're all, so many of us are just sitting at home building our businesses, right? So many of us are solopreneurs that we have virtual teams and we're just not getting out of our house. So I wanna give people a reason to get outta their house. I wanna give people a reason to get a little spoiled.
Laura: Spoil them too. But it's fun. It's fun. It's a great day. It's also great for business to do things that are in person as well, but I'm really excited for it. I'm also a little terrified 'cause we're gonna have 150 women. We were 65 women last time, so that's big growth.
Kelsey: It's just casual doubling. Pretty much.
Laura: Yeah, pretty much doubling, but it's still gonna be really intimate. We're doing so many cool things. One of the things I'm really excited about is we're doing what we're calling the networking wall. So it's gonna be this giant wall that we're building. This again, why do I do this to myself? But bear with me. It'll be awesome. We're gonna have different sections on this wall, so it's like marketing or finance or whatever, different categories. And when women come in, we're gonna take their pictures on a little Polaroid. And you're gonna put your picture in your category section and write your name on it.
So during our networking component, you get to self-identify like, Hey, I'm an expert in this. So you'll be able to connect, find the people that you wanna meet that are experts at the things that they're experts in. So a lot of things like that just to facilitate more connection.
Kelsey: Community, ugh. There's just nothing better than forcing yourself to get out from behind your laptop. Leave the four walls of your office even when it feels uncomfortable, 'cause the moment you walk into a room like that, you go, this is why I do what I do. This is what matters, is sitting shoulder to shoulder with others who are like me, who share values, who are on a similar track, people who get it.
And I love that you niche down to mothers running businesses. So, um, yeah, I just think anyone listening who's toying with the idea of like, yeah, I wanna go, but I don't wanna go alone, it's like, how alone? Just buy that damn ticket. You'll meet so many people. Like you just said it. Your whole goal is for them to make friends. Like you'll meet someone, you'll sit beside someone. You'll have two people on either side of you. So it's like you're guaranteed connections.
Laura: There are a lot of women coming alone. I'll tell you that right now. There are a lot of women coming alone. I have a lot of people in my DMs saying, I wanna come, but I don't wanna come alone. I was like, just come and they do. So you'll be in great company. I think last time there was about half the room came alone. And if that's not a validation to anyone who's worried about coming alone, like just know you're not the only one. Not everyone's arriving in like a preexisting posse of people, so...
Kelsey: No posses. No posses.
Laura: No posses, no posses.
Kelsey: Yeah. Well, we'll definitely link the URL to go grab your ticket to This Mother Means Business. It is on Wednesday, April 1st, if I'm not mistaken.
Laura: Got it.
Kelsey: Yeah. Awesome. We'll put all that in the show notes. And where can people connect with you if they have questions about the conference, your coaching, the podcast, all the things?
Laura: Yeah, so the easiest place is www.thismothermeansbusiness.com. You can find everything there. We've got the events. We do quarterly connection calls. Our Inner Circle program, our mastermind, and one-on-one coaching, all the information is there on the site, but you can also come in and hang out with me on Threads or on Instagram at it's Laura Sinclair and certainly the podcast, This Mother Means Business podcast. You can listen to that wherever you listen to podcasts.
Kelsey: Amazing. These really—shows on Mondays and Thursdays, two episodes a week.
Laura: My goodness. Crush it.
Kelsey: Yep. One is a solo, one's just me. Mondays is just me, and on Thursdays it's a guest episode and I have love that. I have this problem where I have so many incredible guests that wanna be on the show that even my podcast editor's like two a week, I'm like, listen, I can't not have these conversations.
Kelsey: So we have that. So fun. Well, we will link all that in the show notes for those who want to connect with you and find you. And thank you so much for sharing your wisdom on motherhood, business, all the things. Such an important conversation to be having. So thank you so much, Laura.
Laura: Thanks for having me.
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