Welcome to the Happy Healthy Hustle podcast where we explore the intersection of health, happiness and productivity. I'm your host Christiane and I'm super excited to be here with you today. Today we are actually talking about being a mompreneur. So I have Jessica Sitani here who is a mompreneur coach and she's going to share a little bit with us some of the secrets that she is using to be a successful mompreneur coach and what it actually means.
Well today's guest is Jessica Sitanii and let's hear a little bit about Jessica first. With her bachelor's in psychology, Jessica Sitani took a leap of faith to start her own business back in 2020. Then after coaching dozens of clients on mindset, consistency and habits, she became a first-time mama in 2022. This new event in her life inspired her to pivot her business to become a mompreneur coach.
Now, as she scales her business, Jessica is passionate about helping other mompreneurs simplify their life from the inside out. All things mindset, self-care, decluttering and time management. So let's hear from Jessica. We're really going to love her insights. Thank you so much for being here, Jessica. Of course. Thank you, Kristiana, for having me here. Really is such a privilege and an honor to be a guest on your podcast. So thank you for that.
Well maybe first of all, to kick things off, how would you describe being a mompreneur? What does it actually really mean, Jessica? Oh my goodness. What doesn't it mean, right? It's a little crazy, the best of both worlds, right? Because you have your little ones and then you're also raising in a way your business. Because I like to see your business as your baby, right?
You take care of it and you put so much time and effort and energy, so much money into it and it's as if you are taking care of your baby. Obviously it's very different if we go into the logistics to be very literal, but I like to see that as a little symbolism or analogy where that is how important your business is. You're doing so much because you want it to grow and to succeed and you want to impact so many people.
While you obviously want to be the best mom possible because first and foremost, your kids will always come first. And so being a mompreneur, and I'm sure mompreneurs listening to this and I'm sure you can also agree it can be a little bit crazy trying to manage and figure out the time of, okay, first of all, I'm a mom taking care of my baby's needs and then I have to go to my business and then where am I? Where do I find time for myself? And so it's trying to find that balance.
Now will it ever be perfect? No. And I know that it's about figuring it out and as a mompreneur coach, that is what I help mompreneurs do. I help them simplify their lives from the inside out, starting with their mindset. I even help them with self-care because without self-care, I am sorry, but you will not be able to be your best self as a mom and a business owner, let alone as a wife and as a friend and so many other titles and hats that we wear, right?
I also help them with decluttering because I know I'll share this a little bit, in a little bit, about how that helped me and it helps me to stay sane, keeping my house neat and organized as much as I can and as well as with time management. So self-care mindset, decluttering and time management are what I use to help mompreneurs simplify their lives because I feel like in today's world and in today's day, we need a little bit more simplification than trying to complicate it.
Thank you so much, Jessica.
That's an amazing definition of being a mompreneur, that you are raising little ones to become successful and amazing humans and at the same time, you are also raising your business, independent of what stage that business is, to become an amazing and thriving and self-fulfilling work, because you want to feel you're pouring your heart and soul into it, your passion, but at the same time, you also want to feel you are maybe creating that balance between your personal life and your work.
And I actually love that moms are doing it because I always feel that it's inspiring our family that we don't, even if you are, but if you keep your work life going, it actually inspires our family that we can do it.
And there might be circumstances where this is not happening, where you maybe have to put things on hold and you might be able to pick things back up and that's all right because our lives take different twists and turns, but eventually maybe figuring out I'm passionate about this or I was passionate about this and I want to come back to my little business to being an entrepreneur, labeling myself a mompreneur is something that I always feel we get the encouragement from.
So I love that you are a coach and helping people in various stages of being a mompreneur there. Absolutely. Thank you. And the other thing that I love that you mentioned is decluttering and simplifying. In general, the way that I look at it as a health coach is we always thrive when we add in healthy tidbits and when we take out things that might be challenges. So don't make your life harder by stocking unhealthy foods at home.
Maybe you actually need to set yourself up for success and stock up on healthy foods, whether that's in your pantry, in your fridge, in your freezer, because that will really create that momentum to following a healthy diet. And same with exercise.
Maybe you need to make your workouts more accessible, putting things in reach and visible instead of having them in a very complicated spot or you maybe need to get yourself some nice new workout pants and kind of creating a momentum to where you are setting steps for reaching your personal wellness goals because that self care is so important to us. Absolutely. So Jessica, how would you define your personal superpower?
What makes you you that you feel you can go back to and that keeps you going day by day? Do you have one superpower, do you have multiple? What are your secrets? Oh gosh, I was like trying to think about this because I often, you know, it's like the question like what makes you unique? And a lot of the times people are like, I don't know what makes me unique. And I've been there, you know, I'm like, I don't know what makes me unique.
So I've thought about this often and I always go back to one thing and that is that I am a big dreamer. I love to dream and sometimes that could be like a two-edged sword, right? Where it's like it motivates me and I'm like, yeah, I have the momentum. I'm going to reach my goals. And then sometimes it feels like, oh my gosh, they seem so far away. Like am I ever going to reach those? But I would say more often than not, it motivates me and it inspires me.
And I actually follow accounts that align with those dreams. So when I go on my Instagram, for example, my feed is I would say 99.9% accounts that have my big dreams. So I'm usually always just thinking, thinking, thinking and dreaming and envisioning all these things that I can't wait to be able to attain. Things for example, like being able to go to different countries and being there to physically serve. I am so excited for one day to be able to donate millions of bucks, right?
Bucks, dollars, but more than donating, I want to actually be there and physically give, physically do the work and be able to get to know people from so many different stages and seasons of life and circumstances. That is one of my biggest, biggest goals. But of course I have a million in my mind. I could go on and on about that, but I feel like my dreams are one of my biggest, biggest whys that keep me going even when sometimes I don't feel like it.
And even when sometimes I just want to throw in the towel because I'm not seeing the results that I want as soon as I want. Or maybe when I'm just kind of tired of the mundane, just doing the same thing over and over again, it gets kind of boring, right? So keeping my dreams alive helps me to push forward and to not give up. So I would, I would say that dreaming, being a dreamer is one of my superpowers.
You have a mantra or I had a podcast episode earlier where I hoped a step-by-step to create a one minute mantra. And of course with my children, I've shared this on social media too. We've done a visualization and visual boards. So it's the visual, but it's also the mantra audible that we are doing. What does help you to keep your dreams as your motivation? So I don't have like one mantra per se.
I usually just, I fill my life, my mind really with a ton of podcasts, which is why I also have a podcast because I embrace podcasts that I listen to. I embrace their content and a lot of it is very inspirational and motivational. So it helps me stay on a high.
Also when I am literally just laying with my baby at night or in the morning and I am not tired, I have made it a habit to, now, yes, sometimes I fall asleep, but most of the time I just visualize all the wonderful things that I would love to be in half. And it's gotten clear the more I visualize and it's gotten clear as I have seen, physically seen through like a vision board. Like you said, I use that on my Instagram, for example, the accounts that I follow.
I visually see these things that I'm like, okay, yeah, I could totally see myself being or doing this. So in the beginning it was a little bit like, I don't, it's not very clear in my mind. Like I can't see all the images as I've done it more and more. It's allowed me to not only visualize this when I'm literally laying down, but I could be making lunch and then a thought comes to mind. I'm like, oh yeah, that would be nice. You know, I can't wait for this.
So I think it's just something that I've been doing so repetitive that it's now part of me, I would say. Yeah. I think that always say your mind is a muscle that needs training, whether that's for dreaming, whether that's for clarification, whether that's for calming down thoughts. Your mind needs to practice doing these activities, whether that's, you know, at night where you feel, oh my gosh, I'm so stressed out. My mind is racing. You can train your mind to calm down.
You can train your mind to go towards your dreams and you can train your mind to get there quicker. So when you say, all right, I want to think about these happy thoughts. Then eventually the muscle in your mind will be so strong that when you really, really need it, it's maybe just five minutes and boom, you transport it yourself there and you can see how you are strolling through these countries and helping others and leaving a legacy, which is really what your dream is.
And I think it's absolutely amazing. I love your dream and your passion and how this keeps you feeling. So right now we are dreaming and we are at the stage of day by day. This keeps us going. Let's maybe take a look into the past. What have been some of the obstacles that you dealt with, struggles, challenges, and how did you overcome them? So one of the biggest struggles or obstacles that I experienced was actually when I became a mom. So I'm a first time mom and my baby's going to be one.
It's crazy how fast time has flown. But one of the biggest struggles was experiencing postpartum anxiety. That was huge because I've never struggled with anxiety. I mean, just the occasional worries, right? Nothing where every minute you're worrying about everything. And it was really hard on me just because when I had my baby, I had a C-section. So I wasn't able to get up and change my baby's diaper and do the normal things, I guess, that you're able to. It physically, I physically couldn't.
And so my husband would be changing baby's diaper for I don't even know how long he did that until I was able to heal a little bit more. And I kind of felt, I don't know, I feel like I'm being too dramatic by saying this, but just numb a little bit. I don't even want to say, I hesitate to even say this word, but a little bit useless in the sense of I felt like I should be doing more. I just had a baby. I should be knowing how to breastfeed immediately.
I should be able to change my baby's diapers. I should know why my baby is crying. He would be crying all the time. And I was like, I should know I am the mom, right? And I felt like it might've been, I don't know, maybe a little bit harder also because I coach on this, right? I coach on how to work on your mindset. My background in school is psychology.
I love everything that has to do with the mind and with the brain and how it works and how to change your train of thought and how to overcome bad habits, even addictions. That's something that I did in the corporate world. I literally taught people who were addicts how to overcome that. And so, yes, while my struggle right now was different, I felt like I was struggling to change my train of thought.
I was just worrying and worrying and worrying and having all this anxiety and being hard on myself more than I would have ever been. And it was really hard. I don't feel like I was depressed. I don't feel like I experienced depression. I experienced anxiety. And so fortunately, my parents, they live like 10 minutes away from us. My husband had no parental leave at his job. And so he had to work the moment we got home.
And my mom was able to come every single day early in the morning and help me out. She's such an angel. And because of my mom, I was able to shower. Because of my mom, I would eat. Literally, how do moms do this? She was taking care of me and my baby all at the same time. And I just felt like where were my dreams? This is my superpower that I just talked about. But I felt so numb. I was just surviving kind of thing. So that was really tough.
And then I remember in the shower when usually you have all these epiphanies, right? It's when I started attempting to dream again. I'm like, I know what that's like, but I can't feel that anymore. How do I feel that excitement again about dreaming? And I would tell my mom about it. And I remember our closet was a total mess. I was just like, this is only adding more clutter into my mind. I can't think straight. So I actually one day decided, I'm like, okay, I need to organize our closet.
I decluttered our entire closet literally from head to toe. And that simple act of decluttering just our closet, not our entire house yet, it was just our closet, gave me so much mental clarity that it was night and day difference that I was able to set goals and dream again. After I set goals and started dreaming again, I started having that spark like, oh, I'm feeling like myself again. Then I started taking care of myself. Those were part of those goals were taking care of myself.
Like, okay, I got to get back into eating what I usually eat, like healthy foods, got to get back into hitting my water goal, got to get back to working out. Now working out did not look like how it looked before. It looked going out for a walk. That's how it looked in the beginning. And then one of my goals obviously was my business. I'm like, I need to invest in a coach again. That's what I need to feel like I'm taking action and working towards my business goals. And that's what I did.
So funny how I never would have thought that decluttering would help me feel so accomplished and fulfilled. But it was something so simple that went from one thing decluttering, clarity of mind, clarity of mind brought the spark again of dreaming. Dreaming went into taking care of myself again, taking action on my goals. So that was a really long answer to your question, but that's how then I pivoted to becoming mompreneur coach.
Now helping moms simplify their lives from the inside, working on their mind first to the outside. I love your response. I think it's amazing. And I saw so many perils to my own life. So my two daughters are teenage years now, so a lot of the challenges that you had, I remember this very well, this feeling of helplessness after you gave birth. So when I gave birth to my second daughter, I had a spinal headache that I got from the epidural and it made me bedridden for a long time.
And I was not able, you know, you dream about going out for walks and there's all these perfect family pictures that people are posting with a three-day old infant, smiling faces, breastfeeding and all of this. I did not look picture perfect. Nor did they even feel like this. And my husband had to take care of everything. And same with my first daughter. So my second daughter, I had the spinal headache with my first daughter. I could not figure out how to breastfeed at all.
And Jessica, I so appreciate that you bring this up, how reality is different from your dreams. I wish somebody would have told me that, that breastfeeding is not as it is in the movies. Like you just lift your child and happiness will happen. It really didn't work. And eventually it did. I'm a very, I would say I'm a very driven person and had a wonderful coach.
I reached out and asked for help with the lactation consultant, but I really felt very humbled in the fact that something as simple as breastfeeding was creating an obstacle to me that I wasn't even aware of could happen. You think so much about giving birth and buying all these accessories. I wasn't thinking about the physical act of how do I nurture my child, that that actually could be an issue right there.
So I love that you mentioned your mom because my parents-in-law ended up coming and helping me out with my first daughter. And it was an incredible help really at a time when I really needed it, whether that was as simple as I'm going to take a shower. Yeah, like that does wonders. You go and take a shower and you feel like a new person.
So it's amazing how an obstacle and a challenge can make you so humble and bring you back to what your new reality really looks like, because certainly our life will always change. And that's something that in the rear-view mirror, those challenges actually are what shape us today. So let's talk a little bit about that. No, I was just going to say, I think it's amazing as you were saying that is just the fact that dreams and our current life looks very different.
We go through these challenges and we're like, I just can't wait until I reach my goal. But at the same time, you're going to reach your goal and you're going to experience challenges. My dream ever since I was a little girl was to be a mom and a wife. Now I'm a mom and a wife. And I had my baby, which like, I love him. I can't even express how much I love him and how grateful I am that I was able to give a healthy birth even though it was C-section. But I healed fast, which was a blessing.
And my dream had always been to be a mom and a wife. And I just viewed that as like, oh my goodness, that's my top, top goal. And then I reached it, right? But I still experienced challenges so much that I felt so hopeless, so useless. So the thought of all these amazing goals that I want to reach, they look perfect in my mind, but we need to also understand that once you reach and I'm doing the quote unquote with my hands, once we reach those goals, you're going to want to reach more goals.
So it's like we're never satisfied. So it's okay to dream big. I'm a huge dreamer. I think that helps our passion and our drive to move forward and to make so much impact on so many people's lives. But just remember that even when we have and reach those goals, we still will experience challenges. It's never picture perfect how social media or our mind makes it seem to be a lot of the times. It's just, we're in a journey. We kind of talked about this. It's a journey.
It's never you will reach point Z and then you will never experience anything bad and challenges you will just be the happiest ever. It's not like that. You will always experience challenges, but it's just finding gratitude in the midst of all these craziness. That makes sense. For sure. And even if sometimes in the moment the challenge seems like a little stone in the road or an obstacle, I adopted the mindset that sometimes those challenges are what you can laugh about later on.
Because now when I'm thinking about the fact that there were some instances with my children where I just breastfed them, but then maybe they spit up all over my shirt. Sometimes those are things I'm really laughing about now because it's like, oh my gosh, like, you know, this actually is something that in that moment I did not feel great. But now I sometimes share that with my children. It's like, oh my gosh, I remember you down a little ball.
This is what you can laugh about because in the moment you need to embrace it for what it is. Yep. Later on, those are the things you remember because yes, they were not picture perfect and you didn't expect them, but that's maybe what made that moment different and unexpected and memorable. Yeah, and they shape us. They shape us. I know I wouldn't be a mompreneurial coach if I hadn't experienced what I did experience.
I had to come out of it through what I know now, but I wouldn't have known if I wouldn't have experienced it. So it all makes sense. We can only connect the dots moving or looking backwards and not looking forward. So it makes sense now and things definitely make sense as we move past them. Correct. Yeah, I love that.
And of course, that's something that the more we share what our personal, you know, whether you can, I sometimes tell my students in the classroom, even I say, you need to share your personal struggles, the more you share, and I even call it like sharing your SHIT, sharing your shit, right? The more you share it, the more you will see people perking up like, huh, hello, and I have the same issue right there. Oh my gosh, I cannot believe this.
And you do that, but at the same time, I love what you said earlier with regard to dreaming. So every night at dinner, we have this little exercise with my family, which we call what was the best part of your day. It's another muscle you have to train. So you train to dream, but at the same time, you train to reflect and think about your day and what was maybe something positive that stuck out. And at the beginning, my children were not good. They were just saying, oh, I liked PE today.
And then I have to say, why? And I say, well, was I good? And it's like, why? What made it good? Why I saw my friends. Okay. So what was good about connecting with your friends? So you're asking these open ended questions and keep them going. And now they're actually saying a whole sentence, not just two words, but they start thinking about when we even approached the dinner table, oh, what's, what's going to be the good part of my day? I can share today. Yeah. And look forward to it.
So it becomes part of a routine of a habit because that muscle now has been trained. And at the same time, it kind of even allows us to express gratitude for how our day went, which might have looked really glum and gloomy. But when we look back, we're like, you know what, actually there were those happy moments right there. It wasn't that bad altogether because PE was good. I saw my friends and that was really cool. And let's just accept it for it was.
And we dream that maybe tomorrow is going to be even better. Yeah, exactly. That's so true. I love, I love that. What you mentioned, it's about going like a little bit deeper, not too deep, but you get to realize, yeah, there are, there are good parts. Yeah. I love that. So that's maybe, I know you earlier mentioned who has helped you to come out of some struggles and some challenges, but I want to hear a little bit more of who you feel your biggest influences are and why.
So I would say in person, definitely my husband and my family, when I think it's just night and day, it's like, yep, they, they are my rock for sure. Because my husband from day one, very moment, I said, I wanted to invest when I first started back in 2020. I invested in a program that back then was 997. And that for us was huge. That was a lot of money. That was like, I mean, that is a lot of money, right? It's like a thousand dollars. And if you have never invested, that's a huge jump.
And I remember my husband just said, like, do you, like, is that something you really want to do? And I said, I do. And I believe, I know myself, I'm driven, I'm very disciplined. I'm a go getter. Like, I know I will, I will get it done. And he believes, he just believes in me. And he just said, okay, do it. And every single time, and it's the amounts have gone up from there. Every single time that I've wanted to invest in a coach in a program, he just asked me, okay, you really want to do it?
Like, you, you're excited about it. And I always just say, I am so pumped. Like, I know I will get it done. And he's always like, do it, hon. I believe in you. And he's always believed way before, like, we see obviously the results that this program is promising, right? And like, I'm just so grateful, so, so grateful for that, because I know, I know not many people have that, right? I know, I know it can be hard. And so I don't want to take that blessing for granted.
The fact that my husband is so supportive. I really do appreciate that. And not just in business, just in life in general. And as a mom with a baby, he literally sometimes will just, especially during the weekends, and I'm exhausted. It's usually back when I was only getting like four hours of sleep or less. Now we're sleeping good, but at least for now, right? Knock on wood. But he would just go and take baby and play with him for like an hour while I was able to rest.
So just those little things that may seem like nothing major, nothing big actually made a huge difference for me emotionally, mentally, and just feeling that support. Also, like when I think of the help that I've had because I'm able to do my business, my husband has to work, my mom comes and she's here like for what, three, four hours a day to help me with my baby so that I can stay focused and do my business. And that has been tremendous.
I know that I wouldn't be where I'm at right now or wouldn't be able to do things that I love, meaning business, if it wasn't for the help of my husband and my parents, obviously. And then I think of my coaches, every coach that I have invested in for programs on course creation, on podcast editing, on, oh my gosh, like social media. I'm thinking of all the courses that I've taken for sales, all of these amazing coaches.
Like I have had the support that I've needed and I am so grateful because these wonderful experts decided to take a leap of faith and start their business and sell and put their content out there. And then I came across them and now I'm able to grow and continue to scale my business because I took a leap of faith as well and trusted them, even when I didn't have all the answers at the moment and still don't.
But I would say that those are my biggest supporters and have been my biggest supporters. Yeah. I love that because you're mentioning real life people, you mentioning people that coaches you might have never met in person, just never none of them. So that's inspiring right there to kind of create a little bit of a social network yourself. Real life friends and family and also network of professional friends, which might feel like family after a while.
And I think that's really something that's really important, especially as a mom, that you feel you have these multiple ties, whether that's somebody in the room or somebody across the world via your phone or your computer that you can reach out to and ask for help, depending on what their expertise is. Exactly. And in my health and coaching business too, I have a program that's called Journey to Wellness myself.
I love everybody that goes through my program and look in how they transform, depending on what the health and wellness goals are, how they transform and how they come out on the other side and how they stay in touch with me and connect with me. Because to me, that's something that's so important to be their coach, to cheer them on and to really manifest their health goals with them. So I'm very invested in all of the participants that do the Journey to Wellness program with me.
And I always feel I give a little part of myself when I create the program. And I'm hoping that that part of myself is something that they personally really resonate with and that helps them no matter where they are right now. So I really adore your advice right there. And it's the same with our connection. So we connected on social media. We are today on my Happy Healthy Hustle podcast and we are sharing some insights as well.
If anybody has questions for Jessica, what is a good place to reach you? And maybe you can share with us how we can learn even more about you. Absolutely. So I do have a podcast as well. It's called the Simplified Life for Mompreneurs podcast. And you can find it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts. Or you can just search my name, Jessica Sittani. That's S-I-T-A-N-I. Or you can find me on Instagram as well. That's definitely my social media platform that I'm there.
So questions that you have, send me a DM. I answer all of them. And that's at jessica.mompreneur underscore coach. So I would love to be able to connect, answer questions, support, collaborate. So definitely reach out to me for sure. And I also put your contact in the show notes.
So if anybody wants to connect with Jessica, whether that's via Instagram, whether that's listening to her amazing podcast, whether that's sending her a DM or just kind of looking into what her progress and her transformation is, that'd be amazing as well. So thank you so much for being here today, Jessica. I really, really appreciated it. That's it for today's episode of the Happy Healthy Hustle podcast.
I hope you enjoyed the discussion with Jessica about mompreneurs, coaching mompreneurs and looking back in the rear view mirror and learning everything that has been there for a reason and finding those dreams that keep propelling us forward. Remember, health, happiness and productivity are all interconnected. We need to prioritize all three to reach our full potential. Thanks so much for tuning in and we'll catch you next time. Thank you.