In this episode of the Babies and Business Podcast, hosts Avram & Rachel Gonzales reflect on their experience of preparing for their second child as business owners. They discuss the lessons learned from their first child, including emotional challenges, financial preparations, the importance of support systems, and operational adjustments in their business. The conversation is candid about the struggles and decisions unique to balancing entrepreneurship with family life, offering insights and personal anecdotes to help other parent entrepreneurs navigate similar journeys.

Show Notes

[04:12] The small (but important!) financial prepwork required

[08:32] A different mindset for building your support network

[11:32] Strategies for keeping your relationship tight while chaos reigns

[16:29] A controversial point of view about sleep that religious folks will balk at but oh well

[22:24] What’s different the 2nd time around that’s stressing Avram out

Mentions & Resources

Profit First – Book

Orangetheory

After the Stork – Sleep Training

The Fourth Trimester – Book

Kidstrong – Science-based kids training

[tcb-script src=”https://play.pod.co/embed/frame-v1.js”][/tcb-script]

Related Episodes

How to Drop Operating Expenses by 27% with Profit First

Ask for Help Before You Need It

What You Know vs All the Experts and Your Mom

EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

Avram Gonzales: Welcome back to the Babies and Business Podcast today we’re preparing for baby number two.

If you’ve been a long time listener, you might recall one of the very first episodes that we put together was about, preparing for our first child. As business owners welcoming a new being to this world, we had a lot of unknowns. We had a lot of questions and we did our best to prepare.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.

Avram Gonzales: And I think we did pretty good.

Rachel Gonzales: We did. I mean. Absolutely. We’re here.

Avram Gonzales: But we want to make the best of our second time around and see if we can create some ease for ourselves and having walked the path that we’ve already walked. We want to reflect back and then open up this conversation to you the listener, things that we learned. Things we wish we’d done different. And you can get some ideas of how, you know, we’re preparing for the next baby and maybe you could too.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah. You know, I think back on my journey and being a mom. So much is required. Just physically have you, uh, having the baby, your, you are growing the baby for nine months, then you have the baby. And this is a physical ordeal.

You become this portal to this new being coming into this world. And so much changes about your body. And then if you choose to nurse or breastfeed, if you choose to use formula, there’s so many different things that come about. How do you feed this, little being. And for it was filled with a lot of heartache and guilt and regret and just feeling like I had let my baby down. AndI feel like I really did want to do over. And a lot of different ways and baby number two does feel like a do over for me like emotionally kind of like a reset. Do I feel like I failed Lincoln? No, I did not fail him. Um, those are just very emotional reactions that I had. Uh, but we did have some stuff that we did to prepare andhow do you prepare for the unknown?

Avram Gonzales: That was the difference. That’s a difference between then and now.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah. And you know, you hear about these things. I have seven sisters and most, all of them have every single one of them, except for one has had children before me. And two are younger than me. And I’ve heard different things and I was actually, I’m separated from my family. I chose to step away from my family and not have that support system um, during the time that I was pregnant with Lincoln and had him.

So I was very much alone and just going off of like what my mom had told me and growing up and asking questions about being a mom and then not realizing that I had a lot of judgements around all sorts of things that come up about being a mom. So there’s a lot of things that.

Avram Gonzales: Don’t give too much away.

Rachel Gonzales: Sure.

Avram Gonzales: Don’t give too much away.

There are a couple of things that Rachel and I we’re chatting about before we pop this on and started recording.

And I think the best way we’re going to attack this is in, in categories.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.

Avram Gonzales: The different things and reflections. So we’ve got, I know we had the financial side.

Rachel Gonzales: Yep.

Avram Gonzales: That includes mostly the household. I think.

Rachel Gonzales: It does.

Avram Gonzales: Um, the business side, like how we prep for business operations and how those might change. A couple of other things, right.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.

And, you know, with financial stuff, you know,

Avram Gonzales: All the other things by the way.

Rachel Gonzales: Oh, the household stuff. There’s household stuff. The things that we did.

Support. And there was one other, I think, one other category. I just wrote down three.

Avram Gonzales: Okay. Well, we’ll go from there.

Let’s start with the, some of the financial things. What are we doing now that’s different or the same as before?

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah, so we were just getting started with Profit First, when we were having Lincoln. And just in a very, maybe, probably a year by that time.

Avram Gonzales: And by the way, Profit First is an accounting and cash management type system.

Rachel Gonzales: Cashflow, things like that. Mike Michalowicz.

Avram Gonza
les: Yep. Check out the show notes, we’re going to link to past podcasts in that book.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah. And so what’s different then and now is that before we didn’t really have a ton of profit coming in, that’s at a specific percentage of your gross income and, there’s just so many different things that we didn’t have fully set up.

And this time we’ve been able to save for baby since, or just set money aside since January. Since the first profit draw. So that’s a significant thing that we’re doing to help prepare us.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah.

Rachel Gonzales: This time around.

Avram Gonzales: I guess before we weren’t really sure what money we had available.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.

Avram Gonzales: We’re always uncertain about the money that we were drawing from the business.

Is that more than the business can sustain? Do we deserve more. Should we do less.

Rachel Gonzales: And then also we have, some income goals right now that we’re working with making sure that we’re bringing in enough money on the business side so that it can support the personal side and we’re able to see a clearer vision to that.

So we’re doing some different kinds of marketing strategies for our business. So those also play into what we’re doing. And then on the support side,

Avram Gonzales: this is a big one for us.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah, it’s a really big one that we started Orangetheory in October of 2022, when Lincoln was born. So I was four months postpartum and it was a struggle for me to get there at all. I think it was a struggle for all of us, for you to get there, maybe different level than me.

Avram Gonzales: Nobody was sleeping after four months.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah, so we’re, we’re struggling, but that community has become such a support system for us.

We have a number of friends there that have offered to help with Lincoln. They just adore him. For Halloween, he dressed up as a Fox. We all dressed up as a Woodland creatures. And we ended up bringing in Lincoln and he was dressed up as a Fox and everybody just adored him. They were so excited to see him in the lobby.

Avram Gonzales: Well, yeah. And like shout out to that support system, particularly a Laura G. Um, If you’re listening thank you so much for the support that you are. Laura ended up bringing him a Fox stuffed toy after that because she knew how much he loved that and like, how cool is that?

Rachel Gonzales: Right? And then Justin G. you know, he’s so sweet.

He is always asking about Lincoln and us and just people are so aware and they want to give to you. And in our situation, it’s our job is to receive what is being given to us. Whether that’s just good energy or somebody’s willing to watch our baby. If you feel comfortable with them, then you know, that was our biggest thing is the comfort.

Avram Gonzales: I think we underestimated the first time around how much support you could benefit from.

Rachel Gonzales: Right.

Avram Gonzales: So we were like, yeah, like the family that we have got is great and that’s, that’s easy, but you know what happens quickly? Your family is going to get burned out, trying to help you.That’s a heavy load. They got their lives too. And

Rachel Gonzales: right.

Avram Gonzales: You know, it sounds funny, but like just felt like we didn’t have that many friends at that point.

Rachel Gonzales: Right.

Avram Gonzales: You could call one. Um, I know that sounds weird, but it’s, I think you and I have a hard time asking for help in the first place, we’ve done episodes about that,

Rachel Gonzales: for sure.

Avram Gonzales: We’ll put that on the show notes.

Rachel Gonzales: Absolutely.

Avram Gonzales: We hired a doula last time.

Rachel Gonzales: Right. We hired a doula and she came in and she was able to be with Lincoln while I was able to sleep. Um, so there were a lot of different things that we were able to do. But that only lasted so long.

And you know, I think that as a new mom, I had the most energy. And the first, like six months of baby because it’s kind of like a marathon where you’ve got the most energy at the beginning and then the longer it goes on, the more taxed and less energy you have. And so I found myself at about nine months, just not able to do it anymore. Um, very much emotionally taxed, all these different things.

So the doula was great at the beginning, but what about that ongoing support? We needed ongoing support. And I didn’t realize that. You know, I, I come from a family of women that are self-sacrificing and they don’t think about themselves and they don’t put themselves first. And my mother died before she was 60. And I think of all the different things that could have been different for her had she chosen herself and it’s so important to put ourselves first. If we don’t put our oxygen mask on and I only sound so simple and silly. We literally cannot help anybody else. I was not sleeping well. And I was not showing up well for you or Lincoln. So this time around, we have something in place.

We didn’t actually think about sleep training, that was kind of a DIY thing that we were doing, we were reading a book and going off of these suggestions. They were not personalized suggestions. They were not actually really helpful sometimes. You would tell me when he needed to go down or eat or whatever it was.

And you’d say in three hours, and I said, Avram, I need you to do the math for me. I cannot compute that. And then, um, You actually set up a meeting with a sleep trainer and I was so mad at you mostly because I felt so ashamed that I couldn’t do it myself, that I just I’m his mom, but I didn’t have these instincts in this intuition that could actually get me to the next step.

Avram Gonzales: Well, and it’s like, you think that babies are just going to sleep well, news flash, they, they don’t just sleep. You know, you have to kind of get them accustomed to what that actually looks like.

 We’re really grateful for Carol Grubbe introducing us to her daughter. Megan, Robert Robert, Robert, Robert. Sorry. If I butchered that Meghan. Um, after the stork and you know, Megan’s been instrumental and bring sleep to our household and sleep actually meant peace. And it meant that we could start to thrive

Rachel Gonzales: and sanity, and I was able to, changed my world in just a couple of days.

It truly, truly transformed everything.

Avram Gonzales: And we’ve retained her.

Rachel Gonzales: We have.

Avram Gonzales: You know, Um, as Lincoln, grows older, his sleep patterns change and you know, we’re going to retain her again. I’m sure.

Rachel Gonzales: Absolutely.&n
bsp;

Avram Gonzales: Um, to get on track, even though like we quote, know the things that she taught us. It’s so helpful to have somebody that you’re paying. That’s there to just be there for you and help you through the thing?

Rachel Gonzales: Well, I think it’s just, it goes back to the DIY episode that we’ve done. I do not want to troubleshoot something that has such massive effect. On the wellbeing of our family and our children. It’s just so worth it. Um, You know, planning for the sleep is so important because we didn’t really plan on that.

I really didn’t know about all those things. Um, We planned on how to support each other, how we could recognize when someone else is stressed and overburdened or whatever that was.

Avram Gonzales: And then those exercises that we went through, those were really helpful.

Rachel Gonzales: They were.

Avram Gonzales: Was that inside of Baby Wise?

Rachel Gonzales: No, that was inside of the book The Fourth Trimester.

So a lot of people, when they think about birth, they think about just the three trimesters where we grow the baby, and then we have the baby and then we’re done. But we don’t think about the mother and the healing of the mother afterwards that this book suggests that the next three months should be the healing of the mother after birth.

So post-birth. It was a staggering statistic that I read that said something about marriage is not making it after children because of the stress that comes from children, having a baby and so that was something that I want, I mean, I adore you and I love our relationship, so I want to keep that going.

So how can we do that and support each other and help each other? Feel, like we have support, you know, it changes.

Avram Gonzales: In this part of what I’m going to share ties back into the financial side of it. We really underestimated how important it would be to carve out time for just you and me.

Rachel Gonzales: Right.

Avram Gonzales: We’ve really slept on that for a long time and it’s only until. Until like the last

Rachel Gonzales: two months ago.

Avram Gonzales: That we started asking for help and having somebody come babysit here and there, and I think that’s a new priority and maybe a bigger focus for us on baby number two, because, um, you know, after that first two months or whatever, three months, it is the marathon.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.

Avram Gonzales: And your, your relationship can only handle so much and you got to build into it. I’m built into it when a little baby is trying to take all the time and bless them they deserve it. But so does mom, so does dad.

Rachel Gonzales: Right? When I think about that, Um, that word or phrase benign neglect, you know, We don’t mean to neglect our partner.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah.

Rachel Gonzales: Especially as a mom, we don’t mean to neglect you. Um, sometimes it happens because there’s just so much required.

So it is something that takes a lot of effort and that I’m committed to. Um, Uh, this time around, you know, Before we did a lot of prep we have three things that we thought about, you know, the doula we prepped that. We made sure that we were trying to help each other to make it through. And then we had some plan for sleep, but it was more of a DIY situation.

You know, reading the book it’d tell me all the things. And that was a disaster. To say the least it was really, really difficult. But now what we’re doing is, we have some other considerations. We want to keep things normal for Lincoln, as normal as possible. He goes to Kidstrong and he loves it. And he has friends there and he’s so excited and he talks a lot and all these different developmental things for him.

And we want to keep that going. And for me breastfeeding was not a successful journey for me and Lincoln. It ended at about three and a half months and I was devastated. And then I had to, there were a lot of pivots, but this time around, I have a course and some support. There are people that I can specifically reach out to. And get that specific support that I need.

One-on-one support if I need it. And it is at the tip of my fingers. So I understand more about even the anatomy of breastfeeding. That’s really important to you. We have these bodies, but how do they really function when they come together as a baby and a mother of nursing. So I’m learning a lot more about that.

Avram Gonzales: First time around you assumed this is just going to be easy.

And I got a lot of sisters and

Rachel Gonzales: yeah.

Avram Gonzales: They all did it well and blah, blah, blah. And, uh, and now you realize that first time it wasn’t as easy.

Rachel Gonzales: It was terrible.

Avram Gonzales: So now you’ve just recruited help and you’ve. Got it. Got it.

Rachel Gonzales: And I’ve paid some money. Yeah. So I’m not doing it myself. And, you know, I’m really excited about that support that I have.

 We already talked about Megan. She, we will definitely have her services with us way earlier than nine months. We will elect to have those way sooner. Um, I think that babies can sleep through the night at like four months. I think. So I’m really looking forward to that because that’s going to help our baby have more, um, Just sleep is good for everybody.

Avram Gonzales: Sleep is really important.

Would you like to talk about something more controversial that we are planning? All right.

Rachel Gonzales: It’s kind of already started.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah, well, like just, just, just hear us out for a second.  just hear us out for a second. Well, if you wouldn’t be up in arms about it, but you know what, it’s our household, not yours. Take it for what it’s worth.

Rachel Gonzales: And the intention really it’s, it’s less about what it is, I think.

And it’s more about why we’re doing this.

Avram Gonzales: So we realized in the first two years, how important sleep is.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.

Avram Gonzales: If we’re not getting sleep, everything, literally everything starts to degrade.

Rachel Gonzales: Right

Avram Gonzales: in your life.

Rachel Gonzales: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Avram Gonzales: So you can’t show up good for your kid, for your business, your clients, yourself, self, your partner, everything degrades.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.

Avram Gonzales: So priority is sleep.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.

Avram Gonzales: Because that gives you the longevity.

Rachel Gonzales: Right!

Avram Gonzal
es: So keeping that in mind, we decided recently to bring the day bed in from the garage, we just had it stacked. We haven’t had a use for it in years since Lincoln was born, he took the nursery we took the day bed out.

Rachel Gonzales: Yep.

Avram Gonzales: And we moved that day bed into the bigger part of the house.

Rachel Gonzales: Yep.

Avram Gonzales: And when Rachel can’t sleep right now, because third trimester, the baby’s waking you up, your body is tossing , change it. You know.

Rachel Gonzales: There’s tons of pillows around me,

Avram Gonzales: all this

Rachel Gonzales: stuff.

I take them a lot.

Avram Gonzales: You know, she wakes up in the middle of the night. She’s worried and concerned that she’s waking me up sometimes. That’s the case other times it’s not. So you just started taking the day bed.

Rachel Gonzales: Right.

Avram Gonzales: And you’d go out if you can’t sleep, hanging out on the day bed or read or whatever.

Rachel Gonzales: And it kind of started there and you know, now I’m just sleeping out there and it works really well. You can have a great night sleep. And I can get a great night’s sleep.

I actually sleep better, having more room, being able to turn around toss, like side to side, my hips get sore, simple stuff like that but being able to know that I’m not disturbing anyone else in the house.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah. It was like people like, oh, you’re not sleeping in the same bed right now. It’s like, uh, you also aren’t there for the whole half hour, one hour that we spend in the bedroom before we go to sleep.

Rachel Gonzales: Right. We still have time to connect. Yeah, we make that a priority and we talk to each other. And, um, I remember with Lincoln shortly after him, we would have this one word check-in. And we just asked, you know, what’s your one word. And we get really clear on how the other person was feeling. So, um, we still try to keep that up, but when baby is born, what we’re going to do to continue to help the house have good sleep all the way around is we’re going to have a, um, so baby will be co-sleeping if you will, but sleeping in a bed next to my bed and then I will be able to nurse the baby.

I will not have to get up all the way. It’s not going to change. It’s not going to totally affect my sleep cycles. Hopefully I will be able to maintain better sleep because of that. Um, especially with the little baby, you have to feed them often like two, every two hours, because they’re tummy is so small.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah.

And the thing that we realized is what is the purpose of me staying in that same room when the baby is waking at all hours, when there is literally nothing that I can do for that baby. I can’t feed him. Right, right. What do you, what do you really need? You don’t really need anything so for the baby to go back to sleep after.

Rachel Gonzales: Yes. But also for you not to wake up. When you wake up when I wake up, it’s stressful for me, because I know that you’re not going to sleep. You’re not sleeping well, you’re not going to be able to do the things that you need to do. We have a little toddler that needs you to be present.

Avram Gonzales: And that’s really the bigger consideration is me being able to show up fully for him.

Rachel Gonzales: Right.

Avram Gonzales: Once August is born and then that’s going to allow me to also show up fully in the business.

You’re taking some time off, this time I’m not taking the same amount of time off. We did last time you were out, um, off almost six months.

Rachel Gonzales: Right.

Avram Gonzales: I was off fully for seven weeks.

Rachel Gonzales: Right.

Avram Gonzales: That was a wonderful incubatory time that we had as a family where we’re not doing that this time.

Rachel Gonzales: No. And it’s shifted for a number of different reasons, but the sleeping situation has been so great for me.

Um, and I know that I will have less stress on the other side of having baby, because of not having to worry about you sleeping. Or not sleeping because, that was actually kind of a point of contention after Lincoln was born. Um, you know, you didn’t want him sleeping in the room because no one had got any sleep, but we didn’t have these other solutions.

So having this solution makes it really, really nice, for everybody to get more sleep.

Avram Gonzales: I want you to know how it goes. Sure. Well, this podcast is going. We’ll have a lot of reflections.

Rachel Gonzales: Right. And you know, something that we’re doing in our business  speaking of preparing, you know, is we know that we have 11 more episodes or 11 total that need to be recorded. So that we can make it through to September, September is kind of a place that we feel like we’ll be in a better place energetically and

Avram Gonzales: yeah. we’re making it so that if we don’t have the energy to record another podcast episode

Rachel Gonzales: or the time

Avram Gonzales: or the time for three months,

Rachel Gonzales: right.

Avram Gonzales: Following August birth, we’ve got the episodes to cover it. We’re cranking them out right now.

You know, this one who knows when this will get aired, who knows when the next one will get aired? But sometime between now and September.

Rachel Gonzales: Right? So that’s another thing that can help with lack of stress, not just getting rid of that stress. Um, lots of other different considerations, but really, you know, I think if, if nothing else the sleeping situation that we’re choosing to do in our household. I think it just invites.

I invite everybody out there that’s maybe in the same situation or has something that maybe is unorthodox that they’re considering. I was living in separate beds when you’re married. Um, the, you just make it less about other people and more about you. And see if it works for you, because this really works for me.

I grew up Mormon. And this is super awful. It’s taboo. It’s like, You do not sleep in separate beds. If you do, there’s something wrong with your relationship.

Avram Gonzales: That’s. That’s common.

Rachel Gonzales: So, yeah. There’s that.

Avram Gonzales: We’re, we’re doing, I think a lot less different with the business this time around last time we did have a key team member that was with us. Shout out to Lauren.

Lauren was there with us, um, when Lincoln was born and really handled all the client communication and stuff while we were out. And it was really because of her that we were able to take that time. We had built some systems and things in place. They weren’t perfect for us to be able to take a significant amount of time off.

 But now this time around. You know, we’re we’re two years further in the business. We’ve discovered a lot of efficiencies. We’ve contracted down our service offerings to make it more simple. Uh, it’s just really a lot easier to run the business now than it was two years ago. And we’re also able to batch. A lot of the work in advance of taking time off. So

Rachel Gonzales: right.

Avram Gonzales: Things are going to keep going because we do have other team members that continue to take care of things in the background. And, you know, you’re working with c
lients right now to set up their next quarterly meetings or monthly meetings around the time of the birth?

Rachel Gonzales: Yes.

Avram Gonzales: So proactive in that communication, they know what, what to expect.

They know that they still have a line to me. Even though you’re not there anymore.

Rachel Gonzales: Well, and also something that we I think is different from then and now is also recognizing very clearly that your time is limited. You Avram in the business. And that we need to make sure that when we bring on something else, when we change something, whatever it, whatever that looks like, that we do not put more onto your plate. And that’s really, really helped us to get very, very clear on what does and does not work for us. And it’s been serving us very, very well and not overburdening you.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah. Yeah.

Rachel Gonzales: So we’re going to take that into future for all the prep.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah, cause short term, it’ll be me handling client stuff for the interim. Not the best at that, those details and things, but the way that we’re going into it and the prep is going to make that a lot easier for us and more seamless for our clients.

Rachel Gonzales: Right? Exactly. So no one is going to suffer because of this change in our life. Um, this, this addition, but we’re, we’re coming into it more prepared and with our eyes wide open. But also I think. More willing and able and already starting to ask for help, which is a huge thing.

Peace. So that there are so many people around us and around you that want to help us. And you.

Avram Gonzales: I think it’s funny as I’m looking at, you know, where you’re going recording for over 20 minutes. And I think the first part one episode was like 15. So we learned a lot. Yeah. We’re very excited to share with you today about some of the things that are changing for us as we get ready for a little number two. As you know, Running a business and raising a family is a world that not everybody knows.

Most people are clocking nine to fives. Most people that have a business. We have a lot of these friends, one person is running the business.

Rachel Gonzales: Right.

Avram Gonzales: Other persons right in the household.

Rachel Gonzales: Right.

Avram Gonzales: But when you’re all in it together it’s complicated. It’s messy. It’s hard.

Rachel Gonzales: Right.

Avram Gonzales: And that’s why we created this episode

Rachel Gonzales: Communication is so important. Oh, my gosh.

And we’re going to get into all of that. There’s so many things, so many nuances. About working with your spouse.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah.

So anything else you’d like to add before we kind of wrap it here?

Rachel Gonzales: My only thing that’s really. I think we really covered all the things, you know, just, um, maybe the only thing I’d say is, um, Find out what works for you and make no apologies.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah. Check it out on the show notes.

There’s an earlier episode as well. I think it’s cheekily called everybody knows best. And other or something like that. Put that in the show notes too. It’s about following your intuition. And, uh, everybody’s got opinions about how you run your business, how you run your household, but none of those people are paying you. None of those people are, are helping you.

So, you know, you don’t need to listen to them.

Rachel Gonzales: Right.

Avram Gonzales: Cool. Um, with that we’d love to hear from you. What is one thing that you wish you had prepared better for, with the new addition that came to your family? Maybe it’s been a while since that new addition arrived, but Hey, we’d love to hear it. And, uh, you can find us on social media @babiesandbizpod.

I got Facebook, we got Twitter. We got actually it’s X now, right? Uh, Instagram, YouTube, all those places we would love to hear from you. And we’re still asking for those five star reviews on Apple Podcasts. If you write a little note about it and what you’ve enjoyed specifically about this podcast, It’ll encourage other people to check it out to those reviews mean a lot to us. Thank you for getting on there and taking just a minute out of your day to do that, make sure you check out the show notes for this episode, we dropped a lot of different resources here. We want you to be aware of and have accessible to use in your life, or maybe even share with a friend. So with that, uh, we appreciate you for tuning in.

Rachel Gonzales: Bye for now.