We were lucky to catch up with Beth Lehman recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Beth, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?

I remembered reading The Scarlet Letter in high school. Ok, full disclosure, I definitely didn’t read the book when it was assigned – but I did read the Cliff’s Notes and watched Emma Stone in the movie, Easy A which was inspired by The Scarlet Letter….but I digress. In the book, Hester Prynne was found guilty of adultery and having a child out of wedlock. Her sentence required her to wear the scarlet “A” for the rest of her life. In the beginning of the novel Hester’s letter A is a representation of her sin and adultery. However, as time progresses, the meaning of the letter changed. It now represented, to some, ABLE.

Bad Mom Shop was inspired by “The Scarlet Letter” and after I received a little too much unsolicited feedback from a family member during a holiday get together. Some of my family members have always felt the need to share their unsolicited opinions about (insert literally anything). This isn’t a rare occurrence in families obviously, but I was just sick of it honestly. Shewwww…it was just a little too much and I needed it to stop without blowing up the relationship. Because “they are family after all right?!

Spoiler alert – I blew up the relationship, set some boundaries AND started a business.

Prior to starting Bad Mom Shop I was working as a freelance graphic designer; creating logos, patterns, and branding materials for so many other businesses. I had always wanted to use my designer skills for a brand of my own, but I couldn’t settle on any one idea. Fueled by family frustration, a little bit of pettiness, and my branding skills I decided to create my own version of “The Scarlet Letter” so the next time I was in the presence of any family member, they could see I already know it – I am a bad mom. I am going to wear this B so they can save their breath and keep their opinions to themselves – they are right. I am a baadddddd mom….who is doing exactly what she said she was going to do and will settle for nothing but happiness and abundance.

I will rep my B and when anyone asks me, “”what does the B stand for?” I say proudly, “Bad Mom.”

They almost always say, “but you’re not a bad mom,” to which I reply – “you’re f***ing right I’m not….I am a BAADDD MOM.”

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

This is such a loaded question and I am very guilty of including way too much I feel is relevant so please feel free to cut up as much as you would like.

I grew up in West Virginia. I was never one of those people that had any idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. The only reason I went to college was because my dad was a single dad and he gave me the option of moving out and getting a job or moving out and going to college…that I was going to have to pay for.

My friends were visiting West Virginia University because that was what high school juniors did apparently, in preparation for the next steps after high school. I had no idea what I would major in at college if I went, but I was lucky enough to have a community of public school teachers who basically picked up the pieces that fell apart at home and guide me. For example, I had an elementary school principle that made sure I ate breakfast at school since we didn’t get breakfast at home. And probably the most impactful was my high school art teacher, Ms. Karen Barrett who let me sit in multiple art classes and assist to keep me at school versus out doing dumb, unsupervised high school aged kid stuff. She was the one who turned me on to art and ironically puppetry. This is a very long story but the very short story (which is long but not a novel so here goes) is:

+ I picked going to college because I found out Puppetry was a degree offered at West Virginia University (yes it is a degree program). I wanted it to be just making puppets in the art department but it definitely wasn’t that and I had to take theater classes. I learned how to tell stories, make puppets, perform, and create entire characters and stories from nothing more than fabric, glue, and imagination.

+ I did my internship at Disney World in entertainment as a puppeteer for summer

+ depression and childhood trauma caught up to me by senior year and I lost my mind

+ barely graduated and decided (it really wasn’t a decision) to become an agoraphobic and hide from life and everything while high school boyfriend and now graduate student took care of me.

+ quit all the things I loved that let me be creative and got a temp, desk job just because everyone told me I needed to get it together and be more realistic. Worked desk jobs, climbed corporate ladder, and lived life on autopilot because that was what was “realistic and logical” even though it wasn’t fulfilling.

+ 1, 2, skip a few…I started being creative again because friends asked me for help with their businesses. I started a business and then a non-profit with friends and just had to learn what I needed to get by in order to be taken seriously and not just have it flop. Sold original business, the non-profit is still going strong, and along the way I developed a giant portfolio of self taught, design work. Eventually getting hired to do the same for others and Bad Mom Shop was created because of mindset and design journey.

That has kind of been the theme of my life. I have had to just figure things out and develop my skill set because no one was ever going to to come and do it for me.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Do you and do it authentically!

I listened to so many people and doubted myself on so many things because someone else shared their shitty opinion. I never felt like I fit in and tried to act or be like everyone else because I didn’t want to call attention to how weird or how different I was. I loved puppetry and on paper was doing just fine learning and developing my path, but then when I got pushed off my path I never recommitted to it and instead spent so much time trying to carve a new path that fit in with everyone else.

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

My first side hustle was designing logos. The only reason that was the side hustle is because I had designed so many of them for friends I had enough to say I was “a designer.” The truth is, I did all those for free because I thought I wasn’t good enough to charge anyone for them. When I first starting charging for logos I was shook and declared it a side hustle.

I charged $150 for my first logo, but I celebrated the shit out of that transaction. It was validation. Now I charge $2000 for a branding day intensive. I thought I was going to be so many things and to be honest, I am so glad I tried on so many hats in the creative world because without trying them on, I wouldn’t have landed on the things I love to do the most.

The best advice I have to scale your side hustle, is to take daily, imperfect steps to just keep moving forward. Period. You will overthink it and you will doubt yourself and you will tell yourself you need a plan first. But establish a goal – set your sights on it and take imperfect, sometimes “terrible, horrible no good very bad day” steps and you will scale.

The funny thing to remember is you will scale, but opportunities will come that you had no idea were even on the horizon. But because you kept moving forward, those opportunities just seemingly showed up.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.badmomshop.com
• Instagram: @sunnysidebeth and @shopbadmoms

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