Growing up, one of my fondest memories is waking up on school mornings in the winter, lured from my cozy bed to the still-chilly house by the smells of breakfast cooking. Every single morning of my childhood, my own single mom would rise before my two brothers and me, and cook a proper hot breakfast: Pancakes and sausage with applesauce on the side, french toast and bacon, any version of eggs and omelets, oatmeal or muffins. This was the midwest, and my mom grew up on a farm. Meals were square, big, and served with cold milk.

Now as a mom, I do more or less the same — though I do find some short-cuts, like baking healthy muffins in bulk, freezing them, and microwave de-thawing them before dragging the kids out of bed. For dinner, I cook from scratch most evenings and we always sit down together for the meal — something that makes me a bit of an anomaly these days.

This shared passion for family dinners is just one thing that draws me to Leanne Ely.

Over the past few years I’ve looked to Leanne as a mentor. After all, this momma launched a 7-figure digital marketing enterprise long before “digital marketing” was even a term.

Back in 2001, this mom was a breadwinning wife homeschooling her two kids in rural North Carolina when she launched SavingDinner.com, one of if not the first meal planning subscription businesses. The business kept her focused through a divorce and single motherhood, and blossomed into a 7-figure enterprise that employs 10 food writers, a CIO, COO, customer service team and a sister white-label business whose clients include nationally famous physicians and celebrity chefs. “I can do almost all of my work with my slippers on and no pantyhose involved, and I’ve always been there for all my kids’ events,” she says.

Aside from business brilliance, Ely is an advocate — building her enterprise on her mission to bring families back to the evening dinner table. In this episode we dish about our distain for picky eaters of all ages, our shared fond memories of home-cooked meals around the family dinner.

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The post Se. 1, Ep. 16: 7-figure single mom Leanne Ely on why families don’t eat dinner together, and picky eaters appeared first on Emma Johnson.