THE INSPIRATION PLACE PODCAST
Miriam Schulman:
Well, Hey there, my art lover, you passion maker, you. This is Miriam Schulman, host of The Inspiration Place Podcast. You’re listening to episode number 139. I am so grateful that you’re here and shout outs, by the way, to my newest listeners in Nigeria, incredible. Today, we’re talking all about making space for motherhood. In this episode, you’ll discover strategies for balancing caretaking, whether that’s aging parents, baby humans, fur babies, whatever that is, balancing caretaking with your art and your work.
Now, before we dive in and I introduce you to our guest, I want to update you about my baby. No, it’s not a human baby. It’s my book baby. Mother’s day is right on the horizon, which is why I think it’s a perfect episode today to talk about making space for motherhood. But I really wanted to update you about the book baby. Because I consider this kind of our baby, our baby together. Since so many of you have been asking me for years to write a book like this.
If you’ve been listening to my podcast for a while, you might remember that I made my goal for 2021 to get a publishing contract. Meaning I want to traditionally publish my book. In order to get a publishing contract for a nonfiction book, you need a proposal to send to publishers. I’m going to walk you through the process because all this is new to me. So, I’m going to assume that it’s new to you as well.
So, you don’t just write a book and give them the book with nonfiction. You need a proposal that describes who you are, who cares about this book, what your platform is, meaning your followers, your network, your bio, and then an outline of the book and all the chapters and who the ideal reader is. And you have to research the market. It’s a huge deal.
It’s actually like 60 or 70 pages just to write the proposal. And you include some sample chapters that takes part of it as well. Now what happens is once you write the proposal, the proposal is actually what the publishing houses look at when they decide whether or not they want to invest in a book, whether they want to publish the book. So they’re going to be investing money and resources and paying you, the author. The proposal is really a sales package that helps them decide if this is a book they want to print or not.
Now, most authors do this using a literary agent to broker the deal. And that is the route that I am going. To get the literary agent, now, some agents will take you on without a proposal, but most won’t. I had a proposal when I approached my literary agent and the one that I signed with, that I’m very excited to tell you, I did sign with a literary agent. She actually had me rewrite it. So, there was a vision for the book that she had that wasn’t quite captured by my proposal. And she was willing to take a chance on me and give me the guidance to rewrite that.
By the way, not all agents will do that. There were some agents I approached who probably shared Michelle’s, this is the name of my agent, Michelle’s vision for the book, the type of book that I’m writing now, but didn’t have the time or didn’t want to take the chance or the risk of helping a new author shape the proposal. So, now my agent has my rewritten proposal and she’s sending it out to publishers and we’ve already gotten some interest.
So, it seems like things have happened really fast, but really I just haven’t been updating you on the journey. So I had approached Michelle back in the end of January and it took a good month to six weeks before we finalized our contract together. And I had to also rewrite their proposal. Michelle has been sending out these proposals and pitching this book idea to the editors that she knows that she feels my book would be a right fit for. And we’ve gotten some interest. We’ve gotten an interest, which means this is going to happen.
Now, I can’t share any more details with you, because that would mess with the negotiations. But I promise that you’re going to be the first to know as soon as I DocuSign that deal. Pinky swear. So, the book baby is happening. This is getting published and I can’t wait to put this forward in the world.
All right. So, now I want to introduce you to my guest, Lianne Kim. Now, she also has just published a book and she went the other route. She went the self-publishing book route. So, in addition to today’s interview where we’re going to talk at all about being moms, I invited her to join me inside the Facebook group, my free group, The Inspiration Place, so we can discuss the pros and cons of traditional publishing versus self-publishing.
We would love to have you join us. So, if you’re listening to this episode, when it goes live, Lianne is joining me on Thursday, May 6th at 2:00 Eastern Time. The event is free and all you have to do is request to join the free Facebook group. You can find that over at schulmanart.com/group, we’ll make sure we link to that in the show notes.
If you’re not on Facebook or you can’t make it live, or you’re listening to this way after the fact, because you’ve just discovered me and your binge listening to episodes, don’t worry there will be a replay. Go search for it over on YouTube. It’s called book babies. Now let’s move on to the show.
Lianne Kim is a business coach and founder of Mamas & Company, a community for mama entrepreneurs. She is the host of the widely popular podcast, The Business of Thinking Big, and the author of the brand new book, Building a Joyful Business. Lianne is on a mission to help women make a great living on their own terms, doing what they love. Please welcome to The Inspiration Place Lianne Kim. Hey there, Lianne. How are you?
Lianne Kim:
I am doing great today, Miriam. How are you?
Miriam Schulman:
Like you hesitated, I was like, “Wait, did I say her name right? Did I [crosstalk 00:07:41] her last name?” [inaudible 00:07:42] something really wrong [inaudible 00:07:44] there.
Lianne Kim:
Did I?
Miriam Schulman:
No, if I did, I’m like, “No, that’s not my last name. What are you doing?”
Lianne Kim:
I was thinking, do I tell the truth and say like, things are a little challenging right now, but-
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, your kids are home today?
Lianne Kim:
Yeah. So, I live in Toronto and schools have been on again, off again. We were home for all of January and February, March we were back in school. And then we just found out the other day that kids are home again for the foreseeable future. So, we’re juggling, my husband and I are both working from home. The kids are trying to do their school work. It’s like a co-working space around here. I’ll tell you.
Miriam Schulman:
Well, this is exactly why I wanted you on the show today, because my children, don’t kid yourself that they get that much easier as they get older. My 23 year old and 20 year old, I don’t have the same issues that you do and I really wanted to have you on, because I do have a lot of people in my community who are mothers and also not just mothers, but who are caregivers. So, they have that added responsibility to their families, in addition to being the caretaker of their creativity and the caretaker of their business.
Lianne is in my mastermind and you are so inspiring with the strategies and because you are so in the thick of it, I’m like that older parent who doesn’t remember what it’s like to be a young kid anymore. So, I’m so happy you’re here. But before we get into it, I just want to share a quick story, that you’re talking about having your kids home because the quarantine, my kids had asked me, “Mom, what would you have done if you had to homeschool us?”
Lianne Kim:
I’m dying to know where this is going.
Miriam Schulman:
Well, I don’t think I’ve shared this story in the podcast and it’s super funny. So, I said, “Well, you have to be more specific. Just pick an age. How old were you when this hypothetical is happening?” My son says, “Okay, I’m in sixth grade until I was in ninth grade.” I go, “Perfect. I have the answer for you. Seth, sixth grade does not matter. I don’t care what your teacher say. You could take this year off. Talia, you were too young for ninth grade anyway, I’m holding you back a year. You’ll do ninth grade next year.” Done.
Lianne Kim:
I love it.
Miriam Schulman:
Well, that’s my thought before the pandemic wore on to year two.
Lianne Kim:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, let me be clear. I have a ton of respect for stay-at-home moms and for homeschooling moms. That’s just not me. It’s never been who I am. I’ve always loved to work. And actually I started my first business, which ironically enough was a painting business, an art business, when my son was a baby and I was on maternity leave with him. Even then, I was doing it because my brain just needed something to do. I’ve always really loved being someone who juggles a lot of different passions and family is just one of those things.
So, I never saw myself being a homeschool parent or having kids at home while I was working. Not only do we enjoy the benefits of having a kids in school most of the time, they are also in before and after daycare. So, I really enjoy that freedom. But at the same time, this year has been a bit of a whirlwind and a bit of a challenge for all of us.
We’re all doing things we never thought we’d do. And we’re all in situations we never really expected. Especially those of us who are trying to run a business or run our creativity empires while caring for others. It can be really overwhelming and really frustrating.
Miriam Schulman:
Absolutely. That’s why I had asked my kids to be specific, because what my business looks like now, it didn’t look like when they were younger and I didn’t work 9:00 to 6:00 or whatever, I don’t even know what I work now. Who knows? I wasn’t doing those things then. I mean, I was really in the trenches with them. I didn’t have help from a housekeeper or a nanny. The kids came home from school and my kids, even as you learn, as your kids get older, yeah, you don’t have diapers anymore, but now you have this kid who maybe takes after you, because they’re ADD and you have to sit on them or they’re not going to do their homework. Suddenly that’s the full time job.
So, I definitely have compassion for whether it’s the running it now with the quarantine, which is super challenging or even just the regular challenge of managing it all so that you do have quality time with your family, however that looks, and the responsibilities you have as well as taking care of yourself.
Lianne Kim:
I have a friend of mine, whose kids are slightly older than mine, and she always says, “Little kids, little problems, big kids, big problems.” You don’t just have no problems as your children age. I’ll be honest, I think we have it pretty lucky, because our children, I had my kids very close together, so they’re in grades two and three right now. And for online learning at home… I also think that’s just a super adaptable age. It’s also a really fun age. So far, it’s my favorite. I have to be honest. I was never really the mom who was obsessed with babies or toddlers. That just wasn’t my jam.
Miriam Schulman:
Same.
Lianne Kim:
But now that they’re kids it’s like, you can do stuff with them.
Miriam Schulman:
I’m still not the mom who gets gaga over other people’s babies.
Lianne Kim:
Yeah. No.
Miriam Schulman:
But my husband’s like, “Look at that baby.” It’s like, “So?”
Lianne Kim:
Mine too. I was just going to say… Maybe it’s because they never had to carry them, I was like, “My husband is obsessed with babies.”
Miriam Schulman:
No, other women aren’t like us. I don’t get super excited by other people’s babies. I was super excited by my babies, but not other people’s babies. I want to make this super actionable, because another reason why I’m so happy to have Lianne here is we have inside our mastermind, she was sharing tips with a expectant mom about how to take care of business when you are actually, even before the baby comes, taking care of that pregnancy can feel challenging. Although we both know that’s the easiest way to take care of your baby is when they’re in your belly, [inaudible 00:13:53] it’s much harder once they come out. So, can you share like some of those tips?
Lianne Kim:
One of the things I would love to share, and again, this is whether you are a parent or you’re caring for somebody else. One of the things that I had said is really keep in mind the business that you want to build. This is nobody else’s journey but yours. So, all the thoughts of like, “Well, so-and-so does it that way, or I should be doing it that way.” That’s really rampant in our society. And I talk about this in my book.
You really want to get to the core of what you want to create, and it’s okay to have big dreams and visions and have no clue how you’re going to get there. I still encourage you to dream big and think about, “What is it that I really want in five years time or 10 years time? What does that look like?”
And then also be okay with, it’s not going to happen overnight. You will find a way, truly, I think about everything I’ve done. I’ve only had a business in the last seven years since having children. That’s when I started my community.
There are so many things I’ve accomplished in that seven years, but it didn’t all happen at once. So, my first tip is really get clear on what a joyful business or venture feels like for you. Then, start to think about, what are the most important things? I think I shared this with our mutual friend, [Camilla 00:15:18], in the group.
Really think about what are the most important things that I need to get done today versus what can wait? And that I would say has become my super power over the last year, because there were days where I’d be working 30-hour, 40-hour weeks, and then boom, we’d have a day’s notice that our kids were at home. And all of a sudden, back in the early days of COVID, we had no childcare, we had no online learning at all. So, it was us, 100% on us. So, I literally went from doing seven or eight hour days to like, “Holy shit, I only have three hours today.”
Miriam Schulman:
I want to circle back to something you said in the beginning, because we’re moving quickly. And I don’t want something that you said that was so important to get lost. So, you said the first tip really was to get very clear on your vision. One thing that I always try and encourage my audience to think about is that you’re never going to grow bigger than your dream. It’s our jobs to make those dreams super big and almost feel like they’re not even quite attainable yet. So that you’re always reaching for something super big, because if you dream small, that’s going to limit you.
So, I think that’s super important that you share that, the first one. And then I want to just be very clear that tip number two is getting very efficient by eliminating things that probably don’t matter anymore. That is something that I do and I’m sure you do as well, Lianne, with my team on a weekly basis is, we’ll sit there and we’ll go through their tasks and reevaluate, “Should she still be doing this? Is this important? Why are we making these Pinterest pins? Are we actually getting traffic from Pinterest? No, we’re not. We’re getting it from over here. So, why are we wasting time creating these pins?” So, we’re always looking at, is everything, all those shoulds that are on our list, are they still shoulds?
Lianne Kim:
Totally. When I say prioritize too, myself, it’s myself and then the two top ladies in my team who make these decisions, and they were actually really looking out for me, in my case, it was them coming to me saying, “Okay, here’s the project that’s right in front of us and here’s the project that we’ve been talking about that’s still two or three months away. Let’s back-burner that and let’s focus on the one that’s at hand.”
So, we got very good at saying, “What’s most important this week? What was [inaudible 00:17:44] coming down the pipeline versus… Not only what isn’t essential for the team to grow, but literally what is not happening this week. And they’re great. They really do keep me in check and they look out for my emotional wellbeing.
Their kids are also a little bit older, so they’re able to provide that for me. But that perspective is really, really key. And sometimes you have to make those tough decisions and it’s not a no forever. It’s just a this isn’t important right now.
Miriam Schulman:
I don’t know that my team really reins me in quite that way, but occasionally I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry. I told you to work on this because this bright, shiny thing, it’s great, but it’s taking us away from what our first quarter priority is”. So, for example, I really wanted to put out there a little horse class, which is out there now, but last quarter they were working. I was like, “Oh wait, wait, we really have to finish this other thing over here. Let’s slow down.” It’s important also to think about, sometimes you do need to slow down in order to speed up.
Lianne Kim:
Yes, totally. We’ve experienced that as well, where there’s moments where we’re like, “Oh, we could really put out this thing right now and people would respond to it. We’d absolutely make sales.” But if we do that, then here’s all the other stuff we’re not going to be able to have bandwidth for. And I’m a big believer in my word for this year, for 2021, was space. I don’t know if I shared that with you.
Miriam Schulman:
No, tell me why you picked that word. I love word for the year.
Lianne Kim:
Mostly because I don’t have enough of it right now. No, I’m joking. I literally said to my husband yesterday morning, both of our shower/getting ready time coincided and I was like, “I just want 15 minutes in here with nobody trying to talk to me or touch me, is that so wrong?” I feel like a lot of us are feeling that way. We don’t have the space that we normally would in non-pandemic times, but really space for me is more of giving myself the mental space and the calendar space to do that dreaming big, to do those really big picture strategizing.
One of my favorite things to do, and again, if you are a mom or a caregiver or a parent, I love this, it’s just baking into your week one hour or two hour blocks, usually for me, it’s later afternoon, walks. So, it gets you out, which is good, gets your body moving, which is good for you, gets you breathing fresh air. It gets you out of the physical space of doing the work.
Typically, what happens, and I call this, all my clients know I call this CEO time. Typically, what happens in this CEO time is that’s when you get your best ideas and that’s when you get your biggest inspirations and things that you want to act on. But when we are so jam packing our days full of tasks and to-dos and all we’re doing is checking things off a list, we have no room for that. We become these servants to our business and our business is running us instead of the other way around, which I’m a big advocate for.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. I’ve had that in the past, where I felt like I was the lowest paid person at my company. Like, “Wait, wait, what happened?” But really, that’s just in my head, it’s not even true. It’s kind of a lie.
By the way, I wanted to make sure you knew that I am taking applications for the Artist Incubator Mastermind for 2021. If you’re lacking a solid strategy or winning mindset, and you’re disappointed with your current art sales, I can help you. So, if you’ve been listening to this podcast and you found these tips helpful, maybe it’s time to take the next logical step and work with me on a deeper level. Currently, as of this recording, there are only three spots inside the mastermind. If you’re interested in the self-study level, it’s more of a group coaching program, not a mastermind, to the self-study level of the Artist Incubator. There are more than three spots in there, but self-study is closed. It will open again on May 20th. So, if you’re interested in that, I hope you will join me on May 20th.
The Artist Incubator Program is for professional and emerging artists who want to take their art business to the next level. So, if you’re ready to invest in your art career and join a dynamic community of artists who are doing the same, go to schulmanart.com/biz, as in B-I-Z, to apply now. Now, back to the show.
I was going to tease you that you must lock yourself in the bathroom to get space or no?
Lianne Kim:
My car actually. We live in a house in East Toronto, and we’re a one car family, and I will literally drive to the grocery store and just sit in the parking lot and listen to a podcast or sometimes it’s like, I’m creating voice memos to get my ideas out. Sometimes on tough days, it’s like, I’ll go in my car if I have to cry, on really tough days and we’ve had a lot of them in this past year.
There are just moments where sometimes what you need is an emotional release. I know a lot of people listening can probably relate to this. Sometimes you feel like you can’t just let go, because everyone around you is counting on you to keep the ship moving forward. So, I’ve had moments where I cried in my car for an hour and then felt so much better after, because at least I was able to get it out.
For me, I also work with coaches. I’ve never personally done therapy, but I’m not opposed to that. We all need these places where we can have that emotional release. So, yeah, I’m a big fan of that. If it’s your car, if it’s your closet, if it’s your bathroom, we’ve got to make that space for ourselves, because no one’s going to give it to us. When was the last time your partner said to you, “Sweetie, I think what you could really use is a couple of days off.” Has that ever happened to you, Miriam?
Miriam Schulman:
No, that’s why I join pricey masterminds and go on the retreats. So, I have an excuse to go away. Meanwhile, it would be a lot cheaper for me not to join a mastermind and just book vacations for myself. Why don’t I just do that? No, I really very much enjoy being part of a mastermind. I think it’s super important to surround yourself with people who are having similar challenges as you, not just the business challenges, but the personal challenges of keeping everything together and to feel less alone in all of this.
I also see that in, and I’m sure you do as well, Lianne, in my own communities, those strong bonds that form between them, because it’s hard to find people like us. We don’t always remember that, because we’re always looking at those people. We’re looking at the people who have those businesses, who are ahead of us, who are artists who are ahead of us, to people around us. But then in our communities, in the IRL world, it’s like, “Where are those moms who have their own businesses?”
Lianne Kim:
That is exactly why I started my community. I don’t know if you even know the story, but it was quite by accident. I had two small kids, I had a full-time job, I was not really looking forward to going back to it after basically two years off on maternity leaves, because that’s what you get up here in Canada. We get these nice, delicious maternity leaves. I had one for each kid. My colleagues used to joke that I was on the every other year play on at work, because I would be on and then I’d be off with a kid and then I’d be back.
One of the things that happened was, as I was heading back to this day job, I realized how little I was just not at all lit up to do it. I had these little side hustles and these little projects that were making a bit of money. Those lit me up beyond belief. I just posted in a local, God bless Facebook, I just posted in a local Facebook group. It had about 2,000 moms from my neighborhood in it, from East Toronto. And I posted and I said, “Does anyone here have a business and want to get together for a glass of wine and talk about it?”
The response was overwhelming. So, within a matter of days, I had 300 people in my own free Facebook group at the time, because they had no one to talk to about this. They had their mom friends who mostly were not self-employed or they had maybe their entrepreneur friends that didn’t have the challenges of being a parent. So, what I found was, I was like, “Whoa, I’m really onto something here.” Because these women, every time we had a pub night meetup, it would just be more people and more people. I thought, “Okay, I got to figure out how to scale this.”
Eventually, I realized, “Oh, this is a business right here, this right here.” The piece that made it really the business for me was the night that I had them all over to my house to learn about sales, because that was my background. I came sales and marketing and these women were amazing, but they didn’t have that same knowledge. And a lot of them were very fearful of selling themselves.
So, I did a little sales presentation and somewhere in the middle I was like, “Oh my God, this is what I was born to do.” And that’s when I really had the idea of becoming a business coach. So, our communities, when we surround ourselves with people like us, who have the same dreams and hopes, that’s where we start to, again, see our best business opportunities unfold. So, those communities are really, really important.
Miriam Schulman:
So important, because in any area where you may be lacking belief in yourself, seeing somebody else, who you feel is like you, succeed is more powerful than anything, Lianne, you can preach, “This will work. This will work. This will work. And I will do the same thing.” It’s not until somebody in my program actually does it and everyone else says, “Oh, that actually works.” That they really grow in that belief system of what’s possible. So, it’s, again, going back to the idea of you need to dream bigger surrounding yourselves with people who are taking those actions and having success and also not having success and learning how to feel okay with that, both of those things together. Knowing that just because not everything works out, doesn’t make you not okay.
Lianne Kim:
You touched on something that I think is really important. It’s that piece of sharing the real journey, the highs and the lows. To me, that’s one of the things that’s the most important when you’re trying to balance being a parent, running a business. If you don’t have those people that you can talk to about it, who really like, again, yeah, some of them might be ahead of you, some of them might be not as far along as you in different ways. But it’s the ability to just talk about it.
It’s amazing how I’ll come to our mastermind thinking, “Oh, this is what I need today.” And I leave having a totally different nugget of inspiration, because of something maybe you said, or maybe our mutual friend Lauren said, and all of a sudden I’m like, “Oh yeah, that’s genius. I’m going to go act on that.” So, those conversations about the inside, what it’s really like, and then also what I think one of the things that you and I really vibe on is that inner game piece. How much of this is really the inner game? And I say it’s 90% inner game stuff.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, 100%. Yeah. Yeah. There are so many times where it’s not that I’m trying to hide and act like I’m doing better than I am, but there are things that maybe, as you’re moving up the ladder, it’s more like a spiral as you’re moving up and you kind of cycle back to certain problems that you may not realize, “Oh, wait, you need to work on this again.” And that’s what’s really helpful when other people ask those questions that you may not have either felt brave enough in the moment to be vulnerable, to share that that’s a problem for you in the moment, or that you are blind to it right now, in the moment, until that person asks it. And you’re like, “Oh, wait a minute. This is a problem for me as well.”
So, it’s both the not wanting to tell yourself the truth sometimes, but also not seeing the truth of where you’re at, which is why it’s so helpful to be in a group where everyone is sharing different aspects that you may not even realize that is a problem for you right now, that you need to think about or marinate on or talk about.
Lianne Kim:
Yeah, I would say that’s definitely, when I think about my handful of business besties, women that have been by my side for a couple years, that’s what those women are really great at with me is, they’re able to hold up that mirror and say like, “It sounds a little bit like you’re dealing with this.” Sometimes it’s just like, “Yeah, you know what? I didn’t realize that. Or Lauren’s really good at this.” Again, our mutual friend, she’s really great at seeing like, “I think this might be where you’re getting stuck.”
I mean, and this is another strategy, just in terms of not even getting more done, but being more effective with the limited time that we all have, is self-awareness. Cultivating self-awareness, being able to call yourself on your own BS or being able to call yourself up when you realize you might be limiting yourself. One of the most obvious ways I see this. So, I work with a lot of women who are on the cusp of quitting a day job to start a business, or they’ve just done it and they usually are mothers of younger kids, ages 10 and younger.
So, a lot of them will come to me, these are my coaching clients, a lot of them will say things like, “Well, I won’t be successful until I’m making in this business how much I made in my old day job.” And I will say to them, “But why is that the ceiling for you?” They don’t even realize that is limiting themselves, because maybe they were making 80K or 100K if they had a great job and they’re doing well. But as you and I know, that’s not the limit of what’s possible once you become self-employed.
So, that’s something that I see a lot. Once you can be become self-aware of like, “Oh, I didn’t even realize.” Another one I see is when women are using their children as an excuse for not being able to be where they want to be. And I caught myself doing that when I was having those darker days. Well, of course so-and-so is further ahead. She doesn’t have kids. Here I am, I’m not going to ever make it like that, because I’ve got little ones. Then, I realize, how terrible for me to say for them, I [inaudible 00:32:17], I would never want to be the reason why someone else-
Miriam Schulman:
I don’t even think that’s true. So, for your first point, that’s goes back exactly what I said when you are putting a cap on your own dreams, you’re never going to grow bigger than your dream. So you’re always going to fall short of that. So, you got to make that dream big. But the other thing is I can find so many reasons why I’m more successful in my business because I have kids, just a million things.
One of the things we talked about today is becoming super clear about what needs to be done, because you have to be. That is the greatest way to become super efficient right away is to have a kid. And this is true even for men who have kids, who become fathers, they say the same thing, “I suddenly got really efficient in my business. There was all this stuff. I was spinning my wheels on and now I don’t do it anymore.”
Lianne Kim:
Yeah. It’s so true how those little munchkins have a way of just really illustrating what’s most important in life, eh?
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. Also tragedy has a way of doing that as well, unfortunately, there’s things in our life that happen that suddenly, “Oh, wait, now I see what’s important and what’s not.”
Lianne Kim:
When limitations of any kind have been put upon us, we find these strengths and resources we didn’t even know. So, great example of that would be last year at this time, we muddled through the first few months of COVID with no plan-
Miriam Schulman:
Because we thought it was going to end. We were like, “Three months and we’ll be done.” We were so naive.
Lianne Kim:
So naive. In our household, we were doing all the things, the over-drinking, the overeating, which caused us to be snippy with one another, which-
Miriam Schulman:
Caused us to gain lots of weight. I have my pandemic pants now.
Lianne Kim:
Yeah, and be unhappy. Yeah. So, one of the things when I finally caught myself and I was like, but for me physical fitness is really important. I can’t really be me if I’m not moving my body every day, and in minimal ways, I’m certainly not like some sort of bodybuilder, CrossFit, nothing like that. But I realized, if I could get up at 6:30 and do my 20-minute walk or run before the kids even needed me, which is like breakfast time and all that, then at least I know I’ve done that.
So, I will tell you, I never got up at 6:30 before COVID, I was not interested in that. I knew that I’d have the time, but because of COVID and because of the restrictions, I had to make the time, and I think that’s what happen to a lot of us when we’re in these situations where we’re caring for others and we need to be on all the time is, we find resources within ourselves we never knew were there.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s so true. So, Lianne, you just finished writing a book, tell us about it.
Lianne Kim:
It’s called Building a Joyful Business. It’s my very first book ever. I was inspired to write it because of some of the stuff we talked about and I think some of the ways in which we’ve all been struggling over the past year. I’ve tried to write a book multiple times, but COVID and the pandemic and juggling all this stuff was like, that’s the topic is how can we have businesses that are more joyful?
So, I poured my heart and soul into it and I touch on everything from vision to working only with dream clients and how I do that, to the marketing and the selling. So, it really is a great piece for anyone who’s looking to start a business, or even if they’ve already got a business and they want to be experiencing more joy. I’m really grateful and I’m really hopeful that it’s going to change a lot of lives.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s beautiful. I haven’t gotten my hands on it yet, and I really wanted-
Lianne Kim:
I’m going to send you a free copy. So, don’t you worry?
Miriam Schulman:
Awesome.
Lianne Kim:
That’s my gift to you.
Miriam Schulman:
Usually when I have authors on I like to read the book before, but it had come out and I knew like with the Canadian shipping, I was like, “Is it going to get here on time?” I was like, “Am I going to be able to read the book?” But the cover is so beautiful by the way.
Lianne Kim:
Thank you. Thank you. So, one of the things that I feel really strongly as if we’re going to have a joyful business, let’s bake it in, and one of our core values in my business is we bake the fun in from day one. That’s everything from our logo and colors to how we approach client acquisition, how we engage with our communities, everything, really, if it’s not fun, I’m not interested in doing it as much as possible.
So, when the book came out and they were like, “We want to make it colorful.” I was like, “Yes.” So, there’s actually, not only is the cover super colorful, but there’s actually color within the book as well.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh wow. That’s fantastic.
Lianne Kim:
Yeah. Your artists will love that.
Miriam Schulman:
I’m going to describe it for those who cannot see it. It has this beautiful, what would you say that it’s a coral pink color on the back, the back cover is coral pink. The front cover, the font, the joyful is in yellow and the word business is in that same coral pink, which I’m obsessed with that color by the way. So, we want to make sure that you can get the book as well. And Lianne generously is offering 15% off for my listeners. You can go to Liannekim.com/book and use the coupon code inspire to get 15% off the book and we’ll have her back for maybe a Facebook Live, so we can chat about the book inside The Inspiration Place community, which is my free community. All right, Lianne, do you have any last words for my listeners before we call this podcast complete?
Lianne Kim:
Oh my goodness. I touch on this in the book. The thing that I really want you to remember is it’s not about getting it right every single day, it’s just about tenacity. Just getting up, keeping doing it, putting one foot in front of the other is so important, especially on those days where you feel like family has to take priority or you can’t be your very best. It’s not about being perfect and it’s not about being the fastest or the smartest. It’s just about doing it. That’s what Building a Joyful Business is all about to me is just to keep showing up and keep doing the things that you love.
Miriam Schulman:
I love it that, so it’s not about succeeding at every single thing that you do. It’s about never giving up.
Lianne Kim:
100%, 100%.
Miriam Schulman:
All right. Beautiful. All right, my friend, thank you so much for being with me here today. Whether you are a boss mom, baby mom, fur mom, book mom, art mom, whatever kind of mom you are, whatever you are celebrating, just celebrating your own mother. I want to wish everyone here a happy mother’s day. I will the same time, same place next week. Stay inspired.
Thank you for listening to The Inspiration Place Podcast. Connect with us on Facebook at facebook.com/schulmanart, on Instagram @Schulmanart and of course on schulmanart.com.
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