16 Work Hours, 2 Small Kids, & a Powerful, Profitable Business
Welcome to the Courage and Clarity podcast! Steph Crowder here, and I'm really excited about this episode. It's my version of answering a question that I've been getting a lot lately:
How the heck are you doing it all?
I've been told that I make being a new mom and business owner look so easy -- and for the record, I've been asking myself why is it that I'm coming across as through this is easy, because it really is not.
However, I have learned a lot, and I've come up with some things that I do that I think are helping to ease my transition and find business success while also showing up in my family as the type of mother and wife that I want to be.
Before we get all into this, let me set the scene for you at this current moment, in February 2020:
I work 4 hours a day, 4 days a week. That's 16 hours a day of work time that I have.
I have a three-and-a-half year old whom I pick up from preschool myself, every day at 2:15. I have a 5-month old son.
I work out at a gym 3-5 times a week. We eat most meals at home, and go out to eat probably 2 times a week.
And I rarely take my computer out after 2:15pm, so I'm not generally working in the evenings. Once I relieve the babysitter at noon, I'm pretty much done for the day.
With this schedule, I have been staying up on recording podcast episodes, I launched Crickets to Customers and had a good launch where I brought in a good bit of revenue into the business. So far, so good!
Before I get into some of the specifics, I really, really want to make sure that you guys hear this:
I am not perfect by any means. Like I said, this is tough. But there are some things that I do to make it easier, and honestly this out of necessity (if I worked the same way that I did even a couple of years ago, there's no way I would be able to make it work!)
The biggest pre-step to all this is being really clear on what matters to you, and why. This is huge! What are you here to do right now? What matters? We all go through seasons of our lives and it's important to recognize that the season you're in right now is not permanent, and there will be lots of time.
So with that being said, here's a sneak peek of my best tips and practices:
Know what matters in your business [8:22]
Is it rubber or glass? [10:27]
Give yourself less time to do things [13:50]
Let go of limiting beliefs [17:54]
Say no when it's not a hell yes [22:32]
Simplify on the home front [24:15]
Know what matters in your business
This is probably something that comes with experience, but I know what is going to move me towards the most important thing -- which is revenue. First of all, I define my revenue goal (which I've talked about how to do in some of my previous episodes). Once you know what's enough for you and your family and your business, then you can make a plan to getting to that number.
Everything that I do in the limited working time that I have is passed through the filter of, is this going to move me closer towards revenue?
If I don't have a very firm grasp on how a potential opportunity or task is going to move me towards my revenue goal, I don't do it. This allows me to be ruthless about what I should be working on.
Rubber vs Glass
Imagine that you have two different kinds of balls, one made of rubber, and the other made out of glass. Obviously if you drop the rubber ball on the floor, it's going to bounce, right? And if you drop the glass ball, we all know that it's going to shatter.
So often we get into the habit of feeling like we can't let anything drop. Everything feels urgent, everything feels like it needs to be done perfectly. What if instead we pause and think about what happens if we drop a particular ball? Is it going to bounce, or is it going to break?
In my case, picking up my daughter from school is a glass ball. If I don't pick her up, she's going to be there alone, and no one else will come get her. So obviously, that particular ball is a non-negotiable for me. On the other hand, emails in my inbox, and me responding to them, is a rubber ball. If I don't respond to email right away, it's not going to be a dealbreaker.
What I'm learning is that there is very little glass, and a lot of rubber. Is my house in perfect and beautiful condition? No. Am I pulling myself into great, beautiful makeup every single day? No, I am not. I honestly do feel better when I get dressed and do my hair, but is that going to happen every single day? If it means the difference between getting a podcast done or not, then I know it's going to be a rubber ball for me.
"So really get a sense of what is your rubber? What is your glass? If you let something fall through the cracks, is it that big of a deal? Challenge yourself to play with that."
If you think that something feels absolutely critical, challenge yourself to see what happens. See what happens if you let your email inbox sit for an extra day. See what happens if you don't log onto Instagram every single day. You very quickly will get a sense for what is going to bounce back when it hits the floor.
Give yourself less time
I originally heard this tip from Brooke Castillo when she was on Amy Porterfield's podcast. She challenged Amy to give herself less time when completing tasks. Amy admitted that if she's going to record a podcast for example, she might block out a whole afternoon or even a whole day to get it done. And Brooke really challenged that and said that the problem is that she was giving herself too much time.
This is known as Parkinson's Law, which tells us that a task will expand to fill the time that we allot to it.
So if you're going to record a podcast and you give yourself three hours, or you give yourself one hour, according to Parkinson's Law it'll either take you three hours or one. Maybe you'll go slower if you have more time, you'll check your phone more, you'll take more breaks. And I have 100% found this to be true.
One thing that I do every single day is I try to give myself as little time as possible to be absolutely ruthless about my working time. The fluff gets cut when you set yourself up so that you really don't have time.
Let go of limiting beliefs
The idea of having a "fancy" business
In order to make this work, I've had to let go of quite a few limiting beliefs, and one of them is that I have to have a fancy business.
The first part of that is having a huge team. Honestly, my team is tiny. It is me, Anna (who is editing this podcast), and sometimes Sarah (who runs her own business and creates my beautiful graphics that you see for launches and things like that). But that is it. I don't even really have a VA helping me with emails or anything.
This isn't about me trying to do all the things myself, that would not work. It's about me only pursuing critical items and keeping it as streamlined as possible. I've been down the road of hiring a whole bunch of people, and I honestly did not get a lot of value out of it at all. What's been much more impactful for me is just letting go of this notion that to be a legit business owner, I have to have a whole bunch of people working for me. Maybe it's not sexy, but the idea of having a streamlined business, run by me and some helpers but mostly me, really helped me not be distracted by a whole bunch of shiny objects.
Letting go of what people think of me
This is honestly a hard one for me. I don't have fancy systems. I'm not perfectly organized. I'm not going to be the first one to have everything polished and all put together. I know that I'm super smart and what I teach is rock solid, but as far as having everything buttoned up and being perfectly executed -- that's just not going to be me. I spent a lot of time feeling some lack of worthiness about that, beating myself up because I don't have my Instagram scheduled out for the next 30 days, and not having perfectly polished images, or very fancy email sequences.
But here's the thing, guys: none of those things have helped me build the business that I have now. This is a business that brings in multiple six-figures per year, and it's not about all those fancy systems and cool people you can hire. It's honestly about being really focused on what you can do for people, find people and offer them something that they really need.
"I know that having a business that looks fancy, that allows me to brag about the size of my team, is not going to move me towards that revenue. So, you know, big funnels and sequences and all those crazy strategies that you hear about. I have implemented some of them and I know about those things. But if I do them, I am very, very aware of exactly what purpose they're serving for me. I'm not pursuing big, fancy systems just for the sake of having them."
Letting go of what people think of me has allowed me show up exactly as I am at this moment. Am I saying that I'll never have those things? No. When my life looks different, maybe that's what I'll need to go to the next level. But for right now, I know my exact goal and I've got intense focus on the tasks that are going to help me get there.
Learn how to say no when it's not a hell yes
I've had to come to terms with the fact that anything I say yes to is typically going to take five to ten times longer than I think it will. I don't want to make it sound that I'm not grateful for options and opportunities -- I absolutely am! And I like to say yes when I can. But not everything is going to be equally impactful for me from a revenue perspective. So I have to recognize that if I'm not feeling a "hell yes!" on an idea or opportunity, I have to let it go.
If you find yourself saying yes to things, and then wishing you'd known it was going to take so long -- maybe start to see if you get that immediate absolute yes feeling. And if you don't, then consider letting go of it.
Simplify on the home front
This is for everybody who thinks that it's all easy when it really isn't. I have been trying to make my home life as simple as possible. I take advantage of delivery services like Shipt, Amazon Prime Now, Hello Bello for diaper delivery, and at the time of this episode, I'm just about to try Freshly which is a meal delivery service. I also have a house cleaner who comes to my house every two weeks.
So I'm trying to automate and outsource and simply the heck out of everything at home. I'm always asking myself, how do I make more time for the good stuff -- which is playing with the kids, being with them, reading, doing business stuff, and the things I actually care about.
I also try to protect my work time by doing as much in advance as I possibly can. I make my kids' lunch the night before, and I plan the weekly meals on Sundays. I'm trying to do as little in the moment as possible. I sit down on Sundays and think about what's the one thing I'm going to do each day this week, and what must I have done by the end of the week (or two, or sometimes three things) so I can reverse engineer it and make sure I'm not pursuing the wrong tasks.
Overall, the last thing I want to share about is my focusing on simplicity.I am really trying to look at my home life and my work life through the lens of simple.
How can I make this simpler? How do I make it easier? How do I keep removing more and more extraneous parts? How do I set things up to win? What can I let go of, and what can I kill?
A simple business doesn't have to be small -- it can be simple and powerful and profitable, which believe me it is. I find that the more I simplify, the easier I make real money and enjoy my business. And I encourage you to challenge yourself to keep it simple, as well.