I changed from having successive jobs that weren’t meaningful to me, to being an overworked restaurant entrepreneur who had no time to spend with my hubby and two growing kids. Then I quit it all and pivoted. I now run my own online business working from home as a content creator. I do work I love, creating content that I’m passionate about, while assisting my husband in his own creative pursuits and teaching my children the importance of doing what you love.

Hey there! It’s Nikki, aka Mommy Seed, and I want to officially welcome you to my world of content creator family businesses. I’m talking about YOU and your kid(s) and spouse learning to grow a business online, together, creating content around something you love…and making good money in the process. On this blogs site I share info on how we did it, as well as how I’m balancing business life with mom life, wife life and self-care.

In this “about me” blog post I want to give you some background on who I am and what led me here.

Nikki (Mommy Seed) with daughter (Nadia), son (Nigel) and hubby (Tre – Daddy Seed)

One of my WORST Jobs

I started working jobs as soon as I could get a worker’s permit …which was 13 years old back in my day. From that point I worked job after job for years. I hated working jobs. I thought it was the jobs I chose that I hated, so whenever that unfulfilled feeling set in I’d leave the job and pursue a new one. But what I realized was that what I hated wasn’t the job, it was having to work a job at all.

The thing that gave me fulfillment was always having my own business doing something I loved…and I launched businesses even before the work permit…even before I knew to call myself “entrepreneur.”

My most memorable worst job might just be the time I was Sylvester the Cat. Yup, the Looney Tunes character. It was a temp job I got working in a Warner Bros store in Atlanta. I dressed up in that tuxedoed cat costume for what was to be the first day of a month-long gig.

All I can remember is how hot it was inside that suit and, even more memorable, the group of teens that came up to me laughing, who then decided to spin my costumed head around. All I could hear was them laughing and running down the mall as I tried to spin my head back to the eyes so I could see who they were. Of course, by then, their dirt was done and they were gone… And I was gone too. Gone out of that costume and that job and on to the next.

content creator mom as a girl, outside of bad job at Warner Bros
Me outside of Warner Bros job

Starting a Business as an 8-Year-Old

My parents must’ve recognized that I, from a young age, was not going to be one who succumbs to being a cog in the machine. I’ve never willingly gone along with the crowd. I’m so grateful that they applauded my quirkiness.

My mom has always been supportive and my dad literally celebrates every small accomplishment I make as if I’ve discovered time travel or cured all the worlds problems each time.

That kind of support and elevated praise has always given me a confidence that made me truly feel I could achieve anything. It’s a lesson to us all that a consistent positive focus on the good, vs ignoring the good or condemning for the bad, will help our kids thrive. I’m hoping I’m doing the same for my kids.

Mom creator as a baby
Me with my mom and dad, late 70’s

And so, with that kind of self-assurance, why not start a business…as an 8-year-old.

From speaking with so many other business owners, I found that there seems to be this mutual feeling that when you have a passion for something you don’t just want to simply enjoy it, you want to figure out how you can make a business out of it…because that’s where you find real joy. As a kid, I loved making crispy treats – the rice cereal, butter, marshmallow snack. I would make them with my mom and grandma so much and always loved the taste.

My uncles owned neighborhood grocery stores at the time and, even though I was only about 8 years old, they allowed me to sell squares of my crispy treats in their stores. An entrepreneur was born.

I made those treats into my teen and adult years.

When friends invited me to their parties that required I bring a dish they’d always say, “let me guess, you’re bringing crispy treats.” Yup! Little did I know where those treats would take me in my later adult years. Stay tuned.

Next up, I started reading The Babysitter’s Club series. And, as a budding serial entrepreneur, I couldn’t simply just enjoy the books, I was driven to start a babysitter’s club of my own. By this time I was maybe 10 years old. I gathered my friends together in my house, made a plan to market our babysitting services to the neighborhood, and set out to get clients.

Note, I didn’t actually want to babysit. I just wanted to run the business of babysitting so I taught my friends how to babysit while I planned to run the operations. Either way the business flopped as the neighbors thought the idea was cute but knew better than to leave their kids alone to be watched by other kids.

Rage Against the Machine

I’m not your stereotypical rebel – outwardly disruptive, constantly challenging authority. However, when it comes to the indoctrination of “go to school to learn how to get a job because that job is the only way to take care of yourself in our world so work it until you die whether you like it or not,” I’m definitely a rebel.

I believe in being disruptive with yourself, in your own life. I believe in deciding what you value, and (as long as it doesn’t go against God) honoring it, without conforming for the sake of someone else’s values. For me, when it comes to life satisfaction, what I value is doing what I want to do and making a living from it. That typically takes the form of business ownership.

Mommy Seed

But business ownership takes guts, tenacity, self-motivation, the ability to rise up from repeated failure…and the ability to find money while you grow your business (sometimes that’s a job).

So, I also believe in honoring what other people value as well. That is, if you are happy making a life working a job then more power to you.

There are certainly perks to working a job – consistency in income, health benefits, investment gifts from your employer. There’s even freedom in working a job . That is, the freedom of not having to sacrifice, or think and plan your every step as you must in your own business. I can respect that.

I’ve had LOTS of businesses and I’ve worked TONS of jobs, so I know life on both sides. For me, true satisfaction has ONLY come from business ownership.

working a cubicle job
Working a desk job during college years

But, funny thing, I always say if I have to ever work a job again I will be the absolute best employee ever. Lol. Since I’ve been an employer for many years I truly appreciate the employees who do their job well and respect the company.

I couldn’t have run some of my businesses without my employees. And knowing how much effort I’ve put in as a business owner, I would have a different level of respect for any company I work for if I ever find my self in the position of being an employee.

Can I Quit High School?

I met my now husband in 9th grade. The first day of high school was a Monday. Usually everyone gets new clothes and a new hairdo before the first day of school. I had the clothes but I didn’t bother getting my hair done because my salon was closed on Sunday. Plus my non-conforming self felt a new do on day one wasn’t something I had to do. I came to school late on the first day and so, had to walk in alone, front of class, to give my late slip to the teacher. All eyes were on me.

Tre, my now hubby, told me later he thought I was cute but shoulda gotten my hair done 🤨. This was the first sign of how different we were.

Husband in high school walking the halls
Hubby walking high school halls
Husband in high school class
Hubby in class in high school

But opposites attract. We became immediate, flirtatious, best friends. In fact, we had a clique of friends – about 8 of us in total – who became super close and did everything together and we’re all still friends today.

Our opposite traits came out in our personalities. Tre was outgoing, funny, and touchy-feely. I was only outgoing when I needed to be, funnier than him 🤣 (he’d say that’s a joke), and I liked my personal space.

Couple in bear hug

Our opposite traits also came out in our thinking. Tre’s thinking was more convergent – following a logical sequence of events to solve a problem. Black and white. No filler. Don’t give him the details, just get to the point. Happy, but naturally very glass-half-empty. His lean to pessimism is a work in progress, though (like most pessimists) he likes to say he’s just a realist 😑.

My thinking, more divergent – there can be lots of creative solutions to solve a problem. Just because they say it should be one way doesn’t mean we shouldn’t challenge that. The story is more important than the punchline. The journey more important the destination. Disrupt established norms or else there will be no advancement. Opportunities abound. I push but I’m a great listener. And I’m forever the optimist.

Wife and husband on vacation

He loves to talk sports and politics – two topics I abhor. I like to read/listen to books and learn things through online courses – two things he isn’t naturally drawn to.  

I had no idea in high school that our traits, though so different from one another, would actually be the thing that made us perfectly compatible. Each of his traits a compliment to mine, and vice versa, serving us in our relationship and in business.

Mommy Seed
Wife and husband

While I’m always entrepreneur-ing, he’s always worked a job. I immediately forget names. He remembers names forever. His interest in staying on top of politics gives me just enough info to know what’s going on in the world without drowning in the muck of it. If it weren’t for his sports love I’d miss the vibe of going to the stadium to see a football or baseball game, the atmosphere being more exciting than the actual game for me.

While I’m outgoing when needed, I’m seriously drained afterward. The consummate ambivert. Tre is fueled by his extrovertedness. When I don’t want to be bothered he is always on, always happy to meet folks, always funny. This makes him a great communicator, and great salesperson – all valuable skills when we walk into networking events or when it’s time to seal the deal. He knows everybody, he gets us into places, and he knows the places to get into, because of the connections he naturally makes.

And if it weren’t for his desire to have kids early we may have never had kids (who are now also the loves of my life). Granted, we were 32 years old which was already 7 years into our marriage when we had our first of two kids, and most don’t consider that early. But I wanted to wait until my businesses were on auto-pilot before starting on the kid journey (which I assumed would be in my 40s), not realizing at the time that there is no end to entrepreneurship for a serial entrepreneur. It’s a lifestyle.

On the flip side…

We always have fun and never run out of good conversation because I’m always questioning and discussing the details of life. We date each other constantly, even if just at home on the deck. See how we do at-home dates on the deck.

My optimistic beliefs have allowed us to manifest opportunities that some are too scared to even dream about…and have pulled us out of situations a “realist” would have thought was the end of the road. Because of my push, listening skills and lean toward details I’m a darn good negotiator in contract negotiation meetings. I don’t easily back down on our desires but definitely want harmony so all sides are happy.

Because I soak up books and courses and expert info on a gamut of topics, I have the info needed to grow most any business we desire to start. And if it weren’t for my unbending belief that you should seek to do what you love truly love, he may not be the influencer he is today – sharing his sneaker-culture love with the world.

You can’t connect the dots going forward. You can only connect them looking backward

Steve Jobs

I say, ‘God don’t miss.’

In fact, we now see that we were really destined to be together. In 9th grade, when we stayed on the phone for hours every night talking, we would both say “you know we’re going to be married one day, right?” Yup I know you think that’s something you might say when you are seriously romancing someone, but it wasn’t that. I’m telling you we were serious. I’m talking serious with zero doubt in our minds that it was true. Both of us.

We talk about it to this day how odd that was that we both so whole-heartedly believed we would be married even though we were so young and hadn’t even known each other that long. We weren’t even dating then, just liked each other. We even went through a period in high school where we seriously hated each other…but still had that feeling in the back of our heads that we’d be married. I know it sounds weird. And I know that was God giving us an eye-wink, preparing us.

Anywho, I made it through high school. Even though I was in the accelerated course and got good grades, I hated school every day. I just did not want to be there. It felt confining. It felt like I wasn’t learning anything I was interested in.

I didn’t like being forced to be somewhere at the same time each day, day after day. I wanted to be home schooled. I wanted to see the world. I wanted out of the confinement.

The funny thing is I love learning. I can soak up a good book or educational video for hours on end. But I just did not like the idea of not having any flexibility or freedom over the learning. I didn’t love school until I got to college, and got to choose.

Nevertheless, high school introduced me to great friends and the love of my life. 

The Job is Dead. Long Live the Business.

Tre and I tied the knot at 25, after being in a committed relationship for seven years. During our dating years, we attended different colleges and worked various corporate jobs. Tre was originally pursuing a career in engineering, but eventually switched to sales which turned out to be a perfect fit for him. My bachelor’s degree is in mass communications, however, I took on various jobs – some in the industry and some unrelated – to make ends meet.

Throughout those years, my passion for entrepreneurship remained steadfast and I knew those jobs were just stepping stones on my path towards becoming a full-time entrepreneur. At a point the jobs got to be so much that I came home crying, night after night, because I was so fed up.

Eventually I decided that was it and I had to pivot. Around the age of 27 I threw a retirement party to say to the world that I was done with the traditional workforce and about to dive into entrepreneurship full force. And I’ve been a full-time entrepreneur ever since.

Haters Be Gone: A Guide to Living Life on Mute

I started so many businesses I can’t even remember them all – a cookie company, a lunch delivery service, a freelance writer service, etc. I really wish I’d stuck with that last one. I had some pretty good writing skills and I loved it. At the time, writing as a profession was so uncommon that the world made you feel it wasn’t a secure income path.

When blogging popped up in the early 2000’s it was hard to imagine you could make money off of it. I must’ve had a brain fart – probably too blinded, I mean busy, from working a job – that I let the world’s belief on that slip into my subconscious mind. Typically I would never.

girl smiling in kitchen

Fast forward to now and thousands of bloggers are making six figure incomes, monthly, from their successful blog. Work-at-home moms and stay-at-home moms are writing, sharing and building communities around subjects they love.

So here I am today, just starting my blogging journey with you here, when I could have had a 20 year headstart. This goes to show that if you commit to doing what you love, and believe in it, opportunities will always emerge. Don’t be afraid to start early.

On the flip side, things happen when they are supposed to…

When You’re Laughing All the Way to the Bank, but Crying Yourself to Sleep at Night

While I’ve been the visionary when it comes to business, Tre has always participated in some way, and many times partnered with me.  Around the time we got married we not only bought our own house but started in real estate investing (REI). We bought, rehabbed and sold (or rented) multiple properties. 

I ran the REI business while he worked the job. Besides dealing with sexist contractors, learning the hard way that pipes will burst and ruin your cabinets in freezing temperatures, and that not hiring a good property manager will cost you time and headaches, I loved transforming properties and having happy new homeowners. Of course, the best perk of REI is the big pops of income when you flip a property. I’m sure you’ve seen the HGTV shows. You know how it goes.

We ran that business for about eight years until the 2008 recession hit, leaving us holding the bag (or I should say the mortgage) on a number of properties. I’m sure we could have stuck it out and worked the opposite side of the market but my heart wasn’t in it. By then I knew business alone isn’t enough. Your best business is the one you have a true passion for, or else it just becomes a job.

And if you’ve paid attention since the beginning then you already know what I had a true passion for…

A Soft Landing

Around 2009 I decided to make that thing I loved, and start selling it – crispy treats.

If you have a passion for something look at that as a gift. There’s a reason God blessed you with that love. It’s so you can use it; so you can bring that passion into the world somehow so others can enjoy it through you. Life is meant to be enjoyed, whether you are the giver of joy or the receiver of it.

Mommy Seed

I thought to myself, ‘if I’m so obsessed with these treats there have to be others who are just as obsessed.’

rolling crispy treats at Savage Bros equipment company

I got to work testing recipes from home. To make it feel like my own business I knew I had to put my own spin on it. I knew I wanted the customers to be adults, not kids.  I knew I wanted people to love the treat but really wanted it to rewind them to when they were kids and making the treat with their own mom.

in the kitchen making crispy treats
Making crispy treats in my home with my mom helping on dishes

That meant it couldn’t taste like the commercial crispy treat on the market but had to taste more like the ones you make in your home kitchen. I also don’t eat pork, and marshmallow is made with a pork gelatin. I usually give marshmallows a pass on my palate but if I was going to be making and eating these things all the time I wanted to make sure I felt good about it. So the marshmallow had to be pork free…and finding good-tasting, pork-free marshmallows at the time proved to be impossible. So I had to make my own.

That became our signature: grown-up crispy treats with handmade, pork-free, marshmallow that reminded you of when you were in the kitchen with your mom. We were selling nostalgia.

For months I tested recipes for marshmallows, various rice cereals, various butters, quantities of each, mix-ins, formulas to make it shelf stable, packaging, labels, etc. I met with food scientists to discuss food consistency and stabilizers. I made my friends try the variations and did brainstorming sessions with them to come up with a name.

I eventually settled on the name Mallow Munchies, later changing it to Mallow Crunchies.

Sweet Potato and Sweet Face

By this time Tre and I had our son, Nigel. I called him “sweet potato” because his cute little round, orange-brown face reminded me of one. In 2009 he was 3 years old and for Halloween that year I dressed him as a little chef and took some pictures of him in the costume.

The pictures were so crisp and so fitting to the new business that I used one of the shots on our crispy treats and made Nigel the face of the brand. This worked out perfectly as I began selling at farmers markets with other local businesses. I would have him giving out samples in his little chef’s costume and people ate it up, literally.

In 2010 baby #2 was on the way. Pregnant women in businesses like this don’t typically give themselves much, if any, maternity leave. I was no exception, working at the markets through the end of my 9th month when we were blessed with our baby girl, Nadia.

Back in the home kitchen I recruited the family members – my mom on dishwashing and the hubby on packaging and labeling. I plopped Nadia right in a baby pouch on my chest as I cooked up marshmallow on the stove, careful not to burn her little baby buns.

She had such sweet, chunky cheeks that we started calling her “sweet face,” and she became the face on our bags of handmade marshmallow.

Nigel on our Mallow Crunchies crispy treats and Nadia on our Mallow Softies marshmallows. It was a family affair and that was the best part. I loved that. If I could do this all day, everyday – eat my favorite treat, work with my family AND make money, this was the dream.

Nadia holding a Mallow Crunchie

Making Lemonade (marshmallow) out of Lemons (Customer Feedback)

Farmers markets are an amazing test ground for businesses. Customer service is right on the spot. Feedback from customers at the markets helped me adjust the formula, testing new add-ins with them helped me develop new products. Buyers and chefs who frequent the markets took to the product and requested it in their stores and restaurants.

To sell in stores we needed to move into a commercial kitchen and, after testing out a few, I settled on my first shop in 2012. It was in a retail shopping center that didn’t have a lot of foot traffic. This was perfect because it allowed me to make our product for farmers markets and for wholesale to local stores without the need to hire a bunch of workers to handle retail traffic coming into our shop.

So I turned it into a dessert cafe, The Mallow Bar, with the underlying goal of it being our production kitchen. In fact, we were the first ever crispy treat cafe in the country.

In my first cafe

Action… Lights, Camera, Action…Then More Action

All that hard work and early testing paid off because our crispy treats became super popular. They were in high demand with even more stores calling and more farmers markets requesting us. We also started getting lots of media attention – winning awards, newspaper articles, magazine articles, online publications, news segments.

The family and I were making treats on local TV, and I was invited to be on national TV to compete on a food game show on Lifetime.

I was a busy mom. My daily routine included the hubby or me dropping the kids off at school, then he’d head to work and I would head to my kitchen. I’d make dozens of batches of treats for stores and was working seven farmers markets every week!

The kids were with me in the shop after school, the hubby after work, and (thank God) mom stuck with me washing dishes in the shop during the day. Part of my routine, late when I left the cafe, was grocery shopping or ordering supplies, creating invoices, paying bills, filling out paperwork, or popping into my kids’ sports games. My to-do list was growing like crazy.

I was a hard working mother, and a new mom, but at the end of the day I didn’t have much time for my two young kids, no free time for myself and not much quality time with the hubby.

Mommy Seed

The hubby’s personal life was getting zapped too. Since so much of my work schedule – morning and night – was filled with running the business, he had to bear much of the load of taking care of the home front, meal planning and cleaning the house.

We went a long time living like this and I knew the only possible way we were to get back to somewhat of a normal life, maintain our mental health, and grow the business, was by getting some help.

Good News Walked through the Cafe Door

In spite of all the hard work, I didn’t feel like I could afford to hire help. I couldn’t see the forest for the trees. This is a big mistake many entrepreneurs make because hiring good help will multiply your income more than you can alone. Lucky for me, God was looking out and sent me someone who was excited about my company and willing to work as an unpaid intern to learn the ropes.

For the first time I was able to have some regular work hours and some life balance. She was so great that I quickly hired her as my first employee. I saw the amazing value in having an employee and added even more on to our team. The intern became the manager of the team, and we were able to 10x our production.

Specialty food stores like Whole Foods Markets and Harris Teeter wanted my product in dozens of stores at once causing us to outgrow our little cafe/production kitchen. It was time to expand. My next iteration of The Mallow Bar was in an industrial park, giving us tons of production space, offices,  and even a loading dock. We were primed for major expansion.

The Mallow Bar Production House

Crossroad Conundrum: Direct Route or Scenic Route?

The next few years 2014-2016 was a flurry of business activity. I found that because we were growing fast I was always working and it wasn’t the work I wanted to do. It wasn’t the freedom I desired. Whenever you feel like this it’s important to tap into why you started this in the first place.

What’s the reason for it all. My reason for running my businesses has always been to have a freedom over the work I do and freedom over my time. That was slipping through my hands.

Granted I had wonderful employees handling the production of the products and some even handling some farmers markets. But I was handling everything else: bookkeeping, legal stuff, payroll, marketing, sales, everything…nothing I got into business to do. And this was around the clock.

I wasn’t spending time with my family like I wanted. They would be with me at the production kitchen a lot but I wasn’t mentally there with them.

It just wasn’t the way I wanted to own business, or the fun, I’d hoped for. That may sound immature but, call me crazy, I believe your own business should be fun for you. Hey, some folks think bookkeeping is fun. I’m just not those people.

Then I was selected for an opportunity to open The Mallow Bar as a restaurant in a new casino. The prospect of it was exciting. I envisioned expanding the Mallow brand worldwide, putting people (other than me) in place to run each location.

This could be the chance to run operations of my business the way I’d always dreamed – put the Mallow brands on the map with fun retail locations, each run like franchises that I oversee, while finally having time for my family.

But remember, I was already spinning from the workload and responsibilities of the wholesale and retail business I already had. So I said to myself if the casino venture didn’t pan out I would shut it all down – both businesses. Why go back to the stress of the first if it wasn’t feeding my passion.

With the hubby by my side we spent a year in meetings to develop the new restaurant – meetings with architects, investors, food suppliers, casino owners, licensing people, interviewing, hiring and training new staff. This was all while the production kitchen was still pumping out product. It was all an adrenaline rush but more mentally, physically and financially demanding than anything I’d ever experienced.

(Very) long story short, we got the restaurant opened. Tre quit his job to come work with me because this was a full-time job and then some. The location was beautiful and our Mallow Crunchies were the top seller. People loved them.

My restaurant

But I soon found out what rich broke looks like.

We were invited to the hot events and concerts in town as VIP guests, we were gifted free meals by fellow restauranteurs, given access to exclusive clubs, and were commonly doing six figure monthly sales in the restaurant. However, our expenses absorbed that income like a sponge.

So after a year of planning, all of our money, many sleepless nights, and having to hire my mother to be a nanny to our kids because the hubby and I were working 24/7 barely ever seeing them, we soon had to shut down the restaurant. A year later, I shut down the original production kitchen too, as I’d promised myself.

A Whole New (Content Creator) World

When we were nearing the closure of the casino restaurant I decided to start a podcast. Because sure, I had time for that. On the podcast, Biz Underdog to Topdog, which you can still find on podcast platforms, the hubby and I interviewed successful entrepreneurs to hear how they rose to success.

The first guest was the famed restauranteur Guy Fieri who we knew because he also had a restaurant in the casino (and opened a second one in the same space I occupied there).

I wanted to hear from the interviewees how they were fueling their soul with their business. Yes they were working hard, but were they enjoying life? Were they making the impact that they desired? Was the juice worth the squeeze?

For some, the answer felt like a no. For others, yes.

Tre and I on our podcast

But there was a group of these owners we interviewed who fascinated me. They seemed to keep more money, earn the money quicker, and had time for things like working out, meditating, and just life fun. Lots of the owners in this group were also paying it forward by helping up-and-comers do the same.

The commonality among all of them was that they owned online businesses.

They were educators, fellow podcasters, email marketers, content creators, social media marketers, bloggers, affiliate marketers. They seemed to be fulfilled in their work and getting paid handsomely for it – some of them even posting their monthly income online.

I rarely heard brick-and-mortar owners talking about meditating or working out or vacations. This felt like a secret society that I had just discovered.

A New (Online business) Chapter

Could I actually have everything I currently desired in a new business, online – working from home near my family, good income, positive impact on aspiring entrepreneurs, ability to sharpen my writing skills, and simply some time to think? As usual, God stepped in and said, “hold my halo.”

Tre didn’t want to keep going with the podcast, my brick-and-mortar businesses were in the process of shutting down, and I was unsure of what was next for me. But I tuned in to my kids. Nigel was 10 years old and, like most kids, really into video games. He’d come to us every other minute asking us to buy him a game. A bit fed up with that I said, ‘You know what? You should start a business so you can buy your own games.’ He said, “You know what? I like that idea!” His six-year-old sister said, “Me too!”

So, after many days of planning, I helped them launch Loose Seeds, which was a company selling motivational merchandise online through print-on-demand, dropshipping. After dealing with inventory for so long I knew I didn’t want to house any merchandise myself. An online model was perfect.

Nigel, Nadia and I went into business as partners, with the hubby cheerleading us along. I was able to teach them the ins and outs of business, work from home and, bonus, work with my family! Won’t he do it.

The kids were selling online as well as taking their ipad to local events to sell there too. We started exploring slime and created DIY slime kits that they sold door-to-door, as well as online. We made thousands of dollars in a few months with that product. You can get the ebook breakdown of exactly how we did it here.

Start a “Slime Kit Business” ebook

They became kid educators at local events, conducting slime demos and giving STEAM (science, tech, engineering, arts, math) workshops, they went to business conferences and interviewed business experts.

I wanted the world to know that there were kids behind this business brand and so we launched a YouTube channel so potential customers could get to know them. We started making videos with the two of them doing funny things together that they were interested in like reviewing candy, making slime, etc. We fell in love with YouTube. It was so fun making the videos and we had a flood of ideas.

Soon, building the YouTube business became the priority, taking over the merchandise business. And that YouTube business transitioned into a broader content creating business, across various platforms. Tre saw our commitment and joined in too. We launched multiple communities, each focusing on our specific area of interest, under the Loose Seeds umbrella. We were all now full-on content creators.

Loose Seeds YouTube channel artwork

My and the kids’ skills grew into learning how to act on camera and how to direct and produce behind camera. We all wrote scripts, we were the videographer, we became proficient in editing, we even created a number of online courses teaching other kids, and we licensed our videos to other platforms creating additional revenue streams for the business.

The kids have both become skilled in dozens of apps and software from Adobe Premier Pro to Frame.io and Final Draft. They’ve mastered more skills since they were 6 and 10 years old than most teens and young adults.

We’ve continued to add various content creation skills to our family business portfolio. Nigel Seed became a livestream gamer, proficient in all the backend tech that required. Nadia Seed became a world builder in Roblox. Daddy Seed became a sneaker influencer and starred in a TV pilot (we’re waiting to see if it gets picked up). And, in addition to managing the family business, I added a podcast – In the Company of My Kids – the namesake of this blog.

Artwork for "In the Company of My Kids" podcast

Out of all the businesses I’ve grown, this content creation business is by far my favorite at this point in my life. I’m able to work in my own business, in my own space, on my own schedule, with my family, entertaining and inspiring others.

My intention is to inspire you, through this blog, to do the same if it’s your desire. Working moms who might be in a job you don’t like or a business you don’t like. But to change it feels so overwhelming. You feel like you’re in so deep that there’s no changing it. Plus you don’t want your family going down that same road. I’m here to tell you that this is your life. Do what it takes to make yourself happy in the work you do every day.

Grab a piece of this digital economy and be the catalyst for your family to have freedom and fun WITH good finances. I’m here to help you figure out the best ways to do that.

Mommy Seed

So hang out with me here for 1. tips to grow a content creator business as a family, 2. mom life adventures, 3. wife life adventures, and 4. self care (because we’re going to need some pampering after those first three).

Thanks for reading my story.

Let’s keep building online businesses, one family at a time.

Nikki (Mommy Seed)