So as you can hear from my voice, I have been feeling a little bit under the weather. I finally caught what seems to be traveling all across the country, and it has been quite frankly awful.
When Life Throws You a Curveball: Dealing with Illness
But what started with sinus pressure and headaches, which I am very used to due to the fact that I have a severe allergy, ironically enough to herbicides and pesticides at the golf course. Definitely a job hazard. It was compounded with a fever that lasted for days and then a cough that made me sound like I’ve been a smoker for 30 years.
It’s a next level virus, and it definitely kicked my you know what. And you know it’s bad when I had to have my girls leave my house to go stay with my parents and Nick for 2 nights. That was literally the first time I had ever been away from my baby, and only the second time I’ve actually been away from my toddler in almost 3 years. But I couldn’t risk anyone in the family getting this virus.
From what I had been told from my friends who did have it, like it ran through their homes. It’s extremely contagious. And I didn’t want my dad to catch it. He just got back to Florida. He just had a second heart surgery, and I just couldn’t risk it.
And honestly, I didn’t want the baby getting it either. Because ain’t nobody trying to have a infant have a strong virus like this. Like, it’s just awful.
Now, I always like taking challenges that I face and using them as learning lessons. So let’s break it down. First of all, like how to combat this awful virus, what to do if you’re a nursing mom. So that’s obviously a very niche specific topic.
And it may not apply to you, but it could apply to someone that you love. And as always, from the perspective of a business owner. So first of all, all the links to the products I used will be in the show notes.
I don’t want to dive into them too, too deeply in this podcast episode in itself because let’s be real, you’re listening to this, you’re not necessarily taking notes.
And you know, I’m as crunchy as it gets. So I was handling this as holistically as possible. Now my husband, not so much like he was ready to throw in the towel and drag me to the walk in clinic, but I stayed the course.
Because this is 100% a virus and at the end of the day, like it or not, like you have to let a virus run its course. There’s no drug or antibiotic that is going to fix that. And at one point,
I did get so desperate that I called in an IV concierge to come in and give me some fluids, high dose vitamin d shot, vitamin c, methylated b vitamins, glutathione, zinc.
And I’m very grateful that I did that because my supply, my milk supply has definitely taken a major dip.
And it would probably almost be nonexistent, honestly, if I hadn’t gotten those extra fluids on Sunday like I did. And I’m fully aware that that luxury, because that’s what it is, it is a luxury item to have an IV concierge come into your home, it’s not always an option for many.
And, yes, it does come with a major price tag. But for me, it’s a necessity, obviously, with my steadfastness towards breastfeeding. Like, you know, I’m only 5 and a half months in. Like, I went almost not almost. I did. I went 2 years with my toddler.
So I’m not giving that up anytime soon. And not only that, but I needed to get back on my feet and get back to teaching so I wouldn’t be missing out on golf lessons this week. At the end of the day, I’m at the mercy of my lesson book. And if I’m not teaching, I’m not making money.
And it’s a seasonal job, so you have to make hay when you can. And right now, January, February, March is when you are hustling hard teaching golf.
Homeopathic and Natural Remedies
- Elderberry
- High-dose Vitamin C
- Cold and flu detox bath
- Onion remedies
- Nebulizer with saline solution
- Liquid zinc and methylated B vitamins
But there were some products that I did use to support me throughout the whole weekend, and they are the ones that I am making sure that I share with you.
These are products that my family uses regularly whenever we feel something coming on, and I definitely recommend that you get them in your medicine cabinet so you are prepared when and if this awful virus hits your house.
Now a few musts in my homeopathic arsenal are
Eelderberry high dose vitamin C. I personally take a 1,000 milligrams, sick or not, of a powdered vitamin c every single day.
I have a cold flu detox bath that has all kinds of different supplements in it, but specifically to help out with the cold and flu, ginger and turmeric.
You can I know this isn’t always a fan favorite because it’s fine if you were like me and you had no sense of smell, but if your, you know, spouse is not sick, it might push them out of the room?
But I put onions on the bottom of my feet, and I wrap them in saran wrap, and I put socks over them overnight. And I also will cut an onion in half, and I’ll put it in a bowl because onions are known to absorb germs in the air. So that’s a cool little trick. I use just a, you know, plain old white onion. I have a nebulizer with saline solution on hand.
We use that all the time. I mean, yes, do we use a neti pot? For sure. But I find that if you use a neti pot too often, it can actually make your nasal passage more inflamed. So I definitely neti pot, but that’s not something you wanna be doing every few hours.
Whereas a nebulizer is definitely like just nicer on your nasal passage. You know, it’s it’s a smooth little mist, if you will. Liquid zinc, methylated b vitamins, I mean, I take those every single day. And of course, rest is always best.
I do track all of my rest and recovery with my WHOOP. I’ve been wearing it for years. And when this all hit me on Saturday afternoon, the following morning, I woke up to what is infamously known as the 1% club on WHOOP.
Typically, that kind of recovery comes from a massive hangover. Whereas, like, this was not from having a fun night like and having something to show for it. You know what I mean? This was literally like you’re just getting your butt kicked by a yucky virus.
And I had to make sure I got those recovery numbers up because if you’re not recovering properly, you don’t have the ability to fight off the virus, and it’s just gonna keep kicking your butt day in and day out. And I love having something tangible to improve.
And that’s why the WHOOP is absolutely fantastic.
So essentially, what I did on Sunday, you know, I woke up at 1% because I was up every hour on the hour with a fever. I typically my body temperature typically runs at like a 97.9. It’s on the lower scale. And that night I was up to like 101.7. So like a normal person that would be literally like, almost 103 degrees temperature. So I was up every hour I was uncomfortable. I was miserable.
I was sweating. I was all the things. Next day on Sunday, I was making sure that I was resting. So I took 2 separate 3 hour naps, and my recovery went from 1% to 12, just like that. Now the next day, I had a much better recovery at 54%, but then it dipped again. So this virus definitely comes in waves. My fever came and went. My recovery came and went.
But, you know, regardless, you have to stay hydrated, and you must rest. And when I finally did have the energy to, like, rest, but also kinda have some finally, like, some me time, like, it sucked not being with my kids to be real, but like, I don’t watch or read anymore. Hashtag mom life.
Like if I’m not with my kids, I’m working. So the whole idea of like finishing a show or watching like some trash TV. It’s just never an option. So I actually binge watch the entire Netflix series called The Perfect Couple, which I believe is based off of a novel. And I’d never read the book, but I did love this series.
It reminded me a whole lot of the White Lotus show, just in the way that it was filmed. And I loved all of the characters names in the show, the scenery, the outfits, the whole thing. It was it was pretty good, I have to say.
And I think it was only like 6 episodes, you can definitely binge it in one day. I also watched, finally, It Ends With Us. Now that is a book that I read years ago before Babies. And I can definitely say that I enjoyed the movie more than the book. And I was enticed to watch it, especially with all the drama going on between the two main characters in the movie, Justin Baladoni and Blake Lively.
Like, that’s a whole another that’s a whole another spin off podcast episode about those 2. But there’s a lot of drama between those 2 right now. And I was just curious to see if you could, like, feel it by watching the movie, and at times, you definitely could.
I will say that the movie versus the book definitely it definitely had a stronger message of domestic violence and women empowerment, you know, of, you know, overcoming that and ending the cycle with your family.
Like, that messaging came through clearer through the movie screen and the acting than it did between the pages of the raunchy smut book. I’m just saying, like, that message is obviously an important one. And I really think that Colleen Hoover should be counting her blessings that they made this movie. Obviously, she got paid in dividends.
But not only that, like, whatever she was trying to convey came through so much better on the screen versus the pages of her book. But, overall, side note, that’s like squirrel brain going off there on on on my Netflix takes.
The Nursing Mom Challenge: Protecting and Supporting Milk Supply
But this virus was super weird. Like I said, it had ebbs and flows with my recovery. My fever was in and out. My milk. Okay. So like, whenever you’re fighting a virus, you can tell right away because your milk becomes this light blue translucent color, like that’s your antibodies a 100% at work.
And as soon as my temperature broke, meaning that like, okay, virus is gone, like, we’re done fighting. Let’s try to get back to normal and heal. My milk went back to its normal creamy, fatty color. Now does it have the quantity that it usually has? No. Definitely not, and we’re working on that. So speaking of milk. Right?
Like, let’s just kinda harp on this for a little bit. You know, breastfeeding is a wild journey, and I just wanna take this little sidebar in this episode for all of my soon to be moms or new moms, or if you know someone who is about to become a new mom.
Because breastfeeding is by far the most challenging hurdle that moms encounter when they become a new mom. The learning curve is absolutely insane. And I breastfed my daughter for, like I said, you know, 2 years. She literally stopped, like, right at her second birthday.
I mean, it also helped that I was pregnant. So, like, my milk was I wanted to wean her. My milk was disappearing. So it was just kinda like perfect timing in that regard.
2 years, like, is good. You know, time to move on, kid. And obviously, this new baby is exclusively breastfed as well. But, probably, I definitely started to feel it on Sunday. You know, I was trying to stay regular with pumping. That is so important. Even if your supply is dipping, like, you you wanna keep on that schedule. So for me, it’s typically every 3 to 4 hours.
And even if you’re not getting the same output that you normally do, like, you have to do it. You have to train your body. Like, you don’t want your body thinking that it doesn’t need to be producing milk because it does, obviously.
And so because I was pumping and I wasn’t with the baby, my body is not used to that. You know? My body is used to pumping once, maybe twice a day, 5 days a week. You know? Other than that, she’s nursed.
And when a baby nurses, it’s totally different versus pumping because whatever position you happen to have them in, on how they’re moving their mouth and their tongue around, like, all the things, like, they’re pulling from your breast differently with each suck, whereas the freaking pump is just that same monotonous. You know, God bless all those moms who exclusively pump.
I don’t know how they do it. It is not for the faint of heart. Bless them, like, seriously. So because I was pumping and not nursing, I started to feel a lump developing. And I really started to panic because, you know, the baby wasn’t here to nurse. I knew I was still very contagious, and I had a fever. Right? So, like, now I’m worried. I’m like, okay.
Is the fever from the virus, or am I developing mastitis? Like and the fact of the matter is I’ve had mastitis before, so I knew, you know, at the time, like, it wasn’t mastitis because I didn’t have other symptoms besides a fever, but the fever was for me being sick.
But, like, that clogged duct could have easily turned into mastitis, and that goes south real fast. And so I finally, like, threw up the white flag on gosh. What was that? Tuesday. Tuesday. Yeah. And I called my mom, and I was like, you gotta bring the baby over. And wouldn’t you know, like, as soon as I nursed her, it was gone.
Like, I was being tortured by this thing for 2 days and, like, literally weren’t one nursing session, and it was gone. And then not only that, but, like, my milk started to change. Like, my fever broke. It became that, you know, nice consistency again.
But, you know, it’s this was it was hard. And so I just want to let all moms know, like, you’re not gonna be the only one that has gone through this. I stand with you in solidarity.
My biggest recommendation is you have to stay hydrated, and water is not enough.
Key Practices for Sustaining Milk Supply:
- Stay on a Regular Pumping Schedule: Pumping every 3-4 hours even if the output is low maintains your body’s milk production rhythm.
- Hydrate with Electrolytes: Water alone isn’t enough. Electrolytes are essential for milk production.
- Include Protein in Your Diet: My go-to was paleo valley chocolate bone broth, which provided protein and hydration.
- Nurse Frequently If Possible: Nursing helps clear any clogged ducts and restores milk consistency faster than pumping.
You have to have electrolytes. You know, I was drinking my paleo valley electrolytes. I still am, finding even if you don’t have an appetite, find ways to have liquids that are also protein. So I have been relying so heavily on my paleo valley, once again, chocolate bone broth because at least I’m getting protein and it’s a hydration.
It’s, you know, more than just water. That is absolutely key in maintaining your supply, especially if you’re renting all of your meals, aka throwing them up, like I was all weekend. So staying on a regular pumping schedule regardless of how you’re feeling and how much you’re outputting, like, making sure you stick to that, stay hydrated with proper electrolytes, try to get in as much protein as needed, and then, obviously, you wanna be resting.
You know, your body is gonna pull the nutrients from you, your organs, your bones, and it’s also gonna give your baby the antibodies that you’re creating.
Yes. Your milk’s gonna look funky. No doubt. But it doesn’t mean that it’s not healthy for your baby. It certainly is. So as long as you’re keeping those electrolytes in and, you know, you are trying to get protein whichever way you can, like, it’ll come back, you know.
And, obviously, having a supply of frozen milk in these situations is huge. Because I know what a mind f it’s gonna feel like, because I’ve experienced this where, like, you see your frozen stash just diminishing, and then all of a sudden you’re not producing enough milk.
You know, you’re like, oh my gosh. This is a ticking time bomb. Like, what am I gonna do? And I just encourage you to keep moving forward. It’s gonna come back. You just gotta stay hydrated and stick to your schedule.
And, of course, if the opportunity presents itself, I highly recommend that you’re nursing your baby. You know, obviously, wash your hands, try not to breathe in their face, but nurse, nurse, nurse, nurse, nurse. So that is my recommendation with that.
Balancing Business and Illness
Now that we’ve gotten through all of my remedies and discussed bodily functions, let’s talk about your business while you’re sick.
So I mentioned that I lost out on a lot of golf lessons earlier in the week. And let me put in perspective for you how brutal the service industry is. Okay? At the end of the day, teaching golf, it’s a service industry, and it is very much sales.
And it’s kinda like just like when you would show up on social media for, say, like, your direct sales company or affiliate marketing business. You know, if you’re not showing up, chances are you’re not making sales. Right? And I had to call into work on Monday. Monday is a very big teaching day for me, and that was a freaking $700 loss.
Now imagine you’re in a position where your business is solely on social media and you do not have multiple streams of income. Now I don’t fall into that camp. A, I have multiple streams of income. B, I don’t solely rely on social media anymore. Okay?
Years ago, for sure, when I was in direct sales solely. Yeah. And I want you to think about what it feels like to be so sick that you can literally barely pick up your phone to check your messages. K? Let alone scroll social media or heck, like, freaking engage with people in the DMs.
Now perhaps your situation isn’t an an illness like mine was. Okay? But your home has been ravaged by the fires in California. And I’m gonna give you a very wild story that if you’re a millennial, you’re actually gonna be like, what?
You’re gonna relate to this. But of Heidi and Spencer Pratt so chances are, you know who they are, but let’s just kinda recap in case you don’t. I mean, I’m sure if you’re a millennial and we’re friends, like, we’re like minded, and you probably watched the same trashy TV that I did 20 years ago.
But Heidi and Spencer, they got their notoriety from the MTV show The Hills. So Heidi was Lauren Conrad’s roommate, and then Spencer was portrayed as the antagonist best friend of Lauren’s on again off again boyfriend, Brody Jenner. Yes.
That is, if you really wanna connect the the dots, that is the infamous Jenner, who used to be Bruce Jenner’s son, the artist formerly known as Bruce Jenner. So a k a now Caitlyn Jenner. Spencer and Heidi, they ended up dating on the show, and then they ended up getting married. And they’ve been together for nearly 20 years.
They were like the couple that you love to hate, especially because of Spencer. Like, he was outspoken. He still is. You either loved him or hate him.
And he learned how to monetize that that role. And they have their own podcast, and it’s all about the underbelly world of reality TV and its impact on pop culture. It certainly has a large impact.
And they have both, especially Spencer, have been monetizing on social media ever since too. He’s almost created this cult like following about his crystals. Now listen, I’m a Christ follower. I’ve never been into the whole thing. Like, I think it’s woo woo.
I think it’s weird, all the things. But like, that’s his jam. And he has his people. And he talks all about his crystals and this and that, all the things. And he he does have a large following, especially on TikTok.
But, sadly, this past week, Heidi and Spencer and their 2 boys, they have 2 sons, they lost their entire home located in the Pacific Palisades fires. So you can say what you want about, well, these people have money, like, what you know, and and listen. I get it.
You know, it it is a very triggering topic. I have a very good friend of mine who couple years ago when they had those fires in Colorado, like, she lost her whole home, and she straight up told me this week, like, it’s very triggering for her to be on social media and see all of this, and hearing all of mainstream media just only talking about these celebrities and not talking about, like, regular people who lost their homes.
But at the end of the day, like, it’s still very traumatic no matter how much money you have. And while it may be easier for some people to rebuild, at the end of the day, like, people still lost animals. People still lost heirlooms. They still they still lost a lot, and they went through something that, god willing, most of us won’t ever go through.
And I promise there’s, like, a happy ending to this. But rather than sitting back, right, and doing nothing and, like, crying, woe is me, Spencer, he took things into his own hands.
So I’m telling you, you gotta hear this. It’s freaking unbelievable. Now I truly believe that people always like to root for an underdog. And especially in recent times, like, we find ourselves cheering for the outspoken ones, like going against the grain, speaking up against the machine. Right?
And Spencer has been on TikTok calling out the California government on their lack of funding and protection of its citizens, like yada yada yada. Right? All the things that, you know, you and I probably feel too.
But not only that, like, he hasn’t been too proud to ask for help. Now his account, it was large before all this, but he has grown it now to over 1,000,000 on TikTok.
Now TikTok, when you have a large following that, you have the ability to monetize the platform differently, and you can make money by going live or producing content that’s over a minute. He also this is the part that’s so wild to me. He asked his fans to purchase his wife Heidi’s album on iTunes. Now mind you, this album came out in 2010, okay? 15 years ago.
But as of January 12th, her song Superficial is freaking number 1 on the iTunes charts. Now as you may or may not know, like, artists make money off of the amount of downloads and plays and all that that they get on these, music platforms, you know, iTunes, Spotify, yada yada yada. Like, that is freaking wild. And it’s the power of social media.
And I think it’s a freaking superpower to be able to think outside the box on how to earn an income when your back is up against the wall. And seriously, kudos to Spencer for doing this and like thinking this way, like talk about an entrepreneur.
Now while my situation isn’t as extreme as Heidi and Spencer’s, or quite frankly, the rest of the families impacted by these fires in LA, I do think that an illness is something more of us are gonna face than, say, a fire. Right? Illness is inevitable.
And yes, it can affect your business significantly if you’re not prepared. You know, I didn’t wanna talk to the camera for days, which is saying a lot because if you know, you know, I love to talk when I have something to say.
But whenever I feel this down, like, I’m grateful that I no longer have to micromanage an entire group. Like, seriously, imagine if you were days from a big goal and you had to muster up enough strength to drag yourself out of bed to host a freaking team call that maybe, like, 2 people have showed up for.
Because that’s the reality of direct sales. Now you use that tiny bit of energy you have left after that call. That’s a waste of your time to respond to messages and answer questions that quite frankly can and should be answered through Google or a simple FAQ. Like just waste of time. There’s so many things in direct sales. Oh, my gosh.
And, like, imagine you’re trying to send a follow-up, but like, you’re throwing up. You’re throwing up while sending up your follow ups like, and then you get scared that you’re gonna miss the goal by a long shot because you haven’t been able to show up on social media, right?
And let alone be a product of the product and doing the workout or doing your skincare routine, right? Like, heaven forbid, this illness attacks you at the end of the month, right? Which is when most direct sale companies are requiring you to hit certain benchmarks, right?
The Power of User Generated Content
And as I laid in bed the last 3 days, literally a shell of myself, a pop person, I was leaning on my team and my support system in business and in life to help me get through whatever this was that plagued our household.
I was reminded about the power of user generated content multiple times and the passive income that it absolutely creates. You know, my Amazon commissions don’t depend on me showing up on social media. I set it and forget it, right?
I’ve created the content, it sits there, people watch the video, and I get a commission off of the products that they’re purchasing from me. You know, the content that I tweak and I edit in the tiny pockets of time that I’m quasi feeling decent. They’re not going up on my social media anyway.
So I can be, you know, editing it be done and then go back to napping in 5 minutes. The deadlines that I do have, I reached out to brands and brands were very, you know, very understanding. Like they were like, oh, my gosh, like, please feel better soon.
Like, just let me know. Like, when do you think you could have these in? Like, you know, they were wishing me well and saying, listen, don’t worry. Like, we understand, like, you know, get to us with the content delivery when you can.
Plus, I thought this was pretty funny. Like, while I was sick, I was actually able to use multiple products that I received as UGC jobs to help me feel better. From the saline mist to the shower steamers, like talk about a job paying off in dividends.
Now this is the freedom that comes from your income sources and adapting to life’s happenings and healing instead of hustling through them like most people do through direct sales and affiliate marketing. It’s different y’all, I’m telling you.
And I know you needed this reminder today too, whether it was hearing about the Cinderella story of Heidi and Spencer situation or my regular day to day story, you know, my story of this the sickness that ran through our house.
So the call to action for you is to keep this negative info for when you need to hear my voice reminding you that you should have started sooner. Like, don’t wait. Like, you need to be doing this now.
UGC – YoU Get Cash Course
Remember, people spend 100 of 1,000 of dollars on marketing ads, when the reality is they just need to show up as themselves and for themselves. When they do that, legit anything is possible my friend.
And I encourage you to take advantage of my You Get Cash workshop and learn all about user generated content. If you didn’t know it is now housed on my website.
So you’re going to have lifetime access to it, you can go at your own pace. I’m telling you, you won’t regret it. I actually received a message from a dear friend of mine. She so you know, this always loops back to direct sales, right?
And this was for she is a friend of mine, but she was, right, because Beachbody’s gone. She was part of my downline. And she took my course, and she messaged me today because I had posted up a reel and about UGC. And she said, I just got my first $108 job. So that’s fantastic.
I mean, think about like you’re literally getting a $100 job to make an Instagram reel. I mean, in direct sales, you’re doing that, you know what for free and like, hoping you get one sale out of it. Like, this is guaranteed income. And I asked her. I was like, what is this for? And she said it’s IPL. It’s a hair removal device, and the device itself is worth $300. So it’s a freaking $400 job. And, like, this is just the beginning for her.
Affiliate Links Mentioned In This Episode
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