S2, E1 of the Dream Doers Podcast – “Momming: The Best Business I’ve Built”

After a 2.5 month healing journey, this special episode will start SEASON 2 with a bang!

What happens when the life you spent years dreaming about finally arrives, but it looks nothing like the picture you had in your head? In this episode, Jana shares her journey to becoming a mom, from praying for adoption as a teenager after visiting an orphanage in Mexico, to nearly 20 years later receiving a phone call that would change her life in a matter of hours. One minute she was sitting at her dining room table editing photos and running multiple businesses, and the next she was preparing to bring home a three-day-old baby boy, with the possibility of his older brother soon following. Motherhood didn’t arrive according to her plan, but it became the life she had been praying for all along.Becoming a mom also changed what success looked like.

Jana shares the reality of raising children while running businesses solo, restructuring a career that once depended heavily on nights and weekends, learning when to grow and when to slow down, asking for help, protecting family time, and accepting that every season requires something different. This isn’t an episode about magically “doing it all.” It’s about building businesses that support the life you actually want to live, adapting when your priorities change, and realizing that sometimes the greatest thing you’ll ever build isn’t a business at all. For Jana, it was becoming Mom.

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✨ Episode Highlights

⁠00:00⁠ The Unexpected Journey to Motherhood

⁠05:59⁠ Redesigning Life as a Mompreneur

⁠10:26⁠ The Evolution of Motherhood

⁠13:49⁠ Embracing Change and Finding Balance

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Follow Jana:

🌈 Instagram | Facebook | TikTok | YouTube → @thedreamdoers.podcast

🌐 Visit my website at www.thedreamdoers.com

✨ Subscribe to Dream Doer’s YouTube Channel: @dreamdoers.podcast

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Shownotes: “Momming: The Best Business I’ve Built”

Jana Marler (00:01.088)
Welcome back, Dream Doers. Today I want to talk about something special. How I became a mom, how everything changed in a matter of hours, and how I went from running multiple businesses and having complete control over my schedule to suddenly being responsible for keeping tiny little humans alive and wondering what in the world I was supposed to do next. How was I supposed to keep my babies alive, keep my businesses alive, and maybe

Somewhere in the middle of all of that, keep myself alive too. If you’re a mom preneur juggling it all solo, this one’s for you. I can still picture exactly where I was when I got the call. I was sitting at my dining room table, editing photos, doing what I’ve done thousands of times before. It wasn’t a special day. There was nothing particularly memorable about any of it at the time.

I had client work to finish, deadlines to meet, businesses to run, and a calendar that belonged entirely to me. Looking back, it’s funny how life works because we rarely know when we’re living the final moments of one chapter before another one begins. But the phone rang. And on the other end was a caseworker asking if I could take placement of a baby boy who was just three days old.

Jana Marler (01:24.11)
Three days. I signed the final papers just the night before, followed up the next morning with a don’t forget I’m ready for a placement. And not even three minutes later, I got a call to come get my baby. I still laugh when I think about that because I spent nearly 20 years praying to become a mom, and after all that waiting, God apparently decided there was no reason to drag it out any longer. One minute I was editing photos.

worrying about client deadlines and business decisions, and the next I was trying to figure out where you even buy newborn diapers or anything, baby, on a short notice. Nothing about that day felt real. I remember looking around my house thinking there was no possible way I was prepared for this. Emotionally, maybe spiritually, I had been preparing for years, practically not even close. I didn’t even have a beautifully decorated nursery.

I didn’t have shelves stocked with baby supplies. I didn’t have a checklist sitting on the counter telling me exactly what to do next. Whew. What I had was a phone call. A car and a lot of faith. And a very strong feeling that this little boy was supposed to be mine.

Jana Marler (02:42.018)
Before I had fully wrapped my mind around becoming a mom, I got another call. The baby had an older brother. They weren’t sure where he was yet, but if they located him and placed, they weren’t sure where he was yet, but if they located him and placement became necessary, would I be willing to take two? I said yes, without hesitation. Looking back now, I don’t think I understood the weight.

of that answer. I understood enough to know two children needed somebody. I understood enough to know that if those boys ended up in my home, I would do everything in my power to give them stability, safety, consistency, love, all of it.

Jana Marler (03:26.134)
What I didn’t understand was how completely my life was about to change. The interesting thing is that the story really started almost twenty years before that phone call.

Jana Marler (03:42.882)
When I was a young teenager, I visited an orphanage in Mexico. I can still remember walking through and realizing these were children and there were children all over the world who simply needed somebody to show up for them. That trip effected me in a way I didn’t fully understand at the time. I came home with a completely different perspective on motherhood, family, and what it meant to love a child.

During that trip I had a conversation with God that stayed with me for years. I told him that I wanted to adopt. I remember praying that if adoption was the path he had for my life, he could even remove the desire for biological children because I knew there were already so many hundreds and thousands of kids who needed good, healthy moms and a happy home.

It sounds like a big prayer for a teenager, but it felt incredibly simple at the time. I was in love with all of them, and I wanted to come back for all of them. I just knew I wanted to be a mom to a child who needed one. For years I thought I knew exactly what that would look like. I was convinced I would adopt a Hispanic little girl, and I still heavily have that on my heart. That dream lived in me and still does.

But I explored adoption possibilities in Mexico because that’s where my love began for adoption. I love the country. I thought I would marry his a Hispanic man. but when that door didn’t open, I looked into maybe Guatemala because I knew someone who had adopted from there as well. And I imagined maybe visiting the country together someday and helping our kids understand where their stories began.

I had this entire picture in my head of how my future would unfold.

Jana Marler (05:32.512)
Life rarely follows the pictures we draw for it. Isn’t that right? A pastor, a dear friend of mine, eventually we remember sitting in her car in her driveway, and she encouraged me to look into foster care. And to be completely honest, that was not the route I thought I wanted at all. Foster care felt intimidating, it felt un uncertain. It felt uncertain, complicated, but after praying about it, I felt

a piece that I couldn’t ignore. So I started the process. Then one ordinary afternoon, God answered a prayer I’d been waiting for nearly two decades. Not through international adoption, not through the story I had written in my head, not through a little girl, but through two little boys. And I can honestly say now that my story didn’t become the story I imagined it became the story I needed. There are parts of my boys’ stories that belong to them.

And I want to be respectful of that. One day they’ll decide what they want to share with the world.

Jana Marler (06:40.622)
One day they’ll want to dis One day they will decide what they want to share with the world. What I can share is my side of the story. The part where I became a mom, the part where I learned that loving children isn’t always convenient, tidy, predictable, or easy. The part where I discovered that motherhood can stretch you further than you ever thought possible, while simultaneously becoming one of the greatest gifts you’ll ever receive.

What nobody prepared me for was how much of my life would need to be redesigned. People often ask how I managed to keep my businesses running while raising children and doing it all solo, and I think they’re expecting some secret productivity hack. Maybe a color-coded calendar, which I do have. Maybe a magical planner, which I kind of do have too. Maybe a time management system that solved everything. I wish it were just that simple though.

But the truth is that mother had forced me to rethink almost everything about my life.

Before becoming a mom, most of my work happened exactly when families spend time together. Photography happens on weekends and weeknights, photo booth events on the weekends, basketball and volleyball officiating happens weeknights and weekends. Clients often want evenings because that’s when they’re available. The exact schedule that had worked beautifully for my life before children suddenly became the exact schedule that conflicted with the life I wanted with my children.

Jana Marler (08:19.254)
I couldn’t keep operating the same way and expect different results. That’s one of the biggest lessons I think mompreneurs eventually learn is that business that worked before children may not be the business that works after children. Sometimes the answer isn’t working harder. The answer is restructuring what you’ve already built. So I started paying attention to how I was making money instead of simply how much money I was making.

There is a huge difference between those two questions. One focuses on income, the other focuses on lifestyle. When my boys were little, I couldn’t spend every evening working. I couldn’t even like spend a weekend gone. I couldn’t say yes to every opportunity simply because it paid well. Every decision had a cost attached to it, and that cost was usually time.

Time at home, time with my kids, time to rest, time to breathe, time to be something other than productive. For a long time, I think I believed I could somehow outwork reality. If I just got more organized, worked a little harder, slept a little less, became a little more efficient, maybe I could fit everything into the same 24 hours. I eventually realized that wasn’t the solution. The solution was learning that every season requires different priorities.

There were seasons where growth and my business slowed because my kids needed more from me. There are seasons where I focused heavily on work that couldn’t happen There were seasons where I focused heavily on work that could happen during school hours because e

Jana Marler (10:02.462)
There are seasons where I have focused and continue to focus heavily on work that could happen during school hours because evenings belong to me and my boys. There were seasons where simply making it through the week felt like an accomplishment. And honestly, that’s something I wish more women talked about. We hear so much about the hustle culture. I talk about it a lot here on the podcast. We hear so much about scaling business, maximizing productivity, doing more, more, more.

Meanwhile, there are moms sitting in school pickup lines in the middle of the day, answering emails, taking client calls and parking lots, scheduling doctor’s appointments between meetings and trying to remember that they walked into the room for and trying to re

And trying to remember what they walked into the room for because they’re carrying the mental load of an entire household and a whole unit. That’s real life. That’s the version of entrepreneurship most moms are actually living. And despite what social media sometimes tells us, I don’t think the goal is doing it all. I think the goal is learning what matters most in the season you’re in. Because if I tried to be everything to everyone all the time, eventually something suffered.

Usually it was me. And if I’m exhausted, overwhelmed, unhealthy, disconnected, and running fumes, my kids feel it and my business felt it too. That’s why community became so important to me. It’s why I created a foster and adoptive mom’s small group. It’s why I leaned on my church heavily. I learned to ask for help a lot.

I found

Jana Marler (11:48.374)
I found babysitters, better friends, mentors, and people who understood what I was carrying, not because I was weak, because I was wise enough to realize nobody was designed to carry all of this.

Jana Marler (14:21.228)
As I sit here recording this, almost seven years have passed since that phone call. My boys are a little older now. The things that consume my calendar look different than what they did when they were little. I’m not carrying diaper bags anymore. I’m carrying sports bags. I’m carrying different responsibilities. The appointments are different. The conversations are different. The challenges are different.

Jana Marler (14:54.988)
As I sit here recording this, almost seven years have passed since that phone call. My boys are getting older now. The things that consumed my can calendar look different than they did when they were little. I’m not carrying diaper bags anymore, but I’m carrying sports bags, different responsibilities.

The appointments are different, the conversations are different, the challenges are different. I’m in a new season with my kids. Motherhood keeps changing. Just when you think you’ve finally figured out the season that you’re in, when I look back at that woman sitting at her dining room table, staring at her phone and wondering what she had just agreed to, part of me wants to hug her and part of me wants to laugh.

I want to tell her that it’s gonna be okay, that she’s gonna make mistakes, she’s gonna cry more than she expects, that she’s going to question herself, second guess herself, feel overwhelmed, stressed real thin, I’ll be exhausted, that occasionally she’ll feel completely unequipped for what she’s been asked to carry.

I also want to tell her she’s stronger than she thinks. Not because she’s some superhero, not because she has endless energy or has everything magically figured out, but because every time life changes, she’ll find a way to adapt.

That’s really what motherhood has taught me more than anything else. Not how to be productive, not how to manage my time or run my business more. Those things matter, but they’re not the biggest lesson. The biggest lesson is that human beings are far more adaptable than they give themselves credit for. The version of my life I imagined about 15, standing in that orphanage in Mexico, doesn’t look anything like the life I’m living today.

Jana Marler (16:40.994)
The version I imagined at 34 doesn’t look much like it either. And yet somehow it’s better. Definitely not easier, but richer, more meaningful, more grounded, more purposeful. There were years where growth in my business slowed because my children needed more from me. There were opportunities I passed on. I had to say no more. I had to get better about looking ahead at my calendar and saying, no, not that weekend.

There were nights I went to bed feeling like I had failed at everything. There were seasons where I felt very isolated. There were seasons where I was simply trying to make it through the week. And if I’m being completely honest, there were moments where I wondered if I was doing any of it well. But when I look at my boys today, when I look at the relationship we’ve built and that we’re continuing to build, and all the work we’ve done and all that we’ve been through together.

When I think about the laughter, the jokes, the road trips, the core memories, the movie nights, the tears, the hard conversations, the victories and growth, and even the struggles we’ve all walked through together, I can honestly say I wouldn’t change a thing. Not the chaos, not the uncertainty, not the sleepless nights, the appointments, the schedule changes, the sacrifices, not even the parts that hurt so much. Because all of those things shape the family sitting here today.

Between me and my two boys. And for every mompreneur listening who feels like she’s drowning a little bit right now, I want you to know that it’s okay if you’re still figuring it out. It’s okay if your business doesn’t look the way it used to. We have to pivot. We have to slow down, reprioritize.

Children change the equation, and pretending otherwise only makes us feel guilty for realities we were never meant to apologize for. Build the business that fits your life. Create the schedule that supports your family. Ask for help before you’re desperate for it. Find people and keep searching for people who understand your season. Protect your health, protect your peace.

Jana Marler (18:49.804)
Remember that your value isn’t measured by how much you can carry before you break. And give yourself permission to evolve. The woman I was before becoming a mom built businesses. The woman I became after.

Jana Marler (19:06.796)
The woman I became after becoming a mom built life. Looking back, that’s the achievement I’m most proud of.

And if you have been following me for some time, you’ve probably heard me talk about this. If not, go back and check out my old episodes. I talk about the programs that I put into place to support me during this exact season so that my business could be sustained and keep running while I was struggling both. It kept me organized, both in personal and business life. I’ve talked about so many of those hacks in previous episodes. So make sure you go back and check out the ones that seem like they fit for what you’re looking for.

If this episode resonated with you, share it with another mom who might need the reminder that she’s not alone. Thank you for spending part of your day with me. And until next time, keep dreaming, keep doing, and keep remembering that some of the very best days are now. All of the things you dreamed and wished and prayed for are happening now. Soak it in, pivot, and adapt. You got this, mama.