My 12-year-old daughter recently started her own business.

She jumped on Canva, designed a brochure, listed her services,

popped her phone, popped her phone number in there, and then started letterbox

dropping around our new apartment block.

She did not ask for permission.

She did not overthink it.

She just did it, and I stood there watching her and thought,

where did she learn that?

Then it hit me.

She learn it from watching me.

our kids are always watching, aren't they?

They're watching how we react to things when things go wrong,

when things go right, they're watching how you treat people.

They're watching what you tolerate.

They're watching what you celebrate what you quietly walk away from, and sometimes.

They're watching you when you do not even realize that they're watching

you and teaching them anything at all.

And today I wanna talk about a sleepover, a tie-dye t-shirt, a moment

in my laundry that stopped me in my tracks, and the day my daughter became

the founder of Evie's Pet Patrol.

Each year we invite one of Evie's friends to come and stay

at our cabin for a few days.

Last year we did two back to back 15 days of other people's children.

It was loud, it was busy, it was beautiful, and I was completely

exhausted by the end of it.

The truth is, I did not grow up with a lot of sleepovers.

I can count them on one hand.

It was a different time, a different style of parenting, a

different way of doing family.

So when we started opening our home to other children, I

realized I wasn't just navigating logistics and snacks and bedtimes.

I was quietly working through my own history.

We have to do that sometimes, don't we?

We have to notice the stories we were handed.

We have to decide which ones we wanna keep.

And we have to actively loosen our grip on the ones we do not want repeated.

And I have talked before about my own childhood, about finding myself

without a stable home at 14, about parents who remarried within a week of

each other and somehow forgot that had biological children in the process.

And I've been through years of therapy to work through that.

And one of the things I decided a long time ago was that I would

not bring that trauma forward.

I would draw a line in the sand and say, my past has shaped me,

but I am choosing to do something different here.

So when it comes to how we welcome children into our home,

I'm very deliberate about it.

I am conscious about it because I know what it feels like to crave being seen, to

crave belonging, and also to not have it.

This year I was a little smarter about how we did things.

We chose the friend Evie has known since kindergarten.

They did not go to the same school anymore.

But when they're together, they laugh all day.

They build worlds in bedrooms.

They wander down to the beach.

They make each other giggle in that deep belly way that reminds you

what uncomplicated joy looks like.

Do you remember?

She comes from a family of eight siblings.

Eight.

That means our quiet little cabin feels like another planet to her.

We tend to spoil her in small ways, matching pajamas, hoodies, little

treats that say, you are welcome here.

You belong.

Before she arrived, I had been volunteering at our local surf club,

TDYing T-shirts, and Evie had made two, one for herself and one for her friend.

And we left them sit for 48 hours as per the instructions.

And then they rinse them out together in the laundry.

And I was in the next room when I heard her say, completely delighted.

Yay.

I have two more pieces of clothing.

Two more pieces of clothing.

She was so genuinely excited and it landed in my chest in that

quiet way that both softens you and breaks your heart a little.

It reminded me how much we actually have, how much we assume, how much we stop

noticing once abundance becomes normal.

And then the days unfolded and every time we took her somewhere, she said thank you.

Every time I asked her to help.

She did.

She never lost her gratitude.

She never lost her kindness and she never lost her light.

She was an absolute pleasure to have on holidays, and it got me thinking about

where that comes from because kids do not learn gratitude from a lecture.

They learn it from watching.

Someone in her world has modeled that for her.

Someone has shown her what it looks like to be kind without being asked to

say thank you, without being prompted to bring good energy into a room.

Just by being present your inputs shape your outlook.

That is true, as true as it is.

For children as it is for adults, probably doubly true for our children,

and at some point during the trip, she told us that in her phone

she saved me as her other mother.

I had to blink a few times when she said that, not because it felt heavy,

but because it felt quietly important.

I know what it means to need another mother.

I know what it means to find safety in someone else's home.

I lived with a beautiful family when I was a teenager, and they

gave me something that my own family could not give me at that time.

Stability, a place to land.

So when this little girl calls me her other mother,

I do not take that lightly.

I hold it gently because I understand what that means from the other side.

Children are always watching.

They are learning what normal looks like.

They are learning what safe feels like.

They're learning what care sounds like.

They're learning what kindness does in a room.

And we don't have to be perfect.

We don't have to be loud about it.

We just have to be conscious.

speaking of kids watching,

let me tell you what my own daughter has been up to.

She's such a mini me.

As some of you know, we recently moved house and we are in an

apartment block of about 50 homes, new neighborhood, new people, new energy.

And Evie, who's 12, looked around this community and she saw

something that I didn't expect.

She saw an opportunity.

Within weeks of moving in, she had jumped onto Canva, designed herself a

brochure better than her mum, by the way, written a little bit about who she is.

Listed her services and pricing.

Popped her phone number on there, and Evie's P Patrol was born.

Yep, at 12 years old.

My daughter has started her own business.

Proud is an understatement house sitting, dog, sitting cat checking

Now, nobody sat with her and said, Evie, here is how you start a business.

Nobody gave her a lesson on marketing or service based offers

or identifying your target market.

She just did it.

She saw a new community.

She figured out what people might need.

She's very smart.

My daughter, she created something to tell them about it, and

then she put herself out there.

I think about this a lot.

I've been running my business from home for the best part of nine years.

Evie has grown up watching me take calls, prep for events, record this

podcast, have coaching conversations, build offers, and show up consistently

even on the days I didn't feel like it.

She's watched me write content, talk to clients, and figure things out as I go.

She's also seen me cry.

She's seen me have ideas.

She's seen me test them and sometimes fail at them, and she's absorbed all of that.

And I think about the time she pulled a pen apart in her bedroom to see

how it worked, and I cried because she couldn't put it back together.

And then she cried because she couldn't put it back together.

And I look at her and I thought.

That is my child.

That genuine curiosity, that desire to pull things apart and understand them.

And I said to her, I love that you are curious enough to pull it apart.

Yeah, you busted it, but what did you learn?

And she told me all the things.

That is what we are doing when we model entrepreneurship in front of our kids.

We are showing them that curiosity has strength.

That curiosity is a strength.

That taking initiative is a great thing, that you can see a

gap back yourself and have a go.

Evie did not need to learn that from a textbook.

She learned it from watching her mom, and honestly, her brochure was better

than my first attempt at marketing.

I can promise you that.

I'm not even joking.

She's clearly been paying more attention than I thought.

So here is what I want you to sit with today.

Whether you have kids, whether you lead a team, whether you mentor someone,

whether you are just living your life in a community of people who see you every day,

you are modelling something.

The question is, Are you conscious about what that something is?

I've seen this play out in business too.

I was at a networking event once eaves dropping because I'm

nosy and that's what I do best.

Five women were in a conversation and one by one it's spiraled into heaviness.

This thing is hard.

That thing is hard.

By the time they all left, they all looked so deflated.

I walked away thinking if even one of them had shared a small win, a

little piece of gratitude, would that have shifted the entire energy?

One of my beautiful clients stopped listening to the Doom and Gloom podcast

that she had been binging on for months.

She avoided the news and she spent time with different people.

She was a completely different person.

It is up to us to protect our energy because our energy shapes the

environment around us and the people around us, especially the little ones.

They absolutely feel it.

I am sure.

As always, I wanna leave you with something practical.

A couple of things you can do this week.

Number one, notice what you're modeling,

Not what you're saying, but what you're doing.

How are you reacting to stress?

How are you talking about money?

How are you treating yourself when things go wrong?

Your kids, the people around us, our teams, they all pick up on all of it.

You're always teaching something.

No pressure.

Make sure it's something that you would be proud of.

Number two, create a moment of conscious welcome, whether it's a child in

your home, a new team member, or a client walking through your door.

Think about what you belong here.

Looks like in practice, sometimes it's matching pajamas, sometimes

it's remembering someone's name.

Sometimes it's just being fully present for five minutes small.

Deliberate gestures of welcome Ripple much further than you think.

And number three, check your patterns.

What stories were you handed as a child?

Which ones are you still carrying?

And which ones do you want to consciously put down?

You do not have to bring the trauma forward.

You can draw a line in the sand and say, this shaped me, and I am grateful

for the lessons and I'm choosing to do something different from here.

if we do not choose the patterns we are repeating, we repeat them by default.

And

sometimes just, sometimes we get to be a gentle pause in a child's

story, A soft place to land, A quiet example of another way to live.

And sometimes if we get really lucky, we get to watch our own kids take

everything they've absorbed and turn it into something of their own.

own.

Like my little 12-year-old with a Canva brochure and a business

called Evie's Pet Patrol.

That is what conscious living looks like.

That is what conscious mothering looks like.

That is what happens when you choose to live awake.

It ripples so much further than you think.

Now if this episode has got you thinking about the patterns you are running in

your own life and in your own business, I want you to know that you do not

need to have all this figured out.

Some days I do, some days I don't.

But when I coach women one-on-one, this is exactly the kind of

work that we do together.

We build the business foundation that makes everything easier.

Your positioning, your pricing, your sales rhythm, your messaging, all of the things.

And yes, we also dig into the patterns underneath.

Because there are stories that you are telling yourself beliefs that

you are carrying and things that are quietly keeping you a little bit stuck.

because sometimes you need someone in your corner who will meet you, where

you are at, cheer you on, give you some tough love when you need it, and

help you move forward with a plan.

That's me.

I'm that person.

And if you've been thinking about getting some support.

This might be the nudge that you need.

Head to emma mcqueen.com au to find out more about working with us one-on-one.

I would love to hear from you.

Until next time, choose your patterns wisely.

Your people are watching you and they're learning from

every single thing that you do.