How I Run a Successful Business as a Single Mom (real talk)
A business coach who lost her marriage and most of her working hours in one year lays out the six rules that kept her business alive on three hours of childcare-free time a day.
Posted
2 years ago
Duration
Format
Talking Head
sincere
Views
9.7K
414 likes
Big Idea
The argument in one line.
When a business owner's working hours collapse from eight-plus a day to three, survival depends less on working harder and more on healing first, then spending every remaining hour only on activities that directly generate revenue.
Who This Is For
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
A solo parent or caregiver with two to four hours of interruption-free time a day trying to keep a business alive.
Someone whose income still depends on trading hours for dollars and wants a real account of why passive income matters when time collapses.
Anyone mid-crisis (divorce, loss, illness) who needs permission to address the emotional damage before returning to work.
SKIP IF…
You want a step-by-step build guide for a specific passive income product — this is mindset and time allocation, not a how-to-build course.
You're looking for tactical Instagram growth or pitching scripts — both are referenced but not taught here.
TL;DR
The full version, fast.
After her marriage ended in early 2023, a business coach went from eight-plus working hours a day to three. She argues the emotional work has to come first, because grinding through a crisis without processing it doesn't actually work. With only three hours to work with, she filters ruthlessly: passive income and daily pitching survive, everything else gets cut, and the passive income business she built years earlier is what kept her financially stable through the collapse. She treats gratitude as a daily practiced discipline against scarcity thinking, stops comparing her current capacity to other people's, and narrows control down to two things: presence with her daughter, and protecting the few working hours she has.
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States that her marriage ended in early 2023 and she became a single mom; frames the video as practical advice rather than the breakup story itself.
00:43 – 02:48
02 · Rule 1: mindset before work
Argues the emotional/headspace work has to happen before business work — therapy, reading, not forcing recovery — because you can't do both at once.
02:48 – 04:51
03 · Rule 2: the childcare reality
Describes going from eight-plus working hours a day to about three (one hour before her daughter wakes, two during naptime), and accepting that less will get done.
04:51 – 08:27
04 · Rule 3: spend the three hours only on revenue
With three hours to work, only activities that grow revenue survive — content creation and most other business-owner tasks get cut. Credits the passive income business built years earlier with providing financial stability through the crisis, and daily pitching as the core revenue activity.
08:27 – 09:23
05 · Rule 4: protect your health
Frames health as non-negotiable when there's no room to get sick — a minimum of two workouts a week.
09:23 – 11:31
06 · Rule 5: gratitude over scarcity
Argues scarcity and fear actively repel money, and that choosing gratitude is a conscious daily decision that has to be practiced, not a mood.
11:31 – 14:36
07 · Rule 6: stop comparing, control what you can
Describes letting go of comparison to peers running full eight-hour days, and narrowing control down to two things: presence with her daughter, and protecting her three working hours.
14:36 – 15:55
08 · Close
States she has zero regrets about the choices made this year, credits her Instagram income for the stability, points to a linked training, and signs off.
Atomic Insights
Lines worth screenshotting.
Emotional healing has to come before business rebuilding — grinding through a crisis while still in it doesn't actually work.
Going from eight-plus working hours a day to three forces a filter: only directly revenue-generating work survives.
A passive income business built years before the crisis is what created the financial security to survive the crisis at all.
Scarcity and fear actively repel money — the moment you need income most is the moment your mindset works against you.
Gratitude is treated as a daily conscious decision, not a personality trait, and has to be practiced even mid-crisis.
Comparing current capacity to your own past capacity, or to people without your constraints, is a losing frame — the fix is dropping the comparison, not increasing effort.
When time is maximally constrained, control narrows to two things: presence with the people in front of you, and protecting the few working hours you actually have.
Daily pitching, not content creation, is credited as the activity that kept revenue flowing during the lowest-capacity season of the business.
The privilege of having any childcare-free time at all is treated as a variable, not a given — the same three-hour framework applies whether that time falls in daylight or after a full-time job ends at night.
Takeaway
Three hours of work only works if it's the right three hours.
WHAT TO LEARN
When working time collapses to a fraction of what it was, the fix isn't more hustle — it's healing first, then ruthlessly filtering every remaining hour down to what actually generates revenue.
02Rule 1: mindset before work
Emotional healing has to come before business rebuilding — trying to grind through a crisis without processing it doesn't actually work.
Give yourself explicit permission to go through the emotional stage fully before returning to work, rather than forcing productivity on top of unprocessed grief.
03Rule 2: the childcare reality
A hard childcare or time limit isn't a personal failure — accepting that less will get done is itself part of the system.
04Rule 3: spend the three hours only on revenue
Going from eight-plus working hours to three forces a real filter: content creation and most 'business owner' busywork gets cut, and only activities that directly grow revenue survive.
A passive income business built years before a crisis hit is what provides the financial stability to survive the crisis when it comes — the safety net has to exist before it's needed.
Daily pitching, done consistently, is credited as the single highest-leverage activity during a low-capacity season — more valuable than more content.
05Rule 4: protect your health
Protecting basic health (workouts, avoiding illness) is treated as a non-negotiable input, not an afterthought, when there's zero slack in the schedule.
06Rule 5: gratitude over scarcity
Scarcity and fear are described as actively repelling money — the exact moment income is needed most is the moment the mindset works against getting it.
Gratitude is framed as a decision practiced daily, not a mood that arrives on its own, and it's explicitly used as the antidote to scarcity thinking.
07Rule 6: stop comparing, control what you can
Comparing current capacity to your own past capacity, or to peers without the same constraints, is a losing frame — the fix is dropping the comparison rather than trying to match the output.
Under maximum constraint, control narrows to two things: full presence with the people in front of you, and protecting the few working hours you actually have.
Glossary
Terms worth knowing.
Passive income business
A business model built to generate revenue without continuously trading hours for it, typically through a digital course or product sold on autopilot after the initial setup.
Radical acceptance
Fully accepting a difficult reality as it is, without fighting or denying it, so energy can go toward responding to the situation instead of resisting it.
“I could hire seven nannies to sit and look at each other if I wanted to. That's not the point. I want to be present in my daughter's life.”
reframes the childcare-affordability assumption in one line→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
09:08
“When you need the money the most is when you're your most desperate and when you repel the money the most.”
tight, counterintuitive claim about scarcity and money→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
11:31
“I had to stop comparing myself to the girl bosses.”
short, specific admission that reframes the whole back half of the video→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
14:37
“I have zero regrets for how I've handled things over the last year, and every choice I've made I am proud of.”
clean closing statement, works as a standalone quote→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
The Script
Word for word.
Read-along
Don't just watch it. Burn it in.
See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.
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analogystory
00:00So I became a single mom at the beginning of twenty twenty three when my marriage unfortunately ended due to circumstances outside of my control. And it's hard to talk about and I don't really wanna talk about it very much.
00:12I really wanna focus this video on what I've done in the last year plus to run my business as an unexpected single mom.
00:22And it's tough. There's no way to sugarcoat it. There's no way to get around it.
00:26Being a single mom is just so much harder than I could have ever imagined. And I have really been humbled because for years I've had single moms in my audience, in my world, and I'm oh yeah, moms, that's hard. No you guys, this is brutal.
00:41It's tough. It's really difficult. And I get it now because I'm living it.
00:45And I think that I was like, I I don't know, like there's the I think one of the good things that has come out of all of this is that I'm able to share a little bit more with more practical advice. Because when you're a single mom trying to run a business, it's just so different than any other category of people. And so what I wanna do in this video is walk you guys through some of the things I found to be helpful over the last year or so to continue to run my business, to continue to show up as the mom I wanna be, and sort of move forward with my life while running the business that I've been running.
01:16So let's get into it. So I think the first area that I had to work on was the mindset emotions headspace. Obviously, when you're going through something so new and so difficult emotionally, it's almost impossible to focus on work.
01:29And so before I could worry about all the work stuff, and I do have a lot of practical work stuff coming up, but you have to do the head stuff first. And I know that some people lose themselves in their work or bury themselves in their work.
01:40I couldn't work if I wasn't feeling emotionally healthy. So I had to do therapy, and I'm still in therapy, and I find not to be very helpful.
01:48I had to read books on dealing with this new chapter, and I just really nourished myself and my mind, and I was gentle with myself, and I didn't force it, and I didn't push it. And I think that that is so important to honor and acknowledge what we're going through emotionally because I don't I think that I was able to eventually show up as a much healthier, stronger person because I had taken that time, and I hadn't tried to force anything or push anything.
02:13And so I think I felt the need to address this first because the head stuff is the first thing. We have to get our head screwed on straight as best as we can before we go and build our quote unquote empires.
02:25You can't you can't do both at the same time. And so if you're in the more recent period where you're kind of going through it emotionally, give yourself permission to just go through it. Just whatever you gotta do to go through it, honor that, read books, go to therapy, do all the things so that then you can with a full emotional health move on to the work stuff, which is what I did and I found that to be so helpful.
02:47Secondly, let's talk childcare as a single mom. It's like a joke, childcare.
02:52I like laugh saying it because if you're like me, I mean again, somebody I made a reel about this and I was like, you gotta do all the things in the two hours you have childcare. And somebody commented, well, you make all this money so you can hire a childcare. You're making this up.
03:06It's like, I could hire seven nannies to sit and look at each other if I wanted to. That's not the point. I I want to be present in my daughter's life.
03:13I want to be with her. It's not about not being able to afford the help for me, although I completely recognize and acknowledge that that is not the case for most women. For most women, it's I can't afford all the charity care I would like to have.
03:26And either way, the reality is we don't have the childcare we would love to have in context of running a business.
03:34So we can all be on the same page on that. And so for me, I probably work during the same hours most single moms work.
03:42I work for one hour in the morning before she wakes up, and I work for two hours during her nap, and that's it. She's little right now.
03:49She doesn't go to school. She doesn't go to preschool. She's home with me all the time twenty four seven up my butt just hanging out, and I love it.
03:55I genuinely do love it. But that means that I went from having eight plus hours a day to work to having three hours to work. Sometimes I work an hour in the evening, but usually I'm so exhausted from running around chasing a toddler all day that I just am too tired.
04:11By the time she goes to bed, I'm just my brain is done. I'm done for the day. And so I actually wake up an hour earlier because I'm fresh.
04:17So I wake up an hour before she does, get my coffee, get a little work done. Usually, I do during that hour is create my Instagram reel for the day. So you guys know I tend to do Instagram content pretty much every single day.
04:28And what I do, I make that during the morning when I'm fresh, she's sleeping.
04:34That's when I get that done. With all of this, what I've had to learn is that I just have to accept that I'm gonna get less done. There's a lot of things I've had to accept in the last year, and this is just one of them is that I'm not gonna get as much done as I would like to, and it's okay.
04:46Frankly, it's okay. Okay. So thirdly, if I have three hours a day to work, what do I spend those three hours on?
04:53I think this is the crux of it. As single moms, what do we spend our time on?
04:57If we all agree that we all have limited child care time, if at all, but we all want to run successful businesses, what do we do in those limited three hours? Our precious three hours where we have to work.
05:08And I I will say this, I am gonna pause before I answer this question because I wanna make sure I acknowledge that for a lot of single moms, you are you might have your kid in day care, and you might be working a full time job. And so for you, your three hours or your time to work on the business might be very early in the morning or very late at night when you're tired.
05:28And I just wanna like put that out there and just say that that I completely recognize a, what a privilege it is that I can be home with my daughter all the time as a single mom because most single moms just don't have that privilege. I just wanna put that out there. I know I'm interrupting myself, but I think it's really important to say that the way life looks for me as a single mom is so much easier because of the financial stability that I have, and I just wanna that out there and say that.
05:47And and the honest truth is the reason why I've been able to be so financially secure as I go through all of this becoming single mom stuff is because of the passive income business I set up a few years ago. There were so many days where the only thing I could do was just be sat on the couch with Ellie, and that's all I did.
06:04And that's so normal, and it's such a normal reaction to everything that happened. But I was in that moment, I was so grateful for my passive income business, and it's why I am so fired up about teaching this. You'll notice it in the last year, I've started sharing more about my passive income stuff that I really never did before.
06:19It's because the passive income business saved my butt this last year, and it gave me financial abundance and security without having to trade time for money, which really, like, as single moms, we just want more time with our kids. Like, we really that's at least the ones I've been talking to and myself, like, we just want more time.
06:35And so I am really fired up, and I am on a mission to help more all moms, but especially single moms, create that financial freedom and that passive income. It really boils down to the passive income because then you get to experience what I'm able to experience which is, oh, it's Thursday.
06:52What do we do with Ellie? Let's go to Disneyland. That's literally what we did last Thursday.
06:55And I completely acknowledge that that's a privilege, and the privilege comes from the passive income that I've created, which is why I want you guys to have that too. So we're about ready to talk about what we're gonna spend those three hours on. For most of you, it's going to be building your passive income business.
07:11You guys need to be if you are in a full if you are a single mom who has a full time job, the way you get out of that sort of lockjam is passive income. But the way you build passive income, I'm gonna talk about it in your three hours, you have to put the time in.
07:24You're gonna go through a harder season before it gets easier, and I wish there was a way around that, but there's just not. You're gonna have to work even harder so that in a little bit you work a lot less. Only having three hours a day really pushes you to focus on the things that are going to make you money.
07:40That's the only thing that you should be doing at this stage. You should not be worrying about creating endless amounts of content. You should not be worried about most things business owners worry about.
07:49You need to be focused on doing things that grow revenue and only things that grow revenue. So for me, I pitch every single day, and we just published a YouTube video on how to pitch every single day without seeming spammy. I highly encourage you to go watch that because that's gonna really walk you through in-depth how you're gonna be pitching every single day without coming across sleazy or spammy or, like, annoying.
08:11So I highly recommend you watch that video because that's gonna break it down in-depth. But, essentially, as a single mom, in the three hours a day that you do have, go be pitching every single day. That's what those three hours should be spent on.
08:23Fourthly, I take care of myself, especially my health. I'm just gonna be real.
08:29When you're a single mom, you can't get sick ever. There's just no luxury. There's no way to be sick.
08:34You just don't get sick. You're not allowed to. You're out of luck.
08:36Don't get sick. What I do to help prevent getting sick is I take care of my body. I work out two times a week in a good week.
08:44No. Two times a week is like a minimum non negotiable. Three times a week is like a really, really, really good week.
08:49I'll be real with you. Most weeks, it's two times a week. I just can't find the time to work out more than twice a week.
08:54The next thing that I found really helpful as a single mom running a business is expressing gratitude. I cannot tell you how hard it was to express gratitude in this last year. When you need the money the most is when you're your most desperate and when you repel the money the most.
09:09And so you are actively repelling money when you need it the most if you don't get control of your thoughts.
09:16And it sucks. I think it's the most unfair thing in the world, but it just it is what it is. And so how do we combat the fear and the scarcity?
09:23By expressing gratitude for what we have. I wanna I had to really, like, lean into that in this last year because I was back to, like, old Maria from before I learned about gratitude. So, obviously, it's very understandable.
09:36I'm having normal human emotions, and I went through them and they were good, but what I had to be careful of was not to wallow in them to the point where they were repelling money and to the point where they weren't serving me anymore. There was a conscious point at certain point in the year where I said, okay, We've had our pity party.
09:55We've had our we've had our time. Now we're gonna rebuild. Now we're gonna look to the future.
10:00Now we're going to look ahead. And no matter what stage of your business you're in as a single mom, I really feel that every day we're presented with a choice of how are we gonna respond with today's show.
10:13Like, it's just how it is. What is your response to today's show? Are you going to respond with resentment and anger and scarcity emotions, or are you gonna choose to take that deep breath and reshift your mind?
10:30What are we grateful for in this moment? What is good in this moment? What is abundant in this moment?
10:33What are we so happy for? Like, for me, is it hard to do all the child caring that I do? Of course, it's hard.
10:40She's a toddler. But she's so little, and she's so beautiful, and she's so interested in everything. She's, like, really into pandas right now.
10:47I know so much about pandas because she's so into pandas right now, and I know that as hard as this time is, it's so limited. And so it's the perspective shift that attracts the money. And you're watching this video because you wanna learn how to run a successful business, and part of it is you as a business owner.
11:04So much of it is you as the business owner. Your identity as a single mom is intrinsically tied up right now with your identity as a business owner.
11:12And so the actions and thoughts and the mindset you have and the daily gratitude that you express as a single mom directly ties to how much money you make in your business. I'm a firm believer in that. And so when in doubt, choose gratitude and that's that's all I have to say about that.
11:27Finally, and this is a big one and a good one I think, I had to stop comparing myself to the girl bosses. And I love them.
11:36I was a girl boss. I love being a girl boss. It's the best.
11:40But I'm just not anymore. I'm just not right now. Some of my girlfriends are out there, and they're working eight hours a day, and they're crushing it, and they're thriving, and I'm cheering them on, and that is just not my life right now.
11:51I don't know why I'm being emotional about this, but it can be so hard not to get frustrated in the day to day about not because I love my job. I love working so much, and I miss it. I miss the, like I used to go into an office for eight hours a day, I don't know what the hell I did.
12:04I was, like, so not busy. But I miss that so intensely sometimes because it's just a different stage of my life right now. And I have found so much joy in not comparing myself and just rooting for those girls instead and just be like, girl, get it.
12:18Like, go get it and crush it. And and truly, if you're watching this for whatever reason and you are not a mom and especially not a single mom, go work, go have all that, go do all of that, go enjoy that to the fullest because I really did.
12:29I got to work on my career for like ten years and it was the best. And it like really came in handy when I became a mom. And so I've just been practicing radical acceptance in every area of my life, including the fact that right now my stage of life is not to go to all the business conferences and work the eight hours a day and all the things I miss.
12:48I desperately miss it, and I know I'll get it back, and I'm worried about it. I'm choosing the right thing right now, and that's to be super present to my little daughter. I'm never gonna get that time back, and I will so be grateful and glad that I did that, but I have to focus on the few things that I can control, not the thousand million things that I cannot control.
13:04And so what can I control? Really at the end of the day, I can only control two things and this goes for you if you're single mom running a business as well. You can control two things.
13:12One, when you're with your daughter or son or kids whatever, be as present to them as you can, something I've been doing. So I'm not watching TV anymore.
13:21I'm not on my phone as much as I would love to be. I'm just with her. We are outside when we're out.
13:26It's like we we do we try to spend as much outdoor time as possible. We do no screen times. Some screen times, I'm gonna be honest.
13:32We do some screen times. Very minimal screen time. I'm with her.
13:35So what can I control? My presence with her when I'm with her. Really prioritizing those three hours of work per day.
13:40It's difficult, especially if you have a a nine to five job, then it's even more difficult. But I drag myself out of bed, I hit my feet on the floor, go get some coffee, do my little morning routine, and then I get to work, and I make my Instagram reel.
13:53And it's not the end of the world, not that big. I'm sitting in my bathrobe creating content.
13:57This is not that crazy. And then when it's nap time, I'm sure I don't even think about it because the minute I put her down to bed I'm like scrambling around like going to get the work done so I don't even think about it, but I'm sure like I would love a nap time where I just read a book, That'd be fun.
14:12I don't even know it's a novel concept to me. Put it on for my two my precious two hours, and I go get work done. And I'm super focused during that nap time.
14:20For you, might be super focused in the evenings after they go to bed. You're gonna have to sacrifice. Like said, I don't watch TV.
14:25It's just the season of life I'm in right now, and it is difficult. It is too it is super difficult, but I do truly believe that it's worth it, and I have to say I am so proud.
14:37I have zero regrets for how I've handled things over the last year, and every choice I've made I am proud of. And that is everything. To have that personal integrity and to be able to be proud of every choice I've made is I wouldn't change that for the world.
14:50I really wouldn't. And so that is what I'm doing right now. That is what I've been up to over the last year or so.
14:54I've been navigating this new role. I think the overarching thing that I am grateful for is the fact that I make so much money from Instagram.
15:03If you wanna learn about how I do that, I am just gonna put a link in the description. I'm not here to pitch today, but in case it is helpful to you, you can check out the link in the description below. It really did truly I don't know what I would have done without it, to be honest with you.
15:16Without my passive income business, I just have no clue what I would have done. I would had I don't even know. I don't even know.
15:20I can't even think about it. So if you do or if you're interested in what I do, I did make a training on that. The link's in the description below, but that's not really the point of today's video.
15:29The point of today's video is that as single moms, we're doing the best we can with what we have. I wanna encourage you in that. If you like this video and find it helpful, please like it.
15:37If you wanna follow along, obviously, I'm new to my whole single mom journey, but if you wanna follow along, I'll be sharing more as I step into it, more as I learn more about how to navigate it, as I kinda step into this role with more maturity and just experience. I'll be obviously sharing here, so subscribe if you want more videos like this, and I'll see you in the next one.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
She opens with the fact, not the story: her marriage ended in early 2023 and she became a single mom running a business overnight. What follows isn't the breakup — it's the six-part system she built to keep the business alive on roughly three hours of childcare-free time a day.
Frameworks
Named ideas worth stealing.
00:43list
The single-mom business rules
Handle the mindset/emotions first
Accept the real childcare limit on your hours
Spend those hours only on revenue-generating work
Protect your health
Choose gratitude over scarcity
Stop comparing yourself, control what you can
A six-part list she walks through in order, each addressing a different constraint of running a business with collapsed working hours.
Steal forany framework for operating a business under a hard, non-negotiable time constraint
CTA Breakdown
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
14:59product
“if you're interested in what I do, I did make a training on that. The link's in the description below”
Soft, single mention near the end after she explicitly says 'I'm not here to pitch today' — low-pressure CTA rather than a hard sell.
A belief-reduction exercise and 20 real, mostly-tiny income case studies, aimed at the one thing that actually stops beginners: not believing it can happen to them.
A ManyChat coupon-recovery flow, a retargeting ad script, and a 45-email upsell sequence — the three automations one course creator credits with tripling her monthly revenue.
An entrepreneur making four times her best year ever sits down to film and realizes she has nothing to say — and unpacks why success and burnout keep arriving together.
A 30-step, start-from-zero blueprint for turning one hyper-specific problem into a daily content habit, then a digital product, then a paid course upsell.
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