MAKIN’ (BUSINESS) BABIES

Rebellious mothers birth rebellious businesses.

A six-week group coaching program for feminist mothers ready to conceive their small care-based businesses and lead beyond their families.

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2022 
$750 USD

(Use code MAMABIRD at checkout for 20% off through Sept 23)

Photos by Katie Sikora

 

There’s a fiery business brewing inside of you-

and the world needs it.

 

YOU’VE HEARD ME SAY IT BEFORE:

Motherhood is an initiation into leadership and power.

And whether you recognize it or not, you are already leading your family in a powerful way. As a mother, you use rebellious anger, fierce care, and pleasure practices to be and raise conscious, progressive, justice-oriented humans, ready to make change in the world.

So what if you could raise your small business to do the same?

Imagine a care-based business that:

  • Centers the humanity of both the clients and the person running it.

  • Disrupts the current oppressive and outdated norms in its field.

  • Is trauma-informed

  • Redefines what work looks like, by those who have traditionally benefitted least from the 9-5

  • Provides autonomy while valuing community

  • Raises a giant middle finger to The Mommy Complex*.

Welcome to Makin’ Business Babies.

Here’s the breakdown:

We meet as a group on Mondays, from 11am-1230pm CST.

OCTOBER 2022

October 10, 17, 24, & 31

NOVEMBER 2022

NOVEMBER 7 & 14

In addition, each participant will receive a 45-minute 1:1 coaching session during the course of the program to help you refine your personal goals and define your next steps.

INVESTMENT: $750 USD (Take 20% off if you sign up on or before SEPTEMBER 23, with code MAMABIRD).

Payment plans available at no additional cost.

*The Mommy Complex?

 

The Mommy Complex is the systemic, oppressive web that dominates our (American) cultural norms around parenting.  I’ve termed it a “Complex” both because it turns parenting into a machine, churning out narrow, one-size-fits-all specifications for how to be a parent, and because of the way it preys on the fears and insecurities of mothers, and then gaslights them when they show distress. 

The Mommy part refers to the problematic and exclusive language norms of parenting.  The term Mommy has often been a way to infantalize and gender birthing parents, to manufacture discord between parents marked as female, and perpetuate gender stereotypes in parenting. 

Put it all together, and you have The Mommy Complex (sigh. It’s always the mother’s fault, isn’t it? THANKS, SIGMUND FREUD).

Left unchecked, The Mommy Complex results in Mother Fragmenting; the exhaustion, burnout, and disconnection that is specific to parents who have been socialized as mothers.  

 

Mother Fragmenting is the expectation that you can only access one part of your identity at a time, and may have to forsake one part for another-

the voice that tells you in order to be good at your job, you have to turn off your Parent Part, and in order to succeed as a parent, you have to forsake your work and dreams.

 
 

It’s the pressure of the binary: “Parenting is the most important job and I can only be good at it if I devote myself completely,” combined with the sinking feeling of “But I don’t want motherhood to be all there is to me.”

You were a full, complex human before you became a parent. Why should the rest of you dissolve in the face of motherhood? And who benefits from that?

Not your kids, and certainly not you.

In the space between that expectation and reality usually lies a sense of shame and self-blame.  A feeling that you have a personal failing that makes it hard to keep up, that leaves you empty and burned out.

But if you listen carefully, there’s something else humming beneath the surface. Anger.

Because The Mommy Complex lobs fragmentation at you as a way to knock you on your ass and distract you so that you are out of your power, out of alignment, and out of fucks to give.  Knowing that when you’re like that, you can’t fight back. And it weaponizes your anger at you as something unbecoming, unmotherly, unjustified, unhinged.

No wonder you’re both simmering with rage and afraid to call it that.

So let’s call it that, take it back, and use it to lead, disrupt, and motherfucking MOTHER.

Photos by Katie Sikora

 

Well, Allison, that all sounds nice, but…

…It’s too much of a risk.

…I don’t have my shit together as a parent- how could I start a business?

…I don’t have a business degree, so I’d feel like a fraud and no one will take me seriously.

 

…Maybe when [insert arbitrary date/event/milestone] happens, and then I can think about this.

…I’m overwhelmed already and don’t know where to start.

…My kids need me, and it feels selfish to take time and attention away from them.

 

…Does this program come with ten extra hours in the day?

…I shouldn’t be spending the money

…The Mommy Complex has trained me to believe that now that I’m a mother, I should be small, quiet, and self-sacrificial, and I no longer believe that I have much to offer beyond doing shit for my kids, and even that I don’t feel so good about, so I give up already.

 
 

Lovingly, I call bullshit.

(Keep reading to see why.)

What I want you to know is this:

So much of what you need to be successful, YOU ALREADY HAVE.

You have your technical skills in your profession.

You are attuned to your prospective clients, their challenges, and how to help them access healing.

You are intuitive and resourceful, able to feel out what is needed and be creative in how to get it.

You are care-centered and nurturing, patiently planting seeds for the future, even when it doesn’t feel immediately rewarding.

You have a fierce protective instinct like a fire smoldering in your belly that directs you to what feels unjust and needs your spirit, and a desire to use that fire to burn shit down and build back better.

 

Conceiving, birthing and raising a small solo business is WORK. There’s no way around the inevitable panic, despair, tedium, and existential questioning.

But you’re built for this. You’re a mother.

And both motherhood

and business-building

require support.

SUCH AS:

  • Committed time and space: Weekly 90-minute calls and a 45-minute 1:1 session in a supportive group container.

  • Self- and co-regulation: Getting that nervous system settled and widening the safety margins.

  • Support and recognition of the motherhood identity: Integrating motherhood within the context of creating a business, rather than asking you to shut off that part of you in order to “lean in, #bossbitch.”

  • Befriending your rage: Learning to listen and heed the valuable advice of so-called negative emotions in order to create safety, meet your needs, and find what hurts.

  • Centering your needs and values: Refusing to replicate oppressive structures (especially those of motherhood by pushing your ability to thrive and be fully yourself to the margins.

  • Attuning to and calling in your clients: Speaking to your clients like the real, brilliant humans they are, without using predatory sales tactics that make you both feel like shit.

  • Building Community & Resources, AKA Networking: Finding natural ways to connect with folks who complement your clients and your work.

  • Talking yourself up, AKA Marketing: Getting comfy with being visible, having something important to say, and embodying the spirit of your work.

  • Motherhood mindset shifts: Neutralizing and reframing the whispers of The Mommy Complex (without blaming you for “limiting beliefs” that are actually systemic oppression).

  • A “business birthing plan:” Creating sustainable, exciting, and action-oriented next steps.

  • Unfolding, Unfucking, Unlearning: Conceiving a business that is a natural extension of yourself by accentuating what’s already there- no starting from square one, hiding yourself, business degree or traditional “professionalism” needed.

Photos by Katie Sikora

 

Who is this for?

  • Parents who identify and/or are socialized as mothers

  • (Including birthing mothers, adoptive mothers, step-mothers, foster mothers, and non-birthing mothers)

  • Who align with (not just white) feminist and progressive values (meaning you don’t have to be an expert or be perfect, but are willing to look through the lens of systemic oppression beyond gender, and acknowledge your own privileges in order to start to betray them and build something new in place)

  • Who are looking to start or have recently started small helping/healing/care-based businesses (such as therapists, coaches, birth workers, nutritionists, dieticians, personal trainers, educators, creatives, and other healers)

  • And who are looking to build (or revamp) businesses to feel more like a reflection of who they are and what they stand for, versus being “palatable,” “professional,” or “blank slates.”

  • Willing to see motherhood as a form of leadership and power to use in the right ways to disrupt The Mommy Complex and create a new culture of motherhood and care.

 

Join Makin’ Business Babies

$750 USD

Take 20% off on or before September 23 with code MAMABIRD

We start October 10th!

 
 
 

Hi I’m Allison Staiger, and I’m a maternal leadership coach.

I help birthing parents, mothers, and caregivers lead their families and build businesses with feminist care and rebellious anger.  

I specialize in helping parents who want to change their relationship with caregiving, from paternalistic and performative to personalized and political. And in re-examining what motherhood, parenting, and care mean, we can also re-examine what it means to be a working mother starting a solo care-based business.

Over and over, I’ve heard my clients express frustration with being a mother engaged in traditional work, and how it dehumanizes, marginalizes, and overlooks them because of the realities of simultaneously being mothers. And lets face it- even for those who aren’t mothers, traditional work and capitalism are getting a much needed reckoning these days.

So the time is ripe to start a feminist business that focuses on healing systemic wounds without scarcity or sacrifice of your own needs and thriving. A business that uses rebellious anger, fierce care, and pleasure as power to disrupt what both motherhood and work are supposed to be.

A mother to a fiery 9-year-old, I have worked as a licensed clinical social worker specializing in perinatal mental health for over a decade. I have built both a solo private practice (in two states) and an online coaching business, and have mentored other therapists in the components of practice-building AND how to create ideas beyond private practice.

This uniquely positions me to understand the beautiful destruction that comes with motherhood, our society’s failure to acknowledge and support it, and the fuckery of starting a business that feels personal and necessary.

In addition to offering coaching to clients, I am a lifelong learner and absorber of my own coaching. I have worked in several Mastermind programs and completed Kelly Diels’ Feminist Copywriting Certification and Feminist Social Media Certification, which helps me assist my clients in sales and marketing that doesn’t feel sleazy or predatory.

This is a movement to expand the definition of mothering and facilitate spaciousness, wholeness, and fire into the foundation of it. It’s time to rage against the Mom-chine.

Welcome to The Matriarchy.

You can learn more about my feminist values and business practices here.

Photos by Katie Sikora

In Makin’ Business Babies, I walk you through a quick and dirty (but deeply valuable and practical) six weeks of bite-sized lessons on the fundamentals of starting your own small or solo helping business. We focus not just on things like marketing and networking, but how to integrate your identity as a mother with being the mother to this business while staying regulated, visible, and resourced.

Makin’ Business Babies is intended to be a place to get your footing and determine what the next steps are for yourself, and start to plant the seeds for going deeper. I am not going to be talking about algorithms, business entities, ads, sales funnels, or scaling to six figures, and you are not going to walk out of here with a fully-established, smoothly-running and profitable business.

What you will have is the safety and space of a group container (so that you can let your mind engage with some of the ideas that have been rolling around like tumbleweeds in your head), an acknowledgement of both the challenges and strengths of being a mother in The Mommy Complex, business advice that speaks to the practical, logistical, and emotional sides of business-building, and a concrete plan to take your ideas into some kind of intentional actions.

I am deeply invested in you finishing this program feeling like your leadership is a doable and necessary act of care for yourself and the world.

 Because care is a feminist ethic, not a feminine duty. And it’s the responsibility of all of us.

 

Our work together:

(Subject to some shifting based on the needs/wants of the group)

 

W1: HELLO GROUP (HELLO NERVOUS SYTEM) - Orienting to the group, the goals, and the reasons why; self- and co-regulation

W2: FIND WHAT HURTS - What it means to start a business as a mother (and why it feels so hard), befriending rage to bring forth the spirit and mission of your business.

W3: LEAD LIKE A MOTHER- Ask not what you can do for your business, but what your business can do for you (and the world)

W4: EMBODYING YOUR BUSINESS- Creating community, talking yourself up, and getting comfy with visibility

W5: CONSERVATION EFFORTS - How to make this sustainable and pleasurable (and why that matters)

W6: SHIT JUST GOT REAL - Putting it all together to create your business “birthing plan”

Plus, each participant receives a 45-minute 1:1 coaching session to really dig in to your most pressing concern or shine a light on where to focus your energy (because we don’t have time to be throwing shit to the wall and seeing what sticks).

 

Join Makin’ (Business) Babies

$750USD

 

Motherhood is a leadership practice.

Lead your families,

lead your business,

lead a new culture of care.

 
 

Ready to join Makin’ (Business) Babies?

Doors close on October 7th, and we start on October 10th!

$750USD