What No One Told You About How to Run a Business as a Mom- E48

Dr. Celia
00:00 – 00:31
You know that project that’s been sitting on your list forever? The one you keep moving to next week, then next month, then after the holidays. The real reason why it’s still on your to-do list is because you’re drowning and nobody can see it because from the outside looking in it looks like you’re succeeding at what you do. Today we’re going to talk about the invisible weight you’ve been carrying in your house, in your head, in your business, and what to do when you finally decide you’re done carrying it alone.

Dr. Celia
00:32 – 00:51
Welcome back. I’m Dr. Celia and if you’re new here, I’m so glad you found this podcast. This podcast is for experienced mom business owners, women who are experts at what they do and build a business around that. Women who recently became a mom or had another child and suddenly everything that was working for you is not working for you anymore.

Dr. Celia
00:53 – 01:01
your systems broke, your schedule broke, your bandwidth broke. And you’re sitting here wondering like, how do other moms actually run a business? How are they doing this? What am I missing?

Dr. Celia
01:02 – 01:14
Let’s get into how other moms are running a business. So, have you felt this? Overwhelm, fatigue, frustration, and the one nobody wants to admit out loud. Resentment.

Dr. Celia
01:15 – 01:30
Resentment towards your business. Resentment towards your partner. Sometimes even that resentment towards your kids and then the guilt that comes crashing right after that. You may think that these are character flaws or that you were not cut out for this, but that could not be further from the truth.

Dr. Celia
01:31 – 01:54
These are emotions that are simmering for a while, of a much bigger problem. And the bigger problem is this, the systems that you’re using to run your business were not built for your life, not even close. Here’s what I mean. Every productivity system, every business framework, every piece of advice that you got in about how to run your business as a mom, it assumes something about you that is not true.

Dr. Celia
01:55 – 02:13
It assumes that you have a clean separation between work and home. It assumes that when you sit down to work, that you are working without constant interruptions. It assumes your brain is free, but your brain is never free, is it? Right now, even as you’re listening to this, there’s a list running in the background.

Dr. Celia
02:13 – 02:38
Doctor’s appointments that need to be rescheduled, permission slip due Friday, that weird sound that washing machine started making this morning, what’s for dinner, whether your kid is a little off from the morning and should you call the school to ask about it. That’s mental load and it never stops. So I was at this marriage and family conference recently. Our small group did this whole event, had a counselor presenting.

Dr. Celia
02:38 – 02:57
And honestly, I went in thinking that it was going to be like one of those nice lectures that I’ll forget about in like 20 minutes. But something sparked in me while I was sitting there watching his presentation, because he was talking about marriage and family dynamics. And somewhere in the middle of it, I just had this moment of realization. We prepare for everything as moms, like everything.

Dr. Celia
02:59 – 03:20
labor, delivery, sleep training, we read the books, we take the classes, we join the Facebook groups. But nobody, and I mean nobody, prepares you for what comes after. Nobody sits you down before the baby arrives and says, okay, let’s talk about what happens when you become a mom and the relationship with your partner changes and both your roles change in the household. Like, let’s actually talk about it.

Dr. Celia
03:20 – 03:28
We never ask ourselves and our partner, what do you need? What do you want? Are you okay carrying this? Or is this too much for you to carry?

Dr. Celia
03:28 – 03:37
What can your partner take off your plate? What can you take off of his plate? And not just once. Because a newborn life looks nothing like a toddler life.

Dr. Celia
03:38 – 04:00
And a toddler life looks nothing like the you got a kid who’s in like three different school activities and you’re basically a full-time Uber driver. Or if you’re homeschooling and in charge of the lesson plans, homework, and forms for the state, etc. Does any of that get reassessed? Does anyone ever have that conversation? And not just like that one conversation, the conversation every couple of years.

Dr. Celia
04:01 – 04:13
For most families, no. It just solidifies. Silently you roll, and one person, usually the mom, ends up carrying more and more and more until there’s more arguments in the house. You’re snapping at each other.

Dr. Celia
04:13 – 04:34
You wish the person would anticipate your need, which you do for them on a regular basis. I’ll give you a real example from my own life. I do breakfast in the house. I batch cook.

Dr. Celia
04:34 – 04:44
I plan it. I handle it. That’s my role that I fell into because of Hubby’s work schedule. I really do not like cooking, but I do the batch cooking because I know it’s easier for everyone, especially if the week is rough.

Dr. Celia
04:46 – 05:03
But there are weeks, and you know those weeks, when you just cannot. I look at the kitchen and I internally groan that I have to spend hours prepping, gathering the ingredients, cooking, and hoping it tastes okay, and then clearing up the kitchen. So I ask my husband, hey, can you cook breakfast for the weekend? And he will.

Dr. Celia
05:04 – 05:13
And I’ll take something off of his plate in return when he usually asks me. Maybe I’ll take out the trash. Maybe I’ll handle something he usually does. That sounds small, but it is not small.

Dr. Celia
05:13 – 05:38
It gives breathing room when one person really needs it at that moment, based on what’s actually happening that week. And that, that give and take, that constant reassessing is what makes it work. Because here’s what I want you to notice, that conversation, most couples do not have it. The rules just solidify silently over time and one person, usually the mom, still carries that weight until they cannot bear the weight anymore.

Dr. Celia
05:38 – 06:00
And that weight walks straight into your business with you every single morning. That is why figuring out how to run a business as a mom isn’t just a business problem, it’s a whole life problem. But here’s the layer underneath that, because it’s not about what’s just happening in your house right now. It’s about what’s been happening in your head since long before you became a mom.

Dr. Celia
06:01 – 06:17
How were you raised? Were you the eldest, the one responsible for everything, the one who learned early that your job was to hold it together? Or did you watch your mom do everything silently without complaining and tell yourself that you’ll never be like that? And then one day you realize, hey, I became my mom anyways.

Dr. Celia
06:19 – 06:49
Because here’s what no one talks about when we talk about how to run a business as a mom. You’re not just managing a business and a household, you’re managing all of that and the programming that’s running in your head since childhood. The beliefs of what a good mom looks like, what a good wife looks like, what a successful business owner looks like, how to handle everything without asking for help. societal expectations, family patterns, the voice in your head that says you should be able to do this, that other moms are doing this, that something must be wrong with you if you cannot figure it out.

Dr. Celia
06:50 – 07:08
That’s not a time management problem. That’s not a systems problem. That’s a much deeper conversation, and it’s the one we don’t have nearly enough. That you are a combination of your past self and present self making it work and figuring it out as you go in the unknown of raising kids and running a business.

Dr. Celia
07:10 – 07:26
So let me tell you about a client of mine. She came to me completely drowning, working 60 hours a week, getting nowhere, bundles, networking, complicated strategies that look good on paper, but made her brain shut down completely. And you know what the worst part was? She was dreading summer with her own kids.

Dr. Celia
07:27 – 07:46
She was dreading it because she could not figure out how to run her business with her kids at home. She had ADHD and she had been forcing herself into systems that were never built for how her brain works. And she started to question whether she was even cut out for entrepreneurship at all. We worked together through a Voxer intensive, just one session.

Dr. Celia
07:46 – 07:57
And here’s what we did. Instead of adding more to her plate, we removed things from it. I looked at everything she was doing and said that, bundles are tech heavy, avoid them. Your strengths are referrals and speaking.

Dr. Celia
07:57 – 08:19
Let’s build around that. And she told me later, she nearly cried with relief. because no one ever looked at her actual life, her actual brain, her actual goals, what she actually wanted her day to look like and built a strategy around that instead of someone else’s framework that was never made for her. We created quiet work pockets around her kids being at home.

Dr. Celia
08:19 – 08:44
We broke her 90 minute client calls into 45 minutes. We built a summer schedule that let her be fully present with her kids during the time and fully focus on work during hers. And this is what she said, I went from drowning in 60-hour weeks while dreading the summer with my kids to finally feeling I could breathe again, all in one Voxer session. She stopped dreading summer, she started trusting herself, and she stopped second-guessing everything.

Dr. Celia
08:46 – 09:02
Because someone finally looked at her whole life and helped her build something that actually worked for it. That is what figuring out how to run a business as a mom actually looks like. So what does this actually look like in practice? It starts with the self-reflecting questions.

Dr. Celia
09:03 – 09:19
Is the system that I’m using right now built for my life? Or am I forcing my life to fit into someone else’s system or an outdated version of myself? What roles am I taking on as a mom, business owner, and household manager? If you have a partner, what roles do they have?

Dr. Celia
09:20 – 09:59
Can any of the roles be swapped, removed, outsourced, delegated, What are your needs, desires, and wants as a mom and business owner? You could have the best business strategy in the world, but if you’re running on an empty tank in a house where the mental load is all on you, carrying beliefs that say you have to do everything perfectly and alone, that strategy is going to keep breaking down. The shift happens when you stop trying to manage your time better and start looking at the whole picture. The household load, delegation conversations you have not had, the beliefs running quietly in the background, the business model that needs to be flexed around your actual life instead of fighting against it.

Dr. Celia
10:01 – 10:14
That’s how you run a business as a mom. Not by doing more, by finally getting honest about what’s actually in the way. You came to this episode maybe thinking you needed better systems. I hope you’re leaving with looking at your life with a different lens.

Dr. Celia
10:15 – 10:40
The reason that it feels so hard is not because you’re doing it wrong, it’s because no one builds a roadmap for this. For the mental load and the household and the beliefs and the business all existing in the same body at the same time. That’s a lot to carry, and you’ve been carrying it far too long on your own. You know that project that’s been sitting on your list forever, the one that keeps moving to next week and the next month, then after the holidays?

Dr. Celia
10:41 – 10:57
I want to help you finally finish it. Inside the Biz Mom Balance Blueprint VIP experience, I use what I call the Biz Mom Method. Build, manage, maximize, and it is what I found to make the business sustainable as a mom. We start by building your plan together.

Dr. Celia
10:58 – 11:22
Not a perfect plan, a realistic one, designed around your actual life. Then, for 30 days, I am with you through the messy middle of sitting down to work on your business, but getting derailed by your kiddo wanting a snack that’s not even in the house. We spend the 30 days on Voxer Monday to Thursday and I cheer you on and help you troubleshoot when things do not go as expected. Then we get into that income generating project done, off your plate for good.

Dr. Celia
11:22 – 11:46
You finally get to cross this off your to-do list forever. No more worrying about when to get it done, you can move on from this and make money in the process. And because my background is in psychiatry, who knows how the mind works and is trained to see patterns underneath, you get a personalized voice memo at the end of the program showing you what’s been running in the background affecting your productivity to get the most important business tasks done.

Dr. Celia
11:47 – 11:59
It’s 30 days of feeling genuinely supported while building something you’re proud of. If any of this describes your current reality, come join me in the Bismarck Balance Blueprint. Head on to the show notes to discover more.