Suzanne Proksa:
Welcome to the Happy Healthy and Rich podcast, formerly the Suzanne show. I developed the happy, healthy, and rich brand in 2016 to help women just like you have some real discussions about personal development, navigating the ins and outs of being a woman, women's health, and how to find more joy. Come on in, friend. I'm Suzanne Proxza, multitalented founder, SeussPro Innovations, and I'm proud to serve women, online business, and to the people ops HR community. I'm also a former featured Etsy seller, plant addict, concert lover, gardener, and human straight up obsessed with helping others and cheering on women. Grab your coffee or your wine. Break out one of your hundreds of notebooks. Yes.
Suzanne Proksa:
I see you. Light that soy candle and let's dive in. This one is for all the mamas out there. We are going to be talking about practical steps to have it all as a business mom with Alissa Wolf. After having 5 kids in 10 years, Alyssa went looking for her next challenge and found online business, wanting to simplify life for moms everywhere. She is now an online business productivity coach for other work from home moms who want to achieve 6 figure incomes in part time hours. She helps them love their mom life. Again, think less time spent on housework and business to dos more time being present with their kids while making time for them to recharge, confident that they've handled everything in their business needs.
Suzanne Proksa:
Welcome to the show, Alyssa. I am very excited to have you here to talk about this topic. I know this one is going to be a very popular episode, so I can't wait to dive in.
Alyssa Wolff:
Thank you, Suzanne. I'm so excited to be here with you.
Suzanne Proksa:
We are going to just dive right into the good stuff today. So my first question is what's the key to handling it all as an ambitious woman who still wants to make great memories with her kids?
Alyssa Wolff:
For me, the first key that I lean on is scheduling. You might have heard of this more as time blocking, but make sure that everything you want to get to in your life, whether it's business, the kids, the self care, the workout, all has a spot on your calendar, All has a spot in your planner and you have enough time to transition between since of course you can't go a 100 miles an hour from business and then switch straight to parenting. That doesn't work. So if you can make everything sit nicely in your day, you know, that you are having it all as a mom, woman, and CEO.
Suzanne Proksa:
Thank you so much. So let's dive into your experience. How do you balance running a thriving business and being a present mom for your kids?
Alyssa Wolff:
As I mentioned, I like to lean on the time blocking. So before my kids get up, I get 2 hours to spend on work. And then when they do come out, since they're all a little bit older and they can kind of help themselves to breakfast food, I get to spend another hour doing wrap up tasks, feeling like I have hit my most important to dos for the day. And then I could head over to the homeschooling side because I have 5 kids and they're all homeschooled. So I'm kind of handling homeschooling and house chores and overseeing people getting their stuff done. And then I can put myself together for the day, have a cup of tea, have breakfast, all that kind of stuff. And this usually pretty much takes us through get lunchtime. And then I still have lunch young enough that need to go down for a nap.
Alyssa Wolff:
So I handle that. That means I have my second uninterrupted work time block for the day. Yay. Get myself a cup of coffee, light a candle, and really kind of lean into that time by myself using business time as self care time in a sense. And then I can knock out whatever I've got that's still on the schedule that I hadn't gotten done to. This is also when I'll deal with the client calls. Cause again, I don't want the kids around interrupting being noisy. And by that point, my kids are still gonna have quiet time.
Alyssa Wolff:
The older ones get to do their hobbies and relax too. And I get to take actual me time for myself. It's not just getting to work on business and purpose. So this is when I will go exercise, listen to podcasts, whatever it was I really wanted to do that day for myself. That's when it all fits in. By this point, you've gotten to like a normal 8 hour Workday stop point. So I can swap back. Husband comes home from work.
Alyssa Wolff:
We can start prepping supper, making sure all the kids' homework is finished. Dinner, baths, bedtimes, you know, end of the typical routine. So that's what my day in a life looks like.
Suzanne Proksa:
Okay. So it's not all about the kiddos, right? With all that women have going on, how can a busy entrepreneur make sure her own personal development, wellness practices alone time, etcetera, are getting significant attention in her daily life.
Alyssa Wolff:
With this one, I like to lean on making sure you have enough time during the day. So not like a 20 minutes scrolling break on your phone, but how much time do you actually need to rejuvenate and how much time does it good work out for you and your particular favorite forms of exercise entail? So for me, I'm going on a walk. I'm using this as mental processing time and a meditation prayer. Mental journaling, if you will. So I can't just go for a 15 minute walk. This needs to be something more like 40 minutes. Okay. That's a decent time block.
Alyssa Wolff:
Also, if I want to listen to some podcasts because that's my way of doing the continuing development as a business owner and CEO. Right? I'm listening to them on 2 X speed, but I still need more than a 20 minutes to decompress and recharge. So I might want 40 to 60 minutes of podcasts. So we're sitting at almost 2 hours right there. And then what else might I want to do? Anything that is not work and non kid caretaking has to finish or has to fit into this time. So do I need to go select some new library books for myself? So I have something to read on the weekend. That's a task, but it's a task that supports my self care, if that makes sense. So I also need a little bit of buffer time to handle that.
Alyssa Wolff:
So the end result is I'm still looking at at least 2 hours a day so that I can handle the me time and the movement. And so what I encourage the busy mountain to do is get creative with where you're fitting this into your day. It does not have to be at the end of your own work day. That's just where it happens to fit right now for me. But please by all means, put one of your self care activities partway through your day, or you could leave it to right before you go to bed. It's all a matter of fitting all these little puzzle pieces of the time blocks throughout your day and seeing where it will all work based on what your caretaking and client responsibilities are. Such great
Suzanne Proksa:
information, but I know what some people are thinking, you know, there's that guilt that you can get. So what advice would you give to moms who feel guilty about dedicating time to their business or personal development?
Alyssa Wolff:
Well, honestly, this might sound a little counterintuitive or harsh, but if you're having guilt about the business time, did you really want to be a CEO? If that is 100% no question, part of your purpose here on this earth, then the only question becomes for you. How do I get it all done? Like how do I fulfill my business purpose while at the same time being a good mom to my kids? It's not, oh, I don't know. Maybe I should drop the business because that's what being a good mom entails. No, you already chose that you had a second purpose or it found you. Then all we need to do is start looking at where are the cultural stories that are telling you being a good mom means X. What is that X that isn't necessarily true? This can be really sneaky. I mean, you probably already understand you don't need to be dusting the baseboards yourself to be a good mom. Right.
Alyssa Wolff:
But are you still holding onto a story that you needed to be the only person who cleans anything in your house that to ask your 7 or 8 year old to do some of the bathroom cleaning is too much for them? Are you holding onto cultural stories that you must bake every homemade baked good for their birthdays? Are you holding onto stories in your head saying that if you ever, and I mean ever have to skip one game or one piano recital, or cannot be the person driving them to their gymnastics lesson, that that means you're a bad mom. When in reality, you're just part of a team balancing who's taking them to what. These are some of the things we need to unpack because that is what is actually gonna banish them on guilt for good.
Suzanne Proksa:
I'm curious to hear about what boundaries or routines that you have set to help keep work and family life from blending together too much? What types of things are you doing, to make sure that all of that keeps balanced?
Alyssa Wolff:
I really don't like to blend as you put it. So I try not to be doing anything business related on the computer and homeschooling at the same time. It means we're both distracted. So, yes. Do I sometimes feel like I am being inefficient with my time if I'm sitting there on the sofa waiting for the 4th grader to figure out what his answer to the next question is. Yes. But the decision fatigue of reorienting myself to where I was at typing this email to a client. That's worse.
Alyssa Wolff:
So I like to use hard stop boundaries. Okay. Somewhere between 9:15 and 9:45, depending on when I end this particular content project in the morning. That ends morning work time. I am not physically shutting down my computer, but I could put the monitor. Blap. I could at least minimize all of my tabs. And now I'm going to pull up my mom to do list.
Alyssa Wolff:
I'll keep that in a separate area. Flip open that planner or digital to do list and say, okay, what was on here? Was there something I needed to put in the crock pot right now? Better yet, is that something that needs to go in the crock pot? Something that's at the ability level of 1 of my kids to have an impromptu cooking lesson from AUS. Who is ready for math help right now? And are 3 people ready for math help? Okay. Then I'm going to get 2 of them doing something else, help the first one with math and then start rooting through. Right? And then, the same logic nap time is sacrosanct. Mommy is working. Mommy is not helping you with schoolwork, and she's most certainly not cooking or cleaning. Those are outside work hour activities.
Alyssa Wolff:
So if that gives you an idea, I just try really, really hard to stick to, was this the fam family mom hat, or is this the CEO hat time? That is what really helps me not feel like it's bleeding into one another.
Suzanne Proksa:
Thank you so much. I think it's super helpful for the audience to hear like what you're doing at the, and that this is possible. Now, of course, these days in 2024, there are all kinds of tools and apps and things like that out there. Are there any specific tools, apps, resources, etcetera, that help you stay organized and balanced in both your business and family life that you think might help the audience?
Alyssa Wolff:
Great question. And I'm actually kind of a minimalist about this. I just like a plain old Google doc. This lets me delete all the stuff I've done, all the previous day's activities, and only look at what is going on today or this week. And then I keep a template for it so that I can drop in my standard prep and family or weekend activities at anything that's on repeatable cycle in the business. I just keep copy pasting that template in week to week. I don't use anything fancy. I don't even have a smartphone, so I don't have any apps.
Alyssa Wolff:
That's pretty much it. It works for me though.
Suzanne Proksa:
We always love to hear about little things out there that can help us with staying organized and balanced and all of that. So thank you so much. All right. Let's narrow this down. Okay. What is your top tip for blending motherhood with entrepreneurship successfully?
Alyssa Wolff:
It's gotta be, you have the choice. If you are truly choosing both of these things, there is going to be a way to fit it in only the essentials, not maybe everything you're encompassing under this head of business owner and mom, You may need to outsource a lot more than you're intending or strip back your gourmet meal cooking a lot more, but there is going to be a way to fit it because you have so much power in how you approach your day, how you think about your energy reserves, how you view and refuel your creativity, your ability to be a great mom. A lot of it just comes back to you. And once you are open to the notion that the answer is going to appear, it is out there for me. It is amazing how tweaks and shifts and light bulb loads pop up for
Suzanne Proksa:
me. Awesome. Well, now that we are armed with that top tip for getting started and, and blending everything, I know that we are still going to have people out there who are going to be wanting help, more information. How can they reach out to you? Where can they get more information from you or any resources that you have to help them on this journey? Thank you, Suzanne.
Alyssa Wolff:
So for you as a listener, if you want a dose of bite size encouragement along the way, this entrepreneur plus mom journey, go to the on busy mom podcast. We release episodes twice a week. They're very short. So they're all under 10 minutes. So you can come away with an action oriented step that is going to make a big change to your daily life. Also, you could go to my site, yourunbusylifedot com. I've got a variety of free resources for you right now. The top one on there is 3 steps to love your work life balance again, the 3 day challenge.
Alyssa Wolff:
And there's always the offer of a free coaching session as well. It gets a work life balance audience. I would love to show up for you in that way to see you on zoom and get you some practical, personalized transformation.
Suzanne Proksa:
Alyssa, thank you so much for being on the show today. As most people know, I am a huge cheerleader for women who are trying to do the things. And sometimes women are trying to do all the things. And I love to be able to provide speak guests and speakers who can help provide that support, give those gems of advice like you have today. So I am just so thankful, that you took the time and I hope that the audience, got just a ton of value from this episode and that you're going to charge out and do the things. But thank you again and look forward to talking to you soon.
Alyssa Wolff:
Thank you, Suzanne. This is a wonderful conversation.
Suzanne Proksa:
I am so glad you joined me for another episode of happy, healthy, and rich. If you loved the episode, do me a favor and help with a rating and a tip. Looking for more info on the podcast, my women's membership, or how to work together? Head to my website at suzanneproxa.com or my easier URL at suzpro.cobodcasts. See you on the next episode.
