Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Angie Stenback, co-founder of The WOMB, located in Milton, ON, Canada.
What's your business, and who are your customers?
The WOMB is a place of origin, growth, and love. It is a gathering space and health centre that nurtures and nourishes families to flourish by providing and inspiring community, connection, and whole health care. The WOMB provides health care and education to individuals and families going through the journey of fertility and conceiving, pregnancy, labour and birth, postpartum recovery, parenting, and infant and child health and development.
The WOMB first grew out of a passion for nurturing, loving, and inspiring birthing families with the founding of the Halton Doula Group by myself and Lorri Fleming in 2007. Over 7 years, the group grew and formed a community of health care practitioners that became The WOMB: The World of My Baby.
THE WOMB opened its doors with its flagship practice in Milton, Ontario, in June 2014 and has since expanded to include 4 locations, including Burlington, Vaughan, and Woodstock. Today, THE WOMB provides families a one-stop-shop for:
• Nurturing guidance, health, and education when planning a pregnancy (and conscious creating).
• When searching for a mindful and informed birth and parenting experience
• When seeking family healthcare, personal development, and self-growth.
The WOMB fosters this through a collaborative health team of naturopaths, chiropractors, massage therapists, physiotherapists, osteopathic manual practitioners, and others. Through self-awareness practice, education, yoga and fitness, and supplemental products, clients flourish into parenthood in a non-judgmental, safe, and welcoming environment.
Tell us about yourself
I am a woman inspired by nature, who is passionate about everything I do, and who seeks to inspire the world. It is why I spend most days working alongside an amazing team of 30+ experts and leaders in fertility, pregnancy, birth, and the postnatal period at The WOMB. We work together to create an environment that is healing, loving, and supportive.
It is also why I became a doula. I am inspired by the moment a new mother realizes how courageous and strong she has been during birth – that moment she believes it fully in her every cell and cries, “I did it!” I marvel at the moment a father or partner sees their baby for the first time. That first breath, first cry, and the overwhelming awe fill them. I’ve seen partners buckle to their knees, cry, laugh or have to sit down from awe and joy. It is the most incredible miracle to witness birth – every time – no matter the type of birth a family experiences.
But to be consciously there, I need to work from a place of freedom for myself and endeavor to inspire this in others. That means I support my own and my client’s freedom to choose or make their own decisions, the freedom for my clients to be themselves and not who anyone else “expects” them to be while birthing, and also the freedom of us all to "live in this moment". Even when that means I am up close and personal in a woman’s space, guiding her and her partner through every birth sensation and every breath.
Having birthed five children myself, I know that the most important thing mothers need from their support team is the unwavering belief that “she can do it” – despite the pain, the doubt, fears, anxiety, or what anyone else says. When the intensity increases, mothers need mental and spiritual strength from within - and then someone to fall back on. And that can be in any kind of birth – in a hospital room, at home in a tub, or under the lights of an operating room by cesarean.
If you don’t see me at The WOMB, you will find me driving my kiddos around to hockey, dance, or film school, hiking with my pup through the woods, or tending to my vegetable garden. I am a firecracker, nature-loving and passionate - for myself, my family, and those who have entrusted their care and support to The WOMB through pregnancy, birth, and new parenthood.
What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?
Teaching my team and clients “to fish.” It’s a common exchange between myself and our management team – one that we get very excited about. In everything we do, we endeavor to empower our teammates and clients. For example, in every health program, we aim to perform certain services and teach individuals positive attitudes toward taking control of their health, which will benefit them throughout life. The purpose is well stated in an old Indian proverb. “If you give a man a fish, he will be hungry tomorrow. If you teach a man to fish, he will be richer forever.”
In this age of social media and instant information, growing anxiety is surfacing and hitting parents hard. It’s the reliance on “someone else knows better” or “I don’t know how, so I will ask Google or read about it elsewhere.” This incredibly fast-growing reliance on sources outside of ourselves has led to a loss of “knowingness” and trust in oneself – and the ability to fish. Each time one is hungry, the media is there to provide a fish. But parents then began to lose trust in themselves, their abilities, and even a sense of what they wanted for themselves and their own families.
This has led to increased postpartum anxiety, depression, and other mental health disorders. Robin Wall Kimmerer says it brilliantly in her Indigenous wisdom and book Braiding Sweetgrass: “But I also see that when we put scientific instruments in their hands, they trust their own senses less.”
Thus, The WOMB endeavors to guide each person and parent to learn to listen to their inner voice, hear what it’s saying and learn how to respond to it in every service that we provide. At The WOMB, we have a saying, “Trust yourself. Fall back on us.”
This also rolls over into the work I do with our franchise owners. We work collaboratively as a team of owners sharing resources and our expertise. And as their guide and leader, it is my role to show them – very much in the same way that I used to as a doula – that they have the strength, the vision, and the ability to find solutions, grow and nurture their businesses, lead their teams and have a place for themselves in all of that. I teach them how to fish – so that they can teach others the same.
What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?
One of the hardest things about being a business owner is isolation. Sometimes it feels like you are creating a community and culture for everyone else without doing the same for yourself. Finding time for a community is difficult with heavy workloads and what sometimes feels like the world's weight on my shoulders.
Being naturally an introvert, I am more likely to run to the woods or my garden to restore my energy. But what is surprising is that when I connect with my business coach and/or a business group of like-minded business owners, I feel less alone, more confident in my abilities to lead, and reassured that I am going on the right path - or provided the resources to course correct. As they say in meditation practices, the busier you get, the more you need it. The same goes for a community or network. Otherwise, it can often be lonely at the top.
What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?
1.) Parts of it are going to be intense. The start-up period is an especially intense period of starting a business. You may find every waking moment is consumed with to-dos, creation of systems, recruitment, and spending money on equipment, facilities, garbage bins, and printers. It will feel like you are the eye of a hurricane. Everyone will want you to make decisions, and you will be problem-solving and putting out fires on a daily/hourly basis.
Business is like the ocean, though. It will ebb and flow. Once systems and the right people are in place, you will see your business start to flow, and you will be needed less and less for every decision (if you teach them how to fish!). Don’t get too comfortable, though; there will be intense periods that will balance those flow periods. Keep your head in the game, your mission, vision, and values upfront and center, and remember why you are doing this. You are strong enough to brave that storm, and calm will be restored with your strong and forward-thinking guidance.
2.) You are going to benefit from having a great support network
It helps to have a business coach/doula to guide you and be on your team. My business coach Karen always says, “I’m team Angie so how can I support YOU?” It can be lonely as a leader, so having someone or a network of people to bounce ideas off of, to get directions and bearings when you haven’t been down a certain road before, and someone to help you correct your course when you’ve stumbled. It’s easy to doubt yourself when things aren’t going as planned, so having someone to rely on for support can make the difference between success and closing up shop.
3.) There is no one right way to birth or start a business! Birth can take many forms, from vaginal to cesarean, with epidurals to no pain medication, from home to hospital. There’s no one right way. There’s just your way. It’s the same with business!
Although many common tasks will help a business get off the ground, including creating a business plan and financial projections, how you start and operate your business is up to you! And don’t let anyone tell you that it can’t be done your way. For example, I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been told that the content of an agreement of some kind is “standard,” so I can just go along with it. My response over the years has been, “Well, I’m not standard,” so let’s go through this, and I will let you know what I will agree and not agree to. There has never been a reason not to ask for more benefits at a lower price, from lease to contractor agreements. Or, we have been asked, "why would you open a health clinic in the middle of an industrial park?" For us, it's because there’s no competition, and we've made ourselves a niche destination!
With my business partner, Lorri – we started a heart-centered business and have been successful at it! We have been able to bring together a team of health care providers who collaborate and refer to one another. We work together, create together, and cultivate an open relationship and open-door policy so that we can nip issues in the bud when challenges arise. We’re real with each other and safe with each other. But that’s just us. You do YOU.
Where can people find you and your business?
Website: https://www.thewomb.ca/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theworldofmybaby
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theworldofmybaby/
If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solopreneur that you'd like to share, then email community@subkit.com; we'd love to feature your journey on these pages.
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