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The Mommy Mayhem Matrix: Ambition, Business & the Life You Want · Fractional Frequency

• Billie Tienda: Today we are joined by Beth Mazza and Victoria Cybris, founders of the Female Maverick, entrepreneurs, authors, and advocates for a more honest approach to building and scaling businesses. Beth and Victoria have both built several successful businesses while raising children, a decision that ultimately changed the way they have approached business growth, leadership, and what success really looks like. Through the Female Maverick, Beth and Victoria now reach an audience of more than 15,000 new and aspiring founders. Helping them navigate the realities of entrepreneurship without buying into the idea that success requires sacrificing everything outside of work. In this episode, we'll talk about scaling through downturns, overcoming rejection, landing Fortune 500 clients while prioritizing family life, and the decision-making framework they call the Mommy Mayhem Matrix. We'll explore why sustainable growth starts with building a business that actually fits the life you want to live. So welcome, Beth and Victoria. So glad you're here. Well, let's dig right into it. Beth, I'd love to start with you. So you've built and sold several successful companies while raising, I think, four children you mentioned, or potentially combined family of nine. What did this experience teach you about work-life balance and what that actually looks like? it doesn't exist, right? And I feel so bad for moms that I meet who are still trying to figure out how to do it on a day-by-day basis. I think there's so many great things in the book that, first of all, are stories, so everyone feels better about the lack of balance. But also, you know, my kids are great and they didn't have a mom who was wildly balanced, but they did have a mom who was really, really present at the moments they needed her. And I find them now very being very present for me at the times I need them. I think I did try, and I still do try every day. I mean, I have a funny list of like all the things I have to get done for work. And then I also write down each of my kids. And I write down maybe they just need a prayer or a thought, or maybe they need like a full court press of an hour with me on the phone or I'm coming to New York to see them. But whatever it is, I I do make sure that I'm wildly thoughtful and present with them. And I think that that's what we can do as moms and as working moms. But like be perfectly balanced and calm and great moms all the time and great people at work all the time. I don't know who can do that. Totally. And I think when we talked initially, you know, we we talked a little bit about like it's so much more than you know the time management. Of course, that's a part of it, but it's also in thinking about it a little bit differently. Victoria, what's your perspective on this? You also have a family with with children and young children to boot. Yeah. So like I my kids are five and they're between ages seven and fifteen. And honestly, like when we were in the heart of Claremont Partners, building it and scaling it, there was people that would call me Super Mom all the time. And I absolutely hated that label, mainly because A, it's just, it's bullshit, to be fair. And B, like, I was always trying to do I always like to say I was always at like 75% on either side of it at any given point. And I do fairly, I think 75% Mine is a little bit higher. But like, I mean, I the point is is that I was failing somewhere at any given point. So like I learned to give myself a ton of grace as I was trying to kind of drive the business forward and also be there for my kid. Like I think I learned a lot from watching Beth because she's a little bit ahead of me, but also I just realized sometimes I was gonna miss stuff and like, yeah, it hurt and I just felt it, but it was just kind of part of life. So there was not much to do about it. So, like, you know, my biggest thing is I just tried to be there when I felt that they particularly needed me. Sometimes they were just fine, but sometimes they just needed me to curl up in bed with them and hang out with them and give them a little extra hug. And I think that that worked out well. I what I can learn from my 15 year old is, man, I thought she was never we were never gonna have a close relationship and we really do. Like I people actually commented on it all the time. And she is the one that really lived all the traveling I was doing and how little I was around. And I think now to have that in kind of my quiver, like it gives me it gives me strength with the other kids that they're gonna find the same resiliency. Totally. And I think there a lot of people maybe start with. What do need to do to make all of my business commitments? And then how do I sort of squeeze my life in around those? But when we talked previously, that's not the way that you both think about it. It's more more about like how do I design my life intentionally for what I want in all pieces and and work from there. And so Maybe Beth, I think you I I remember us talking about this last time. Maybe expand on that a little bit. What does that actually look like for you as you're designing and and deploying that strategy in your life? You know, I have a good perspective because in the first business I didn't do anything I'm about to say you should do. And then the second I did. And so that's why it forms kind of the base of what's in the book, which is we set our non-negotiables. And we have a personal non-negotiable, we have a financial non-negotiable too. And so Once you set that personal non negotiable, I mean mine was I wasn't gonna miss any event of my kids on the weekends. Victoria's was she was gonna get home on that four forty-five train, do everything she should do as a mom. And then after she put her kids to bed, she might get back on and work. When you begin with those non negotiables, which are like in your heart, in your mind, what are most important, you then begin the design process from there. It's not as if you're not going to give up a lot, right? Nobody at 9 30 at night after you put your kids to bed wants to get back on the computer and start writing press releases. But she did. I did. But there also is this amazing freedom in being able to say, I'm going to sit through dinner, whether I cooked it or it's from Chipotle. And this is my definition of freedom. And I'm going to start everything with the assumption that those things are going to happen. And we don't do that as moms because we're so used to just saying yes to everything, giving Our self-care, giving everything up. But in the end, we were better and stronger mothers and way better business people because we drew those lines. But if you don't do them in the beginning, what I learned in the first business is you can't suddenly start to do that. Yeah. So we set those lines really early. I think it's interesting though, too, because I in it and we'll get into it because I think this is really important. In in that second business, which was Claremont, I mean, we structured the business. as moms. Like, I mean, let's be I I I do have to put the caveat. It was a professional services firm where client services everything. So like you can put as much structure around it for your family life as you want, but you're still going to have to dodge and weave and and things are going to have to change and you have to be flexible. But like long before COVID, you know, we instituted work from home policies for not only us for but for other parents that were in the office. So like they were able to work from home and we and And that was that built an incredible amount of trust with our employees very early on. And so I think that was a a big component not for us, not only for us personally, but also for the support of the the business that you were building. And I I really I'm it I it would probably scare most people to look at my calendar because I still live the same calendar, but like I'm time blocked like crazy. Like I know what my business is my business time is versus my family time. It's color coded. It's scary as crap, but like it's it is how I live and die my life. Now, this third business, I have a little bit more of a priority on my kids because I was gone so much in the second business. And so I tend to figure out what are gonna be my constraints from a family perspective. And then I work the business around that. And like to be fair, the second business gave me the financial freedom to do that. Like I I wouldn't have been able to do that if we didn't have the way we did at the birth time. But that I bring that up because I think that there is depending on the business that you choose and you move forward allows you to figure out how you can build the work life balance that works for you both personally and professionally. Totally. And I think I love the what you said about starting with your non negotiables because if you don't start there, it's hard to get there later once you've already designed for everything else. I think one thing that we hear frequently from founders is that sometimes, you know, that can get lost in scale. So when you're, you know, trying to to build and and grow, you can start to work into your margins and and give up on some of those things that you wanted to commit to. And so what would you say to founders who are, you know, maybe parents and and have Competing priorities all over the place as they're scaling. How do they protect those commitments in that time? I'm gonna take this first. I'm going for you. Cause I think this is super important. Cause it was something that I didn't know at Claremont, which is as you scale, I think most founders, generally speaking, are very type A control freaks that they think they can do it better, faster, stronger. I was that person 100%. And like that's from the Beginning was pushing me hard to delegate within my team, which I fought for a very long time until literally I almost broke because I was doing all of the client work plus the HR stuff plus the invoice until like one in the morning, trying to get them all done. Yeah. Yeah, our margins looked great, whatever, but like I was about to break. So like we very quickly, once the business could support it. hired a fractional HR person. We hired a fractional CFO. And we beg I personally began to lean on the team as we scaled the business. And that was a very hard lesson. But like if you want to have a successful business that ideally you're pushing to exit at some point, if you can't learn delegation as a control freak type A founder, then you're never going to get to where you want to get. Yeah. In addition, that's the number one for sure. My number two is People don't want to hire other people, right? So entrepreneurs, they love their profit margin when it goes up. And so they want to keep it that way. They don't want to make hires. Our sales guy made more than we did until we sold the business. And then we made a lot more. The person who headed up an emerging business for us that we just didn't know enough about, we took out of our own salary to pay for hers. And guess what? That investment was really worth it. But you know, so many women I talk to, they don't want to hire. They're terrified of it. If they think it's like it's another marriage or something, you can't scale. You cannot keep your non-negotiables and scale your business without investment. And like if you begin with that knowledge, you will make good decisions. It's funny. It I we have a close friends that is a founder and she's honestly she's building the business that we had. And I introduced her to this sales guy that we wanted to hire very early on at Claremont, but we we perceived we couldn't afford them. Like it all worked the way it was supposed to. I think she's at that moment and I'm trying to work with him to say, think about your compensation structure because you remember I think you think you missed the vote at Claremont. And he's like, I totally did. And like I'm talking to her, being like, okay, Figure out a structure. Like he's flexible. Figure out a structure that you both make money over the long term, but you're both kind of making the bet on it. Like because if you wanna get to where you wanna get to, which is an eight figure business, you gotta make that higher and you gotta kinda take the hit to do it. Yes. I so I have one follow up because I think This is something that we we live and breathe and and feel ourselves. I love that you, like many leaders and and founders, are leaning into the fractional model to supplement where it makes sense. Maybe kind of clicking back one one step where you're starting as a founder to feel like there's too much for you to really continue to to run on your own. You need to pull in some some supplemental help or or make up that higher. How do you decide where? Maybe this is for my God, this is simple. What's your building block for growth? So for us, we had two big building blocks. We were great at selling, but our buyers were all over the nation. They were CEOs. They were not coming to us and they did not want to do a phone call. So we had to get on a plane and fly. So at some point we were doing the initial sales meeting, the second meeting, the third meeting, the fourth meeting until the closed meeting. We did all of them. And we realized if we could cut the first three steps out, we could get a lot more of the last two steps. And I mean, we knew that because we said the keys to us scaling. We had to sell more because we had invested in a big team. And then we needed to really make an area of our business a little bit more customized and special. And it took a big hire to be able to do that. We could not do it on our own. So we invested there. I mean, I think part of it is. Sometimes when I talk to women, they're like, well, now that I've achieved this level, I need marketing, I need accounting, I need all these different things. I'm like, I don't know what you need. Give me your growth plan. Look, you really only need these two things, invest there. And I think what my business is gonna need is gonna be totally different than yours, Erin, and totally different than someone else's. But you better figure out that first and put all your money behind those one or two things. Versus like, I'm gonna build out my executive team, I'm gonna do whatever. I don't know what any of that means. I just we knew we gotta sell more bigger ticket items. How do we do that? An expensive sell sales guy. We've gotta be able to sell this ESG business authentically really good. Okay, let's hire a smart team. And then we didn't pay attention to a lot of stuff, right? We didn't invest in advertising, we didn't have spippy office space. You know, there were other areas of the business that we starved to pay the growth areas of the business and First step is figuring out what the growth areas are. And then, you know, what you can starve a little bit until you start to make more money. Absolutely. I think the other piece too, though, is yes, of course, the growth engine, but like again, leaning on the mistakes that I personally made, like HR is such a huge component. And pretending that you can do it on your own if you have no HR ability, I think is is a total mistake. Like that team as it grows needs a needs someone else besides you as the boss to talk to. And also there is so many operational aspects of HR that is just a waste of time for a founder. Like figuring out the benefits policies outside the cost. Like, I mean, there's just so many different things that are time sucks that to best point, figuring out where the growth engine is, that's where your time should be. It shouldn't be on the the operational side all the time. I love the the point you made about what people need too. Because I was actually talking with with my coach a couple of weeks ago and I asked her, you know, across all of her clients, are are founders you know, thinking about AI or, you know, are they talking about it in their sessions? And she thought about it for a second and goes, No, not really. They're they're talking about leadership and how do they work through tough people problems and anticipate tough people problems. And I think that's You know, even with through all of this hype and and noise about what's going on in the world and and market in general, that's still so critically important for founders to put the right support around. So Yeah. And I think right now employees feel kind of threatened by AI, right? So I feel like as a founder, we have to really support our people, either because AI is gonna be an important part of our business, we gotta really train them. Talk about how they're gonna use it, or we need to support them and say, look, I mean, especially in a professional services business, you know, a CEO doesn't wanna like go on to Chat GPT and say, What happens? My CFO just quit. Like he wants to talk to a real human being who has experience and say, my God, I'm really feeling it right now, Victoria. What the hell do I do? And Victoria says, I've done this fifty times. Here's what you do. So there it there's so much of professional services that will not be replaced. It'll be enhanced by AI, but I do talk to so many employees that I feel feel threatened by it. I think it must be kind of a tough time to be in HR and tell all your employees, Yes, some of you will be gone, but some of you will not be. Yeah. It's it's a totally tough time. And I think we could probably derail on that, but I wanna pick your brain on another topic. So I'm gonna I'm gonna kind of jump back here. And that is in building through rejection. And when we talked before, I think this may have been in the context of building the Claremont business. But Beth, I think you had mentioned like being rejected over 200 times before you got the First. Yes. And so tell us a little bit about that experience as you were building. Because it's so flippant and easy to say, like, yeah, I built these businesses and they were successful, but like it's painful and it's hard. What was that like to push? I mean, we're wait, it's still going on. I just wrote a substack that w I took a hundred and eighty no's before I got my first bulk by for this damn book. And I mean, people I knew ghosted me. People who said, Yeah, we'll do it. Never talk to me again. So Clearly, being rejected is super sensitive and it's super hard. I do tend to look at rejection as a part of business. If you can't take it, don't be an entrepreneur, but you can take it. So that's one. The second is to have super realistic expectations, right? Which it took me a while to figure out. Even though I thought every Fortune 1000 CEO should hire us because we're really smart and we're exactly who you want when the chips are down. Maybe they might, maybe. The thought should be that 10% of them should hire me. And so then I started to look at that list as I'm not going to close a hundred percent of the close meetings, but could I close half of them? And could I close 10% of the second and third meetings? And I do think it's a mindset shift. And they always tell this story, but I had a friend of mine a long time ago who's a consummate sales guy and he's been wildly successful in his life. And he would get off the phone after being rejected and he would say, Got another rejection. And I'd be like, Dave, literally you got rejected. He's like, Yep, I'm one goal closer to the big one, the big contract. And that's how he lived, you know? And he's just a very positive upbeat guy. And by the way, wildly successful. Wow. I I like that. Is that crazy? I mean, I don't think we can all do that, but it still was a learning. You know, it's funny though, like I have this My flaw is I am a consummate optimism. I just think I'm always gonna win. So like when I don't win, it's like it's really, it really like cuts to my core. And like I had one particular huge loss after I mean, I thought for sure it was it was probably one of the bigger clients we had pitched. Like it was a multifaceted engagement. Like I thought we were a hundred percent in and we got the call and said we went with someone else. And like I was almost I mean, not almost, I was for sure fighting back tears. And Beth came into my office and she's like, all right, go home. Like, feel it, deal with it, drink some wine if that makes you feel better. And then tomorrow let's figure out what we're gonna do instead. But like go feel it. Cause I think oftentimes you try to like push past rejection and just kind of keep going. Sometimes you just kind of have to sit with it and feel it, and then you can move on a little bit better. And we we actually have an exercise in the book. That you can go back to again and again because you do have to go through that grieving process. I mean, I remember that day and I remember that client and they missed out on some very great counsel, Victoria. But totally. You're you get so ahead of yourself when you're close on these big ticket items. You do kind of have to go back and say, Okay, my rule was I could get ten percent of these, so I may or may not get this one. And then you really have to go feel you have to write it down. You have to think about it. You have to see if you would do anything different. And then you just go wallow in it for a day or two and that's it. And move on. And I feel like we've we've sort of alluded to the book a few times, but we haven't like fully introduced it. So like let's go there. What is the book? What's it called? And tell us a little bit about what inspired you both to write it. Book is called Entrepreneur Like a Mother. and it is, I mean, to be fair, I was inspired probably a little bit differently than Beth, but like, you know, Beth and I have been together for 20 years. I am a little bit behind her age wise and kid wise. And I was lucky enough to have this mentor that turned business partner, that turned work wife best friend as I was building Claremont. And so that yin and yang between the Two of us, plus the fact that I had guidance in in from her from her first business. I always kind of called us unicorns. Like that, I think was part of our secret sauce was that we were together. So like when we wrote Entrepreneur Like a Mother, it's of course one part memoir, but more than anything, it is a five power room playbook to build your business as a mother. And like it was really born out of all of the mistakes that we made. With the idea of being the unicorn for all these female founders that are often doing it alone and don't have the unicorn. So we're hoping the book is gonna be their unicorn. And they can pick it up. This is really funny, but this morning I got a text from a guy friend of mine who has a big old architectural services business. He took a picture of himself reading the book and he said, Okay, I'm in power move three right now. This is not just for mothers. This is for anyone building a business. And that was that was the goal of it, that you felt like you weren't alone. You know, you could pick it up and be like, my God, she feels me. She knows I have absolutely no idea how to get connected to the one person that might help me build that piece of the business. And then there's a you know, there's really specific steps and how we did it, how you should do it, even to the extent of here's the DM that you write to someone who you want to do a favor for you to make a connection. We wanted it to be so practical because we we just didn't see anything for women, but certainly for moms that felt practical or felt like they were living the life we were living that like we still had to get the damn permission slip signed and somehow send the checks mixed to school. But then, you know, we also might close Coca-Cola that day. It was that crazy. And when we were writing the book, we were just like, it was the first time that we could talk to each other and be like, my God, that was a totally nutty 24 hours. That was as weird as I thought it was. But you have to look back on it and see it. And we just wanted moms to be able to look at it and say, Okay, my last 24 hours looked similar, but they were successful. So maybe I can be too. You know, there is this story in the book that I I have to say I think is my absolute favorite. When I found out I was pregnant with number five, I keep in mind I had just potty trained my twins, which were three and four. I had just sold every piece of baby equipment that I had at a garage sale. We had just started to hit our stride in terms of growth at the business. And I the day I was leaving for Disney World, I found out I was pregnant with number five. So like after I got back from Disney World, I had to go in and tell Beth that I was pregnant, knowing that that meant like, There's a maternity leave somewhere in the mix and we're in this point of the business. I was deathly afraid with what she was going to say to me. Like, how could you do this? It was the total opposite. It was like, I'm so excited for you. Okay, so let's figure out how you're gonna like live through the pregnancy, how we're gonna live through the business, and how we're gonna just kind of keep kicking ass. And it was like, it was this moment that, like, I could do whatever I wanted to do. We can keep driving this business. It's not like the The travesty that I thought had created for us. Like it was a really big moment for not only our relationship as business partners, but also as friends. Like to be able to see that kind of support, like unwavering support was pr pretty cool. Well, also, and don't you think it was also because I was like, okay, great. We'll just move forward. We always do. I mean, and I think there's some I mean, maybe it was like absolute blind delusion, but you you did go through it. Like you did. You were wildly successful. you know, in addition to being the great mom that you are. And how does that so I think there are so many women, and maybe this is parents in general, but you know, women come to mind of thinking that, you know, kind of building the family and having that really tough season of of having children in the early days has to sort of come in succession and then I'll do my business afterwards. So once I've sort of been through that tough season. But you've done it successfully in tandem. What do you think specifically Beth did, you know, outside of that conversation, but maybe kind of longer term through that experience? What did Beth or or others on the team do to show up for you and enable that success during that time? Well, like keep in mind, like I watched Beth do it in the her first business. So like I knew it was possible. Like when I first joined her first firm. Like I we always joke about it. Like I w remember sitting in this office and I saw her belly before I saw her face because she was eight months pregnant with the twins. Her twins, number three and four. So like I saw this ballbuster woman that was commanding boardrooms while juggling a bunch of kids. Like Sam and I never talk about this. Sam is her oldest, but like I remember him sitting in our conference room and I'd go in there and chit chat with him because he was just a cool kid. Like, but he was really little at the time and she was on the phone with some Bortune five hundred CEO while he was in the conference room. So like wait, you have to fast forward this to last week where we're at some fancy restaurant in New York City and Victoria and I are out with Sam, my oldest and his girlfriend. And I mean it was like Victoria's his aunt. They were talking more than we were It was 'cause I like it is just like to be able to see someone else do it ahead of time. But like honestly when I got started having my kids. I mean, I got started to get scared and I started to wonder if I could actually do it. And like she I I do the I had this one piece. She's like, You're not gonna suffer at home. You're not gonna suffer at work. Where you're gonna suffer is your socialized. And like she was a hundred percent right. Like I had something had to give, and that's probably what g gave for me. But again, I had a great support system in my social network too, that, you know, and now starting to come back to them again. And like they're still there for me. And they were great cheerleaders and great supporters through that edge. But like, you know, when I talk to other women that are in that moment, again, it's about priorities. Like I physically as women, I don't think you can put off having a family because there is a time glock on it. And so if you want to do both, you kind of have to figure out how to do both. And you also this goes back to the the beginning of our conversation, is you're gonna have to give grace to yourself that you're gonna fail. in all various aspects of what you're doing. But if you can pick yourself up and kind of move forward, like it it is doable. Like there, that conversation that you have to choose is utter bull crap. Like it's just not possible. Like you can do both. And you know, I don't know if this is helpful, Erin, to your question about what others can do, but one thing that you have to do so others can help you is say it. This is a hell week. I got three sick kids. Nothing's wrong with my kids today. I just feel completely overwhelmed. I'm gonna climb underneath my desk and stay there. Like I felt like we were both so lucky to have people around us and each other so strongly to just say, I don't need anything specific from you, but cheerleader, can you tell me that I'm not the worst mom ever for missing X? And I felt like the more open and transparent I was with people. First of all, they stopped calling me Super Mom and realized how pathetic I could really be. But second of all, they figured out ways to step in. I mean, I will never forget. I was telling my cousin missing stuff. I'm missing flights are delayed. I don't know what to do. A week later, I did miss something really important. I called her. I didn't have to explain anything. She already knew I was feeling stressed out about missing kids' stuff because flights was delayed. And I called her and I like, My flights delayed. First words out of her mouth are, where do you need me to me and when? I'm in my car right now. Go. And she did it for me. She saw my two kids who, for the record, neither of them remember any part of this incident, even though it's like a tattooed on my brain. But I do think in order for others to figure out how to help us, because they do want to help us, like you have to stop with the brave front and just say, Jesus, this week is rough for me or I am struggling. And like I swear, magically, women and people who love you figure out a how to step in and help. It's funny, like I so we're on this book tour, right? So two things happen. One, something came up with one of my twins. So she's here and she's sitting over there right now. She came to San Francisco with us and I told Beth that I think she's gonna come to the event. He's she's like awesome. I think Felicia's gonna be too. So Felicia and Vib can hang out. My youngest. Yeah. Like, so it just like that was perfect. And then the other thing, my oldest has homecoming this weekend and I like she didn't get the dress in time. I totally spaced on the alterations. I called my best friend from home. She pulled her out of lunch yesterday to go take her to go get her dress tailored. So like there is this community that shows up if you build it. And like that is I that's probably the most important thing, the community and being able to say, I need help. Which I think is again, if you go back to control freak type A founders, is a is a hard thing to say out loud. It's hard. You have to set your s your pride aside entirely. thinking about like a a similar sort of breakdown moment. And I called my co-founder and and said, you know, I I need to write an email before I can hang it up for today. And I have to communicate something hard. And I need you to literally hold my hand and write it with me. Because I just my brain can't do it right now. And you know, I think I think to your point, speaking up and not being afraid, even if it seems silly or something like you should be able to handle, just ask. Just ask. And remember too, this is All over the book because we it built our business, but it also kept us sane, is we're always paying it forward. So we I know when someone does me a favor, I'm gonna do them five more. And as I've gotten to know people on the book tour, when someone does me a favor, which my God, so many women have, at the end of the conversation, I do always say, Hey, what can I do for you? Okay, you don't have anything. So know that you've got a big old shit with me and make sure you use it. We're both really good at that, but we also built our business on the backs of People doing us favors and getting a little bit out of their comfort zone to help us. So we just have to remember we're gonna do the exact same thing. We're gonna return the call when we don't want to return it, return the email, make the connect, we're gonna do all the things when we don't feel like doing it, because of how many times people did it for us. Yeah. Totally. And what are you hearing? So you're on tour, you're talking with women, you're talking with men, any readers of your your book and and of your community. What are you hearing from folks right now? What's on their minds? What are they reacting to in the book? They they are so reacting to a female successful voice that they can relate to. I mean, the number of reviews, if you just read them, of DMs to us, even men, like I told you in the in the text that I got earlier, like I think they're responding to the relatability of it. And then when they see ultimately we were successful, maybe just our own definition, but we were. Suddenly, like entrepreneurship feels a little bit more relatable to the people reading it. And that's awesome for us because it's what we wanted. It is crazy. One of my my husband's best friends, I was looking at our reviews this morning. He wrote a review. Like, I didn't ask him to do I didn't even know he was gonna read the book, to be perfectly honest. And I see him show up. He is this total super masculine guy. Like The fact that he was reading that book and he's like, Yeah, entrepreneur like a mother. It was just the cutest thing I've ever seen in my entire life. The community that has shown up, and also what I think has been awesome, which we didn't know would happen, is most of the people that are picking up, they're saying, This is not just for entrepreneurs, like or just women. Like I can see a lot of these power moves being very applicable to women who choose to stay in corporate America or men who choose to stay in corporate America and they want to forward their career there. Like there are bare it's it's a lot of how you make yourself stronger as a ambitious person. Not only just like how do you build a business. And and And two of our favorite reviews came from women who are not mothers by choice. They do not want to be mothers. Yeah. And one woman who I know actually wrote a review and said the title sells this book short. It's not just for moms. Yeah. We were just trying to be very authentically, you know, who we were. And that's why we wrote the book. But we love hearing that too. And by the way, there's there's many guys who have read it that we've gotten feedback from, which I just love too. Yeah. I love that. I mean, and I think like, you know, even if you're not a parent, there are so many other things that take up space in your life that you have to figure out. how to prioritize and how to balance outside of just the work. I don't know too many people who are fulfilled in life by only the work in front of them and nothing else. So that that cracks. Yeah, that's right. What would you say is there and maybe this is a spoiler. So if it is, don't maybe t tell me to to move on to the next question. But is there like a thematic aha moment for readers as they're coming to the end of the book that you're hearing? God, I think there's two of them. One is in the beginning, which is how you choose your business. The aha moment should be it's not just because you really like doing the thing you're doing, that there's a rubric by which you say, okay, wait a second. This is the right business, this is the right niche, and I could cross seven figures if I so choose. So I feel like for people that have reviewed it, that seems to be a really significant moment. And then the second part is how often you mess up and you have to pivot. And how it's like a daily, weekly, monthly thing versus that you make one big mistake and can you overcome it? Victoria and I, I mean, we made so many mistakes constantly that I hope the aha moment is well, that's just another big mistake I made. Let's try something else. Really? Victoria, what about you? What have you heard? Anything different or would you say those are? No, I think that that's pretty I think that that is pretty spot on. I think the other piece that that didn't talk about in choosing the business is not whether or not it's just a viable business, but like choosing the right business for the life that you want. Like when we built Claremont, that's that Mapreneur mayhem matrix that I never can say 'cause it is tongue twister. But like with Claremont, we were building that business for an exit. So as a result, we had a ton of mayhem in our lives and it the balance was just didn't exist. Or it exists in the truest sense of it. This business, like It's a little bit different. Like I I said earlier, like I want to be home with the kids a little bit more. So like the mayhem part of it, I've dialed down. And as a result, the future financial value of it is impacted. Not impacted in a negative way, it's just impacted in the absolute terms. And so like figuring out the business that you want versus the mayhem that you want in your life is how you create the business model that you're going to use. And I think that that then leads into the now do you have a viable business pro business idea that you want to take forward and build and create and scale. Yeah. I love that. I'm gonna have to go look at that rubric and run our business through it. It's good. Make sure we picked the right one. Trust me, we did it for this business as well. Yeah. No, I I think those are those are huge aha moments and and I'm excited to dig in for myself. So I'm gonna I'm gonna wrap us with our sort of quick hit advice questions at the end. This is something we always do in these conversations is just end with something for listeners to think about. And so I'll ask for perspectives from both of you on these. The first is what do you think the next generation of women founders will need to do different to build successful and sustainable companies? Maybe better Invest in each other. That is what they have to do. Stop looking for investment from men who aren't giving it to us. Wealth is going into women's hands. We gotta invest, even you know, a thousand bucks. We gotta help each other. And and I this might be a little controversial, but I'm gonna say it anyway. Cause I think the younger generation is starting to get back to it, but there was a moment that younger people think that it's not a it's not a hard work, it's not a slog, like you gotta work it's not just gonna be handed to you. So you want the success, you want everything, you gotta put in the time. Social media has skewed. You gotta put in the time. It does not you know. Five time revenue valuations on business do not does not exist by sitting on the sidelines waiting for it to come to you. Or cause you had a viral moment on Instagram. Yeah. Totally. That did not happen either. Yeah. Yeah. I even find myself, I know exactly what you're saying, Victoria. And there's like this, you know, something about the I can get it right now sort of culture that has approved for all of us that I have to check myself about my expectations of how quickly I can do things or how quickly I can achieve things because most things actually take time. Still. I mean I do I have to admit, like I felt I personally have fallen into that trap in this lat in this third business a couple different times. And like I had to reset my mindset being like Claremont didn't happen overnight. And like there were so many struggles. This one's not just gonna happen overnight either. So like I it it is it's a constant shift, particularly in the environment that we live in. Yeah. All right. So one last wrap up. and Beth, we'll start with you again. How do you see, in light of everything that's happening in the world today and in the market today, how do you see the conversation around ambition, family, and entrepreneurship changing in the coming years? I think women have to stop running away from the term ambition. I think it's so ridiculous that every PR person we talked to said you can't use the word ambition with women. It has a negative connotation. Like we can be ambitious. Because we want our kids not to have college tuition bills they have to cover. Yeah. We can be ambitious for a million different reasons, but this idea that it's harsh or it's very unfeminine to be ambitious. I I think we get to define what that term means for us, and then we get to pursue it. Society doesn't get to tell us what's good, what's bad, what ambition is for women that's different than men. What the hell would they know? We get to do our own. Yes. I'm gonna make sure we use that word in the title of the episode. I agree. We would love it. Victoria, what do you? And I have to say, so four of my five four of my five kids are girls. And so what I'm hoping that they look at in terms of business motherhood where they wanna be is I just want I it's it's a real basic traditional view. I want them to be able to think that they can do whatever they wanna do. And that and that might mean that they take a path that's at home. That is awesome. There's like but I want them to know that they don't have to choose. They can just do it all if they choose to do it that way. And so like I think that there is a lot of pressure these days that you do have to choose again. And like I think the pendulum is swinging towards another way in a political environment that I don't love. And so I want to make sure that they know that they can do whatever they want. Same. I've got two little girls and I couldn't agree more. I think it's also never too late, right? Like you don't have to away at eighteen and have it all figured out. You can reinvent yourself however many times you choose in however way you choose. So it has been so much fun picking your brains and chatting this afternoon. Thank you for spending some time with me. Tell us where we can find your book for listeners who would like to learn more, check it out for themselves. You can find it anywhere books are sold. It was published by Wiley, so Amazon, Barnes and Noble, your independent bookseller who has actually sold almost. 2,000 copies of our book have been sold through independent booksellers, which is just freaking amazing. So use them as well. And then you can also go on to female mavericks.com. And if you do that, there's some other things that you can get along with the book if you buy it directly from from our website. But for God's sakes, just buy it. Fabulous. Well, thank you so much. Pleasure to chat. And until next time. Thanks. Great to have you.