Creating The Everyday Mother with Jackie Mangiolino
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Episode Summary
One of the things that has supported me most, especially in those first few months after having my baby, is The Everyday Mother Tracker, a journal that helped my husband and I track feeds, diapers, sleep, and everything in between in one organized place. Because of this, I’m so honored to have its creator, Jackie Mangiolino, on the podcast today. Jackie’s baby boy was born 14 weeks premature and spent 99 days in the NICU, which is where The Everyday Mother was born. In our conversation, Jackie shares her story of not only becoming a mom (and how it differed so much from what she imagined for herself), but starting a business with a newborn. Jackie is honest and raw about her postpartum season as well as the ebbs and flow of being a business owner. If you’re a mom or soon-to-be mom, and you’re thinking of starting or finally going full time with your business, this episode is a must listen.
Topics Discussed:
Jackie’s own motherhood story and how she used her background in data analytics and organization to improve her motherhood confidence
The importance of being confident in your support team to help get you through pregnancy and postpartum
How Jackie made the most out of her NICU stay even though it was very different from the birth story she imagined for herself
How planning far ahead help Jackie balance a stay in the NICU, owning a business, and supporting herself and her baby
Jackie’s advice for mothers or soon-to-be mothers who are the beginning of their entrepreneurship journey
The process of The Everyday Mother Baby Tracker coming to life and when Jackie knew she wanted to make a business out of it
Debunking the straight line trajectory of business growth, especially with a product based business
What’s next for The Everyday Mother and how you can engage with the brand
Episode Resources:
About Jackie:
Jackie is the New York based owner and founder of The Everyday Mother. With a background in stationery design and business psychology, she used her experience as a NICU mom to create a daily baby tracking journal. Her goal is to help all new parents use tracking as a way to understand their newborn, learn to trust their instincts, and gain the confidence they need to become the parent they dreamed of being.
Connect with Jackie:
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emily_gorrie:
Welcome to today's episode of the Project Mom Podcast. I could not be more thrilled to be talking with Jackie Mangiolino today. And we are recording our first episode of season two. So I could not be more thrilled that today has come. Jackie is the New York based owner and founder of The Everyday Mother, which is a daily baby tracking journal. She has a background in stationary design and business psychology. and she used her personal experience as a NICU mom to create the Everyday Mother. So Jackie, welcome. Thank you so much for doing this with me.
jackie:
I need to chat. I have a lot of a lot of things I'd love to chat about so.
emily_gorrie:
Yay, perfect. And I want to, before we dive into all of that, I want to start with just some gratitude for you. First, that we could kind of coordinate this, but also for the product that you created. The Everyday Mother is actually something that I used when my daughter was born. It was the first purchase that I made after she was born. To be honest, I didn't even know I needed to track her like peas and outputs and food. Diaper, I didn't know any of this. I think I went into motherhood, I severely blindsided and underprepared. And the Everyday Mother was the first purchase I made post her birth that actually felt like I had some authority or control over something that felt so out of my control. So I'm just grateful for you for creating this product, first and foremost, because it was something that gave me a lot of comfort. sounds like something that you are really hoping to provide to the users and the clients that you have. So first off, just thank you for that.
jackie:
Thank you. That's amazing. How old is your daughter now?
emily_gorrie:
She's two. We have moved past that, thankfully, all the tracking
jackie:
I'm
emily_gorrie:
and
jackie:
sorry.
emily_gorrie:
everything. But different challenges come with that.
jackie:
Oh yeah, I think they say small kids, small challenges, big kids, big challenges.
emily_gorrie:
Oh yeah.
jackie:
But
emily_gorrie:
Oh yeah.
jackie:
thank you so much for sharing that. That's, um, that just makes me feel really nice. That's exactly why I created it. Um, and it's nice to know that that's how we connected. So thank you for sharing.
emily_gorrie:
Oh, you're welcome. And I think perhaps we just start there then with the Everyday Mother and the product that you created. So maybe share a little bit with us as we start to get to know one another and our listeners start to understand your journey. What was your experience with motherhood? And your son is older now, so kind of tapping back into the beginning period of motherhood for you, your pregnancy, your journey in the NICU with him, and kind of where did the Everyday Mother come into play in all of that.
jackie:
Yeah, so for for me, at least, I feel like my motherhood journey started long before I was a mom. My husband and I have been together since you were 16. He always we, you know, high school sweethearts and all that. And he always wanted a big family. So we were engaged when we were I don't even remember 2021, pretty young.
emily_gorrie:
Mm-hmm.
jackie:
And then we waited a few years, we got married, and then we said we were gonna wait five years after we got married to start a family. So I always had this, you know, I think most women have motherhood hanging over their head in one way or another.
emily_gorrie:
Mmm.
jackie:
And I did not look forward to it. And that's,
emily_gorrie:
I get that.
jackie:
yeah, I mean, I'm being honest, my husband would have... you know, he would have liked kids sooner, he would have liked many, many, many kids, and I was dreading everything about it. I was a corporate executive coach and my background is in business psychology, but it's industrial organizational psychology, and I think the key word there for me is organizational, organizational
emily_gorrie:
Mmm.
jackie:
psychology, but even before I was a mom, data and organization and analytics. all of that was always something that gave me a lot of comfort. Information is what makes me feel confident. If I understand something, I can tackle it confidently. And I think part of why I was so not looking forward to being a mom is because there is no way on this planet to ever get somebody to understand what motherhood is until you're in it, right?
emily_gorrie:
Yep, absolutely.
jackie:
So that's a little bit of my background. And even before getting pregnant was my mindset of, I don't know what I'm doing, so therefore I don't want to do it.
emily_gorrie:
Mm-hmm.
jackie:
But we got pregnant, and I had the happy hormones, as I like to call them. I love to be pregnant.
emily_gorrie:
Mmm.
jackie:
It was a really nice surprise.
emily_gorrie:
Yeah.
jackie:
And it was, the pregnancy was not long lived. I delivered my son at 26 weeks. And let's see, I started not feeling well probably around 23 weeks. I
emily_gorrie:
Okay.
jackie:
noticed that I was getting very swollen. My blood pressure started going up. I ended up with health syndrome. which is hemolysis, elevated liver enzymes, and a low platelet count. It's very rare, but one of the most fatal pregnancy complications that exists. I was extremely fortunate that I caught it very early. So,
emily_gorrie:
Yeah.
jackie:
yeah.
emily_gorrie:
Question on that. I'm going to interrupt you quickly. Did you feel as though you were supported by your doctor in identifying some of these concerns? I think we've, at least on this podcast, we've had episodes with women who have not had such a pleasurable partnership with their OB-GYNs and feeling supported in some of their concerns throughout that. So did you feel that you had? That's where I imagine somebody who's interested in understanding everything that's going on, it would be important to have somebody who would answer your questions, listen to your concerns, support you through that educational journey as to what was happening with your body and with your baby.
jackie:
Yeah, my OB is phenomenal. She sort of was phenomenal. She retired. I think she bought herself an Airstream and is currently traveling the country.
emily_gorrie:
Amazing, good for her.
jackie:
Yeah, but she delivered babies for a lot of my friends. So I had known about her for a long time. A lot of my friends who had complications had a lot of faith in her. She was great. She's also associated with a research hospital, which is nice.
emily_gorrie:
Mmm.
jackie:
Yeah, I live on Long Island, which is about, I'm about 40, 45 minutes from New York City. The hospital that I delivered at is technically in Queens, which is part of New York City, Men's Research Hospital. So I think having access to a good doctor and such a great network of... hospitals.
emily_gorrie:
Mmm.
jackie:
It was just so fortunate. I know a lot of people are not as close to that type of care.
emily_gorrie:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I love that I think there's something to be said for feeling really confident in your support team and getting yourself through not only pregnancy, right, as normal as a pregnancy can be, right, with all of these changing physical, emotional, mental stages, but then you add an element of something's not quite right, right? Something's
jackie:
Mm-hmm.
emily_gorrie:
not quite going the way that it's expected to go in a traditional. low-risk pregnancy. So that's amazing to hear that you were able to find that and support yourself through that. So at that point, you found out 23 weeks or so you weren't starting to feel that great. You were swelling. You delivered your son at 26 weeks. Like, what did that look like for you, those next couple of weeks that experience?
jackie:
I'm going to just go back to my doctor really quickly
emily_gorrie:
Absolutely.
jackie:
because you said something that uh my light bulb went off. When I went in at 23 weeks to my doctor
emily_gorrie:
I love that. Perfect.
jackie:
um um when I went in at 23 weeks to my doctor I had already I was swollen my feet were swollen that was like the first symptom and I asked all of my friends you know when did you start swelling when did you start swelling and everybody's answer they had an answer because every I've learned every mother knows when they started swelling.
emily_gorrie:
Yep.
jackie:
Um, you can't avoid it to the date. Um, so every friend answered and then they also said, you know, but if you're not feeling right, go to your doctor. Uh, so I did and I went to my doctor and I just said, you know, I don't, I, I'm swollen and she said, okay, and, and I said, and it just, something's not right. It doesn't feel right for me. And the minute I said that, she just was like, all right, let's, let's get you feeling right. Let's see what this is. So
emily_gorrie:
Amazing.
jackie:
it was a few weeks of monitoring at home and being in touch with my doctor in the beginning. It was every other day and then it became towards the end. It was hourly and then I was admitted to the hospital at 24 weeks. And it was all just She trusted me when I said I didn't feel right. And that was the beginning of the symptoms for me with help syndrome. I was in and out of the hospital, I don't even know, at least three times and out of labor and delivery with high blood pressure. And then they would send me home. And then I would go back and follow up with my OB and there was protein in my urine. So they would send me back to labor and delivery and then there wasn't protein in my urine. And then I would go back to my OB the next day, and then my blood pressure would be up, and there was protein in my urine. So she sent me back to labor and delivery while she was on call. And at that point, my platelet levels had started dropping, and she came in and she saw me in the ER, and she said, you know, we're in emergency labor and delivery. You know, this is really nasty thing called help syndrome. And I don't, what did she say? She's only seen it a handful of times. in her 30 plus year career. She never wanted to see it again, but she was concerned. No, well, that's great.
emily_gorrie:
Yep.
jackie:
But they sent me home and she said, you know, come back the next day, we're going to do more blood work and we'll just keep an eye on it. And then that night, I had tacos for dinner and had really bad heartburn. and I called her at midnight and something's not right. I've never had heartburn like this. I've never had anxiety like this. I don't feel good. Just to go to labor and delivery. By the time I got to labor and delivery, I was in organ failure. I had full-blown health syndrome. It progressed that quickly. And I was put on magnesium, magnesium drip. We did it for... It's normally like 24, 48 hours. They did it for me for 72 to stabilize me.
emily_gorrie:
Mm-hmm.
jackie:
And then I was admitted, obviously, to the hospital. Once I was stable, they came in and they just said, here's what's going to happen. And when I say they, it was the chief of every department. I didn't have any doctors that were familiar anymore. They sort of. My OB became an observer, but it was in great hands.
emily_gorrie:
Yeah.
jackie:
And they just said, you know, at 24 weeks when this is all happening, there's the survive versus thrive conversation that we had, and that was like very eye-opening for me because I could understand the medical terms, but then when they say, you know, the baby could survive, but it might not thrive. And also there was, they just said, you know, my survival was their utmost priority. So they asked where I was at, what I thought, and we all agreed that it would keep me stable in the minute for as long as possible.
emily_gorrie:
Mm-hmm.
jackie:
And that the minute my body started crashing, that we would deliver in order to save my life. So we made it to 26 weeks and two days. And I just sort of, you know, I just said, my husband works, my husband was working and we knew we were going to have a long haul in front of us at that point. There's no way you're delivering at 26 weeks. And
emily_gorrie:
Yeah.
jackie:
not, not going to need a lot of time off one way or
emily_gorrie:
Yeah.
jackie:
another. But so I had said to him, you know, I'm stable at the hospital. Why don't you go back to work? And so he went back to work a couple of days, a couple of nights. And then there was that one night where he just, you know, just not feeling it today. I don't think I should go to work. Normally I'd argue with them and I said, no, you know, you could stay, I'm not feeling great either. And that night, that whole night, I just didn't feel well. And it was like eight o'clock in the morning that the chief of every department, chief of surgery, then the chief of NICU, every department head filed into my room.
emily_gorrie:
Yeah.
jackie:
And I said, all right, I guess that's it, isn't it? And he said, yep, that's it. and they literally put me in a wheelchair, ran me to delivery, it was a c-section, he delivered my son, he weighed two pounds, two ounces, he cried when he was born which like blows my mind
emily_gorrie:
Amazing.
jackie:
because I didn't, yeah, I didn't know that could happen, and then and then I woke up two days later and he was in the NICU doing well. and I was obviously in recovery.
emily_gorrie:
Yeah.
jackie:
So that was a sort of like the short version of our birth story.
emily_gorrie:
Yeah. I mean, Jackie, I have goosebumps. The journey that you went through just to become a mom, essentially, the progression of getting over this dread and fear of you had of doing it to getting to a point where you didn't feel so good to having to essentially choose your life or the life of your son in order to kind of move to this next stage is so momentous and something that I think none of us really prepare ourselves for. So you're doing, I can imagine you're doing the preparation for each next thing that happens as it's happening, like mentally educating yourself, supporting yourself. And just one of the things I take away so strongly from you sharing that story, and I thank you for sharing it, is just the level of trust that you have in yourself say, I don't feel right, or this doesn't feel right, or something feels off in my gut, husband, please stay, or, yeah, maybe we just don't fight on that anymore. It's like just the level of trust that has to happen is beautiful, to say the least, and in a way that doesn't quite describe what I'm hoping to. But it's really quite miraculous, this journey that you went through to get to this point. So I thank
jackie:
Yeah,
emily_gorrie:
you for
jackie:
thanks.
emily_gorrie:
sharing it.
jackie:
I, my husband and I both made a decision almost immediately when we realized how serious it was that it was going to be our birth story, no matter what it was, and we wanted it to be filled with love and as much joy and comfort as possible. So I made that decision and, you know, we left with the nurses, we brought gifts for the nurses every time a nurse shift would change, I would always introduce myself and say, hi, I'm Jackie Mangilino and I know what I have is serious and you're gonna keep me alive tonight, aren't you? And you're not gonna, I'm a tough stick because that, believe it or not, the IV and all of the needles were like my least favorite part. So then
emily_gorrie:
Gosh, yeah.
jackie:
the nurses would come in and I would just. thank them profusely for taking such good care of me and built that relationship with them, which also helped
emily_gorrie:
Mmm.
jackie:
me feel better by having that connection with them.
emily_gorrie:
Yeah.
jackie:
So, so I, you know, and like I said, that was a choice we made and we continued to make that choice throughout the entire NICU stay. My son was in the NICU for 99 days and it's hard to show up and see the NICU and see other children and other families. But we made a choice every day to make the best of it. This is their baby. This is their and why shouldn't we enjoy it?
emily_gorrie:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think, too, right, there's, and you kind of sum it up so beautifully, right, there's this choice that we have to weigh ourselves down in the hard parts, the parts that didn't go the way we expected them to, or the way we planned, or the way that we thought it should have gone, right? We could weigh ourselves down in that, or we can make a choice to. navigate through what it is that was placed in front of us and make the best of it. And I do love how beautifully you summed it up, because I think it can easily, in any scenario, right? In business and in building your family, right? Any of those expectations that we have could be a downer if it doesn't go the way we had hoped it. What if we tie ourselves to one particular outcome? we can get lost in that sadness. So I love that you shared that. And I wonder if you can dive into this, and feel free to loop me back if there's more you want to share. When you were in the NICU with your son, and you were kind of experiencing the support of the nurses and watched what they do and what they're tracking and what they're looking out for and all of that, were you working at the time? When you were in the NICU, were pregnant, were you still working corporately? Or did you choose to, I guess, kind of transition out of that? And when did you start your stationary business? And when did the everyday mother come into this? Was this during the same period?
jackie:
So I quit my corporate job in 2014 to work for myself for my stationary business. At the time I was doing fine print wedding invitations. So letterpress, foil, kind of a wedding stationary concierge and design type service. So I was doing that full time. I had a studio outside of my house. I had staff. And so that... that company is what I was working for for myself though full time when I had my son. Yeah.
emily_gorrie:
OK, and how did you balance that and your stay in the NICU and your son and kind of re-navigating or re-plotting what the next couple of months were going to look like? Because I can imagine, as you shared, only until 23 weeks were you on this fairly standard trajectory of your pregnancy. And your timeline to transition out for a maternity leave probably looked a little bit longer than what had happened. So how did you navigate and support yourself through that transition with the business and now with your priority really being full-time with your son in the NICU?
jackie:
Yeah, I am a planner and I think it all like came back to how far ahead I planned. I had
emily_gorrie:
Mmm.
jackie:
hired, I had planned for a maternity leave and part of that plan for maternity leave was hiring an additional person to join the team and take over a lot of the design work for current invitation clients and I stopped taking clients for that maternity period that I was going to, that I had planned on being out. so that there was no onboarding of clients or anything like that scheduled. So that was great. And then I emailed all of my active clients the minute I was in the hospital and said like, you know, I'm in this situation, this is what's happening. They had all already been introduced to the woman who was helping me. So she said, you know, she's
emily_gorrie:
Mmm.
jackie:
going to be taking over from here on out. And if there's anything that she needs help with. she'll be able to get in touch with me, but you're in great hands. And that was, and at that point, I also just said, I hired somebody who's very familiar with the stationary industry. Something I learned from corporate is to always hire people that are better than you.
emily_gorrie:
Yup, I love that.
jackie:
Yeah, so when, trying not to use my New York four-letter words, but when you know what hits the fan.
emily_gorrie:
Yeah, we can always beep it out. That's OK. Don't stress.
jackie:
Yeah, well, when, you know, when the birds hit the fan, we didn't say that,
emily_gorrie:
There you go.
jackie:
when the birds hit the fan, I had a great team behind me and they were able to really step up and I completely checked out. And I told them, I am checking out. If you need me, only contact me if it's an emergency. But otherwise, you know what you're doing. You're fine without me.
emily_gorrie:
Yeah, that's incredible. I think when we think about us as women as entrepreneurs, I think there's a variety of us, right? We run the spectrum of women like yourself who know what you need to do to support yourself. You're a planner. You know before pregnancy even, right? You had built a team to support yourself to scale this business. And I think there's a lot of us too that are listening, perhaps, that are. just starting to build some side hustles or some businesses that we want to go into full time and perhaps don't have the funding or the even wherewithal sometimes to even see what we need to see in order to hire a team or to support ourselves. So from that perspective, do you have any advice for somebody who wants to? build a support team behind them, knowing that they're entering into a motherhood stage or are in full-blown motherhood and want to start a business and know that they could use some support to get their dreams off the ground. I mean, do you have any advice for those women who are just at the beginning of that?
jackie:
Yeah, prepare yourself for the worst.
emily_gorrie:
hahahaha
jackie:
No, I think that I was very fortunate that I started entrepreneurship before I had a baby, before I had my son. And there's two stories here because there's kind of like life as Jackie before becoming a mom and life as Jackie after becoming a mom and one business ended and all of that experience. Some of it carried over, but it was a whole new journey. So I can kind of speak to it in both senses
emily_gorrie:
Yeah.
jackie:
that one of the easier parts of doing it, obviously before you have kids, with the amount of networking I was able to do and going
emily_gorrie:
Mmm.
jackie:
to industry events and speaking at industry events, participating in industry events, meeting people who were at similar stages. Actually, all of the people that I had hired who were working for me, or almost all of them, were moms who were in the wedding stationery industry and then they had children and couldn't keep up their own businesses. So they had sort of put their businesses on the back burner but wanted to keep a foot in with design. And so they
emily_gorrie:
Yeah.
jackie:
came on and all of their experience came on and that's you know. So I really relied on moms who had
emily_gorrie:
I love
jackie:
experience.
emily_gorrie:
that, yeah.
jackie:
I mean a lot of moms, we all, we have skills. So that was how I started from the beginning with hiring people part time who had the skill set. I also reached out to local colleges for internship programs.
emily_gorrie:
Okay.
jackie:
So being legally set up, however it is that you decide you want to set up, helps to set exponentially because you can legitimately go to a college and say, you know, I'm a corporation or I'm a company or I'm whatever. And I need help and I'm able to give college credits in exchange for the help that I need. And so I've had quite a few interns. Some have been paid, some have been unpaid. One of the girls who works for me now started off as an intern and now she's paid and I'm turning the day when she graduates college. But that was So that was since my old company was called Sincerely Jackie. That was the wedding invitation company.
emily_gorrie:
Yeah.
jackie:
And that took years to be profitable when I was doing it by myself, especially with something that has a lot of overhead like product,
emily_gorrie:
Mmm.
jackie:
you are bleeding, bleeding money, hemorrhaging money in the beginning.
emily_gorrie:
Yeah.
jackie:
But... I was able to do that at the time. I started it while I was still working full time, so I was hemorrhaging
emily_gorrie:
Hmm.
jackie:
my corporate salary.
emily_gorrie:
There you go. Yep.
jackie:
And then for the everyday mother, I took a similar approach in that I started it while I still had some surly Jackie.
emily_gorrie:
Mmm.
jackie:
So, I mean, I started it in the NICU. It started really... I, again, I was at a research hospital and I find myself up for every research study that they were doing. They're pretty eager to get their hands on me. I did
emily_gorrie:
I
jackie:
not
emily_gorrie:
bet.
jackie:
realize, yeah, right. I didn't realize that one of the studies I was in had to do with pumping for micro preemies and breast milk. I don't even know, I never, to this day, I have never gone back to figure out what that study was. But I had lactation consultants assigned to me. That was another benefit of this particular NICU is they had a full lactation consultant staff. There were six full-time lactation consultants in the NICU. And they were with me like 24-7. And I had to hand in like, pumping report. When I was pumping,
emily_gorrie:
Mmm.
jackie:
when I was pumping, how much I was pumping, we were tracking how much my son was eating, his weight gain. There was just so much tracking. And they did it all, we did it all on like a marble notebook. They had loose leaf papers, you know, the eight and a half by 11 pumping
emily_gorrie:
Yep.
jackie:
breastfeeding papers that I think every hospital just gives you.
emily_gorrie:
Yeah.
jackie:
And I was like, yeah, and I mean, that's fine. I think if you're going to be there for a couple of days. But we were there for a long time. So I was like, I need
emily_gorrie:
Yep.
jackie:
a notebook. So we had our notebooks and we were tracking. And I'm handing this in. And I was like, I need something better. I hated pumping. And I was like, I came from the world of luxury stationery. So I was like, I want something pretty. I don't want it to look like baby-ish. I want this to f***. I want this to be beautiful quality paper and foil printing. I want to take my wedding invitation experience and apply that to pumping. That was kind of,
emily_gorrie:
Amazing.
jackie:
yeah, that was my treat for myself. I was like, I'm going to do this. And that was like the original how the Everyday Mother came about was just that I was a part of this study where I had to hand in all of this information. I wanted an easier way to track it. I worked with a lactation consultant to develop a template. We ended up giving it out. Just the template was printed on 8 and 1 1 by 11 paper and it was folded in half. But we gave that template to all the moms in the NICU. They were all using it. And then it was almost like a community effort. I'd be in the pumping room, and I'd be another mom with my template. And I'd be like, oh, what would you add to that? Your
emily_gorrie:
Yeah.
jackie:
baby's doing different things. You're going home soon. What else? And so that's. That's how it grew.
emily_gorrie:
Yeah.
jackie:
Yeah, and that's. That was the birth of the everyday mother.
emily_gorrie:
Yeah, I love that. I think there's a lot to be said for creating something for yourself that makes you feel good too, right? Because I mean, you said it and I don't think I've spoken to any mom who enjoyed the pumping process. I mean, being tied to something, I did not enjoy it. I know a lot of friends right now that have just... given birth a couple of weeks ago, they're starting to try pumping to give themselves some more freedom. They're like, I don't feel free anymore. I'm like now tied to this machine, right? It's a whole thing. So I think there's no, I haven't heard one and I would love it if somebody listening feels differently reach out to me, let me know. Like I'd love to hear a story where somebody like did truly enjoy that process. I think there's a lot of frustration around it, but to give yourself or create something for yourself that makes you feel good while you're doing it. is half the battle of creating something that looks pretty. I mean, I feel like once we become moms, the emphasis is not on the mom anymore.
jackie:
Great.
emily_gorrie:
It's on the baby and if they're thriving and how they're doing. And are we making sure we understand every input, output, weight gain statistic to report back to our doctors? And I imagine right in the NICU that that's just amplified exponentially. So to create something for yourself that makes you feel good and makes other moms feel good is amazing and just something that needs to be done more often. So while you are in the NICU and you're looking at all of these women around you, leveraging this template, when did you decide, hey, this is actually something I'm going to create and produce and get in the hands of more women?
jackie:
Um... It wasn't until... We were discharged. So I had, I was specing out the pricing. I had a contact already. I knew what it would cost. But it wasn't until we came home and I did a mock-up for myself and my husband loved it.
emily_gorrie:
Mmm.
jackie:
And all of a sudden, like in the NICU when I was pumping, I had so little control over what I could do for my son. So the pumping was it for me. And like, I... couldn't even hold him, I couldn't soothe him, I was barely feeding him his bottle. I couldn't do anything really for him. But I could pump and I could keep track of something and I could look and see and say like, yay, I did a good job today or like, you know, whatever. So,
emily_gorrie:
Yeah.
jackie:
you know, that's what made me feel good. But then when I came home, when my husband started using it and like, I would be up, we took shifts. That's like my favorite thing. My most favorite thing and we didn't do it. There was no strategy behind it. It was just like survival.
emily_gorrie:
Mmm.
jackie:
My husband worked nights. So he, I don't know, I think it was his idea. He was like, you know what, Jackie, you go to sleep for a couple hours. And my husband would literally, I would sleep in the bedroom by myself and my husband would sleep in another room with little Richie, who's our son. And from whatever, 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. was like my husband's shift. And then my husband would come to bed at 1 a.m. and the next time little Richie woke up, I would get up and I would leave. But my husband would leave our everyday mother template on the kitchen island. And so I could just get up and see when he fed Richie, how much he fed Richie, which bottle of breast milk he used, if he had like the wet diapers and I was like. this is the greatest thing ever. Like
emily_gorrie:
Love that, yes.
jackie:
he didn't have to ask me a question. I didn't have to ask him a question. It was just like a beautiful well oiled machine. He went to bed, I woke up, neither of us missed a beat. And once we got into this rhythm of like, not only using it for me, but using it as a way for everybody to take care of our son and everybody to. take some of that responsibility off of me as a mother. That's when I was like, okay, I'm done with the prototype. I sat down, I'm a numbers person, I'm an analytical person, and I put together a plan for the finances. It was small, so it was, I went to my printer and I said I have, I have X amount of dollars, how many books can I order? and I think it was like 50 or 100 and
emily_gorrie:
Mm-hmm.
jackie:
I said okay so order me 50 or 100 and I sold them at double the cost of printing and I did a pre-sale so I sold the initial 100 books and then when I had that money I said you know what I have enough money to buy 200 I'm just gonna buy 200 and it didn't cost me anything and they sold out almost immediately and that's when I was like I'm on to sell. I'm sorry.
emily_gorrie:
Yes, that's an amazing reassurance, right? Just a validation that this is something that people would benefit from. And I think some of the biggest lessons we can take from our lives are the ones that we can transcribe and transpose into something that could probably benefit somebody else who's not quite willing to take the leap. yet or to take the journey to create something like that. And I think there's something really unique about entrepreneurs and those willing to take those risks, but also moms who are entrepreneurs willing to take those risks. I think just everything that we experience is in relation to ourselves but to others. We have this ability to think of others in the actions that we take. I love that you were able to do that. I am, to be honest, jealous of your experience of that shift work. My husband and I talk now, my daughter's too, we're contemplating having a second kid, and we're like, okay, here's what we would absolutely do different
jackie:
Hahaha
emily_gorrie:
this next go around. I don't wanna see you in the middle of the night. We are sleeping in different rooms and we're doing the shift work. When we, when my daughter was born, she lost a lot of birth weight at the hospital. So we started supplementing with formula and I was pumping and I would totally do it differently. Now I didn't end up getting any supply. I think from delivery, my body was too stressed. I could not produce much supply to sustain her. So we switched to formula, but I remember in the middle of the night, it was my husband and I both trying to just get back to sleep as quickly as possible. So he would get up. he would feed her the bottle. I would pump to try and generate this miraculous supply that was nowhere to be found. And
jackie:
Yeah.
emily_gorrie:
we would attempt to both write it down and we both had the notebook next to us. He would say what bottle he wrote, he fed her, and I would insert the pumping info and we would do it differently. I mean,
jackie:
Yeah.
emily_gorrie:
I should just be, one person should be in charge of the baby certain hour. So I love that. I love that. And I love that this book was able to give you like just that insight into how seamless this could be.
jackie:
Yeah.
emily_gorrie:
Because it's not easy. I mean,
jackie:
No.
emily_gorrie:
we would totally do it different.
jackie:
Yeah.
emily_gorrie:
And I think I would hire somebody. I think I would hire a nurse.
jackie:
Yeah, yeah,
emily_gorrie:
I'd start
jackie:
I am.
emily_gorrie:
saving now.
jackie:
Start saving now. Start saving now. Yeah, that was, I mean, on one hand, I always, I'm a half, a glass half full type of person that's over lighting type of person. So yes, everything we went through at the NICU was traumatic. I am still in therapy. But we also came home with a baby that was on schedule.
emily_gorrie:
Mmm.
jackie:
because they were like, hook work at the NICU. So that did help a lot too. It was like my husband and I picked shifts and we were very diligent about sticking to the schedule that was already created for Little Richie. And I also just, with everything that happened, I am a huge planner. I said that, but again, you just make, I made a choice somewhere along the line that it was about progress and like just moving forward instead of perfection. So
emily_gorrie:
Yeah.
jackie:
yeah, my husband did it differently. I mean, he totally did it differently. His idea, there's a part of the everyday mother that's a five star poop. And that's like, a lot of a lot of the everyday mother is my husband, which is funny because people reach out all the time. And they're like, you know, why is it called the everyday mother? Because I want my husband to use this. And I was like, well, My husband actually came up with the name.
emily_gorrie:
Yeah.
jackie:
It was him because he felt like he wasn't a part of that motherhood journey. Like he couldn't be that caretaker. So like that's sort of what a mother means. And then he was like, this book lets me kind of like be the mom. Like it lets me do the stuff that a mother does every day. And I can like totally help and be like a mom. And then I was like, yeah, sure you can. That's
emily_gorrie:
I love
jackie:
for
emily_gorrie:
that.
jackie:
the... That's where the name came from. And then he was like, the first time he had one of those poops, you know, that like comes out from behind baby's ears. And like,
emily_gorrie:
Mm-hmm.
jackie:
my husband was like, that's gotta go in the book. Like, we need people to document when that happens. So there's a spot in the everyday mother that's a five, like, you know, did you have a five star poop today, yes or no? And that was 100% my husband. But I love that we both used it differently because now I look back and I love looking and seeing his handwriting, his definition of a five-star poop, which was totally different from my definition of a five-star
emily_gorrie:
Yeah,
jackie:
poop.
emily_gorrie:
that's amazing.
jackie:
Um.
emily_gorrie:
I also think too, there's a lot of the load that we carry as moms, of
jackie:
Right.
emily_gorrie:
making sure that things are tracked, that the kids are fed or we're on this schedule. And I think there's a disconnect with the dads sometimes, or the partners
jackie:
Mm-hmm.
emily_gorrie:
who don't carry the baby or don't have that instinct or their minds don't quite work that way. Because I know with my husband, his mind doesn't quite work the same way mine does. And I wouldn't
jackie:
Mm-hmm.
emily_gorrie:
expect it to, but there's a way that, there's like info that I still want, but I want to also trust him to do and be, and be there and create that connection. And I do love that this book that you created offers that, because it takes some of the mental load off of him needing to be like, what is it again that I like needed to write down or, you
jackie:
Yeah.
emily_gorrie:
know. did I, you know, he just has to plug and play essentially, right? And it's like whatever matters to him, he can plug in, but then it gives me the info that I was looking for also
jackie:
Right.
emily_gorrie:
on the other end. And that takes a lot of the pressure off because I think a lot of partners don't jump in because they think either maybe they're not going to do it right the way that their partner wants them to, or they're not going to, they're going to mess it up or, you know, whatever. So it takes a lot of that pressure off.
jackie:
Yeah, a huge amount of that pressure off. And that's another thing that I love about it is like, so when we came home from the NICU, I started going back to work for the stationary, for my stationary business. We had all sorts of therapists in and out of the house, occupational therapy, feed therapy, physical therapy, creating a state, every type of therapy you can think of we had as we were in and out of the house. And my parents and my in-laws, and my husband were all taking care of our son. He was on medications and like my dad is probably the biggest fan of the everyday mother. And it's just, I think it's adorable, but like he also, he's like an engineer, he has an engineering background. He's also one of those like data chart type people.
emily_gorrie:
Mm-hmm.
jackie:
And he He could not function. My father could not function if he didn't have the book. Like, well, you've got the baby, and he's like, yeah, but I need the book. When did the baby last eat? When did he get his medicine? When did he need his nap? I need the book. Where's the book? It's like my manual. Where's the book? And that does take a huge mental load off of mom because he would call me, and instead of asking me a hundred questions, he would call me and say, where's the book?
emily_gorrie:
Mmm.
jackie:
And I would say, oh, you forgot the book. It's on the kitchen counter. Go get it. Or I left, you know, it's in the diaper bag. And that would be it. So instead of, you know, me being at work and hearing a hundred and having to like fill somebody in on like my life for the past 12 hours,
emily_gorrie:
Yeah.
jackie:
it was just go get the book and that's everything you need to know. And like, yeah, huge mental load gone.
emily_gorrie:
Yeah. I mean, I didn't even think about it that way. My parents don't live nearby. So when they do come to visit, we would leave my daughter with them for a couple of hours. And I always would be writing down, OK, this is when she last napped. This is how much she ate last. She needs to have a poop today. So try and do some bicycles or whatever. You would have to leave a running list of
jackie:
Right.
emily_gorrie:
things for them. And
jackie:
Right.
emily_gorrie:
I can imagine with a lot of people a son who came home from the NICU, right? The schedule is there. And perhaps the like tracking and the medication following is way more exponentially important too. So like just to have that and take that load off of you is vital. I didn't even
jackie:
Yeah.
emily_gorrie:
think about that. That's amazing. Yeah, that's amazing.
jackie:
Yeah, it was a running joke for a really long time. It's that when my dad came, he didn't need the baby, he needed the book. And it's cute. And so, yeah,
emily_gorrie:
I
jackie:
it
emily_gorrie:
love
jackie:
does.
emily_gorrie:
that.
jackie:
It helps a lot with the mental load.
emily_gorrie:
Mm-hmm. So what does your shift into doing this full-time look like? So you started to, you built out the inventory, you sold some product, you bought more product with that profit. How did you transition this into full-time? When did you know that this is where you needed to spend more of your time and step away from the stationary business and make that pivot?
jackie:
Let's see. So. About 2019 is when I made the shift. So I started the Everyday Mother in 2016 when my son was born. And so it was about three years of continuing to grow the Everyday Mother while also working full time for Concerly Jackie. I don't know. I don't remember exactly at what point it was where my income from the Everyday Mother started to. creep up to what I was making as Sincerely Jackie. And then I started doing less, taking less Sincerely Jackie clients and taking, and then, you know, spending more of my time on the everyday mother. So that transition happened slowly. I was getting burnt out in the wedding stationery world. There's a huge overhead. So like financially, it's a beast. I was doing
emily_gorrie:
Mmm.
jackie:
orders. I had, towards the end, I had an order that was like $8,000 or $9,000 for this coupled invitation and there was a mistake with the printing and I just was like, I don't want to do this forever. I don't want the stress of making an $8,000 mistake. That's
emily_gorrie:
Right.
jackie:
not even something I did. It was something. I was very much a middleman. I was the designer and then relying on printers and had to, and the printer would make a mistake and I'd have to, it was just stressful. And I ended up, and you know, I was like, I'm selling on a purely business level. People like to talk a lot about like the emotions behind a business and like how something makes you feel and follow your instincts and warm fuzzy animals and butterflies and stuff. And I'm not like that at all. I'm much more analytical and business. focused.
emily_gorrie:
Yeah.
jackie:
And the risk associated with doing the everyday mother was it was like a no-brainer. I was selling a book at the time, you know, for $30. If there was a mistake with a book, donate that book to the NICU and they'll give you your money back. Like it's 30 bucks versus if I
emily_gorrie:
Right.
jackie:
made it if my printer made a mistake on an eight or $10,000 wedding invitation order, I would be like sick over it for like it's a And I was like, this is just, this is very, this risk thing is not working for me.
emily_gorrie:
Yeah.
jackie:
It was, yeah. And then it was also like, so I started slowly stepping away from the wedding invitation industry. And then in 2019, I took my last invitation clients and I said, I'm going to take a break. And that COVID happened and the wedding, the wedding business collapsed.
emily_gorrie:
Mm-hmm.
jackie:
And I was like, wow, I got out of that right at the nick of time.
emily_gorrie:
Yeah, seriously. Wow.
jackie:
Um.
emily_gorrie:
That I mean, it is really quite remarkable when you can look back on a timeline and say everything just happened the way it was supposed to.
jackie:
Yes. Yes. And but then there were there's also like last year for the Everyday Mother was an awful year.
emily_gorrie:
Hmm.
jackie:
It was not at all what I had planned. But there's so much opportunity now to learn. I'm a learner. And
emily_gorrie:
Yeah.
jackie:
I think that So a little bit of what, so I stepped back from Sincerely Jaggy. I closed down the studio I had outside of the office. I reduced costs as much as possible because there was still, I knew it was going to take years for my income from the everyday mother to get anywhere near what I was earning from what I had. Yeah, so I started working from home, brought the everyday mother home. hired a part-time intern to help with the everyday mother and started growing from there. In 2021, we had a phenomenal year. I don't know why. It kills me that I don't know why because I like to know why. I like the data
emily_gorrie:
Mm-hmm.
jackie:
behind everything, but we grew like 500%, literally couldn't keep up with the orders. It was just a phenomenal year. I brought on another person and then 2022 happened and it was just like the perfect storm of, you know, Facebook ads changed. I learned all about
emily_gorrie:
Mmm.
jackie:
how politics affects ad costs
emily_gorrie:
Oh,
jackie:
for
emily_gorrie:
yeah.
jackie:
Facebook and stuff like that. And Amazon, I sell on Amazon. Amazon lost a huge shipment. And it was just like sales were going down. I was hemorrhaging money again. And so getting through 2022 was really difficult. So I don't want it to look like, you know, this perfectly straight, you know, graph
emily_gorrie:
Yeah.
jackie:
of just increased sales and up, up, up, up, up. No, it was like increased sales and then it just sort of dropped. And last year was a tough year. And then I realized that In all of the growth, I stopped learning. I was so caught up in catching up and just getting the orders out the door and answering email. I was just so busy that I stopped learning. And there was a lot of change happening in the world that was happening around me. And I was stuck in my little bubble of like, yay, I'm doing awesome. And then that bubble burst and I had to go back to learning again.
emily_gorrie:
Yeah. I really appreciate you sharing that, because I think there is this misconception of this straight line trajectory. If you just
jackie:
Right.
emily_gorrie:
keep going, you'll always just keep going up. But in the reality of things, you highlight it so beautifully. Things are still happening all around us. We don't live in a vacuum. We don't live in our own little silo in what's happening around us in the world. will absolutely impact what we do in our businesses and how we present ourselves and how we show up. So being able to just share that and being vulnerable with us, because I think there's not a lot of joy behind, right? I can imagine the frustrations behind not knowing why certain things aren't going the way that they used to go or things like that. So I appreciate you sharing that, because. there is that misconception that everything should be going perfectly and that if it's not, something's wrong with me because it is for everybody else. And I think more times than not, as entrepreneurs, we have these cyclical moments similar to yours. So I do just appreciate you sharing that with us and those of us that are listening. So in terms of what's next for you in the everyday mother, I think it's important to think about want, I'd love to highlight kind of what you're focusing on now, how our listeners can find you and engage with your product. What does the next couple of months look like for you? What are, where are you focusing?
jackie:
So, 2023, my overall goal is to get profitable again, to really reinvent. I want to say reinvent the wheel because it's not reinvent the wheel, but. I love social media. I do. I love connecting with people and it like hurts my soul that Instagram specifically is not a way for people to connect anymore. Like I would love to find a way to connect with mom again. That's one goal, that connection. So we've been working on that through a newsletter. I'm going to be starting some new storytelling posts on Instagram. I want to be able to share my story in a way that is different and it's really less, that's less about gaining numbers and more about having a connection with the people who do follow
emily_gorrie:
Mmm.
jackie:
You Have a Name on There. As far as the profitability side goes, Since I started the Everyday Mother in 2016, at the time I was the only baby tracker that existed. And now there are so many, quite a few have copied me. So that's no fun, but it's all about the learning.
emily_gorrie:
Mm-hmm.
jackie:
But also the notebook industry in general has exploded. So like, how do I fit into this market now again? That's what we're working on. Um, but I've been through a lot. I, I have one child, but I joke that he's enough that I, he like equals like six children. Um, my experiences with him, my experiences with all of the doctors and his health issues and how we navigated it. Um, I don't want a mom to ever feel like they can't do something or that they don't have the tools, the resources, or somebody else that's been there. So yeah, profitability and connection are like the two things that we're working on behind the scenes.
emily_gorrie:
I love that. I love that. And I, again, appreciate your transparency in kind of recommitting to the main goal of that, which is to connect with more moms and empower more moms in whatever it is that they're ultimately trying to achieve. If it's being a full-time stay-at-home mom, great. If it's being a good mom on the side of also being an entrepreneur or going back to work and giving them the tools to do that, then it's great. empower them to do that. So I love that transparency. I love you sharing that. How can our listeners engage with you right now and follow you? Is it best on Instagram? What's your handle? What's the website? How can they find you?
jackie:
Instagram is where you can usually find me. It's the everyday mother. And also a newsletter. I spend a lot of, I stopped blogging a long time ago, but instead, every now and then when I feel the urge to tell a story that goes out through a newsletter, in addition to our schedules, we do a lot of special newsletter stuff. So the newsletter
emily_gorrie:
awesome.
jackie:
is great for if you want to absorb content, but Instagram is where I am for that interaction. And I would love to find people. I would like, come check.
emily_gorrie:
Yay. Yeah. Well, we will make sure to link to the Instagram and link to your website, which I'm assuming is where they can sign up for this newsletter. So we'll
jackie:
Mm-hmm.
emily_gorrie:
make sure that that is all in the show notes. And Jackie, just thank you. Thank you so much for being here and sharing your story.
jackie:
Thank you for having me. It's been such a pleasure.
emily_gorrie:
Of course. Okay, I'm gonna stop recording.
jackie:
Okay.