Behind the scenes at Go Diaper Free: How we help parents go “diaper-free” every day

Welcome to the Go Diaper Free Podcast where we're all about helping you stop depending on diapers as early as birth. I'm your host, Andrea Olson, author and mom of five EC’d babies. This is episode 57, Behind the scenes at Go Diaper Free. How we help parents go diaper-free every day.

So welcome to the show today, you guys, I'm Andrea. I'm glad to have you back this week. This week we are not necessarily going to talk about EC and some kind of thing that can help you be better at it in your own house, but we're going to talk about something that I get a lot of questions from you guys in my audience about every week, which is how do you do all that you do and reach so many people in teaching about EC? How do you run your business? What's going on back there? How do you guys do all the stuff that you do?

So just so you know, I am the primary person in my company. And today I want to pull back the curtain, ala Wizard of Oz, and at the end I'll give you something juicy that you can kind of take with you and apply to your own life if you're in this vein with me. So anyway, I'm the primary person. I just recently promoted one of my virtual assistants. So I have one, two, three virtual assistants and...no, four. And they're all super part-time. One of them just moved into full-time and she's my project manager now, Francine. She's amazing.

I really couldn't reach so many people and help so many people with EC if it weren't for my wonderful team. It's all women and... Oh, no. My podcast team is all men, but everybody else is all women.

They're really hardworking. Some of them are moms, some of them are my coaches that I've trained that help with people who have problems on all of our channels and stuff. But yeah, it's mostly me trying to do as much creative stuff as I can while raising my babies and running my house.

It's kind of hard sometimes. But the reason I started Go Diaper Free a long time ago, I wrote my first e-book and recorded my first audio book, they were called EC Simplified, because I kept skipping out on yoga class every 30 minutes with my baby mommy and me yoga back in Berkeley. And my friend was like, "Where are you going with your baby every 30 minutes? What are you doing?" And I said, "Oh, when he gets fussy I take him to the potty." And she was like, "Oh my gosh, you have to show me how to do that."

So I showed her how to do it and she started doing EC too. And a lot of people started asking me and so I was like, "Okay. I just need to make a pamphlet out of this." And then, you know, I'm a quadruple Virgo, as some of you know, sun moon rising and Saturn, I can't help myself but make things better. I'm a maximizer. I got to make everything better. Right?

So I took about seven months from the time my son was five months old to 12 months old to write my book. And it turned into, it turned from like a five page pamphlet into 250 pages at the time and now it's about 350 pages. I just researched, researched and I whittled down everything that I could find about EC. And I asked people questions, helped people on these email lists. Back before Facebook groups, they had this thing called Yahoo groups, maybe some of you remember it.

The Yahoo groups, people would ask questions and have all these problems and I just really researched what was working for people and what wasn't. So that's kind of the result of all of that along the line is this podcast, my new book, Go Diaper Free. Everything that's in the trenches actively working for people.

The reason I also started this is because when I started EC with my first son, I found it so hard. I had to read the book I had on it, The Diaper-Free Baby by Christine Gross-Loh, which I really like. But I had to read it about three times to figure out exactly what to do, like how to do it. And I found that I really needed some visual guidance. So, that was kind of the impetus for starting Go Diaper Free. So hopefully you enjoyed hearing the little story of like how it began.

I really began because I needed something better and I noticed that everybody around me didn't even know what EC was and I really wanted them to. And then kind of like in Frankenstein, his creation turned into a monster. Mine didn't turn into a monster, but it's gotten kind of too unruly, like a garden that you really need to regularly prune. Things have kind of exploded over the last nine years.

There are a lot of moving parts, but everything was added organically over the years in order to serve you guys. The next thing I started was a YouTube channel where I posted a few videos of me doing EC with my baby at the time, and those to this day have hundreds of thousands of users, they're still doing really great. Then I started my podcast. You guys, I started my podcast like what, five years ago?

I wasn't consistent for a while and now I'm consistent and I love it and you guys were loving it. But it was really hard to be consistent while having all these babies in between. So that happened next. And I figured that on YouTube and podcasts I could really find and meet more people, more of you moms and dads where you are, whether you prefer video or audio. Then I could help people be turned on to the idea of EC and even know that it exists.

So I kind of unofficially became an emissary of EC, which was super fun. And then I found myself leading this movement. I am honored to, and I love to do it. And there are lots of other authors in our space and lots of other bloggers and everything, but as far as things have gone, I've really been at the forefront and I love, love, love representing EC in the world. Teaching people like, "Hey, you need to know your options."

And then I don't care what you choose. But once you're equipped with the options, usually people will choose EC or some form of it, right? Anyway. Then I got all these emails. Can you please make a paperback book, not just an e-book? So, I figured out how to self-publish my book as paperback. And then I started Tiny Undies. Oh wait, first I started the coach program.

I started teaching other people to teach EC in their town. If you're interested in my coach program or if there's nobody in your town who does EC and you really want to teach it or start hosting groups, please join our coach program. It's so much fun. It's godiaperfree.com/coachprogram. Pretty easy.

I started that and with the revenue I made from the coach program's first launch back in, I think it was 2013, I started Tiny Undies and Tiny Undies was created because I couldn't find anything to fit my nine month old when he was out of diapers, my first child. And my second child luckily got to wear tiny undies when she was out of diapers at 13 months.

She told us every time she needed to go at 15 months, it's really cool. By the way, on my Instagram I have a really cute little picture of her up just today where she's holding a little sign that says she was out of diapers at 13 months. It's really cute. And it tells a little bit about her story there.

So Tiny Undies was started when I had Isadora. And I really wanted to bring small underwear to the market. I'd found them in Thailand. I brought back like 50 pair. Everybody wanted them, all of the Go Diaper Free followers wanted them, and I didn't have enough to giveaways and I gave away a bunch of them.

And then I asked the company to make them for me and they refused. So then I said, "Well, I'm going to make some myself." And that's how Tiny Undies started. And then I started training pants because honestly, Gerber's, baby pees right through the Gerber's and right onto the floor. So what's the point of even wearing them? Right?

So I wanted to get stuff that works for my kids and I knew it would work for everybody else's as well. All right. So coach program and then Tiny Undies, and then I started asking people, what are your biggest challenges with EC? And I got, it whittled down to the seven biggest challenges which I turned into my video mini courses. Mini as in small. Those mini courses can be found at godiaperfree.com/minicourses.

And those really solve and take a deep dive further than my book into seven areas of challenge, like night-time, like outings, newborn, getting back on track, potty pauses, things like that.

And now... Oh and then of course in the mix there I wrote my potty training book because everybody wanted something that was EC-friendly. And then I wrote my board books, which were super fun, that teach the whole process of the potty routine for a child. And I wrote my night-time board book because I used to always take one of our board books and tell my children, "Oh this little boy, he always wakes to go to the bathroom. He doesn't pee his bed."

So then I made it into an actual board book and worked with an illustrator out of Malaysia for that, which was super fun. So a little behind the scenes of the path that everything's taken and how it's all grown organically and all based in service to you guys to help make EC more accessible, more universal, easier to do in any lifestyle, with the right tools.

I've never felt like I had to concoct something and then market it. It's always been something that's been out of a genuine need. And after all of this, people kept asking me, "Well Andrea, how do you, how do I do what you've done? I would really like to have a business like yours."

And so I created MamaWorx, which I'll talk about later. And that's mamaworx.com, where I teach new moms with tiny babies and big dreams how to start a passive income business. And really that's the core of what Go Diaper Free is. I wouldn't be able to do all this and be a mom if it weren't this quote unquote passive income model. I learned a lot about passive income from Pat Flynn, got to give a shout out to him now. I was on his podcast a long time ago.

I started listening to his podcast when I first started out and learned a lot about, okay, how could I make a business that means something in the world, that helps people, that also aligns with my family and my desire to be with my kids, you know, because we always want to be with our kids. Unless we really love work, in which case that's a definite choice, you know?

So this is what I do daily, every day and with a goal of getting EC in front of more people's faces so they can make an informed decision about their potty options, every day I nurture points of connection with people. So, as a team we answer every single communication that comes at us on all channels. We get Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, the podcast, email. I send out emails to my list, which is probably the biggest bulk of followers is my little private entourage of email subscribers, maybe you're one of them.

And I really love that connection that we have, that private connection with the email list that I have with you guys. So every day I nurture some kind of point of connection. I stay connected with you guys to see what's going on? What do you need? How can I help? And what challenges are we having? What celebrations do we have to share too?

Every day I continually improve or tweak something. So, there are a lot of moving parts with this. Obviously I do all my own websites. I do most of my own graphics. I write all of my own writing. I don't have a copywriter. And I tweak little things to make them better. Like right now I'm doing a huge overhaul of the Go Diaper Free book and version six is going to be amazing, new cover and everything. And I thought, "Oh, I'll just fix it in a week." It's taken about four months now.

So, I'm continually working on things to make things better for you guys. Some days I do photo-shoots with my kids, which are chaos but fun. I like to do that myself. I've taught myself a little bit about how to use my camera. I have this really cool Leica camera because I can't figure out how to use my Canon.

So we do little shoots and I do little pictures of us in action for Instagram. Every day, I like to mingle with other people in the online space to bring EC to more people. I'm not really good at this because I'm not really an extrovert. I really prefer to just kind of keep to myself and sit at my desk alone and work. But there are a lot of people like, oh, our friends at The Free Birth Society, Emily and team. Being on a podcast like that was super special and also helped to expand EC to put it in front of more people who are doing free birth and unassisted birth.

Anyway, that's just part of behind the scenes, what goes on. We in the online space like to mingle and network with each other, not in order to just make bank and do all this gross slimy internet crap, but to help people realize ways to be, to have easier births, or to be more in tune with their babies. And there's a really special group of you guys out there. I love it.

Other things that I do behind the scenes, I encourage and guide my team. I'm not great at it, but I've been learning. I hand things off. So there's a lot of things that I can do, but shouldn't be doing. What I really love to be doing is producing content to help you guys. So the podcast, the videos, social media posts, all that stuff. That's my forte and my love. I love to be in front of people and presenting, ironically, because I'm not an extrovert, but I love performance and things like that.

So I love to be in front of you, to help you personally. Right. I practice what I preach. I do EC all day with my baby. I am very committed to EC. I live it. We walk it. My husband doesn't do it sometimes, I'm like, "Uh, excuse me, your Andrea's husband. You have to do EC. Go potty your baby." And he's like, "Ugh." He likes the tool of the diaper. But you know, really he's onboard. But I do practice what I preach.

So, one thing about...I've worked so many jobs in my life where I don't believe in what the company does. I'm all in on this one. So, and the other thing I do that might help some of you with businesses out there, people who want to start a business. I remain alive and well on all channels. I automate things as much as possible. I have visual presence on most things.

I'm all about teamwork and helping to help the most people, you guys, our coaches, everybody. Our network of coaches is amazing. And I'm the core writer, speaker, creator and planner. And I'd carry this vision forth to help affect change in the world. So anyway, this whole model of what Go Diaper Free is, is called a passive income business model. It is perfect for moms. So perfect. Especially if you have some leeway and you're pregnant, and you don't really want to go back to work. This model is awesome.

It took me seven months to get ramped up in it. For mine, I launched my first book to 70 people and it was modest, but within a few months I was making about 500 bucks a month and hired a virtual assistant to help me. And then grew and grew and grew from there.

And the reason I'm mentioning this today as well is because, as moms specifically and dads, I know we have a lot of stay-at-home-dads too listening. It's really hard for us to put our dreams aside until our kids are in grade school or until they're leaving the house. I have dreams and I have ambitions beyond being a mom, and my momming is my biggest job. Right?

Other times of the day when I'm not working, I only work three hours a day, Monday through Friday. Other times I mom. I do mom stuff. I meal plan. I've recently just started meal planning and cooking a lot with, oh my gosh, I put her name in the show notes. The show notes will be at godiaperfree.com/57. But her last name is Garcia. She has the most amazing book. I've got to look it up right now. I want to say her name is Joy. It's called Cook Once, Eat All Week. Here we go. It is by Cassy Joy Garcia. Garcia came up with this amazing book. And it's gluten-free affordable meal prep to preserve your time and sanity.

You guys, this book is made for parents like us. I meal plan three days out at a time, I garden, I've recently started studying acting because I promised myself when I turned 40 I would go back to acting, which I did in my twenties. A lot of my home stuff I've automated, streamlined. I order groceries online, but I go pick them up in person. I create little environments for my kids at home so they can be independent, like little reading areas, a little teepee with books, little music areas. Then they have their bedrooms, which are pretty decluttered.

And I work out. So my husband and I have been doing CrossFit since I was one month postpartum and I've been doing physical therapy and pelvic floor repair as well and I've recently downgraded to the easier CrossFit. It's called after burn. But I work out so that I have energy to do all this stuff and run the business and stuff.

And I'm going to talk about this in next week's podcast as well, like how to balance it all. But I do have help. We have a sitter in the morning, our morning nanny. And we have an onboard husband, which is key. I'm going to talk next week also about how to get your husband onboard, if I'm talking to the mamas here, or your partner. How to get them onboard so that everything in your whole family just is more pleasant and happy and peaceable and lovely. And these days we don't know how to do that. So, I'll talk about that next week as well. But that's a little bit about behind the scenes. If I could just pull the curtain back and just show you what goes on day-to-day.

You know I work a lot in Google Drive. I work a lot in Photoshop. I work a lot in GarageBand. I'm a Mac. I'm a Mac lover. I work a lot from this little tablet, which on the YouTube video version of this you can see is my little remarkable tablet where you can write notes and it turns it into text.

I have all these little tricks and fun things. And the reason why I do all of this and I try to get more efficient at my job every day is to help all of you and your babies and the environment by teaching EC to all of you. This work enlivens me. I get to be with my babies, I get to help you. I get to contribute to the world. It's great to feel useful.

So, if you want to create something like Go Diaper Free or Tiny Undies and you want to find balance with your baby, I will be teaching a free masterclass tomorrow, August 28th and Thursday, August 29th, 2019. And in this class you are going to learn about how I do this.

So if we go to MamaWorx, mamaworx.com/class you're going to find the registration form. And on this registration form, it's the MamaWorx's blueprint. My step-by-step blueprint to building a mama run passive income business like Go Diaper Free.

And in this free class, I'm going to teach you seven clear steps and my very special secrets to create a business that allows you to stay at home with your babies as much as you want, contribute to your family's income and make a big impact on the world.

So, that's going to be at mamaworx.com/class. Once you get over there, if you've gotten there after August 28th or 29th, 2019, I will have a place to waitlist for my next class. If you're listening to this later. Anyway, I hope you'll come learn with me. I hope you've enjoyed looking behind the curtain. Whether this resonates with you as in you've got a million ideas and no time because you have a baby, or you have no good single idea, or you have a good idea and you have no traction, because you don't have any focus time.

If you have no idea, but you know you've got something inside of you that's just waiting to burst forth if you could just get some help finding out what that is. And if you have a tiny baby and a home to run, and a relationship to tend to. I want you to come to this free class and get some ideas about how to enliven yourself and to be with your baby and to contribute to the world like I get to do and I'm honored to do with Go Diaper Free. All right. So that's all for today.

So I want to give you a little peek behind how all this happens because you guys ask me all the time, how do you get all this stuff done? How do you do all this? Next week I'm going to tell you about this was the what, and then next week I'm going to tell you about how I balance it all, and hopefully in that I'll give you some tips. But next week specifically is going to bring it back to EC, elimination communication. How does that fit into the picture? How do I balance EC with running home businesses, and having all these babies, and trying to make fresh meals and things like that.

So join me next week for that. And then the week after that we're going to get back into the real nuts and bolts of how to wrap up or pass the baton rather, not wrap up but pass the baton for EC independence. So stick with me for the next few weeks, it's going to be fun.

Anyway, join me in the class tomorrow or Thursday if you can. If you have any questions, please leave a comment over in the show notes, godiaperfree.com/57. Comment and let me know if you have any questions about our operations, about how we do anything in our businesses. We would love to hear your question and answer you there. And also if you have any questions about work-life-baby EC balance, save those for next week and we'll address them then.

All right. Thank you so much for listening. And thank you so much for being the inspiration for what I do. I really am not joking. I'm not exaggerating. I wouldn't do any of this if I didn't get emails from you guys saying, "Andrea, you've totally helped me and my baby connect." That's what I'm here for.

All right. So, we'll see you next week and take care. Have really a great time pottying your baby and also nurturing your own dreams. If you got any right now that you're thinking of, just write them down and save them for that class. All right, take care. I'm Andrea with Go Diaper Free and I'll see you next time.