Are you a mom who wants to change unhealthy parenting patterns so that you can improve your life and the lives of your family?

Randi Rubenstein is one of the women I’m featuring in my interview series called Women Entrepreneurs on the Rise.  I’m talking to women in all phases of their businesses about the story of their business, how they started it, and asking them to share the challenges they’ve faced and how do they overcome them.

Sherold:   Welcome, everyone, I’m excited today to have Randi Rubenstein with us.

Randi is the founder of RandiRubenstein.com, where she’s a life and parenting coach specializing in helping moms change unhealthy patterns to improve their lives and the lives of their families.

Randi, can you tell us about your business? How you decided to start your business — the whole story of your business.

Randi:  I’m a mom and I have three kids. My oldest son is a senior in high school, and I have an eighth grade daughter, and a fourth grade son.

When I started having kids, I went from being this chain-smoking tough girl to a mom that had this crazy yearning to do it differently than it had been done for me.

I can’t even say that I knew it at the time, I just knew I had this hunger to learn about kids and to get to know my kids.

I started reading a lot of self-help and child development books that I would never have guessed would have interested me but they did.

Then I started teaching parenting classes when my oldest son was probably about six or seven.

I taught parenting classes for about eight years based on a program called Conscious Discipline.

I taught these classes and my kids were guinea pigs. I shared lots of real life stories of what was going on and how the tools worked and how they were transforming my life.

As I was teaching those classes, people kept trying to hire me or they would ask, “My husband can’t come to the classes. Will you meet with us one-on-one?” I met with a few people and I just kept saying, “I need more tools,” so I took the GRE and I thought about maybe becoming a therapist yet I knew that didn’t feel right.

Then I started researching life coach training programs, and I settled with doing Martha Beck’s program. I spent about 10 months totally committed to doing that. I finished that in October of 2014 and I got certified quickly.

Then I started your program (Profit from Your Passion).  After I was done with the life coach training, and I learned all these amazing coaching tools, I knew that I needed to learn some business systems.

That’s when I signed on with you and studied with you and learned from you for six months afterwards.

Sherold:  You were one of my action takers.

To be successful, what it really takes is being willing to face your fears and also be willing to stay in action.

Right out of the gates, you knew that you wanted to develop a program and also write a book. You’ve been very dedicated to that focus.

In Profit from Your Passion, you went from making zero to about $3000 a month right out of the gates just by learning sales – what I call transformational conversations.

You did all of that, yet your focused remained on creating a new program. Since that program, what are some of the challenges you faced and what have you done since?

Randi: I started your program in November of 2014, and I finished in April.  When I started your program, I was an action taker. That’s me. I want the information; I want to jump in, and I want to try. I think I probably drove you crazy in the beginning because I wanted to learn everything yesterday.

Sherold:  Let’s talk about that. I said, “What is it about your skills, and what is it about the way you take in information?” What did we find out? It was fascinating.

Randi: Well, the Kolbe assessment taught me how I naturally take action in the world. What I found out about myself is that I’m an eight – a quick start, but I’m a seven – fact finder. I felt like it was me wanting the information and jumping in and chasing my tail a lot, but I think it was just my process.

Your program was excellent for me because it gave me a taste of lots of information in terms of what it was going to take to really have a virtual business — mostly an online business.

There was so much to learn, there were so many new systems. You would have to talk me out of that hole and help me see the big picture and remember why I started my business, and why I was doing what I was doing.

My business was always about helping other families live happier lives.

My hell and back story is: if I can do it, you can do it.

I see so many people surrounding me that are living in functional misery, that are not feeling good about the way they’re raising their kids.

They’re not laying their heads down at night feeling proud of the mother they showed up as that day.  They’re numbing and checking out — which I can totally relate to and identify.

I started this business because I wanted to help people enjoy the family dynamic that me and my husband had created for ourselves and, frankly, those are the people that I want to hang out with.

I have constantly had to get back to that intention and that goal of, “You’re doing what you’ve always wanted to do. You’re having real conversations with other moms. No one is perfect. You’re sharing your struggles, they’re sharing their struggles. Everyone is feeling like we can do this, we can do this together. I’m not on an island alone.”

I’ve constantly been checking back in with that when I get overwhelmed with some of the techy details that can send me spinning.

Sherold: In all fairness, you were a star student. It was interesting for us to find out why you needed all that information now. We figured it out and it was because you are an action-taker — the quick start — and a high fact finder.

What is conscious parenting?

Randi: Conscious parenting is just showing up as a conscious person. There’s a lot of buzzwords around right now. Being conscious, being mindful; there’s a lot going on about meditation. It’s all about living in the present moment and showing up in the present moment.

A good example is, for years, even when I wasn’t physically addicted to cigarettes anymore, I was still mentally addicted. There were times in my life where I was somewhere, but I wasn’t really there because I was thinking in my mind, “God, it would be great to be able to go and have a cigarette right now.” You know?  I was anywhere but there.

Conscious parenting is actually being present, being where you are, enjoying that moment.

If you find yourself checking out and wanting to think about somewhere else that you want to be, check in with yourself and say, “What’s causing me to feel discomfort right now? Why am I wanting to check out and escape and get away from this present moment?”

The thing is, your kids, they know. They know when you’re actually there and when you’re saying, “Just a minute. Hold on. Just a sec. Huh? Oh, yeah. That’s cute,” and you’re not really there with them. That’s really what conscious parenting is — actually being with the person you’re with in that moment and enjoying each other.

Sherold: Isn’t that what we’re trying to do anyway (becoming conscious)? Wake up more people? Martha Beck calls it being on the team. These are the people who want to make a difference in the world. Most likely, they’re all people who want to be more mindful, more conscious, awake, self-realized. The more conscious we are about what we want, how we’re acting and all of that, the better. It’s hard when you see yourself.

Randi:  One of my favorite Oprah quotes, which I’ve heard her say a million times is this: “In the 25 years of interviewing people, there were two commonalities. Those two commonalities were people wanted to know, “Do you see me,” and, “Do I matter?”

You send the message to the other person that you see them and they matter when you show up in a conscious, awake way.

Sherold:  That’s fantastic. If we didn’t get that as a child, then we’re looking for that as an adult.

Randi:  Yeah. I think most of us are looking.

Sherold:  I’d say so. Yeah.

Randi:  You know, it’s interesting because I’m really fascinated by the human brain and I’m fascinated by this repetition of patterns. There’s so many times it’s like… people say, “I open my mouth and I hear my mother’s words coming out and I swore I was going to do it differently. Why? Why when I’m in a heated moment do I find myself going to her words?”

We’re patterned seeking animals, and so we repeat these patterns until we consciously work to retrain our brains and learn new patterns. As we do that, it’s so much fun and it’s so enlightening, but it also has allowed me to not feel resentment over the way it was done for me.

Sherold:   Oh, that’s big.

Randi:  Yes It is. The way I’ve defined it at this point is we’re meant to evolve. As we become more conscious, of course we’re going to be a little bit more evolved than the generation before. As our children will, hopefully, be more evolved than we are. That’s the point.

Sherold:  I love that. Tell us about what you’re working on now and where you see your business going. What’s important to you as far as building your business and what projects and things you’re doing?

Randi:  I’m so glad you brought up the KOLBE. I have to say, you were so understanding and flexible in… once you had my KOLBE numbers, you’re like, “Oh, I get it. It makes sense. That is why I’ve done it with all — my husband and my kids. It’s that it’s really helped all of us to show up and really understand that we all bring different things to the table. It’s all about truly understanding each other.

Right now, as my quick start fact finder, I’m really fascinated by the mother/daughter dynamic as I have a teenage daughter. She’s 14, she’s in eighth grade. She’s about to start her last semester of middle school.

It’s been really interesting to me that a lot of things have surfaced for me that I had no idea were still there that didn’t come up when my son went through middle school, but it has come up when my daughter’s been in middle school. I’m really interested in adolescent girls and how we are parenting them and how we are communicating with them and supporting them and that mother/daughter dynamic in terms of… I feel like our culture, our society thinks and speaks about teenage girls in a way that it’s like they kind of demonize them. I’m ready to dispel that myth.

I’m ready to say,

“As mothers, we have all the power to shape the next generation.”

Especially when we’re interacting with our girls, we’re shaping the mothers of tomorrow. When they’re in this transitional period, going from girlhood to womanhood, we have to learn more effective, supportive communication techniques so that we can empower them in the right way to become those more evolved mothers of tomorrow.

That’s been my primary focus right now in terms of my writing.

I just created a new program called Becoming the Mother I Wish I Had.

I’m in process of writing a book. Which the purpose of the book is really about this conversation that I want to lead and I want to have with other women.

Becoming the Mother I Wish I Had is a six-week program and it’s basically a deep dive, very results oriented approach to improving your relationship with your teenage daughter.

Sherold: How can people find out about it if they’re interested in taking it?

Randi: Right now, I’m taking applications because before I offer it as a group, I’m going to work with 10 individuals. I’ve literally just started talking about it two days ago and I’ve filled three spots.

I have seven spots left. They can visit my website, which is RandiRubenstein.com or you can email me directly — randi@randirubenstein.com and just let me know that you’re interested in receiving more information.  We can even hop on the phone and you can ask me anything you want to about it.

Sherold: Randi, thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure to talk with you and I know my people will really enjoy this.

Randi:  Thanks, Sherold!

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