This episode is concluding our Mompreneur Series!  (Except for the BONUS episode with Denise Duffield-Thomas who will be my guest next week…mompreneur scheduling ;)).  I’m so excited to share with you the 4 (+ 1 bonus) ways this series has directly impacted how I show up to my business and my daughter.  And, the last half of the show features incredible mompreneur stories from your fellow Biz WomenRock community members!  I promise you, you will be touched!

1. My life as a mom and my life as an entrepreneur are not separate.  They are, in fact, two different elements of my life that are part of the whole.  Just like my right arm and my left arm are two separate body parts, but still work in tandem with each other and are vital parts of my entire body.  And this is not how I’ve been approaching mompreneurship.  I’ve been so proud of the fact that I’m “100% present” when it’s mommy time and “100% present” when it’s business time.  And while that’s a good practice to be present in the moments and most definitely time needs to be managed so I can put my energy into the two well, the overall life I lead does not separate these two things.  So, my lesson has been to let these two bleed more into each other.  To talk about business with Sedona around, to do some work even (gasp!) at times if I really need to, to chill the hell out when I’m at a business meeting with her and just have the conversations I can have…not to get all pissy because I “can’t be business woman and mommy at the same time.”  This also allows Sedona to SEE her mommy work!  This was a BIG, big lesson for me!

2. The pursuit of time management mastery is a necessary endeavor. Work/life balance is a myth, so I prefer to focus on time management – how am I proactively creating the schedule that best suits my life and what do I have in place to optimize every single minute of the day?  The big lesson here is that there is no such thing as MASTERY of time management.  What was incredibly clear was that every single woman I interviewed put a lot of time and effort into managing their time wisely.  They had to in order to give attention to all the things they deem as important.  However, things NEVER go 100% according to plan.  And so they understood that time management was never going to be mastered.  They did their best and then adjusted as needed.  

3. Organizing one’s life is a must.  And the tools and manner of organization are always evolving.  During this series, I had a serious realization that my methods of organizing no longer work for me.  After a few weeks of feeling in a cloud of chaos, I finally got a planner, a white board calendar and re-vamped the way I organize myself every day.  Managing a toddler, a romantic relationship with my husband, general life “things” and a growing business requires serious organization!  

4. Your mindset will determine the path you travel.  One of my favorite moments of this series was when Carissa Hill talked about how she simply decided she was going to have a seriously high earning and fast growth business AND spend ample time with her 6 month old.  She does tons of things to train her mind that anything is possible.  This resonated with me SO MUCH because I’ve put a lot of time and effort into mindset work.  That being said, I’m gonna be honest about the fact that I have moments when I want to scream at the universe about how flippin’ CHALLENGING this path actually is.  Times when I feel like I’m doing it all on my own.  Times when I want to work, but I’ve dedicated that day to Sedona.  Times when I want BIG THINGS to happen in my business now, but I know I don’t have enough work hours to complete it during the week.  Times when I want to just give up the hard push of growth in my business because I am loving mommying so much.  And honestly, these were the things I expected to commiserate with my fellow mompreneurs about during this series.  But when Carissa talked about this constant mindset work, I realized that yes, these experiences of mine can be true, but ultimately MY MIND IS THE ONE IN CHARGE OF WHERE I GO.  Whether I enjoy this journey and get the most out of every single moment or whether I struggle.  So my lesson was knowing that I don’t want this to be a struggle.  And so my mindset olympics continues.  

BONUS: My daughter deserves the same kind of energy, planning and passion that my business gets!  Maria Dismondy’s stories of how she organizes and plans out time with her kids was a huge eye opener for me.  While I definitely do activities with Sedona during our mommy-daughter days and while I am absolutely proactive about what we do together, Maria’s descriptions of the cool stuff she does with her kids really opened my eyes to the disparity between the energy, focus and excitement with which I approach my business vs. time with my daughter.  Sometimes it’s just easy to go on auto-pilot with Sedona or use our day as a “brain break” for me after going so hard in my business.  But I realized that I can get just as excited and ready for fun stuff for me and Sedona to do that can take our time together to an entirely new level of fun, learning, growing and bonding.  Since my interview with Maria, I’ve had two play dates with other mommies (I hadn’t had any this whole time!), created my own crafts corner, created a Summer Bucket List and have plans for baking cookies together soon.