Balancing Work & Mom Life
At the beginning of the year, I was at my breaking point. I just had a newborn and a team member quit, not to mention end of year is my busiest time as a bookkeeper. I made myself a goal to take a step back and really figure out my work/mom life balance. I'm not going to act like I have it all figured out, because it's a continual process... but I have implemented some things that have really worked and allowed me to show up better for my client and my kids.
I sat down and really thought of my priorities and what I wanted my dream week to look like. Before I had my son in November, I was able to mainly work during naps and after my daughter went to bed. But quite frankly, adding a newborn to the mix changed things up a ton. I was sleep deprived and having them nap at the same time was impossible. I had to come up with something.
For me, that was creating separate work time and mom time. I felt like I was always having to be both a business owner and a mom at the same time. That was not allowing me to serve people well.
With that, here are 4 things that have helped me with balancing work & mom life:
Growing my team & outsourcing where I'm not good at.
In March I hired a VA to help with admin tasks and social media. She helps with my website & blog, Instagram, Pinterest, and more. Having a VA takes away the mental load of making sure everything gets done, scheduled, published, posted, etc. It saves me so much time and energy - the time it actually takes to do all those tasks and again, the mental load of managing everything that needs done.
I’ve also hired another bookkeeper to assist with coding transactions. This has helped so much because it can involve a lot of back-and-forth with clients to make sure we have their transactions coded correctly. It’s an important, more time-consuming part of bookkeeping for me.
Maybe you’re an artist or someone who sells physical products. You could hire someone to package and ship products. If you’re a photographer maybe you have someone assist during shoots. With any business, there are all kinds of tasks that need to be done to keep your business running smoothly (bookkeeping being one of them 😉). Find what stresses you out, what you’re not as good at, etc and consider expanding your team to have someone else do it.
Another thing that’s made a huge difference is that I hired a cleaner to come to my house every other week. When we hear about outsourcing, we think all business. But sometimes it can be stuff in your personal life as well. I can hire a cleaner to where I don't have to do it (hallelujah), work in my business during those hours, and still be making money.
Having set work hours.
I have a babysitter come on Tuesday and Thursday, and those are my main working days. During that time when the sitter is here I get bulk of work done - client calls, clean up projects etc.
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday are my mom days. I usually try to schedule a fun outing on those days with the kids. I still keep myself available for my team and if clients vox me, but for the most part I try to take those days off. Having set work hours has made a world of difference. It allows me to know I’ll have dedicated time to get things done, while having the freedom to have fun with my kids. Most importantly, it helps me focus and be present with what I’m doing.
To do lists are my BFF.
I can't tell you the amount of lists I have for every area of my life. My other suggestion here (at least what works best for me) is to make it DIGITAL. My calendar and all my lists are on a cloud so no matter where I'm at, I can pull up my whole life schedule.
I’ve also recently discovered ClickUp (you can do a LOT with the free version) and it has made communicating and collaborating with my VA so much easier. We’re in the process of moving my bookkeeping team from Trello to ClickUp. If you need a good way to manage multiple people collaborating on the same projects, I definitely recommend it!
Stay flexible.
In an ideal world, everything would work out amazing and there would be no scheduling conflicts. But as you may already know, reality is not that way. Clients need last minute things, babysitters back out, kids get sick, or you may just not want to work that day and move things around. That's all ok. Just remember to set up boundaries for yourself as a mom and business owner.
Follow along with my work/mom life over on Instagram, I’d love for you to say hello! And if there’s anything you’d add to this list that’s helped with your work/life balance, DM me! Female and mompreneurs need to stick together and help each other out 👊🏼
