#120 — Beyond Mom: Exploring and Nourishing Our Non-Mother Selves 

What does it look like to take your work from the corporate world to the freelance world and begin the path of entrepreneurship? How do you take the piecemeal career acquired from many different projects, companies and job-hopping and then go into starting a business?

One of the things that I am fascinated with here at Startup Pregnant is the idea that we are in perpetual startup mode in many senses of the word: in our own lives, in our own careers, in our own journeys. We don’t just pick corporate versus entrepreneurship. That is a false dichotomy. Instead, I find that people end up with these really interesting layered careers where they follow projects or purposes or people and they embed their time and their energy in these various different projects whether or not it looks like a traditional tried and true company, or it looks like building a new endeavor on the side as a branch of a company, becoming an entrepreneur, starting a new initiative or starting a freelancing or side hustle career or even starting a company on your own.

Today, we talk to Randi Zinn, who is the founder of Beyond Mom. Randi lost her father when she 25, which affected her emotionally, philosophically, psychology, and also, it set her on a new career path. Her dad was an entrepreneur, and while she thought that she would be going straight from graduate school into a world of media, she ended up on a slightly different path.

Randi is an author, a wellness expert and the founder of a site, company, blog and suite of tools called Beyond Mom. Beyond Mom is a company that provides things like wellness retreats, mindfulness at work, encouragement for women an overall philosophy and ethos supporting women interested in taking back their right to self-love, self-care and community. Randi encourages moms to cultivate a life beyond mom, one that embraces the gifts of motherhood, but expresses all that they are as individuals.

IN THIS EPISODE WE TALK ABOUT

• How Randi’s first pregnancy ended in miscarriage but going through a loss with her husband brought them closer together.
• How as an only child herself, Randi loves to learn about the sibling relationship by watching her son and daughter together.
• The way the loss of her father impacted her career trajectory, leading her away from a traditional path in media to following in her entrepreneurial father’s footsteps.
• How yoga entered her life as a stress mediator through this process, but that once she was a mother, teaching and “schlepping” from studio to studio became untenable.
• Her surprise at meeting other mothers who were using their transformation into mothers to gain momentum in changing their career paths as well.
• The organic origins of Beyond Mom and how by spending time with and serving her ideal customer, Randi was able to create an authentic, deeply desired service and brand.
• Beyond Mom’s focus on supporting the entire woman, both on her journey through motherhood and, above all, on her personal journey as she evolves and grows as a whole person.
• How in the inspiration behind her book was to make her message and platform accessible across socioeconomic and geographic lines.
• Why, despite all of the challenges, she commits a large portion of her business to bringing women together in person because that is w