In this episode of Babies and Business, Avram and Rachel share the not-so-picture-perfect story of their recent move—a week filled with sickness, stress, broken AC, and unexpected detours. What started as total chaos turned into one of the most eye-opening lessons they’ve had about balance, gratitude, and growth. Together, they unpack how even the toughest seasons come with equal support, if you’re willing to look for it. It’s an honest, real-life reminder that behind every challenge, whether in business, parenting, or life, there’s a deeper purpose waiting to be seen.

Show Notes

Key Highlights from this Episode:

• Avram and Rachel share the story of their chaotic move into a new home. 
• What was supposed to be a smooth transition quickly turned into a week of sickness, stress, and setbacks. 
• They talk about how chaos can reveal deeper lessons in gratitude, patience, and perspective. 
• Avram reflects on rediscovering his love for teaching and stepping into a new season of growth. 
• Rachel opens up about finding calm and presence even when everything feels out of control. 
• Together, they explore how life’s challenges often come with equal support. You just have to look for it. 
• A powerful reminder that growth often hides inside life’s most uncomfortable moments.

Episode Transcription

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

Avram: When you’re going through it, you don’t always see that through some of your greatest challenges, you also have support. Today’s episode is about that introspection. It’s an invitation to look at some of the things in your life that may be challenging you in great ways and recognizing the deeper meaning in life, and that there is equal support to the challenges that you’re facing. Sometimes you cannot see it.

Rachel: Sometimes you can’t see it. Sometimes you can’t feel it, and sometimes it just feels really heavy and you’re in it.

Avram: That’s right. That is the experience that we had moving into our new home. A couple of weeks ago, we shared with you that we moved into a new home. We have been enjoying it very much. We have reaped some pretty amazing benefits we’ll share with you in being in the new home. But what we have not shared with you is how jacked up our crash landing was into the new home.

Rachel: Yes.

Avram: Our first week into the home, we expected bliss. What we got was, I don’t know, some kind of earthly version of hell.

Rachel: Yeah, it was pretty bad.

Avram: So we—

Rachel: Well, prior to packing, and if you’ve been following Avram’s stories at all, you will have seen that I got sick. The day that we were supposed to pack our truck, we were moving the next day. Yeah, that was the first of the shit show.

Avram: Rachel is the critical ingredient to that. Like, I like to believe that because I grew up playing Legos and I’m very good at that kind of thing, that I could absolutely pack a truck. Our marriage has proved that I am the inferior packer. I am okay with that. But when Rachel was like saying, “I might throw up, I’m really nauseous and hot,” and it’s like five or six o’clock at night, the babies are about to go to bed, like this is the time when we will pack the truck before the movers come tomorrow.

Rachel: That was the time that we designated. We’d already had the conversation.

Avram: And she’s dying on the couch like, “We are so screwed right now.”

Rachel: I know, because it was full stop to the moving period. Just full stop. You’d brought home dinner and I was like, “Oh, don’t make me eat that. I have zero appetite.”

Avram: So we completed a rigorous weekend of packing with toddlers.

Rachel: Rigorous being, we packed as much as we could, but didn’t get nearly close to it.

Avram: We got, I would say, 75 to 80%.

Rachel: Yeah, for sure.

Avram: But there’s still a big chunk. So that was the first hurdle. The next day we do the actual move and unload.

Rachel: Yep.

Avram: And that went pretty well.

Rachel: Yep. And I did rally that night. I was able to get better. I felt a little bit better. I ate, we packed, and we were done about 11:00 PM.

Avram: Uh-huh.

Rachel: It was pretty brutal.

Avram: We had a hectic Tuesday, the day after Labor Day, with that unload. We had like a dental appointment I had scheduled for two that I just—

Rachel: It’s so funny, I forgot about the dental appointment.

Avram: You know, you can’t move that appointment. It’ll be another two months if you don’t do it. But the next day is where it was really tough.

Rachel: Well, and then also one other thing. I had had a massage scheduled that weekend and we thought, “Oh, I really should go to that.” When I thought of rescheduling it, I thought, “Oh, I don’t want to do that to Avram,” because I thought Avram needs a break. If I keep going at this pace, I’m gonna burn him out.

So anyway, keep going. We moved into the house, the move-in day.

Avram: Well, this is where it gets all jacked up—Wednesday. We drop the boys off at school, and two hours later we get a call.

Rachel: August has hand, foot, and mouth.

Avram: Yay.

Rachel: I’m like, what? Okay. Not only do I realize I need to go to the doctor, get him checked out, and get a doctor’s note so that he can go back to school, but I also don’t have their insurance cards because when we left for Texas last month, I had given those cards to my mother-in-law.

So I gave her a call and asked if I could meet her somewhere to get those. “Oh, Jessica has those.” I called Jessica, set up a time, went across town to get them. My day was completely rerouted.

I went over and picked August up, went to urgent care, and sat there for about three hours. It wasn’t bad—he was a trooper. He nursed and took a nap. But yeah, he had hand, foot, and mouth—highly contagious.

Avram: So your whole plan that week was you would unpack while I worked.

Rachel: Yeah. And so Wednesday comes along and he has hand, foot, and mouth. So my week is completely shot because he can’t go back to school until Monday.

Avram: Yeah. And then we make the decision that Rachel should not be unpacking things like the kitchen because she could have contagious all over.

Rachel: Exactly. So we don’t want this to spread throughout the house.

Avram: So okay.

Rachel: I need to do nothing.

Avram: Yeah. So we usually cook all of our meals—we don’t eat out very much.

Rachel: No way.

Avram: And that was very intense. I unpacked maybe 60 to 70% of the kitchen in my off hours, and it was still crazy.

Rachel: Our first night here was pretty uncomfortable sleeping. We had the ceiling fan on, which dried out the air. And the reason was there’s no airflow from the AC in our master bedroom in this new house.

Avram: Yeah, it’s the furthest.

Rachel: It is very warm and uncomfortable. So not only did I not get to do the things I wanted to do, I was also so hot that I wasn’t able to sleep very well. I reached out to our property manager, and we then had to field three different businesses coming over to look at the system.

Avram: Yeah. Your second conversation with the property manager—she screams at you because you were simply asking for some help.

Rachel: And I also didn’t take no or any of the answers that she was giving me as the end of the conversation. I was like, “There is no airflow, so I hear you, but we have no airflow, so we’re looking for a solution.”

Avram: Yeah. Lady flips out and is like—

Rachel: “Whoa.”

Avram: Welcome to the neighborhood.

Rachel: That was clearly not something meant for me. I think she was aiming that at somebody else. So lots of stuff going on there. Then we also have some family stuff requiring our attention, but we have no attention to give. Then I have a call with our lawyer dealing with IRS stuff. Then we have a client that says they won’t continue working with us.

Avram: They’re going out of business.

Rachel: They’re going out of business—and not only that, they’re going to take what we have written for them and create another website using all of the information they don’t own yet.

Avram: So client decides to cancel and then steals all the stuff.

Rachel: Yeah. So whoa. Crash fucking landing. Yes, this is explicit.

Avram: But then the next day, we pick up Lincoln from school.

Rachel: Oh yes, oh yes.

Avram: And—

Rachel: He now has hand, foot, and mouth.

Avram: It’s like, oh, now he’s got it. So we’re just discovering this on Friday.

Rachel: He then is with me until, I think, Wednesday of the next week that he went back.

Avram: But better than that—

Rachel: I got—

Avram: You got it.

Rachel: So all of us are sick.

Avram: I focused on washing my hands 40 times a day.

Rachel: And you did not get it. That was awesome.

Avram: Okay, so shifting gears—we’ve painted the crash landing picture for—

Rachel: Grotesque reality.

Avram: Nothing went our way.

Rachel: Oh wait, one more thing to add. During the day of packing, some of the things I intended to do—like pack a bag for the kids—were missing. When we got here, we couldn’t find the box with all the kids’ clothes. So not feeling well, not totally a hundred percent, it just kind of extended the agony of moving.

Okay, now we can shift gears to the really awesome things that happened shortly after getting here.

Avram: We closed two new deals, which is a pretty major thing for us.

Rachel: Big deal.

Avram: On average, we’ll close a deal once a month. Last year we brought on nine new clients. These two were not in the pipeline at all—they were brand new.

Rachel: Showed up out of nowhere.

Avram: Jumped on them, closed, and started onboarding.

Rachel: Yeah. So while I wasn’t feeling well and was with the boys, I wasn’t putting out any energy of frustration. I just sat in it and loved being with my boys.

Avram: And you were different this time than I’ve seen before. You just chose not to stress about the business stuff.

Rachel: Yeah, I just chose to be present. There was nothing I could do about it, so I had gratitude instead of anxiety.

Avram: Well, we put on a workshop that month—

Rachel: Yes, you received so much support for it.

Avram: Well, I’ll share something powerful, right? We came back from Texas. I realized I remembered how much I like to teach and share information and how high of a value that is for me, and that, um, I’ve been making a lot of excuses and playing small and choosing not to do that. And choosing to like, kinda like hide behind our business lots of things and decided I’m going to do a workshop.

Rachel: You decided on a date.

Avram: Yep, and even when chaos hit, I said, “No, we’re doing it.” Even if only one person shows up.

Rachel: Right.

Avram: When we confirmed the location, it was booked. So we moved it to the 24th. And as of now, we’ve got eight out of ten registrations.

Rachel: Such a win. Everyone you told about it registered—and some are bringing a friend. I love seeing you step into being visible and owning the amazing strategist you are.

Avram: Mm-hmm.

Rachel: Moving to this new house was an invitation for both of us to stop playing small. For me, it’s project management and finances—pushing us to the next level.

Avram: Mm-hmm.

Rachel: We are not okay playing small anymore. We are not okay waiting, and we are not okay with waiting pattern. We are moving forward.

Avram: Just right away. Amidst all of the challenge from the universe—from God—there was equal support.

Rachel: Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever works for you.

Avram: Amidst all that, there was support—new clients showing up to meet our goals. And I leaned in to ask for support in ways I hadn’t before.

Rachel: You found that people leaned in.

Avram: The support was there. I just hadn’t engaged it.

Rachel: You just had to tap into it. That was the beautiful thing.

Avram: And we might share more on this concept in upcoming podcasts. But this story clearly demonstrates the principle that where there is challenge, there is always equal support—and vice versa.

Rachel: Yeah. We can get tunnel visioned and only see the challenge. This is an invitation to broaden your vision and see both—they’re both present.

Avram: We appreciate you for tuning into this week’s episode. If you haven’t checked us out on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, you can find us @babiesandbizpod. We’ve got new content, video interviews, and more guests coming soon.

If you have questions or topic ideas, reach out at hello@babiesandbiz.com. And with that, we’ll catch you on the next episode.

Rachel: Bye for now.