Successful Doula on Why Starting a Business Is Like Giving Birth

Latham “Glow Maven” Thomas, founder of Mama Glow, has helped many women accomplish one of the greatest achievements in the world: giving birth to another human being.

Thomas, a mother, and graduate of Columbia University and The Institute for Integrative Nutrition, founded a doula and wellness service providing support to women along their pre- and postnatal journeys to motherhood. Mama Glow offers services including culinary, nutrition management, yoga, and birth coaching.

Some of the women who have enjoyed and benefited from her maternal services include internationally known hot mamas (hello, Alicia Keys, Kelly Rowland, and Christy Turlington Burns) who have managed to juggle childbirth and parenting with running businesses and making power moves of their own.

From Birthing Babies to Birthing Businesses

Thomas has now made yet another boss move, applying similar success tactics and strategies she’s used when helping women give birth, to helping women start businesses.

For many women, particularly in the African American community, starting a business has its own labor pains, transitions, highs, and lows. As a doula, she seeks to help all women make the process progressive, beautiful, and ultimately almost as rewarding as smiling into the face of a new bundle of joy. She details life-changing strategies in her latest book, “Own Your Glow: A Soulful Guide to Luminous Living and Crowning the Queen Within.”

“A lot of the women who have come to me over the years in having their babies were also, in tandem, looking to birth dreams they had,” Thomas says. “I’ve had so many women who are on a global stage in terms of the brands that they built-many of which were created while they were pregnant, and I was giving this support as they were growing these businesses.”

“It’s interesting to see that the hand-holding that I was providing for women to cross the threshold to new motherhood-the same type of hand-holding is really necessary when you’re growing a business or looking to birth the best iteration of yourself and create the life of your dreams,” she says. 

Check out three starter tips from the holistic lifestyle guru on how you can best approach creating your best life or dream business:

Recognize your strength and purpose

When you’re taking on the process, you must be confident and unafraid to make a solid commitment. Thomas recommends asking yourself assessment questions: Who am I? What’s my purpose? What am I doing? What do I really love? What’s my vision?

Pace your growth as you move through the process

Thomas urges women to take their time. “We’re in this culture now, because of social media and smartphones and everything being immediate-accelerated living-we are missing so much. Part of what we’re missing is this idea that what’s available to us is when we’re stirring that pot, being intentional, taking our time, and we’re marveling at the process not just the outcome or the product.”

Deliberately make self-care part of the process

It’s cool to focus on the business side of starting a new enterprise, but Thomas advocates for incorporating practices such as meditation or yoga to keep you centered and allow you to be able to take on whatever the process might throw at you. “It’s about embracing our unique feminine attributes, standing tall on this pedestal that you’ve built for yourself, and reclaiming your body as sacred,” Thomas says. “I really want women to see self-care as a vehicle for doing that. Taking better care of ourselves will also give us the energy to be able to sustain the work that needs to be done so we can be at our very best.”