CPC guest post: What I've learned as a mom and entrepreneur

Today's guest post is by Morgan Jungels of Created to Convert

Good morning and welcome back to Creative Parenting Club.

Today’s guest post is by Morgan Jungels, a marketing consultant and author of the Substack publication Created to Convert.

As fellow digital businesspeople, we’ve been enjoying Morgan’s insights on all things marketing-related since subscribing to her newsletter a few months ago.

This week she’s joined CPC to share her reflections on juggling parenthood and entrepreneurship. As fellow parentpreneurs, this one resonated quite a bit.

Have a great weekend everyone, and see you next week!

5 things I wish someone would’ve told me about being a mom and entrepreneur

By

Morgan Jungels

,

Created to Convert

—

I’ll never forget the night a few years back when I sat down to dinner with my husband and baby while on vacation in Nantucket, Massachusetts.

There was an older woman and her two adult kids seated at the table next to ours. The woman smiled at us and waved at my drooling daughter. She asked how old she was.

“6 months,” I responded proudly.

“I remember those days,” she said wistfully.

She continued to ask me questions that got progressively more probing as she became increasingly comfortable in our conversation. Until she asked THE question, the one that even now in 2025 continues to carry the weight of centuries of cultural judgement. Did I work.

“I do,” I replied, prouder still. It hadn’t been an easy go of it in my business those last six months. At that point, I was amazed that I—along with my boutique marketing agency, Atlas & Anchor—was still standing. “I have my own business. I work a few days a week while someone helps out with my daughter.”

Her response was something I would turn over in my mind for months afterward. “Oh honey, why?” she asked, with that grandmotherly tone some women take when they want something to sound like it comes from a “well-meaning” place. “You only have so many years to have your child home with you. Your career can wait.”

I was stunned that this stranger would be so bold as to pass judgement on my life. My husband was stunned. But being quick on my feet has never been my strong suit. So I said nothing.

I busied myself with my daughter, my face hot. A million thoughts flooded my brain, many of them limiting beliefs and feelings of guilt I’d been working for months to overcome, as I grappled with a strong desire to be a “good” mom while also continuing to grow my dream business.

I waited until our dinner was over and we’d made it to the car. And then I burst into tears.

It’s been almost 3 years since that dinner. I’m still a proud mom and entrepreneur. I’m still growing a strong and thriving business and an even stronger and equally thriving 3 year old.

I look back on that dinner now and almost laugh from the absurdity of it. Truthfully, I’m thankful for it. That one 5 minute, seemingly inconsequential interaction forced me to confront my own limited thinking and challenge my own beliefs in ways I never could have foreseen at the time.

If I could look back, there are so many things I wish I could say to that struggling, newly-minted mompreneur (or parentpreneur) version of myself. So I’m sharing them here in case someone else needs to hear them too.

1. People will always have their opinions

There’s something about becoming a parent that makes other people think that your life is now a public forum on which to pass judgement. On everything from how you feed your baby to how you get your baby to sleep to the kinds of diapers you use.

You can’t do a whole lot about their opinions. But you can control how you respond to them. Don’t sink to someone else’s perceptions of your choices. Everyone’s opinions, no matter whose they are, are shaped by their own small slice of the world and their experiences in it. Which means their opinions are a reflection of them, not you. You get to choose whether you agree with their opinion or whether you don’t.

If you were a child of the 90s like me, you’ve maybe heard of the “Wear Sunscreen” song by Baz Luhrman.

Sometimes out of nowhere, this quote from that song will pop into my head:

“Be careful whose advice you buy but be patient with those who supply it.

Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past

From the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts

And recycling it for more than it's worth.”

Advice and opinions are basically the same thing, just distributed with different intentions. They’re both rooted in perspective and past experiences. So take them with a grain of salt (mine included).

2. Being a business owner does not make you less of a parent. And being a parent doesn’t make you less of a business owner.

I used to (and on my really bad days, still do) get so triggered by posts on social media that would say things like, “You have to host 3 live webinars on back to back days (no Mondays or Fridays!) if you want to have a successful launch” or “You can do this start to finish in a single weekend, so what are you waiting for?”

I’d feel like such a failure because I physically could not do those things. I had other priorities I had to juggle. And that seriously impacted my confidence because I felt like I was behind before I even got started.

Then in the same doom scroll, I’d see posts like, “You’ll never be able to get a good sleeper if you have your kid in daycare.” or “I’m so glad I’m a SAHM because I get to experience moments like these.”

Oof. Nothing like 15 minutes on Instagram to make you feel like you’re not doing life right.

So in case you need the reminder—there are an infinite number of ways to grow a thriving, profitable business. There are an infinite number of ways to be a good and present parent. One doesn’t have to be at the expense of the other. Just run your own race.

3. You can be two things at once

It doesn’t mean there won’t be days when it’s hard as hell. It doesn’t mean there won’t be days when you question everything. It doesn’t mean there won’t be days when you sob into your rose out of frustration or crawl into bed at night and pass out from the sheer exhaustion of trying to show up for everyone all the time.

It’s a yes/and not an either/or situation. Yes I am a mom and yes I am a business owner. Yes I love my two jobs AND yes there are days when they suck every vestige of life out of me. Then the very next day they’ll fill me up like nothing else in the world can.

I’ve come to accept that balance is a very squishy concept. We think it’s striking a chord between the two parts of ourselves, but in reality, we’re both things always. The balance is in how we take the good with the bad, the knocks with the wins, the periods of hustle with the periods of rest.

4. Embrace the different seasons in life and business

I tried too hard to fight them. And it ate up a lot of energy and happiness, especially in those early months as a new parent. I felt this need to prove that nothing in my business had changed, when in fact, my entire life had been flipped upside down and put through the spin cycle.

I told myself that I was lucky that I could make my own hours and choose my schedule. My former corporate job never would’ve allowed for that. But in my head all I could think of was the work I had to do that wasn’t getting done.

The experience taught me a very valuable lesson. Being an entrepreneur doesn’t make you free. Being able to build a business that fits your life does.

Sometimes that might look like slow growth or quiet periods. That’s okay. I truly believe there is value in every season. It might illuminate different opportunities or encourage you to rethink your offers or business structure in ways that will help you grow more than before.

5. It’s not easy. But if it’s what you want, it’s worth it.

Yes, because I’m a business owner, I spend less time with my daughter during the week than if I stayed home. That is a trade-off. It took me a long time to come to terms with that and not feel so guilty about it.

But all of life is trade offs. Doing one thing always means saying no to an infinite number of other things you could be doing instead. The trick is finding the trade offs that you can live with (even thrive in), owning them, and pivoting when you find they no longer support you.

At the end of the day, the thing that always brings me back to center is ultimately my daughter. I think about the example I want to set for her.

(Disclaimer: the example everyone wants to set for their own kids is uniquely theirs—I am in no way advocating that mine is best, it’s just mine.)

I want to be able to look my daughter in the eye in 20 years and tell her that even when the chips were down, I chose to follow my dreams. All of my dreams. Not just the ones that were convenient or easy or culturally normal/acceptable.

I want her to know she doesn’t have to choose between one dream or another. It can be a yes/and situation, not an either/or.

I want her to know there is value in hard work, that her path doesn’t have to look like someone else’s, the she can design her life, not just follow the same road paved by the people who came before her.

It’s what I wish for myself and it’s what I wish for her, too.