The Three Keys To Less Stress As A Mompreneur
Back in 2016, as I sat in my office listening to the Rising Tide Summit, I kept hearing the speakers, and the attendees in the chat, talking about their struggles in business ownership as a mother. It was slowly dawning on me that in a few months, I would be feeling those pains as well. Our daughter would finally arrive that May.
Without sharing all the gory details, our road to starting a family was not smooth sailing.
Back then, I was not as open about what I was experiencing. It was the hardest period of my life. While I was dealing with losses and infertility, I didn't have the option of hitting pause and climbing in to bed like I so badly wanted to.
Life kept going, clients kept emailing and the calendar continued to flip.
As a wedding planner, my calendar was spoken for months and years in advance.
Even with the "flexibility" of being my own boss, I still had plenty of responsibilities. If anything, it felt even more impossible to take the time off I badly needed because I didn't have a team of employees or co-workers to pick up the slack. I alone was committed to my wedding clients.
Back to Rising Tide Summit, I realized while listening to Lara Casey specifically, that if it hadn't been for the tough times in my business and learning to set boundaries and say no, then I would have been in a much worse place once these baby-making struggles reared their ugly head.
I am so thankful for the three key turning points that I experienced in business ownership that caused — more like forced — me to make some big and important changes. I implemented all of this before we started our family. This is for everybody, not just the mamas.
IDEAL CLIENT
Figuring out my Ideal Client was an important milestone early on.
Before I realized that not every bride-to-be was the best fit for me, I was wasting time and energy trying to attract and book everyone. It was mentally draining because each sale I didn’t close, felt like a failure. This process was tiring as well because I was overworked, taking on projects that weren’t my best fit.
The switch flipped. I focused my efforts more specifically. I even gave my Ideal Client a name, and it became easier and easier to identify her and cast my net to attract her, not just every fish in the sea. With a better understanding of who I worked best with, I could simplify my offerings and efforts.
Focusing on my Ideal Client meant that the work I did book was more fulfilling, less stressful and a better fit for my future portfolio and growing my business smartly.
Instead of taking on everything, it gave me a guideline to follow and made decision making much more simple. Both in the work I accepted and my strategies behind the scenes.
LEARNING TO SAY NO
Identifying that client made it a thousand times easier to say “no” to inquiries and projects that were a bad fit. This meant I was more excited about the work on my plate, even when it often felt like it was still too much.
I was surprised — and relieved — to find that it was rarely met with the sort of negative reactions I had worried about. To this day, I have no regrets about the work I have turned down, because it lessened my stress and frustration.
Once I got the hang of it, "no" rolled off my tongue for commitments both professional and personal. “No” made space in my calendar for my family and myself. The more important things in life than a calendar rammed with bookings and social commitments.
Full disclosure: I’m still working on the part where it makes more time for self-care. Baby steps.
SETTING BOUNDARIES
Most importantly, those first two turning points lead me to setting boundaries which made my workload more tolerable and allowed me to live a an actual life. As well as dividing my time between mom and boss, or between different jobs ahead of going self-employed full time.
It became clear that if I didn't find more time and space away from work, I was going to burn out. These boundaries became strict rules for me to follow and helped to build a much better work-life balance. As good a work-life balance can be achieved in wedding season of course.
For me personally, I avoid client meetings on Sundays at all costs. I understand evenings and weekends are when they’re free from work but if I don’t set aside at least one day a week to skip appointments and stay in my sweats, I go batty.
Similarly, I don’t bring my computer in our bedroom. If I used my laptop in bed, even with Netflix on in the background, I would never stop.
I also turned off the email notifications on my phone shortly after Hannah was born. The email ding would go off while I was in the middle of a diaper change and I would immediately start to sweat, wondering what important work I was missing. The answer was nothing. I’m not curing cancer. It could wait. Turning off the notifications meant that I would get to my emails and work when it was actually time to do so.
Building a wedding business is exciting, and hard, but building a business that actually fits with your lifestyle as a working mom is vital. I see a lot of wedding pros and small business owners working towards goals that don’t actually fit with their ideal lifestyle anymore. They’re still working away at goals they set before their family arrived, or based on old ideals. They’re setting themselves up for heartache and stress.
I help my business consulting and coaching clients work through these details regularly in their first module of a three-month program, or it can be the focus of a one-on-one Mini Consult to pick my brain.