Entrepreneurship as an act of radical self-care

Tara Hunkin: 00:03 This is the My Child Will Thrive Podcast and I'm your host, Tara Hunkin, nutritional therapy practitioner, certified gaps practitioner, restorative wellness practitioner and mother. I'm thrilled to share with you the latest information, tips, resources, and tools to help you on the path to recovery for your child with ADHD, autism, sensory processing disorder, or learning disabilities. My own experiences with my daughter combined with as much training as I can get my hands on research I can dig into and conferences I can attend have helped me to develop systems and tools for parents like you who feel overwhelmed trying to help their children. So sit back as I share another great topic to help you on your journey.

Tara Hunkin: 00:46 A quick disclaimer before we get started, My Child Will Thrive, is not a substitute for working with a qualified healthcare practitioner. The information provided on this podcast is not intended to diagnose or treat your child. Please consult your healthcare practitioner before implementing any information or treatments that you have learned about on this podcast. There are many gifted, passionate, and knowledgeable practitioners with hundreds if not thousands of hours of study and clinical experience available to help guide you. Part of our goal is to give you the knowledge and tools you need to effectively advocate for your child so that you don't blindly implement each new treatment that comes along. No one knows your child better than you. No one knows your child's history like you do or can better judge what is normal or abnormal for your child. The greatest success in recovery comes from the parent being informed and asking the right questions and making the best decisions for their child in coordination with a team of qualified practitioners in different areas of specialty. Now on with the show,

Tara Hunkin: 01:54 Hi, I want to welcome everybody back to the, My Child Will Thrive podcast and video show on YouTube and I want to welcome today my guest Faith Clark. How are you today? Faith. Hey Tara. Good, good. So before we get started, I want to tell you a little bit about Faith, and why I was thought it would be amazing to have her here with us today. So what we're gonna talk about today is entrepreneurship as an act of radical self care. And that's something that actually faith came up with. So I can't wait to dive into that. But before I do that, let me tell you a little bit about Faith. Faith is an intuitive strategist and a new venture specialist. An author and an academic nerd, a design thinker, and an Outlander junkie.

Faith Clarke: 02:47 She helps disruptive, eclectic businesses, infuse their core DNA into their team so that they can catalyze social change from the inside out. She especially loves to do with special needs family run businesses who create space for people with special needs. Faith is also the author of Parenting Like A Ninja, an autism Mom's guide to professional productivity, which is an Amazon bestseller and reflects her own journey with the crazy chaos as special needs parenting and the need to harness energy and be protective. She believes entrepreneurship is a perfect mental and psychological health choice for many special needs parents and offers the opportunity to do business differently while creating more of what our communities need. She's also the host of disrupt and lead a podcast showcasing courageous entrepreneurs with complex family lives who navigate daily chaos and create more of the change in the world they want to see.

Tara Hunkin: 03:45 And she's also currently helping her two younger children, Simonne and Zachary. Simonne's 18 and Zachary's 15 with their first project, which is called Inspiraction. It's a creative art company that offers illustrations and stories in art that inspire. And in addition, her son Jayden, who is 20 with nonverbal autism, wants to write a book about his experience with anxiety. So you have your hands full, but yet you do it with a smile on your face. Every time I talk to you, I get I feel more relaxed in general. So you inspire that another. So that's why I think today's conversation that we're going to have is so perfect. And as I said to you before we got started typically, and you also said too, typically when we talk about entrepreneurship, we are talking about how stressful it is, how difficult it is to start a business.

Tara Hunkin: 04:49 It's all about the challenges around it. Now. Also the flexibility that it tends to give us in our lives. But then a lot of entrepreneurs say it's not nearly as flexible as they thought they would be, which is why I think your perspective on this as one, so unique and so exciting because I do think entrepreneurship is really a great well great thing in general, but, but also at it, it tends to help a lot of parents that want some flexibility around their lives. So let's dig in and figure out how you came up with this perspective on her entrepreneurship and, and your journey with your son and, and your businesses.

Faith Clarke: 05:29 So it's interesting, right, because I think every time we think Self care, we think, you know mani petty and a massage, which I really need a pedicure.

Faith Clarke: 05:42 I haven't had one in years. So I think we think in these kinds of really specific ways. And, but I think for me, two own, the fact, that self , that's Faith care was the only way to care for Jayden, my son with autism. And then, you know, as an expansion of that just, it was the only way to parent then it took me kind of having no Faith care to recognize what was happening for me. And so I think, you know, anybody who has a child with chronic illness, you tend to be really outward facing. I mean, I was, I have been and still am on a constant 24/7 kind of high vigilance parenting relationship with him. I sleep with my ears open. No, because if there's anyone who could, Mmm. Disarm the autism proofing of our home, it's Jaden.

Faith Clarke: 06:38 And so I'm thinking, you know, did he get the window open at two in the morning? And so there's a lots of this kind of constant monitoring of the environment and perhaps not equivalent monitoring of my internal world. And the results of that was just, you know, sleeplessness and all of the good stuff. Sadness and anxiety and anxiety about Jaden, but exactly that became more generalized and anxiety that was about monitoring the safety of the family and the kids and, and I call what their lives are going to be on so on and so mixed in with that. I was not, I'd stopped working and I was happy to stop working. I really didn't care both working for others. After I got Jayden's diagnosis, but I realized that over time I, all of my sources of energy, were gone. And it took some time for me to realize that I really loved, like, I love talking to people informally and long deep dives over coffee and stuff like that.

Faith Clarke: 07:39 And I love it. Teaching, I love presenting, I love facilitating learning experiences and I love the feeling I get afterwards. It's like a euphoric high. I had systematically removed all those things from my life and there are times when I'd start something back and I facilitate some workshops and then I'd come home and everything felt so chaotic. It's like I left and and left a hole and then. I came back home to more work it. That's how it felt, you know, just more autism too to the process and and more toddler crazy medicine and just stuff. So the absence on the inside of just kind of infusion of things that faces all of them. Plus the hypervigilance, I think led to something that was very dark and difficult when we hit the puberty years. And so entrepreneurship for me became, and entrepreneurship, the way I'm defining it.

Faith Clarke: 08:36 Now, I, I did start a business before that I love, I still use that original business name, Melody of Autism, but the way I designed that business was again, very, what do they need and not as much what helps me thrive. And so stepping out of that phase and saying, how would I really want to live if I only had 10 days, 10 hours per week to do something that felt meaningful to me? What would I do? And recrafting my business such that I was the primary engine off care and I was doing the stuff that I love to do and offering that gift of love to others. Just you know, it gave me energy. And you know, studies back this up, but it just kind of gave me more, you gave me almost as much energy as you get from sleep. Almost just, I really feel like special needs moms and women especially who tend to be super awkward focused in terms of care, need to be aggressive about finding ways to infuse themselves to kind of listen to their hearts and infuse themselves with stuff to give energy back into the system.

Faith Clarke: 09:49 That's producing this massive amounts of care in the environment. So that's kind of how I see entrepreneurship can be a way to force that.

Tara Hunkin: 09:59 Yeah, there's, there's so many aspects of that that I really love. I mean there's tons to dig into there, but one of the things that you're talking about too is that you still are at that stage and you don't, that's okay. Sleep is elusive. Obviously if you live with your ears open. So, and sleep is always the one that we go to when we talk about self care because obviously not being sleep deprived, as I can tell from just the look of your face when you've talked about sleeping even better. You know, it is incredibly powerful in terms of, you know, stress and everything else, but also so is, you know, the science shows having that, that joy and what you're doing and having that having that the uplift from the work that you're doing.

Tara Hunkin: 10:48 So you, what you've done really here from what I can see is you created an opportunity to de stress at least part of your life through the work that you're doing and give you joy at the same time, which is the science. You know, obviously it backs that up as well in terms of how impactful that can be on our health. So I, which, you know, it's a tricky thing to do. So what you're talking about doing with your the work that you're doing, or at least I look at it or I think a lot of entrepreneurs think it's really hard to do that. How do you go about finding creating your business so that you can focus on the parts of your business that do bring you that kind of joy?

Faith Clarke: 11:36 Right. so I think that, you know, as you were talking, what I, what came to mind was that it's that flow States.

Faith Clarke: 11:44 States of flow. I don't remember the psychologist, but that place where you're in the zone and loving the thing you do the most. And all of the kind of psychological and biochemical benefits we know that we get from meditation or that benefit that we get that from things that cause us to stop. Okay. The fight, flight response, you know when you're in is like, and you live life that way. Anything that we can do that kind of shuts that lower brainstem down that shuts, down the control of those parts of us. And help us to be in that higher state. I think that's healing to our bodies and that will help us. So for example, I actually sleep better now because I'm just not sure as much in the grip, the panic, anxiety, fight flight that I was in. And so for me it's the half I used and for many women who are going to go entrepreneurship, I said, don't go entrepreneurship the way we've seen it done.

Faith Clarke: 12:47 We have to be really deliberate about going into it in a way that's going to help us heal and help us see just who we are and kind of share that with the world while just normalizing the chaos that's inside. So how do I do that? I think, you know, first of all, I set the rule for myself. 80{4537a52abafa24f75931b694e3f6d1d9b0beb5896e18e49b3141987b78b41d96} is just the number, but I'll just say it here. If 80{4537a52abafa24f75931b694e3f6d1d9b0beb5896e18e49b3141987b78b41d96} of what you're doing in your business isn't the stuff that lights you up, then we have the wrong business model. And so when I meet with a client, one of my first things is I will, we'll just talk about what she's actually doing and we'll just scale it back. Okay. So this, that you do, you have a new client right now and you're doing this with them, and then you do that with them and then you do this with them over your journey with them.

Faith Clarke: 13:30 Let's just look at it. How do you feel? And they, which I, we feel it out. Is it energizing or is it not? If it's not energizing them, we go into a redesign if they're open to it. And many of us as women, I think we feel that we shouldn't make money on things that aren't hard. And so some of it is, it's tricky now to say what actually, let's make the most money on the stuff that's fun. The stuff that's easy for you as like, ah, the stuff that's easy like this on ethical to be making money off the stuff that's easy. Actually, the stuff that's easy is probably easy because you've worked really hard to make it easy. Yeah. And, and just to really own that. This is just brilliance for you now. This is expertise for you now. This is gifting for you now, so let's figure out how to stay there as much as possible.

Faith Clarke: 14:21 And I think then also it's figuring all, it's how to know when you're not there. Like for example, if you have a client that you're thinking, Oh God, Oh God, so then there's something about that interaction either how you're choosing clients that's not catering to your kind of bliss and joy. And then we talk about that. Maybe it's the type of clients that you're attracting that we need to reframe who you're working with or it's what you're doing with. And some of that it's about saying, actually I'm going to start the journey with the clients at this point and not earlier because I feel responsible for helping them make this journey. And so it's just kind of looking at the whole thing and being willing to be honest about what we're doing and saying these things that don't give me joy, I'm going to stop doing them.

Faith Clarke: 15:14 I'm going to stay in the zone with this thing that gives me joy, make my money from that and then outsource the rest. Sometimes we think, Oh no, I can't outsource until I've made the money. But then I kind of, I don't have the energy to make the money when I'm constantly doing things I don't enjoy. So I tend to truncate it as, make our money on this area where you love and then we'll figure out how to add bells and whistles that other people love doing and we'll pay them to do it. Uand so it's kind of like that thing on some I, lots of it is very introspective work. I do a lot of with personality assessments with people and with myself. It's lots of meditation and kind of internal work. Just say what, well, what really do like here? Uand sometimes I ask myself, Ooh, you had an experience that you hated.

Faith Clarke: 16:04 What's that? What was, what's going on in that interaction? Either with a client or in some kind of experience that I had professionally, if I know what I hate. And I was like, well, good, let's make sure these things are not in how you do business. So for example, I love doing workshops, but I did a workshop for a governmental agency. I won't say which one. And, and I hated it. And everybody there, I realized that they were there for mandatory staff training so they weren't interested in being there. It was like a bell rang 90 minutes and the room levitated and headed out the door. And I was like, huh, I don't think you could pay me enough money to do this again. But I learned something about myself. And that was about choosing certain kinds of clients.

Faith Clarke: 16:53 It was a both what kind of engagement I want. There's no point in me leaving my family going somewhere doing a thing. The financial exchange can not be enough if I am going to leave it feeling crappy. Yeah. And so some of that is how I kind of help people to just like a design it first of all. And then notice just by noticing how you're feeling when you're coming out of it. And then figuring out, well, what's missing? Is that something that I should be having somebody else do or is that something I need to internally reframe so that it's fits within bliss and joy for me?

Tara Hunkin: 17:32 So what, what I like about what you're talking about too is that you don't, a lot of times people when they hear, Oh, you know, you didn't do what you love and they're like, no, no, no, I need to make money.

Faith Clarke: 17:41 Especially a lot of the parents that you and I both speak to that have a lot of costs involved in their child children's care. So money's a really big stress. So they feel like they need to make that sacrifice and what they want for in order to make ends meet and, and, and meet the needs of their children. Right. But what, what you're talking about is not ignoring that. And actually maybe you can talk about, I don't know if you have an example of where it made a big difference where you had a client that actually made the shift to working or maybe even on your own business working on what they actually really loved and did outsource those other pieces that they didn't love or do it do as well themselves. Cause that's usually hand in hand. We don't like doing the things that we don't do very well and are easy to do as you said that we're not in flow state.

Tara Hunkin: 18:30 So do you have to have an example of where following what's good for you actually ends up being financially healthy for you as well?

Tara Hunkin: 18:40 So I'll give two examples. I with my own business, Melody of Autism. The original business model is a childcare model. Basically I recruited caregivers for families of kids with autism. I train them the training I love doing, but I, it had a staffing model so that this caregivers weren't my staff, but they weren't necessarily my clients either. So there was no way of making sure they came to trainings and stuff like that. And it was only, our compensation was only on the markup on, you know, like the referral fee and, most of the work was recruiting and training and especially recruiting and supervising. And then it was problem solving when the parent called and said, you know, somebody didn't show up or something's wrong or whatever it is, or a caregiver is sick and there's a massive level of administration.

Faith Clarke: 19:34 And I realized that I just both nauseous when a client's called me and said, Hey, do you have a caregiver instead of feeling, Whoa, I am helping you. Yeah, more time, which is my, my desire, my objective is I help you get more time to thrive. But I didn't have that thoughts at all when people called me, I'm helping you get more time to try it. And the markup, because I was so into and with the parents struggle, we have not, we don't have enough money to do all these things. And so I was almost immeshed in that conversation in their head. So my markup was not enough. And for the work that I was doing. Yeah. And I think over time I had to decide courageous. So this is not a decision about outsourcing and I think this has to be, you have to be willing to make this decision first.

Faith Clarke: 20:24 I decided that the training was the only thing I liked. Oh, you know, so I, it took me a year gradually releasing clients. It just like, okay, you can work with this caregiver on your own and you pay them directly and it will be fine. And I, you know, I let you go and I should have gotten a little faster. But what that did for me once I said I will not recruit, that just freed me up to say what will I do? And so then I would say to people, I can help you train your existing caregiver. I can help you with autism sensitivity training for your company. And then I started to build training into the stuff that I really wanted to do with people in entrepreneurship or whatever it was. Price point on a training is way higher than the price points on caregiving.

Faith Clarke: 21:11 And yeah, the, the overhead on the training is way lower than the overhead on the caregiving. So the choice was a smart financial choice, but I was so emotionally invested in giving parents something that was, I felt would be easy for them to get and that would just really make a little bit of difference. I wasn't stepping into what was going to energize me, which was the thing that was going to actually make me more money, which would provide better stability for my family, which puts me in a better place to help these very families because it's easy for me to say it to help somebody. How to find the caregiver if I'm in the place where I need to be. So that's like the first one that's came to mind. And I'm talking with a client right now who has a done for you type of business model, where her clients comes in and she basically does everything, some strategic thinking with them.

Faith Clarke: 22:05 And then also all of the pieces. I know there's, you know, marketing and kind of graphic design every single piece. And, I think it's just, it's been interesting to kind of watch her notice that, I'm a mom of a child with special needs, I need to shift this. And so now just watching her relinquish some of the pieces, outsource some of it to actual designers, some of it she may, I'm thinking ahead of her in some ways, but she may actually just remove them from her product. I think many of us come from places where we do things for people and don't value the fact that expertise and wisdom is its own product. And and so just being willing to say to a client, Hey, I can help you do this. I won't do it for you. Much of the doing for you is stuff that isn't necessarily energize it for us because this, this is stuff that we probably do for ourselves and don't like it.

Faith Clarke: 23:05 So we just do it cause we need to, you know,

Tara Hunkin: 23:08 Well, I think actually you touched on a number of things there, which is when you are thinking about, I, agree with you that, that especially a lot of us that create businesses around what our experience has been in our lives to solve that problem for others as well. You could do end up doing a lot of things that you don't like to do. Cause you know that, that it's something that people need and want because they don't like you didn't like doing it. Yeah. But, but on, on top of that, we are very calm. You know, usually these are, you know, what a lot of people refer to as heart-centered businesses and then we don't value and we know that people are in, you know, are having a lot of people are having financial challenges, make, making choices for their children day in and day out about therapies and treatments and, and caregivers and everything else so that we don't end up valuing the work that we're doing for them or we're trying to give it to them at the most affordable price.

Tara Hunkin: 24:02 But then in the end, as you said, you'd almost dread providing that service because you aren't being compensated appropriately for what, right. The, what you're bringing to the table. It'd be interesting too in terms of your business, in terms of the Melody of Autism, right? A melody melody, of Autism and whether or not people found that the quality in terms of what, what actually really worked for them as they hired their caregiver and then sent them to you for training. I often business owners find that when the person takes ownership of the cost of, of, of doing that training, they tend to apply it a lot more to the work that they're doing. So I it, I think so, yeah, the outcomes I would imagine would have increased as well, which also gives us a lot more joy in the work that we're doing when people are actually being able to apply and and benefit from the work as well.

Faith Clarke: 24:57 I think one of the more like energizing experiences I've had is being in a sorta corporate and business as a catch all phrase. But to go into their space and train their caregivers, there is this deeper sense of ownership. No, you're right. But then they are like, this is something we want for all our mission. And then I come to kind of join with that energy that's way different from you give me a person that does a thing I think I need, but I haven't kind of invested myself yet in even defining what that thing is. So it's super easy for me to say, no, you've gotten to the wrong person. No. You know, versus the energetic experience. Almost synergy. Hey, this is a mission I have. And I say yes and I can align with that and really help you create that, you know?

Faith Clarke: 25:49 And so yeah, I think definitely a better quality product. And again, for me, because that's the stuff that juices me cause I think, I definitely think that's another person who is. Have you ever done fascination advantage? It's a personality type as well. Anyway, it says, you know, one of the things that says about me is that I am don't give me detailed work. And I am great with detailed work, but in comparison to my strategic thinking and visionary type work, detailed stuff is not. No. And but there are other people who just get high on that. And I think for those people, the challenge of, yes, we're going to go through all of the tedium of this is like, they don't think it's tedium. It's just juicy and joyful.

Tara Hunkin: 26:38 It's actually, it's funny cause it's, yeah. So there was the choice of words.

Tara Hunkin: 26:41 We can tell what you liked or like it's all in the choice of words. So what would you say to someone who, so we have a parent listing right now that is thinking about going into business for themselves so that they can obviously provide but also find some joy in what they want to do. What, what do you think when you're, if you were first just starting out, what would you have done differently right from the get go in terms of making that decision of what type of business to go into? Are there questions that we should be asking ourselves?

Faith Clarke: 27:14 So I, I tend to start now if I'm thinking about, you know, where I would have been or whether with a client, I tend to start with all our core drive as parents, which is to help our kids. Right. And so the, the reality that I like to say to a mom to settle into is that more stuff is caught then it's taught.

Faith Clarke: 27:39 And so the development that we really want for our kids, especially our kids with special needs is this willingness to search through really hard things and find what lights them up. Especially for our kids who have to work very hard to do basic stuff. Their ability to get to their motivation and our ability to keep pointing them to motivation as a way to push through and be able to do hard things like hold a pencil. That has to be super key. And as our kids get older, they become more and more aware how far behind they are. And so I, I tend to start there because if I'm not willing to, to find what lights me up. Huh. And to pursue it, even though I feel is hard that I can't model that for my child. And I became, as my kids got older, I became really just convicted about that.

Faith Clarke: 28:33 I wasn't modeling, I was modeling do what others think is important. Hmm. And I know that that doesn't help, the kid who is trying and failing to be potty trained or trying and failing as my son is to point to the right letter on his communication board. And I think that, okay, I feel that though the energy of a find your joy and sits in it and push through you as it to energize you to push through hard stuff. It has to be the message we give our kids. So I'll get off my soapbox.

Tara Hunkin: 29:10 No, I, well first of all, just so to interrupt. I love your soapbox. It is really, really true. I think we see our kids doing the really, really tough stuff. Like my daughter's same thing like they work so hard, they, they push very hard, hard to make a difference.

Tara Hunkin: 29:27 The smallest difference in their lives. So we feel like we should need to do that too. And I think that that what you said is that, and we just do that instinctually, which we, we work at. We find the hardest thing to do. It seems like I do sometimes just to show that yeah, I can work hard too and, and, and model that as opposed to,unot that, that's not a great thing that they're doing and it's not that it's not great to work hard, but there is another way to go about it, which is I think what's really important to take away from that as well.

Faith Clarke: 29:57 As our, as our kids get older, their motivation can really flag. And I think it's, it's hard to, you know, I don't think motivation is the kind of thing where it's high or low. I think it's sourced the source of motivation.

Faith Clarke: 30:11 Is it internal or is it something that's external, like do this for this external benefit. And we know that external motivation isn't sustained. Right. So I really do feel that as people who are thinking about starting businesses, many of our kids by the way are probably going to have to start their own businesses because the modern workplace isn't fit for them. And so many of us need to start businesses to create space. But that's a different conversation. They're going to need to really be internally driven. And so we have to be willing to find our internal drive. So question for anybody is thinking about the business is what do you really, really love? And the obstacle many of us come upon is, yeah, but I can't make money from that. And I'd like, yes, I would be happy to talk to you to tell you there are 15 million ways to make money from what you love.

Faith Clarke: 30:56 If we believe it's possible. But what do you love? Let's figure out how to keep that forward. Front and center and the easy answer to what you love and what you're good at though is the stuff people call you for, for free. There are people who are calling you like right now, say, Hey, can you help me? Do the dah, dah, dah, dah. I usually like your kid is crying or you know, you haven't slept and you just do it anyway. I love to help women do businesses out to things that they can do even when they're sleep deprived or even when it's like, there is a ton of stuff I said to my therapist once, it's like everything falls into the toilet and he said not everything. And I was like, that's true. It's not everything. So there are some things that are maintained regardless of what state we're in.

Faith Clarke: 31:41 Why don't we do more of those things? Cause clearly they're not as fragile as some of these other things that we let go of as soon as we're under pressure. And so if we can kind of get answers to those questions, then it's easy then to think, okay, how can I share that with other people and have the courage to say, pay me for it. And so that's, that's the simple process. I love the, this process that I asked my clients to think through.

Tara Hunkin: 32:10 Yeah, no, I love that. So, and then what, what do you do? And I think you've talked a little bit about this, but what do you do if you have a business that is already existing? I know you obviously have people sit and think about what, what parts of it give them joy, but do you ever come across at the, the situation where someone just needs to start fresh instead of trying to reengineer what they've already started?

Faith Clarke: 32:35 Usually I think if people need to start fresh, they already know that when they've, they're starting to speak to me. It's really hard when I think somebody needs to start fresh to convince them of that. Yeah. So I, I tried to just stay away from that, but usually when we're in the wrong business, the pain speaks to us. Whether that's the pain of not being fulfilled or in the case of where we've already scaled, we have some staff and some products already on the ground, right? It's the pain of the revolving door staff because there's some other kind of things that happen, but when we're in the wrong business, the right people, they'll won't get on our team or they don't stay with us. Are the people who stay are, there's the wrong fix for us. And I likewise, we have the wrong clients.

Faith Clarke: 33:21 And so it starts to be painful and you see recurring problems and as you start to say, okay, why, why did we have this problem and why are we having that problem? It starts to morph into a change of core DNA. So that's why I tend to say let's help infused core DNA there is a core way that we want to be in the world. And as we learn from the stuff that's going wrong, it helps us to clarify, okay, well what is this way? And then how do we infuse that? And perhaps more gradually you'll see a shift in strategy, which will show up as a shift in products. And sometimes I tend to say, Hey, why don't we just pause our energy on two or three of these things and just focus our energy on this particularly thing, and let's see.

Faith Clarke: 34:07 No, no, we don't have to shut them off. If they're stable and or creates an income, that's fine. Well, let's just increase our energy in this one area and see what happens. Because I think once we, once we, Oh, no, I hate that stuff and figure out what does that mean in terms of what I really do value and what do I really, how do I want to act and how do I want my team to act and how do I want us to show up in the world really when we kind of have the courage to own that, then it creates shifts in terms of, you know, what the business looks like today versus, you know, a few years ago.

Tara Hunkin: 34:43 Yeah. So I, I love all of that. It's, it's amazing how sometimes, you know obviously the, the, the tough things in life, like, you know, what you, what your son has to goes through every day can turn into some really great joys.

Tara Hunkin: 34:58 What would you have been doing? You said you were, you went out of the workplace when your son was diagnosed. What, what would you think you would be doing now if you hadn't had that change in, in your life?

Faith Clarke: 35:14 I am not sure. So I was a I was an engineer, a computer engineer and teaching computer programming at the college level. I loved it teaching and I hated academic bureaucracy. So I feel like I was heading out of that anyway. And I was at an academic conference listening to people talk, whatever. And I thought, I don't care. I don't, I don't care. I'm just, you know, so, so for me Jayden was a kind of fast track into what I really did care about and I was coming to the place where I knew I cared about creating meaningful experiences for people, but I think I would have second guessed that because well I went to school for this, and should I kind of do this other thing? I think parenting and especially a complex needs child kind of said to me that doesn't matter.

Faith Clarke: 36:12 All of the gremlin noises kind of go. Although they're loud. They're not as loud as what he, what Jayden creates helped me think about, which then opened up a lot of space for everything else. And so Jayden's name means God has heard. And at first I thought, Oh God is hearing my prayer for him. And then the next thing is, Oh, well maybe God is hearing other people's prayer. And I guess the part of answering that, but now I'm thinking, Oh, maybe God is hearing my prayer for me. And maybe all of this comes out to that. So I'm okay. That's kind of how I've been holding onto my experience with autism.

Tara Hunkin: 36:53 That's amazing. I want to make sure that everybody knows where to find you and your book and everything else because you are an amazing resource to parents out there that are, are, you know, trying to do well the best for their families, but are the best for themselves now, which is really kind of a whole new way of looking at things, I think for most of us.

Tara Hunkin: 37:15 So where can people find you if they would like to learn more about the work that you do and your book and and also follow along as you're creating these new projects with your kids as well, which I think is very cool.

Faith Clarke: 37:28 Facebook is the easiest place to find me. And I would, I think I'm going to give you the link for the show notes. But I think just google me in Facebook, or search for me in Facebook. You'll find me Melody of Autism.com and email easily faith at melody of autism.com. That's a, I'm an easy way to be in touch with me as well. And one of the things Tara that, I've been doing a lot since I'm super open to this is yeah, any parent who has a thought about, hmm, I want to do this.

Faith Clarke: 38:01 I'm not sure how to integrate the complexity of my current life with this idea of I need to make some additional income. I want to do it in a way that maybe create some space for my kid or I have a business already, but I, it's not bringing me the joy I wanted it to and now it really matters. I can't let it go. It's actually is bringing some money in. I'd love to just, we could get on the phone and just chat and throw all the pieces out on the floor and, and see. So I'd be happy to spend some time with, with mommy's especially, guys too, but with mommy's just kind of like, okay, let's grab a coffee virtually and just talk.

Tara Hunkin: 38:42 That's, that's a very generous offer and I hope that that people take you up on that because having someone to walk through that who actually understands the day to day realities is well it's hard to come by and I know you talk about building that village around you as well.

Tara Hunkin: 39:01 We talk about that here at my child will thrive as well. And it's amazing to have you as part of this village to as a resource for parents that are, are trying the entrepreneurial journey, which I think can be a radical, self care tool. Now I haven't kept me active, so thank you. Well, you know, you do it the way you're thinking about it. It really can be. So that, that's, that's an amazing gift. So I have to thank you for that. I also want to encourage people to check out Facebookparenting like a Ninja,

Faith Clarke: 39:35 Correct parenting like a Ninja. And, and it's, it has its own domain - parentinglikeaNinja.com. So yeah, they can go check them.

Tara Hunkin: 39:42 Perfect. And we'll make sure all those links are also in the show notes and below this video as well.

Faith Clarke: 39:47 And again, faith, I want to thank you for taking time. You may have noticed if you're watching this video that Faith, is sitting in our car and this is real life entrepreneurship as a parent, when you have kids inside the home, we can't always predict what's going to happen next. So sometimes we just have to grab a quiet moment in the car to record a video or to,

Faith Clarke: 40:07 It gets noisy at my house especially.

Tara Hunkin: 40:09 Well, I'm thrilled that you and your car could join us today and I look forward to, I would love to do this again.

Faith Clarke: 40:18 Oh, I would love it. Thank you.

Tara Hunkin: 40:21 Wonderful. Okay. Bye for now.

Tara Hunkin: 40:30 So that's a wrap. Thanks for joining me this week on My Child Will Thrive. I'm so passionate about giving you the tools and information you need to help your child recover. And as they say, it takes a village. So join us in the, My Child Will Thrive Village Facebook group where you can meet like-minded parents and stay up to date on everything we have going on at My Child Will Thrive. This is Tara Hunkin and I'll catch you on the next podcast or over at My Child Will Thrive.com.