An Interview with Lindsay Teague Moreno
Hi Lindsay! Thanks for being here. Tell us about your family! We know you have three beautiful girls. How old are they?
I have three amazing girls. Identical twin girls, Boston + Teagan, age 9, and Kennedy, age 7.
What is your favorite part about being a mom to your three beautiful girls?
My favorite part is realizing I’m handing down a legacy that comes from my mom and her mom and her mom. It’s so cool to carry on traditions from them that come from my great-great-grandmother. It’s a strong female legacy that these girls come from and I want them to be proud of it. I love seeing little glimmers of my mother in my kids.
Also, now that they’re a little older, they are super fun. We can play games and have real conversations. I’m loving it.
And what do you find the most challenging? And how do you overcome it?
The most challenging for me is the mundane, consistent parts of parenting. I am so lucky to have an amazing husband who thrives in consistency, but my personality type craves new, different, and challenging situations.
So much of parenting requires that steady, consistent hand, which is so hard for me to stay motivated to love. I like to be that fun parent that says stuff like, “yea, you can go jump in the puddles, let’s go,” but you just can’t be that every day.
I don’t want to pretend that I smile and love the morning and nightly routines and the packing lunches and the dealing with kids fights. It’s a struggle and it often drains me.
We know you’re very intentional about creating memories with your daughters, so do you have any tips on mothering with purpose? What’s been your favorite memory with your girls, thus far?
Traditions are really important to me so as they get older I count the amount of everything I have left with them. Number of summers. Number of Christmases. That helps me stay really intentional with them. I try my best to let them have a say and get messy when I can.
Last year, our family of 5 sat down and created a Summer Bucket List together and worked really hard to check everything off the list. It was an amazing summer. It took a lot of energy but it was really fun and memorable. We already created the list for this summer and the girls are already talking about how awesome it’s going to be. It helps us all enjoy time as a family and value it before it’s gone.
With 9 year olds, I only have 9 more summers before they’re off at college. I need to soak in all the fun I can before they leave.
What would be your perfect day with your family? Walk us through it.
Well, I’m not the best version of Lindsay or Mom or Wife in the morning hours so my perfect day starts with all of us sleeping in. Sorry, not sorry.
I’d hit a breakfast joint (Snooze is our favorite in CO) for a no-wait breakfast as a family. I love the mountains and we live so close to the Rockies I’d love to drive up to the mountains with some family friends for that cooler weather and maybe rent a little B&B up there.
For me, any day that ends in board games with family and friends makes me very, very happy. I’d do that until we are all ready to pass out. That would be a quality day for me.
When you were younger, did you always know you wanted kids or at what point did that thought cross your mind?
No, the opposite. I didn’t actually want kids at all, fearing I’d be a terrible mother.
It wasn’t until I met Michael (when I was 26), whose lifelong dream was to have kids and be a dad that I realized it would even be a possibility. When I realized all the ways he’d make a great dad, I got on board pretty quickly. I was right, the girls have the most hands-on, protective, loving daddy. He makes up for all the places I lack when it comes to raising kids — and trust me, there are plenty.
In what ways have you seen your daughters take on your mannerisms and traits?
The twins are very much alike. They look alike, they sound alike, they act alike. It’s bizarre sometimes to look at your own kid in the face and call them the wrong name because they’re so similar. They look a lot like me at their age but they are their dad on the inside. Empathic, kind to everyone, loving, sensitive, consistent, and friends with everyone.
Kennedy looks just like Michael, but she’s me on the inside. She’s a little bit manipulative and bossy. I can see her be strategic to get what she wants. She thrives under challenging situations and says what she means. She’s more independent like I am. It’s an interesting mix of kids we got and I love seeing them grow into parts of me and Michael. My hope is that they all grab onto and value the very best characteristics while overcoming the parts of us that aren’t the best.
What do you think is the most important idea / advice you can pass down to your girls?
The best thing I want the girls to know is that they are worthy just as they are. They’re enough. They’re all of the things without having to change a thing. That self-confidence and worth will take them anywhere they can dream of going.
It’s only by having the confidence to try new things that they’ll be able to live that full and adventurous life. I want that for them so it’s up to me to make sure I tell them everyday how enough they are. Confident girls make amazing things happen in our world.
Aside from being a mom, you are a wife and an entrepreneur, or shall I say momtrepreneur. I imagine no two days look the same for you. How do you manage to balance it all? What’s your advice for managing it all?
Well, first of all, we have a lot of help. We didn’t always, but now we do.
When I first started my business, I was a stay-at-home mom and I was building my business before, during, and after running kids around, feeding them and doing all the mom things. I let my house be a mess, I didn’t sign them up for too many activities and I worked on building my business from home at all hours of the day, when I could.
Does that mean I let them play by themselves and neglected them at times? Yep, it does. Does that mean I let laundry pile up and didn’t make my bed? Yep. I chose strategically what to let go and kept in the things that were really important, like our traditional Saturday morning family breakfast and things like taking the kids to school and picking them up.
In the beginning you have to choose what to let go of (mostly it’s the version of perfect you have in your mind) and then be okay with it. As the business grew, we could hire help to take care of different things in the house, or help us with the kids pickups so I could work longer hours during the day. Michael eventually came to work with me at home and that made our workdays significantly easier. Whatever it is you choose to have help with, go for it. This is your life and your family. You get to choose and don’t listen to what the internet says about what’s right. They aren’t you.
Also, I don’t believe in balance. I think it’s a myth to keep us buying products and burning ourselves out.
If you’re working really hard to build a business, sorry, but your personal fun and friend time will likely take a hit. For me, every other part of my life sat by the wayside until I could pick it up again and know my business could afford time without me.
There just isn’t enough margin to work on your spiritual life, physical health, business growth, family life, friendships, financial health, travel or time off, and a marriage at the same time. So choose what to set down and choose what you cannot. Your choice, your life. Be confident in that choice.
It’s no secret that you don’t just have a side hustle or a small business; you’ve built a huge business over the last few years (that Entrepreneur article – wow!) – how have you done it having three young kids? Can you tell us about it?
Yea, it was messy, you guys. Just messy. There was nothing neat and tidy about it. It was fast and furious and I was hitting it really, really hard.
I let my kids play alone (how dare I?). I didn’t sign them up for a million activities; one was what I could do. We made a lot of sacrifices and much of that was the time I got for my kids during the 3 first years of that business.
I am so lucky to have had a spouse support that and takeover for what would traditionally be the stay-at-home mom duties. I missed a lot during those first years and that’s just the truth, but it was what I was willing to give up for the ability to say yes to pretty much anything from here on out.
Now we get the payoff for living a very different kind of life for a few years — we get to live the life of our dreams, with the funds to go along with those dreams. Dreams cost money and we knew it. You gotta be willing to go all in to get them.
In the end, I think it’s good for our kids to have seen the sacrifice we made in order to chase after the things that were/are important to us. It’s good for them to see Mommy work her butt off. It shows them by example that they can go get whatever they want in their life. I think it’s also good for them to get to have really amazing experiences that we can afford to give them now when it comes to travel, cultures, music and food. They will experience the world in a totally different way than I did as a kid.
For someone who might be starting her own business, while also raising children, what would your number one piece of advice be?
Don’t expect perfection.
The internet will tell you that if your business is right for you, it will be easy and nobody will have to see you sweat over it. That’s BS. It’s going to be so hard it makes you cry somedays, but you’ll still love it it if it’s right. Not all the time, but most of the time.
Fight through the downs so you can experience the level of success you want to live the life you’ve dreamed of. Some days you’ll feel like a fraud; other days you’ll know you’re a total badass. That’s entrepreneurship. It’s like raising kids — you just try your best to make it work and seek out help from those that have gone before you and you never stop trying to make it work.
Just because you have kids, doesn’t mean your dreams aren’t as important as they were before you had them. If you’ve got a dream, build that sucker. You’ll be a better mom when your kids see you value yourself like that.
In a recent blog post of yours, you talked about self care for the busy momtrepreneur. What do you do on a daily or weekly basis for your own self care?
I’m one of those people when I start working, can work for 20 hours straight. I have to make myself stop. At one point, I had to go see a counselor to help me stop — I love what I do that much and I’m not ashamed of it. I know this about myself.
I also know that I need forced breaks and forced fun. So, I schedule a lot of travel (I don’t work efficiently on the road and at this point, I don’t take my computer with me very often). I work hard and I play hard. I love time with friends and I make that a priority now. You’ll always find me trying to put together group trips. When we travel I try to do really relaxing things like schedule massages and time just sitting in the pool or by the beach. Those things recharge me.
It’s also really important that I spend alone time with Michael. We do adults only trips once a quarter and I don’t have any guilt about it.
As far as little things, I start my mornings slowly with hot coffee. I try not to schedule work activities too early in the morning because I need to take care of myself that way. I also love alone time with my husband so I try to take time with just him during the week after the kids go to bed. I no longer work in my room, so we watch movies or shows and drink some wine together. It’s our time and we need it.
We know you’re passionate about supporting other momtrepreneurs – what would your biggest piece of advice be for them? What struggles do you see unique to momtrepreneurs?
I think the biggest issue plaguing momtrepreneurs right now is low self-worth. Are our dreams worth the time to create them? Will it hurt the family? How will this affect my marriage? What will the internet think *insert eye-roll*?
We put everyone else in front of our dreams and then before we know it, our kids go off to college, we don’t really know our spouse any longer and we can’t remember what we like – all in the name of doing what’s right for everyone else. I don’t want that. I want us to have it all in a both/and situation.
Value yourself and the things you’re skilled at. Know what you love and don’t let them go because you have a family. Your dreams are important. Know that and have the confidence to say what you want. Have honest conversations with your family about them. When people talk smack about what you’re doing (and they will because it makes them feel self-conscious about their own lives), keep pushing forward. Your dreams are as important as everyone else’s. Boss up, and go get them. You can have a great family and a great business.
This isn’t on the subject of motherhood, but more about women in business – we hear you have a two-book deal! Congratulations. Can you tell us about it?
Yea, I’m so pumped. I just signed with a division of HarperCollins, called W. They’re an all-woman team and I fell in love with them from our first meeting. The book deal process is so crazy. I’ll have to write about it one day. It took us two full years to go from conception to pitching the books to publishers. I am so glad to settle in with W and get to writing.
I can’t spill all the details about the books yet, but we’ll be revealing bits throughout the year. You can follow along on my IG feed (mostly the IG stories). The first book will release in the fall of 2019 and the second will be first quarter 2021.
Being a writer lets me impact women entrepreneurs on a greater scale and also allows me live this life full of travel and adventure at the same time. I hope it leads to a great public speaking career along side a successful writing career. If I can, I’ll write and speak for the rest of my life.
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