Before your child even steps out the door every day, their emotional baseline for the day is already set — not by color-coded routines, but by how safe and connected they feel in your presence.

As a conscious parenting researcher, I’ve studied more than 200 kids, and I’m a mother myself. I’ve found that the happiest, most resilient kids are raised in homes where connection matters more than control, especially in the morning.

Parents who raise happy kids practice nine morning rituals to create emotional safety and support their children’s developing brain:

Before your child wakes up, take just 60 seconds to check in with yourself: Take a few deep breaths, a moment of stillness with your coffee, or a quick meditation.

Children learn how to be calm directly through our nervous systems. When you begin in a regulated state, you provide a sturdy emotional foundation for your child’s day.

Before asking about teeth-brushing or backpacks, create a moment of genuine connection, like eye contact, a warm smile, or physical touch. Your message should be: “You matter more than the morning rush.”

This brief emotional attunement regulates your child’s nervous system and sets the stage for cooperation and calm.

Integrate small rituals that slow the pace, like playing soft music during breakfast, sitting together without screens, or implementing a 30-second family huddle before heading out.

These micro-moments teach kids that calm is available even on busy mornings.

Even in the midst of spilled milk and mismatched socks, find opportunities for playfulness, like a silly voice, a 10-second dance party, or a shared inside joke.

Laughter reduces stress and reinforces that mistakes or morning mishaps don’t overpower emotional safety.

Before diving into the day’s logistics, pause to check in with how your child is feeling: “How’s your heart this morning?” or “What’s one thing you’re looking forward to today?”

These brief emotional check-ins build emotional literacy, which is one of the strongest predictors of lifelong resilience and happiness.

A morning hug, a forehead kiss, or a moment of snuggling releases oxytocin and increases emotional security.

Choose three specific moments in your morning routine where you’ll pause for intentional physical connection and affection, regardless of how rushed you feel. It’s one of the fastest, most effective ways to regulate a child’s nervous system.

Make mornings a device-free zone for both parents and children for at least the first 20 minutes of waking. No phones, tablets, or television.

This digital boundary creates space for natural conversation or even comfortable silence together.

Children live at a different pace than adults. That’s just their biology. I recommend adding five extra minutes to one morning transition and match your child’s pace.

When we slow our movements and expectations, we help regulate their nervous systems. What looks like “dawdling” is often a child’s natural rhythm: their brain processing the world at a developmentally appropriate speed.

Instead of rushing out with a quick “Let’s go,” pause for a real goodbye: eye contact, a hug, reassurance.

Then add a “connection bridge,” or something to look forward to later: “I can’t wait to hear about your science project tonight,” or “Let’s make pancakes tomorrow morning.”

Let go of the idea that every morning needs to be rushed, or that the day is in shambles because they didn’t finish their homework the night before. Focus on creating emotional safety. Even adopting one of these habits can help shift your child’s entire day and support healthier brain development.

Reem Raouda is a leading voice in conscious parenting and the creator of the BOUND and FOUNDATIONS journals, now offered together as her Holiday Emotional Safety Bundle. She is widely recognized for her expertise in children’s emotional well-being and for redefining what it means to raise emotionally healthy kids. Connect with her on Instagram.

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Cat Goetze may be a tech founder, but she’s on a years’ long journey to reduce her reliance on devices.

Two years ago Goetze, who goes by CatGPT on social media, wanted to swap her smartphone for something more low-tech.

“I was kind of just sitting around [thinking] it’d be so cute if we still had landline phones and you could twirl the cord and talk with your friends,” she tells CNBC Make It. “That just felt nostalgic and chic to me.”

Looking into it, she didn’t realize getting a landline for her apartment would require getting a new number and paying for a phone line. So, the 20-something zillennial built her own version from a phone she thrifted: “I literally just hijacked a landline phone and made it Bluetooth compatible.”

The pink clamshell handset quickly became the most talked-about feature in her apartment. Whenever someone buzzed into her building’s security system, Goetze would let them in from her landline. She could also place outgoing calls from the set.

After two years with it, Goetze unveiled the phone to her online audience in July 2025 to see if anyone else thought it was a good idea.

Within hours, hundreds of people commented on the video within hours saying they needed the device. She set up an online shop to collect pre-orders thinking 15 to 20 people would place actual orders and she could make the devices by herself in her apartment.

Goetze’s project, Physical Phones, passed $120,000 in sales in its first three days, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. The business has sold over 3,000 units and made $280,000 in sales by the end of October.

“It literally felt like we had captured lightning in a bottle,” Goetze says.

Physical Phones currently has five styles of phones that range from $90 to $110. Goetze partnered with an electronics manufacturer to produce the phones, and the first batches are set to ship to customers starting in December.

Physical Phones connect to both iPhone and Android devices via Bluetooth and will ring when the smartphone receives a phone call, or an audio or video call from platforms like WhatsApp, FaceTime, Instagram and Snapchat; the audio of the call then routes to the Physical Phone.

Users can place outbound calls by dialing a phone number or pressing the star sign (*) to activate their smartphone’s voice assistant and instructing it to call a contact’s name.

Goetze says the success of her business aligns with a growing movement of people trying to reduce their screen times and reliance on smartphones.

She points to the Covid-19 pandemic as having a major impact on how people use their phones today. People were stuck at home and away from people, so they turned to apps like TikTok to fill the time and feel connected.

Now, as some consumers grow skeptical about tech companies’ hold on their attentions, and are getting tired of navigating AI and AI-generated content online, people are trying to course-correct, Goetze says.

“Our attention spans are shorter. We feel more anxious. We’re less present and unable to enjoy our lives. We’re going through a total loneliness epidemic,” she says. People are now “starting to put their foot down and realize, ’You know what, I actually don’t want this, and I’m going to go ahead and choose a different future.”

Goetze stops short of “demonizing” technology, however, explaining that it’s “what brings us sustainable forms of energy and vaccines and a bunch of really good things for for the world, but it’s like, OK, how do we live in harmony with it?”

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This story is part of CNBC Make It’s Six-Figure Side Hustle series, where people with lucrative side hustles break down the routines and habits they’ve used to make money on top of their full-time jobs. Got a story to tell? Let us know! Email us at AskMakeIt@cnbc.com.

When Tayo Lanlehin was planning her son’s first birthday party in April 2022, she bought yellow and blue signs, balloons and a cake with 3D planets. Every detail fit the “First Trip Around The Sun” theme, except the chairs.

She only found one rental seating option near her home in Oakland, California, she says: adult-sized white plastic chairs. She borrowed a picnic table with benches instead, and ruminated on the gap in the market for weeks. In May 2022, she sourced and spent roughly $2,000 on 48 kids’ chairs from a manufacturer overseas, and stored them in her basement, says Tayo.

Those chairs became Bay Area Kids Rentals, a side hustle that she runs with her husband Dolu Lanlehin. Now a full-fledged party rental business, the company has brought in over $295,000 in 2025 revenue as of Nov. 25, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

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Bay Area Kids Rentals has been profitable since the beginning, but the couple doesn’t take an income from the side hustle, and is instead reinvesting those funds back into the business to expand its rental line, Dolu says. It now offers ball pits, mini bumper cars and multiple colors and styles of furniture.

Tayo and Dolu’s first party was for an event planner, who found the company on Instagram and requested pink chairs for a Barbie-themed party for her daughter in August 2022. She posted photos afterward on Instagram and the review led moms in Hillsborough, an affluent nearby town, to the business’s social media accounts, Tayo says.

Word-of-mouth “spread like fire,” and by October, Bay Area Kids Rentals was supplying decor for parties celebrating professional athletes’ and Silicon Valley executives’ children and grandchildren, she adds.

The rapid success of the side hustle was initially “a little jarring, because of the level of celebrity,” Tayo says. “My day job would end, then I’d go and work on parties for Silicon Valley CEOs’ children.”

The couple works a combined eight hours per week running Bay Area Kids Rentals. Tayo, a strategic partnership principal at health-care company Blue Shield of California, oversees the side hustle’s marketing and customer communication, and a portion of its work with manufacturers. Dolu — the head of product for Chegg Skills, part of education tech company Chegg — manages the company’s accounting and finances.

They outsource tasks like delivery, running painting and jewelry-making stations, and equipment maintenance to six contract employees, they say.

Here’s how Tayo and Dolu started their luxury party rental business, how they attracted high-profile clients and how their individual skillsets make them strong partners:

CNBC Make It: Do you think the success of your side hustle is replicable?

Dolu: 100%, but there would be some prerequisites. If someone is creative, detail-oriented and in a market somewhere in the world that supports this, I don’t see anything stopping them. But Tayo does a nice job of seeing around the corner a little bit, staying connected to market trends and seeing where there are gaps.

What kind of skillsets does someone need to run a luxury rental business?

Tayo: [My inspiration] comes from a place of empathy. I’m a parent, so I’m always thinking operationally about [their experience], the services we can provide, having a website that is easy to book from, what we can do differently and more seamlessly than other companies.

Kids are so visual, too. I’m always thinking like, “Wouldn’t it make sense if a princess’s birthday had cute pink chairs and a cute pink bounce house?”  

Dolu: Tayo is entrepreneurial, and I tend to be analytical because I come from consulting. I wanted to do market research, so we sent out a survey, just to get a signal. Other than a mortgage, kids are the biggest spending line item for parents. People are willing to be irritational for their kids and spend money they maybe don’t even have … because your kids tend to be the embodiment of your dreams, your visions that maybe you didn’t get when you were younger.

How did you attract ultra-wealthy, high-profile clients to Bay Area Kid Rentals?

Tayo: We’ve had to do some marketing [and search engine optimization], but we really haven’t been pressed because very early on starting this business, we hit our ideal client — with high net worth families and their event planners — like right away.

I followed [NBA player] Andrew Wiggins’ partner Mychal Johnson, and she had posted about one of her daughter’s parties on Instagram. I did research and noticed that her next daughter’s birthday was coming up in October [2022]. I direct messaged her with a link to our website saying, “We have luxury kid party rentals, and we would love to be a part of your kid’s birthday, if you’re doing a party.” She responded in 25 minutes and put us in touch with her event planner.

We did four events for their family until they moved to Miami [in 2024].

What makes ultra-wealthy clients different? What do they like about your services?

Tayo: Flexibility and having limited touch points are very important in the luxury space. We don’t send our rentals out for just four hours. We schedule our services around when the client wants to set up and tear down, when they want you to come and leave.

They’re not looking to go back and forth, either. A lot of our competitors will take deposits to make sure people don’t damage their rentals. I don’t do that — I just incorporate these costs into our pricing. That way, we don’t have to have another conversation to process the payments and the refund.

What’s it like running this business together, in addition to your full-time job?

Tayo: Running this business has given me some confidence that I’m building something of my own. I’m building something that could last and the potential of generational wealth.

It’s also just really nice to work with Dolu. This is like our third baby. Partnerships in business don’t really work out a lot of the times, and the fact that we’re married and raising kids on top of having a business, and we know how to resolve all kinds of issues, gives me the confidence that [our relationship] is going to be fine.

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On a mild winter day in Arizona, 38-year-old Cami’s laundromat can teem with customers loading their clothes into washers and dryers, and employees working on laundry deliveries.

For Cami, running the business as her only job is a welcome change of pace, she says. She worked almost full-time as a nurse at a hospital while simultaneously running the laundromat from October 2020 to April 2023, when she quit nursing. (Cami requested to be identified by her nickname only, due to security concerns over her cash-heavy business. Her identity and the name of her business are known to CNBC Make It.)

“Now, I’m only working maybe five or six hours a week [running the laundromat],” says Cami. “But I also am hesitant in telling people that, because that’s not how it was five years ago, four or three years ago. I was working a lot more hours trying to grow this business.”

In that time, she hired employees — the laundromat employs six people, including one part-time worker — so she can “focus more on growing the business and not working in the business,” she says. Cami also spends about 10 hours per week creating and posting videos on social media about her business and the experience of running it, she notes.

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Cami’s laundromat brought in roughly $475,000 in revenue last year, plus nearly $30,000 in rent from a salon that operates next door, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. That included about $119,000 in profits — some of which went back into the business, and $66,000 of which became Cami’s salary, she says.

She also made about $22,000 from six months of social media posting in 2024, and is on track for a significant bump — “around $200,000” — in 2025, she says. And though she misses the camaraderie of the hospital, she enjoys the work-life balance and freedom she’s experienced with business ownership, she says.

“This is my first time where I’m able to be home for all the holidays, have every weekend off,” says Cami. “I never have to go to a boss or a manager to be able to take off on a random trip home or anything like that. So my freedom of time has been completely changed.”

After 13 years of working as a nurse, primarily in the bone marrow transplant unit of a large hospital, Cami was ready for a change, she says. She just didn’t want to re-enroll in school to do so. “And so I knew, really my only way out of working would be to own a business,” she says.

She looked into a couple ventures, including renting out storage units and buying a mobile home park. Then she saw a listing for the laundromat on bizbuysell.com, a marketplace for buying and selling small business.

A friend referred Cami to his uncle, who owned two laundromat locations himself, she says. “He looked at the numbers with me, and he said something that I will never forget. He said, ‘You know, if I could go back in time … I would never go to college. I would never get my master’s degree,’” says Cami. “He’s like, ‘All I would do is buy laundromats, because laundromats scream money.’”

Cami planned to buy a business for about a year before actually making a purchase, she says, and selling her house to help fund the expense was part of that plan. She sold her house for $310,000 in April 2020 and moved into a rental home, she says.

Because her mortgage wasn’t fully paid off, she received about $150,000 in equity from the transaction to put toward the $300,000 laundromat, she says. She took another $50,000 from her savings to make a $200,000 down payment on the laundromat in October 2020, she says.

“We seller-financed the remaining $100,000 with a 6% interest rate over the next two years,” says Cami, adding that she paid the loan off in about a year and a half. ”[Selling my house] wasn’t very scary. I was more excited about owning a business rather than owning a home.”

The laundromat had already been functioning for over 20 years and was “cash flowing,” says Cami. She put $20,000 toward renovations like new lighting, flooring and fresh paint to make it feel more “homey,” she says. She’s currently paying off two loans for washing machine purchases and two loans for vehicles for her laundromat’s pickup and delivery services, totaling “about $4,900 a month” in payments, she says.

As she ran the laundromat, she gradually decreased her hours per week at the hospital. She bought a new house in April 2023, she says.

At Cami’s laundromat, machine prices range from dryers that cost 25 cents per seven minutes to 80-pound washers that cost $12 per load. Laundry pickup and delivery prices vary depending on the job, too.

Cami didn’t have any prior leadership or business ownership experience, which was “the biggest learning curve,” she says. She says she listens to business podcasts, reads books and tries to attend “at least one or two laundromat conferences a year” to stay up-to-date on industry trends, software and technology.

One of the biggest lessons she’s learned, she says: Make money and use it to follow your passions outside your job, rather than pursuing a career around your passions. In her case, her passions are time with her loved ones and control over her schedule, she says: “My days are a lot smoother [that way].”

The average laundromat can generate cash flow between $15,000 and $300,000 per year, and can range in market value from $50,000 to more than $1 million, according to The Laundry Association. Cami estimates that she could potentially retire in about six or seven years, or maintain ownership and hire someone else to run the business.

She could also acquire a second location — buying someone else’s laundromat or starting from scratch — grow it and eventually sell it for a profit, she says.

“I see it as this fun game that I like playing,” says Cami. “I love the hustle of trying to learn more so I can scale it bigger and make it grow.”

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Nothing is as desired as much as the thing you want but can’t have. In fact, for most people there’s a hierarchy of spending that goes something like this:

• If you don’t want something and you don’t have it, you don’t think about it.
• If you want something and have it, you might feel OK.
• If you want something and don’t have it, you might feel motivated.
• If you want something and can’t have it, you drive yourself absolutely mad.

As I explain in my book “The Art of Spending Money,” it hardly matters what the “something” here is — a glass of water to a thirsty person is more valuable than a private jet is to a billionaire who has two others.

This all makes sense when you understand what your brain wants, and you’ll notice it more during the holidays. By and large, your brain doesn’t want nice cars or big homes. It wants dopamine. That’s it.

I’ll leave it to the excellent book “The Molecule of More” to describe the process: “Dopamine is the chemical of desire that always asks for more — more stuff, more stimulation, and more surprises. In pursuit of these things, it is undeterred by emotion, fear, or morality. From dopamine’s point of view, it’s not the having that matters; it’s getting something — anything — that’s new.”

In other words, your brain doesn’t want stuff. It doesn’t even want new stuff. It wants to engage in the process and anticipation of getting new stuff. This is similar to actor Will Smith’s description of fame: “Becoming famous is amazing. Being famous is a mixed bag. Losing fame is miserable. The change, not the amount, is what matters.”

You can see this so often with money. When you’re young, you dream about having a car — any car.

When you get a $10,000 car, you dream of the $20,000 car. When you get a $20,000 car, you dream of the $50,000 car. If you get the $50,000 car, you dream of the $100,000 car. If you get the $100,000 car, you dream of having several $100,000 cars.

There’s almost no end to this. The millionaires look at the centimillionaires, who look at the billionaires, who look at the decabillionaires, who look at the centibillionaires. And what do the centibillionaires want? Immortality.

It’s always just: “What’s next? What’s missing? How can I get to the next level?” That’s what you do because that’s what your brain wants.

Wanting less can have the same impact on your well-being as gaining more money. But it’s not only more in your control; it’s a game you can actually win, leading to durable contentment instead of fleeting happiness.

To be content with what you have is the deepest way to enjoy the house you’ve purchased, the clothes you wear, the vacations you take. After all, would you rather be a billionaire who wakes up every morning anxious about what you don’t have and jealous of those who have more, or an ordinary person who wakes up so content, with so much pleasure, able to appreciate what you have regardless of how much that is?

My grandmother-in-law was financially poor, but psychologically rich. The gap between what she had and what she wanted was smaller than some people’s with one hundred times as much money as she had. Once you see someone master that equation, you’ll never think about wealth the same.

Morgan Housel is the author of the new book, ”The Art of Spending Money.” He is a two-time winner of the Best in Business Award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, and winner of the New York Times Sidney Award. He’s a partner at The Collaborative Fund and is the host of The Morgan Housel Podcast.

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