Join a Community, It’s Not a Waste of Money with Jill Salzman

I would like to welcome our very special guest today, Jill Salzman. I have so much to share about Jill! Number one, I feel like we’re definitely sisters from another mister. If you go look at her LinkedIn profile, she looks like a crazy woman like me. Today, she looks pretty normal. But I can already tell that she is a crazy woman from just a little bit of conversation. And I love people that are like that. Really fun people and Jill, you’re giving off that vibe. So, we’re going to have a lot of fun here today.

And before we jump into learning more about Jill and everything she’s sharing with the world, I just want to tell you her professional bio. Jill is currently growing her third entrepreneurial venture, The Founding Moms. And that is where mom entrepreneurs learn to build better businesses. And I love the BBB words, although that alliteration build better businesses. She is also a graduate of Brown University and law school ,over achieve much? And yes, we can all tell she is an overachiever. She also started a music management firm, and then launched and sold a baby jewelry company before creating her current venture. Because she didn’t do enough, yet. I have many other things to share with you that she’s done. She’s also the author of two books, and I absolutely love the name of both of them. The first one is The Best Business Book In The World. And the second one, which is the best seller, is Found It: A Field Guide for Mom Entrepreneurs. What a wonderful title. Jill is also the host, because she hasn’t had enough to do yet. of the top-rated entertaining business podcast, Why Are We Shouting? She gave her own TED talk on 11 11 11. And I believe that means something all those 11 do you know? Okay, you know, I’m gonna have to look that up when we get off because I’m pretty sure there isn’t like angels or something.

Okay, I’ll bet there are people listening right now. Go ahead. I know what it means. And if you do, go ahead post in the comments, let us know. She was dubbed a mommy mogul by CNN Money. A cool mom entrepreneur we love by MSN live, and was recently named one of the Top 50 Women to Watch in Tech, as well as a Top 100 Champion Small Business Influencers. After Forbes, named the Founding Moms one of the Top 10 Best Websites for Entrepreneurs.

I’m tired just reading this I’m not done at all. She’s also shared the speaker stage with get ready for this. Richard Branson, Sheryl Sandberg, Daymond John, MaryLou Henner and Desmond Tutu, and she regularly appears on ABC 7’s Windy City live TV show. Now here’s the funniest line of her entire bio. In her spare time, Jill enjoys kloofing, baking and erasing her daughter’s crayon artwork from the kitchen walls. So Jill, let’s start by you telling us what is kloofing.

You know, in high school, someone said to us as a class. If you are putting your resume together, find something that nobody knows. so that it becomes the conversation starter and it’s an easier way into an interview. And ever since then I’ve put this in there because halfway through college I went and I lived in South Africa for a little while. And in South Africa, they speak Afrikaans. And the word kloofing is Afrikaans for cliff jumping. So, they usually go out and climb mountains for about five hours, find a ledge, jump into a pool of water, get out of water, go to another ledge, and you basically jump down the mountain, off of cliffs into water. And I don’t actually remember why I put it in something I enjoy doing. Because I don’t ever think I’ll be doing it again.

But you did do it once.

Oh, I sure did. That’s how I learned that that it’s not for me. And it’s sort of like, you know, the poor man’s sky diving without a, what is it a balloon and umbrella, whatever.

They come down on an umbrella. I hope they would even have an umbrella when they kloof.

They don’t even have an umbrella.

Oh, my God. At least give them umbrellas?

Yeah. Nothing. Nothing.

Wow. Do you have any pictures to prove that you did that? I don’t picture that leaving you now. Not even in the mind.

Lots of lots of people being airlifted out of the area that day. No, seriously, not for you.

Are they really? Oh, there’s no way. No, I’m afraid of heights. There’s no way I would ever do that. No way. Yeah. But I need to tell my husband because he loves to jump off of high things.

He would love it. He should go kloofing.

Yeah, he would. He would really well. And he also loves to dive and he loves water and all that. So, I’ll be telling my husband that that’s great. Baking. What do you like to bake?

Who doesn’t like to bake a chocolate chip cookie? It’s the best thing and I only like to eat them. I don’t really care about baking.

Oh, we’d be a good partners. You know, either. So if you’re a cookie dough fan, come with me. Because I don’t like yeah it.

Yeah, I don’t either. I don’t want it raw.

No. I understand. A lot of people love it. You know, but no, I don’t even like cookie dough, ice cream or anything. So, I think we’re supposed to be talking about business here. Hey, you know what, this is my podcast, I get to do whatever I want. Jill, tell us a little bit about your journey. Because you have done a lot. What made you decide to I mean, did you? Did you do any law? Or did you just jump right into the music management firm?

No, I went well, prior to going to law school, I worked in the music business for a year or two years at a record label, went to law school, I worked in an office for two weeks, watch the lawyer I worked for played Solitaire every day all day and realized I can’t do this. I can’t be stuck in an office working for somebody else. So, it was a two-week stint. And then I never practiced law again.

I launched pretty quickly after that, going back to my music, business roots. And I decided I was going to help bands not go the music label route that I had experienced. I watched a lot of people come through the label and get screwed by the label. So, I thought you know what if we’re in music, you have record label and focus on touring bands, merch. So, I did that. And I sent bands on tour for years, and I would try to get them to make a good living without getting sucked into corporate. It was great.

It’s wonderful that you helped people like that who are so artistic, they don’t really usually have that business side. They don’t want to understand that business side. So, they do get abused in that way often. And that is such a wonderful thing.

Yeah, I called it Paperwork Media to say hey, you focus on your music. I’ll focus on the paperwork because you don’t know what you’re doing. And, we’ll make some solid dough that way but I did that. And during that six-year period that I ran that biz, I started a second business about two years in. I had my first daughter who received a little pair of sterling silver anklets with bells on them from some cousins, some family I have in Thailand.

They shipped them out they said Congrats. I slipped these little anklets on her ankles. And I got compliments wherever we went. So, I thought let’s see if I can sell them here because I can’t find them here. Selling those and taking what I learned of marketing and branding and sales for my first biz and applying it to the second biz, and ran two companies at the same time for four years, which can drive a long time to run two companies.

It was crazy and I learned a lot. And I learned that I hated selling products. So, as I was winding down the baby jewelry business, I was desperately searching for a fellow entrepreneur who might know how to run two businesses at the same time. And I was pregnant with my second kid. So, I thought we could use the two baby. So, I opened up on meetup.com, if you know the site, and I invited anybody who had a business and a baby, can you please come and meet with me and tell me, you’re not losing your mind? And I had no idea that it would be so well received. And so many women would show up to the first meeting. And about six months in somebody said, Could you open up a second chapter, I don’t want to drive all the way here from the big city.

And I thought she was really lazy, because we weren’t that far from the big city. But a lightbulb moment and I thought, Wait a second, it’s the internet, I can open up a city anywhere. I sort of took off, and I closed up the music management business, and I sold the baby jewelry business, because it felt like something bigger than I had ever imagined. I would do it already. I knew it would be something good. So, I chased it. And I listened to my members as they attended. And what did you need? What do you want to hear about? What do you want to learn?

And we’re 10 years later, we’re in loads of cities around the world. We have an online community now that we launched five-ish years ago. And so we have online and offline resources for any mom entrepreneur who wants to build a better business there for your alliteration needs.

That is fabulous. I love it. So, a couple of questions, from things that you’ve mentioned, what was it about selling product that you didn’t enjoy? For anybody that’s like thinking about doing that? What do they need to watch out for?

I don’t like I mean, if you couldn’t tell Kathy, I am a people person. And I love to chat. And when you have your product sitting on a shelf, they do not talk back to you. They don’t interact with you. I couldn’t stand that I wasn’t serving a person, that I was serving a piece of sterling silver. So, I also know nothing about jewelry and kind of went into an industry and realized that after.

I see all that you’re wearing right now.

I mean, it’s all fake. I really should not have done that. But it’s sort of also and I’ve been very lucky in this regard. With my second and my third businesses, I sort of launched them not really planning ahead, not thinking much about it just oh, let’s see if this works. It’ll probably fail. And then they took off. And then I went Oh, wait a second. I don’t love it.So, although I do love what I do, where I serve mom entrepreneurs now, I really am a service based business person, not a product based business.

Yeah, I did a little bit of product stuff. It was not successful. Before I started my virtual assistant business, and what I hated was inventory.

Yes, amen. I’m with you.

I am a people person. Also, I don’t like to talk to, I was ridiculously making my own soap. And anybody who knows me now would just die laughing because I don’t like to. I’m not crafty at all. So why ever got into that? I’m still like, what was I thinking? But, you know, I know that I learned a ton from every business that I tried. How about you?

Same totally. And I don’t regret it for a minute. And in fact, I think it’s what led me to do what I do now. And I offer so much advice and coaching and consulting about product and service-based businesses. And I’m able to do that because I’m here.

And the mistakes that we make, we always learn from those, right. If you don’t ever make any mistakes, you’re not learning as fast as those of us who’ve made mistakes.

So what advice would you give now that you have gotten a lot of advice and you have become The expert on how to be both a mom and an entrepreneur, a mom and a business owner, what tips can you share with people on how to do all of that at the same time?

I mean, it’s always a tough question to answer because everybody’s different. But the two general things I’ve noticed with mom entrepreneurs, specifically, across the board, meaning all ages, once they’ve had a kiddo, all countries all time zones, they there are two things every woman carries. One of them is fear of failure, because there’s a lot more on her plate, and there’s a lot more at stake. So, she’s really scared she’s gonna let her family down, she’s really scared to let her kids down, her partner, everyone. If there’s a lot of fear, to sort of let go and give up carrying around and then the other piece of it that I’ll be frank, I don’t know if I’ve even fully gotten rid of it is guilt, guilt that you are prioritizing yourself or your business, and you’re not helicoptering over your kids all day, every day, and you’re not paying attention, quote, unquote, to the important things which are supposed to be not you, which I find to be garbage at this point.

But I began that way, and is feeling so guilty that I was doing anything for myself. And I’m a long way since then, and I think a lot of our members who’ve been with us for a long time have also sort of evolved away from that thinking and carrying that as well. But those honestly, are the two things I see with members we have in Mexico and in Norway, and in Austin, Texas, and San Francisco and New York. So, no matter where you are, if you have kids, and you have a business, these are the biggest blocks, if you will.

Thank you for sharing that. And, you know, the name of this podcast is Dare to Leap. And the reason I called it that is because I find that that is where the biggest fear lies, is making that leap into your own business into an entrepreneur type of business into something new. What tips do you have for people who are like, I really, really want this, but…

For me, when I heard the name of your podcast, I thought, it’s so brilliant, because there’s always an unknown. Even if you don’t run a business, there’s always an unknown, you have to leap into it. And if you dare to leap, you’re gonna feel amazing afterwards. But I think I used to say to folks, let’s just steal from the Nike slogan, you know, just do it, just go ahead and do it. And a lot of you would say I would love to. And intellectually that makes sense, but I can’t.

And so I think the thing I’ve noticed and I have drunk the Kool Aid a little bit, the thing I’ve noticed, that’s work the best is if you find a community of some kind, where you can find emotional support, literal, physical support, other women as examples of what you can go do, and the fact that they might have failed, but pick themselves up or the fact that they dare to leap into the industry, you want to leap into all has been so helpful. I’m ashamed that I spent the first five years of my business life without a community, because, boy, did I reinvent the wheel about 5000 times. And had I known to go out and meet people and talk to them and not be so opposed to welcoming other viewpoints and other people into my life. Man, I would probably be a billionaire.

So, that’s interesting that you did that. Because quite honestly, I did the same thing. When I started my business, I basically became a hermit for five years, I did not reach out to others at all. What do you think that’s all about?

You and I are not the only ones. But I think that a lot of it is that fear and that guilt that I was talking about? A lot of it is control. I don’t want to tell anybody what I’m doing. I don’t want to ask for help, because it’s admitting that I don’t know anything. It’s admitting that I need help. I think we do a lot of mind tricks about thinking that I got this. I can do it. I can manage 49 departments of my own business by myself. Sure. Right. healthy. Yeah. Mm hmm.

No. I know another thing I was thinking because as you’re talking about that, I’m thinking what was I thinking when I did that? Because looking back, I’m like, that was really not at all something smart to do. Why did I do That, because Jill, you’re obviously a very intelligent person. I know I might seem like the craziest woman in the world, and I am. But in my own crazy way, I’m also intelligent. And, you know, thinking back, I really just thought all I have to do is work really, really hard. And I will make this happen. Why? And what I, you know, that work hard. I think as women, we always think we have to work hard. Have you ever thought about that? Or had anybody else say that to you? And if so, what’s your thought on that?

I mean, I used to literally have a standing desk where I’d work 18 hours a day, and thought, well, the harder I work, the better, the more profitable this will be, the more successful it’ll be. And it’s so funny to say, of course, hindsight, 2020, that it’s the dumbest thought in the world. But I think I’m still thinking about what you asked before, a reason that people don’t go out and seek community, I think community has a bad name.

Because I think I know that I used to assume, first of all, everybody who’s in a community, I’m not and they all already know what they’re doing. And I don’t so why would I join them? I also think is filled with those god-awful networking, women and men who walk in the hand their business card to you, they give you a sleazy sales pitch and you supposed to leave the meeting and connect with everybody and never ever have anything in common.

And there definitely are those types of communities. You don’t even have to attend to figure that out. You don’t even have to attend one. You just ask a couple of people that are in it, what it’s like, right.

I wanted to skip the time trying to figure that out and just focus on the hard work, let’s keep going. And it turns out that it’s such a good investment of your time. And if you win something money, it’s just the makes a world of difference. But you and I can easily say that now because we know after the fact. So, if anybody’s listening who’s not there yet, take it from people who know, and who spent years wasting time.

So, any tips on how to find a community or how to identify when you do see a community, that is one that’s going to be a good fit for you?

I highly recommend immediately finding three to five communities and joining them. And you can do that really easily on Facebook or LinkedIn. You can search groups. Of course, they’re having a bit of trouble because it’s a little bit of a pandemic right now. So, you can’t go offline. But there are an awful lot of places you can Google it. And then the reason I say join three to five is because within 24 to 48 hours, you’ll get the tone of the group and you’ll know if it feels right in your gut. And you’ll just go These are my people or who are these Looney Tunes I’m leaving.

And do you in your community of mom entrepreneurs, do you offer something free for people to be able to experience you and your community or something low cost?

Yeah, we do. I’m going to tell you all about it. If you go to foundingmoms.com you can get yourself a membership and it includes access to our offline founding exchanges, which are twice monthly masterminds, where right now we’re doing them virtually because of this tiny pandemic I mentioned. And online, you would join our closed exclusive Facebook group. For members. We have weekly Facebook Live teaching things.

We have monthly video courses that come out. We have a business coaching program, we have a virtual assistant program, we have so many freakin resources. I don’t honestly remember all of them right now. But if you go there and you join, it’s normally $50 a month. I’m gonna Can I just say the code?

Please if you want to, and I’ll also put it in the show notes.

It’s not just like a free a week free, we give four weeks free. So, you can not only spend a month in the the FMC but you get two free meetings offline in your local area. The code is 1MOFREE that you enter at checkout. Go for all lowercase because they don’t remember.

Well, that code and a link to that site will be in our show notes. Thank you for offering that for free. And the reason I brought that up not only was to, you know, get you some PR there, but to also mention, you shouldn’t have to pay anything to get an experience like this to see if you’re going to be a good fit. Agreed you should either very low cost or free to be able to experience it. And then you can decide if you want more.

Yeah, before you pay for you pay a lot to get more. Because I know I want people to experience all this. And if you’re not watching the video, I’m circling my head where I have my tiara on. Before they decide if I’m the right fit for them, right. Well, thank you for offering that. I really appreciate it. That’s exciting. I’m on go sign up myself.

You must come sign up.

Winning. And I’m also thinking about changing the name of my podcast from dare to leap to dare to kloof.

That would be cool. But I know. It wouldn’t have quite the same ring. Not quite the same ring.

So, in your experience in working with all these mom entrepreneurs and those who are scared to leap? Do you see any reoccurring reasons why they’re scared? Why they’re fearful. Why they can’t seem to take that leap? Yeah, even if it’s, you know, because they could do a side hustle. They could do it part time. Is there a difference between side hustle and part time?

To some people? Yes.

Okay. Can you tell I’m showing my age?

No. It’s just really funny that it’s a complicated answer now. But you know, if I don’t want a solid 40 hour week in my home running an international business, some people call that part-time, even though I know I work full.

My gosh, you’re kidding. So, then I did not know that. Some people assume side hustle means you’re not making money yet. It’s all who you ask. It just is a million. What the other thing is side hustle would mean you have another job, wouldn’t it?

Correct. That implies you’re doing two things. A part time. You don’t need to have another job, or time to do hours. But it’s right. You’re talking to corporate folks or not? It’s a mess out right. In that regard. And I don’t think it matters. But to answer the question.

I felt like you are hip with it enough? Because you use a lot of abbreviated words. Oh, yeah. And like rn? I thought, Oh, she’s, and it is his hip, even write a cool word anymore. It’s cool. Even a cool word anymore?

Yeah. My children watch, and they teach me everything. But, I think that often times people will not dare to leap. I mean, the fears involved, the guilt is involved. But I think a lot of it actually, from my members, what I’ve heard from them, stems from having grown up in a family or a society where you’re constantly told you not gonna make it. Or you’re literally told by your partner or your family, you’re not going to make it.

And so when you hear that, and you convince yourself of that I’ve known people to walk themselves through Excel spreadsheets of financials through business plans they’ve written up and right before launch have decided it could never work. So, I’m going to go the other way. Oh, my gosh. And it’s very frustrating for those of us who don’t do too much planning and just dive in. I don’t really so I don’t really relate to it as much as I understand from them.

But I think a lot of this is ingrained for many, many years. And then of course, there is a hearing about a lot of success stories like the lady who launched Spanx, and thinking it’s such an outlier. How can I ever get there? And if that’s sure, talk yourself out of it, but that shouldn’t mean you know?

Yeah, like that idea is already taken. There’s nothing else. Right? So, one of the things that I hear a lot and I would love to hear if you hear this too, or in your opinion on how to overcome this is I don’t Want to start over?

You mean start over like a new biz? What are you talking about?

That exactly. I’ll be talking to somebody who is in the corporate world. And they’re like, yeah, I really hate my job. And it’s, I have nowhere to go. There’s no promotional opportunities. You know, I’m getting a 2% raise every year if I’m lucky. I drag myself to work every day. And then when it comes to daring to leap, they’re like, really don’t want to start over.

Well, they’re close. And they’re in the Yes, lock-ins, stable paycheck. no control over my own fantasy. Just to bring it back to community. I think a lot of those people are surrounded by other people. Also naysaying the whole idea of, well, if you go off and do your own thing, you’ll never have this lifestyle. So right, let me pull it right out from under you in terms of succeeding and you know, get rid of that.

And then we have found a lot of, I don’t know, we should call them corporate flippers, who joined because they were in corporate. In fact, we have a member who 72 years old, and joined us after attempting or sort of joining a lot of other Women’s Business groups she comes from, she joined a lot of corporate Women’s Business groups.

And then when she found us, she did this huge sigh of relief and went, wait a second business doesn’t have to be boring. Like, I can just have fun with this and launch my own thing and see where it goes. She’s one of our biggest supporters, she loves everything we put out, because the way she talks about it, no one presented to her the idea that it could go the way that it’s going for her now. So, I think such entrepreneurship is such a different mentality and way of working than it is in corporate that I think people in corporate can’t even imagine what it’s like in the entrepreneurship world.

How rough and tough and challenging. It is like in corporate, but without all of the barriers that you meet all of those bosses stopping you from flourishing. It’s so much better for everyone. It’s so much better.

Yeah, Jill, you’re absolutely right. Because I, you don’t know this, but I came from corporate almost 20 years at a fortune 500 company. I was golden handcuffs. God, thank you in really good. And then they told me I laughed and smiled too much. And I was never going to be promoted. And I was 40. And everybody said, You can’t leave here. You only have 15 years to retirement. You can’t leave here. You’ll never make this kind of money. Oh, we can’t leave.

And even when I took my letter of resignation into the boss, who had told me I laughed and smiled too much. He said, this is the biggest mistake you’re ever going to make in your life, you will never make this kind of money again. And I vowed to myself, right then Oh, just watch me. I will double this. That’s what I thought I will double this.

And then that’s part of the reason I put my head down for five years because I was like, I’m doubling that, you know, and then once I doubled it, I’m like, now I’m going to triple it. Now I’m going to quadruple it. And then when I came up for air, I was like, What have I been doing? I recreated a job for myself. This isn’t what I wanted to do. And that’s when I started making decisions based on Am I going to have fun doing it? Am I going to feel fulfilled doing?

Yes. I mean, that’s the best way to go. But that doesn’t sound safe to somebody who’s sitting in corporate, right?

Yeah. It was just on a virtual event with a lot of lawyers, you’ll be able to relate to this. And you know, as my normal self, I have my tiara on and all that. And they were all in suits. And In the conversation we were supposed to have in the group was, how do you feel about having fun? And, you know, I of course said, Well, I love it. I do it all the time.

And most of them said something like, there is a time and a place when it’s appropriate. Now, I was like, whoa, I’m so glad I don’t work with you. Because for me the job that places whenever I feel like it. And I told him just like I told you, I said I had a really crazy chair on like, you might think this is crazy. This is my this is my fancy tiara. I had a I had a blow up one because it was supposed to be we’re supposed to be at a pool party.

So, I wore a blow up for tiara so I could get in the pool. I told them, and they were all like, there’ll be a time and a place for that. And I said I have a fancy tiara. And not nobody said anything. Nobody laughs I was like, yeah, this isn’t The community for me, I’ll be moving on from this one. So that’s a good example. The other thing that I hear from people and see if you hear this one, and women, when I say people, I’m really talking about moms, women, grandmas. aunts, is my husband believes I can do it by myself. My husband says I can do it by myself. I don’t need anybody else’s help. I don’t need anybody to teach me. I don’t need a community. Have you ever heard that one?

No. I mean, I’m desperate to know why he believes that why he thinks that, is that his experience?

Well, I will tell you, my very own husband told me that in the beginning, when I wanted to hire my first coach, and he said, Why do you need that? You’re smart. You don’t need that? And I said, Yeah, I do. Because I’ve gotten as far as I can go on my own. And I have big aspirations. And I want to hire a coach who has already been where I want to go, so that I can get there faster and easier. And he was like, oh, that seems like a waste of money to me. And I said, Well, I’m gonna do it. And then we’ll see. So I did. And oh, my gosh, best money ever spent! I will never be without a coach again.

Oh, for sure. Well, I think I like in that scenario, to what we all often hear from folks. And this might be you, Kathy, people who don’t really believe in or understand or think that therapy would be helpful. Well, I can just process my feelings on my own, and I’m just going to be sad, happy, whatever I need to be. And I, why would I need someone else around and until they understand the concept of needing the back board, so that you can’t actually process anything alone, you’re feeling right, this concept, you need a back board to echo back to you what you’re literally thinking and saying, so you can tweak it, so you can hone it so you can improve it.

And to me, once you have it’s like a religion, I guess once you’ve accepted that, that is the way that we function as human beings. I think people then dare to leap into, oh, wait, I’m gonna reach out for help, and not just sit here and do this all by myself, because that, to me is all ego talking. That’s just that, to me, is you’re very out of touch with how business is actually done, because there’s a reason that there are presidents and boards and all kinds of people at the top level of companies, you need people to check in with people.

That’s why the government set up the way the government set up. We can’t do anything without each other. So, you and I are saying that we’re like preaching to the choir with each other because we both came doing this on our own.And we both know so well, now how much it hurt our progress? I think I know. Yeah.

Well, what type of women typically join your program, and I’m assuming there gonna be a wide range. But give me an idea, a wide range.

In terms of type of business, I do think we have majority service-based businesses, because a lot of retail folks are in the stores all day and don’t have time for accessing our stuff at the speed that you would want to. But we tend to run and a little bit older than you would think a lot of people hear the Founding Moms and they think that we’re all young uns carrying infants. But we’re pretty much 35 years old to 72. As I had said before, I say 72 Yes, you did.

And we’re usually not comprised of women who are thinking about launching, we usually you’re in your first one to 10 years of business. You really want to go Okay. Yeah, you want to get really good at marketing, branding, sales. And that’s not to say, we have members who are thinking of ideas and hang around for 10 months and then launch that’s some of our members the majority are right, but in doing what they do, but they really need to bump up their marketing game or they need to get better at branding, they join us.

Good I like that. So, marketing branding, those are two biggies say you help with sales. Okay? So, if your marketing branding and sales.

Yeah, well here in there, we have lawyers who are members who can give you some advice we have accountants who definitely comment often about advice for us but for big only accounting, financial, you know stuff that’s not for you.

Well, and legal and accounting advice you can’t give legally without them actually working right with you. So that’s a holy man now that that’s a big reason why lawyers and accountants don’t give that advice freely because they can’t. They can share some insights and give some broad information but for your specific business, you do want to have your own accountant, your own CPA, your own bookkeeper, whoever that is. Do you agree?

Oh, yes, I do. I didn’t need to do but can.

Oh, yeah, I’m not a numbers girl, but I’m learning to like on because you can make some really bad decisions without knowing your numbers.

You and me both.

See, we’re, we’re sisters from another mister. I’m telling you. Well, in wrapping up two things. One, I want to hear what your life is like on a daily basis. Okay, so your typical business life. And then I want to wrap up with you telling us how people can there’s a way other than what you’ve already shared, you can share it again, how people can find out more about you and what you have going on. And how old are your children.

I have a 13-year-old daughter, she’s 13. Now, I have a 10-year-old daughter. And then I have a 14-year-old stepson and a six-year-old stepson a little bit of a break over here. Yeah, and I do love talking about my schedule, because it’s morphed so much over the years, where I used to, again, work 18 hours at a standing desk every day and not move, just bathroom breaks. I realized, wait a second. I’m the boss. I’m in charge of my calendar.

And so I started rearranging everything. Particularly right now we’re talking at a time where the pandemic has hit Chicago has all schools going remote. So, I’ve just recently rejiggered my schedule, Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I only work a couple hours in the evening, because I like to be around for my girls who need a lot of help at school and the boys. And then Thursdays and Fridays are my gung ho, let’s do this. And then on busy weeks, which are most weeks, I’d work a little bit through the weekend, too. So, I kind of take off, quote, unquote, Mondays through Wednesdays, for the kiddos.

And it ends up sounding like I’m not working very much during the week. But in fact, my email program enables me to schedule email. So, I look like I’m working all week long. I’m very systematized in my business now. I do a lot in advance and schedule a lot out. I look like I’m around 24/7. So that’s there’s not really a day in the life. There’s no, every day is an adventure.

I love that. And that’s exactly what I wanted to hear was what is your real life Like? Yeah, because that’s part of what the corporate people don’t get right? Is that you really can when we say you can make your own schedule, we don’t mean you can choose Yeah, I’m gonna have Monday off and then I’ll work nine to five the rest of the week. No, you literally can choose whatever you want.

I think a lot of that’s awesome in that way as well, because they want to look like they’re real business people, but they don’t realize the internet. We’re in 2020. You can do a lot and not. Right? And be kind to yourself and actually take time off every Yes. And then if folks want to find me, foundingmoms.com or you could just Google Jill Salzman. I’m everywhere. I’m at founding moms on pretty much almost every single social media handle. But come to FoundingMoms.com. Join us and use code 1mofree when you check out and you won’t be charged for four weeks, so you can try everything.

It’s gonna be a party. Yes. That’s awesome. Thank you for letting me share that. Jill, I’m telling you, I could talk to you for another two hours because you just you could I Could I come and stay with you. And could you read me Chicago after the pandemic’s over.

We will have to hang out.

Yeah, yes. Yeah. And, you know, you’re gonna have to get bring some tiaras for your daughters too. We have a couple of I have a couple of men in my program. Now. You don’t allow men at all? Or do you allow men in your program?

It’s not that we don’t allow them. They just don’t show up.

They just don’t. Well, I mean, with the word moms, I would think not. But yeah, you never know.

This very true. But we just haven’t had that experience yet.

Yeah, we’re all inclusive. But out of hundreds I have five guys. So, we don’t when we do giveaways we do tiaras. And everybody’s like, what about men? And I’m like, if they don’t like them to wear it, but I’m not giving them some special. How many, you know, times in our lives have the men, you know, made exceptions for the women? Not? It’s our turn now. It’s our turn in a lot of ways I feel as women today, and I’m really excited about that. How about you?

Ditto.

Well, Jill, thank you so much for spending this time with me. I really appreciate it. Yeah. And I look forward to jumping in and getting to experience your community and see what are you have going on.

FoundingMoms.com, we’d love to have you. Thank you.