75. 3 Things Every Mom Entrepreneur Needs for Work-Life Harmony

Phylicia Pough: 00:00:00

You can also get support at home. Ask for help from your spouse or other family member. You have to be specific in the type of help that you need.

You have to be specific, you have to give grace, and you have to be patient. All right. Discuss what you need support with and how you would like to receive that support. You are now tuned in to the Mom CEO Suite podcast.

I'm your host, Phylicia, wife, mom and entrepreneur.

In this podcast, I'll be sharing my mompreneur journey along with strategies that will help you build your online business operations in a sustainable way. The goal is to help you build a business that fits into your lifestyle as a mom who values putting family first.

We will also hear the experiences and expertise of other moms with service based businesses. You'll get a peek into our journeys so you'll know that you aren't alone. Motherhood gets hard, entrepreneurship gets hard.

But together we can do hard things. Welcome to the suite. Hey, friend. Welcome to another episode.

So today we are talking about three things that mom entrepreneurs need in order to experience work life harmony. Now, when we talk about experiencing work life harmony, this is not something that's going to happen overnight or on the first attempt.

It's really going to take some intention and constant refining and other things as well to kind of get to this place where you are experiencing what harmony looks like for you. Okay? Now here on the podcast, we talk about work life harmony instead of work life balance.

And I'll put some links in the show description so you can get a better understanding of that. So back in episode 27, I talked about finding harmony in life and business as a work from home mompreneur.

And in episode 54, I shared three things hindering mompreneurs from experiencing work life harmony. And those three things were comparison, lack of community and lack of boundaries.

So I'll link them again just so you can get the full breakdown of all of that information. But today we know a few things that hinder us from experiencing work life harmony. But what do we actually need? So number one, we need support, right?

This journey, it's hard. It's hard to be on the journey alone or feeling like you're alone. And in the intro I say, motherhood gets hard, entrepreneurship gets hard, right?

And I'm not just saying that for fun. It is the reality. And without support, it feels a lot harder. And so where or how can you get support so you can get support in the business, right?

You can get this through hiring employees or dedicated contractors. This can look like hiring somebody on retainer or having some type of fractional officer in your business.

So fractional chief operating officer, fractional chief marketing officer, fractional chief financial officer. I was trying to remember what they all stand for, but coo, CMO and cfo, or you can have project based contractors. Okay?

Whatever you do, however you choose to do it, just make sure that you consult with a lawyer and HR specialist to make sure that you are in compliance. Okay?

But maybe because of your circumstances or just a decision that you have made, you decide to remain solo in your business, there are still ways for you to get support. You can get support through coaching. And with coaching, you are not trying to figure it out on your own. Okay?

And there's different levels of coaching. You can have one to one coaching, or you can have a group program, or you can partake in a membership. Okay, I've done some level of all of these.

You can also get support through community. All right? So if you're remaining solo, you can get support through community.

In episode 58, I talk about how moms need villages too and the importance of community for work from home mompreneurs. So I'll link that in the show description as well. So that's support that you can get in your business. You can also get support at home. Okay?

Ask for help from your spouse or other family member. All right? You have to be specific in the type of help that you need. You have to be specific, you have to give grace, and you have to be patient.

All right? Discuss what you need support with and how you would like to receive that support.

So for example, with me in my situation, I told my husband, this was a while ago, while ago, I told him, I just said, I need you to take the kids more. And that was very vague and it just wasn't translating. And so I needed to have another conversation about specifically what that looked like.

And so then I had to have another conversation where it was being very specific. Okay, do the morning routine with the kids on the weekends. And then had to have further conversations that I need to be off duty on the weekends.

Right? Because with being a mom, you always feel like you're on duty.

And so it shifted and it changed and I had to communicate that I needed to be off duty on the weekends. Okay? So when you're asking for help from your spouse or another family member, again, be specific, give grace. Right?

Because they may not do things the way that you do them or how you do them, and just be patient with them throughout the process. Okay? So that's support in business, support at home. And then you can also get support through your faith.

Now, for me, my faith is a huge part of my life. And I know that I literally would crumble if I did not have faith in God. I know my help comes from the Lord, in my flesh and in my own strength.

I'm further away from the version of the mom that I desire to be and the mom that God has called me to be. Right. I am more irritable. I have less self control. And this is something that I unpack more in the Harmony private podcast.

So make sure you get access to that. But one of the things with my faith that we're taught is the fruit of the spirit.

And the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.

And so when you think about all of those things, at least for me, I think, are all of these things evident in my daily interactions with my children and on the days where I'm intentionally connecting with God, more of these things are evident. I'll just leave it at that.

Okay, so that is the type of support that you can get in order to experience work, life, Harmony mom entrepreneurs need support. You can get support in your business, you can get support at home, and you can get support through your faith. What else do we need? We need systems.

Okay. There is a free training that I have. It's called how to Use systems to build a sustainable Online Business.

And I will encourage you to go ahead and get access to that training if that's something that you need. But when I talk about systems, for me, a system is a uniquely crafted ecosystem of processes, tools, and people. It's how you do what you do.

And so you can have systems in life and you can also have systems in business. And having systems, it really provides you structure and guidance and clarity. It allows you to be more efficient.

Okay, and what does it even mean to be efficient? Right. Sometimes we just say words all the time and we don't really know how to explain what it is. But what does it mean to be efficient?

Efficient means capable of producing desired results with little or no waste. Capable of producing desired results with little or no waste. This is possible when you have systems in place. Okay.

And so as an example, I'll use my podcast guest management workflow. When I'm onboarding a podcast guest, they get a scheduler so that they can schedule a time for the interview.

This is efficient because we're not going back and forth in email or DMs when it's time for me to gather information from them, I'm using a form or a questionnaire to gather that information. That's more efficient than having multiple requests spread out over several emails. Emails getting lost, asking for info multiple times.

Okay, so this is what efficiency looks like. You're getting to the desired result. The desired result is successfully onboarding these podcast guests with little or no waste.

And in this example, the waste would be the time, right? We don't want to waste time. Okay? And so the way to efficiency is to think through the process in its entirety.

Think through the process in its entirety.

You're able to see all of the steps and then from there you can tweak things because you may see that maybe it makes sense for step three to really be step two, or it may make sense for you to add in some special verbiage in step four to minimize confusion. Okay? If you want to be efficient, think through your process in its entirety.

So in order to experience work life harmony, we need support, we need systems, and then finally, we also need sustainable strategies. We need sustainable strategies. And when I say sustainable, I mean able to be maintained.

So can this strategy be maintained based on your lifestyle, your preferences, and your priorities? So I'm going to go through a couple of examples. You need a sustainable visibility strategy.

So for me, in my life right now, something that I can maintain as a visibility strategy would be a virtual event or participating in a bundle versus an in person event or packing my schedule with in person events. Right? That's not really sustainable for me in this season of Life with Little Kids. Okay? Sustainable marketing strategies.

So for me, that looks like email marketing. I can keep up with that podcasting, I can keep up with that Pinterest, which I'm going to get into, right? And why are these things sustainable?

Because I can keep up with them. I can email my list, right? I had that time at night.

If you listen to the previous episode, I talked about shifting my work blocks to the nighttime and the weekends. Email is a thing where I can schedule out in advance. I don't have to show up in real time to do that.

Same thing with podcasting, all of the episodes are prerecorded. And with podcasting, it's evergreen content, so once it's out there, it can be found later.

And then Pinterest is more like a search engine as well, so same type of concept, it's searchable. When I think about marketing strategies, those are sustainable versus social media, right?

You're having to show up constantly because just the way social media is set Up. The lifespan of a post is very short. I don't have the stats on it, but it's very, very short.

And so you're constantly having to show up to gain traction on social media, which can be draining. Thinking through sustainable sales strategies. So for you, in your season of life, what can you keep up with?

For me, that looks like DMs, that looks like voice notes and phone calls instead of zoom video calls. Zoom calls tend to be at a scheduled time, which can be challenging the way my day is set up with my kids. Right.

DMs, voice notes or phone calls, those are more asynchronous. Right. We don't both have to be in the same virtual location at the same time. Phone calls.

Yes, but there's also that component of not having to be on video, which adds another layer of unsustainability, because what if it's just been a rough day with my kids and I am not prepared to be on camera? Okay. Sustainable fulfillment strategies. So fulfillment relates to how you deliver your your product or your service.

And so for me, I'm shifting into this. What's more sustainable for me is digital products like the Harmony Private podcast. What's sustainable is a subscription.

What's sustainable is voxer coaching versus done for you work. So what is sustainable for you in terms of the strategy? Yes, think about the strategy, but also think about sustainable in terms of the cadence.

So maybe instead of blogging every week, what's sustainable for you is that you blog two times per month. When it comes to podcasting, what may be more sustainable for you is that you podcast in seasons instead of podcasting weekly. Right.

So think about sustainability again in terms of the strategy, but also in terms of the cadence. Alright, so just a quick recap. Three things that mom entrepreneurs need to experience. Work, life, harmony. Number one is support.

And you can get support in your business, you can get support at home, and you can get support through your faith. Number two, we need systems. And then number three, we need sustainable strategies.

And when you have support, when you have systems, and when you have sustainable strategies, all working together to create an atmosphere where your work and your life are in harmony. They are in agreement in relation to an end result. Right in relation to your goals, as opposed to fighting in opposition.

When you have all of these things, it allows you to have internal calm instead of internal chaos. Okay, so I want you to think through these three things. Where do you need? What's the area that you need to focus on the most? Is it getting support?

Is it getting systems? Or getting sustainable strategies. Send me a DM over on Instagram, let me know. Let's chat about it and I will see you in the next episode.

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