About the episode
In this episode of the Mom Owned and Operated podcast, Rita Suzanne and Chelsea Skaggs discuss raising a family, running a business and remembering yourself.
On a mission to help people enjoy the life they’ve worked so hard for, Chelsea is a certified professional life coach who focuses on supporting expecting and new parents. She helps couples and individuals understand themselves, break unhelpful patterns, and develop skills to be a strong communicator, connector, and own their confidence.
You can connect with Chelsea on her website and on Instagram, Facebook, and on TikTok.
Listen to more interviews by visiting momownedandoperated.com and apply to work with Rita at ritasuzanne.com/apply/
Listen to the episode
Show Notes
SPEAKERS
Rita Suzanne, Chelsea Skaggs
Rita Suzanne 00:01
Welcome to the Mom Owned and Operated Podcast, the podcast about moms and for moms, where we have candid conversations about running a business, raising a family, and remembering ourselves. I’m your host, Rita Suzanne, a single mom of four, digital strategist and provider of no nonsense business strategies and tactics.
Hi, I’m Rita Suzanne, and today I have my guest Chelsea with me. Chelsea, I’m so excited to chat with you. Please tell everyone a little bit about you, your business and your family and I have two kiddos, so I have a seven.
Chelsea Skaggs:
I actually hate the word kiddos so I can’t believe. I said that, but it just comes out. I have a seven year old and a five year old. My five year old just my journeys were very different. My five year old was born with some medical complexities and so I thought for sure that second round would be like easy breezy.
Chelsea Skaggs:
I know what I’m doing, but of course life always brings its twists and turns. And then my partner is Mike and we’ve been married for almost 12 years. I think I was just recounting that when we our one month anniversary was also our one year of knowing each other anniversary. So I was never the person who thought I would take a relationship quick like that. But it has worked out. It’s been a really fun journey. So I am a certified professional life coach and I decided to specialize in expecting in new parents, really focusing on the relationship aspect of why does no one talk about how much your personal identity and your relationship identity and the capacity you have for one another changes so much? And so I help couples to really recalibrate and find their way as a team in the chaos. I love.
Rita Suzanne:
I love all of that, and so you know, I was reading through all of your stuff and obviously well, not obviously people don’t know that we’ve met in person, because I also live in central Ohio but I was reading through your website and through the information that you submitted for the call, and one of the things that caught my attention was when you were talking about how you were in the kitchen and you just kind of fell down and you were just thinking about how you just didn’t know if your marriage was going to be able to make it through having a baby. And I remember doing that same thing when I was pregnant with my first son, and I wasn’t in the kitchen, I was in my son’s room and I was just so upset and I was just like I just don’t, I just thought things were going to be so different. I just thought it was going to be so different.
Chelsea Skaggs:
Yeah, we’re definitely sold such a blissful picture and there are really beautiful blissful moments, but that is not the full story.
Rita Suzanne:
Yeah, yeah, it’s crazy. But then the other thing that really caught my attention was you know the title of this episode is going to be you know how to not impress other people of this episode is going to be you know how to not impress other people. And I love that so much because when I thought about making this podcast, it was all about really telling people how it really is and being honest and truthful about what it’s really like to be a mom, run your business and trying to take care of yourself at the same time. But what I have found in these last few years of doing this is that when I’m not recording, there’s a lot of honesty. That happens, but as soon as you hit the record button, the business owner turns on and then you know there’s there’s some uh, covering up. I guess that happens as well. So I’d love to talk a little bit more about that. And and you know, just feel like what what do you think that’s about?
Chelsea Skaggs:
Yeah, that’s really interesting for me to reflect on. So, um, I I started an Instagram right early back in the days of trying to figure out what my business is going to be and what was my passion and how was I sharing that Um and and social media has come a long way, but it’s. It’s still not, you know, still not where it needs to be, I would say. But seven years ago, when I was a new mom, it just felt like every moment was like how do I polish this, how do I polish this up for social media so that I can inspire, or, you know, people will like it, or people will be attracted to me as a person and as someone who is trying to become, you know, a thought leader in that way, and I was burnt out on that. It’s so quickly and so easily that you can just become burnt out on that because it takes so much extra energy.
Chelsea Skaggs:
But I think, because we live in a time and age where we are constantly able to see someone else’s motherhood or someone else’s business and how it presents itself out in the world, it’s easy for us to think that we need to have something impressive.
Chelsea Skaggs:
We need to, you know, come out of the woodwork with some brilliant aha phrase or some you know picture capturing something incredible. And I think you know, as business leaders, there’s a lot, of, a lot of natural tendency to want to cover up our weaknesses or not get into the vulnerable spaces, especially as women, because we aren’t given the benefit of the doubt as much, I think, as our male counterparts are in business, and so it almost feels like we have even more to prove, even more to impress, because we’re also doing this while managing, usually, the mental load of our family and schedules and logistics. And so I think when we slow down and embrace the messy, sometimes that feels like so raw and overwhelming that it can be easier to not even open yourself up to it. So we kind of you know polish and box things.
Rita Suzanne:
Yeah, I feel like um, because they’re business owners, they feel like if people know the real me, then they won’t want to hire me, right? Because?
Chelsea Skaggs:
I’m not professional.
Rita Suzanne:
I’m not polished, I’m not all put together all the time, and then they won’t want to hire me, right? Because I’m not professional, I’m not polished, I’m not all put together all the time, and then they won’t feel that they can trust me to help them. And I feel, like you know, unfortunately, I tell my clients all the time like sometimes you just have to show like the ugly part of it, because that’s what resonates with people the most is not the polished part, not the perfect part, although a lot of us want to project that perfection.
Chelsea Skaggs:
Yeah, definitely. I think one of the most helpful things that I learned was that my ideal client is a few steps behind me and my my job is to get them to a better point not to this level of perfection, which is honestly, not a guarantee I would ever be able to make.
Rita Suzanne:
Well, it’s not even attainable for anybody. Right Like perfection is not even something that any of us can achieve at all. So, and especially as moms, I think that there’s so much pressure to try to be the quote unquote like perfect mom. And so how do you feel, like moms do, especially new moms? Like how much pressure you know, especially new moms. Like how much pressure you know. How are you helping them go through that and help them deal with not worrying about impressing other people in that aspect?
Chelsea Skaggs:
Yeah, yeah, two aspects to that. The first is what I always call, like the Pinterest collage mom and I, I, I think we take little snippets of these different people’s lives that we’ve seen and we make a collage of those and that becomes this ideal, perfect mom that we’re shooting to attain in our own lives. So maybe you know, there’s the influencer who is doing all of these homemade, pureed foods for their babies, and then there’s the one that’s just super into fitness and you know, counting their macros or whatever, and there’s one that is doing play dates all across their city, so on and so forth. People have their specialties and I think sometimes we forget this person showing one area, this person showing one area that they have chosen, and we cannot expect ourselves to be all of all of those things, and so we can do anything. We cannot do everything or not without burning ourselves out.
Chelsea Skaggs:
And so the second part to that is that I always start with new moms of helping them to say what really does matter most to you. Like, let’s put all this aside. What are your top values? How do you want your family to feel? What do you want your child to remember about this time? What do you want to remember about this time and that becomes like the bouncer in your brain. So you create a mini version of yourself and it’s this bouncer in your brain that says like, oh, you know what, that’s not in my top values. I cannot let myself stress over that. That doesn’t get to take up space in my brain. You have to filter. You know, I’m an ambitious person. I love having goals for myself and I love achieving goals. Um, but if I’m trying to do all of them, then I do none of them. Well, and so the same for a new mom or a couple or whoever it is. If you don’t know what your top values and priorities are, you’re grasping at all of these straws and not taking clear action.
Rita Suzanne:
Yeah, I think especially. You know, my kids are teenagers now, so it’s kind of hard for me to think about what it was like as a new mom. But one thing that I do remember was just so much pressure that I had and how I really was trying to be so perfect right, I was just wanting to do it so perfectly because I had went through, you know, five years of infertility and I was just, you know, everything had to be perfect during my pregnancy, which ended up in a C-section, which I didn’t want. You know. That messed up my whole like birth plan and everything else. And then, once I had my son and I was home, everything had to be exactly. You know I wanted to breastfeed and you know that worked out for a little bit, but then I had to go back to work and you know, and then I was depressed and I didn’t even realize that I was depressed until after.
Rita Suzanne:
You know like a lot, a lot of these things and I just remember feeling so much stuff but it was like so heavy at one time and I think what it, what it is like to your point, is like we’re trying to do all the things at one time and not focusing on the one thing, and I think that’s where we make the biggest mistake and that’s where someone like you comes in and is like really helps us to like focus and hone in on what we really need to worry about, and it’s not really like what, what a car seat we buy worry about, and it’s not really like what, what a car seat we buy, right, yeah, yeah, cause I I don’t really prescribe to the idea of like, just don’t worry about it.
Chelsea Skaggs:
I enjoy worrying about things because it it gets me to a next space, but it’s what do we choose to put that kind of energy and intention towards?
Rita Suzanne:
Yeah, I love that because I think that you know, as moms, we’re going to worry anyways, right, we still, we still, I still worry about my, my kids, all the time and, like I said, they’re teenagers. I still, you know, try, I’m trying not to control them, but I still am worried about all of them at all times. So what do you think? So here’s something that I love to talk about. Is that when women have babies, there’s such a huge shift in your identity, right? Let’s talk about that for a few minutes. What are your thoughts on that?
Chelsea Skaggs:
Yeah, I think it is like a massive shipwreck and you get to decide what do you want to preserve, what do you want to let go of and what do you want to maybe find a fresh, fresh approach or fresh tool in? I don’t think a lot of us are prepared for how much it shifts the way our brain works, the way we see ourselves and our family because now we are a parent and how that impacts how we relate to our parents, to our siblings, to our partners, to our coworkers, to our friends, and it’s just a very layered change. It changes you on every level, which I think can either be a really hard cause, a lot of resistance, or it can be a really beautiful transition. I like to invite people to say you know what your life is going to change in so many ways. Let’s let’s just choose to make this a beautiful transition where you get to know yourself more than you ever had before.
Chelsea Skaggs:
But but it’s hard in a society that doesn’t honor everything that comes with that with. You know, our time is not honored. Our recovery is not honored. Our you know the way that our brains literally rewire themselves in some ways, like the science behind it. It’s just not talked about, it’s not honored in our policies and in our society, and so sometimes, as women, we’re kind of we’re kind of swimming upstream, but I think what we get to do is swim upstream together and pull one another along and say this is, this is a rebirth in so many ways, and we get to decide what to hang on to and and the ways that we’re going to redefine ourselves decide what to hang on to and in the ways that we’re going to redefine ourselves.
Rita Suzanne:
Yeah, I think that if we don’t isolate ourselves right, because oftentimes moms will isolate themselves because they’re caught in that cycle of trying to be perfect and all of that stuff, and so one of the things I always talk about is trying, you know, take how moms are not taking care of themselves, especially after they have have children. Right there, they become more focused on everything else, and then if you add a business in the mix as well, then you also then lose priority on yourself again, right, so it just becomes even, you become even lower, unfortunately, Right, yeah, and when that I mean, I think that that just naturally happens a lot of times and that’s.
Chelsea Skaggs:
but we don’t want to stay there. We want to say, oh, this is where I’ve, I’ve gotten to. But also I want to be my fullest version of myself for my kids and as a business owner, for my business. And I have to ask myself what do I need Not to like? Luxuriously, you know, sit around every Saturday and be pampered, but what do I need? To be the fullest version of myself, the person that I want my kids and my partner and my clients to remember.
Rita Suzanne:
Yeah, I always ask, you know, like I mentioned earlier, one of my most favorite questions is what are you doing for yourself as far as, like, what are you doing to take care of yourself in your, you know, as a priority? And oftentimes I’ll get I’ll get such a wide variety of answers. Right, it goes from, you know, reading a book to going to the spa and getting my nails done and all of these things. And when I first started doing this, I would tell moms, I would tell them like sometimes it’s just going into the bathroom and closing the door and just being alone. Right, it’s, it’s sitting in my car for five minutes extra by myself. It is not even going anywhere, it’s not even taking the time to do anything spectacular, it’s just being alone, being me. Yeah, because you know it’s. They just need so much all the time.
Chelsea Skaggs:
That’s true.
Rita Suzanne:
Yes, especially when you’re a single parent. You know, when you have another parent who can you know take some of that burden for you, then it can actually, you know, take a little bit of that emotional toll off of you. But when you have another, when you’re trying to do it all by yourself, it is a different level of emotional.
Chelsea Skaggs:
Yeah, I imagine, so yeah.
Rita Suzanne:
So tell us, tell everyone who you love to work with. Like, who do you work with?
Chelsea Skaggs:
Because I know we talked about this the other day the moms and the couples who really do feel like they are kind of reinventing themselves or coming, coming into back into their own skin through the transition of parenthood. Um, these are people who you know. Typically my clients are people who believe that, like humans, are on a trajectory of growth and they like introspection. They want to learn about themselves, they want to learn about how their family can keep working together better and how they can contribute to society in those ways. So it’s really the couple that wants to be a really good team. They want to share the mental load, they want to communicate effectively, they want to still have those little connections throughout the day while also being really present parents. And it’s the mom who maybe needs to reconnect with her own identity so that she can show up in these other relationships the way that she wants to.
Rita Suzanne:
But you also work with just moms by themselves as well? Yeah, Just in case. Just in case the mom can’t get the partner to join or if there is no partner, right.
Chelsea Skaggs:
Yeah, yeah, because it’s all you know. We learn what’s in our locus of control and so, regardless of whether both people are doing that at the same time, or one person is showing up for her own growth and really owning who she’s become as a mom, those are both really effective ways to you know, benefit the family.
Rita Suzanne:
Let’s talk about what made you decide to start your business. What was your like jumping off point? What motivated you to start?
Chelsea Skaggs:
Yeah well, I was a teacher in another state when I became pregnant for the first time and really I don’t know if it was disinterest, laziness, what you would call it, but I did not want to transfer my teaching license up here to Ohio and I really didn’t want to be away from my baby, and so I didn’t know a lot about online business at the time. My journey started in the MLM world, where someone kind of showed me the ropes of here’s how you use a project management system and here’s how you schedule Instagram posts. I mean, these were the things I was learning early on and, you know, selling someone else’s product made me able to develop those skills and learn how to do those things. But what I quickly realized was that I was in kind of the health and fitness field at that time and a lot of women were coming to me because they wanted to feel like themselves again and they were turning to the weight loss industry, hoping to feel like themselves again, and what I found was that weight loss was not the key to feeling like yourself as a mom, and these people needed something else.
Chelsea Skaggs:
And through those conversations I really saw the gaps.
Chelsea Skaggs:
I saw the gaps in no one’s helping these women reconnect with their identities and see all the ways their lives have changed and they’re feeling like if they just get their body back, their relationship is going to be on cloud nine again. But really they were missing the skills of communication and how to work together as a team. And the romance that maybe was missing wasn’t because they still had 10 extra pounds of baby weight. It was because they and their partners felt so distant from one another and they weren’t sure how to get past talking about logistics and diaper blowouts, and so that’s when I I didn’t know how at the time, but I knew that having something like that would have saved me a lot of heartache and would have been very, very helpful in saving some really hard times in my marriage. And so I set out on the life coaching path and did as much research and studying as I could on the, the matrescence and just kind of the, the birth of a mother and the communication and what is necessary for a meaningful connection and teamwork as partners.
Rita Suzanne:
Yeah, I love all of that.
Rita Suzanne:
It’s it’s so important because you are able to recognize that it really wasn’t about the weight and I think that a lot of women that’s what they think that at some point, if I get to this certain size, or if my business makes X amount of dollars, or if I do this, or once I buy this certain house, or or whatever the case is, once I I hit that material thing, then my life is going to be so great, I’m going to be so happy and you know it’s not, that’s, that’s not it, and it’s always.
Rita Suzanne:
You know the inner work, it’s always. You know, I always tell my kids especially now that you know some of them are trying to date and have relationships, and, and especially the girls in particular, because they’re seeking validation from other people you know that this, your love, your validation, comes from you first. It comes from you, no matter what, and you have to do that first. That’s your own work and you know, no matter what happens, you need to do that first and I think that a lot of times, women miss out on that. And then, as we become adults, we still seek that validation in so many other ways and, um, yeah, it, and it can cause problems throughout our entire lives.
Chelsea Skaggs:
Yeah, I remember hearing the phrase and I used to think it was so enchanting of like finding your other half. That was something that was used a lot, you know, and now I really don’t sit well with that phrase because I think we have to have two whole showing up together and they need to be able to stand on their own feet, but also celebrate the strength that they bring together.
Rita Suzanne:
Yes, I love that. I remember, you know, when I got married and um, you know, we were in the church at that time and we went through the counseling and everything and our pastor had told us, you know, each of you has to be at 100%. It’s not a 50-50 thing. You both have to be at 100%. You know, and you know we carried that throughout the entire time. I know I did, you know, so I felt like that was a good lesson to take away from the whole thing. So, as we were starting to wrap it up and I, you know, I I mentioned my favorite um question was always what are you doing for you, chelsea? What are you doing to um? You know, remember yourself, because that’s what this podcast is about. It’s, you know, about raising your family, running your business, but, most importantly, remembering you. What are you doing for you?
Chelsea Skaggs:
Yeah Well, it feels so cliche saying this, especially after just explaining my whole journey, but it truly is exercise, but in such a reframed way, like I, you know, I clung to exercise right after my baby, trying to lose the weight, trying to find some kind of self and worth again, um, and then I kind of rebelled against it, like this doesn’t define me and I’m not, you know, going to focus on weight loss. And then I, I think I came back full circle to really saying, like I enjoy embracing my own strength, I enjoy stretching past my limits, um, and so truly like, starting my mornings with something like that, um, is is good for me and I’m a pretty intense person and I think that just having that intensity first thing in the morning is something that I need, uh, so that I can, you know, go through my day a little bit more gently and level headed. But I, I do have to have that space and, wild as it is, it starts with um 5.00 and it it just sets the tone for my week.
Rita Suzanne:
Yeah, that I. I mean, I also feel like exercise is the thing that helps me maintain my sanity. I’m not a runner, that’s not my thing, but I get, I get it. But you know, everybody has to find the thing that they love and I think that you know, for you it’s funny and I, and I think that it’s good to have it in a group setting because it creates that accountability as well. Right, if you’re. If sometimes, when you’re set to do it by yourself, we don’t do it, right, we, we will make excuses for ourselves and say you know what? It’s actually kind of cold, I’m not going to do it, especially here in Ohio. Well, I still do that sometimes, but not as frequently. Yeah, you won’t do it as much. If you’re having, if you have the group to you know that. You know that they’re going to be wanting to see you there, okay, so where can everyone find you online? Where are you?
Chelsea Skaggs:
at yeah, pretty much everything is under postpartum together. So Instagram is postpartum together, Facebook, TikTok, those are all postpartum together. And I’m online at postpartumtogethercom, Um, which, I’ll admit I’m kind of like going through a facelift transition stage, but there’s. You know, I I’ve spent a few years doing like a new mommy blog stuff on there, Um, and I’m now really focused on on the coaching aspect.
Rita Suzanne:
Yeah, well, it’s still there. So you know everybody can find you and they can get in touch and, you know, reach out and connect with you. So it was been such a pleasure, Chelsea, thanks you so much, thank you.
And there you have it. I want to encourage you to remember that being a mom who runs her own business is not easy. We all struggle, but just keep moving forward. And don’t forget to make time for yourself. As moms we are usually the first thing to go to the bottom of the list. If your business is overwhelming you and you need real solutions, not just some sugar coated suggestions apply to work with me at ritasuzanne.com/apply
