I have a car that I really like. It’s a total Mom car, a PT Cruiser with tons of cargo space and a cool profile. I fell in love with the Cruiser when it first came out, because I liked the gangster, “Al Capone would’ve driven this car” look. It drives like a dream, and it’s cooler than the typical sport utility Mom-mobile.
I still have my other car, too. My husband’s been driving it, because it gets really great gas mileage. She is a great little car – zippy and cute with awesome handling. She’s ocean blue, though her paint job is looking a bit ragged from age and dings. Every now and then, I get to drive Little Blue, and tonight was one of those times. The girls wanted to ride home with their Daddy, but there was no room in Little Blue for them, so he drove my car with the girls and I drove home in my little car. Sitting at a light, I texted my husband, “I feel like I’m sitting six inches off the asphalt and reclining.” No matter how hard I tried, I felt like I couldn’t get the seat back up as high as my seat in the Cruiser is.
Eventually, I settled back, got comfortable and cruised (yes, cruised! Ironically, my Cruiser doesn’t have cruise control) on home at a smooth 80 mph. I put Little Blue through her handling paces on our off-ramp, letting her hug those curves at 60 and decelerating. Because that’s what she does.
We Mompreneurs sometimes find it so easy to get used to handling our businesses with the steady dependability of our Mom cars. We’re sturdy, reliable and able to take on a lot of stuff. This is good; it’s what we need to do. However, we also need to remember the cars of our pre-Mom days – cars with good gas mileage and little cargo space, cars that were exciting and exhilarating to drive. In remembering those cars and how it felt to drive them, we also need to transfer that same feeling to our businesses. Setting aside momentarily those sturdy and reliable ways of running our businesses, how might we embrace the thrill and excitement of pushing our businesses – once more – to their limits, daring to test our businesses against the basic math of what “could” happen, but refusing to play it safe anyway?
