Meet Matthew Bivens: Balance Lifestyle Coach

We had the good fortune of connecting with Matthew Bivens and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Matthew, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking
When it comes to facing things/situations that scare me or make me feel uncomfortable, my feeling is that the risk is 100% worth it, because giving into the fear and doing nothing I’m GUARANTEED to not grow or heal or expand. So if it’s “risky” for me to step into the fears because I might fail, I’m going to do it all day long. Because I know that I’m guaranteed to remain stagnant if I do nothing. At least if I take the risk and move through my comfort zone I will learn something about myself (even if I get my but whooped and fall on my face). That alone is worth the risk. I’ve used that way of thinking about risk to propel me forward in my business, in my relationships, and in my personal life. It’s served me because my confidence in myself has gone up every time I’ve stepped into the unknown. Things have not always worked out the way I wanted or anticipated, but I still leveled-up every time.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
I co-own a birth empowerment brand with my wife, Sarah, called Doing It At Home. We help future and current home birth families believe in their success with home birth. In 2016 we had a home birth with our daughter, Maya. It was a transformational experience for us both. Both Sarah and I are entrepreneurial by nature, and we realized while pregnant that there were no home birth brands that were dedicated to supporting, empowering and educating home birth families like ours. So we created it. We started with our podcast — Doing It At Home — which launched in September 2016. That grew into a thriving community where 1,000+ new and soon-to-be moms come daily to connect, ask questions, provide resources and overall support one another in having successful home births. We wrote a book which will be published later in 2021, and we have other products/services in the works to help the families we serve. A major factor that sets our brand apart is that both Sarah and I are Balance Lifestyle Coaches, so we bring the knowledge and expertise that has come with years of coaching men and women to live their greatest lives. Additionally, what makes us unique is that both of us are an equal part of the brand. There are not many men and fathers talking about birth, yet with Doing It At Home that’s what you get — a male perspective in the conversation about birth, helping to normalize home birth and empowering other men/partners to step up during pregnancy, birth and parenthood. Some of our biggest challenges have been building this brand while also wearing many other hats. Doing It At Home started out as a passion project, and within the last 1.5 years transformed into our full time business. So for over 3 years we were building the brand while also running other businesses. That presented unique challenges with bandwidth, organization, communication and more. Sarah and I needed to be synced up to be able to do everything we wanted to do, while being new parents and still maintaining a thriving relationship between the two of us as friends and lovers. We understood that taking on a new project like this would add to our plates, and so we made sure to install time where we can take off the business owner, podcast co-host, and house manager hats, and just reconnect as friends and lovers. It proved to be our most important habit and activity for us to maintain the speed at which we were (and are) moving in life. To this day our relationship dynamic is acknowledged repeatedly by listeners and community members. They want to know how we keep it fun, loving, sexy, and connected, while doing so many other aspects of life together. It certainly has come with its ups and downs, its breakdowns and breakthroughs. And we’d go through them 100x to have the relationship we have toady. It’s from that foundation that our businesses flourish. And we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
We live in Marietta, Ga which is north of Atlanta, so our tour is starting there! Marietta Square is our favorite spot, so we’ll start with Thai food and dessert in the square. Then we might head to The Battery for some people watching and more food. Probably end the night with bowling or another fun physical activity. The next day we’d take them to some of our favorite nature spots around town, which there are plenty in the Atlanta area. Kennesaw Mountain is fantastic, and so is hiking near the Chattahoochee River. The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Shoutout my tribe, the YourDay Balance Game community. I would not be the entrepreneur, coach, leader, father, lover or man I am today without these incredible men and women. They have held such a powerful space for me to connect with myself and allow my greatness to shine. I’m eternally grateful to them for the accountability, feedback, mentorship and unconditional love. I also want to give a shout out to my mother and father, Derry and Kurt Bivens, for the incredible foundation of love and security that they provided for me. As a father myself, I understand what it takes to raise a child, let alone do it well! My parents gave me such an amazing childhood and shared with me so many valuable lessons (even if I didn’t have the listening for them at the time). I always knew I was loved, I never felt unsafe, and that gave me confidence to explore things on my own and ultimately become the man I am today.

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