That time a finance bro told me this community sucked.

I love when loser bros underestimate me. Seriously. I LOVE IT.

Let me tell you a story…

It was almost two years ago. Serene Moms was only about three months old, and if I’m being honest, I still had no idea whether any of this was actually going to work. There wasn’t an app yet. I was teaching yoga, creating on-demand videos, trying different ideas, and honestly just wondering if anyone thought this was something worth paying for. I couldn’t have explained exactly what Serene Moms was back then because I don’t think I fully knew myself yet. I just knew motherhood felt lonely, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that there had to be a better way.

I remember constantly refreshing my then website to see if someone had joined. Every new member felt like this tiny little vote of confidence. Every cancellation felt personal. I don’t think you ever really forget those early days because every decision feels so much heavier when you don’t have proof that your idea deserves to exist.

Around that time, I won the Amber Grant - an exclusive grant for women owned startups.

I remember getting the email and feeling so excited. Not because I suddenly had $10,000, although that certainly helped. It was because someone had read about Serene Moms and decided it was worth betting on. For the first time, someone outside of my own little circle believed this idea might actually become something. I remember feeling like maybe I wasn’t completely crazy after all.

A few weeks later I had a meeting with a man who worked with a startup accelerator.

I was nervous beforehand. Looking back, I laugh because I treated the meeting like I was about to meet someone incredibly important. I remember thinking, “This guy has been around startups. He’s probably going to see things I can’t.” I even remember hoping he’d tell me I was on the right track.

Instead, the conversation went sideways almost immediately.

At one point I proudly mentioned winning the Amber Grant.

He looked at me and said, “Why wouldn’t your husband just give you $10,000?”

I remember staring at him for a second, trying to understand what he meant.

I wasn’t talking about needing money from my husband.

I wasn’t even really talking about the money.

I was talking about what it represented.

To me, that grant meant someone believed in this tiny little idea I had. It meant someone thought it deserved a chance. It felt like we were having two completely different conversations.

After that he spent a while talking about himself. About how successful he was. About how he and his wife had three kids and she was able to stay home. I mostly just listened.

Eventually we got back to Serene Moms. He asked what I charged, and I told him.

Without hesitating, he said I should make it $200 a month.

I remember asking him, “Even with everything that’s included right now?”

He said yes.

Then he said something that honestly made my stomach turn.

He told me that if “losers on welfare” couldn’t afford it, then those weren’t the people I should want in my community anyway.

I don’t remember exactly what I said after that.

I just remember thinking… that’s not who I’m building this for.

The conversation somehow kept getting worse.

He told me community memberships don’t work. He explained that I would never bring in enough new members each month to replace the people who left. He said I would always lose more members than I gained and that communities like mine eventually die because churn catches up to them. He told me I would never consistently bring in ten or more new members every month. He wasn’t saying it as an opinion. He said it like it was a fact.

I remember driving home feeling completely different than I had driving there.

Before the meeting, I had been excited.

Afterward, I was questioning everything.

I remember telling my husband about the conversation that night. I repeated all the reasons this man had given me for why Serene Moms wasn’t going to work. I was waiting for him to agree with at least one of them.

Instead, he basically shrugged and told me not to worry about it. He didn’t think I should join the accelerator, and he definitely didn’t think I should let one person’s opinion change how I felt about what I was building.

A few months later, the same man reached back out.

The first time we met, he had suggested paying around $8,000 to join the accelerator.

This time he asked if I’d like to join for free. Odd decision for someone to make considering he had 0 faith in my idea.

I never answered.

Life moved on.

Serene Moms kept growing. Not dramatically and definitely not overnight. It was just one mom at a time. One event. One conversation. One friendship. Looking back, that’s probably why I didn’t notice how much we were growing while it was happening. Every month just felt like another month of showing up.

Somewhere along the way, the business changed too. The yoga classes became less important. The on-demand videos became less important. The more I listened to the moms instead of trying to build what I thought a wellness business was supposed to look like, the more obvious it became that connection was the product all along. The friendships became everything.

Today, we have more than surpassed those “impossible” milestones that man told us we’d never achieve.

Our members meet each other in person across the country. They’ve gone for coffee together, taken their kids to the park together, celebrated birthdays together, started businesses together, and supported each other through some really difficult seasons of motherhood. We have moms joining from different states and even different countries, all looking for the same thing I was looking for when I started this business almost two years ago.

I don’t really think about that meeting very often anymore. Honestly, I don’t even know what that man is doing these days. But the memory came back to me this week because we just added something new inside our membership: Entrepreneurial Mom Meet Ups.

As I was writing the event description, I realized I wasn’t just creating another meetup. I was creating the kind of room I wish I had walked into two years ago.

Back then, I walked into a room hoping to find mentorship. I thought I was going to have a conversation with someone who would challenge my thinking while still believing that maybe, just maybe, this crazy little idea had potential. Instead, I left feeling like I had to defend why my business deserved to exist before anyone even cared to understand what I was trying to build.

I don’t want another mom building a business to feel like that.

I want her to walk into a room where people are genuinely curious about what she’s building. Where she can celebrate a new customer without feeling like it’s too small. Where she can admit she’s scared without someone telling her all the reasons she’s going to fail. Where people ask questions because they’re interested, not because they’re trying to prove they’re the smartest person in the room. Where motherhood isn’t treated like something she has to overcome in order to be an entrepreneur, but simply part of her story.

Maybe that’s why this memory came back to me after all this time.

Not because I’m still upset about what he said.

Not because I feel like I need to prove him wrong.

But because somewhere over the last two years, without really realizing it, I stopped trying to find the room I was looking for.

I built it instead.

And I think that’s a much better ending than anything that could have happened in that accelerator.