Hello everyone. I’m Laura Greco, your host, and you are listening to SuperPower Mommas and welcome.
Today we have a wonderful guest, her name is Natalie Perkins and we are speaking on the topic of Empowering Women Entrepreneurs. I have to say that after reviewing, I don’t know now Natalie personally, but after reviewing her website, I am so excited to have her on this show, especially with what she’s done with her life.
Without further ado, I’m going to just introduce Natalie, welcome to the show.
Hi. Thank you so much for having me.
Yeah, so happy to be here. Have you here with us.
Yeah, happy to be here.
Yeah, and SuperPower Mommas, of course is all about empowering women and mommas to live their authentic life and to live in a way that also allows them to be empowered, to be the parents that they’re striving to be in life and not get sucked in by things that really don’t fit them or suit them.
When I read your bio, your intro on your website, I was intrigued because of many things, and I’m going to get into that in a minute, but first, before we even get into why I was intrigued, I want to ask you our standard question, which is, what is your momma superpower?
I actually had to go to a couple of friends to have to be like, “What is my superpower?” Thankfully, because I don’t think we always know our own superpower, but what I have boiled it down to is I will convince you to believe in yourself and the idea that you can achieve anything if you hang out with me long enough.
Aw, I love that. That is a really wonderful superpower, especially since it’s coming from the people who know you.
Yeah, absolutely.
How would you say that that has assisted you? You have a daughter, she’s 11 years old. How has that assisted you as a mom?
Well, I think our values and life and that particular superpower if you want to call it that is, you know we do use them in different ways, whether it’s in parenting or in business. And for me as a parent, we always are trying to empower our kids to believe in themselves and the idea that they can achieve anything and especially when they’re like my daughter’s 11 so coming into her own and really thinking about her future and what she wants that to look like. And you know, what all of those things, what she wants her ideal family structure to look like, what her professional structure would look like, how all of that fits together. I think it’s really one of those things where I’ve kind of left that box sort of open for her so that she can put together her own ideas. And it’s not just fitting into these categories of, “Do you want to be like a doctor or a lawyer or you know, this or that?” And just letting her know that there’s so much out there and to really explore it.
Yeah. And I love that you are saying that because to me when you’re saying you’re empowering others to believe in themselves, like believing in themselves doesn’t mean that they’re in a job as much as they are being who they are, wherever they are in.
It’s just about being happy and creating the life that you want, and knowing that you’re in control of it.
Exactly. Because, I mean you can, I mean, I obviously work in the dance industry and so I work with a lot of studio owners. Some of them are Bella Ballerina owners for our franchise. Some of them are studio owners who have been in business for themselves for many years and we do consulting work with them. But you know, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I want somebody to be successful only in that way. I’m interested in working with women and talking to women all the time that are in a lot of different types of industries, different positions. They don’t even necessarily have to be working for themselves. It’s just about being happy and creating the life that you want, and knowing that you’re in control of it.
Absolutely. And we were talking a little bit of that before the show. So let’s go to this. I visited your website, read your bio and what really took me was that you have this toddler and you’re looking around for something and realize that you already have something. You were already experienced as a ballerina yourself from what I gather. And you also had an entrepreneurial spirit about you and so you went ahead and created something for yourself that I’m sure serves your family as well. So how about you tell us more about that.
Yeah, absolutely. It was always really important to me `growing up. I had watched my dad being an entrepreneur himself and I knew that was in the cards for me. It was just kind of finding the right opportunity. And when that opportunity came along, when my daughter was young, it was sort of one of those aha moments because I had been in the dance industry forever as a dancer and a teacher. But I had never really considered it a career opportunity because I don’t think that when we’re coming out of college and things, you know, you’re not thinking immediately of working for yourself.
I knew I was going to get there at some point and this was just the right opportunity at the right time. And so we started down that path. And it’s been amazing because we started it when my daughter was the age that we see in our studio, they’re mostly the toddler age range and now she’s 11 and really too old for our studio. But it’s funny to see all those transitions, just sort of how we experienced not only business ownership but business ownership in a business our family partook in, you know? And, then how we see all of these other families kind of transitioned through our businesses. Their kids grew up too.
So it’s been, it’s been amazing because we’ve been seeing this significant growth where we started very small and it was very close knit and then we expanded on that. We really became a part of the communities that we were in and people know our name in those communities. And then expanded to different communities when we started franchising our model. So we’ve been a family owned business every step of that growth. My family has been a part of it. All of our studio owner’s families are now a part of it. So we haven’t lost any of that warmth, and it’s meant almost the same thing to all of us that that same like heart-centered sort of mission has been there for everybody.
It’s amazing because they’re all building their own stories and developing their own independence with their business kind of in different ways and for different reasons, and I love being a part of each one of those stories.
So in many respects you have that empowering women entrepreneurs, have you not?
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. All of our studio owners, I mean it’s obviously mostly a female driven industry. They are all women’s studio owners at this point, not that we wouldn’t welcome a guy, but you know, but they’re very involved. But I mean, for the most part I do foresee it being mostly female studio owners. And it is so amazing because everybody has a different story. Everybody’s at different points in their life, different season, you know, with or without kids. It’s amazing because they’re all building their own stories and developing their own independence with their business kind of in different ways and for different reasons, and I love being a part of each one of those stories.
Very beautiful. And I love the fact that we’re talking to moms here for the most part and you and I are both moms too and also we are very involved in other mom’s lives, and we know that it’s a different path for every mom. But there are many moms that I meet that are looking for something to do, not maybe from home but flexible enough with their family’s schedules so that they can be intimately involved in their family situations. There are other moms who really find it rewarding to go out to a place of employment and participate in the workforce that way, and that serves them in being empowering moms at home. Then there’s moms who prefer to stay home. I think your business also encourages moms to participate and their family or their child’s participation in the ballerina.
Oh absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I see so many moms in and out of my business directly. And you’re right, they all come from this different point of view. I personally enjoyed the work. I enjoyed those adult relationships that come with going to a place of work every day, and I really enjoyed the work I was doing. I just didn’t enjoy having to be slave to somebody else’s schedule. That wasn’t cutting it for me.
I think a lot of people are in that boat, whether they are a working mom who again they might like their job, they might not, but they really don’t like the schedule aspect of it, and also being in control of their own income. There’s a lot of moms who are leaned the other direction. They’re like, “I’d really prefer to stay at home but I really want to bring something to the table to my family financially, but I really don’t want to leave the kind of stay at home mom role.”
Then there’s moms who would just rather just stay at home, and that’s cool too. It’s just, everybody’s kind of comes at it from a different point of view. That may not be where they’re at forever too. We have different seasons of life, different seasons of our kids’ lives, and so that may change over time. What our company does is brings something to the table for all three of those types of moms. We have a lot of studio owners who approach us as their kids are going into school, and so now they’re sort of, “Okay. Now we have this free time during the day and I kind of want to get back into the working world. And yeah, I’m not really wanting to have something that’s going to take me to a place where I can’t be there to pick up my kids everyday, or I can’t be there for those field trips to go on,” and things like that.
We have moms who have been in the working world and again, just want that flexibility of schedule. And so what we built in our model was sort of purposely built around that woman because I think that that’s kind of what happens with a lot of moms. They have this, “Okay, we’re like plugging along at life, we’re working and dah, dah, dah, dah,” and then all of a sudden we have kids and we realize that nothing else in our life fits around the ideal situation for how we want to parent. I think a lot of women become entrepreneurs later in life because of that transition of having children. It’s not until you have these major life changes, like having kids that you stop and evaluate everything else in your life, including your profession.
Sometimes, our profession no longer fits into our family life and rather than just kind of work our family life around it, a lot of women turn to owning their own business and say, “No, I want my business to work for me, you know, my professional work for me.”
Right, right. And there’s more options like way back when I was a mom the options were very different than they are today.
Absolutely.
And yeah, it’s wonderful to see, like when I saw this business that you’ve created, I thought, “My gosh, that’s like a whole nother way of moms reaching out and creating an income and still being able to be involved with their families.” So that was a really.. It was intriguing and to me, it was very creative. It was a beautiful thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We love when it can all fit together nicely.
Yeah. Yeah. So we’re going to take a quick break and I would like everyone to know how they can find your website. So could you tell us the website?
Absolutely. You can find us at BellaBallerina.com.
Very simple. We look forward to you returning with us. If you just give us a few minutes, we’ll be right back. You are listening to SuperPower Mommas, Empowering Women Entrepreneurs. And we’re speaking with Natalie Perkins.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
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