64 | Nurture Sustainability

Annie: Well, hey there, Leah.

Leah: Hey, Annie, how are you today?

Annie: I am doing fine. I have survived a very difficult month of January with having COVID and a blizzard and just that transition after the holiday break is always so, so hard. I know it's been really cold in Texas too, which is wild to me.

Leah: Yeah, we don't know what to do over here. I'm freezing and there's so many days that have been like, I can't go outside. It's only 30 degrees. How do people survive? I don't even know how to dress for that. Yeah, we're not used to this cold. I hear you, January tends to be a really packed in month, which is always so odd to me, because we're coming out of December that's super packed, but I feel like January always is busy. Then we decided to have another COVID surge and so many of my friends got COVID. It's just been a whirlwind of January, I totally, totally hear you. Glad we're making it here today. I know that getting through January was a lot but one thing that's helped me so much is some of the things that we're bringing to the podcast and I know you've really worked on kind of your messaging with your business and working through this kind of idea of nurturing. Nurturing lots of different things, nurturing yourself, your business, your circle of care, there's like so many pieces too. I just love the word nurture. I know this is really kind of helped guide you on so many of the things that you're doing now. Annie, where did this kind of idea of nurture, I'm sure people have seen this word from us so much like you guys really love this idea of nurture, and yeah we do, and why, Annie, why do we love this so much?

Annie: Well, last year, I was trying to really hone in on what I feel like my passion is. I've been doing a lot of different things and looking to find that unifying factor, that united, not just the work that I'm doing with Paperless Lactation and the conferences, but also my private practice, really seeing myself as a whole person. I worked with somebody who specializes in messaging. We kept talking and she was like it, this word just kept coming up, this idea of like, I want them to have the resources to build something that takes care of them. I kept pushing back against self-care, and not that I'm against self-care. I think self-care is really important. But wanting to go bigger than this idea of self-care of like, okay, now today, I have to find time to take care of myself. But thinking bigger and saying I want to build something that I can take a break from whether short-term or long-term because I've set it up to take care of me. I was really thinking about it in terms of business, and those really concrete practical things that you need to have in place to have a sustainable business. When I brought the idea to you, you started talking about all the more holistic stuff like we're not just businesses we're people. I love those conversations we were having, and you were really sharing a lot of what you'd been delving into, and this is all happening during our summer hiatus from the podcast. So tell everybody more about some of your journey when it comes to this idea of nurture.

Leah: Yeah, I mean, I think like you, I didn't really have a word picked out in my head, like, this is the word that would describe what I was doing. But I was really kind of finding myself in a place of, pandemic is going on, I'm feeling burned out. I'm feeling like things don't seem sustainable. The level that I was working at, or kind of how I was rolling didn't seem sustainable. I am just so tapped out on so many levels. Which really, I think for a lot of people brings them to okay, well, what am I going to do? How am I going to move through this? I knew that I needed to really dig deep on what was I needing. When you brought the word to me, you were telling me about what you were doing trying to find this kind of central theme and everything and you said the word nurture, I was like, oh my gosh, that's totally what I feel like I've been doing. I've been nurturing so many aspects of myself like, trying to really focus on my health, trying to also focus on my mental well-being, just beyond the physical body but also where I was from a mental state perspective and even deeper than that. Where's my energy? Where's my soul, like the whole picture of me as a person. When I think about nurture, it feels so much more than one moment of like, I'm gonna go take a bubble bath and that's going to help me. The word just feels like a constant pouring in. I was like, that's what we're doing, we're constantly pouring into ourselves makes us so much stronger. It's not a one time I drank a green tea and or whatever, meditated for a few minutes. It was like this constant and I was figuring that out for myself. I needed to have this constant pouring into myself and to my business. So when you were talking about the business, I was like, yes Annie, we got to do the business pouring in, and making it sustainable and take care of us. But we also have to do the personal pouring into ourselves. So we can really build that sustainability. I just love the way this idea has just continued to flourish and grow. I feel like it's a little garden that we're nurturing, this little garden of ideas and it builds to the next idea, and it builds the next idea, and it really feels it's happening organically. I enjoy getting to bring these ideas because I know they've really impacted my life so much. It kind of makes me laugh sometimes because I do a lot of corporate lactation and I think about, we feel like business and like holistic self are very separate, but in the corporate world, they have these whole departments that are employee wellness departments. It's so interesting because I'll do these corporate lactation classes, and then they'll have other people sometimes speak around the same time that I am. I'm hearing this and I'm like, this is totally what we're talking about. There'll be like we have mental wellness services on these days and we have the gym, come meet with such and such for yoga. They'll be announcing these different things and I'm like, corporations have figured out that you have got to take care of your people. I'm thinking small businesses have got to figure out that you've got to take care of your people, not just your business, but your people. Guess what, all of us lactation consultants in private practice out there we are the people that we need to take care of. Every time I hear it, I always giggle. I'm like, that's what we're doing on the small business side too, trying to bring that message in.

Annie: It's so funny, because when you were saying that I was reminded of a movie I worked on, back in the late 90s. It was a movie called Pollock and the director was Ed Harris, the actor. He had some, I don't know, maybe back problems, I don't know. He was the director and the star. He was really stressed and he brought in a massage therapist who was just available. We were working 18 hour days on this movie so I guess she was too, but she was just there. Any crew member could go get a massage when they needed one. She was great, too. She had really, really magic hands. I think when you think about it in terms of that corporate world, obviously, they have seen that they need to take care of their workers because they want their workers to be more productive. At the baseline, yeah, we are workers in our own private practice and we want to be productive. We know from working with families, we're not trying to make parents more productive as milk-making people. We're all like, what is your whole life like, let's just really support you in growing your new family. So that's the energy that we've been bringing to this is that you have a passion for the work that you do. You've been called to do something amazing in the world, helping these new families during this transitional time in their life, helping them with something that is so high stakes for them, helping babies that are so vulnerable, and being able to come at that from a place of wholeness and strength, because you've been taken care of. That really starts with a sustainable foundation for your business, which is something I did not have when I was starting out. I was like, yeah, I'm just gonna go see people and it's gonna be great. Clinically, yeah, I was doing a good job. I certainly made rookie newbie mistakes and needed to call on help from my mentor and other people in the community for things that I just hadn't experienced yet clinically, but I didn't really think at all about how the money was going to be handled. I knew I had to get liability insurance, but I didn't know about disability insurance or workman's compensation or what would happen if I got injured at a client's house. Gave zero thoughts to any of that. I was just taking checks and putting them into my personal checking account. Looking back, I didn't know anything about having a corporate entity. I didn't know anything about the legal stuff beyond the basics that I needed to have in place to be able to grow. That is the one mistake that I look back on that I would love for nobody else to make.

Leah: I know, I know. I mean, I had just a tiny bit of understanding, but even still, it's not to the level that it is now. I also feel like things have changed a lot. We have to give ourselves a little bit of grace because the world of lactation has changed so much. How you set businesses up, I feel like we've learned and changed a lot. But I agree, I feel like that foundational piece allows you to have whatever you want in the future, it might not be like, I want to have 50 lactation consultants working with me, that might not even be it. But if that foundation is solid, whatever you build on top of it is just going to be built with ease and sustainability. It doesn't feel like oh, this is really shaky surface any moment one piece of this could fall and I'm done. I feel like, I wish I could grant that and that's our dream. We're gonna grant that to every person out there that wants to start a business. We're gonna scream it from the mountaintops, I feel like sometimes, but really understanding business, understanding foundation, and giving yourself that gift. I mean, you could almost think about like, I am going to treat future Leah really nice right now, just like you wish past Annie had done for you. I'm going to take care of this now even though I want to just run out there and start seeing all the people and doing all the things. I'm gonna take a slower step into this and really build that foundation. I think that allows you to then build, have big ideas, and you can kind of do whatever you want with it once you have that foundational piece there. I think we've talked a lot about cultivating big ideas because I'm super passionate about I know, there's so much out there in all these wonderful lactation consultants' heads, there's so much possibility. Those foundational pieces, that sustainability allows us to cultivate those ideas and those dreams that people have in such a more easy way. I mean, I guess it's the only way I could put it if you have any idea, but then it means oh, I'm gonna have to spend six months trying to figure out what I have to do to set up my business and then cultivate my big idea. It's like, oh, that doesn't feel as good as like, I already got this all set up and I just came up with this big idea. I could start working on that now.

Annie: Yeah. I think the big idea piece is something that is really underrated in lactation. We think our job is to help this family and this baby, and then the next family and the next baby. Before I met you I had never heard of corporate lactation and even just saying the term and I type it a lot because you have a CERP training that we sell through paperlesslactation.com, that is on corporate lactation. Every time I type it in, I picture a large group of people lactating at the same time. I don't know, which is like I guess something like a scene out of the Mad Max Fury Road.

Leah: Oh my gosh, that's the same thing I pictured.

Annie: It's nothing like that. But I had no idea that these companies would, of course, they would bring somebody in to teach about lactation. Making that connection with you showed me something that exists that I never would have thought of on my own. We find new things in the world when we nurture our connections with other people. There's been so many things that I've learned through our friendship as we've been doing this podcast together, other lactation consultants I connected with locally through NYLCA events, our New York lactation consultants Association, through conferences, I'm super excited that USLCA is going to be in person later this year. I'm absolutely going to be there. I can't wait. When we have these conversations with people, we see things in the world that maybe didn't even exist until we talked about them, and you talk about them, and then they can become real. That happens through conversation and through connection.

Leah: Yeah, and that allows us to understand what are other people doing for all these pieces that we're talking about? Sometimes we don't know what's possible until you have a conversation until you hear what other people are doing. We got to reach out there through these connections and then start to see how we could build even a bigger circle carry around ourselves around our businesses and keep extending that out further and further because it just makes us show up to the families we do want to serve, that core piece that we're also passionate about, we can show up as our whole selves as our business being strong and sustainable. I just think it's so so important to continue these conversations so that we can understand what all is possible and really keep moving that circle of care kind of wider and wider, but also tighter and tighter. It's kind of interesting that like ripples out. You want something tight around you but you also want to extend so far out. It just resonates so much with me and kind of where I am and where I'm trying to go. I know we've taken this to like we want to share this with more and more people this idea and USLCA has partnered with us, which is going to be this amazing workshop that we're going to do, really bringing all these pieces together and helping you guys understand the whole picture of what we feel this nurturing the circle of care really and truly is.

Annie: Yeah, we're gonna be doing this one day workshop on Friday, February 11th which is, if you're listening to this podcast the day it comes out, it's later this week, but there's still time to register at uslca.org/nurture-your-pp for private practice. We're gonna be together all day but we're not just going to be sitting in front of our cameras staring at each other watching slides and PowerPoints. We've got a ton of interactive stuff planned for the day, in addition to some CERPs sessions. It's not about the CERPs, this day is not about that. This day is about nurturing our private practices to build sustainability so that we can do this work as long as we want to do it. So we're going to begin the day by working with a Certified Energy leadership coach, Rachel Carey-Mcelwaney, who's going to take us through nurturing our minds with intention. We've got Allison Porter, who is an attorney and a certified breastfeeding specialist, who's going to be answering our questions about liability insurance, workman's comp, all the different kinds of things that you need to have legally in place to protect yourself. Then Jenny Schott Miller, who is a therapist and CPA who's going to be doing a presentation for us on the finances, the money part of it, that's so important. I'm super excited for that. She teaches a lot about empowering business owners to take control of their own finances so that's what she's going to be teaching us about. Can you tell us, Leah, about our amazing panel and our afternoon session?

Annie: Yeah, I'm really excited about this. We talked about this idea of big ideas and there are some amazing lactation consultants out there doing really, really cool things. We've kind of pulled together this panel of people who've done some neat and innovative things and kind of showing us how a big idea comes to be and then how do we get it out into the world. We're hoping this will inspire you to have some big ideas and be motivated and excited about seeing how other people have gotten their big idea and shared it with the world. We're hoping to in courage you to do the same with your big ideas through this panel and I'm so excited. We have Joy MacTavish, Naiomi Catron, Whitney Dula, and Katie Linda so it's just like a really exciting panel that we have put together, and I can't wait to hear all that they're doing.

Leah: Me too and after that panel, we're gonna be doing some movement with Jen Yang, who is a yoga instructor and she's also a nurse coach. Then she's coming later in the afternoon to do some breathwork with us and in between our movement and our breathwork, this one, I can't wait to end the day with Brandie. Leah, tell us who Brandie is and what she's going to be doing with us in the afternoon.

Leah: Brandie is also a nurse coach. She's actually a nurse coach instructor as well and she is just number one amazing human. She is going to share with us about how to nurture our circle of care, how to make sure that we are caring for ourselves, not just in that kind of like traditional self-care way, but really deeper than that, like what does it really look like to have the right support in our lives or good boundaries in our lives. And what does that really even mean? We hear a lot of these kinds of trendy term self-care, boundaries, yeah, I got all of that. I get support. But what does that really mean and how are we can we do like tangible things right away to make that happen, but also understanding how that might evolve and how we need to continue to kind of cultivate that in our lives so we can have the sustainable foundation to be awesome lactation consultants that you all are.

Annie: Then the best part, I don't know, it's all the best part. I shouldn't say anything is the best part, but we are going to be doing it in the middle of the day and at the end of the day, we're going to be doing breakout sessions. Where you're going to be able to connect with other participants using a workbook that Leah and I are putting together. So it's not just going to be like, okay, you're in a breakout room together everybody says, hi, do an icebreaker or if everybody just kind of stares or like wanders off. We're going to be giving you discussion questions that you can use to nurture those connections with other people. You never know you might meet your next business bestie on Friday through our workshop. We hope we hope those kinds of connections happen. It's going to be a long day, but we're going to be doing some movement as we said. We're going to take a lunch break. The sessions are going to be recorded, not because we want you to not be able to come, we want you to come live, but because I think there's going to be a lot in here that you're going to want to go back and look at again. I know I will.

Leah: Definitely yeah, I totally am going to be reviewing these I am certain of that. I think the live experience is just going to be so much fun because we're gonna have so much interaction. I can't wait for these kind of networking breakout sessions as well. Those are always my favorite part of conferences. I mean, I like the technical things of conferences, but I love just sitting down with a group of lactation consultants and just having that conversation and hearing what people are doing and where they're coming from and just opening my perspective on things. It just is something that you can't get without making those connections. So we're excited to bring that all to you guys in just a few days.

Annie: We will put the link to register in the show notes. There is still time to register if you're listening to this the day the podcast comes out. We can't wait to see you and so until Friday. Thanks, Leah.

Leah: Great to see you and I'll see you on Friday. Bye.

Annie: See you soon. Bye.