In our launch episode of Babies & Business, Avram and Rachel share three things they did to get ready for the birth of baby Lincoln, knowing that it would bring incredible changes to their lives. Learn why the book “The Fourth Trimester,” hiring a doula (specifically a postpartum doula), and meal prepping in advance were all game-changers in the first few months after Lincoln was born.

Show Notes

2:10 How to prepare your relationship for a new baby

3:02 What the Fourth Trimester looks like for men, not just mommy

4:57 How ‘This is Us’ inspired a mantra for greater compassion

6:12 Where we failed as a couple along the way

6:55 How our household changed + one out of the box idea to make for an easier transition and get momma some rest!

8:38 Pinpointing your weaknesses and planning around them

12:02 What we did to prepare our business to operate for 7 weeks without us

Mentions & Resources

The Fourth Trimester (Book)

This is Us (TV Show)

ABQ Doulas (Local Business)

Run Like Clockwork (Book)

The Clockwork Accelerator (Website/Program)

Adrienne Dorison (Person)

Episode Transcription

Below, you will find a transcript of this entire podcast episode. Enjoy!

Avram Gonzales: Hello and welcome to the Babies in Business Podcast. This is your co-host, Avram Gonzales, joined by my co-host, my wife, my business partner, Rachel Gonzales. Rachel, tell our listeners what we’re doing right now, if they could picture us here. What’s going on?

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah, we are sitting on the couch. I have our little bundle of joy on my.

He’s taking a nap and we are getting stuff done while he’s sleeping

Avram Gonzales: Keys to the kingdom friends. In this episode, we’re going to talk about three things that. We did to help get ready for this new bundle of joy in our life while running a business full time, working together, being at home, basically being in it the entire time, knowing that that’s what we were heading to.

We had a couple things that we wanted to share with you that we found powerful. Upon reflecting that we wanna pass along to expecting, expecting business owners, right? Expecting that baby to join your life. There are certain things that will be turned upside down, and there were things that we did that we learned from we wanted to share with you today.

So we’re gonna talk about it in three different areas of our life that were impacted in real quick. This is a brand new podcast. If you love it, please share it with your friends, your, your comrades, and folks who would appreciate this type of material and subscribe the podcast, Leave us a review. We would so appreciate you doing that.

Let’s jump into the content. So first we want to talk about relationship. This is the foundation of not only your household, but your business, especially if you’re working together. So Rachel, why don’t you share some of the things that you were thinking about. You did a lot of research and prep before Lincoln arrived here.

I’d love to hear more about it. Okay,

Rachel Gonzales: so I was pregnant for nine months and I had a lot of time to read, and so I took that time to read. I read a lot of different books about mostly the postpartum journey and one of the. Books that really, really impacted me was the fourth trimester, and it just talks about how we just, as women, we go through a lot of change and there’s also no thought really given for the the dad.

And how he’s going through some change too. You know, maybe he might, for the first six to eight weeks he’s losing his friend, his partner, his lover is made everything because there’s so much going on. And so I wanted to be able to help us as a family prepare for that and as a couple. And so there was this, um, in the back of the book, there’s this.

Form that you fill out separately. So Avram filled it out and I filled it out and there were simple questions that really make us think about how to navigate a time that we just don’t know how to prepare for. And some of the questions are like, what is your love language? How do you deal with stress? Um, how do you recognize the stress in each other?

Things like that. And just being aware because. Each of us are going through it in a different way and just having compassion for each other. Um, so that was really the biggest prep that I did in terms of our relationship is reading and just being aware of. We don’t know what we don’t know.

Avram Gonzales: well in knowing that there is pressure, so to speak, that is put on your relationship.

Uh, there’s less time that you might have, you know, we’re new parents and we have only just had each other and a dog. For the first three years of our togetherness and the first few years of our marriage. And so we knew things were going to change. There’s so something really powerful that Rachel has done for me, and uh, maybe she could speak to that a little bit here, is she brought this mindset in this perspective, was it from the fourth trimester?

No. Okay. So, um, well you wanna talk about that perspective? Yeah.

Rachel Gonzales: You know, there’s this show, it’s called, This Is Us, It’s a dysfunctional family, but, you know, you get to see their, their just realness in relationships and, you know, Kate’s. Um, character really actually inspired this way of thinking. Also, my mom probably is, you know, Kate shows up in a way that I just did not like

She had a specific way she wanted things done, and if you didn’t do it, oh man, were you in the doghouse? So, The kind of mantra that I have is I want people to show up the way that they want to show up, and I allow them to. So I, I let people show up the way that they will. And with Avram, you know, he’s never been around children, little tiny babies and, and he has insecurities about those kinds of things or, or whatever.

But I have many nieces and nephews and, and this is nothing new to me. And so I wanted to allow him to learn. What he could and, and just show up how he will.

Avram Gonzales: Right. And something else that we did. And before we start talking about the next part, uh, that we wanted to get to the second part here in our, our podcast today is there were, you know, there were these other exercises in the fourth trimester that we did that, that, um, We actually kind of failed on a little bit.

Um, we had some goals that we had for, for six weeks out. Uh, we wrote these goals out and you know what We did what we did. Shh, don’t tell anybody, Don’t tell anybody. . We kind of forgot all about them and didn’t tap into them and check on them the same way that we might with business goals. So, a little bit unlike us, but also as Rachel said, Didn’t know what we were really getting ourselves into, what to expect.

But what we did do that I think has served us well so far in our journey is we made that commitment to each other, understanding that our relationship is the bedrock for our entire life. It’s where it started. It’s where our family started. It was with us, and this is a continuation of that. It allows us to show up more powerfully in business, in our relationship, and with our baby as well.

Give him the best and the most that we can. So next, we’d love to talk about how our household changed, uh, what we prepared for. There’s a couple things that might seem like really simple. Things that we did. Also, things that we didn’t know were possibilities until they were introduced to us in preparing for little Lincoln.

You wanna talk about the first one, Rachel? The doula, Cuz that was a game changer. And why was that important? Why do you think people should consider something like that in preparation?

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah. So first I had to have one question answered. I’d heard about doulas and I thought, well, if I’m having two midwives already, why would I want to doula as well?

Because. Most often people think of doulas as being part of the. Process, but they also have postpartum doulas. And what was so special about it is that one of our midwives had suggested a postpartum doula. So I looked into it and I would, I just fell in love with the organization here, Abq Doulas in Albuquerque.

And uh, I met with, uh, Jenna. Our doula, and we had her come over a couple times a week for probably a good six weeks.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah, Like two hours. A two hours each time. Yeah.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah. And she would come over and then I would get to take a nap. Or there were times when we would take a shower or there were other times when we would just sit and visit and we needed like some kind of like adult contact and, but also having, Questions answered.

She helped us troubleshoot. Like sometimes he would be crying and we just didn’t know what was going on and she like how to settle him and she made some suggestions and, and they were just so helpful and I felt less alone in the process even though I. Have known babies and held babies. It was very different.

Avram Gonzales: I think it’s cool that with this, we really did take an approach that’s much like we do in our business in terms of preparation and really planning ahead for things, understanding where our weaknesses would be, and looking at like, okay. How much money do we really have available to dedicate towards this first six weeks?

You know, when you’re growing a business, growing a family, your budget is, it is, for most people, it’s limited to a certain amount of money. And it’s like, well, what’s gonna be important to us? Looking at how we, you’re looking at our relationship, we knew, well that’s important to us. We’re gonna need some, we’re gonna need some backup because family’s great.

But you know what else is great as well? Somebody who is not family , who you have paid to come over and help you out. Uh, that was definitely a game changer for both our physical needs and even just getting some, some time together, like, holy cow, something else that we did that seemed simple, but again, I think.

Speaks to kind of how we approach things in businesses. We did a bunch of meal prep. We anticipated that the household would be a stressing point specifically for me. Rachel’s the one that’s gonna be nursing, feeding, taking, taking that level of care with him. Well, how can I be a support? I started distress and thinking about all the household things.

Rachel usually helps with that. I would be doing and I would be, I would be taking on alone knowing that we prepared and that made for a pretty seamless transition into parenthood and not having to worry so much about the house or what we’re gonna eat when. We haven’t slept, we haven’t showered. You know, normally our goals were, let’s take over the world today.

Our new goals were how can we get a shower in today? And wow, that’s a success. You know, those are the things that we knew that the, we knew the household would be a stressing point for us if we didn’t get some assistance or plan ahead. Yeah,

Rachel Gonzales: and you know, you’re a brand new parent when you’re faced with an option, and those two options are, do I take a nap or do I take a shower

And you don’t feel like you have time for both .

Avram Gonzales: So I never played any contact sports in, in high school. I didn’t Or like full contact. Yeah. I played like soccer, you know, volleyball. You’re not supposed to contact anybody. You know, I didn’t play football. Right. And um, Having a kid is the most full contact sport that I’ve ever, I’ve ever played because it was so intense.

Uh, like Rachel said, I, I grew up an only child. I didn’t have a lot of exposure to, to little ones, and it was like a, it was just like the most intense thing. Uh, this brings us into our third, uh, topic of today, which, which surrounds the things that we did to prepare in our business specifically for the arrival of our child.

A huge inspiration for our preparation was work that we started doing about two years ago. Rachel and I got together. We came together coming out of relationships that, and neither of our exes wanted children when we got together. That is something that we shared, we had in common that we wanted to do.

We talked about it from the beginning and then we literally planned for it. We knew when we wanted to have him. We knew what we wanted to. , we knew where we wanted to be when we had him, and one of those things that was important for me, but also for both of us, was that we could be fully present for at least this first six weeks, which ended up being more like eight for us, and not have to be working every day or even working at all.

And for a lot of business owners, the idea of taking a month or more off of your business seems like suicide. You know, you, you put out fires and things every day. What’s gonna happen if you walk away? We were introduced to Adrian Doris in and the run like clockwork community. We jumped into her Clockwork Accelerator in August of 2020 with the goal of creating a business that would run itself for at least a month or more while we were welcoming our new child into the world, and we spent the last, specifically last year since we knew he was coming, working very hard on the systems, the processes.

And more that were taught to us by Adrian and the crew at run like clockwork to be able to do that. I worked maybe six hours in the eight weeks following the birth of Lincoln, and I don’t think that’s something that very many dads get to enjoy. Can you tell me a little bit, Rachel, why that was important for you two and maybe what the journey of clockwork in our business has looked like?

Yeah.

Rachel Gonzales: You know, um, clockwork, our business has meant so much to me because I, without really knowing how much quote work a baby is, um, I just knew that I wanted us to share this experience together. That it’s a once in a lifetime thing. You have a child and. If you don’t take care of that child well, they don’t get taken care of.

So, um, clockwork, our business has just been an incredible journey. It’s helped us serve our clients better. It’s helped us sleep better at night knowing that we are serving them better, um, and really being able to, gosh, step away and have that confidence that things wouldn’t burn down while we were out.

You know, I, I didn’t do any. Very, very little work. Um, and I was able to really focus on Lincoln and that’s really, really important. And as we keep going on on these podcasts, we’re gonna be dropping these little tidbits of why that’s important. You know? Um, you know what? I’m not even gonna get into it cuz there’s so many things and so many reasons why clockwork.

Our business wa s so, so very important for having a child.

Avram Gonzales: Our babies, our kiddos really deserve to have their parents. To whatever capacity works for that family. Right? Yeah. And you know, my opinion, the there is really not enough that you can give to your kid, whether that’s the time or the energy you put in.

We knew that if we could at least get the time, that it would be really, really special. And it was something very worth doing. So like you said, Rachel, Yeah, we got plenty of podcasts to talk more about how this. This, uh, came to be what was important about it and shoot, maybe sometime we’ll have Adrian Doon here on this podcast.

She’s a great mom, wonderful ceo, and brilliant woman who has helped us in amazing ways to build a business that ran while we were gone. Shout out to our team members at Digital Harvest. You guys killed it while we were gone and did such a great job in running the business while we were away. And so, Those three areas, our relationship, our household, and our business were things that we started preparing for long in advance.

If there’s something that you’d like some support on some insight, make sure to drop us a comment online. You can connect with us at hello@babiesandbiz.com. Send us an email. You find us on social media. Shoot. You can find Rachel and I on Instagram, Facebook, things like that. Send us a message. Maybe we’ll feature your question in an upcoming podcast.

But I’d love to hear from you now, Mr. Or Mrs. Listener, what’s something that you did to prepare your business for, or your life for your new baby, the new bundle of joy in your world? We’d love to hear about it. So would the rest of our listeners. Thanks so much for tuning in. Rachel. Any last thoughts here?

We’re just,

Rachel Gonzales: just so excited for the future of being able to tell you more about what. Experiencing in our world because, uh, we think that it’s really worthwhile and, um, coming together on how we can really create these special moments and take the time to actually stop and smell the roses on life’s journey with our children.

That we don’t walk by those beautiful experiences and say maybe next time, because maybe next time won’t.

Avram Gonzales: And on that note, we wish you the best. We’ll catch you on the next one. Please drop us a line, subscribe to our podcast, review us and get the word out. Friend, we appreciate you. Bye for now.