Show Notes:

Aria Leighty is the Founder and CEO of Mob Nation (Mom Boss Nation), a Thought leader, Trailblazer, and an Award Winning Business Mentor. For almost a decade, Aria has combined her diverse experience, creative ideas, wide range of connections, and unique perspective to help women on the edge of change up-level in their businesses and lives. Aria helps her clients to get out of their own way, sparkle their mindset, step into their power, and live their dream life. Working with Aria as a business mentor blends consulting, coaching, and cheerleading not found anywhere else. The MOB Nation is an alliance of mom-owned businesses dedicated to empowering women who balance both motherhood and business. Through regular networking, support, resources, and encouragement we believe moms can thrive in both endeavors.

Links: www.arialeighty.com, www.themobnation.com, www.instagram.com/arialeighty www.instagram.com/the.mobnation

Episode Transcription:

Lindsay: Welcome back to The Book Your Dream Clients podcast. Today, we're talking to Aria about how to get unstuck and out of your own way.

I know we can all relate to this and Aria has some great tips for us and how we can be untangled and ready to move forward in our business. So sit back, relax and enjoy.

Lindsay: [00:00:35] Aria, thank you so much for being on The Book Your Dream Clients podcast I'm so excited you're with us bright and early today!

Aria: [00:00:42] Well it's early, not bright. I'm very, very excited to be here.

Lindsay: [00:00:47] I was looking at your Instagram and I was excited because I saw a testimonial on your posts and it was, “You are magical. Yourself, you untangled my brain in five minutes.” 

And I thought that's awesome... untangled my brain. So I'm excited to have you on, because I feel like everyone thinks there is just a mess of knots in their heads sometimes. So why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself and tell us about how you got started.

Aria: [00:01:13] All right. Well, thank you again for having me. So my name is Aria Leighty and I am the founder of The Mob Nation, which is the national alliance of mom owned businesses. And I'm also a business mentor and mindset coach for women entrepreneurs. And I got started with the mob nation in 2012 actually, before the whole like #momboss culture.

And I really just loved working with mom owned businesses. I was a brick and mortar owner and I was thinking, what am I doing? Who is crazy enough to start a business and have kids? And so I just kind of went out searching for my people, and then the coaching and the business mentorship just really blossomed from that experience.

Very organically, just from working with all of the different mom-owned businesses out there. And seeing the same struggles, the same mindset issues, the same types of creative blocks just popping up over and over again. So that has been a beautiful journey for me -  for the past -  I mean, being an official, having a title as a, you know, consultant business mentor, that's been about five years now.

Lindsay: [00:02:26] I love that you help moms because I'm a mom. I have three kids and I know what it feels like to feel like. If I could just get one minute to myself, that would be great. Maybe in five years or so. I don't know. There's always somebody pulling at you. And then when you're trying to start a business and run a business, it can feel like, ‘what was I thinking?’

Aria: [00:02:48] Right? The two, the two craziest hardest things to do in this world. And then we were...you know, nuts enough to combine them. 

Lindsay: [00:02:59] I mean, how nuts are we? We're up... you're up at 3:00 AM on a Saturday morning on a podcast interview. No, we're very strange creatures. We are. 

Aria: [00:03:09] Yeah. I wouldn't have it any other way. 

Lindsay: [00:03:14] No, I think it's so amazing to work with moms because they are great at coming up with solutions.

And they're also wanting to fix everything though. And I think that's where we can get really caught up in our business and where the tangles come in. What do you feel like is the biggest struggle for those moms who are growing their business? 

Aria: [00:03:38] I think moms in general, we think that we have to be like martyrs for our families.

And then you add in, you know, the business aspect and we're martyrs for that as well. And so I think that like not putting themselves first, like coming last in everything. And that same mentality that we kind of have of coming last in the household, we often will do that in our business as well.

Pay ourselves last or, you know, not set proper boundaries to make sure that we're only calling in dream clients or you know... just not building a sustainable model and the background that keeps us fed and happy. Because we think that everything has to be hard and, you know, unless we're making these huge sacrifices for everybody then we're not doing it right.

Lindsay: [00:04:28] That is just right on point. We think everything has to be hard. If we're not exhausted and tapped out, we're not doing something right. Why do we believe that? 

Aria: [00:04:39] That's just what the stories have always been. You know, like we watched that happen. I think that when women started entering the workforce, they weren't able to, you know, outsource the home life.

They still had to balance both of that. And they had to make it look seamless and no complaints, because you know, people would be like, well then why didn't you even enter the workforce in the first place? So a lot of us still carry that on our shoulders. We, you know, watched it be modeled by the women in our lives, and nobody told us that it could be any different.

And so we just always are out there trying to make it worth it and trying to prove that we are great moms and great business owners and we don't need you know, help or coddling or, you know, we're strong enough to do that.  

Lindsay: [00:05:33] Yes, right? And we are. But what happens when we don't fill our cups? What happens to that mom who's running her business and is just going off of fumes. What happens to her? 

Aria: [00:05:46] Yeah. I mean, you just get yourself into a space where you can't do it any longer. You know, it's like, if you can fill your cup and it's not just pouring from an empty cup, like your cup needs to be overflowing and you need to share, you know, like that excess stuff that's in the saucer. Because that's going to be the only way that you can consistently be yourself in full. But also we have to remember that our kids, like, we get to break that cycle. Like I said, we saw that type of behavior before. I definitely do not want my daughter taking on that lifestyle or, you know, thinking she has to be a martyr. So once I kind of made that decision that life did get to be easy, or I did have to do things for myself.

I know that that’s breaking a cycle for her. And that she's not going to take on that martyrdom when she goes into entrepreneurship or relationships or motherhood or whatever she decides to do.

Lindsay: [00:06:45] I think that's such an important thing that nobody talks about is being a good example for your kids. It seems like the kid discussion is always left out of everything. Don't you think? 

Aria: [00:06:54] Yes. Yeah. Or we think again, like they have to see us struggle so that we can prove how much we love them, but really we're showing them what type of lifestyle they can call in and what they can expect for themselves, how they treat themselves, how they talk to themselves. And I think once he flipped the script and you really think about it like that, then...you know, it's hard for you to justify beating yourself up or not pouring into self care and not setting boundaries. 

Lindsay: [00:07:23] No one can feel how you feel more than your kids. They know exactly what mom's going through. 

Aria: [00:07:28] Yeah. And, and on the business owner side, I mean, if your cup is full, then you're giving the best client experience.

I know that we're talking to coaches mostly, and like that's even more of an important job to protect your boundaries, protect your energy, to-  you know, create a safe space for yourself so that you can give that best experience and you can be completely dialed in to connect with your clients and you're not burnt out.

And you know, so much of it is active listening. And how can you be an active listener or, you know, a loving coach, if you are burnt out and exhausted and you know, just worried about your own needs that are going unmet.

Lindsay: [00:08:14] I think the important thing now to go into is some symptoms of burnout because sometimes we think if we're so in the thick of it, we don't even realize we're on the road to burnout. What are some symptoms of it? 

Aria: [00:08:26] Exhaustion. Wanting to just give up completely. Lack of focus. I know that I just, you know, when I got really burnt out, every single task seemed so huge, you know? Opening up my email I would get a sense of dread. The words would just not flow to me. Social media started feeling like a huge burden instead of excitement to go share.

So yeah, I think once you get to all of those kinds of spaces...and I used to own brick and mortars, like I said, I also used to live that hustle culture. So when I started struggling from burnout,  some people were like, oh, this is burnout. This is burnout. I was like, no, this has a burnout.

My life is so much easier now. Like I would have got burned out, you know, from that type of lifestyle, I have no right to be burnt out right now with this easier workload. And you know, it's not, that's not all that it is. You know, like emotional burnout is so real. The burnout from just the collective right now, from everything that we've gone through in the past few months.

The burnout of just always being emotionally on and available for your clients or your kids. That's a real thing. 

Lindsay: [00:09:50] Yeah we can't set hours for our kids, but I feel like when coaches first start, they feel like they need to be on call like they’re ER doctors for their clients. And I think the biggest  problem is there are zero boundaries set with your business, especially, I've been working from home for sixteen years.

And so I know what it's like to feel like you're always at work and it's hard to shut that off. And that might be something where you walk out of your office, but yet your phone's with you and you're checking your email and you're responding to messages and Voxers and, you know, seeing notifications on your phone.

And I remember thinking this is so great. I have so many things on my phone that I need to take care of. And that is not a badge of honor for how successful your business is. No boundaries set, is a set up before a disaster. Do you think that's a big problem with new coaches, new business owners with boundaries?

Aria: [00:10:47] Oh, absolutely. And I think that women. You know, they just always feel like they have to be accessible and that their energy has to be perfect. And then when you're setting out in business, you want to like, prove that you're valuable. You know, you have that weight, that shadow over your head and that's like, I just charged people money for this.

I have to like go and be, you know, my best self all the time. Or over-perform, over-deliver in order to feel valuable. And so, yeah, I see that quite often with my clients is right in the beginning, they just, they tried to give way too much so that they can feel validated in charging, you know, that, that amount for coaching.

Lindsay: [00:11:36] So what happens when somebody gets on a call with you and they're feeling like everything's a mess in their head, they don't even know what to do next? Is that the main problem when they come to you? So let's talk about that. And then what do you do for them? 

Aria: [00:11:53] Yeah, I would say that typically, if you have booked a session with me, then you either have way too many creative ideas and you don't even know where to start, where you're kind of in that like creative paralysis where you're just like......staring blankly, not like not making moves in any direction. And yeah, most women will come in saying they don't know, or, you know, they want all this validation for their ideas. And a lot of it is just reminding them that they had a great idea and like getting them to listen to their gut. You know, having somebody else on the other line, like just listen to all of -  I just want to bring them and then, you know, take those little pieces. But sometimes it's just a question that's as simple as what do you want to be doing?

And they're like, well, I don't know. And I’m like no, but do you want to be doing it? And then there's always an answer for that, you know, but we just need permission. Or we need somebody to say, that is absolutely a brilliant idea. And you're allowed to go do that and you're allowed to make money off of that and you're allowed to build it however the hell you want to.

Lindsay: [00:13:05] Permission came to my mind too, as we're always looking for permission to move forward in our business. And the notes and the post-its that we can write down all of our ideas hidden on our desk and a stack of papers is not going to help anybody. And then you're waiting for somebody else on the internet to say, yeah, that's a good idea before you move forward. Why do we do that? 

Aria: [00:13:30] I don't know. I haven't figured it out, but I mean, I am in that same boat as well. You know, I think a lot of coaches think that since they’re a coach, because, you know, they don't have all the answers for themselves or their own business they kind of feel like a fraud, like, oh, who am I to even be coaching women or talking to business owners when I'm having this struggle.

But I think we all need to have somebody else reflecting, you know, our ideas back to us and have that sounding board and, and have somebody say like, yeah, that's not crazy. That is really actually... it is crazy, but it just might work. Right? 

Lindsay: [00:14:11] Right! So you have this fantastic group of women, The Mob Nation who are all moms, they own a business. What's the kind of primary business that they mostly own? 

Aria: [00:14:22] You know, our tagline is “there's a mob for that” because they're really, so it is so diverse. I mean, you can go into our directory and find everything. We do have coaches, lawyers, coffee shops, direct sales leaders, cosmetic companies, clothing designers, like anything that you can think of is within this group of really powerful mobs. It's really community over competition. So, you know, all the coaches that are in the mob nation, they are constantly like referring each other, they're doing collaborations, they're coming into each other's groups to chat with their different clients.

Like it's, it's really beautiful to see, especially some of the coaches that have been in it for a very long time, helping and mentoring, you know, ideas to the newer coaches and reminding them to raise their prices and charge their value and you know, all of that stuff. So I love that. 

Lindsay: [00:15:24] I love that collaboration is such a big thing.

Cause I think it's such a lonely world, especially when you're just starting, you feel like the only person who knows about your business is maybe someone from your family or maybe it's just you -  and you feel like you're doing this all by yourself. And it's so important to be a part of something.

Especially if you have the personality where you thrive off of a group setting and we can't just go down the block and hang out with coaches, right? That's not possible where I live. So I love that you do that and you encourage everyone to lift each other up and work with each other.

What else is so special about The Mob Nation? 

Aria: [00:16:02] Oh gosh, I couldn't. How much time do we have? It is a national group, so it's very beautiful that you could make connections with somebody -  like I'm in Hawaii. We have members from, you know, the west coast and the east coast. When people travel they're always like, which moms do I need to go support?

Tell me which, you know, coffee shops are or anything else that's in this area. And the culture is unlike anything that I've ever seen. Like every day, I'm just like still surprised by the amount of love that is poured in. Like we show up for each other in such massive ways. Like we just had a coffee shop that, you know, is struggling from COVID and they did a cash mob and she made in one day, like what she usually makes in a month because everybody, you know, poured out to her shop and people that had never met her across the country were, you know, putting in online orders or, you know, sharing.

So, because we've built just strong - our own micro economy with that concept, ‘there is a mob for that’ then most of our business owners survived COVID, thrived through COVID. When a lot of businesses were not because we were already having that mentality of supporting each other first, you know, going to a mob first and investing in our own little community there.

Lindsay: [00:17:28] Amazing. All right. Tell us how people can be a part of this and where else they can find you. 

Aria: [00:17:35] They can join The Mob Nation at www.themobnation.com and you can find me at www.arialeighty.com and I'm also on Instagram at @arialeighty. 

Lindsay: [00:17:48] Amazing. We will put all of those links in the show notes. You guys go show her some love and follow her and join her Mom Nation.

It's such an amazing group to be a part of. And it's important for you to not only always grow in your business, but to be a part of others who are doing the same thing on all levels. So thank you for bringing this to light for us Aria and for spending some time with us. Thank you so much.

Aria: [00:18:12] Thank you for this conversation. I appreciate it. 

Lindsay: [00:18:16] Before you go, I want to invite you to join my free Facebook group for coaches. Simply type ‘Dream Client Community.com’ in your browser, request access, and we will happily let you in. We have amazing coaches in there just like you who are starting and scaling their business and we would love to see you there.