Redefining Success: Balancing Business and Motherhood with Nicky Elliott

Your Dream Business

In this episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast, I’m having a very candid and meaningful discussion with my guest Nicky Elliott, a female entrepreneur and founder of the Wilder Collective. We delve into themes such as the personal definition of success, the influence of societal expectations, and the challenges of balancing business with motherhood. This episode highlights the importance of flexibility, changing perspectives, and the evolving concept of success, with both of us sharing personal anecdotes and practical insights for female business owners navigating similar journeys.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• Redefining Success: Success isn’t a one-size-fits-all concept. It’s important to define it on your own terms, rather than let societal expectations dictate your path.

• The Importance of Flexibility: Being adaptable and open to changing perspectives is crucial for both personal and professional growth, especially when balancing business and family life.

• Support for Female Entrepreneurs: Sharing personal stories and experiences helps create a sense of community and provides valuable insights for women navigating the challenges of running a business while juggling other responsibilities.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Nicky Elliott on Instagram or Website Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript

Teresa: What does success mean to you and how do you define it? Have you been in the trap that I have where you've looked at someone else's version of success and measured yourself against it and then felt really rubbish because you hadn't quite hit the mark or the bar that they set and is it okay to change your mind to define success as one thing and then to change your mind to another thing and how do you get so clear on what it is that you want, that you are so bloody minded in the fact of, I don't care what anybody else thinks of me or my business. This is how I define success and this is what I want. Well, these are some of the fascinating conversations that I have with my guest on today's episode of the podcast. Welcome to the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your host, Therese Heath Waring, an international bestselling author, award winning [00:01:00] speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast. I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love, but one that perfectly aligns with you and the season of life that you're in. In each episode, I'll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus we'll be diving into some mindset, tools and strategies that keep you focused, motivated, and are going to stop you from getting in your own way. So if you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you are in the right place. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. Okay, you are gonna love today's episode. When I record interviews, I batch, so when it comes to doing the intro and outro, oh, I don't do an outro anymore, but when it comes to doing the intro, I go back and quickly, like, fly through the episode to remind myself [00:02:00] of what we talked about. And I literally listened to the whole episode with this one because I was like, oh, wow, we talk about so much different stuff and it's such a good conversation. And not only that, I think it is the most perfect episode for this time of year. So at the point this comes out, it is the 30th of December, and this episode is actually sandwiched between a part one and a part two, all around reviewing your year and goal setting and that sort of thing. And I would love to say that I planned this, but I didn't. The universe just obviously, like, made this happen because this episode is so, so perfect for this time of year. Today, I'm interviewing the very lovely Nicky Elliott. Nicky worked in events for over 15 years and founded her own agency in 2011 before having her children. On her second maternity leave during the pandemic, she knew she could not return to a full. hour. That's right. Daily [00:03:00] commute and spend so little time with her kids. So she started a unisex kids clothing brand after riding the waves as a product based business, investing a lot in it and losing it. She used her platform that she had built to share stories about amazing female founders that she had met along the way. She now has a podcast where she has women's stories from early memories right the way up to present day, which I have already been on. So we'll make sure we link to that in the show notes. And what her listeners can learn from them. And in 2024, she launched the Wilder Collective, an online community for female founders and freelancers to share their journey and support each other. Nicky and I have such an interesting conversation. Like I said, I went back and started listening to it to get the main themes that we talked about, remind myself of some of the stuff and therefore obviously let you in this intro know. what is coming up. We talk about so many different things and we generally talk about, if I had to kind of sum it up, [00:04:00] this would be very much an episode of what it's like to be a woman in business and in the world and what, how we define ourselves and how other people define us and success. Like that's a really kind of short summary of what we talk about. We talk about the fact of the success is the main theme. And, and I don't know whether you know, but there's a good reason this podcast is called Your Dream Business, because I am very much of the opinion that you get to decide what your dream version of your dream business looks like one of the things that we talk about in this episode is especially in the online industry, there is a big push to having people who, you know, have seven figure launches and, and have eight figure businesses and all that sort of thing. And almost defining success as that, that money is the only measure of success. And my opinion, which has never changed for all the years that I have been doing this has [00:05:00] been that you get to define it. If it means working less, if it means earning an okay salary for not much work, then brilliant. If it means taking the summer off, great. Like whatever this means to you, that is your version of your dream business. And that's what I want to empower you to do. But also we talk about how it's absolutely fine to change your mind. Because we go through seasons of life, and in those seasons of life, different things are important to us and different things matter to us. And actually, I have gone through various different seasons of life since having my business, of which I talk about, and, and I have changed. And sometimes that has not helped me in the sense of, I don't know, I guess, In the last year or two, I have been much more confident and happy to say that I want to earn good money. And I want, and I do see money as one of the measures of my success. And really, it's about the case of having [00:06:00] no judgment for anybody who feels like that, or no judgment for someone else who doesn't feel like that. It's just different, and we can all make our own decision as to what that success looks like for us. So we talked through that. We talked through some real kind of fairly deep conversations about bringing up children and up my own. I share quite a lot of my own personal thoughts around this and my own personal thoughts about. schooling and starting businesses and that sort of thing. We also talk about how it's fine to want to talk about money and how it's fine to change your mind. There is so much packed into this episode. I think you're going to get so much from it. It really was a great conversation. And I think, like I said, I couldn't have planned it better. I didn't plan it this intentionally, but I could have planned it better to be at this time of year. So I hope that you are, if you are listening to this over the Christmas break and over the new year break, that you are sat doing something nice or just chilling out and listening to this. We would love to know what you think. So [00:07:00] please do go ahead and DM us or tag us. We would love to see that. Okay. Without further ado, here is Nicky. Nicky, welcome to the podcast. Nicky: Thank you for having me. Teresa: I'm excited about today's conversation. We're actually doing a bit of a podcast swap, so I'm going to be on Nicky's podcast soon ish, depending on when my episode comes out. Anyway, just check both of them because, you know, it's hard to say. There's a lot of planning that goes involved in podcasts. It's a lot of work. So anyway, so I'm excited about it. And also you sent me my questions the other day, and I'm really excited about answering the questions because your podcast is a bit different to the questions I'd normally answer. So that's very exciting. So we'll just. you know, leave that there for them to come and find it. Nicky: Yes. I'm looking forward to asking them. Teresa: That's very cryptic. You will need to go and look at Nicky's podcast next. Okay. So we are talking today about redefining measures of success, which is a very subject, very close to my heart, because I think in the [00:08:00] online industry, we often define success as a seven figure launch or a six figure launch or something like that. But something happened to you that helped you redefine success for you. So can you just take us back to that point where you went, hang on a minute, I don't think this is right anymore. Nicky: Yeah. I mean, as is the case for a lot of people, I think when I became a mom, A lot changed for me. And it wasn't like a sudden moment, but it was more like a, that was part of what happened during this process. So I had my daughter and I went back to work. I used to work in corporate events for 15 or so years. I was in quite a senior ops role running a group of people. Companies. So that was my big job in inverter commas, if you like. And that had a decent salary. And it was based in London, and I was commuting in and out of London. And then I had my son at the beginning of 2020, [00:09:00] which obviously was the old Pan D. Yeah. And I was on maternity leave through the pandemic and. did what a lot of people were doing. It wasn't unusual. It wasn't peculiar to me. I had a big reevaluation reassessment and felt that having two kids now rather than just one meant a balance tipped even more sort of away from that role I'd had. I had a four hour daily commute, two hours each way, which was really challenging. So when I was doing that with my daughter, I was out of the house before she was even up. My husband took her to the nursery. I would pick her up at six o'clock, chuck her in the bath, chuck her in bed. No quality time. And my kids are school age now. And you know, I just wanted to have more time with them. So I started my own business for the second time because I had started an events company in my previous career. I started a unisex children's clothing brand. Because I had a daughter and a son and got very caught up in [00:10:00] issues around the way they dress and kind of got on my soapbox a bit about that and launched a clothing brand, which I absolutely loved. And it evolved into a women's wear brand. And I did that for a couple of years, but it was in a really, really challenging marketplace. And Over the course of doing that, I'd met other amazing female founders running their own businesses and had created this kind of network for myself. And that was when all of these conversations started happening for me about measures of success. And I started thinking about what success looked like to me because I had gone from the big job and a high five figure salary to zero pounds a month income, which I appreciate is a privileged position to be in. My husband and I talked about it. We did a lot of belt tightening. So it's not like we were swimming in money and it, and it came easily, but it was possible. But with that, I had to completely change what success meant to me because with, with a startup, especially a products based startup, [00:11:00] you don't make any money and you don't make any money for a while, but that doesn't mean the business wasn't successful, wasn't selling. You know, I had sellout collections. I had really, really loyal customers. I had all five star reviews, repeat customers. So that was when it started shifting for me. What is success? Because We're all fixed, fixated on money and status. And on the status front, I had also dropped down, you know, feasibly because I'd been in this big role now amongst my friends who are all in their late thirties, early forties, they've all been in their careers for 20 years. We're all starting to progress. And I suddenly put myself to the bottom of the pile. Yes, I'm CEO, but I'm also tea lady. of this one person startup operation. So on the money and status front, I really had a just a huge, huge reassessment and it was all part of that, that big journey, really. Teresa: So I feel like I'm about to jump into a very deep question. I've [00:12:00] got so many comments on that, but I just want to ask you one thing. Why do you think it is so inherent to us? Because I was exactly the same. I worked in corporate. I got made a director at the age of like 30 something early thirties. My title meant everything to me. I was probably horrible. Like I was so up my, my own ass, like, because I was like, I'm a director now. Like, oh God, it was awful. Why do you think it's so important to us and do you think it's. Just certain people that it's important to or where do you think this comes from? Nicky: I think it's important to almost everyone and I think it we are all a product of a capitalist system and we are sold to and sort of talk to from all angles at all hours of the day. And it's impossible not to be influenced by that. We also grew up [00:13:00] with parents who were billionaires, who were making more money than their parents before them. And we were growing up with films like Wall Street and, you know, people who were successful, were making money, those two things went together, like success was money and status through that lens. And it's really, really hard to unlearn that and unpick that if you, if you don't question it. you will just carry on on that path. And I was on that path. And of course I still get caught up in that. I still get caught up in, you know, what my friends might be making or because I'm a human being who exists in the, in the world in 2024. But It's like I have to check myself on that front. So yeah, I think it's a societal thing. I think there is so much noise, so much external stuff, what we grew up with, what's still around us now. I do hope it's starting to shift a bit, but these things take a lot of time [00:14:00] because I can exist in an echo chamber where people are like, yeah, I agree. I agree. But of course that's a very, very, very small part of the world and actually out there people are still measuring success on, on money and status. So. I get it, but I think, yeah, it goes very deep. Teresa: And do you know what, I was debating whether to say something because you were saying that, which shames me a little bit, but I think it's important. The very, my, my daughter, who's 14 going on 25, as they all are, she has a boyfriend, a new boyfriend, I say new, he's been a few months now. And my question to her was what do his parents do? Nicky: Okay. Teresa: Like, isn't that? ridiculous, right? Like, even though I have gone through a similar, and I'm still going through similar stuff in terms of, and I think we evolve this all the time, you know, in terms of what's important to us, but isn't that awful? Like [00:15:00] that, that was my measure. That was my, you know, not are they nice people, not are they got good values, not any of that. My immediate way that I could very quickly in my head, make an assumption about them is to know what they did as jobs. Nicky: Yeah. I mean, it's not surprising. And I don't think you can beat yourself up for that because. It is a way of creating a picture of someone in your mind. It's certainly not the whole picture, as you said. My husband and I had a, had a conversation about a school dad just last night about the fact that he does a manual job and the assumptions that we had made about him and how the way he communicates is really incongruous with how he appears. And, you know, people are putting certain things out into the world. So, it is difficult. And again, generationally, we are all defined by what we do. You know, I talk about this all the time. We talk about, you know, what do you want to be? And we mean, what job do you want to have? But we're tying our entire identity to what we do for work. So it's not surprising that you asked her [00:16:00] that question. Teresa: Yeah. Yeah. No, it's not. And I do, you know, Part of me, like I said, as we just said, I thought, do I even admit to that? And I'm like, well, no, I, you know, it's important that we do because then that's a point where I can go, okay, yeah, no, probably that isn't the best idea. So that brings me on to another question then about your children. And okay, again, I'm going to talk really personal stuff, but I think it's really important. So in my family, in my aunties and uncles and siblings and like the kind of extended family, I