How To Be A Good Working Mom – Harmony, Not Balance

Welcome to Limitless TV. My name is Krissy Krohn and today, we’re talking about how to be successful working mothers. Excuse me? Let a real working mom tell you how it’s done. Alright, we got Marianne DeNovellis joining us today talking about how to be a successful working mother from one that is. The whole reason why we’re doing this video in the first place is because I think there’s a lot of people that really wonder first of all, is it okay in today’s world to be a working mother? I mean we got the feminist movement on one side, we got the conservatives on the other side and it’s like, where do you stand with this Marianne? Oh my gosh, so these whole movements and extremes, oh my gosh. It’s like, stop putting labels on yourself and just be who you want to be. So you can bet as a working mom, I got a lot a lot of feedback from people all over the place, from family, from friends, from people who wanted to be working moms, from people who wanted to be a stay-at-home moms and I just had to say, throw it all out and ask myself, where do I want to be? Who do I want to be? And how am I going to get there? – Well and you got five kids? And so with five children, some people might want to get in your business where they don’t belong and maybe even argue, is it irresponsible and today obviously, we’re going to be talking about how do you do that cause you’re an amazing mother and how do you even respond to that when people want to challenge you? You know, it’s a really funny thing. I used to work in a nine-to-five job where I had to go in punch in, punch out and I was working for somebody else and when I decided to work for myself, I actually became a much better working mom because I could decide my own schedule, I could say when I need to be there and and when I can go do my business and that and the other but when I decided that the entrepreneurship was for me, that often times will be what triggers people into the other direction say, “No no no, you shouldn’t do that. You can’t afford to be away from your kids that long blah blah blah.” And I said, you know exactly the opposite is true because I get to say when I get to be there. Wow and at the end of this video, just a little bonus, I want I’m going to invite you to share for mothers that are entrepreneurs or that need to cram more successful, more results into a shorter space of time, I would love for you just to share some of the amazing habits that you have that make it possible for you to absolutely crush it. I mean, ’cause even just this last week, there were three days I had a hard time reaching you and you let me know, Kris I got a check out, I’ve got family things going on and I know where I need to be and it’s like, wow that is so amazing, to have that level of control in your life so let’s start with this then.. Balance, right? How do you balance being a wife, a mother and this amazing rockstar worker? Oh my gosh. So there’s more, there’s more to worker than all of that worker in and of itself, you’ve got to be your own bookkeeper, you’ve got to be your own time manager, you got to be your own secretary, you’re balancing on, any business owner knows that you have ten things that you’re juggling once, you add on top of that wife, you add on top of that mother, and don’t forget you’ve got to be yourself in the middle of all of that and that’s where a lot of working moms get lost, is who am I? Where am in all that? So imagine you’re you’re juggling all of these things up and around and below you and that’s why this word balance actually isn’t in my vocabulary anymore. Balance is a misnomer for me because if I balance this over here, let’s say this is time that I spend cooking dinner and this over here is time that I spend working my business, if I balance the two that means they have the same weight and require the same time in my life. Well actually seems kind of like a broken analogy. – It totally is. So balance actually it’s not something I use. I use harmony and here’s where harmony fits in. I know exactly when I need to be with my kids at their dance recital, I know exactly who to call on for my laundry that doesn’t take priority in my life. I know exactly how to use my time calendar to tell me where I need to be and prioritize my time and it all works like a symphony because the violins come at this moment, the drums come in at this moment, the conductor manages it all and each moment and each part of my life has its own priority. So do you think harmony looks the same for all working women? – Oh, it can’t because not all songs are the same. Each looking woman, it’s their own conductor of their own music and their own song. So my song, it’s absolutely ridiculous for me to pretend it’s going to sound like somebody else’s. Imagine if there were only one song ever created ever in the whole world, it’d be the awful song that never ends, right? I want to just throw this one in there, you don’t have to work. Why do you work? I can’t help it. What I do is what I love and with the life that I live, I can’t help but do what I love. I love being a mom, I don’t consider that work. I love being a wife, I don’t consider that work. I love being me, I don’t consider that work. I love mentoring and I don’t consider that work either. So you’re saying that you don’t really go to work, you’re just harmonizing all of these different areas of your life that are important and you’re assigning the appropriate time and energy to each one of them as feels right for you? – Totally. You know, I mean, we certainly can’t ask every woman on the world to become an entrepreneur and that’s not going to resonate with many of them. – Not all of them are supposed to be. And do you think it’s possible then to create the right harmony if you have a day job? Oh, totally totally. In harmony. Again, it’s all about the balance in creating your own music. So maybe you’re a mom that works in 9 to 5 like I used to. You know, prioritize what’s most important. Maybe you can have space to have someone else do your laundry, maybe you have spaces someone have someone else you know help you with your cooking or take one day and put all your meals together so you don’t have to worry about that for the week. The most important thing is this and here’s a relief and a mantra that I live my life by. If it’s not joyful, don’t do it. I do things in my life that bring me joy. That means if I have a responsibility, I get to find a joyful way to do it. Wow. So obviously, one of the expectations that all parents have with their children is is managing time, there’s this time expectation. How do you train and educate your children or help explain the expectation on what time management looks like between you and them? This is really cool and something that we have very deliberately done, it didn’t happen by accident. So in our family, we have five kids and each night of the week, they get a dedicated time just for them, all of the other kids go to bed and they get to stay up late with mom and dad a half an hour past bedtime. So last night, with my daughter, it was her evening to stay up late with me and sometimes we do homework together, sometimes she did a project, last night she actually ironically enough wanted to create a calendar together. So we’re sitting there, drawing and coloring it in and doing all these things together and meanwhile, we’re having this conversation about what her life is like and what’s going on what, she’s struggling with and and the other tool is to set that time aside but only schedule half of your time on something specific, that leaves the other half of your day open for whatever is needed in a moment. – I can only imagine that there’s a lot of women watching this video and thinking, “But isn’t it stressful?” or “Don’t you have an anxiety?” or “Isn’t it difficult to prioritize?” Was there ever a time when you were figuring it out where you felt the stress of a lot of time commitments? Oh yeah and it really hit me hard when I was on my way to my nine-to-five and I had a two-year-old, she was two and a half and she came out to me sobbing as I walked out the door and any working mom can probably relate to this and she said, “Mom, don’t go to work today.” and I was heartbroken, it was so hard for me because I was torn for being between providing for my family and providing for my family. Do I provide the emotional support my daughter needs or do I provide the dollars to pay the bills? I felt so torn up inside about what do I do and that’s really one of the indicators that said something here it’s got to change. And what did you change? – Well, I decided that is my rule, if it’s not joyful, don’t do it. Now don’t get me wrong, I loved my nine-to-five, basically, I got to work in a bookstore and I loved working with the people that I worked for but it wasn’t my calling, I felt like I was actually wasting my time there, you know. I felt like the dollars per hour exchange rate wasn’t really my value and when I looked into my kids faces and they were constantly giving me the same feedback, I thought maybe there’s something to look at here. Do you think right now, how do you feel like your children feel about you working right now? Oh my god. I can’t even tell you. Well my kids actually, they’ll come up to me and I’ll you know kiss me goodbye before they go to school or maybe I’m leaving on a Saturday when they’re home and they say, “Hey mom, what are you doing today?” “Oh, I’ve got this meeting today and I’m meeting with this group of people today and I have Limitless today.” And my daughter, she’s 11 years old and she came out to me, she said, “Mom, I’m so grateful that you’re doing what you’re doing. I want you to go out and I want you to help families today. You have helped our family so..” And these are words for eleven-year-old! She said, “You have helped our family so much, I’m so proud of you for helping other families the way you’ve helped ours.” And that was just so fulfilling to me. – You know, I remember, you know children, they have so little knowledge when they’re young and they don’t have logic, they don’t have abstract thinking and so often when a child asks a question, we don’t tell them why we’re giving him the answer, we just tell them what the answer is and I remember back in one of my college classes, getting my degree in marriage family human development, what an eye-opener it was when we were encouraged as parents to educate your children on why you’re giving them the instruction. It sounds like that that’s what you’re doing and having those conversations so that children understand why you’re making the choices that you are, that’s where sometimes the real education comes because now they’re learning principles as opposed to just being a “yes kid” or a “no kid” and told what to do or how to think or what to say, it’s let me share with you why we’re doing what we’re doing and so I commend you for doing that, that’s really really beautiful. – It’s really powerful. If you had to give some advice right now to to any moms out there that are feeling a tug of war between family life and work life, what advice would you give? Bottom line, where do you want to be? What do you want to be doing? There’s a pathway for whatever you want to build in your life. If you feel like your calling is to be working and creating income for your home, do that and involve your kids, find a way to bring them in on the conversation. I know there’s another video on this channel about doing exactly that. Bring your kids on the conversation and tell them what is your why, ask them what they would do, take advice and listen to the feedback of your kids and then ultimately, make the choice that’s best for you. I can’t know what that is for you, Kris can’t know what that is for you, nobody can know what that is for you. You are entitled to the knowledge that provides your best answers. Well, I love it Marianne. This is so great. Before we wrap up, I want to go to some bonus time real quick. Okay, so you are an entrepreneur and we might have some others that are like, “Alright, I want to do what Marianne is. I want more time which means I got to figure out how to compress more results.” And one of the things that I love about entrepreneurship is, any boss that ever hires you, it’s because economically, they need to get a 4x return on you. It’s kind of an unspoken rule that most people don’t know, employees don’t really know but generally, an employer hires someone and whatever they’re paying you, it’s because their goal is to try to create four times as much income off of what they’re paying, if they pay you $10 an hour, they’re hoping that you’ll contribute $40 to the company whether you’re directly or indirectly involved with that compensation. Reason why I share that with you is because it means that if you’re on your own, that means that we live in an economic society where if you’re taking charge of your life, that there’s at least room then for you to get a 4x return on your own efforts instead of 1x for you and 3x for your employer and so Marianne, what advice would you give a mother that’s an entrepreneur that wants to know how to have more time with her family by being more effective during her business hours? What habits do you have for conquering and crushing and rocking it and creating value and making it happen instead of punching in and punching out, letting someone tell you what to do with your life? One of my favorite tools and this is a real-time actual tool that I do on a daily basis, I’m always looking for ways to multiply my time, that multiplication factor, I love doing that so if my business requires me to use some time, I’m going to get up early in the early morning hours, I usually wake up between 4 & 5 in the morning and I sack that time for all it’s worth, I make my plan for my day or I organize my schedule, I prioritize my to-do list and I condense everything that I need to do in a 24 hour period into a single hour so then, I don’t do it at all on an hour, but I organize it so that when I come across it, I can finish my day by 7:00 in the morning sometimes, I can finish my day by 4:00 in the afternoon sometimes so that by the time I am called on for my mom duties, either when the kids get home from school or whatever they’re needed, I can say I am totally free, I have nothing else on my mind, I have nothing on my plate, everything is taken care of because I multiplied my time. Alright, so number 1 sounds like time management is really key. Number 2, you got to know how to prioritize your time and number 3, you got to have some self-starter that says employers are for tapping on your shoulder to tell you what to do, when you’re self-employed, you’ve got to do the tapping and take advantage of the gift of your time freedom by maximizing it. – Yeah Awesome. What other advice would you give if someone was saying, “Marianne, how do I make more money?” Often, entrepreneurs they’re in sales jobs and they need to produce, they earn money by commissions, by how productive they are, how do they be a more effective salesperson? Wow there’s so many answers to that and my first answer would be breakthrough. To be honest with you, breakthrough is the bottom line key component. If you feel like you’re not creating enough wealth, if you feel like, gosh people effort so much and so hard and you’re probably familiar with people like this, if they, I put in the time, I work my tail off, I do everything and the dollars aren’t coming in, I know what that’s like, I’ve been there. This tool of multiplying time is going to maximize your results because you’re putting in the correct amount of effort for the maximum result. Do your breakthrough work. If you feel like you’re not getting your time four dollars, if that’s not imbalance for you, if it’s not in harmony for you, if it’s not working for you, find out why with your breakthrough skills. And for those of you that are like, “Breakthrough, Marianne, what are you talking about?” There’s a link at the bottom where you can learn more about that. Marianne’s actually one of our breakthrough coaches where she works with people all over the country and helps them figure out how to break through their limitations and that’s not even the main source of her income but a neat interesting thing about Marianne. So, beautiful advice today. So, really, manage and organize yourself really well and then the other one is you’re going to have a myriad of things that are going to keep you from getting maybe the results that you want so use the breakthrough technique that we teach and supply to you so that you can actually effectively work through everything that you need to change that keeps you from getting the results that are available to you? Wow, Marianne, such awesome advice today. Aren’t you so glad that I wasn’t in that yucky head dressing actually giving you advice today? Marianne, it’s so awesome to have you here today. Thank you so much for rockin it out for our friends here today. – See you! Another big shout out to our good friend Mareianne for being on today’s channel and sharing with us how do you be a rockstar working mother, dow do you do it successfully, how do you do it effectively. You’ve given us some really great golden nuggets today Marianne. I really appreciate that. Friends, we’ll have Marianne back in the future, go ahead and comment below and the kind of things that you would like to continue learning from her, she’s obviously a powerhouse and every month you can find her live in Utah at our three-day Limitless breakthrough event, an incredible place to experience change, breakthrough, and take your life to its next level. Finally, subscribe. Oh yeah, subscribe and finally subscribe so that we can get you more amazing content from Marianne DeNovellis.