There is no such thing as work life balance – especially if you’re a mum and or an entrepreneur…

“I just need more balance in my life” or “once I finish this project I’ll be more balanced”

Do you ever find your self saying: “I just need more balance in my life” or “once I finish this project I’ll be more balanced”?

This is such a common feeling for most of us that I recently spent sometime researching this never ending desire we all have to find the elusive “balance” in our lives.  What I found may upset some of you….  I don’t believe we can ever fully achieve balance and that in fact our job as human beings is to always be trying to balance our scales (lives), but the moment it appears that everything is just right something changes, either in ourselves or from an outside influence.   In other words our purposes is to look for balance (but never fully achieve it), we’ll feel a lot more content if we realise that we’ll never be able to fully attain it, and therefore we should enjoy the journey – balance is not a destination that we’ll ever reach (and maintain).

“Personally I have some of my best ideas while I’m out running or in the shower..”

Work/life balance is what we hear about most as business owners – the self employed are notorious for working all the time and neglecting other areas of their lives.  This is especially true of business owners who, run businesses around their passions or are serial entrepreneurs.  We often hear from experts that we should have a break from work, take some down time!  Although I do agree with the idea that a change of scenery and focus can be just what the doctor ordered, I don’t believe most entrepreneurs can just “turn off”, nor do they want to.  Personally I have some of my best ideas while I’m out running or in the shower – these are times that I’ve stepped away from the computer and all the busy work that keeps my business ticking over, fall away and I can think about the direction of my business – the creative side of business if you like.

Smart phones with reasonable sized screens, mean I can and do take my business everywhere with me.  Waiting rooms,  pick up kids, being in transit (driven places) and in the supermarket shopping queue, all give me an opportunity to stay connected to my business.  Likewise when we go on holiday I don’t just “turn off”, I may not take my computer but I do have my phone and my mind.  In many ways being on holiday just means that I don’t have to do the everyday repetitive tasks and can free my mind up to think creatively about the state of my business and where I’d like to see it go in the future.  Its in some of these times that I make the biggest decisions about the direction of my business.  Don’t get me wrong, I do believe that digital business owners should have regular unconnected time from their businesses.  When we head to the mountains here in Tasmania there is no internet connection and we have no choice but to walk and think for three days.  I love this time spent mostly in my head and guess what I’m thinking about most of the time?

When I was thinking about writing this post an email arrived in my in box from Ryan Levesque all about work/life balance (funny how that happens – all the stars aligning ;-)).  In his video post he talks about people who are really passionate about what they do, not being able to just turn off.  People like artists and entrepreneurs, the creative people of the world, like you and me.  In fact Ryan states that if you don’t feel that way about your business then you probably shouldn’t be in business.  I know there are times when I work like crazy to hit a goal and most of the other things in my life are neglected for a short time, and the reverse can be said if I have important personal activities happening, the business can take a bit of a backseat (not that I stop thinking about it ;-)).

Have you ever been very passionate about a new hobby or fallen love?  Its amazing how these things can be all consuming for a time – I actually feel sorry for those people who haven’t experienced this.  To some extent thats what it can feel like when you’re in the middle of an exciting project in your business – you can feel the same rush of adrenaline and any hope of a balanced week can fly out of the window.

The lines between work and family are definitely blurred  for me.  I love my business and the people I serve in my business and as a result its often the first thing I think about when I wake up and the last think as I go to sleep.  Its not uncommon for me to have the kids around as I work and I’ve even had them in meetings when it couldn’t be avoided.  Just as its not uncommon for me to be answering an email or messaging a staff member while watching a game of futsal the kids are in.  Don’t get me wrong though, I do believe its important that you are present physically and mentally for your kids in these situations, and perhaps this is where I practice a little balance and try be encouraging and engaged with their activities.  After all its not enough to be there physically if you’re not there mentally for your kids – you don’t want to be that parent who misses every goal because they have their heads down looking at the phone, only to look up and see the disappointment in your child’s eye because they know that you “missed it”.  That almost feels as bad as not being there at all – I know this from experience

As a mother and a business owner it often feels like I’m trying to juggle a bunch of balls in the air – I now realise that I thrive on this continual juggling act as I try to balance the many areas of my busy life.  I do have a few habits that I’ve developed over the last 20 years to help us maintain a family/work mixture (not really balance) that works for us.  The two that have had the largest impact on our lives and been around for the longest time are a menu plan and eating our main meal in the morning.  Let me explain how they work and the benefits of both, they may be something you’d like to adapt to your busy lives.

I remember the frustration I felt every afternoon when it was time to think about what the family was going to eat that night.  Some days it almost felt like a physical pain as  I trawled through my cooking books for inspiration and dug deep into my mind for family favourites I could cook.  You see I’ve never liked to dish up the same meal every day, so I tried very hard to come up with a variety of meals so the kids didn’t get bored and so I could ensure that we ate healthily.  About 20 years ago I started planning what we would eat for the next two weeks and writing it down.  At that time I wrote it on paper and put it on the the fridge.  From that menu I would write my shopping list and go and buy all the ingredient from the supermarket.  These days I write the list in notes on my smart phone and do my shopping online (and have it delivered).  So for the last 20 years I have not had that mild panic as I think about what to feed the family – its already sorted, the ingredients are in the cupboard, all I need do is cook   I’ve found that transferring that daily pain to a twice a month exercise has been very effective in the running of our house and my business.  I can use my brain to think more about what needs doing in the business instead of mundane things like dinner preparations.

Our family is reasonably large by modern standards in Australia, with 5 children born over 11 years and evening meal times were becoming a little hit and miss – mostly because the older kids started going to extra curricular activities (like music and sport) and Simon (my hubby) was having to stay later at work some nights.  This meant that we rarely all ate together as we just weren’t all in the same place at the same time!  So we decided to do something out of the norm – this has become a habit – we started eating our main meal in the morning instead of breakfast and we moved the traditional breakfast food to the evening.  Instantly our family ‘worked better together’, we got to sit around the table everyday before school and touch base with each other and at the other end of the day we were more relaxed.  As the children got older they feed themselves in the evenings (cereal and toast etc.) and I often prepared the mornings main meal ready to heat up or cook in the morning, depending on what the meal was.  After 16 years we still eat this way and love it – there are a lot of health advantages as well but thats not the topic of –  we found changing when we eat each day the linch pin for family cohesion and we couldn’t imagine doing it any other way.  These are just two family routines that we’ve found help us manage family and work.

My business, Mission Mojo is a lifestyle business which for me means I can do it any where and at any time as long as I have an internet connection.  That means not only do I think about business when I’m with the kids but I can actually run my business when I’m with the kids (if I need too ;-)).  Of course this all works in the other direction to – when I’m working I will think about my kids, especially if one of them is having a hard time.  It also means that I don’t have to miss school assemblies, athletic carnivals or like we just did, I can take 3 of my 5 children and travel the world for 18 months.  All this is possible because the lines between my work and my family life don’t really exist.

“Once you label me you negate me.”

– Danish philosopher : Soren Kierkegaard

Like most business people I’ve struggled with who I serve with my business – you see, just like you I can help “everyone” … Well, everyone in business!  I truely believe that I could provide value to anyone in business by helping them to improve their online presence in some way.  There are a few problems with this though:

• I can’t market to everyone effectively.
• I don’t actually want to work with everyone – in fact there are many people I don’t ‘want’ to work with.
• And I would never be able to provide ‘everyone’ with the coaching they deserve.
• etc.

This is an exercise I regular go through with my coaching students and like many coaches I am the epitome of “do as I say and not as I do” …

Recently I was going through this process again – re-honing exactly who my target market is – in an effort to improve my marketing message to these fantastic women.  This exercise had me researching ‘work from home mums’ and ‘self employed mums’, because they are the people I like helping most and I feel my digital business skills will provide them with the biggest steps forward.  During this research I realised just how much I hate the word “mumpreneur” (or mompreneur if you’re in the USA).  Every where I turned this term was being used to identify women who had children AND owned a business.

“The term ‘mumpreneur’ implies that the businesses are not serious, that they have been started ‘because’ these women have children.”

Personally the term itself implies to me that any business these women (including myself) were running was a hobby, something to do while the kids were at home, and once they went to school, so these women could be flexible enough to work around the kids school/activities. The term ‘mumpreneur’ implies that the businesses are not serious, that they have been started ‘because’ these women have children.  Moreover, that the main focus for these women is their children and not so much their business.

The reality is somewhat different as any business owning mother will tell you.  Starting a business from your kitchen table is often the first step in birthing a new child, with time consuming demands and needs just like your real children. I’m sure I’m not the only mother to have neglected all the household chores, feeding the kids and even occasionally picking up the precious children because of a business deadline that has overtaken your life!

Becoming a successful business owner requires just as much disciple whether you’re a man or a women, with or without children. When a mother achieves some success in her business, she is often labeled as a mumpreneur, taking a little of the shine off her achievement.When a father is successful in a similar fashion in business you don’t hear him being referred to as a dadpreneur, in fact whether he has children or not is considered irrelevant, and rightly so!

 

After a little research I’ve found that I’m not the only one who prickles when referred to as a mumpreneur, in fact theres quite a back swing against the term:
“I hate the term mumpreneur. I think it’s degrading and patronising. You don’t see male entrepreneurs with kids called Dadpreneurs,” – Stuff.co.nz/business

There was another quote in the same NZ article which quoted a winner of a mumpreneur award as saying she was a little embarrassed to say she’d won this award as it felt ‘less’ of an award than it would of been had it been an award for just entrepreneurship!  One of my businesses won an award in 2011 for its entrepreneurship and I would have to say I’m glad that it was a general classification and not labeled a mumpreneurs award.

You could argue that mothers are better business owners than non-parents because they do have the ability to get organised and keep a number of balls in the air at the same time. There are a large number of businesses started by new mums, many of them don’t survive the nappies (diapers) stage but for those that do they offer these women more choice, once their child is ready for school. They can choose to stay “at home” work their business and be more available for the kids or drop them off at school each day and re-join the workforce they came from before motherhood. Both choices are valid and have their merits. Returning to the workforce provides financial security for the family, while running your own business gives you more flexibility to fit around your families needs. We could have a whole discussion on how much security you really have in a job, but thats for another day

Being a mother does appear to be a catalyst for many woman starting a business in the first place – “mothers of young children are up to three times more likely to be self-employed than other working women, according to the Australian Institute of Family Studies and the Australian Bureau of Statistics” – smh article. There has been numerous studies as to why this is the case – they bring up a range of conclusions:

• monetary considerations (to bring in extra cash for the family),
• to solve family/baby problems which the mother suddenly becomes aware of (many new mothers create baby related products),
• professional women who have suddenly (for the first time in their lives) found themselves at a loose end – they want something to stimulate them, beyond the baby and the house,
• the new mother not wishing to return to an inflexible workforce.

Personally all of the above motivations were catalysts for my own business ventures!  What about you – why did you start a business or why are you thinking about starting a business?

“An entrepreneurial perfect storm is created when you take professional women out of the workforce and place them with a young child and a whole bunch of repetitive activities!”

Have you noticed that many of the products that new mums create are baby/children related?  An entrepreneurial perfect storm is created when you take professional women out of the workforce and place them with a young child and a whole bunch of repetitive activities!  Their brains go into overdrive to find ways to make this new situation they find themselves in (motherhood), more efficient, work better, more rewarding etc. They basically become a one women research and development arm of their family.  When you multiply this by millions you have a massive number of R and D departments working away in their kitchens around the world, coming up with the next new sippy cup that ensures junior’s meal times will be “less” messy  Maybe mothers who start businesses based around baby/family problems that they’ve solved should be called “mumpreneurs”?

My first exploration into self employment had me creating wooden fish puzzles which I sold to the local tourism shops (I had 2 young children at this stage), then my sisters and I created a family organiser magnate that stuck to your fridge, which we sold locally (this was my family product).  These ventures where what I would call mumpreneurial as they really didn’t amount to much more than hobbies, the magnet in particular was even related to being a mother and organising family life.  However after returning to the workforce as a teacher I soon realised I loved teaching but hated having to be at school every day between 8am and 4pm!  In 2002 (with 4 children and a 5th child on the way), I chose to start and run a business online.  Thanks to that decision I’ve had unprecedented flexibility, not just in being around for my kids but also in where I choose to actually work (and that freedom was my main motivation).  You see with a digital business I can be any where as long as there is an internet connection.  We tested this out in 2014-15 and took our 3 youngest children traveling around the world for 18 months, while we still ran our digital business!  It was the best experience ever – we ran a travel blog at: upsticksandgo.com – if you want to check it out…

But back to the label mumpreneur, it implies I have a hobby business – after 14 years and hundreds of clients, I do not believe it is a hobby – it also implies I’m at home running my business from the kitchen table – and sometimes I am, but in the past I’ve also leased an office for 4 years, ran webinars in cafes on the other side of the world, ran webinars in a tent on the beach, worked from a co-sharing space in Vietnam and just sat in a park with my laptop. Being a digital business owner has given me the flexibility to be the kind of mother I want to be – one who is around, one who will drop everything and play, one who will cheer from the sidelines at footsal, one who will sit through (sometimes boring) school assemblies, one who is not afraid to get a little uncomfortable and one who is trying to show her kids that they can do and be what ever they want, including an entrepreneur!  I am an entrepreneur who happens to be a mother to 5 gorgeous kids, but please don’t call me a mumpreneur!

P.S. Oh and I forgot to tell you – this little business has supported our family since 2006

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After a load of questions about how to set MailChimp from my coaching clients recently I decided to do a quick video with the basic steps…  That video turned into 4 videos – oops

Here is the first showing you how to opening a free account – enjoy and do let me know if you have any questions?

You can find links to parts 2-4 below:

Mailchimp Part 2 – Creating lists

Mailchimp Part 3 – Adding forms to your website

Mailchimp Part 4 – Sending email