Hey, beautiful Boss Mom. Grab your coffee, pull up a chair, and get cozy, because I want to start with the moment almost every mom I know has had and almost nobody says out loud.

You did all the things. You got the degree, and then maybe the second degree. You landed the great job. You were good at it. And then somewhere in the shuffle of a new baby and a life you built on purpose, a quiet voice showed up and said: this is not it.

If that voice has ever whispered to you at 6am with a kid asking for a whole thing of bacon, this one is for you.

About the Guest: Daniella Devine

Daniella Devine is a third-generation business owner, a business buyer, and a commercial real estate agent. Over more than fifteen years she has owned and operated small businesses, and today she focuses on acquiring and growing Main Street businesses. She sits right at the intersection of business and commercial real estate, and she helps other business owners grow both their companies and their portfolios. She is also a mom of young kids, which means she lives every bit of the tension we get into in this episode.

You can find her on Instagram at @thedanielladevine and at thedanielladevine.com.

“I Did All the Things, and This Is Not It”

Daniella described the lost season better than I ever have. About six months after her first baby, she realized it no longer made sense to go back to her big, fancy deputy director job, and she was left staring at a question with no clean answer. And then, because this is how it actually goes, she kept having babies, and each one made the question a little more complicated instead of a little more clear.

“I did all the things. I got the BA, I got the MA, I got the great job. And this is not it. I remember that time just spiraling and being so lost as a new mom.” — Daniella

She called it a dull ache of discontentment. Every single day, no, no, no. I have talked to enough moms building a business to know that ache is not rare. It is practically the water we swim in. And here is the thing: the ache is not a sign that something is wrong with you. It is a sign that you are still a whole person underneath the snack requests and the preschool notifications you are too scared to open.

“I’m still a human being. I still have problems I want to solve, and it’s not how to get my children to all eat the same thing.” — Dana

That deep well does not go away when you become a mom. Sometimes it gets pointed at your kids, through homeschooling or building tools for them. Sometimes it needs somewhere else to go. Either way, it is still there, and pretending it is not is exhausting.

Borrow the Books Before You Buy the Mentorship

When Daniella started to feel that ache, she did something quiet and smart. She did not immediately spend money she did not have. She went to the library. She borrowed the books instead of buying them. She listened to the podcasts. And she kept checking in with herself: does learning more about this make me feel good? Am I getting inspired?

Then she did the part most of us skip. She stopped just reading and started doing.

“I had to start doing the new things I was reading about. And I learned really quickly: oh, this has got teeth. Or, nope, never doing that again.” — Daniella

That is how she found commercial real estate. That is how she became a fractional COO. That is how she built the confidence to eventually buy back her family’s business. Not from certainty. From trying things and letting some of them be terrible.

The Zombie Apocalypse You’re Actually Living In

Here is the metaphor I could not stop using with her, because after coaching tens of thousands of moms I am convinced it is true. Motherhood and building a business is a lot like living through a zombie apocalypse.

You want to give up every single day. But if you give up, everyone dies. You have to make sure the door is locked, because if one zombie gets in, it is over for everybody. And every day, someone looks at that door and thinks, I could just walk out, ignorance is bliss. You cannot do that, because other people are counting on you to stay.

“We are the hunter, the gatherer, and the caregiver all in one, because everybody else died.” — Dana

Daniella made it painfully literal.

“Right now I’m sitting in a 16,000 square foot warehouse in San Francisco by myself. No one’s coming. It’s me, girlfriend.” — Daniella

If a semi pulls up, she offloads it. If someone breaks in, she calls the cops. If she forgets to lock the lot, she pays to empty the dumpster someone filled overnight. And in the middle of all of it: is there dinner in the fridge? No idea. That is the real weight. Not any single task, but being the only one checking every door, and still having to context switch into feeding the next group of people who depend on you.

I am not naming this to make the day feel heavier. I am naming it because that is the first step to doing something other than white-knuckling through it.

Working Smarter Not Harder Isn’t a Slogan. It’s Survival.

Here is the part I want every mom to underline. When things get hard, the instinct is to work harder. Stay up two more hours. Do the dishes, the laundry, prep the lunches, wake up at five, start again. Daniella named exactly why that fails.

“This obsession with working hard, you will deplete yourself. You must reframe what working hard means. Must.” — Daniella

I see the softer version of this constantly. A mom is full of self-doubt, so she keeps rejigging the plan. She overthinks, because she is not sure which strategy will work and there is no immediate proof either way. So with the limited time she has, she defaults to the one thing that feels productive: working harder. But the working harder is almost never in service of the thing that actually makes the money. Working smarter not harder is not a cute phrase here. It is the difference between a business that grows and a mom who burns out trying to carry it.

Know How You’re Wired (So You Can Trust Your Own Plan)

The antidote is not more effort. It is strategy, and strategy needs guardrails. When you had a boss, someone handed you the plan. As a mom raising kids and running a business, no one hands you the map. So you have to know how you are built.

“I’m a hunting dog. I hunt, but I need the right trail. If you put me on the right trail, I will blow up the trail.” — Daniella

Some of us are hunters, some are farmers, and some are both. Me, I am a bit of an architect.

“Until I can visualize the end of the plan, I’ll stare at a wall. The moment I can see it, I’m a building machine.” — Dana

The point is not which one you are. The point is that you have to know, because you cannot build self-trust on a strategy that does not fit how you work.

You Were Never Supposed to Carry It Alone

For a long time I believed my partner was supposed to be everything I would ever need, that the two of us were supposed to handle the whole unit ourselves. Then I heard a woman say something that rearranged my brain: we are supposed to be community. Your kids are supposed to be able to call the aunt, the uncle, the grandparent, the neighbor. We are just not built like that anymore, so we quietly pile the entire load onto one person and then feel crushed when that person has a hard day too.

“Everything feels less heavy the moment you stop putting it all on you, or one person, or your kids to be the savior.” — Dana

The current partner in my life is the first one secure enough to say, out loud, that he does not have the emotional capacity to be what I need in that exact moment. That used to send me spiraling. Now I hear it as an invitation to go find the right support instead of demanding all of it from one place. Daniella and I both keep a short Rolodex of the right people for the right need. She calls it sending a podcast. “Okay, podcast incoming,” her girlfriends will say, and she knows someone will check her when she is stuck in a loop.

The real skill underneath it is self-awareness. You have to know who to call. Do you need a shoulder, or do you need the hard truth? I have a brother who will give me the thing I do not want to hear, and I will tell him I need a day before I can take it in, because I already know he is right. Daniella will just say it straight.

“I really need you to be soft right now.” — Daniella

That is not weakness. That is a woman who has slowed her own emotional freight train down enough to ask for exactly what she needs.

Seasons, Grace, and the Popcorn Game

None of this means it gets easy. It means it gets truer. So much of this runs in seasons and cycles. A hard season in your business will sometimes land right on top of a hard season with your kids or your partner, and no amount of gratitude journaling changes the fact that you still wake up and do it all again, hopefully a little better and a little faster. But the hard season is temporary, and so is the easy one. Aiming for a life that is 100% handled is a setup. A realistic pie looks more like: 20% of the time you are wondering what on earth you are doing, 50% of the time you have got this, and 30% of the time you are genuinely rocking it. That should be the goal, not perfection.

“Your kids are still alive. They still love you. You should be looking at it going: I’m freaking winning.” — Dana

And here is the part I do not want you to skip. On the way to the big goal, you are already living inside small moments that have nothing to do with the goal and everything to do with your joy.

“Give yourself an immense amount of grace, and fill the gaps. On your way to the end goal, you are living in small moments that bring you deep joy.” — Daniella

For me that looks like sharing a popcorn with my tween at a matinee, both of us guarding it, both of us reaching for the same handful. If I were somewhere else, I would miss it. The whole point of building the business your way is so you do not have to miss it.

You are not failing because it is hard. Your kids are alive and they love you, which means you are already winning at the thing that matters most. Now go be strategic about the rest. As Daniella put it: you make what it is. So go make it.

Your Next Step

If this lit something up:

• Come find your people first. The free BossMom Community is where moms clarify their goals, build the focus to work with limited time, and stop doing this alone, with networking events, mindset workshops, daily mindset audios, and a dedicated app off social.
• Ready to level up? BossMom+ is where we build the right marketing plan and give you the implementation support to actually hit your financial goals.
• Go say hi to Daniella on Instagram at @thedanielladevine and at thedanielladevine.com.

I’ll see you next week.

xo, Dana