When was the last time you celebrated? I mean REALLY celebrated… surrounded yourself with supportive friends and family, popped the champagne or cider, danced, flung confetti, and felt that overwhelming tickle of joy in your chest?
Can you even remember?
Every success, big or small, is equally important. Today we’re going to dive into how and why we celebrate.
Read on for your permission to party!
I was beyond blessed to be joined on The Beyond Leadership Podcast by my friend Kim Peterson. Kim is the founder of The Mompreneur Collective, a fellow podcast host, and a toddler mom. Her focus is helping moms prioritize self-care and celebration so that they can be present with their families. She is a cancer survivor, a home school boy mom, and just an all-around great person. So go grab your glass of champagne, get ready to celebrate your small wins, and join me today as we go through this wonderful journey.
First I asked Kim to tell us a little bit more about who she is and how she relates to other mompreneurs.
Kim brings up how she founded the Mompreneur Collective, explaining- “I initially started it out of crisis, I lost my career from crisis management and I was diagnosed with cancer for the first time. I left my career on a Monday and started this business on a Friday, the same week. My identity was so wrapped up in what I did that I didn't take time to know who I was. I treated my first round of cancer like a job, literally kept a checklist of what I was doing every single day to heal my body and I worked and grew my business to a place where my business didn’t work without me. What I mean by that is that I was working 15-16 hours days and still feeling like it wasn’t enough. April of 2021 is when I found out that my cancer was back because I didn't truly do the work the first time in healing. So in April I took a huge step back, left everything, and planned to come back once I was better. I made sure to focus on myself, heal, and do things that were really scary... which was learning who I was as a person and what I really learned was, outside of all of the little things in my life that have happened, the one thing people love the most is it doesn't matter how awful something is, I'm the first one to laugh about it. I think that it’s hilarious, it's always happening for me, and somehow it turned out better than I ever expected. There you go, that's what we're doing at Mompreneur collective. We are celebrating the heck out of our lives.”
I then asked Kim how and why do you celebrate small wins?
“I celebrate small wins in the most extra way ever. We have little containers of confetti around our house that I always have filled, and every time we deem something really fun or special (ex. My kid saying the ABC’s for the first time) confetti’s going! I have balloons everywhere, sometimes we even just pop them for fun. I'm probably the most extra when it comes to celebrating, but there are also other times where I celebrate in smaller ways, for example in [IG] stories, I’ll post my lemon water in the morning in a champagne or wine glass. Why do we use these glasses? To wind down or to celebrate. I believe that when we wake up in the morning we should celebrate another day, that our bodies are moving. So I celebrate in small ways like the glass I choose to use, and in more extravagant ways like the confetti and balloons.”
What are the reasons behind celebrating not just the big things, and how can we integrate this into our lives?
“First I want to say that it all stems back to our story and ‘why’. So, where we're at, not with cancer but with our oldest son who is a survivor. So for us, celebrating had to be the only way. In my childhood celebrating the small things is what got me through the hardest points of being abused and in poverty. So carrying that through my life I learned that when we are able to celebrate and add in these little things how much better life becomes. So how do you integrate into your life? It's just choosing a couple of tasks that you're working towards or that you sometimes take for granted. One area that we often take for granted is being able to move our bodies, or being able to buy the food that we buy at the grocery store… if you're buying your food at the grocery store and you're paying with a debit card, cash, or whatever... that is a blessing that a lot of people don't get to experience. So use that as a way to celebrate. You can celebrate it by telling the register person at the grocery store ‘thank you so much, this is great’ or starting a conversation. You can start by doing a little dance on the way to the car with your kids. There are so many ways that you can integrate just a little bit of this. What celebration does is bring you right into gratitude. You realize how much you actually have... so in our world, especially as mompreneurs, we're always pushing the next thing, the next goal, celebrating allows you to get grounded and recognize what an amazing life you live.”
Tell me more about how you celebrate the wins of those in your community.
“I truly believe that when I rise, and you rise, we rise together. What that means is when I celebrate or you celebrate, when we celebrate together, all of that energy and excitement is amplified. So I will surprise people in the community by popping in and asking them ‘What's going on in your life that's great for you on Friday’ and they'll answer and we share, I'll tag them, and post a lot of balloons and a bunch of fun things on Instagram. Then we take it further and I personally reach out to them on Instagram to celebrate them. Sometimes I'll send them personalized cards in the mail just to show them they’re recognized, and then also to show that we are all rising together with them.”
(Prefer to listen along? Tune in now to The Beyond Leadership Podcast)
What does it actually do to the people in the community when you're celebrating small wins with one another?
“When we celebrate the small wins it is a way to stop comparing and start realizing that what’s possible for one is possible for all of us. It’s a chain reaction when we celebrate something as small as drinking enough water all week, it sparks this collective recognition for ourselves to keep going and how those daily mundane things have a larger impact. Then that increases our confidence and overall in our community, although small, is mighty. Everyone just feels this happiness, joy, and competence, and then take it a step further we also see that in their homes a lot of moms have noticed that as they continue to celebrate with us and were this little community they’re overall stress decreases, which means they’re a better mom to their vision of what a better mom is, they're having better relationships with their spouses, their workflow is better, their sense of community is better. Overall it creates a better life.”
Noticing how Kim works closely alongside other mompreneurs, it's easy to see how she embraces her children being around while she works, so I decided to ask her how all of us can incorporate our kids into our business like she has, and still maintain that ‘professional image’ of being a business owner?
“First of all, when we say ‘professional’, define that for yourself. Are you working your business because you want to be a corporate person, or you design your business your lifestyle. That’s always a very big question because a lot of times as moms we want to be taken seriously. It’s not realistic to always try and hide your toddler throwing a tantrum. Here is my vision, why don't we just stop trying to be like everyone else, because as mompreneurs we’re not. What if instead of putting all the stress we were able to you and corporate them. So ways that we incorporate them is we look at their ages, so I started when our boys were 2 and 5, so that seems pretty young to be part of the business, right? But they actually can do quite a bit for you if you let them. So a couple of things for our kids do is color the envelopes when I make cards, so it's pretty nice to have that personalized touch. Another thing that they get to do in the business is if we’re on video, and they choose they want to say hi, they get to introduce themselves to that person. It allows them some socialization, and people get to see that there is a real human on the other side of this. There are ways that you can allow your children to be with you while you're working. A couple of things that I love doing is setting up stations in our house. On the counter we have Plato, when they're doing Plato I'm doing back-office stuff. Because with Plato you kind of need to be hands-on especially when they're little, at least mine because it can get in the carpet and stuff. but you can do back-office stuff like prepping content, your engagement checklist, you can do all the small things that take up time but you can still be mostly present with your children. Another thing I do is when it’s time to be on a video, I set up coloring stations by myself wherever I am.”
What tips do you have for the moms who don’t have a good support system to help them with their children, to make life a little bit easier?
“So my husband is actually truck driver, so he’s not always home. There are times where he is only home on Sundays. This has always been our lives so I knew going into entrepreneurship was going to look like this. What I do is prioritize my rest like I would taking care of my children. My rest is most important because without resting I cannot do anything for them, for myself, or for the business.” Kim goes on to reference life’s prioritizations as a ‘glass balls’ analogy. She says “Out of all the glass balls you are holding up, choose which ones are plastic and let them drop.
This looks like; you have to take care of yourself, you know that you have animals and need to care for them, you know you need to take care of your kids, and within your biz, you know you have a call that day. Those are glass balls you can’t drop but everything you let go of, even if that means your house won’t get cleaned that night. There's a lot of ways where you can look at the time available, and take the stress off from the rest. If you have a launch coming up, then you know you need to prioritize that, then you also know you need to prioritize your energy because a launch takes a lot of energy. There are so many different ways that you can adjust with no help because it is very hard and lonely.”
Kim and I discussed how our energy account is like our bank account. You have a set amount of money in your bank account and yes, you can do things to put more money in your bank account, but at the end of the day if you spend all the money in your bank account and you go and you try to make another transaction you are going to get an overdraft fee. With your energy, if you spend energy on things that are not your priority and then you go back and you try to spend additional energy on your priorities after you're already depleted you are going to get an overdraft charge... and it is going to come in the form of damaged relationships, health, or maybe even financial damage because you chose, and it is the choice, to spend your energy somewhere that was not your priority. Energy is finite, we need to start treating our energy like we treat our finances and taking stock in what we have at the beginning of every day. What do I need more of? And a lot of times that's rest because we as moms don't get it.
Kim agreed, adding “I fully believe, based on my healing journey, the reason why my cancer came back is because I chose to do ALL of the things for almost a whole year. I chose it, and I was like ‘I'll show you’... I willed my way into you something that cost me time, finances, stress, my health, and that's why I'm so passionate about just focusing on you, your rest and having fun because at the end of the day as long as those main priorities are taken care of, the rest will happen.”
How can we continue to follow along with your journey and celebrate both the big and the small wins with you moving forward?
“I cannot wait to celebrate with everyone listening in! You can follow me @momprenuercollective on Instagram, and we have a podcast that's currently on hold, hello priorities, so we'll be bringing that back soon but want to listen to past episodes it's called Permission to Party!”
UPDATE: Kim is officially, finally, and gloriously cancer-free and in remission for a second time! Let's all go over to her Instagram page today to celebrate her! She talks about celebrating small wins and what a big deal that is, guys this is a huge win and I know that there is nobody better than this community to help her celebrate! Let’s show her the love!
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