Kara Forney, BOY MOMS: Collective Tales of Mothers and Sons
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[0:58]Cara Florney is the author of Boymoms, Collective Tales of Mothers and Sons.
[1:02]This was guest-hosted by Juliana Goldman of Mom Aden.
[1:06]Entrepreneur, startup advisor, and business coach Cara Florney has more than 30 years of experience with startups and executive leadership.
[1:13]Inspired by her own pregnancy experiences, in 2005, she became a .com founder creating the bump.com for new moms, and then she grew the company to become the go-to resource for expected motherhood.
[1:25]The bump was acquired by the not and post-transition Cara began consulting with startups and other endeavors.
[1:32]In addition to her work with founders, she combines her passion for education and her alma mater by serving as the executive director for the University of Arizona Corporate Initiative program, developing creative partnerships with industry to provide greater access to higher education for working adults.
[1:48]In 2022, a desire to shed light on the real hashtag Boymoms experience led Cara to create and publish Boymoms.
[1:55]The book is a collection of essays by moms from all points of view, sharing their personal stories about the joys, challenges, and overall significance of the modern mother-son journey,
[2:05]which often looks very different from what society or social media portrays. This is Cara's first book.
[2:10]Cara Florney, author of Boymoms, Collective Tales of Mothers and Sons. Thank you for joining us.
[2:16]Thank you for having me. I'm super excited to chat with you. Tell us about Boymoms. What is it and why did you write this book?
[2:23]Boymoms is an anthology of essays written by moms of Boymoms.
[2:30]Talking about their very kind of raw, honest experiences of raising sons, how that may or may not have match with what they thought it was going to be like.
[2:41]What are some of the things that made sense to them and then didn't make sense to them and how did they work through that themselves? What did they learn about themselves as well as their sons?
[2:51]I just, I, someone called it this, which I loved because I remember those books, but someone called it the chicken soup for the Boymoms souls.
[2:59]It was. Yeah.
[3:01]So, which actually I was like, yeah, that's exactly what it is. It's the mythology of great essays written by wonderful moms.
[3:08]And, you know, I think there's 46 of them.
[3:11]We had such great response to the call for essays that, you know, we had to really work very hard to decide which ones we're going to be in.
[3:21]And I think we got this great representative of a very diverse look at what it's really like to raise boys. It's not this one size fits all.
[3:30]It's often most often not what everyone told you it was going to be like. It's so much more. And so, and a lot of times very different. So, I'm really excited about it.
[3:40]It was this very simple idea that I had, but the writers, the essay writers really just elevated it to something really, really special. So I'm so pleased with that.
[3:51]It is chicken soup for the Boymoms soul. It's like a warm cup of tea to just sit and you feel, I know, I feel like you finished it and you just kind of exhale and have a smile on your face.
[4:01]You really feel as as a boy mom, myself, you know, reading through it, you just feel really connected to a larger community out there.
[4:10]Well, and that was my, I love hearing that because I think, you know, all writers and I'm not necessarily a writer. I feel like I project manage this and I wrote an essay, but I'm not, you know, but I think that's what everyone wants from one of their, from their books, right.
[4:26]I have their audience feel seen and have it resonate with them and have them really feel connected to something. And that's that's what I wanted because this a lot of the my inspiration for this was just my own experiences, obviously raising boys, but then my experiences in the lives being involved in the lives of my friends and my peers raising boys.
[4:47]A lot of times if your experience did not match what those kind of preconceived, you know, ideas you had or that society has around what it means to raise boys.
[4:59]It could be very isolating and you could feel like you're doing something wrong or, or, you know, I'm not part of this larger group because my child doesn't do X, Y and Z or my child is very different.
[5:11]And so that's what I wanted to really combat and I wanted to just change that narrative around it so that all moms of boys feel seen and heard and part of that larger community that we are and and hopefully that's that's what it does.
[5:27]I want to come back to one essay in particular because it just made me think of it where talks about trying to figure out what your son's talent is and this pressure to figure out what that talent is and the mother kind of coming to terms or realizing that that her son's talent is not what what other mothers might find in their sons.
[5:50]Exactly. Yes, and I think I love that essay and I think that speaks to, you know, all of us as mothers is we we it's like we we feel this pressure to find our child's thing right now.
[6:02]What is it.
[6:04]Yes, we got to get them in that thing and we've got to get them on that path and they've got to start excelling in that thing and so I'm just sitting back and kind of naturally watching things evolve and and take place and.
[6:15]That's one of the big things I learned as well is that because if we're trying to make our son have a thing it's usually our thing right.
[6:23]It's usually what we think their thing should be and I, I, you know, I'm very guilty that I did that so much and it's only when I began to step back and let them.
[6:33]And I've let their thing evolve that, you know, it really started taking root in them and made them floors so yeah I love that that's by that one was by Wendy Silberman.
[6:43]Fantastic yeah.
[6:45]I love that also the authors are not necessarily household names.
[6:50]How did you find everyone.
[6:52]Yeah, so I'm so thrilled you pointed that out because that was very deliberate that was very deliberate when I was talking to my editor about this Elizabeth Lions we went through okay what what would this look like even before we even kind of said it would be an anthology.
[7:06]What does this look like and and then when we looked at anthology okay so let's reach out to who do we reach out to and.
[7:13]I mean we quickly came to the decision not to have it be well no names because we wanted it to be very kind of raw and real and from your neighbor or your best friend or someone that you could really relate to you know on all levels so that was very deliberate and what I also love about it is that.
[7:34]So we went everywhere I went everywhere to find to find these essays essay writers so I went to mom groups I went to writer groups I went to mom writer groups, but to my friends.
[7:44]I went to peers and colleagues and and what I also love is that there's such a diverse not only are they not household names it's a very diverse group of women and cultures to.
[7:55]You see the way yeah I love that and and they so some are writers some are you know coaches some are state home moms some are career women in very different fields so.
[8:09]So I wanted everyone to at least find one essay that they could see themselves in and I'm hopeful that that's what we were able to accomplish and I think I love you know even the writers are the essay writers who aren't writers for a career.
[8:24]You know having their essays out there and you know along with these women who are wonderful writers in their own right and that's their career I think is really fun.
[8:32]So I'm very refreshing contrast to the more curated world of social media and mom influencers there was one line in particular that I really really related to I mean it sounds so basic but someone writes how am I supposed to teach my son emotional regulation when my own emotions run wild.
[8:53]I think about that a lot I have a six year old son right now and I'm I'm just lately very cognizant of the behavior that I am modeling for him as well especially in terms of emotional regulation.
[9:09]Right yeah and I I think we can all relate to that I totally such a universal thing and going back to what you're saying about social media and.
[9:18]That was one of the big things to that really was the kicker for for me to do this because I started hearing all these things about or even talking to my friends like we talk about being moms of boys.
[9:30]And I hear well I'm yes I have boys but I'm not a hashtag boy mom.
[9:36]What do you mean by that like guess you are a boy mom.
[9:39]I'm not I'm not one of those hashtag boy moms.
[9:42]What is the hashtag boy mom.
[9:44]So I started researching.
[9:46]Yeah.
[9:47]And I knew of course online you know i'm social media but there's a lot of discussion on Reddit other several articles on how this hashtag boy mom culture is very aggressive it's.
[10:00]very exclusive, not inclusive.
[10:02]It's like, it makes women feel like
[10:04]if you don't have a boy that fits into this mold,
[10:08]then you're not part of that hashtag boy mom culture.
[10:12]And so that just, I said, this is ridiculous.
[10:16]We should not be, you know, isolating ourselves.
[10:19]We should be coming together.
[10:20]We're all, you know, moms of boys.
[10:22]And so that really pushed me to put this out there
[10:26]as kind of another voice around boy moms
[10:29]and the hashtag boy moms that different
[10:32]and changes that narrative.
[10:34]Tell me if I'm wrong, if I've missed this part,
[10:37]but you don't explicitly talk,
[10:40]well, many of the essays deal with neurodivergence.
[10:43]So whether it's autism, children on the spectrum, ADHD,
[10:49]I feel like it's not, you don't say this in a forward
[10:52]or anything, but it's sort of woven in throughout.
[10:55]Yeah, absolutely.
[10:57]So the essays that are in the book are represented
[10:59]of all the essays that we received.
[11:01]What struck me was how many came in
[11:04]around a neurodivergent topic.
[11:08]And so whether it was, like you said,
[11:11]whether it was ADHD, you know,
[11:13]all the way to kind of full autism spectrum,
[11:16]that was very prevalent,
[11:18]which is reflective of society today.
[11:21]And it is reflective of what's going on with our boys
[11:25]and that this is something that is affecting moms
[11:30]and their experiences as moms of boys in a very real way.
[11:34]And it also is a big factor in what impacts your experience
[11:40]as a boy mom, that will directly be the antithesis
[11:44]of what maybe you expected and keeps you from having
[11:47]that typical boy mom experience, right?
[11:51]So I think that is, I love it because I think it's very
[11:56]representative of what moms are experiencing today
[12:00]and how prevalent a lot of this neurodivergence is
[12:04]in our boys.
[12:05]Yeah, I, again, back to social media
[12:08]because it's not what you see women talking about
[12:11]on social media.
[12:12]This isn't what they wanna highlight
[12:15]in terms of their experience as a parent.
[12:19]And what was great, I thought was that there were so many
[12:22]examples of this throughout the book that I,
[12:26]there was one essay in particular
[12:28]that I completely related to.
[12:30]I think there was Will's little boy's name was Will
[12:33]and I wanted to reach out to the mother and be like,
[12:35]oh, there are so many similarities I would love
[12:38]like to know different ways that you dealt with certain things.
[12:42]There was one essay in particular
[12:44]in talking about like the sensitivity of boy,
[12:47]like having a sensitive child
[12:49]and again, this comes back to this topic.
[12:52]One of the authors, she has a son with ADHD
[12:55]and she writes that boys are deeply sensitive
[12:57]and deeply caring, but often taught not to show it.
[13:00]I'm deeply grateful that Will has stayed connect.
[13:02]Oh, this is the one.
[13:04]And I'm deeply grateful that Will has stayed connected
[13:07]to his sensitivity and I envision a world
[13:09]where this becomes the norm rather than the exception.
[13:13]I love that.
[13:14]That's beautiful.
[13:15]Yeah, it's so beautiful.
[13:17]Yeah, I do think that is what causes a lot of anxiety
[13:22]in our kids today and our boys specifically
[13:24]is this tension around being deeply sensitive
[13:28]but feeling like they can't share that or show that.
[13:32]And I think that's part of the conversation that needs
[13:36]to happen is that we need to be very aware of that.
[13:38]When I first had boys, I literally said to myself,
[13:43]oh, I dodged a bullet.
[13:45]I said that because I was your typical crazy sassy teenager
[13:50]talking back very emotional, the whole thing.
[13:53]And I thought, God's going to give me a girl
[13:55]just to get back at me.
[13:57]Yes.
[13:58]And so I went in with this, oh no, great.
[14:01]I got boys.
[14:02]They're not going to be emotional.
[14:03]They're not going to have to deal with that.
[14:05]I was 100% wrong.
[14:08]And I had a very sensitive firstborn.
[14:10]And in hindsight, I looked back and I think what did
[14:15]that preconceived notion?
[14:17]How did that affect the way I parented him younger
[14:20]before I kind of had some enlightenment
[14:23]around boys can be very deeply sensitive.
[14:26]And we need to get underneath that kind of shell
[14:29]that gets put on them and allow them
[14:32]to have those feelings and show them that it's okay
[14:36]and let them express them in the same ways
[14:40]that we let our daughters express their emotion.
[14:42]This is a pretty, I feel like a novel parenting concept
[14:46]at least in this generation.
[14:48]I feel like there's more attention being paid to this now.
[14:52]But you think about boys, like these sensitive boys,
[14:57]50 years ago and how that kind of parenting has shaped them
[15:03]and what that has done and sort of the macro cycle
[15:08]of what ultimately it has created in society.
[15:12]Well, we could see it, right?
[15:14]We could see it.
[15:15]And I always like to say, it's too late
[15:17]when they're running for president
[15:20]or they're being chosen for the Supreme Court
[15:23]or it's too late to start instilling those things in them.
[15:28]We need to do it as boys so that when they become men,
[15:33]they are doing the things that keep them very in touch
[15:36]with themselves and so that then they can execute their lives
[15:41]in such a way that that is healthy
[15:44]and respectful and generous and humble and loving.
[15:51]Those are words that are not necessarily valued.
[15:55]Back previously, I think you're right.
[15:57]I think there's much more attention now
[15:59]which I'm thrilled about.
[16:00]There's a lot more, I think of there's Dave Thomas.
[16:04]He has a book called Raising Emotionally Strong Boys.
[16:07]There's more attention to it for sure than there was
[16:09]and but it still shocks me that there are,
[16:14]continue to be kind of these tropes and ideas
[16:16]and preconceived things around boys.
[16:20]It's still very prominent.
[16:21]Women, moms still feel very pressured
[16:24]to have this kind of picture perfect storybook
[16:27]on my, I have a rough and tumble boy
[16:29]who plays four-time weekend and the set and the other
[16:32]and anyone who's not fitting into that
[16:34]still can feel very, very alone.
[16:37]Yeah, no, that sensitivity and masculinity
[16:40]it can coexist.
[16:42]Absolutely.
[16:43]It absolutely does coexist.
[16:45]Totally.
[16:45]We've just been swishing it down.
[16:47]Yeah.
[16:50]We took my son, my son and my daughter,
[16:52]the Nutcracker last week and my daughter was like a handful.
[16:57]Let's put it mildly and my son, he loved it.
[17:01]And he said, he said, I wanna take dance lessons
[17:03]so I can be in the Nutcracker someday.
[17:06]And so there's a part of, now okay,
[17:09]I'm gonna look for a dance class for him
[17:11]but also I want him to be in a dance class
[17:14]that has other boys in it
[17:16]because there's also a boy energy that comes along
[17:20]with my son where like a typical ballet class
[17:24]probably wouldn't be the right fit for him
[17:26]and would turn him off from the experience.
[17:29]So there are these considerations
[17:31]that I think are unique to boys in this kind of situation.
[17:35]Yes, and there is a, you know, it's what kind of,
[17:39]I think the book shows too is that you can,
[17:41]you can have part of that stereotypical boy experience
[17:45]but not all, you know, it's not, it doesn't mean I had
[17:48]both my boys were incredibly rough and tumble,
[17:51]very quote unquote typical in that brief,
[17:54]but very atypical in other areas.
[17:57]And so it's not this kind of black and white.
[18:00]It's, you know, very interwoven.
[18:03]And what I wanted to say too about, you know,
[18:05]you were talking about how boys are,
[18:09]they are very sensitive,
[18:10]even though they may not show it
[18:13]and it's our job to get underneath that, right?
[18:16]Because even though they don't seem like they're bothered
[18:19]or, you know, they really truly care about something
[18:22]underneath it, they absolutely do.
[18:24]I mean, that's been proven.
[18:25]And so we have to, as moms and parents dig down
[18:30]and help them find that and stay in touch with it.
[18:33]Yeah. There's another essay I just wanna point out
[18:35]as people read this book that is like laugh out loud, funny.
[18:39]And it begins, admittedly mall shopping
[18:41]has never been my thing,
[18:43]but mall shopping with two small boys
[18:45]that's a special kind of hell.
[18:47]Yeah.
[18:48]Yeah.
[18:49]Like, speaking like bringing back this is,
[18:52]this is a chicken soup for the soul essay, I loved it.
[18:55]And it, and there's like a really funny anecdote at the end.
[18:59]Why was this an essay that you included?
[19:02]Well, so again, we wanted to get really, you know,
[19:05]all different types of stories.
[19:06]So we wanted humor as well as kind of the very raw,
[19:11]you know, real or emotional kind of pieces.
[19:14]So this was one of them that, you know, stood out to us
[19:17]that we thought again, you know,
[19:18]a lot of women can relate to this.
[19:20]A lot of moms can relate to this.
[19:21]It doesn't necessarily matter what type of boy you have,
[19:25]you know, there's a lot of truth in just trying to wrangle
[19:29]to small children in the mall and trying to go,
[19:32]especially with, you know,
[19:34]ones that have a lot of energy.
[19:36]So we want to go into the bathroom with your sons too.
[19:40]Right.
[19:41]And the things that they say in the bathroom,
[19:43]because of me observing the bathroom.
[19:45]Right.
[19:46]Yeah.
[19:46]I think we all have, I have those,
[19:48]I have a lot of stories as well.
[19:49]I'm like, so yeah, it was great.
[19:53]I was great.
[19:53]We loved it.
[19:54]What did you learn about being a boy mom while writing this,
[19:57]while working on it?
[19:58]I think what really struck me.
[20:00]is just how many moms wanted to share their story.
[20:05]And we're just thrilled to be able to write
[20:08]about maybe they're non-traditional
[20:11]or not typical experience raising their son
[20:15]and what they learned from that.
[20:17]I think I went into this thinking,
[20:18]wow, this is gonna be like pulling teeth
[20:20]trying to get people to, you know,
[20:22]because who wants to write an essay?
[20:24]Like that's like a school assignment.
[20:26]But it was unbelievable how the response we got.
[20:30]And since we've published, just the response of,
[20:34]are you doing another one?
[20:35]Can I write us?
[20:36]I wanna share, so I have a great story.
[20:38]I have this, I have that.
[20:39]So that has been really wonderful to see
[20:42]and just kind of confirm that notion that we all,
[20:45]you know, we all just want to tell our story.
[20:47]We wanna be heard, we wanna be seen.
[20:49]And we wanna be acknowledged for it.
[20:52]And that, you know, our story is relevant and real for us.
[20:55]So I think that was the biggest thing that surprised me.
[20:59]Are you writing another one?
[21:01]So we're trying to figure out what that would look like
[21:03]and in what format that would look like.
[21:06]But I think I feel like we have to.
[21:08]Just the amount of women that have responded to this.
[21:11]I just, I feel like we have to.
[21:12]We're also looking at also working on something around daughters.
[21:16]Very different from this because I don't have daughters.
[21:18]So it's not coming from like mom of daughters,
[21:20]but coming from being a daughter and kind of that,
[21:24]you know, the family dynamic of daughters and sons
[21:29]and brothers and sisters and kind of the family thing.
[21:31]So yeah, a lot of really fun things.
[21:33]But I do think we have to do a boy moms too in some fashion
[21:37]because they're just too many wonderful stories out there
[21:40]that people want to share.
[21:42]Well, I can't wait.
[21:43]I wanna turn to you because in addition to being an author,
[21:47]you are also a co-founder, you are an entrepreneur.
[21:51]You're the founder of the bump.com.
[21:53]Yes. Tell us about how that, how you came into that space.
[21:57]Well, literally I was pregnant and I was working all the hours
[22:02]and doing all the things and very, very busy
[22:05]and did not have a lot of time.
[22:06]This was with my first son.
[22:08]Had no time to really do a lot of research or anything.
[22:10]And unbelievably, this was at the time,
[22:13]there was not a lot out there where you could just,
[22:16]you know, go and oh, I can look up where in my city,
[22:20]I can get, you know, where are the maternity stores?
[22:22]Where are the baby stores?
[22:23]What should I be looking for?
[22:24]How should I be preparing?
[22:26]There was not a lot out there at the time.
[22:28]So that's how it started.
[22:30]I went on my maternity leave from my company
[22:33]and I just never went back because I started writing
[22:36]the business plan for something like that.
[22:38]Serendipitously, I looked at the knot
[22:40]because the knot.com helped me plan my wedding.
[22:43]And so I was like, why is it there
[22:45]the knot for pregnant women?
[22:47]Why is this not out there?
[22:48]So I kind of, I had that business model
[22:51]and then after building it for five years,
[22:53]the knot actually acquired it.
[22:55]Yes.
[22:56]Which worked out great.
[22:57]So then I went to work for the knot for three years
[22:59]running the bump before I exited
[23:01]and just started working with founders
[23:03]and consulting with them and women founders
[23:05]and helping them.
[23:06]So it was like a lot of good ideas.
[23:09]It was born out of necessity.
[23:11]There was something missing in the market.
[23:12]And I said, we've got to do something about it
[23:14]and I figured I might as well do it.
[23:16]Well, as a big fan of the bump
[23:19]and someone who relied on it during my two pregnancies,
[23:23]I have a question I've always wondered.
[23:25]How did you come up with the different size comparison?
[23:29]Oh, where there's the fruit or the animal.
[23:32]I loved every one.
[23:35]That's like, I love tracking that.
[23:37]It's not amazing.
[23:38]So it's amazing when you're a fan,
[23:39]when you started company,
[23:40]it's amazing what things resonate with people
[23:44]versus what you thought might resonate with people.
[23:46]That was not something that we put a ton
[23:50]really.
[23:50]Well, you know, we brainstormed it
[23:52]and had a great time with it.
[23:54]And that's kind of about it.
[23:55]And now that is what it's because everyone measures
[23:59]where they are in their pregnancy with those items.
[24:04]And so it's really, really fun to see that and watch that
[24:06]and how that came about.
[24:08]But I'd love to say it was like this amazing stroke of genius,
[24:11]but it really, we just thought about things
[24:15]that made sense for the size and things that resonated
[24:18]and we thought were fun.
[24:19]Is there like a head researcher on this
[24:21]that will find like the most obscure animal
[24:24]that's the size of like a great potato?
[24:27]Yeah.
[24:28]Yeah, no, no, it was not anything that thought out.
[24:32]And so that's what I love about
[24:36]just starting companies and being an entrepreneur
[24:39]and founding, you know, you just a lot of those things
[24:42]that you don't expect to really just hit someone
[24:45]and to take off are the things that do
[24:48]and the things that you put a lot of time
[24:50]and thought and money quite frankly into oftentimes don't.
[24:54]So there's a lot of kind of serendipity
[24:58]and the universe deciding what works, what does it work?
[25:01]Which I think is part of the fun.
[25:03]I just want final question.
[25:05]And that is as an entrepreneur, as an ambitious woman
[25:10]who's also a mother, a mother of sons.
[25:13]Can you talk about what advice you would give to women
[25:16]who are trying to chart their career path
[25:20]and they share those ambitions.
[25:22]But they're also struggling with the needs
[25:25]of their children, especially if they have
[25:28]a neurodivergent child.
[25:31]And there's so much, you know,
[25:33]we talk about the mental load,
[25:34]so much energy that needs to go obviously
[25:38]to figuring out, you know, what your child needs
[25:41]and how to balance that.
[25:43]It's very, very hard.
[25:45]I don't know if I have a great pat answer for that
[25:48]because, you know, it's incredibly challenging
[25:52]when you're going through it.
[25:53]And there is no right answer.
[25:54]I mean, I, you know, purposefully,
[25:56]when I was done with a knot and exited,
[25:59]I purposely chose not to start another company,
[26:04]not to become a founder again or co-founder.
[26:07]There was opportunities for that.
[26:09]But I had, you know, put my kids in my mind,
[26:12]I put my kids to the Ringer for a while.
[26:16]And so I knew that I needed to take a step back
[26:20]and make that more of a priority.
[26:22]And so I did a very purposeful career choice
[26:26]to do consulting work, which allowed me the flexibility
[26:30]to be there for what my kids needed
[26:33]and to, you know, they had, they were grade school.
[26:36]And so I was able to be at their things
[26:38]and take them to their things.
[26:39]So I think my short answer is you need to absolutely follow
[26:44]at any given time what the needs of your family
[26:47]and your kind of world are
[26:49]and try to pattern your career around that
[26:52]and around what is at the time, you know, your biggest priority.
[26:55]There are other times when my family,
[26:58]my kids did not need as much attention.
[27:00]And so I was able to do a lot more
[27:02]or do things a little bit differently with my career.
[27:05]I look at it as a very fluid thing.
[27:07]It's not the straight shot, which I thought it was
[27:10]when I was 22 who graduated and working for IBM
[27:13]and thought I would run IBM one day,
[27:15]but absolutely did not happen
[27:19]because of my competing priorities.
[27:23]And that's okay.
[27:23]You have to build the career that works for you.
[27:27]And what I love today is that there's so many ways
[27:30]to do that just with remote work
[27:33]with, you know, you can live anywhere.
[27:35]You can be anywhere, you can work all hours.
[27:38]And I don't mean work all the hours.
[27:39]I mean work the hours that work for you wherever you are.
[27:43]And my mantra has always been work-life integration
[27:47]not work-life balance because of that work-life balance
[27:51]doesn't work for me because it puts more pressure on us
[27:53]because we feel like at any given time when it's out of balance,
[27:57]we feel like we're not doing it right.
[27:58]And it's always out of balance, right?
[28:00]It's always out of balance, you know, it's never.
[28:03]So to me, it's integration where
[28:05]how do you fit your work into your life?
[28:07]How do you, you know, and where does your family fit into that?
[28:10]And it's always integrated.
[28:12]And the other thing for me is I've always said excellence
[28:15]not to perfection.
[28:16]I'm a recovering perfectionist.
[28:19]So I had to learn, especially being a founder,
[28:23]that you have to just put stuff out there.
[28:26]And it doesn't have to be perfect.
[28:28]It just needs to be excellent.
[28:29]And what excellence means is that you are doing
[28:33]the best possible job you can with the knowledge,
[28:37]with the resources, and with the capacity
[28:39]that you have at that given time.
[28:41]So if you're doing that, you're putting out excellent work
[28:44]and you're doing an excellent job.
[28:46]You're not doing a perfect job because that's impossible.
[28:49]So helping me, so switching those terminology with me,
[28:54]that really helped me because I applied that to my work-life
[28:57]and to my family life.
[28:58]We're just going to say as a parent, too.
[29:00]You can be excellent, but you're never,
[29:02]I mean, you're never going to be perfect.
[29:04]No, and so if we're trying for perfection,
[29:07]perfection is the enemy of creativity, right?
[29:11]If you're trying to be perfect, there's no room for creativity.
[29:14]There's no room to try and work things differently, right?
[29:17]There's no room to find different answers.
[29:19]So I try to, yes, I apply that to everything.
[29:22]I try to apply that to my parenting, my marriage, my career,
[29:26]all of it.
[29:27]I also love that perfection is the enemy of creativity.
[29:30]Yeah.
[29:31]That's one of my key takeaways from this conversation.
[29:34]Thank you.
[29:35]Good, absolutely.
[29:36]You're welcome.
[29:37]Karaforni, thank you for the time.
[29:39]Thank you so much.
[29:40]Karaforni, talking to you.
[29:42]You, too.
[29:43]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time
[29:46]to Read Books.
[29:47]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram, at Zibi Owens
[29:50]and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[29:52]Also sign up for my newsletter at Zibi Owens.com
[29:55]And sign up for my virtual book club
[29:56]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[29:59]Thanks so much.
[30:00]to Steve and Ryan in fact, texture sound for the sound editing,
[30:03]and thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[30:05]for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.