112. How Motherhood Transformed My Entrepreneurial Journey: Balancing Business and Parenting

Phylicia Pough: 00:00:00

Hey, friend. You're listening to Harmonious Mompreneur, where faith, family, and business come together.

I'm your host, Phylicia Pough, a Christian wife, mom of two, and life and business system strategist for moms.

If you've ever felt like there just aren't enough hours in the day or find yourself craving more time for yourself but feel guilty about it, you're in the right place. While many strive for balance, I believe it's harmony, an integrated flow that works for you, that truly sustains.

Each week, I'll share insights from my personal journey and practical strategies to help you design systems that bring peace to your business and home life. So give your kids another snack, take a deep breath, and let's dive into today's episode, where we'll start creating your harmonious mompreneur life.

Hey, friend. Oh, my goodness. It has been so long. Well, not that long. It's been three months since I've been here with you, and I am so excited to be back.

ease myself into the new year: 2025

And while I was on break, the podcast got a little bit of a facelift. So we have a new name, Harmonious Mompreneur.

We have a new cover art, and what you can expect moving forward is that we're going to have weekly episodes, except for during our relaunch week. During the relaunch week, I'm dropping one episode per day, but after that, we'll have weekly episodes.

You're going to hear me on here talking more about faith. I'm going to be talking about business systems. Yes, but also life systems.

And then I am going to still have interviews, but they're going to be once per month for now, unless I feel like it needs to change. But for now, it'll be once per month. And so the next few episodes that you hear, they will really be setting the foundation for who I am as a person.

Like, who is Felicia? You'll hear more about my journey, my expertise, my beliefs, and my values.

So you can really decide, okay, is this somebody that I want to be connected to? Do I want to listen to her podcast every single week? Which I think you will.

So definitely stay tuned for all the fun things that will be happening here on the podcast. Now, today, I am specifically talking about how motherhood transformed my entrepreneurial journey.

So I was one of those people who was an entrepreneur before I became a mom.

So if you have joined the email community and you went through the welcome sequence, then you might remember the email called Unplanned Pregnancy, where I talk about how I found out I was pregnant. And it shifted everything for me in terms of how I was able to operate in entrepreneurship.

So I just thought that I would jump right back into the business and work how I did before. And I would just, you know, have my daughter in her car seat or in her chair or on my hip. You know, we would just be like two peas in a pod.

I'm working and she's playing. Listen. That's not how it happened. And just for some context, my circumstances are that I don't send my children to daycare.

And I am my children's primary caretaker. And so they are home with me all the time. And I exclusively. I'm done now, but I was exclusively breastfeeding my children.

So both of them, I have a daughter and I have a son. I breastfed them exclusively for 14 months. Okay.

And so it was very challenging, you know, when I thought I would have time to sit down and do some work, the baby needed something.

If I would have meetings and I was in a room and I just let her sit there and play, she of course, would want to come and be picked up, or she would be in the room just destroying stuff, or there were plants in this one particular room that I sat in a lot and she would always be crawling to dig into the dirt of the plants. And so it was just challenging trying to figure out how to integrate business with a baby. Okay.

And trying to do work with a baby was very distracting. It was just hard to do.

Like you sit down and two minutes later you have to get back up because the baby needs something, she's crying, she might be hungry, she might be crawling towards something that she shouldn't be crawling towards. And so it was just very hard to find any momentum to actually have time to see progress in the work.

And so I quickly realized that I could not operate the same way that I did before I had a baby. And so really, what changed for me? There's a few things I'm going to talk about here.

And so I'll kind of give you what it looked like before motherhood and then after motherhood. So time flexibility. This was a big one. So before motherhood, I could literally work whenever I wanted to. I could pull an all nighter if I wanted to.

I could decide my own hours and they were just contingent on how I felt, what I wanted to do. Now, after motherhood, my schedule completely revolves. At the time it was just my daughter, but now with my son as well.

My schedule revolves around the needs of my children. And so I make sure they are taken care of. And we've gotten into a good rhythm now and then.

I have my set times to work, but it's really times where they are already taken care of. They might be napping, they might be down for the night, or they might be doing some independent playing.

I've kind of observed them and I know when they can play independently. And so now my schedule revolves around the needs of the child. Another thing that changed was my time capacity.

So like I mentioned before, before motherhood, I could work unlimited hours if I wanted to do 14 hour days. That was my prerogative. I was going to do it. Okay?

Now after motherhood, I am responsible for so much more and my time, it just has to be divided amongst so many more things. And so I work more in focused blocks of time instead of just unlimited hours. Another thing that changed was my energy management.

So before motherhood, I could really, I had the liberty, I had the luxury.

I don't know if I would say luxury because I don't necessarily know if this was a good thing or not, but I could push the limits of my energy if I needed to. If I was tired and I still needed to get something done, I could push through and get it done. And I could also bounce back from that quickly.

Okay, now after motherhood, I literally, I cannot run on empty because it not only affects me, but it also affects my family because they are relying on me for a lot. And so now after motherhood, I have to be way more intentional about conserving my energy or just being strategic with how I use it.

And I am now in a season where I prioritize rest. Before motherhood, it was like, oh, I'll rest when, when I can.

Now I have to prioritize rest so that I'm able to show up as my best self in motherhood and in my, my business. And please understand that rest is productive.

I can't tell you how many times I might be trying to work on something at night and I feel myself trying to push the limit a little bit. And I say, you know what? No, this is not working. And I'll go to bed.

And then in the morning when I wake up refreshed, I can knock out that task that was taking me like an hour to work on or 30 minutes. I can knock it out in 10 minutes. Okay, so Rest is very, very productive.

All right, so I've mentioned time flexibility, time capacity, energy management. Another thing that changed was my focus. Okay? Before motherhood, I could prioritize everything. I could say all of the things were important, right?

But now, because of my capacity changes, I have to be very intentional with what I prioritize and what I focus on in the business. Everything cannot be a priority because my time is limited, right? So I have to use my time wisely.

And motherhood really helped me to appreciate time more. And honestly, after becoming a mom, I realized just how much time I had been wasting.

Yeah, before motherhood, I was doing a lot of lollygagging and frolicking and all the things not being as productive as I could have been. And now, which might seem strange, I'm actually more productive now with two children and limited time than I was before.

I think before, yes, I had systems in place. Yes, I leveraged automation, but it wasn't to the level that it is now. Like, I need to.

Like, I definitely didn't have any life systems before, but now I need the systems to be supporting me and I need the automations to be doing work for me.

And so I'm more productive now when I know I have a block of time to do work, I am not, you know, spending 15 minutes trying to figure out what I need to do. Everything is already planned out, and so I can just get to work. So I'm more productive now. And that's because my focus has changed after motherhood.

And finally, the last thing that has changed is my lifestyle perspective. So before motherhood, business was a huge part of my lifestyle, and it really creeped into other areas of my life.

And I literally remember this one time I was on vacation with my family, and I think. I think we were in the Virgin Islands.

We were on this nice beach, and here I am trying to do like this zoom call or manage this, this live stream, and it was just a mess. We talk about the laptop lifestyle like. Like it's something aspirational, but in reality, the.

The true flex is being able to leave your laptop at home, right? Who wants to be on the beach with their laptop? I close the laptop and leave it at home. And so previously, life was fitting into my business.

Business was the primary focus. But now after motherhood, business absolutely has to fit into my life because family is my priority, of course, after my faith.

But family is my priority and what matters most after my faith. And so that happened after motherhood, though. So those are some of the things that kind of changed after I became a mom.

But there were two things that I implemented that really helped me to be in a space where I could integrate the two, motherhood and business, in a way that felt good and where I wasn't always overwhelmed and drained. So the first thing was boundaries. And this can look like having specific work hours.

I try not to work when my children are, like, awake, or I like to have designated work times so they know, okay, this is mommy's work time.

And then after that work time, I'll be with them and fully present with them, but not in a space where I am half present in the work that I'm doing and half present with them. So always want to be fully present with the children.

And so even with my business, with my business, I set boundaries for myself where I say, I will not take calls while the kid. While. Okay, I won't take calls while both of the children are awake, right? So if I'm going to take a call, it has to be when.

When the baby is sleeping. It's okay if the toddler is up, but preferably she should be taking her nap, too, but she's at this age where she doesn't really want a nap.

So not long ago, I took a call with somebody during a time that I. I knew I shouldn't have taken it because both of the kids were going to be up. It was a market research call.

But still, when I tell y'all that when I got on that call, my kids ran wild. It was like as soon as they knew I was on a zoom, they just. They just went wild. And I said, you know what? This is why I have this boundary in place.

Like, Felicia, do not stray away from your own boundaries that you have set for yourself and for your. It really, truly helps. And then, in addition to boundaries, of course, you have guessed it. I implemented systems.

I always knew the importance of systems, right? My background is in administration. My background is in systems. I am a structured thinker. I am a systems thinker. Like, I'm very organized.

And so I always knew the importance of it, right? It's the work that I do.

But now, after motherhood, I see truly how important systems are in being able to successfully navigate this intersection of motherhood and business. Like, without systems, things would be absolutely haywire, right?

And like I mentioned before, it's not only business systems, but it's life systems as well. And I'm so excited to talk more to you guys about life systems. But anyway, that is how motherhood transformed my entrepreneurial journey.

It has been an amazing, what, almost four years. My daughter will be four soon at the time of this recording. And I think it's only going to get better. Right? And so I want to leave you with this.

If you are kind of in the thick of things, maybe you're like me and you have little toddlers running around, you have multiple children, or maybe you're in a different season of motherhood and you have teens and that's a little bit challenging for you or your kids are they're in high school, about to go off to college. What. Whatever your circumstance may be, just know that this is only a season.

And wherever you find yourself, I always want you to remember to give yourself grace. Okay? Give yourself grace and finally do what makes the most sense for you and your family.

Even if what I'm telling you on this podcast, it just does not seem to fit for you, for your family, for your lifestyle, for where God is leading and calling. You don't do it. Right? I am not telling you that what I'm doing is the only way or the best way. Right?

I'm just here sharing what I feel led to share and sharing what has worked for me. But at the end of the day, you have to do what makes the most sense for you and for your family. All right? So I would love to hear from you.

Let's continue this conversation. Shoot me a DM over on Instagram and let's chat about how motherhood has transformed your entrepreneurial journey.

DM me on Instagram or you can join the email community. Both links are in the show notes and I look forward to chatting and connecting with you with grace and gratitude.

Thank you so much for listening and I will see you in the next episode. Hey friend. I'm so glad you tuned in today. Before you go, will you take a moment to leave a review?

Leaving a review ensures other mompreneurs like you can find this show and get the insights and strategies they need to create harmony between their business and home life. I appreciate you so much. With grace and gratitude. See you in the next episode.