Becoming Confident Mothers and Entrepreneurs with Cara Tyrrell

Jillian

Welcome back to The Midset of Podcasting. Today we're talking all about motherhood and entrepreneurship because let's face it, both are hard. They are both very hard. And my guest today, Cara Tyrell, is the founder of Core for Parenting, which helps support mothers on their journey. Because I feel when I had my kids, especially when they were newborns and toddlers, there wasn't a lot of support out there. There was a lot of mom shaming and mom guilt, but not a whole lot of support. And that's what Cara is doing, is creating support of places for mothers to turn. So Cara is the mother of three girls, an early childhood educator, and the founder of Core for Parenting. While teaching preschool and kindergarten, she identified a pattern of underdeveloped skills set in her students, leading her to found Core for Parenting. Her work empowers new moms on their parenting personal development journey while teaching them how to maximize their baby's early learning. Graduates of her courses move from new mom overwhelm and anxiety to confidence and clarity, raising happy, healthy, school-ready kids. So while she does focus mostly on motherhood, we did talk about entrepreneurship because I know a lot of my listeners are entrepreneurs and kind of how to blend being a mother and being an entrepreneur. So listen in. Hi, Cara. Thank you so much for being on the podcast today. How are you?

Cara

I'm great. I'm really excited to have this conversation. Thanks for having me, Jillian.

Jillian

Yes, me too. So let's start with telling us who you are and what do you do. 

Cara

Yeah. So I'm Cara Tyrrell, founder, of course, of Core 4 Parenting, and my background is in early childhood education. I'm a trained teacher, I'm a mom of three, and they're grown children at this point. So founding Core for Parenting has been a journey for me, and this is a culmination. So we are a company who creates community courses and live coaching programs for new moms. And our goal is to support first-time moms specifically, and then as they turn into toddlers, moms having more babies with the tools that they need to approach parenting from a really conscious, intentional place, design their relationship with their child, and support their kids with the skill sets they need to truly be kindergarten ready.

Jillian

I love that there was nothing like that around when I was having my babies, and that's definitely something that could be used. Yes. How old are your kids?

Cara

17, 19, and 21.

Jillian

Oh, so you're up there too with me I have a 21, 16, and 11 year old, so kind of in the same bracket. But yeah, there was nothing like that when we were having our kids. There's no resources to go to or anything. So I love that you have created this for moms who are feeling because those baby and toddler years are overwhelming and stressful and tiring. And just to have a place to go to and turn to is amazing.

Cara

Yeah, it's been amazing. The feedback that we are getting, we get a lot of what you just said. Right? I wish I'd known. And so our goal right now is to turn all the I wish I'd known into, oh, I'm so glad I knew.

Jillian

Yes. So I think as mothers, we kind of always feel like we're doing it wrong, that we're going to mess up our kids. I know. I was always afraid of like, is this what my kids can talk about in therapy later on? How can we, as mothers, feel like we are giving the best to our children and not hopefully them up like we feel we are?

Cara

Yeah. There's a gap between what we think we're doing and what we're actually doing, and moms who feel that and that might be the second most prevalent thing we hear, I'm afraid I'm messing my child up without trying. Right. Moms who think that are doing their job and doing it well. If you have the presence of mind to worry about it, then it matters to you. And if it matters to you, you're attending to it more than you even know, and you're doing it really well. There's no perfect parent. There's no checklist that we can give you. Because here's the deal. You're a unique human being with your own personal traits and the things that come really easy to you in the way that you relate to other people, and so is your child. And those might line up beautifully. And for those moms, wow, we are so thrilled for you. You speak the same language, you think the same way, you see the world the same way, but that's not typical. And so the work that we're doing is figuring out how we best interact with other people. How our child like. Observing our children for who they are and how they really thrive in communicating with others and then doing the big work of speaking to them in a way that they understand and teaching them the skills that we worry that they won't have when they go out into the world.

Jillian

Yes, I know. I always say I don't parent my kids the same way because they're all different. What works for one does not work for the other one. So I've had to adapt each time I have a kid to what works best for them. So it's just, you know your kid best, so do what you feel is best for them.

Cara

Absolutely. I remember the day very clearly. There's a few days in our lives that are just kind of emblazoned in our brains and we can see and feel everything that happened in that moment. One of those for me is the day I realized I needed two sets of strategies to raise two different kids in my same house. And to be perfectly honest with you, Jillian, I had a moment. I was frustrated, I was upset, I felt jipped. I was like, I got this all figured out already. I have to do it again. But it's true. And if we can approach it knowing that that's the truth and that every child we have, it's going to be a new journey and a new exploration and even more beautiful outcomes, then we're going to be okay.

Jillian

Yes. That's beautiful. I love that. So I know you've talked a little bit about this, who before, what mindset can you explain what exactly that is?

Cara

I would love to. One of my favorite things.

Jillian

Yeah.

Cara

So I've kind of alluded to it, right? That who we are matters more than what we do and the expectations we put on ourselves. So when you think about that from a parenting lens, as moms, we need to be looking for clues about who our child is more than what milestones they're meeting and when they're meeting them, and if it's the same as our neighbors children. And so in order to help moms do this, I walk them through an exercise that I call setting your parenting mission statement. And we flash forward 25 years into the future and we think about the qualities and characteristics of the adult human being that you want to put into the world because you know they're going to make great change and add great value. And they say things to me like honest, reliable, on time, mean what they say, follow through with their actions. They are conscious and kind. They are a team player. And they start to put together a picture of this person that they're raising. And from that, we can work backwards. And that helps us choose, okay, who am I talking to today? Who do I want to support my child to be? What characteristics do I need to model if that is the long-term goal? And what happens is this beautiful exploration between parent and child. The core four connectors get anchored in a way that you couldn't have done intentionally. You are now connected to your child with open communication, honesty, respect, and that trust factor that exists between the two of you and from that place you can then share with them. So when we're out in public, it's better to say this than this. And they'll hear you and they'll understand why it matters so much.

Jillian

That is great.

Cara

Yeah.

Jillian

I think we're so in the moment. When they're little, like, we never think who this baby is going to become, and yeah, really doing that visualization. I love that. Like I said, I wish I had my little babies, but I could still do that with my kids now, even no matter what age they are because we're always parenting.

Cara

That is a really important point at core four parenting. We speak directly to new moms because we really want to help them with this transition from womb to world and then kind of be that space so that they evolve into this curriculum. But it's never too late. We're never done growing, we're never done learning. And as long as you feel safe and confident, we need to learn parental confidence to say to our children, I made a mistake. That is not how I should have handled that. Can we try again? I'd really like it if we could. It doesn't matter how old they are.

Jillian

I really like that. Oh my gosh. Yes. How do you help your clients feel more confident, especially in that new mom phase where it's all new, so we don't even know what we're doing. And you can't really feel confident when you don't know what we're doing, right?

Cara

It's true. So new mom overwhelm comes from the melding of three emotions. You are extremely confused. There's a lot of confusion, there's a lot of anticipation, but we don't know what we don't know. So we've got the anticipation and we've got the confusion. And then we've got this tricky thing that we do to ourselves, especially here in America, because we tend to be either perfectionists or recovering perfectionists, and we put these unrealistic expectations on ourselves. So when the three of those start playing around in our brains, we hijack ourselves. What we teach new moms is that it really is not that complicated. If we can push those things to the side, and take off the what we don't know from our worry list, we actually have a short list of four checkmarks and we do give you a checklist where you can just know at the end of every day, especially in that fourth trimester, right? I'm doing this. I am doing this thing called being a new mom and I am winning at this fourth trimester. It doesn't last forever and I just need to be present. I just need to feed my baby. I just need to grab rest where I can. I just need to create nutrition for myself because I'm creating nutrition for my baby. I just need to make sure that I'm listening to my body because I'm healing. And that's really your only job.

Jillian

Yes, it is. I'm just like in awe. I'm like oh my gosh. Again I'm going to say a gazillion times I needed this. So a lot of my listeners are entrepreneurs and mothers and I don't really believe in balance but how can we align with being a mother and also being an entrepreneur and the many other hats we have to wear as wife and friend and all that?

Cara

Yeah, that's a big one, isn't it? I'm not sure anyone has exactly the right answer. Again, I'm going to say that this very much lines up with who you are, your goals, your dreams, your missions. I'm a social company, right. I'm a mission based entrepreneur who really feels like these shifts that we make now will help us raise world ready kids who change the world. Not every entrepreneur is a social based mission based company. If you make a widget good for you. Like the world needs widgets too. What you've got to do is choose what is my long term goal, where does my entrepreneurial dream line up with my stage of parenting? How much of myself do I have to give to each? And again I'm going to say it's about setting realistic expectations. I know myself. I am someone who when I dive in, I'm all the way in the deep end. I'm a committed and I'm going to follow something through. So I knew I couldn't found this company until my kids were adults. That's what I knew about myself. Maybe that's not some of the entrepreneurs that you have listening. Maybe they're able to compartmentalize their work, their time and space and self from their parenting time and space and self. Maybe they know they're actually a better mom when they're doing the creative work of entrepreneurship. And so if you have to forgive yourself the world's expectations and enroll your child in that daycare or put them in that preschool or let them stay late for the after school program because you actually feel more accomplished when you've put out your newsletter for the week and touched lives and now you can do that evening shift with your child and really be in it.

Jillian

Giving yourself permission to do what you need to do that makes you a better mother, a better person, wife, and all the things by taking care of yourself first and knowing what you need. I do love that. Oh my gosh, that's kind of what I do. My kids go to school, which summer is coming, so things are going to change a little bit. But at 02:00, I'm done working. I'm mom. Like, they know that I'm going to be there for them and during the summer, they're going to have to learn. Mom's working in the morning. We're going to have to let her be. And then I will come out and I'll be full attention to you.

Cara

Yeah. And summer strategies are a whole nother conversation, but aren't they a fantastic opportunity if you have older kids like you do or even some of your listeners that have kids between six and nine years old? Right. Isn't that a fantastic opportunity to teach them some of those independent life skills and that self-regulation and some time management? I have 30 more minutes before I can talk to mom. And some choosing of their own adventure, that boredom that turns into creativity, that turns into something that they made that they wouldn't have done otherwise.

Jillian

Exactly. Yes. That is amazing. So thank you so much for this. I know my listeners are going to want to connect with you, so where can they get in touch with you?

Cara

Oh, for sure. So they can connect with me online. I've got at core four parenting on all the platforms and specifically Instagram is where I'm hanging around the most. So come from me there. We do have a digital course suite that starts at the third trimester of pregnancy and follows moms through their journey and the developmental journey of their babies up until one year old. And they can find that on our website, core4parenting.com/courses. And if you're not in that stage of parenting anymore, reach out, because twice a year we run a live group coaching program for moms of toddlers through five year olds. And that is an experience to connect with others in the same space and run through the dual core development curriculum that I designed that works with you and your mindset and your perspective like we were talking about today. And then on the back end, I teach you strategies and scripts, and systems for helping your child develop the life skills that you want them to have.

Jillian

I will make sure all those are in the show notes. Please go check out Carr on Instagram. She has great videos up. And I see that you're starting an ASL class for babies soon, which I actually did with my own kids. And it was so nice to be able to understand what they needed and they weren't just screaming at me. So definitely go check her out. And thank you so much for being here today.

Cara

Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me and I can't wait to get to know your listeners.

Jillian

I absolutely love what Cara is doing. I so wish that there was a program like this available when I had my kids because there wasn't it was hard. Being a new mother was hard. With my daughter, I had postpartum depression, so that was difficult. And I felt like I had nobody to talk to. Like nobody really talked about postpartum depression back then, so there was no place I could turn to for support. So having this support system, I think it's going to help so many new mothers, especially in the trying times of trying to recover from giving birth and also being responsible for caring for a new human being and then add being an entrepreneur on top of that. And it just I wasn't an entrepreneur when I had my babies, but I couldn't imagine being an entrepreneur. Also, I did have to go back to work right after I had my kids and that was hard. But being an entrepreneur is on a whole different level. I do know that. So if you are a new mother or like she said, she has some programs for toddler moms, please go to the show notes and check her out because I so wish I had that amount of support when I was in the phase. But my big takeaways from this episode is that no matter how old your kids are, as I said, my kids are older, I can still envision their future and still parent them with that vision in mind. Because no matter how old your kids are, you never stop being their mother. You don't and you're still going to parent them even when they are parents themselves. My oldest has two babies now and I'm still going to pair her even though she's a mum herself. So we can still change how we do things and how we treat our kids, no matter the age. 

So your podcast tip of the week. So I have three affirmations that I. Tell myself before I start recording an podcast because we all get those little thoughts in our head of, oh my gosh, this is going to sound horrible. I don't know what I'm doing. What am I going to talk about? Nobody wants to listen to this. All those thoughts that go to your head. So I take a deep breath and I say, people are excited to hear what I have to say. People will listen to your podcast because they want to know what you have to say. So I want you to keep that in mind when you're recording and remember, the way that you say something is going to resonate with who needs to hear it. The second affirmation I say is my voice sounds good and people will download my podcast. I know most of us hate the way our voice sounds, but that's just something basically we just have to get over. Like, I hate the way my voice sounds. I say certain words. Weird, yes, I know. But most people listen like the sound because otherwise they wouldn't listen or they don't even notice all those weird things that you notice about your voice. So people won't notice as much as you think they will. The third thing I say is recording my podcast gets to be fun. I have a message that I want to get out to the world and I think that the world needs to hear. So I'm going to overcome my fears and I'm going to deliver my message and I'm going to have fun while doing it. So just remember, this whole process gets to be fun.

So an update for you. The podcast launch solution is live. It went live yesterday. You can now sign up to join the program. This program walks you through everything you need to start your podcast. We go through the mindset stuff, we go through the technical stuff, we go through what your episode should be about, content and all the things, every single thing you need to start a podcast, we go through. And I made this program because I know a lot of women are just starting out in the business or they don't have the resources to hire somebody. And I wanted to make something affordable so women can share their voices. Because ladies, it is time now to use our voices and get our message out to the world. So if you are ready, then go to the Show Notes and click the link in the Show Notes and we will get everything all set so you can join the Podcast Launch Solution and I will talk to you next week.