Project: Mom Podcast
Listen here
About this Episode:
It’s so easy to get wrapped up in the little things, in business and in life.
At work: how many clicks? How many clients? At home: what’s for dinner? When will the laundry get done? How do we get our children to go down for their naps?
These are just a few of the micro items we have to deal with day-to-day. What if we take a moment and think: what is it that’s making us work so hard? What’s the purpose of our labor, the ultimate, big-picture goal? What is our WHY?
Meet today’s guest, Baily Hancock, a mom of two young children and passionate collaborator, connector and catalyst for community engagement and growth. She’s an entrepreneur who now brings her talents to Mighty Networks and is also the recovering overachiever behind the Ambition Recovery Club. Figuring out the “why” is one of the most important parts of her job.
In this episode, Baily and I talk about some real big-picture stuff, from prioritizing ourselves to adapting to life’s ever-changing variables.
Inspired by community
Baily’s motherhood journey began in 2018, when she became pregnant and suffered a miscarriage at 11 weeks along. She was devastated.
At the time, her business, the Collaboration Coalition, was going well, but the miscarriage forced her to halt and cancel 10 speaking gigs in a matter of two weeks to take care of herself. She had put so much pressure on herself to say yes to everything and to “do the most” – but discovered the cancellations didn’t bother her as much as she thought they would.
Her community sent gift cards and flowers and support. It was the first time she felt she HAD to accept help because she didn’t have the emotional capacity to deal with the heartbreak on her own. So many people showed they cared for her, not as a business partner, client or consultant, but as a HUMAN.
What really resonated with me was the SURPRISE Baily felt when she saw there were people who wanted to be there for her. For a lot of us, we find we have to go through these challenging situations to become aware of the support system holding us up.
When Baily returned back to work, she felt new clarity in what she wanted out of her career. Inspired by the support she felt during this time, she went all in on collaboration consulting, which was her main business until joining Mighty Networks in 2022.
The big picture, in business and in motherhood
As Baily points out, it’s the micro things that make up most parents’ days. It’s so easy to get lost in the chaos of laundry, feeding the kids, bedtime routines, naps, and even easier to get frustrated when these little things take over – for example, when our toddlers won’t put on their shoes in the preschool parking lot.
But someday, we’ll look back fondly at these moments and miss them. Probably not today, or tomorrow, but someday.
Baily has since had two healthy children, and this year, realized she wanted to focus more time on them and stress less about her business. She wanted a steady paycheck, benefits, and a job she didn’t have to pour her whole identity into. She became a community strategist at Mighty Networks. It was, in her words, her “ticket to freedom.” She likes the job, the people, and the newfound mental space she has during her off hours.
Baily originally began her own business in part to work from home with flexible hours. After the pandemic, this became the new normal for a lot of companies.
In life, there are always changing variables. What doesn’t change is our ability to decide what we want at this moment – and then decide if that thing is available to us right now. For Baily, it wasn’t two years ago, but it is now.
Today, her job helps Mighty Pro hosts build, launch and run successful online businesses powered by community. One of the biggest steps is helping them discover their big picture. What’s the point? What are they trying to achieve? Ultimately it’s about bringing people together under a common theme or goal.
Which, when you think about it, really can apply to everything.
In our homes, what are we trying to achieve? How do we want our kids to feel, and how do we want people who come into our home to feel? Most importantly, how do we generate a life that allows us to live that way?
Prioritizing ourselves
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Moms, we’ve got to prioritize ourselves.
If we don’t, we will burn and crumble, and it’s so much harder to come back from that place than it is to nurture ourselves along the way. We need to proactively treat all parts of our lives as if they matter, because, of course, they do.
Baily is the founder of the Ambition Recovery Club, a community for burned-out overachievers looking to unlearn what we’ve been taught about productivity and worthiness and reprogram how we define success and achievement.
The intention is to give people a place to come, rest, feel seen, and share small wins. She says it’s an interesting study of her own ambition recovery. The old her would not have started something like this until there was a full, complete plan. The new her realized she needed this NOW.
One of the last things we talked about was lifting ourselves up. Right now, my husband is my biggest supporter, and sometimes, he’s louder than me that I am for me, which is wonderful – but I have to remind myself sometimes that I have to be that for myself, too.
As Baily says, humility is lovely, but it’s not going to get jobs or win awards or get attention. She recommended a couple great books (which you can find in our show notes!) that inspired her to flip the idea around.
Instead: we are not being humble by keeping our talents to ourselves; we are selfish by not sharing our gifts with the world.
Notable Quote from Baily
“Honestly, what most people want in this life is connection. They want to feel seen. They want to feel they can resonate with somebody else’s experience, and they want to feel less alone. And community is the answer to that, and it has to be intentional.” (9:36)
“My god, there’s no better training for life than parenthood. I am so much of a better employee because of motherhood. I can handle maybe obstinate adults that are acting like toddlers because I have toddler experience now. And it’s also harder for me to get wound up over work things because I have those priorities in place now. And I have very good boundaries with this job. For the first time in my career, I have excellent work boundaries, and because I don’t have a choice. It’s because I have to give what I have to give to my family.” (36:03)
Resources & Links
Check out the books Baily recommended: Brag Better: Master the Art of Fearless Self-Promotion by Meredith Fineman & My Hype Book by Toni Purry.
Learn more about Project: Mom and follow us on Instagram at @projectmompodcast.
Do you want to share your motherhood journey on the podcast? Email Emily at projectmompod@gmail.com.
