Redefining Success: Balancing Business and Motherhood with Nicky Elliott

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   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....