
Call Me CEO: Moms Building Businesses, a Woman's guide to Balancing it All
Dive into the stories of extraordinary mothers who have built their own iconic businesses. I'm your host, Camille Walker, and in each episode, we uncover the raw, intimate moments of doubt and failure that these mompreneurs faced on their journey. From humble beginnings to eventual triumph, our founders share their insights and wisdom on navigating challenges of all kinds.
"Call Me CEO” is your master-class on innovation, creativity, leadership, and finding YOUR perfect balance between motherhood and entrepreneurship.
Call Me CEO: Moms Building Businesses, a Woman's guide to Balancing it All
244: Crafting a Cohesive Marketing Narrative for Social Media and Email
Marketing doesn't have to be a mystery, especially for busy moms building businesses. Sasha Fidenchuk pulls back the curtain on what actually works, sharing insights from her remarkable journey from corporate executive to successful entrepreneur and mother of two.
After building a six-figure spray tan business in just six months, then pivoting during the pandemic, Sasha discovered her true calling: helping other entrepreneurs achieve real growth through strategic marketing. Now as co-founder of Daring House with her husband, she's on a mission to bring big business strategies to small business owners who are changing the world.
Forget pretty logos and websites—they're not enough. The true power lies in understanding your customer data and creating marketing that resonates across channels. Sasha reveals the email marketing secrets that consistently generate 8-12x returns for her clients, including how to craft subject lines that spark curiosity and leverage social proof for maximum conversions. Her approach treats marketing not as isolated tactics but as an interconnected ecosystem that builds relationships before sales.
Beyond business strategy, Sasha offers a refreshing perspective on balancing motherhood and ambition. Like the ocean constantly shifting from tumultuous waves to serene stillness, women can embody fierce leadership and nurturing tenderness within minutes. This duality isn't a weakness but our superpower as entrepreneurial mothers.
Whether you're just starting your business journey or looking to level up your marketing approach, this conversation delivers actionable insights while affirming that you don't have to choose between success and presence with your family. You truly can have both—sometimes within the same five minutes!
Resources:
Sasha’s Website: https://www.sashafedunchak.com/
The Ultimate Time Audit & Productivity System (Freebie)
Grab it here: TIME AUDIT WORKBOOK
How to Hire Your First VA for $27
Get it now: GROWTH CHEATSHEET
Discover Your WHY – Free 5-Day Workshop
Sign up for free here: DISCOVER YOUR WHY
The Mom Balance Playbook (Freebie for Managing the Mayhem)
Download here: MOM BALANCE PLAYBOOK
Hire a VA or start your VA business here: https://camillewalker.co/
5-Minute Meditations for Kids Podcast
Listen & subscribe here: APPLE SPOTIFY
Top 100 Mompreneur Podcasts: https://podcast.feedspot.com/mompreneur_podcasts/
Connect with Sasha:
Instagram: @sashafedunchak
Tiktok: @sashadaring
Connect with Camille:
Follow Camille on Instagram: www.instagram.com/CamilleWalker.co
Follow Call Me CEO on Instagram: www.in
And so I think you have to make a decision. What is more valuable to me? Is it money? Is it time, if you don't have the money, to go and spend a couple hundred dollars or thousands of dollars or whatever on a big marketing retainer? I think you have to get the skills around. What's going to really move my business forward? And the thing I harp on this over and over and over again but I think we sometimes lose track of it is you don't get to make that decision up yourself. You have to go to your customer and you have to look at the data that you have, because, at the end of the day, all of our businesses are in service of other humans.
Camille:So you want to make an impact. You're thinking about starting a business, sharing your voice. How do women do it that handle motherhood, family and still chase after those dreams? We'll listen each week as we dive into the stories of women who know this is Call Me CEO. Welcome back everyone to Call Me CEO, a place where we celebrate mothers building businesses.
Camille:And today we are talking about marketing that really works in today's age. Is it social media? Is it email? What is it? We're also talking about how beautiful it is to embrace what it is to have feminine energy, to be a powerful mother and also a business owner, that you can do both, and we're going to talk about that and the story and journey of Sasha Fedunchuk, and I am so thrilled to share her story. She's the co-founder of Daring Haus, which is a marketing and branding business, and she is doing this at home with her husband which that's its own set of skills with two young children ages 11 months and four. So I said, this business is her third baby, so we're so thrilled to have you on the show, sasha. Thank you so much for being here.
Sasha:Oh my gosh, thank you so much for having me. I can't wait for this conversation Me too.
Camille:So tell us a little bit about where you are today. Where do you live? I already introduced your family a little bit, but tell us a little bit more about what put you in the place you are today.
Sasha:Yeah, yeah. So we're located in Wilmington, north Carolina, which is a growing beach town. We've only been here about two years and really we've moved every couple of years. I've moved every couple of years my entire life, so I can't say this will be home forever, but for now we do like it. It's a great place to raise kids and obviously being close to the beach is wonderful.
Sasha:I am the co-founder of Daring Haus, as you mentioned, so we focus on business growth. We work with small business owners and primarily women-owned businesses. We do offer branding and marketing, but really everything for us goes back to growth. So we also have the business performance and finance services and consulting in our business, which is my husband's side. So we've been working on this business together, which is a whole lot of fun.
Sasha:Definitely has its challenges, but my career has always been in corporate communications and marketing. I was actually in the corporate world for almost 12 years before I went out and became an entrepreneur and the story was so random I mean I literally was out to drinks with friends one day just kind of complaining about, you know, the corporate life, even though I had always been really successful. I was a director of content marketing at a global company before I was 30, you know, had the high six-figure salary, had the corner office, but just the dynamics of corporate were really getting to me at that time. Like I said, I was in it for a long time and I was starting to see more and more entrepreneurs come out and getting really curious about it. And a friend of mine said why don't you start a mobile spray tan business? And I thought are you freaking insane? Like I have never even gotten a spray tan. I think I maybe had one once. But I started to look into the opportunity and I could see what other people in the Philadelphia area that's where we were living at the time we're doing and I thought, wow, I could really take my communications, my marketing background and do this thing. So of course, my type A personality. I got obsessed with everything to do with spray tan businesses, learned everything, went to New York to get trained and started this mobile spray tan business. I quit my job and just jumped right in and within six months I had a storefront and I had a six figure business and it was amazing. It was a wild ride for about a year and a half until the world shut down, as we all can remember, in 2020.
Sasha:And simultaneously I experienced my first miscarriage and like a near death experience with that. And so when I got pregnant again a few months later with my four-year-old and the world opened back up and I was back in my salon doing spray tans, you know, I had so much anxiety and I really wanted to protect the baby growing in me. So I realized I can't keep doing this. I can't keep welcoming in strangers and like goodness knows what's really going on, you know, with like we just didn't have any information obviously at the time. So I actually closed my salon. I closed my business, got out of my lease early, I just couldn't do it.
Sasha:And we moved to the Burbs and at that point I was very pregnant, I was remodeling our home and I thought what am I gonna do? I just had a beauty business for a couple of years. It was super successful, but I don't wanna do that again. I don't wanna go back to the corporate world, because I got a taste of entrepreneurship and I'm good at it, and so I realized why not just do the branding and the marketing for other beauty businesses or small businesses and help them get the kind of success I had gotten. So that's when Daring Creative was born, which was kind of the first iteration. We did lots of like mostly branding website, a little bit of social media management, and we did that for a couple of years from home, you know, raising babies part-time. Couple of years from home, you know, raising babies part-time, that whole shtick and again multiple six-figure business very successful.
Sasha:But there came a time when I was pregnant with my second daughter and I started to kind of see the writing on the wall for branding and web and I think this kind of goes in line with your question earlier around like marketing trends for the year. I started to see that logos, no matter how pretty they were or how quote unquote, strategic, and even websites are not enough to really make a business successful. And I have this kind of pull, once I found out I was pregnant with my second daughter, of like okay, if I'm going to do this thing all over again, which, like I have to right, have this baby go through all of this, you know, deal with postpartum anxiety and depression which, like I already knew was going to happen to me. It had happened to me pretty severe, severely.
Sasha:The first time I was like I have to make sure the work I'm doing really feels in line with my integrity. So that's when I had the conversation with my husband Do you want to join forces? He's a nerd, he's in accounting, he has his certified management accountant whatever certification was a corporate controller and director of finance and I thought, if we bring our brains together, I think we can take on fewer clients and actually do much deeper work and help them get real results, not just stuff that looks pretty. And that was the summer of 2023 that we made that decision to transition to Daring Haus, and we've been on that journey ever since, kind of figuring out what that looks like as a business, what that looks like as a married couple, what that looks like as a family of four. Yeah, it's been a trip. I've learned a lot and, yeah, here we are today.
Camille:That's amazing. So you're really in the thick of it and in this thriving business. What was it? I'm curious that thing where I I love that you said you can't just have a logo, a pretty logo, a pretty website and have it just work. What is it? What are those pieces that people really need to sort through and figure out to move the needle of progress for their business?
Sasha:Yeah, that's a great question. You know, one of the things we were offering at the time, and we still do, is brand strategy. So really going deeper into helping these founders understand what is my positioning in the market, what's really making me different, what's helping me to stand out, who are my customers, how am I solving their problems uniquely? And all of that is great. It's like I always say, the foundation of a home or the spine of a human right, like it allows us to do everything else when that is functioning as it needs to be, and it's always evolving too.
Sasha:But what I kept seeing was we would create these beautiful logos, these beautiful websites, these incredible brand strategies, but then the founders would have no budget or no marketing strategy in place. So you can have the world's best business, best products, best services, but if you don't actually have a plan or strategy or the budget to get attention and keep attention, you're not going to grow. So this is what we started to kind of see. But I couldn't just offer marketing, because marketing is actually so closely tied to how is your business really performing. So when we started to add in marketing, we would see, okay, our clients, they don't really have a deep understanding of their profitability, of their gross margin, of not just marketing metrics but real return on investment, customer lifetime value, right. So all these things that my husband and I have done in our careers, respectfully for over a decade, we're like we want to bring these big business terms and ideas and strategies to small business owners because they're the ones changing the world. So those are the things I would say are important, yeah.
Camille:Ooh, that's so good. I love that your husband is a CPA accounting background, because that's my husband too.
Sasha:And.
Camille:I feel like I'm more of the big picture, like creative and where you can really and that's what makes I think from personal experience, that's what makes our marriage work really well is that we compliment each other, and for people that can figure that out in a business, that's amazing, because that takes a lot of special effort to really finding your lane, finding ways that you can compliment each other, and that in itself is. I applaud you for that, because not everyone can do that, and I was explaining before we started this call that my husband and I. He helps me with my SEO from time to time on my blog. He's done my accounting on my in my businesses forever, but when it came down to him and I think we really stopped and looked at it during COVID, this is kind of cool.
Camille:What do you think about being home and what do you think about maybe you could come this way and it wasn't for us. So I think that it's really cool that you're able to figure that out. Tell me what, as far as moving the needle with spending money, I think that when businesses are new, that can be the biggest hesitancy, because I will help people to hire virtual assistants. That's part of what I do, and hiring that first person or putting that first hundred dollars into ad spend is so scary for people. So what would you say for someone who's in that place where they're thinking I need my business to grow, but I don't have a lot of money to do that yet? What would your advice be for first steps to take with in terms of marketing and branding?
Sasha:Yeah, yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, no matter how much success you have or how much money you have, like we all really only have two things, which is time and money, right? When it comes to this situation, right, I mean, like in life, we only have two things, but the resources for building a business, yeah, and so I think you have to make a decision.
Sasha:You know what is more valuable to me. Is it money? Is it time, if you don't have the money, to go and spend, you know, a couple hundred dollars or thousands of dollars or whatever, on a big marketing retainer, I think you have to get the skills around what's going to really move my business forward, and the thing I harp on this over and over and over again, but I think we sometimes lose track of it is you don't get to make that decision up yourself. You have to go to your customer and you have to look at the data that you have, because, at the end of the day, all of our businesses are in service of other humans, and so we can't forget that, no matter how great we think our product is or our service is, solution whatever, we have to look at what is our customer really telling us? So where are your customers actually hanging out? How are they actually coming into your business, spending the time looking at that and looking for patterns? Anyone can do that. You don't need special skills, you don't need time. You don't need well, you do need a little bit of time, but it doesn't take like an extraordinary amount of time and you can really do that on your own.
Sasha:To then identify okay, say, I'm really seeing that I'm getting a lot of new customers but they're not coming back. So that's telling me I don't have a customer acquisition problem, but I might have an opportunity here with customer retention. And what happens when I start to pay attention to customer retention? Say, I can get more of my customers to come back. My customer lifetime value goes up. That actually makes it better for my business to get my customers back, because it doesn't cost as much than for me to constantly get new customers. Right, it's what we hear on the online space all the time New customers, more, more, more. Sometimes we don't need more. We actually need to slow down and optimize and really look at again our customers' journeys. And what are they telling us? Maybe not even like verbally telling us, but what are they telling us with their action? Right? So understanding your numbers and seeing where are the opportunities not for me to just get more money out of that customer, but to have more interaction with them.
Sasha:So if you have a customer retention opportunity, maybe you do email marketing. Can you do that on your own? If you can't, you know, maybe that's what you need to outsource and figure out how you can get the budget for that. If you have a customer acquisition problem, saying you're having a hard time even just getting customers, it could be your marketing, but it could also be your brand strategy. It could be that what you're putting out there isn't very clear or like it's not actually telling people that you're solving their problem. You need to get stronger positioning and differentiation and messaging first, and so really looking to that customer all the time to be like what are you telling me? I'm putting stuff out there, what's the response? Looking at that and seeing those patterns, that should be your first step as a founder to then really deciding how am I going to invest.
Camille:Hmm, those are all. That is all really good advice, and listening to it I'm like, oh, I could probably improve each one of those, you know, because there's there's always something else you can do, which I think, for entrepreneurs, is the blessing and the curse, because there is always more you can do, and it's figuring out what is the next best step for you as an entrepreneur, would you say. As far as analytics are concerned, where do you go to gather that data?
Sasha:I mean, it really depends on the type of business. Right, A service-based business is going to have a completely different tech stack than e-commerce business that's built on Shopify.
Sasha:So, it's really going to depend on your business, but I would look at. I mean, again, this is why I'm so blessed to have my husband's support, because actually numbers are like Chinese for me, like I'm not an accountant, you know. This is where he can come in and do his magic on a spreadsheet and come up with all of this information and then give it to me and I can say, oh okay, based on that, here's what I would do from a marketing or a branding perspective. That's why we came together, because we're like we need the numbers to inform this other stuff. We have so many marketing agencies. They're just pushing their agenda or their expertise without really understanding how the business performs.
Sasha:But to better answer your question, it really, I think, is in the customer transaction data. That's probably where I would look. And if you don't have like a specific transaction, if you have a blog, for example, you know you might look at, like you know page views, bounce rates, you know interactions, clicks, those kinds of things. Again, it's really going to vary depending on the platform and type of business, but I would kind of have that question in your head of like how is my customer interacting with me and how can I start to like look at those touch points and get as much information as possible.
Camille:Yeah, what is your opinion on email marketing? Is there a? I mean, that's such a, that's a huge question, but what provider do you suggest to people? That's one question. And then also, what is your opinion on how often people should be sending email? And I know that this is like it totally depends, but I just am curious what you say in general.
Sasha:I love email marketing, Like if I could have a second husband it would be just email marketing. Like that's how much I love it. It is our bread and butter from the marketing side of things, but I think that it's so underrated and you can do it so well. I have so many juicy tips I'm happy to share with you. We usually get around an 8 to 12x return on investment per month for our clients. We make them good money on email marketing and I'll tell you all my secrets.
Sasha:Yay, I think that it's yeah, yeah, I think that it's so much more effective than social for relationship building and for conversion, so for actually selling your products and services. But there's a big key here which is and this is something that we like to do which is think of email marketing as part of a bigger ecosystem. It shouldn't be just a thing that you do, like random newsletter, you know, or random promotions, and that's the only time you do email marketing. That's what we see. A lot of people do is like oh, I only send an email once a month or once every three months when I have a promotion, or I send emails every week and every single email has a promotion. You know. There's a lot of things then that you're training your customer to only read your email if they want a discount, which also cheapens your brand and hurts your brand equity. And so the way that I like to think about email marketing and how we do it for all of our businesses that we have, like our clients, no matter if they're e-commerce or a coach or a service provider or whatever product-based brand is, the email, should be part of a bigger marketing ecosystem, meaning even if we're not helping you with social media what we talk about in the email you need to talk about elsewhere, like it has to be connected. One because it helps to build trust and it helps with the repetition and seeing that consistency is actually so important for your customers from a principle of influence. It's something that I'm really big on is the influence psychology, so when people can make those connections, it actually sticks in their brains a little bit more. Now say they don't even see your social, but they still get your email.
Sasha:What are some other things you can do? I always say write like you're writing to your best friend, like, have a really clear picture of who your customer is and write like you're writing to your best friend. Have a really clear picture of who your customer is and write like you're writing to a bestie. Now, I don't mean be super personal and you have to tell them you're dirty laundry, but it really is in the tone of the email. If you take some time, like you would to a friend, you're texting them what's going on.
Sasha:For the most part you're probably telling a story and you don't even know it, and when you do that in email marketing you keep them hooked until they get to a button and then they might click on that button and then you go back to a story and then maybe there's a GIF or an image or an infographic whatever. The more you can actually do that storytelling. Like hey, I'm just talking to my best friend, people naturally want to stick around because we all get those emails that are just like promotion, get 20% off. Here's a flashy image Like again, you know, if you're going to get an email from that brand and you don't want to buy from that brand, whether it's Dick's Sporting Goods or Daring Haus or whatever like you're just going to delete it right, and so you want, or whatever, like you're just gonna delete it right, and so you want them to feel like you're building a relationship with them. And you can do this no matter how big or small your business is.
Camille:This week's Motherhood Moments is brought to you by Mixers. Mixers is a specially formulated hormone balancing mega power that is a mix-in for your drink to help you feel more like yourself and on top of the world with each mix Her is combination. It helps with digestion, hormone balancing, natural energy and many other benefits. I love the her greens, which specializes in getting in your fruits and vegetables for your daily allotment, as well as her time, which is all about helping you to balance your hormones in a way that shortens period life as well as reduces pain and helps your moods to swing less. If you would like to give this a try, use the code Camille for an exclusive discount and feel happier with Mixers today.
Camille:Yeah, ooh, I love that and I have fallen victim to I think I've done both of what you've described the person who's like hey, it's been a few months and here you go. I always pack my emails, you should subscribe. I put my in my emails the weekly podcast episode, a blog post from my website, whether that's a recipe activity to do with kids, and then I try to have some kind of a personal anecdote that has value in and of itself that it's not hey, come over here and do this or do that. But I've also been that person who's like oh shoot, it's been three months and I haven't said anything. And then you scramble, what do I say no, and it's just picking it back up again. So, with the consistency, any advice on what to do with that? Are you thinking? I mean, if you're doing weekly, do it weekly? I was with a email coach for a minute who was saying send an email every day and that was too much for me. I was like I can't do that. So what are, what are your thoughts on that?
Sasha:Yeah, I feel like I know who you're talking about there, about every day, and I think, listen, if you're in a sales period and you were like we're trying to get sales, we're running this limited time promotion.
Sasha:Yeah, of course, right, you're in that like that's what you're trying to do, but there's so much power in just the consistency over time of even two emails per month and you can do promotion in those emails, Like, if you're only going to do two a month, I would do one. That's like really value-driven, like again, I don't want to say newsletter because we all kind of cringe at that, but like it's a newsletter, right, how can you bring in even other perspectives where it doesn't feel like you own a soapbox, but maybe other resources even outside of what you have. That just feels new and fresh. That's why a lot of people love when you start to be like, hey, these are my favorites, whatever it is right. My favorite recipe, my favorite beauty products, my favorite skincare, my favorite, you know something else. Like Amazon, you know items. Like people want to know what your favorites are. Just because we're really in this like voyeur economy where we like to watch and be part of each other's lives in this like really weird, creepy way. But that's where that like, that's where we are in modern times, right.
Sasha:So bringing in value through even like sharing what you know, other things that you like, is key, and then the second email can be more kind of like promotional or sharing the benefits, you know, trying to sell something if you need to, but I would say at least two emails a month, if you can get on that cadence. That's what we do for a lot of clients and especially mean we get results right away, not gonna lie, but especially after three months. Um, like I just had a call with a client today and I was like do you guys really feel like this is working for you? And they're like are you kidding me? We will literally just be like out to dinner and they have a local business, a local service based business, and we'll have a client come up to us and be like I loved your newsletter. You know, like the most random stuff, like people will start to get trained to look for it and especially if they already have a good experience with your brand, it just continues to build that trust and that loyalty.
Camille:I love that. So let's talk about subject lines then.
Camille:What are some good tips and tools for that, for getting opens?
Sasha:Yeah. So the number one thing you want to think about when it comes to subject lines is is this building curiosity? Like if you can read it yourself and think, do I want to know more, it's a good subject line. And if you read your subject line and it doesn't give you that feeling of curiosity, go back to the drawing board. And, of course, chatgpt is a great place to start right, like you could literally use the prompt if you write your own email, or even use the bot to write your email, literally tell it. I want a subject line that evokes curiosity and makes them feel like they want more. So think about like newspapers, right, and big headlines on newspapers. That's what they would do. This big headline doesn't make you want to read the itty bitty text underneath it. So that's what we want our subject lines to do Curiosity gets the open rates for sure I love that.
Camille:Okay, so what about sales within the emails Once people have built rubber rapport? What are some tips for best practices there?
Sasha:So my number one tip for sales is social proof. Social proof is another principle of influence. There are seven of them. They came from this guy, Robert Cialdini. He's like the godfather of influence. I'm trying to be like the mommy of influence these days.
Sasha:So social proof is one of the most influential principles of influence, right, like they're not all equal, and I mean you've got to think about it, right. When's the last time you went to Amazon, for example, or wherever you might shop, say, it's online, though, and you go, you want something and you see that it has a hundred reviews, and then something very similar next to it has 10,000 reviews. Which one are you going to go for? You're not going to go and read all 10,000 reviews, but there's something in the quantity and also quality, but definitely the quantity of social proof that is incredibly magnetic to creating a sale. So what we've done one of my little hacks in again thinking of email marketing with an ecosystem is, say you have a product or service or whatever. You get a social proof, and I don't mean just like a written review, those are nice, but video social proof is really, really important.
Sasha:So say, you have a video talking about your product, your service, you know, your blog, whatever it is, how you've helped change a customer's life. You put that video up on your social media Don't just have them put it on theirs and you reshare it. Have it live on your social media and tell that story in the caption, then in the email you're going to link to that video, you know, maybe show a little picture of it, but also write out that person's story, you know, summarize it, because the other thing we like to keep in mind for emails is people learn differently and because they learn differently, they are going to buy very differently. So some of us are visual learners, some of us like to see before and afters, some of us need to like see like a video. Some of us need visual learners. Some of us like to see before and afters, some of us need to like see like a video, some of us need to read, some of us need to hold things in our hands. So the more you can incorporate social proof but in different ways in an email again, maybe a before and after, maybe a story, maybe a video, maybe like a whole presentation, right, whatever it takes.
Sasha:Again, it really depends on your business the more you can incorporate social proof, the higher your conversions are going to be, and we implemented this strategy for a product-based business in February. Those are our very first emails. We did for them Over two emails and the promo that we did like for the month where we did some social proof videos. I think we did like two posts that month. We did some social proof videos. I think we did like two posts that month, like two stories, two emails, and they made $51,000. It was insane.
Camille:Wow, that's amazing. I love the idea of linking a video from social onto the email, so then they become familiar with your social too, where it's ping-ponging back to each other. That's very clever. Yeah, oh, I love that. Any other tips that you would add on to the email marketing?
Sasha:I think you know, just again, it really all depends on goals and things like that.
Sasha:Like again depends on the business Like. One thing that I'm not about is like one singular framework, because I just I hate anything to do with being put in a box, which I know you know we might talk about briefly, but I think when it comes to like really trying to get the sales is, don't forget to build the relationship first. So if you know you have a campaign or a launch or something like that happening, or you really want to make a lot of sales with email, take the time for a month or even two months to give value, build a relationship, you know, make people trust you. If, all of a sudden, you're just like bam, here's a promo. You haven't heard from me in three months Now I'm going to email you five times about this promotion or this new launch, it's like good luck. People are going to be like I'm sorry, I'm just, it's just, the world has changed. You know people get overwhelmed, they need to be warmed up. So I think that's a really important thing to do.
Camille:Yeah, I agree with that 100% Well, this has been so valuable. I feel like I want to shift gears with you just for a moment, because we were talking about the duality of motherhood and business, and I know that that's something that you are so passionate about, and I am as well, and the way that you explained it was so beautiful, so I would love to have you share a piece of that here.
Sasha:Yeah, yeah, no, I'd love to, and I think this has been, you know, kind of what we were talking about before we started recording, like working with my husband, you know evolutions in business, having a second child, which I know, you have four, which is just like, oh my God, how I'm so done after two, like it's it's hard for me and I'm getting up there in age. But, um, you know, something I found that I feel like not a lot of women talk about is how much you, as a woman, change every time you have a child. You know, like they literally say, your child, when it's in your body, changes your mitochondrial DNA and it's like we throw that around, you know. But like I felt like a completely different human the first time I had my daughter and I thought, okay, I'm going to have this second child and it'll be the same right, and it was like a completely different version of me was unlocked.
Sasha:And then, for the last year, I've been negotiating, you know the mother I am to these two different children, myself as a wife, myself as a business owner and then like, who am I right? And if I listen to the online space, I'm like, okay, I either have to be this like girl boss, like I'm the CEO, like I've got to wear my oversized blazer and, like you know, look good all the time and have my posts on social media, look a certain way and talk about how much money I make, or I'm the chicken woman.
Camille:And I'm like stop making money.
Sasha:I'm a millionaire mother and you know, and it's like I'm neither and I'm both at the same time. And I recently, like I saw a video actually on TikTok that got me thinking about this. You know, this idea of like the feminine and who we are as women, especially, I think, when we become mothers, is like we can be that like fierce girl boss I'd actually cringe at that but like we can be that fierce, ambitious leader in our businesses and even in our homes, and we can be that like soft, you know, feminine, nurture, like, and we can be both of them within the span of five minutes. You know, and I think that this like balance doesn't exist.
Sasha:The video I saw talked about the feminine energy and women as like the ocean and the men in our lives, like if you're in a hetero relationship, I guess, as like the mountains where we're literally crashing up against them, and then sometimes we're very still and serene. And I was like I have never felt more seen than to think of myself as the ocean, you know, and to think about how quickly the ocean changes to, you know, from these crazy tumultuous waves to just like calm. For you know, as far as you can see, and I've just was really inspired by that and like thank you for letting me share that, because I feel like we're we're so often told, especially like in the online space. We're so often told, especially like in the online space, you have to fit into one box or the other, and I see more women like yourself kind of revolting against that being like I can be ambitious and I can be present with my kids and I can focus on being a great wife and I don't have to just be one.
Camille:Oh, I love that. That's a really interesting thing about the ocean and that it is affected by the phases of the moon Kind of like we are too. That's an interesting thought. I like that and I agree I feel like, especially now where there are so many examples online, a trend I do not like is people showing motherhood as drudgery and people assuming that to give up your single hood and get married or to give up your independence and have children is the worst death of your life, and I want to shout from the rooftops that you can still have complexity, you can still have ambition. Complexity you can still have ambition. You can still be soft and nurturing and giving and service oriented and have your own things that you're excited about. Like.
Camille:I really think that there is so much more to what people try to paint you in the lines of, so I love that. We very much are aligned in that. So thank you for coming onto the show and sharing your passion and all of these amazing tips. That was incredible. I'm I'm inspired to go write an email, so thank you.
Sasha:I'm going to. I'm going to subscribe, so I'm going to be watching.
Camille:I know I'll be like okay, now I need to hire you, um. So yeah, I ask two questions to every guest. The first is and you could kind of say it's three, because it's what are you reading, watching or listening to is the first set of questions, and then the second is to share a motherhood moment with us.
Sasha:Okay, so reading. I have to tell you, I read my Kindle every night. That's the only way I can fall asleep. I probably read two books a week and I don't know the titles of them.
Camille:That is so funny because I do the same thing, but I listen to them and I'm like what was the name of that. But yeah same, I listen to them as I'm falling asleep too.
Sasha:Okay, yeah. So I'm like I you know, I'm reading and that's how I fall asleep, and then I completely forget the title because you don't have the book to like.
Camille:Look at every day, so I don't have the mom space but I am watching severance, which I'm obsessed with, okay.
Camille:I'm catching up on season one Cause I have to admit, I started it with my husband and I'm like this is so depressing and boring. And then I was like, okay, but it does evoke a lot of thought of like what would you do and how would you feel and what would your response be if you were really in trauma and you wanted to escape it. And so, yes, I agree with you. So you're watching season two.
Sasha:I'm, yeah, I'm, I'm like fully caught up like watching season two on Fridays as it's released, and I tell you it gets good. It gets to be more like out of that kind of depressing like what, to just kind of like the thriller part of it where it's like what's really happening, the mystery picks up the reason why behind it with it.
Sasha:Yeah good, I like to hear that. Okay, um, listening, I'm not. I feel like I'm not doing. I'm listening to a lot of Cocoa Melon. I'm listening to, if you remember, that or maybe your kids are older.
Sasha:My kids still love Bluey and they're older, so yeah, we don't watch, we don't really watch it, but like, yeah, kid music is what I listen to these days, Like princess stuff, like nothing of note, and then a motherhood moment. I feel like a great motherhood moment. Actually, two weeks ago my kids were sick. They had the flu, flu A, and so everything was canceled all week long. Luckily I didn't get it, but I this feels so terrible to say, but like I just loved it, like I loved canceling my meetings. I love that they were home every day, because they do. My little one just started daycare and my other one is in preschool you know she's four. So I loved it. And I don't know if that's like I didn't love that they were sick, but I was like I love just laying around with them and just cuddling, like I just loved it. So that's my motherhood moment. I love that and I love, loved it.
Camille:So that's my motherhood moment. Oh, I love that and I love that. It's a perspective that's. Oh, I had to cancel everything and you know kind of being upset with it and switching it to we could just be together and present and we might be sick, but we can cuddle and yeah, oh, I love that. Thank you for sharing that. Well, this has been an amazing conversation. Please tell everyone where they can connect and find you online.
Sasha:Yeah yeah. You can find me on Instagram at Sasha Fedunchak or at Daring Haus, and house is H-A-U-S, or just check us out daringhauscom.
Camille:Amazing. Well, I'm going to subscribe to you and watch, because that's one way that I've learned is what to do is follow people who are teaching other people to do it and try to mimic it as best as you can and hire them. That too, but all right. Well, thank you so much, and to all of you who are here, thank you for showing up, thank you for sharing the show, thank you for DMing me and asking me questions and even offering to be on the show. I love hearing your story. So thank you for being here and we'll see you next time. Hey CEOs, thank you so much for spending your time with me. If you found this episode inspiring or helpful, please let me know in a comment and a five-star review. You could have the chance of being a featured review on an upcoming episode. Continue the conversation on Instagram at callmeCEOPodcast, and remember you are the boss.