Lessons to Remember for Business and Motherhood
After building a busy wedding planning business over the course of 5 years while also navigating growing my family, I’ve come to acknowledge some key principles in my journey that have proven true time and again. There are many lessons that I have learned about business from my experience of motherhood and vice versa, and I hope to encourage you by sharing some of them here!
Mentoring and being mentored is important for your success.
Just like a new mom will turn to more experienced moms for help and advice when the complexities of motherhood start to rear their heads, an entrepreneur must turn to more experienced entrepreneurs for help and advice. This is called mentorship, and it’s a beautiful thing! You truly can’t do business alone. It’s a difficult calling and a hard lifestyle to manage well depending on your goals, so being able to learn from others’ experience and get their insight is invaluable.
Likewise, it’s important for entrepreneurs to form mentor-mentee relationships with newer business owners in their community or industry. Meeting with new business owners and offering them support has been one of the most fulfilling parts of my own journey as an entrepreneur—not because I’m an “expert,” but because getting to support someone else on their way to success is genuinely a joy! It also helps me connect back to situations in my own business that I might otherwise take for granted, and helping other women work through their own entrepreneurship challenges keeps me sharp.
2. Sacrifice is often necessary to grow.
When we become moms, we often willingly (and sometimes not so willingly) give up things that we love, enjoy, or even need for the sake of our children. Maybe you unintentionally skip breakfast to make sure your child is fed and feeling secure. Maybe you give up a hobby or even a job to do what’s best for your children in certain seasons. We can do these things with joy primarily because of God’s grace and faithfulness to us, and also because we know that they will be worth it in the long run. We hope that today’s sacrifices will be far outweighed by the good that comes from them.
Growing a business also requires sacrifice more often than not. When you start a business, you’ll likely give up—in part or in whole—quality time with your family, your hobbies, any extra funds in your bank account, or sleep. Sometimes a measure of hustle is required to reach certain goals within a certain timeframe, and sometimes it’s worth it. Knowing which sacrifices are worth it for your business, and also when and how to make them, is more of an art than a science, and one that takes time to learn.
3. Sacrifice is often necessary, but so is rest.
Although you may have to make sacrifices to grow your business, it’s far too easy to overextend yourself and risk becoming burnt out both physically and mentally (I should know—that’s exactly what happened to me)! Hard work in your business is good within reason, but incredibly dangerous for your family and spiritual health when taken to extremes. Any time you make a sacrifice for your business, do so with great intentionality. You may need to place a container of sorts around it… For instance, if you have to work every night after the kids go to bed, you may need to agree with your spouse that you will only do so for a certain amount of days/weeks/months or that once a certain measurable goal has been reached you’ll return to a healthier routine. Remember that God instituted the Sabbath for a reason—in His goodness He granted us a set apart time to rest, but taking Sabbath rest seriously also shows that we ultimately depend on Him to provide for us and that we recognize we can accomplish nothing meaningful from our own power. In this way, resting is an act of worship.
Making God-honoring sacrifices for your children and family is altogether different in that you may be explicitly called to make them on an ongoing basis, and you may not really have a choice lest you risk grieving the Lord. However, practicing Sabbath rest and acknowledging your dependence on God and His goodness is vitally important for your children—teach them how to rest in Him! It’s also important for the sake of a healthy family. If either parent is constantly working or anxious about what must be done next (even if the work is homemaking), they set an example for their children that subtly but dangerously insinuates that God is somehow not enough. Don’t allow this lie to take root in your home—practice and teach rest.
4. You have to surrender to see God move.
There have been times when I feared for the life of my unborn child, times that I haven’t been able to provide relief to a sick kid, times that I didn’t know how we would make our money stretch until the next payday, and times that I had absolutely no clue how to handle a toddler’s meltdown. Each time that I have laid these situations at my Father’s feet and asked for His help He has provided exactly what I need, whether that was simply comfort when none was to be found, a gift card from a member of my church family, or a generous extension of help from a loved one.
There have been times when I’ve gone weeks or months without receiving a single inquiry, times when I haven’t known where the money to make payroll would come from, and times that I’ve cried because doing the right thing in my business seemed impossible. I haven’t handled each of these instances perfectly, but I can attest that each time I have gone to the Lord in prayer and surrendered each situation to Him, knowing that my own anxiety can’t do a single thing to help me but that the Lord of the universe cares even for me and my tiny efforts, He has provided for me.
5. Nothing is promised, but God is still good.
God does not promise us anything about how our own lives or our children’s lives will turn out. Many of the most faithful people I know will never live in a fancy house or have a big bank account, but many will face trials. So much is out of our control, and oftentimes we will face suffering or see those we love suffer. In those situations, we might be tempted to forget that God is always good, but the truth that He is good still stands. He has plans and purposes that we will not always understand, but we can still trust in His character!
In the same way, God does not promise that our business ventures will be successful just because we are His children. In fact, sometimes (like in my case), He may lead you to leave a business behind in order to better follow Him or to bless you in the long run! Even if an idea or a business of yours fails, trust that God still cares for you and that He will use you for His purposes—and look for ways to obey and glorify Him in your current circumstances, whatever they may be.
No matter whether we consider our motherhood or our entrepreneurship, our chief end is to glorify God.
In all of our endeavors, glorifying our good God should be our main goal! I bet that there will be many times even in the coming month that you don’t know what the next step forward in your motherhood or business looks like. In times of uncertainty or difficulty, simply ask yourself what you can do to obey God and glorify Him in that moment. That might look like laying your anxieties down at His feet and trusting in Him to provide, or it might look like giving something up or doing a hard thing you’ve been called to do, or any other number of things.
One of the beautiful aspects of our status as children of God is that “we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). No matter what our circumstances are, we can do God’s work, and we know that there will be eternal rewards for each faithful sacrifice we make today.
Lord, encourage our hearts, and let our lives and work be a testament to your goodness and faithfulness for the sake of your glory!
