127. What Work-Life Balance Really Looks Like as a Mom and CEO

What does work-life balance really look like when you're building a business with little ones underfoot? In this honest and behind-the-scenes episode, I’m sharing 10 strategies that have helped me navigate motherhood and entrepreneurship without full-time childcare—from finding pockets of deep work to rethinking routines, home life, and asking for help. If you’re juggling big dreams and snack-time interruptions, this one’s for you.

WILDFLOWER SHOWNOTES: shannaskidmore.com/how-to-balance-motherhood-and-business

📌 Resources

• Toggl
• Oura
• Asana Task Management Software
• Atomic Habits
• Kendra Adachi episode 
• James Clear Masterclass 
• Finance Friday Newsletter 
• Free Budgeting Class 

Transcript

0:02

you are listening to Consider the Wildflowers, the podcast episode 127. Welcome to the show. I'm so excited for today with Mother's Day right around the corner. I wanted to do a solo episode to give you a peek behind the curtain as to how my business has changed since becoming a mother. And I know not all of you listening are moms or have little people at home. You are different stages of life, different types of businesses, different seasons of business, but I know all of us have our own time constraints. And I wanted just to show you how my business, how I'm running my business and managing a team in part time hours and the journey in the journey of starting a business with all the time in the world to now running a business in very limited hours. I'll be honest here. It almost feels a little ironic to record this episode about work life balance. Would you all know? If you've listened to many of these podcast episodes or spent any time around me, I don't love the word work-life balance. I don't like that idea. I love the word harmony though. And that's something I'm always seeking and striving for in my work and my mom life and my home life in general. um But I wanted to really talk about work-life balance as a mom and CEO because I really am deep in the messy middle of it myself with two littles at home and running a team. And that's why, but So I am thick in the thick of it and that's exactly why I wanted to hit record before it's polished, before it's cleaned up so that you can hear the reel and I hope just be encouraged in your own journey. This isn't a how-to or a highlight reel. It's a real life look at what work and life actually look like for me right now. This is my 12th year in business. Two littles at home. Very unpredictable childcare. Zero childcare basically for my littlest one. She just turned one and then my oldest is in school, preschool, part time, three days a week. In a business I still deeply care about growing and it's something I'm currently navigating and have been navigating for the last four years. As I sat down and wrote this episode it worked out to 10 strategies which I really love that have been working for me. Some of them are very practical. Some are one-ish is mental kind of meant em mindset. So in this season when I value my business very much, but it gets very, very little of me. So no matter what season of life you're in work, work life, home life, whether a mom or not, littles, home or not, just a human with limited time, but a business you care deeply about. I hope this episode encourages you in some way. I don't expect that you'll adopt all of these strategies I'm going to share, but I hope that you can take a few and implement them or modify them for your own life or just hopefully take some encouragement if you too are in a season where your business doesn't get as much time as you wish that it could. I'm right there with you. you Before we dive in, wanted to give you a brief look at my business journey to just kind of set up how things have changed over the past 12 years. This is my 12th year officially in business and how these strategies I'm going to share today have evolved in different seasons of life and business. Really just out of, sometimes out of necessity, out of my desires for my life changing, I just wanna share with you how I've come to these 10 strategies in this particular season of Work and Life. And don't worry, it is going to be a brief history, so I'm not gonna spend 15 minutes talking about how my business has grown over the past 12 years, but I think it will be helpful, especially since we don't often see what lives look like behind that highlight reel, or the... you know, home page of a website. It's too easy to compare our revenue to someone else's revenue, our offers to someone else's offers. How often someone is showing up online to how often you're showing up online or someone has a podcast or a YouTube or how are they? How are they doing all of that? We just don't know the back end often of other situation in work or life. Do they have a team? Do they have kiddos at home? Do they have full time child care? Do they have a spouse that doesn't work? Like all of these things matter and all of them look different in our work, our life, in our season. That's why I wanted to share just a bit of what my business looks like today, how it's grown through the last 12 years. and how I have and have not made a lot of progress in all of the different seasons of my business. So I officially launched my business in the fall of 2013. It was a fully service based business. At that time I was working particular. I was working one on one with clients on financial planning, management, accounting. This is my third year in marriage. So just Kyle and I, Kyle was actually back in school. So I was our primary earner for our family, but I did have a lot of time to work. And in that first year, truly what I had to learn about work-life balance was boundaries. I worked a lot because I could work a lot. I was fully service-based. I was figuring all of this out on my own. I was figuring out my packages and my pricing and what I would offer and what I would, I was kind of in that throw spaghetti on the wall season, try it all, say yes to everything. And in some ways I'm so glad that I said yes to all those things and I really quickly honed in. on what I did, what I excelled at, what I wanted to be known for. And I really quickly learned boundaries and setting limits to my time. I started using Toggle, T-O-G-G-L, which is how I track my time. I still use it to this day. I'm obsessed with it. I teach all of my students in the Blueprint model how to use it. What I love is that it helped me estimate project times because I was fully service based. And so in the beginning I was saying, here's all the deliverables I will give you and here's the fee for that. But I really underestimated how much time it would take me to deliver all those things. And so it really tracking my time saved my pricing. I always joke it saved my marriage. Like it saved my business. I could talk about this obviously so much more. But in that first year, really was about work life balance was about figuring out boundaries. Over the next three years, my business continued to grow and in 2016 we had grown so much that I truly could not take on any more work myself. At that time I was running the business 100 % by myself. Kyle of course was helping me with tech and this was before we created a course so it's still again all service based but my husband Kyle was helping me some. But like I was doing all the emails, all the responding, all the client correspondence, like everything. I was maxed out on capacity and at that time I had never considered like the agency model. I didn't consider hiring more Shannas, but I did want to figure out how I could serve more people. And so that's when my husband Kyle and I sat down at our kitchen table and recorded the first iteration of the Bluebird Model, which is my financial planning course for small business owners. Essentially took the work that I was doing with my one-on-one clients and recorded it so I could teach more people. had 54 students join that first time, which was incredible in 2016. At that time, I had worked with Britt and co. And if I may to record some other small courses. So I just tiptoed into the course world. And this really a changed my business model, which I could talk about more, which I didn't really realize. um But it was life changing. It was life changing for our family. It was financially life changing in so many ways. It was life changing. And from that time on, since my business slowly migrated, truly kind of over to the course world. I hired five full time employees. I kept on selling courses, and I slowly realized around 2018-2019, I was no longer doing CFO work, accounting work, not very much one on one work at all. And I was an educator. I was a marketer. And at the time, that was okay. Looking back now is when I have that kind of light bulb moment realization, but my business model truly shifted. In 2019, my husband and I moved states. He started working full time and I knew that I wanted a shift in my business. At that point, I didn't know exactly what I saw in the future, but I knew that I kind of needed a break. And so I decided to take a full year long sabbatical in 2020 and let go of all of my team. We closed down my courses for the year and I just wanted like a clean slate. If you could do anything, what would you do that kind of year? And that's the year I got pregnant with our daughter. So in 2021, early spring 2021, had our first little moved back to Tennessee to be closer to family. And my husband joined me in the business full time. So then again, I was the primary earner. So for the past four years, I have been running my business with some contract help. My husband, of course, was helping me on the tech podcast, doing all of our video editing. And we've had contractors, we've had people helping with emails and correspondence. We've had podcast editors, like all contractors, no full-time help. em And barely any childcare for the first two and half years of my oldest daughter's life, we did not have any consistent childcare until she started preschool. And then, and so I was working about 20 hours a week. My husband and I would tag team childcare. And then when we had our second little last year, so basically for the last year, my husband went back to work full time and I've been working around 10 hours a week and That's one of the biggest reasons I wanted to record this podcast because I have learned so much in the last four years. And I remember when I first launched the blueprint model, I had so many moms, obviously, taking the program and going through the course and saying things like, Shanna, we would love to get your perspective one day when you have kids. Like it does change a lot. And I know, again, a lot of you listening may not be moms or may not have littles at home, but like we all have time constraints. And motherhood is one of those. things that just totally changed me, changed my life and my business. And one thing I didn't mention here is in 2020, when I took that year off, one of the biggest blessings that happened to me is that was the first time I feel like I no longer found my identity in my business. And when I decided to come back, which I was very excited to come back in 2021, what I realized is that this is my job and I really like my job, but it's okay for me just to recognize that This is my job and I like my job. It's no longer my identity. And now sitting here four years into motherhood, I realized in a lot of ways motherhood had become my identity. And again, I'm in this process and not to say that that's bad, but like finding different pieces and facets of who you are. I feel like for the first time in four years, like my brain can get back on business. You know, I've been full in on like, you know, when you're camera roll becomes less about screenshotting inspiration for your next home decor project. And it's all your kids. Now I can see thinking about and dreaming about and processing things for the business. And I just haven't been there. I have really enjoyed my business, but it's almost been like in maintenance mode for the last four years and getting very, very little of my time. As any of you can attest or know, or maybe I can just give you a little encouragement or reassurance here running a business at the level that my business runs in 10 hours a week, sometimes 20 is nearly impossible, and it's impossible. It has felt hard to know in so many ways. Only being able to give it that much time is limiting its growth. So 2025 has brought about a lot of realizations and strategy changes and things that I'm really excited about in our business. And I wanted to share some of those today with you because I feel like I'm finally in this place where I can say, how can you run a business in such limited hours? At a high capacity, what are the strategies to do that? Because I feel like I finally realized these are the things that have worked for me. I've run a multi six figure business, now have a full time employee. And again, at this current season, I'm working 10 to 12 hours. I wouldn't advise that. It's not easy. I could get a lot more done if I had more hours, but that's the season I'm in. I've also learned to give a lot of grace to myself and honestly just gratitude that I get to choose this time with my kiddos. And I get to choose what I want my business to look like. And I don't have the luxury to be a stay at home mom. Like I have to earn. I still have to earn, my family still needs me to earn money for our family, so I don't want to shut down my business. I love running my business. I'm excited for my girls to see me running a business. I'm so grateful for that. I have to figure out how to do both. And that's something I think a lot of us are juggling. Okay, so with that backstory, I hope that was helpful just to hear where I am now, what my business looks like right now, the fact that I still have to earn money. I'm choosing very limited hours because I know how much time I wanna spend with my kids. I love my business and I want it to continue to grow. I'm in the messy middle, welcome. I think some of you are here with me. And I just want to share some strategies that have helped me personally find harmony in this season of work life and mom life and figuring out how to do both. Can we do both? Well, some practical, some mental kind of mindset can take what serves you and leave, leave the rest. Let's dive into the 10 strategies. Strategy number one, I hope you don't cringe, this could be cringe, but it truly has been empowering for me to voice out loud that I need our home to be decluttered, clean, organized. Is it decluttered, clean, and organized often? No, but I'm realizing how much like house clutter, stuff clutter provides mental clutter. And I work from home and I... I needed to voice like I need this space to feel like a productive environment. I recently heard on Kindredachi's podcast a quote from the Nestor where it said, if it's out, it's decoration. And I have just loved that. And I'm slowly implementing that into my home. But just being able to voice and recognize that the space around me affects my ability to focus. And when I have such limited time to work, when I sit down, I need to be hyper focused. so putting strategies in place that help keep the house clean and organized and decluttered has been really helpful. So we do have a house cleaner that comes every other week. And that's just really wonderful to know that those deep clean items are happening. floors are being mopped, bathrooms are being cleaned. That's been really helpful just to take those time consuming things off of my plate and to know it's clean even if it's cluttered. And then I started scheduling days for the other home projects or house things I need to get done. So I think this is probably like an atomic habit. I haven't read that book. It's on my list, but I did watch the James Clear master class, which was amazing. So I think the key and maybe the thought process behind the James Clear, the atomic habits method is like make it habitual. Something you have to think about. And so I did this. Like I literally put on my calendar. what nights I'm bathing my kids. I put on my calendar, we wash our bed sheets on Sundays. I have my meal planning day, my grocery shopping day, because I cannot tell you how much it has helped me just to have days for things and making it a habit instead of a question mark. So I know we're gonna have food in the house because I meal planned for the week and I ordered groceries. and Kyle picks the groceries up on his way home. Just creating rhythms and routines as simple as that has been really, really helpful. Some other just practical things that we do is running the dishwasher every single night and before breakfast unloading it. Because I've found that if you have clean dishes in the dishwasher, the sink just fills up with the dirty ones. So we just take the... m So if we just take five minutes every morning to unload the dishwasher, then all day long we can put the dirty ones in there. I also am someone who cleans as I cook. So if I have pots and pans that I'm using while I cook and I'm done, that's just something I've always done. I clean them out and it makes just such a big difference just to like clean them and be done. m I know that our homes and cleanliness can be a big part, a source of shame for a lot of women. And so that is by no means my goal. I just know that I had a voice out loud that when my house is dirty and cluttered and there's stuff everywhere, I can't focus and I can't focus on my work. I just want to pick up and clean the house. And so I had to put some strategies in place and they're small and it's not perfect, but it definitely helps. having places for the kids' toys to put stuff away every single night, even truly if it is just a bin in the living room and all the toys get dumped in there, which drives me crazy, but at least they're not all over the floor. They're just all in a basket. So number one, keeping the house decluttered, cleaned, picked up was one strategy that made a world of difference, putting some simple systems in place to make our home feel more peaceful and decluttered. allowed me to focus so much since I do work from home. Cough Number two was establishing my work time and my home time and I needed very, very clear boundaries for this. I'm not someone who integrates well. I needed very specific work time, very specific home time. I learned very quickly that I don't like naptime hustle and I don't like doing it because if the baby doesn't nap, naps get cut short, something doesn't happen. I'm frustrated. I'm anxious. I'm mad at my kids because I didn't get to go work because nap time didn't happen. And recognizing those things in myself allowed me to like, this isn't working. I'd rather have childcare for a full day and just go work than try to get an hour in here and there during nap time. So I sat down and looked at all of my tasks and how many hours I needed to work. And 20 hours truly is the ideal amount of time for us to make progress in the business. And so I looked at my schedule, our childcare availability, and was like, when can I work and when can I just be at home with the girls, especially knowing that I don't like nap time hustle. If I get in an hour during that time, I want that to be bonus time and not counted on time. And so the hardest thing ever, I went through a season where I was staying up really late and I would start basically the clock when the kids got in bed and I would clock five hours a night for four days. And so I was working 20 hours and that was I got the oar ring and saw how terrible that was for my body. And so was like, okay, let's regroup. So then I started doing three hours in the morning. Like I would rather get up at 5 a.m. and work until eight than stay up until midnight one or two. And so that's been working a lot better, working in the mornings for five days a week and then having one dedicated day of childcare. And that's been our sweet spot so far. Oh man. And that's truly been the sweet spot and where we are right now. We are about to move as I record this into summer season and I'm so grateful because I have a nanny for the summer who will be with us two full days and so 12 full hours of childcare, AMA mornings like I cannot wait to see. It's so funny to be like, how much can I get done in 20 hours a week? You know, you've been working 10 to 20 only in very limited time. So if you're in a season and what I learned, I had to get ruthless about the tasks that only I can do. And something I teach all my students in the blueprint model, we call it the four quadrant time chart. It totally needs a better name. I think it's probably similar to like an Eisenhower matrix maybe, but we put all of our tasks ahead on my students. And I do this anytime I'm feeling overwhelmed, like brain dump all of my tasks on paper, personal tasks, work tasks, like what is everything? that you have to do in a week or a month. And then I go through and put them into categories. And so I look at like the gold category we call um income producing and dreamy. Something that stuff that you really enjoy doing and business wise, it's very income producing. And so that's gold. Those are the things that you want to do first and really block out your time and make it sacred time to get that done. Then we have inspirational tasks. So those are things you enjoy doing, but they may not be income producing or you could outsource them to someone else. They're inspirational. These are things like, I really love to update my website, but like I probably shouldn't be the one doing that. But you know what? I enjoy it. And so sometimes we're like creating PDFs in Canva. Like I love making things pretty. So sometimes I always say for inspirational tasks, It's good to carve out time in your schedule to do that, whether it's once a month or once a week. Put time in there to do things that you just enjoy, even if they're maybe not the most important things that you can be doing. Then we have mundane tasks. These are income producing, but not dreamy. And so these are things like checking email. Like it has to get done or meal planning it for home. Like it has to get done. or maybe not meal planning, but grocery shopping. it has to get done, but maybe you don't want to enjoy it. And so these are really the places where I start looking at how can we either systemize it, outsource it, or hire someone to do it. And then the last section was clutter. These are things that are not dreamy, not income producing. Again, this is one of those things as you hear me talk through it, you're like, oh my goodness, we got to talk about this more. Maybe I should do a whole episode on it. The clutter. This is why in I ended up quitting Instagram because as a marketing avenue, I realized that maybe Instagram wasn't the best use of my time and I needed to focus more on SEO, long form content, Pinterest. And so it became clutter. I can't say that is for you, but this was the process I went through and I have to redo this process very often because I have such limited time. So strategy number two was really establishing my work time and my home time. That for me mentally, I need to know that at 5 a.m. it's hard, but I'm getting out of bed and I'm going to work for three hours because I and it feels good to know I'm going to get that time. If I didn't have that established work time, I'd be stressed out like when am I going to get my work time in? Like what am I getting out of That for me was not working. Okay, strategy number three. ask for help slash hire help. That goes back to kind what we talked about with the mundane. It's something that has to get done, but maybe you don't necessarily enjoy it or it's not the best use of your time. And you can think personal here, business wise. Get creative. We have a house cleaner that comes twice every other week. We've done mill delivery. We do grocery delivery. We definitely do grocery pickup right now. We, I have hired a lot of contractors, so podcast editors, people to help with the blog, graphics for Pinterest, virtual assistants to answer emails. There's so many other things I would love to hire for like just get creative. Um, and I know you might be thinking here, like I don't have the money to hire someone and I get that. Like I, I get how that makes sense. And something that I, that can be a struggle. Something that I started thinking about was if I'm spending an hour, no, like grocery shopping, for example, I could pay. the fee for Instacart to grocery shop and what is it 1299 delivery fee or something like that and get an hour of work in and if I had a call during that hour my calls are 375 for a 30 minute call with me like that's where I start doing the hiring math. What work would I have to do to justify hiring someone else to do this task for me and I know it doesn't always work that way like somebody's doing my grocery shopping while I have a call that I'm charging for. But if you can figure out how to think of it that way and to make sure the things that you are doing are bringing in actual revenue for your business, it starts to make hiring so much more simple. Like I think about this a lot with child care. If I'm hiring someone to watch my kids for X amount of dollars, say it's going to be $100 while they're here. What would I have to get done in those four or five hours to justify spending a hundred dollars? Is that writing a newsletter? Is that creating a new product? Is that pitching five new businesses to work with our CFO and accounting team? Like that's where it becomes so much easier when you know that the tasks you're doing are directly revenue producing. So one thing I wish that I had done earlier, I have hired a lot of people in my business, contractors, employees, to do all kinds of different jobs. But until 2025, I had never hired anyone that could do my job. And that is the one thing right now in my business I have wish I'd done sooner. I had never thought about doing the agency model. I did not think that I wanted to do the agency model. I did not think I liked being a boss. But I'm telling you, like, it has been life changing to hire someone an accounting professional that I could train to do my actual job. And it truly has taken so much work off of my plate to know that they can work with our CFO clients and accounting clients doing bookkeeping work, CFO work, working on spreadsheets, presentations, financial reporting, all the stuff that only I could ever do. And it was the first time like those type of tasks has ever been taken off my plate. So be that what it is in your in your world and your business, but it's been life changing for me not just to hire to tasks that aren't the best use of my time or that need to get done, but I don't want to do them, but to actually hire someone that could double and triple and do book like do more of my work has been. has been life changing. Okay, number four, know your enough number. You don't have to say this, but it's so true. I believe the best thing that any of you listening can do is know how much you need to pay your bills, your business bills. We call this your enough number, your financial freedom number, your sales goal. Like how much does the business need to make this year in order to pay you, pay your team? Like it's a peace of mind number. It's going to change your life. Like I love having this number because no matter what I know, we have to hit say 100,000. If 100,000 is my sales goal, no matter what, whether that's booking 10 clients at $10,000 or selling a thousand products at $100, like you can, you can mix and match it any way, but I have to hit in 100,000. And that's the thing. Like we're scrappy. We're entrepreneurs. If you know your number. I truly believe we can hit our number. Even if we're doing like what we used to laugh and call it non-portfolio work, like work you're not gonna put on your website, work you don't wanna repeat, like work that just pays a bill. That's okay, like you're just hitting that number. And so there's so much value in knowing what is enough for you. How much do you need this year to pay your bills? Your personal bills, your business bills. If you're like, Shanna, I have no idea. I have no idea where to start. I have no idea how to create a budget. I have no idea how to find that enough number. Then I would like for you to go to shannaskimmer.com slash clack. shannisgomer.com slash training and you will find a free class there all about how to find your enough number, how to create a budget for your business. It's a free 30 minute class. It's really incredible and so much fun. shannisgomer.com slash training. If you don't even know where to begin on finding your enough number. Number five is my wind down routine. I'm sure you've heard of others talk about their wind down routine, but at the end of my working period, whether it's first thing in the morning or my one day, my one long day with child care. em The most important thing that I do is I look at my to do list and I. I look at all of my outstanding tasks, what still need to get done, and I prioritize the first three things that I need to work on during my next work session, whether that's later that day or the next day or I want to know when I sit down what I'm working on first. So I look at all those tasks and name the most important things for my next working session. So I have uh a very simple wind down routine and it really truly is just like What did we accomplish in this work session? What is left to be done? What are my top priorities to work on next? And that leads me to number six, which is what some people might call a ramp up routine. I have a friend that calls it her tiger time, but your deep work time for me, that is first thing in the morning. I know that this is my time to do Shanna only tasks. During my long work day where I have childcare for most of the day, that's where I work with my team and so I'm communicating more with my team. But during my deep work time, my mornings, I have no notifications on. I don't get on my email. I literally look at what I wrote down as the most important tasks for my next working session and I start there first. You want to do the hardest things first, the most important things first. Like I'm not answering emails. I'm not doing this like mindless tasks that I could do watching Gilmore Girls. Like this is my time to write, record content, write our newsletter. Like it is. my most focused time, which is also why I love it in the morning because that's the most quiet time in our house. Like I have learned that I am very easily distracted and I really need that quiet time to stay focused. And so I want to get the hardest things done first during my guaranteed work time. Um, because You know that feeling like if you have something sitting on the back of your mind, I need to get done. needed to get it done. And like things happen. Things come up like traffic's worse and you didn't get to the coffee shop as soon as you wanted to. And now you only have 30 minutes instead of an hour. Like I like to get those things done to get my full attention to the most important things and the things only I can do during my like ramp up time. Tiger time, deep work time, whatever you want to call it. And for me, that's first thing in the morning. Number seven, I could not live. mean, I could whatever. That's dramatic. I would not want to live without Asana. Asana is the task management software I have used for years. I mean, at this point, I couldn't even tell you what year is it. If not, if not 10 years, at least eight, I would say. I don't know. Since they've been around, I think I started using Asana. very early, it works for my brain. So find the task management software that works for yours. For some people don't love Asana like I do, they like Trello or something different, but I love Asana. Asana allows me to put all of the tasks that I have on my brain, personal tasks, business tasks, into one place. And I can assign it a deadline. I can sign it assign it to a team member. can assign it to myself. I put it in projects. It's like super helpful. The way Asana is organized, like it works for my brain. But why I love it so much is that I don't walk around with a running to do list in my head. And if you know this feeling, like please email me or leave a comment. It's like, yes, that running to do list is so stressful. Like trying to remember all the things that I have to get done is no fun. Cough having like 15 paper to-do lists taped to my computer doesn't work, my planner to-do lists, like I just love it in a sauna. And the reason I love it in a sauna is everything goes in there and I just know that if it's in a sauna it's not gonna get forgotten. And so I put like, I have a personal board where I put all my personal things like, paying bills, meal planning, grocery shopping, projects I want to work on the house. Like I put anything that I have an idea about in Asana. I even have like an ideas board. So for business or person really just for business, like I want to update the website or I want to make this change to our core. So I want to add this bonus to the blueprint model. Like even if it's not something I want to implement right now, I put it in Asana website changes. I just love that I can get everything off of my brain and into Asana. If it needs a deadline, I'm giving it a deadline. If it needs to be assigned to a team member, it's getting assigned to a team member. And so I can go into Asana and pull up what are the most urgent or time sensitive tasks that are on my to do list? Is this still the most important? Do I need to move it to another day? Like our editorial calendar lives in there. Our podcast schedule lives in there. All the team members are on the same page. know when like graphics need to be done or the blog needs to be written. Like I love Asana. So find a place that's not your brain and a running to do list. If paperwork's for you, great. Work with paper. If another project management software works for you, great. Like for me, it's Asana and I'm, it like has been just life changing for me because I don't feel like I have to remember everything. Alright, we have three more. I'll run through these a little more quickly because I've gotten long winded. But number eight, get outside every day, rain or shine. For me mentally, like I need to go outside. And usually around four o'clock, about an hour before my husband gets home, like I need to go outside. We have a lot of friends in the neighborhood and so a lot of mom friends are out there playing with their kids. We do a lot of four o'clock walks. Like I feel like we're all getting a little stir crazy. It's the end of the day. um My husband gets home around five and then he plays with the kids for a couple out like an hour or so while I make dinner and I just get a little bit of like Shanna time. I love cooking dinner. It's a really mental reset for me after a fun but long day. But getting outside every day, even if it's raining, we have a really beautiful like front porch, which we're really blessed to have kind of farmhouse style across our entire front of our house. So the girls and I will just sit out there and watch it rain. We love getting outside. think there's just something mentally helpful about getting outside. Number nine could be its own podcast episode. I should talk more about this more later and all the things that I've learned, but getting more strategic about what you offer. My business started service based. Three years in we moved to product like digital offers and have really focused on one course, the blueprint model since then. I've dabbled in workshops. I've dabbled in a lot of different things. The course is what stuck for the longest time until I realized that really in the last few years, but in the made the shift this year. that while I love the course model, it's amazing you get to serve so many more people. Do not see education leaving my offer ladder anytime soon. That to do well in a digital space, you have to be a marketer and pretty much a constant marketer. Your brand needs to be constantly bringing in new people. And sometimes in the season that felt very exhausting for me. And what I really wanted was, you know, recurring, consistent, reliable income. that I knew was coming in. So something we talked about when I worked in finance is like the idea of starting at zero every single month. You you've got to make your sales goal. But in finance, you build up residual income from your portfolio. And so after a while, people would create their, you know, their residual income would become their salary because it was reliable. It was consistent. It was recurring. You didn't lose it often unless you've lost people from your portfolio. oh And I realized I did not have an offer like that. So that's why some people maybe create a membership. again, the motivator here for creating offers, I don't want to say is just the financial part. That's not true. It's how do we serve our clients and customers more? But I think we want to be strategic and smart about our offers. What does your life look like right now? How much time do you have to give to your business? How much money do you need to make? If you need to make $100,000 and You only have 10 hours a week to do that. Is it better to take on 10 clients, one client a month ish for $10,000 or to create one product and sell it a thousand times for $100? Like the product makes sense, right? But you've got to be constantly marketing so that it's not passive income. So just thinking more about your offers. That's been something that's been challenging for me, like a challenge I've given to myself in this season of like Just because you don't have more time to give doesn't necessarily mean your income has to go down. Are there creative ways to serve your audience in a way that also serves your family? So we can talk more about that. That's number nine. Be more strategic about your offers. Last but not least, this is the more mindset mental strategy, but really naming what does harmony mean to me? What does work-life balance slash harmony? What does harmony mean to you? What does it look like? Ask yourself this question and get ruthlessly honest with yourself. How many hours are you working? How much money do you wanna make? What do you want your life and your time to look like? I find that I feel restless inside when I'm comparing my life, my stuff, my kids, my moming, my business. to other people. can't show up on Instagram nor would I maybe want to. I don't know. As often as other people. I don't put makeup on every day. um I'm thinking more about like my summer activities with my kids than an ad, you know what I'm saying? what does harmony mean for you? What does it look like? What is it very specifically? What time are you getting up? What time are you going to bed? Are you reading in the morning? Are you reading at night? Like, what does it mean to you? And on that note, I personally had to ask myself, what does being a good mom look like to me? I need to know what that is. Because I have some really good moms in my life. They're amazing. A lot of them, you know, have like educational activities they do with their kids, like, looking at ladybugs and hatching butterflies. And I'm like, well, darn, I didn't do that. Am I a bad mom? I need to know what a good mom looks like for me. And maybe asking yourself that same. For me, I need to get really specific on that because I'm a competitor. I am someone who likes to excel at all things that I'm doing. And that can feel exhausting if the finish line keeps moving. And if I'm not even clear what the finish line is. So that's number 10 of my strategies, just getting clear on what does harmony mean for you and maybe even digging deeper, like what does being a good mom, a good working mom look like for you? So those are my 10 strategies for finding harmony in work and life, especially as a working mom. Number one, keeping the house decluttered, clean to keep focus and energy high. I need my house to not feel chaotic as much as possible. Number two, I needed personally dedicated work time and home time and those to be clearly communicated and very established. I need to know when I'm working. I need to know when I'm Number three, ask for help or hire help. Look for creative ways to give the hours you have to work to your most important tasks. Number four, Know your enough number. How much do you need to sell in your business to pay your personal bills and your business bills? That is enough for you. Number five, create a wind down routine where you offload all of those tasks in your brain and establish the most important things that you will work on the next time you sit down to work. Number six, know your deep work time, your ramp up routine, like deep work. Keep it focused, keep it on the most important things and do only the tasks you can do in those deep work moments. m Number seven, establish a time. Implement a task management software that helps you take the to-do list out of your brain and put it virtually on paper. I love Asana. I highly recommend it. Couldn't live without Asana. Wouldn't want to live without Asana. Number eight, get outside every day. Number nine, be smart and strategic about your offers, especially in this season of life. Number 10, define what harmony means to you. Above all else, what I've learned in the beautiful juggle, what a blessing it is to juggle work and home. What a blessing it is to have a beautiful family and grow your family and have work that you deeply care about. Like that is an honor and a heart I would choose any day. But I've learned that I have to get clear and honest with myself about what I actually need to thrive in my work and in my home life. And that's going to look different for all of us. For so long, I tried to be superwoman. I never asked for help. I will keep this house clean, but only when the kids are napping because I don't want them to see me cleaning. Like, that's silly. Meal planning, grocery shopping. Like, I don't want to see my kids to see me meal planning or grocery shopping because I do that on my computer and I didn't want to be on my computer all the time around them. giving myself more grace and again, answering what does being a good mom look like. I was trying to be supermom. I was trying to... run and make full-time income and very part-time hours. And I just had to sit down and be like, what do I need to thrive? I learned for me, like I need alone time. I need time where no one is around me. I like working. I like working. I think working makes me a better mom. Like I learned, uh you know, that whole like quality and quantity, like let's talk about it. I will give up some time with my kids. to have more quality time with them where I'm not distracted. I don't wanna do nap time hustle. I had to identify that for myself. And being able to say like, love being a mom and I also love doing work that I care about. If you have felt this tension or guilt, pressure to do it all and perfectly, you are not alone. And while I'm... I'm not sure that feeling of like juggling ever completely goes away. I think there's some strategies that these strategies have really helped me in this season of doing both. And honestly, just allowing myself a different mindset, a mindset that's like, I am so grateful. I get this hard. I get to do this hard thing. um So I hope today has been helpful, has been encouraging. Take what serves you, leave the rest. Above all else, know that you are doing amazing things, mama. One final quote to send off today from Sophia Bush. You are allowed to be both a masterpiece and a work in progress simultaneously. As always, thank you for listening. I'll see you next time.