What My 9-Year-Old Taught Me That 20 Years in Business Couldn’t – Interview With Amber Vilhauer

For more than two decades, Amber Vilhauer has helped authors, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders turn meaningful ideas into reality. But one of the most important lessons of her career didn’t come from a business strategy, a client, or a boardroom.

It came from her nine-year-old son, Clay.

During time spent together outdoors, Amber began asking him a simple question: “What is nature teaching us today?” She expected to guide the conversation. Instead, Clay began noticing lessons many adults overlook about adapting when the path changes, allowinggrowth to take time, moving through difficult emotions, staying curious, and recognizing the light we can bring to others.

Those conversations became What Nature TeachesUs: A Book About Being the Light, a premium gifting book Amber co-authored with Clay after a year of shared observations and conversations in nature.

The experience also inspired Choose the Light, a larger movement asking us to leave people and places better than when we found them. Through their 10,000 Book Donation Mission, Amber and Clay are working to placecopies of the book into the hands of children through schools, hospitals, and youth organizations across the country to offer hope and resilience.

In this exclusive Pump It Up Magazine interview, Amber opens up about what her son taught her about success, leadership, motherhood, slowing down, and building something with a purpose much bigger than a traditional book launch.

What did your 9-year-old teach you that 20 years in business never could?

Amber Vilhauer:

Clay taught me how to notice again.

I’ve spent more than 20 years in business. I know how to build a company, solve problems, create strategy, launch ideas, lead teams, and keep moving when something doesn’t go according to plan. And there is tremendous value in all of that.

But somewhere along the way, as adults, we can become so focused on our scheklists and where we’re going that we stop noticing what’s right in front of us.

Clay doesn’t do that.

He notices the cloud. The bug. The way the water moves around a rock instead of fighting against it. He asks questions without needing to know the “right” answer first.

That was such a beautiful reminder for me. The river never flows backward. It just finds its way. In business, I might have called that adaptability or problem-solving. Clay just saw a river doing what a river does.

Sometimes the wisdom we’re searching so hard for is already there. We just have to slow down enough to see it.

What was the moment you realized Clay was teaching you—not the other way around?

Amber Vilhauer:

It wasn’t one dramatic moment. It happened quietly, which is probably why it affected me so deeply.

I had started asking Clay, “What do you think the sun/trees/flower are teaching us about how to be better humans?” thinking I was creating these wonderful little teaching moments for my son.

Then his answers started stopping me in my tracks.

I realized I was walking outside looking for a lesson to give him, while he was simply looking. He wasn’t trying to make nature mean something. He was curious about what was already there.

That changed the entire experience for me.

I stopped needing to be the teacher. I started listening.

And once I did, I realized there was so much wisdom in the way he saw the world. Sometimes the smallest moments create the biggest connections. A walk. Sitting under a tree. Watching the clouds. A child noticing something you’ve walked past a hundred times.

That became the heart of this book, and, in many ways, a new practice for our family.

Which lesson from nature hit you the hardest personally?

Amber Vilhauer:

The river.

The river never flows backward. It just finds its way and trusts it will meet the ocean.

There is something incredibly freeing about that.

As an entrepreneur, I’m wired to solve. If there’s an obstacle, I want to understand it. If something isn’t working, I want to fix it. If there’s a goal, I want to find the most optimized path to get there.

But a river doesn’t stand there arguing with the rock.

It adjusts. It moves. It finds another way forward.

That has become such an important reminder for me personally and professionally. Adaptability doesn’t mean giving up on where you’re going. Sometimes it simply means releasing your attachment to how you thought you were supposed to get there.

There is strength in continuing forward without forcing the path.

Amber-Vilhauer

Has becoming a mother changed your definition of success?

Amber Vilhauer:

Completely.

For a long time, success was very easy to measure. Growth. Goals. Revenue. Impact. The next milestone.

Motherhood introduced a completely different measurement system.

Am I present?

Does my child feel seen, heard, and valued?

Are we creating a life that feels meaningful while we’re living it, not just one that looks successful from the outside?

Clay has made me much more aware that the moments I could easily rush past may actually be the moments that matter most.

I still love building. I love creating. I love helping meaningful ideas come into the world. That hasn’t changed.

But success now has much more to do with connection, purpose, presence, and who we become along the way.

What do adults stop noticing that children still see clearly?

Amber Vilhauer:

Wonder.

We stop seeing the extraordinary in things we’ve decided are ordinary.

A child can spend ten minutes looking at a bug. They’ll notice the shape of a leaf. They’ll watch clouds move. They’ll ask why the river bends or why one flower looks different from another.

Adults walk past those things because we’ve seen them before.

But have we really?

Children remind us that curiosity is a way of being present.

Clay helped me realize that I didn’t need to create some elaborate experience for us to connect. We didn’t need the perfect vacation, the perfect activity, or even the perfect conversation.

Sometimes you just need to notice what’s already there. To find the wonder again.

And now I urge others to look around, get curious, and ask, “What is nature teaching us today?”

You’ve helped countless people bring their ideas to life. What felt different when it was finally your own story?

Amber Vilhauer:

Oh, everything.

It is much easier to have perspective when it’s someone else’s dream.

For more than two decades, I’ve helped impact-driven leaders find their authentic voice and bring meaningful work into the world. I can usually see the heart of someone else’s message very clearly.

Then suddenly it was my story. My child, our conversations, our vision.

There was nowhere to hide behind strategy.

I had to ask myself the same questions I’ve asked clients for years: What is this really about? Why does it matter? Who are we here to serve?

And the answer kept coming back to connection.

We want children to know they are enough. We want adults to remember that, too. We want families to slow down, reconnect with nature, reconnect with one another, and discover the light that has been there all along.

Once I understood that, this stopped feeling like a book launch.

It became a mission.

What did you have to unlearn to create What Nature Teaches Us?

Amber Vilhauer:

That everything meaningful has to be complicated.

In business, we’re taught to plan, optimize, strategize, measure, improve.

This book asked me to do almost the opposite.

Slow down.

Pay attention.

Get curious.

Don’t force the lesson.

Clay and I wrote this book in the pockets of a full life. We went outside. We talked. We noticed things. We appreciated each other as much as we appreciated the world around us.

There was something very freeing about allowing it to be simple.

A river wasn’t just a river. It could teach us about change. A tree could remind us that growth takes time. A cloud could show us that it’s okay to carry something heavy.

The lesson begins when we notice.

Why do you think so many successful people struggle to slow down?

Amber Vilhauer:

Because movement can feel like progress.

And when you’ve been rewarded your whole life for doing more, achieving more, producing more, slowing down can almost feel irresponsible.

I understand that deeply.

But slowing down doesn’t mean you’ve stopped growing.

Look at a tree. Growth doesn’t need to be rushed.

There are seasons for expansion and seasons for becoming rooted. There are moments to climb and moments to simply look around.

I think many high-performing people are incredibly good at asking, “What’s next?”

Nature reminds us to also ask, “What’s here?”

That question has changed a lot for me.

What is Choose the Light really trying to change?

Amber Vilhauer:

At its heart, Choose the Light is about leaving people and places better than we found them.

We live in a world that can feel very loud and divided. Everything seems to be competing for our attention, magnifying what we lack, and teaching us to look past our environment and one another.

We want to reverse that cycle.

Choose the Light is a movement back toward care and connection. Back to tending the earth, showing up generously for one another and remembering who we are when the noise fades.

The sun doesn’t pick and choose where to give its warmth. It pours into every corner, asking for nothing in return, and life grows because of it.

That idea is so central to what Clay and I hope to share.

The light has always been in you. Nature is here to help you remember.

And when you remember your own light, you can share it with someone else.

Why did you decide to make this bigger than a book with the 10,000 Book Mission?

Amber Vilhauer:

The mission was never to sell a certain number of books.

Clay asked me to help him get the message into the hands of the children who need it the most. 10,000 was his number.

There are children sitting in hospital rooms. Children walking into a new classroom. Children going through something they don’t yet have words for. Children who need to be reminded that big feelings can move and change, that obstacles don’t mean the journeyis over, and that they already carry something valuable inside themselves.

A cloud can hold heavy things and still move forward.

Imagine a child finding that sentence on exactly the day they need it.

That’s why we created the 10,000 Book Donation Mission: to help put this book into schools, hospitals, youth organizations, and other spaces where it can become more than something sitting on a shelf.

He wants the book opened, drawn on, shared, remembered.

If one book creates one conversation that helps one child feel more seen, more hopeful, or less alone, then our vision is achieved.

What do you hope a child feels after reading this book?

Amber Vilhauer:

I hope they feel seen.

I hope they feel curious.

I hope they look at the world a little differently when they step outside.

But more than anything, I hope they close the book knowing: There is light in me. I am connected. My voice matters.

Children experience heavy things. They get stuck. They feel different. They have days when the climb feels hard.

Nature doesn’t tell us those experiences mean something is wrong with us.

The cloud carries something heavy and keeps moving. The river encounters an obstacle and finds another way. The mountain asks us to keep climbing. The rainbow doesn’t need to darken another color to become brighter.

There is room for all of it.

I hope a child reads this book and realizes that whatever they are feeling or facing today is not the whole story.

Their light is still there.

If someone feels overwhelmed, stuck, or disconnected right now, what would you want them to remember?

Amber Vilhauer:

You don’t have to figure out everything today.

Take the next step.

If the path is blocked, be the river and find another way.

If you’re carrying something heavy, remember the cloud. You can carry it and still move forward.

If growth feels slow, remember the tree. Growth doesn’t need to be rushed.

And if the world feels especially dark, remember the stars.

Your light does not become smaller because someone else is shining. There is room for all of us to shine.