The last two weeks have been a whirlwind. I have felt loved and supported. I have also felt intense internal pressure that has been completely self-imposed.

For a minute I thought those two things were tied together. That the pressure was the cost of the love. That when something you made finally lands, you brace.

That’s not what was happening.

The pressure was old bad habits rearing their ugly head. The voice that says you have to be doing more, faster, better, now. The devil on my shoulder running his own little timeline that has nothing to do with mine.

I figured it out the way I figure most things out lately — not at a desk, not in a journal. Out in the yard, playing with Nugget. One afternoon last week, it all just fell into place. I was calm. I was clear. I knew my exact next steps and I had my OWN timing.

Not his.

Mine.

And once the pressure quieted down, I could finally see what was actually here. The love. And I was so unpracticed at receiving it I had been mistaking it for noise.

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One of my daughters said it best:

“Momma, you have always given, loved, and supported everyone. Let us do the same for you. Let us show you how much we love you.”

Read that again.

That is not a sentence I knew how to absorb. That is a sentence I have spent twenty years making sure my kids could one day say to me — and when she finally said it, I almost didn’t know what to do with my hands.

So here is what I did with it. And with the others.

Josh sat down to read the book a few days before launch. About an hour in, he looked up and said, “This is really good. I even forgot I’m a character in it.”

Me: “You have to say that. You’re married to me.”

My friend Kary, out in the wild, spots me. She’s literally holding the book. Highlights. Tabs. The whole thing. She says, “Heather, I’m reading your book right now and it is REALLY good. You make it so easy to understand.”

Me: “Oh my gosh. You are so sweet.”

Another friend finishes the book and texts me: “Heather, it is sooooo good. I love how honest you were in it. The good and the bad.”

Me: “That is so sweet.”

Y’all. Why did I keep saying sweet?

She wasn’t being sweet. She was telling me the book was good. Kary wasn’t being sweet — she was holding up evidence. Josh wasn’t being sweet — he was telling me he forgot he was IN it, which is the highest compliment a husband can give a wife who wrote about him.

Sweet is what I said because sweet moves the spotlight. It makes the moment about them being kind instead of me being good at something. It’s a tiny little verbal sleight of hand and I did it three times in two weeks without noticing.

None of those responses are a thank you. They’re contracts I’m signing in the middle of a hug. You’re being too generous. You don’t really mean it. Let’s agree this didn’t quite land the way you said it did.

Accepting a thank you means letting the thing be true. And if it’s true — if Josh really did forget he was a character, if Kary really is tabbing the pages, if my own daughter really wants to love me back — then I have to live with the size of that. I have to carry it.

Easier to call her sweet. Easier to tell my husband he’s contractually obligated. Easier to swallow it whole and pretend nothing happened.

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And then last week I walked into yoga.

My instructor — also my friend — looked at me and said, “Your book changed my life. I’m going to start the business I’ve wanted to do for years.”

I didn’t say sweet. I don’t know what shifted. Maybe I’d been called out by my own pattern one too many times. Maybe the afternoon with Nugget was still in my bones.

What came out was: “Thank you. My hope in writing this book was that one person would benefit from it. Now I know it was you.”

I walked into yoga and walked out a woman who had received a compliment.

I am not all the way there. I’ll probably say sweet again this week to somebody.

But here’s what I’m learning, slowly, badly:

The pressure was never the cost of the love. The pressure was the old me trying to outrun the new thing.

And the love? The love was my daughter saying let us show you. The love was Kary’s highlights. The love was Josh forgetting. The love was a yoga instructor standing at the door of her own next chapter.

All I had to do was stop calling it sweet and let it be what it was.

If you’re better at this than I am, teach me.

If you’re not — pull up a chair.

xx, Heather

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I want to tell you about my friend Tracey.

Tracey passed away a year ago after a brutal bout of cancer. She was one of the kindest, smartest, strongest, all-around badass women I’ve ever known.

Let me back up. I first met Tracey through my son, Ben. She was his friend Niko’s mom. For years she was Miss Tracey to all of us because she was just that kind of person. Honestly I’ve lost count of how many years Miss Tracey was orbiting in our world (15-ish?).

She was what I like to call a bonus mom to Ben. She loved him, cheered him, and even scolded him if the occasion called for it.

Tracey came to Ben’s wedding. At the reception she came over to give me a hug and said, “You did good.”

I told her, “No, we all had a hand in raising that young man.”

That’s what I want to focus on today. All of the moms who love their kids’ friends as their own.

Kate also has a bonus mom, Anna. Actually, I have a funny story about Kate and Anna. When Kate was around 13 or 14 she was on a tear as only a girl that age can be. I don’t remember the details leading up to this exchange. I’d bet Kate does. She wanted to stop and get a bottle of water. I told her no, that she’d just have to wait a few minutes. Kate said, “What, do you want me to be dehydrated?” My answer: “Yes, I do.” Which led to an epic dramatic scene of Kate announcing she was going to go live with Miss Anna and her family because she wanted to be somewhere people loved her. To which I replied, “Ok.”

Maybe not the best parenting moment. But the thing that landed with me was that Kate had people. She had Anna, who she loves and trusts.

I’m lucky enough to have my own crew of bonus kids. Jessi, Zach, Cory, Myah, Josie, Jessie, Zack, and Madi. To them I am Mama Roberts, Madre Dos, or even Heather. To me, they are family. I’ve had the privilege and honor of seeing them grow up, get married, and I even have two bonus grandchildren now.

So this Mother’s Day, I want to thank all the other bonus moms out there.

Thank you, Tracey.

xx, Heather

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After yesterday, I figure I owe y'all something good. So here's what I've got.

The Nurture Method comes out April 28th. And with it, I’m adding a paid option here on Substack — $5 a month or $55 a year.

Here’s what’s behind the paywall:

Permission Slips. The real ones. The weekly kind. Short, sometimes silly, sometimes the exact one you needed at 2pm on a Tuesday.

Behind the scenes of the book I’m working on now. Yes — there’s another one coming. And I want to bring you inside it while it’s still messy. The chapters I’m wrestling with. The ideas that aren’t quite working yet. The stuff I’m scared to say out loud. What my editor pushes back on. The real making of a book, not the polished version you get at the end.

The free newsletter isn’t going anywhere. The essays, the reckonings, the “why are we still doing it this way” stuff — all of that stays free. Because that’s what brought y’all here, and I’m not pulling it behind a wall now.

Here’s the part I’m actually excited about:

I’d rather you buy The Nurture Method than pay for this Substack.

So here’s the deal:

• Buy the book from Barnes & Noble → send me a screenshot of your order and I’ll give you 6 months of paid, free.

• Leave a review on Barnes & Noble or Goodreads after you read it → send me a screenshot of the review and I’ll give you a full year of paid, free.

Do both, stack ‘em. That’s a year and a half on me.

And here's the thing — the ebook version is 99 cents. Ninety-nine cents. So if a paid Substack subscription is out of reach right now, the ebook is less than a cup of gas station coffee, and it still counts. Buy the ebook, screenshot it, get your 6 months. Read it, review it, get your year. The whole deal works on $0.99.

Send your screenshots to heather.roberts@thenurturemethod.co and I’ll set you up myself.

No hoops. No fine print. Just my way of saying: if you’re going to spend money on me this year, spend it on the book. The Substack thing, I can comp.

Thank you for being here. Means more than y’all know.

xx, Heather

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We are 15 days away from the launch of The Nurture Method. Holy Moly!

I didn’t set out to write a book. It really started as articles that I turned into newsletters. One day it dawned on me that my articles and stories were something more. A structure began to take shape.

I certainly did not have it all figured out. Quite the opposite, really.

Twenty years of building a business and raising a family at the same time. Twenty years of figuring it out in real time, making it up as we went, wondering if everyone else had gotten some secret handbook that I wasn’t given.

Josh and I built RSG Sales while raising three kids. We had hundred-million-view YouTube channels and also completely forgot to defrost something for dinner and even a kid after practice. We had big wins in the business and total meltdowns on the bathroom floor.

That’s real life. And nobody was writing about it.

Here’s the thing that really got me: it was the process of writing this book that cracked something open. I sat down to write a guide for other people — and ended up staring at myself.

I realized I had spent twenty years waiting for someone to give me permission. Permission to slow down. Permission to want something for myself. Permission to say “this isn’t working” without burning the whole thing down first. And it hit me: no one was coming. I was the only one who could give myself that.

That’s what this book is about.

Not hustle. Not a twelve-step system for doing more. Not a productivity hack dressed up in a chapter heading.

It’s part business book, part life stories. Twenty years of my lived experience. Some things I did right. And some things I did terribly wrong.

I interviewed eight other entrepreneurs for this book. One of them, Pia, started her business with $3,000 in the bank. Not as a fun challenge. Because that was it. What I found across every single one of them — and honestly, in myself — is that failure was never really an option. We all had a FITFO approach. Figure It The F*** Out. And we did.

So — who is this book really for?

It’s for the person who’s building something real while also trying to show up at the dinner table. It’s for the entrepreneur who’s tired of being told to hustle harder when what they actually need is to breathe. It’s for the woman who loves her business and her family and is still trying to figure out how to love both without losing herself somewhere in between.

If you’ve ever felt like you were failing at both — the business because the kids needed you, and the kids because the business needed you — this book was written for you specifically.

Most importantly, it’s for the woman who wants to know her people are out there.

They are. I promise.

I’m your people. Hi, I’m Heather.

April 28th. That’s the day.

If you haven’t already, put it in your phone right now. And if you know someone who’s in the thick of it — building something while raising someone — forward this to them. That’s the person I spent eighteen months writing this for.

xx, Heather

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I hate talking about myself. Like, I would genuinely rather go to the gyno. (TMI but true.)

But I’ve got 22 days until my book launches and I’m putting on my big girl pants.

The Nurture Method: A Real Life Guide to Raising Your Business and Your Family comes out April 28th. I’ve been working on it for almost 18 months. It’s got stories and lessons from 20 years of being an entrepreneur and a parent — mine and eight other business owners who were kind enough to share theirs too.

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I sent out early copies. What I did not expect was running into people actually reading it in the wild.

Last week, I walked into my local coffee shop and heard my name hollered from across the room. It was my friend Kary. She was holding up her copy — tabbed, highlighted. “It is really good. Really good.” I stood there completely flabbergasted.

Two weeks ago we were in the Bahamas for a friend’s wedding. Thursday night party, end of the night — I look over and the groom, Cory, is sitting down reading my book. His almost-wife Myah plops down next to him. They sat there together for a good 30 minutes. The next morning they were in the kitchen talking about one of the things I teach — put time boundaries around work talk, or it becomes all you talk about. They were already using it.

I can’t make that up.

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Here’s my ask: buy the book on April 28th. Not the week after. That day. Every sale on launch day counts toward Amazon Best Seller rankings, and that’s my goal.

Please put it in your phone right now. April 28th. The Nurture Method.

And if you know someone who’s building a business while raising a family — forward this to them. That’s exactly who I wrote it for.

xx, Heather

P.S. Thank you!

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I’ve got a question for you.

How are things? What are you up to?

How many of you started answering that question in your head with — “Oh my gosh! Things have been so busy!”

Have you ever noticed no one EVER says “Things are just wonderful. I have plenty of time to spend with my family, work is just a breeze, and I’m loving my (enter name of hobby).”

Everyone is just…so busy.

Busy doing what?

Doom scrolling on your phone?

Every Sunday morning I get a screen time notification. I’ve come to hate these stupid notifications. Why, you ask?

Well, it is not rocket science to know that I get smacked with how much time I wasted this week. My usage is usually between 3-4 hours a day. I’m not proud of that number.

It’s like a rock and a hard place. I’ve spent hours doom scrolling which is a complete waste of time. Then, I wonder what made me feel like I had to be doing something. Anything. Instead of just being.

When did the world say we win only if we are busier than our best friend, spouse, business competitor?

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I was at the dermatologist office last week for a small procedure. I had to get some numbing cream put on. The tech said it would take 30 minutes to work. Next, she asked, “Do you want your phone while you wait?”

My answer surprised me. “No thanks,” I said. “I’m going to sit back and enjoy the quiet.” I never knew 30 minutes could go by so quickly!

This may sound silly but to me that 30 minutes of nothing was a win. No texts to reply to. No emails to send. No scrolling Instagram.

Just 30 minutes of quiet.

I let my thoughts wander with no real place to go.

I could feel the muscles in my shoulders relax.

I could hear the sound of my own voice.

I hadn’t felt that calm and peaceful in the middle of the day in ages.

It was glorious.

It was right there in the dermatologist’s office that I made a promise to myself. I was giving myself permission to just BE for a bit every day.

What started as a quirk — or even a possible experiment — turned into my favorite part of the day. I’m more relaxed and energized at the same time. My nervous system gets a quick little reset.

So here’s your permission slip for this week: Find your dermatologist’s office. Not literally but figuratively. It can be your car in the driveway before you go inside. The back porch. The bathroom with the door locked. Just 30 minutes of nothing. No phone. No productivity. No proving anything to anyone.

Let busy wait.

You’ve earned the quiet.

xx, Heather

P.S. Next time someone asks how things are, try this: “Things are great. I’ve got 30 minutes of nothing planned and I can’t wait.”

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There’s a number that sits in my craw.

$50,000.

That’s what it cost me — the first time — to learn one of the most important lessons of my business life.

I created a business called Sercy. It was a good business, genuinely. But it was the wrong business model for us at that stage. I had that low-grade hum of this isn’t right running in the backg…

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Last week I showed up in your inbox half-delirious with The Crud, made my point by accident, and went to go find a Netflix rom com. I promised you the real version this week.

So. Here we go.

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As I sit down to write this newsletter, I have a raging upper respiratory infection — also known as “The Crud.”

The topic I had planned for today? Your body figured it out before you did.

The irony is palpable.

Here’s the thing. I sat down with every intention of pounding out another issue. My head is pounding back. I think I may have coughed u…

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My friend, Laura Beauparlent, is hosting a keynote speech and workshop in Toronto on March 25th. This is an absolute plug to attend if you can be in Toronto on the 25th but here’s the thing. Laura doesn’t know I’m writing this. The subject of her talk really resonates with me and dovetails nicely to many of the things I write about. (FYI I’v…

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Do y’all have a moment when you said something that made you stop cold because it sounded like it could have come out of your parents mouth?

For me it was when Ben was a teenager. He had done something completely boneheaded. I found myself saying “I know exactly what you are going to say before you even say it.” UGH!

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Those are the exact words…

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I’ve been mulling over the word “enough” lately. And the more I turn it over, the more I realize it might be one of the most loaded words in the English language.

Enough is enough! How many of y’all used that phrase with your kids? They were driving us crazy fighting with each other and I’d hit my point of no return. I’d holler “ENOUGH IS ENO…

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Are you ready?

On your mark?

Get set?

GO!

From the moment we were born, we were placed on a starting line. We’ve been chasing finish lines ever since. Holding our head up. Rolling over. Crawling. Walking. Talking. Each one celebrated, checked off, and immediately replaced by the next.

Go to school. Go to college. Get a job. Get married. Have kids…

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Last week I wrote about Permission Slips—giving yourself permission to stop doing the things that no longer serve you.

Today I want to dive into the other side of that coin: Bragging Rights. Permission Slips are about putting down what you don’t need to carry. Bragging Rights are about actually claiming what you’ve built.

How often are you on…

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I believe it was last week. I was listening to Mel Robbins interview James Clear, author of Atomic Habits. During the conversation James said “if an alien came down and followed you for an entire day, what would the alien think your priorities are?”

I think my alien would think my top priority is trying to find my phone. I swear I get my step…

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