Mom Boss. Nicole Feliciano
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Copyright © 2017 Nicole Feliciano.
Published by Mango Publishing Group, a division of Mango Media Inc.
Cover photo: Raquel Langworthy
Cover and Layout Design: Elina Diaz
BOSS MOM is a trademark owned by Dana Malstaff International. Nicole Feliciano and MomTrends are not affiliated with Dana Malstaff International or the book Boss Mom: The Ultimate Guide to Raising a Business & Nurturing Your Family Like a Pro by Dana Malstaff.
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Mom Boss: Balancing Entrepreneurship, Kids & Success
Library of Congress Cataloging applied for
ISBN: (paperback) 978-1-63353-394-3, (ebook) 978-1-63353-393-6
BISAC category code BUS109000 BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Women in Business
Printed in the United States of America
I just love bossy women.
I could be around them all day. To me, bossy is not a pejorative term at all. It means somebody’s passionate and engaged and ambitious and doesn’t mind leading.
– Amy Poehler
To C & S, may you grow up to be bossy.
Table of Contents
Chapter 6: Solo Artist – Personality One
Chapter 7: Brand Builder – Personality Two
Chapter 8: Team Mom – Personality Three
There’s a popular notion out there that the height of being a modern woman is to achieve the perfect balance between all of life’s big-bucket categories. We hear the idea “work/life balance” so often we don’t stop to recognize that the inherent insinuation in that phrase is that work is somehow separate from life or even the opposite of it. We keep hearing we can “have it all,” “do it all,” and “be it all”— and although none of us have ever personally experienced this balancing act first hand, maybe we keep repeating it, hoping if we say it enough times, we will summon the concept into existence.
But I believe the real mark of being a modern woman is to know that everything costs something…and then to confidently decide which costs we’re willing to pay — and which we aren’t.
When I first met Nicole Feliciano over breakfast in Los Angeles, she described this experience: “We have these burners all going at the same time…family, romance, career, friends…and we try so hard to keep them all going at once. But the reality is something always seems to be burning, but there are other things coming out perfectly.”
Maybe the truth is, we can have it all…just not all at once. And that’s good news. The life of a mother is filled with stages that demand imbalance — times when we need to turn up the heat on some areas in our life and turn it down in others in order to be the type of moms we want to be. Continuous balance in all areas is hardly ever what we really want.
Nicole went on, “At some point, each of those things is going to win and each one will lose. You have to embrace that you can only do a few things really well at one particular time.” An authentic voice of experience I could relate to.
I also have learned that being a mom and a businesswoman can have high costs. I spent my 20’s and 30’s in traditional career mode, first working on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, then working in finance, and then traveling the world as a business consultant. Somewhere in there I managed to get married and have a daughter. My husband would pick me up from the airport each Friday and drop me back off every Sunday afternoon; I would kiss my sweet daughter in her car seat, and wave goodbye, giving the biggest smile I could muster, when really I felt sick to my stomach. I was not the mom I had always hoped to be.
And so I quit. I needed to be with my family. But not working wasn’t the answer. I felt there just had to be opportunities out there where a woman could have more control, making deliberate tradeoffs as it made sense for her family. Not finding what I was after in the marketplace,