Cover Interview: Mompreneur! Tanya Lynn on Mothering Both Business and Babies

Tanya Lynn, Tribal Truth, Business Heroine Magazine

Tanya Lynn is an internationally renowned leader in the women’s empowerment movement. She is the CEO of Tribal Truth, an organization that has impacted thousands of people’s lives and businesses around the world through live and virtual events since 2010.

In her own lifelong search for truth and freedom from China to New York City, Tanya has learned how to walk her talk and teaches the power of vulnerability and authenticity. She is known for being a community builder and empowering leadership in others. In her best-selling book Open Your Heart: How to be a New Generation Feminine Leader, she gives people permission to be real and rise up to their full potential.

Tanya has been facilitating, coaching and leading groups of people since 2006. She trains women in facilitating Sistership Circles and brings women on pilgrimages to sacred places around the world such as Peru and Sedona. She is now the proud mother of her daughter, Kali, and inspires other women leaders to see that it is possible to be a mother and a business owner.

Enjoy her exclusive Business Heroine interview…

BH: How did you end up doing what you do? Tell us your story!

Tanya: I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to have children. I didn’t want to give up my career nor my purpose to “be like my mother” who was a stay-at-home mom. It wasn’t until my friend Karen Solomon came over to my house in June 2013 and told me that her biggest mistake was not being clear when she married her husband so when he didn’t want to have kids, she followed his desire instead of getting clear on her own. She asked me to get off the fence and I made a declaration at that moment with tears in my eyes that I was a yes.

That week I met my mentor, Barry Green, and went on a wild healing ride for 9 months. Toward the end of my healing process, I met Brent on Plenty of Fish. Three months later, we found out I was pregnant.

The best part of the story was that I was producing a theater performance called Rational Lies and my monologue was about overcoming my resistance to motherhood. The night before the performance, I said to the other two women in the show that I thought I could be pregnant. My monologue concluded with me saying to the audience: “I’m ready.” Three days later, I took the pregnancy test. You can watch my performance here:

One of my intentions was to integrate raising my daughter with my work in the world. It’s quite perfect that I had a little girl, Kali, and my mission is to empower women to step into their feminine leadership. The first two weeks after giving birth were difficult, but now I am learning how to ask for the support that I need to manage my business and be fully present with my family.

{photo credit: Josh McMurtrie}

BH: What is your ‘Wake Up Call for the World?’ In other words, what is most of the world asleep about that you would love to wake up?

Tanya: I am a catalyst for the rise of the divine feminine; by empowering women to step into their feminine leadership and lead other women in circles, more and more women are learning how to collaborate with and support one another. A potent and powerful sisterhood is developing on the planet.

And for what? The next seven generations. And here’s the key point: the powerful women of the world need to have children. We are the ones who can raise conscious children. So why are we not? Because we are afraid of being self-sacrificing mothers like our mothers. And I’m here to show that there is another way.

Now that I am a mompreneur, I am inspiring women leaders to see that they can have a child and still do their work in the world. There is no separation really. And it is possible when you learn how to ASK for support and RECEIVE it. I don’t have to do it alone. It takes a tribe to raise a child. I ask my own mother to come and help take care of Kali twice a week and I draw on my sisters to help when needed.

BH: What are the biggest challenges or aspirations your clients come to you with, and what does your work make possible for them?

Tanya: I started Sistership Circle as Tribal Truth’s first offering back in 2010, but didn’t have a curriculum. After publishing my book, Open Your Heart in March 2014, I developed a 12 week curriculum for Sistership Circle and began training women to lead circles around the world. Now we have 3 different levels and facilitators in various US cities and Australia.

I have created a fool-proof model for any woman to lead a circle. But the problem I saw women struggling with was in filling the circle. Most women have a difficult time with enrollment and registration and that’s what I’m really good at from my training in sales on Wall Street and being one of the leaders in the Team Management Leadership program at Landmark Education. Women come to me because they are inspired by the Sistership Circle movement and want to bring the work to their community and I help them not only become a confident facilitator, but also had to be the invitation for women to join them in the circle. This is the most rewarding work as a facilitator; becoming magnetic as a leader so others say YES to you.

BH: We’re curious about your breakthrough moment in business. Looking back, what created the breakthrough?

Tanya: My breakthrough moment in business was in June 2013 when I made a declaration that I was open to motherhood and actually destroyed what I had created with Tribal Truth. It was the toughest decision but I knew I needed to do it. I needed to focus on healing myself so that I could be an embodied leader of my work. I had been missing something: I thought that in order to matter in this world, I needed to be DOING something and building something. If I didn’t have my company, I didn’t exist. I was tangled in the identity of Tribal Truth and I needed to let that go to see that I was worthy simply for BEING. This is the biggest obstacle for most people: owning your self-worth on the deepest core level. To get that we are enough just as we are.

When I became pregnant, the final piece that I had been looking for clicked into place: being the queen. I learned how to fully receive the support I needed. Now I have the capacity to hold the vision for Sistership Circle existing in hundreds of cities around the world and am able to get out of my own way so that other women can step into leadership with me and make the vision a reality. I know how to surrender my ego so it doesn’t become the bottleneck.

BH: What words of wisdom do you have for all the emerging Business Heroines out there who are on the cusp of creating their own purpose-based business?

Tanya: Do your healing work. Be the example. Teach what you know, not from a book, but from your experience. True wisdom comes from experience. We need women to be embodied leadership, which means that they have the visceral experience and teach from that place within, not their heads.

I see too many new business owners pretending that they have everything together when they are a mess behind the scenes. It’s ok to be a student and it’s ok to be vulnerable and make mistakes and be human. Own it. That authenticity will draw more people toward you because they trust that you are real.