Jenna Rykiel openly admits she didn’t always envision herself as a mother.
“Before becoming a mom, I had a lot of fears around whether I even had the capacity to love something that much,” she shared with Lianne Castelino in an interview for Where Parents Talk.
However, Rykiel’s experience of becoming a mother profoundly reshaped her perspective—not only about herself but about the untapped potential of mothers as entrepreneurs.
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Why did you strategically choose that? Yeah, so honestly, before becoming a mom. I had an idea about what it was to be a mom. I never saw myself as a mom, which I should share, because I think that a lot of people, you know, romanticize wanting to become a mom and and, and that’s just not what it was for me. I had a lot of fears around Do I even have the capacity to love something as much as these other moms who are talking, you know, explain it, and I had a lot of reservations about the entire thing. But when I looked at moms from a business perspective, prior to becoming a mom, I was like, this is such a great niche, right? Business School, they talk about niches. You know, marketing courses, niches, it’s like this subset of women or subset of people. You know where to find them. You know that they are struggling, right? Because there’s just a lot of conversations around all the things that moms are going through, right? And then I became a mom, and it changed everything for me, of course, changed my entire identity in such a positive way, showed me so much that I was capable of in terms of love and patience and all these things. And then I had this new appreciation for this group of people that I wanted to help right before it was like, oh, you know, I hear moms complaining all the time, like, and I know how to coach on burnout. I can help moms take care of themselves, right? And then when I became a mom, I was like, moms are like, the most amazing humans, like, in the app, in the world, right? It’s like, we, we grow humans, we give birth to humans, and we keep them, we sustain them, right? And it’s, it’s beyond that, like, you know, everything that we do for the world, and the way that we see the world, and what we can contribute from everything that we are just so observant of and selfless. So then it became this very then, then it became this like mission, right, that I not only want moms to tap into what they’re capable of create a life that they love. Of but also, I mean, moms have so much to offer the world, and so I, like we definitely, in my opinion, need more mom entrepreneurs. And I actually just released a podcast episode this week that’s all about why moms make great entrepreneurs, and part of it is because we see problems differently, right? Like we see gaps in society, and we’ve seen over the course of, you know, the last decade or so, so many amazing products, so many amazing solutions come out because mom more moms are becoming entrepreneurs, right? So, so it. Now I’m just inspired to be a part of the conversation of helping moms really step into what they’re capable of. And I’m, I’m, you know, glad that it shifted from this, you know, business, this is just good business, to like, Oh my gosh. How can I be a part of a part of this amazing transition that that moms are having so in the time that you’ve been running your business, CBJ coaching, what would you say are some of the trends or common stories that you hear among the moms that you meet, with respect to, you know, taking that step to be An entrepreneur, or getting out of where they currently are, yeah, so, I mean, the biggest thing, or the first thing that comes to mind, are the challenges, right? I hear constantly about the challenges. The number one thing is not seeing themselves as entrepreneurs. And you know, truthfully, I don’t think that you entrepreneur is such a an unique word, right? You know, we have such an idea of who is an entrepreneur. And I do think that it takes time to really break that apart and to step into that for yourself, decide what it means for yourself, because you can do that. And then, you know, align it with with who you are, right, and start seeing yourself differently. The other big thing is, you know, not having enough time or energy, there’s so much on our plates. And one thing I love to talk to moms about is my my experience, and it’s similar for so many others, is like when it’s not just adding something to our plate, it’s actually making our plate bigger, right? It’s like when we add in this business and working on the business, maybe as a side business, first we get energy from doing something like that. So even though we feel like we don’t have any energy to give the focusing on this thing that’s just ours that energizes us really does make that plate a little bit bigger. The other thing is not having support in whatever way, shape or form, whether that’s financial or partner support, or, you know, friends or family, right? It’s, there’s some obstacles that that come up there and and those are really the biggest obstacles that I see for moms starting out. And those are all pretty easy to fix, or pretty easy to to, at least start to fill the gaps so that they can start chipping away at at their business. So you are both a mindset coach and a business coach. Take us through how important or what role mindset plays in how you support your customers and clients as a starting point for that relationship that you’ll have with them. Yeah,
absolutely. Well, the secret is that I talk about the business stuff a lot because it’s sexy, but the business strategies will not do anything for anyone, if the mindset piece isn’t there, because you can have the most amazing plan laid out. And I, you know, do that with clients. We have time, you know, we strategically create time in their schedule. There’s a whole time management tool I teach. They find time to do these things, we have a plan. 3060, 90 days, what they’re doing each week. And I always say that a plan is always, or what is the quote? It’s, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face, right? No. Mike Tyson quote, and it really is like life constantly is throwing punches. And the punches could be as simple as somebody saying no or getting zero likes on a post, or, you know, the kids being sick one week that you had something important scheduled, right? It’s these punches are constant. So. Right and without proper mindset work and being able to continue to see yourself as an entrepreneur, see yourself as you know, being able to not make it mean anything about you when these things happen or when these failures happen is so critical. So I always start, you know, I I always say, I bring people in with the sexy business stuff, all the tools I’m going to teach, all the skills, you know, this beautiful business that you’ll have at the end your first client, but then once they’re through the door, admittedly, we we work on mindset as the first piece. And there’s a tool I teach that allows you to really look at your thoughts as stories that you are constantly crafting about any given circumstance, and it allows you to see exactly how those stories are leading to the current results that you that you have. In the case of my clients, you know, when they come to me, they don’t have a business, right? So that’s the easiest result we can pull from they don’t have a business. Their current thoughts are definitely aiding in that happening, and we want the results of them having a business. So we use this tool to work through where their thoughts are now, how they see themselves in all aspects of life, really, and then what they need to be thinking and how they need to be seeing themselves and their story in order to create the results that they want. And that’s why, also, I love what I do. Because, again, the business is sexy. The designing a life we love with a business is sexy, but from day one, there’s a new way that these moms are seeing themselves, and a new way that they are even interacting in their relationships as moms, As as human beings that gives such gives them so so many results right from the start, right? It’s like, if you just learn this, and we, if we just talk about mindset, your life’s going to be changed. But at the same time, I want you to have this business and and, you know, be able to create the life you envision. And that’s so important, too, with moms leaving corporate because so much of it is, how do we make work suck less? I talk about all the time, right? Because that’s how we’re spending our time right now. And it really is. It’s so much better to not wake up feeling resentful and drained and exhausted every day. So so that’s really also where we start to make sure that we’re working on where you’re at right now, in the environment that you’re at because you can’t make great business decisions if you’re miserable and resentful every day, definitely not. Is there a starting point that you think a mother considering becoming an entrepreneur should have some, you know, some foundational criteria in their in their toolkit that’s going to help them along the way. We talked about mindset and how you can be coached on that. But are there any other characteristics that you would think or suggest would be part of that? Yeah, so mindset is, is number one, right? Just, and that’s, that’s, it doesn’t have to be this full awareness and knowing I you can even just on a daily, weekly basis, take out a piece of paper, write down all your thoughts, and then look at each thought as a sentence, rather than this truth about you, and say, the story I’m telling myself is blank, right? The story I’m telling myself is I messed up, or the story I’m telling myself is I’m a horrible mom, right? Um, so that that’s that’s an easy way to tap in and to not let our brains just take over and lead us down paths that that are really based on avoiding fear, right? The other thing Time management is so important, you have to have a system of how you do things, when you do things. I mean, it’s so critical for moms, we all have somewhat of a system. But I think, you know, really recognizing M, does the system allow me to create the results that I want? And if not, there’s hundreds, you know, I teach a system that has changed my life, but there are hundreds out there, and so it’s worth exploring to see if there’s something else that fits, that allows you to get things done, organize your mind and and really not, not feel so burdened all the time by all the things. That we’re doing. The other easy thing, I would say, is surrounding yourself with other mom entrepreneurs. When we’re in corporate we feel like the whole world is corporate, right? We feel like that is the only way. And I remember when I started attending networking events and virtual networking events, and just hearing about other people’s businesses and what they do and and how they run their business, and it was so inspiring, right? And so I always recommend to people surround yourself with more mom entrepreneurs. There’s a ton of different networking events. There’s organizations. I run a monthly networking event myself, the mom entrepreneur circle, and it’s really just a place for people to get together, share their challenges, get support from other moms. But once you start seeing that other people are doing it, it becomes less less scary, right? You’re like, Oh, if. And I always say this too, there’s 4.7 I saw a stat somewhere, 4.7 million moms have businesses and and so then it’s like, why not me? And when we’re talking about the belief piece, it’s like, Well, I’m a, I’m a, you know, above average human being. I think, like, why not me? Right? If 4.7 million other moms can do it. And so we start to see that when we’re surrounding ourselves with moms who are doing the thing, right, we start to get inspired. So I would say that that’s another huge, easy piece, right? You just go to those and you just listen and feel inspired. And it really does help with the inspiration piece, because I think we’re all, we can all do it right? We’re all there’s not necessarily a type of person who can and can’t. I think it all has to do with just the momentum and inspiration that we feel to make it happen. Absolutely. Now, a pitfall or an obstacle. Let’s say, for many people, considering this type of career change, is weighing the risk with the reward, right so the balance or the the steadiness of a paycheck coming in every two weeks, versus, you know, going out there and not knowing when you’re going to get paid, and it’s not it’s anything but steady. Can this be a factor, in your opinion, that prevents a lot of moms who feel that financial pressure to, you know, to contribute to their family’s economy and prevent them from becoming entrepreneurs in the first place? And how do they overcome that? Yeah, absolutely. I mean it, it is the number one thing that I think prevents moms, because there is such a fear. And there’s also this thought around, you know, you even said it, right? Corporate is this steady paycheck, but it’s, it’s almost a false sense of safety that we have in corporate, right? You know, we do get the steady paycheck, but our decisions aren’t, aren’t ours, right? And we see that so frequently, unfortunately, especially in this day and age with layoffs. That’s a perfect example. But also another less maybe triggering example is even with pay, pay scale limits, right? It’s like there’s other people making decisions about how much you can make, around what you make, what your bonuses, right? So much of that is out of your control. So whereas it does feel safe to us, because this is capitalism, this is the way society works. And the majority
there are still safety nets within entrepreneurship and within starting a business. Right now, the there’s no limits to how much you can make, right? And we’ve seen that because the entrepreneur, you know, we know, you know, entrepreneurs out there who are making way too much money, right? So there’s, there’s also this, again, coming back to the what if, like, what if I make more than I made in my corporate job, right? Yes, we do have to grapple with what Steady means and what safety means. And that’s why I talk a lot about money beliefs in with my clients as well, because often so much of our fear around money, and not everyone, of course, but is unfounded, right? It’s like we have a certain idea of what needs to happen now for retirement based on messages that we get from society. But there’s also this world where, you know, if we sort of cut back on some of the things that are building that safety net in the future to. Really set the foundation and grow our business, then our business gets to a point by retirement where, you know, we’re not really working and the business is bringing in money, right? Like those sort of scenarios are very reasonable and very real, and so it’s just worthwhile, like exploring those, exploring the fears, the the what ifs the worst case scenario and best case scenario. And really taking a look at those, those money beliefs, I would also say that, you know, one thing I’ve talked about before is, yeah, corporate salaries. And the majority of the women I work with are six figure salary earners, leaders in in their corporate jobs, um, they’re, they’re big salaries, right? They’re, they’re cushy salaries and and a lot of that, I think, is making up for some of the the elements of corporate that are soul sucking, right? So if we talk about, you know, dollar for dollar. Of course, yes, you might be leaving some on the table by leaving corporate. But what are you gaining in terms of being able to be there to finally take care of yourself, to go to a midday yoga class, to pick up your kids at three without having to ask permission ever again. Um, my husband and I, earlier this year, spent a month in Argentina, which was an amazing, you know, we worked and, you know, we had, you know, our businesses going, but it was such. We didn’t have to ask for permission for anyone, right? And, and, yes, there’s, there’s maybe some financial salary that’s given up at the start of the business, but so much of what you gain is non monetary and and I think that that is the the rich stuff of life. We’re almost out of time. Jenna, but I did want to ask you, what would you say that you’ve learned about yourself as an entrepreneur?
Oh, my gosh,
I’ve learned that. I mean, I think I’ve learned that anything is possible really. You know, because I never saw myself as an entrepreneur, I still don’t see myself as an entrepreneur, even though I, you know, support moms to help themselves see it, and that’s okay for me. You know, it’s like the the typical entrepreneur in my head is my husband, right? You know, in all of his characteristics, the way that he’s, you know, risk, risky, you know, in the way that he’s, you know, spends money to make money and all this stuff, and I’m the opposite of him. And still it works, and still, you know, I’m able to achieve amazing things and, and so I think that that that’s a beautiful thing, that there’s no one way to do it, and yeah, we can really pave our own ways in in the world of entrepreneurship, which has been really cool, certainly plenty of inspirational food for thought for moms who may be considering making a career move and becoming entrepreneurs. Jenna Reich, CEO of CBJ, coaching business and mindset coach and mom of one and expecting another one soon. Thank you so much for your time and your insight today.
Thank you so much.
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“Once I became a mom, it changed my entire identity in such a positive way,” says the CEO of CBJ Coaching, mindset and business coaching company for moms. “It gave me a new appreciation for moms. We are capable of so much—of growing humans, sustaining them, and seeing the world in ways that bring incredible value.”
Making the Leap from Corporate Life
Rykiel’s path began in the corporate world, where she steadily climbed the ranks in sales. However, despite her success, she couldn’t shake the feeling that her work lacked alignment with her passions.
“I loved it until I didn’t, until I sort of grew out of the benefits of it, and really just had this nagging feeling that there was something that my interests, my talents, my skills, could be better suited for.”
Conversations with her entrepreneur husband only magnified her longing for a life with greater flexibility and autonomy—a life where family and personal fulfillment could take centre stage. “We had so many conversations around what we wanted our family to look like in terms of flexibility and travel and and making our own decisions, and corporate just didn’t fit into that plan.”
The COVID-19 pandemic served as a turning point. With time to reflect, Rykiel realized she was edging toward burnout, giving more to her job than to herself. Seeking change, she began offering coaching to women in a low-income housing coalition. These pro bono sessions left her feeling energized and inspired, planting the seed for what would become CBJ Coaching. “That’s when it really told me — there’s a world where I work and I get energy from my work, rather than just always feeling so depleted.”
The Courage to Start
Still deciding to leave the corporate grind wasn’t easy. Rykiel turned to a career coach, whose belief in her potential gave her the accountability she needed to take the leap. Small, deliberate steps followed: updating her LinkedIn, networking, and taking on her first clients.
“The worst-case scenario wasn’t failing,” she reflects. “It was never knowing if this exciting, energizing thing could have worked.”
Her efforts paid off. Today, she is a mindset and business coach specializing in helping moms overcome self-doubt, tap into their strengths, and create businesses that align with their values.
Not long after making her decision, Rykiel gave birth to her first child, a son, in 2022.
Navigating Financial Fears
For many moms, the financial uncertainty of entrepreneurship is a significant deterrent. Rykiel challenges the assumption that corporate jobs are inherently safer. “There’s a false sense of security in corporate,” she says, citing examples like layoffs and salary caps. “Entrepreneurship gives you control and unlimited earning potential,” she says.
She advises mothers to confront their money fears head-on, exploring both worst and best-case scenarios. “What if you could make more than your corporate salary? What if you could create a life where you’re not asking for permission to pick up your kids or take a midday yoga class?” she asks.
Why Moms Make Great Entrepreneurs
Rykiel’s initial interest in moms as a business niche was pragmatic, stemming from largely her MBA background. But her lived experience of motherhood shifted her focus into something deeply personal: empowering mothers to see their worth, tap into their capabilities, and build businesses that reflect their passions and values.
“Moms see problems differently,” she explains. “We’ve seen so many amazing products and solutions come from moms who’ve identified gaps in society.” She firmly believes that mothers are uniquely equipped to succeed in entrepreneurship.
Through her coaching practice, she emphasizes that the qualities honed in motherhood—resilience, adaptability, and problem-solving—are invaluable in the entrepreneurial world. Yet, the transition isn’t without challenges.
The Critical Role of Mindset
While Rykiel equips her clients with the tools and strategies needed to start their businesses, she insists that mindset is the foundation of success. “Business strategies won’t work if the mindset isn’t there,” she asserts. “Life constantly throws punches—whether it’s a lack of likes on a post or your kids getting sick during a crucial week.”
One of her favourite tools involves reframing thoughts. She encourages moms to write down their beliefs, identify them as stories rather than truths, and reshape those narratives. This practice helps clients see themselves in new ways, unlocking confidence and resilience that extend beyond their business pursuits.
Challenges and How to Overcome Them
One of the most common hurdles Rykiel says she hears from her clients is difficulty in seeing themselves as entrepreneurs. “There’s this idea of who qualifies as an entrepreneur, and many moms don’t fit the mold,” she says. “It’s about breaking that apart and defining it for yourself.”
Other barriers include time, energy, and support. For many mothers, the idea of adding a business to an already full plate feels overwhelming. Rykiel reframes this: “It’s not about adding to your plate. It’s about making your plate bigger. Doing something just for yourself can energize you.”
She also emphasizes the importance of building a support system, whether through family, friends, or networking with other mom entrepreneurs. “Surrounding yourself with other moms who are doing it makes it feel less scary,” she advises.
Her monthly networking event, the Mom Entrepreneur Circle, provides a space for women to share challenges, gain support, and find inspiration.
A New Vision for Moms and Work
Rykiel’s own journey is a testament to the possibilities that arise when moms decide to embrace entrepreneurship. “I’ve learned that anything is possible,” she says. “There’s no one way to do it, and we all have the power to pave our own paths.”
For mothers feeling stuck in the grind of corporate life, she offers both hope and a roadmap. By addressing mindset, building a supportive community, and leaning into their unique strengths, moms can create businesses—and lives—that align with their values and aspirations. As she puts it, “If 4.7 million other moms can do it, why not you?”
Rykiel became a mother of two in 2024.
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