Latest / Empower Your Menopause / Episode 77: Menopause Survival Guide for Working Mums

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Episode 77: Menopause Survival Guide for Working Mums · Empower Your Menopause

• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: Hi and welcome back to Empower Your Meniphores, a podcast all about health, happiness, and hormones for women 14 above.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Coach James Ellis.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm Coach Julie Medacy.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: And together with Fabulous Beyond 14, we're really glad to have you with us, particularly because we've got a huge announcement today that we're going to go on.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: We'll go through a bit a little bit later on.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: But first of all, let me ask you a couple of questions.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: Have you ever had a day where you feel you're doing the same things you've always done, but suddenly it feels like you're pushing through the mud?
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: Do you ever feel like you're functioning but you're not really fine, you're tired in a way that sleep doesn't fix, and because so many of your symptoms are nearly invisible, you start doubting yourself instead of recognising what's happening.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this is really common for women fought in above who are managing all those different things: kids, partners, the house, the career, pets, aging parents, and still trying to find some time for themselves along the way.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the problem is most women don't get a clear practical roadmap for this phase of life, and figuring it out how to navigate it can feel nearly impossible, particularly if somebody's just giving you generic advice, like you know, de-stress or take up yoga or whatever it may be.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: So we've actually spent a lot of time secretly over the last three or four months creating that roadmap for you on what I think is the biggest, most challenging, most exciting project that we've ever done for women 14 and above.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll come on to that in a bit.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: Little teaser for you.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: So we've created a roadmap for you, we're gonna talk about it today.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: Our goal is to give you all your busy working mums some real tools that you can actually use even on your most chaotic days.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: So by the end of the episode, hopefully you're gonna have a few tools to use, even if you feel like you've got zero spare time, and then we're gonna tell you about this incredible event that we've got going.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: So, Julie, I want to start where career mums actually are, the real world chaos.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: On a day-to-day basis, what does this look like for a lot of the women that we speak to at Club Fabulous Beyond 40 and within our coaching business?
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a great question because this is the bit that nobody warns you about.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, paramenopause, the whole menopause transition, it doesn't always come in kicking the door down like a SWAT team.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: It it sometimes sneaks in very quietly and just starts messing with the things that you rely on the most.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Things like your patience, your confidence, your energy, your sleep, and especially your brain.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're a working mom, you know, you don't there's nowhere where you can hit the pause button on your life, so you can just take time to figure that all out.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: You still have deadlines, you still have people who need you, you still the almost all of you are the default organizer of basically everything that's going on.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: So you end up doing what we women do best.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: You push harder and assume it's you.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: So you tell yourself, oh, you're just stressed, maybe it's because you're getting older, or you're failing at routines that you used to manage pretty easily.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: The worst part is it can feel invisible, like you're getting through the day, but it's really costing you.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and because some of those symptoms are invisible, some of the things that we get told is that people around the women are in that situation, can actually misread it.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, fatigue can look like you're actually disengaged when you're talking to somebody, brain fog can look like you're not on top of things, anxiety can look and feel like a confidence issue.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: So you're trying to keep up appearances while your internal symptoms or systems rather are basically running on like an emergency power, right?
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: So we want to say this clearly: if you're a career mom and paramenopause or any part of the menopause journey has made everything feel harder, you're not losing hit, you're not lazy, and there's nothing wrong with you.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: You're basically overloaded and under-supported, and you really deserve better tools.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: This is where the science actually helps because there's a reason it feels like the rules changed.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: James, can you break that down kind of simply?
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, you know, all those hormonal shifts that people talk about, oestrogen, progesterone, and testosterone, they can impact sleep quality, stress response, mood regulation, recovery.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: So when you layer that on top of an already packed schedule, it's like you're trying to run a high-performance day on a low battery.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I suppose that's the key thing to remember.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: This is not about willpower, it's finding ways to support that situation that you're in.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: Because nobody's going to come along with a magic wand and just make all those things you talked about just disappear, right?
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: You can't just sort of like make a busy career, particularly if you're in an executive role, or many mums you know, start their own businesses at this time of life as well as part of change.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: When the kids are getting older, when the parents are getting older, you know, challenges at school for them, challenges with their parents' medical care.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: There are lots and lots of factors that come in.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody's going to come along.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: There's not very godmother, even I mean, we're good, but we're not that good, right?
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: Who's going to come along and wave a wand and just take everything away?
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so so that's the problem.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's talk about this.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's very exciting, what we built for busy working mums who don't have time to mess around with all of this.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: What's the summit in plain English?
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so we've created something called the mother of all menopause summits.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: And yes, it's a catchy name, but really the clues in the name as well.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: So this is a free online three-day event happening February 11th to 13th, 2026.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: So we've actually worked really, really hard to bring together more than 20 expert speakers who are going to address loads and lots of things that can actually move the needle in midlife.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: So we're going to talk about stress, we're going to talk about sleep, we've got people talking about strength, we've got people talking about energy, we've got mindset, confidence, we've got a GP who's going to come, who's doing a talk on hormones, and we've got time blocking, we've got sessions that will help with from a career confidence point of view as well.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: So all those things, plus the reality of how to get it to all balance while still showing up at work and home, that's what we're going to do at the summit.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and by the way, before you say or roll your eyes at all of this, anyone listening, this is not designed to give you another massive list of things to do.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: These are bite-sized sessions, um, and they're designed so you can take what you take what you want and leave the rest.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: You can take one idea, one strategy, one shift, and apply it right away in the life you already have.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: We've been really intentional about making this feel doable for the busy mums.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, is there any other kind really?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, let's talk about what's different about this compared to a lot of these other events.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay, so we understand that busy career mums in menopause don't need any more noise than they've already got.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: They need clarity.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: So the summit is about practical support that fits into a real calendar, not some kind of a fancy life, which is why this is not 20 elongated hour-long webinars that you've got to sit through.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's short, sharp sessions from some real experts in all of their fields where you're gonna leave with one or two or three small, easy, doable, clear action points that will either give you something to do or something to maybe just prompt you to think about another way of doing things.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: So this is not adding to a massive to-do list.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I want to talk walk you through a little bit how the summit works so you can see it's just what you need right now at this time.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a mix of recorded, pre-recorded sessions, so they'll be there each day.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: There'll be seven or eight sessions there that you can jump in and you can watch them whenever you've got time through the day, so they aren't on any kind of a schedule, and then we've got some live sessions as well.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: The live sessions are gonna be more to do, these are gonna be more workshoppy, they'll be a little bit longer, um, and they'll be at a certain time, obviously, because we need them to be at a certain time, but we'll also record those so people can watch them afterwards.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: So you can watch in the pockets of time you actually have instead of trying to carve out half a day to fit everything in.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, there are a lot of sessions, but why do we do that?
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: Because we know that you won't want to attend them all.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: We've gone for a wide range and breadth of different subject matters, and therefore you can pick at the ones that you choose to do yourself.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: So, just like if you're going to a conference for work, you don't sit in on every session in the conference hall from start to finish, right?
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: You pick and choose the ones that I think are going to benefit you and where you're gonna get the most ban for your book, and that's exactly what you're gonna be able to do at the summit.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: So you don't need to watch everything, you pick what's most relevant, you go from there.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: So, Julie, a few more key details then.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there are going to be multiple sessions released each morning during the summit, and everything is designed, as James said, to be clear, practical, and supportive.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: So you'll leave every session with some action steps to take simple, doable, bite-sized things.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: With your free ticket, and yes, the summit is free by the way, you get 48 hours to watch each day's speakers.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now, before we go on, let me just say that if your brain just whispered to you, I don't have that kind of time, we've created a way to make sure you can take it all in.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: There's a low-cost upgrade available that's going to remove all the time pressure and make it easy for you to follow through.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll talk about a little bit more about this in a minute.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so let's talk about some of the speakers we've got then because the lineup is genuinely exciting.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: And like I said, we've tried to pull on as many different threads as possible, and we've invited a lot of experts to talk about different topics.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: So, sleep, stress, confidence, energy, business world, home life, so you can feel more like yourself again.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: So, we don't have time to talk about everything.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: I just want to highlight a few key people.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: So, we've got a session hormones explained without the overwhelm.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: So, this is for the woman who just wants to understand what's actually happening in her body.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: The expert there is a lady called Doctor Emily Muirhead.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: Now, Emily is a great friend of us at Club Five That's Beyond 40, she's a great friend of the podcast of Empower Your Menopause, and she's an incredible speaker, and she's one of those rare things, a doctor who has gone out specifically to learn more about female hormones at a time that she's going through it all herself with her three busy kids, and she's going to talk about that as well on the session.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: But has remained within the realms of nationalised healthcare here in the UK.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: So she's not done the shift to make money in private healthcare, she's done it because she's got a genuine interest in the menopause and how she can help women.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: So Emily's coming and she's doing an incredible talk.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm delving into one of my favorite topics, it's one of the things that I'm challenging most.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'm doing a session on sleep help for busy mums.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: This is not perfect sleep, it's better sleep.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: You're going to walk away from that one with three really simple things that you can do at the end of it.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: You could implement as soon as you put the thing down and close your computer and put your pajamas on.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: We've got one of my favorite personal trainers coming to do a session on strength training for midlife, Susan Ishichay.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: She's been working in this area for years and years and years.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: She's a midlife specialist.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: We know that muscles are long-term health insurance, you don't need to print it yourself or spend hours a day to get it.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: So she's going to talk about how to fit things in in a really, really simple way.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: From a business point of view, we've got people coming to talk about how you can create your personal brand within all this chaos that's going on.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: So that is whether you're a business owner or whether you are a career mum, maybe at a higher level, or an exec level, or a management level, or something like that.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: How to build a personal brand so you stand out and how to do that within the chaos of everything else that's going on.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: So that is Rochelle Atkin from the Yorkshire Marketing Company.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: She's an absolutely incredible marketeer, and she also talks about her journey where she transformed herself and transformed her life after being made redundant.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: Hear this three days after she returned to work from her maternity leave.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: So she literally went back, and three days later, she was told there were restructuring, and there was no role for it.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: She'd worked with some of the biggest brands here in the UK, and then she's gone on, created her own company that specifically helps busy career mums within their marketing and their business confidence.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: So loads and loads of different sessions.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: As I said, that's just a flavor of the kind of people that we've got coming to talk to you.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: So, Julie.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, we've we've had clients who've come to us just completely convinced they were failing at life, basically, because there's so much chaos around this whole transition, even if you don't know that you're in it yet.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: But when we look closer, we work together, most of these women are underslept, overstressed, and doing way too much without any support.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: So once we were able to provide them with the right tools, everything started shifting for them, including how they felt about themselves.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and the truth is most women don't need more motivation, they need the right strategy for their individual situation, right?
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, totally.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: So, okay, I don't want to wait anymore.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about the upgrade because this is where it gets really doable for busy working moms.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: James, what is the power pack and why did we create it?
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so we created something called so look, we always want to help women as much as possible and give them the tools to do things.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: The reason that the presentations are live for 48 hours are for two reasons.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, we wanted to mimic online what a real life summit would be like.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, you don't check in for a summit for for work and then three days later still have access to a presentation that somebody did on day one.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: So that's one reason for doing it.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: The other is to prompt people to actually take action to try and get people, even if they're taking small steps, to be able to watch some of the sessions and come away with some things.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: Now we know that that's not practical for everybody.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: We know that not everybody can binge 10 sessions in a day, even though we've made them only 20-25 minutes each.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: So we create this option for those of you who are career mums or actually want to use the summit, not just feel inspired by it and go straight back in survival mode, but to give you the chance to get longer access.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: So for a small uh charge, which kind of covers our costs of running the um summit, here's what you get: you get ongoing access to the presentation.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: So the presentation will be put in a members area where you'll have a passcode, you'll get into that, and we will leave those up there for as long as people are using them.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: So that might be six months, it might be a year, whatever it may be.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: We know some of you won't have time to sit and watch all these things at a computer, so we're actually taking the audio off all of them and giving you it.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: If you just want to stick your earphones on, listen to it on a walk, on the school run, while you're cooking, while you're commuting.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: There are notes and special action steps, so you get the slides from all the presentations.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: Some of the presenters have given us specific handouts to go with those presentations, so you'll get all those.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: We have got daily short, fun, energizing workouts in the power pack as well.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: So they're just 15-minute short, sharp sessions, so you can fit them into anything.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: They're pre-recorded.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: So whether you're getting up in the morning and you've got a spare 15 minutes, or whether you're about to go to bed at night, you'll get those as well.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: Each day, Julie and I will be live for 30 minutes to do a special VIP live QA.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're stuck, you can get unstuck fast with live coaching, or you know, if you're just overwhelmed a little bit and you want to talk about which of the presentations you should prioritize.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: We can help you with that as well.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then we've got loads of special bonuses, extra courses from our speakers that are worth more than I think the last count it was about a thousand pounds.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's about 1300 bucks if you're over in America.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so you will get access to all these special resources, and you will have a lot of those, you'll have open access to them.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: Once you've registered, it'll be in your inbox, and you'll be able to go to it and do it when you want.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: So you can cherry pick again which ones of these amazing bonuses that you want to do.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: And then finally, we've got a month membership in our club Fabulous Beyond 40 program.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's for free, so you can receive ongoing support from myself and Julie Guidance for achieve all these things after the summit.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: So the whole idea of the power pack is going to remove two massive barriers for career mums: that's time pressure and mental load.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're a woman who wants to take action, make the summit work in her real life without feeling like the clock is ticking, then the power pack is something for you.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because for most of us, knowing what to do isn't the problem.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: Following through, finding a way to do it and make it stick while everybody else still needs you, that's the problem that we're solving here.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I just want to say if you tick any of the following boxes, the summit will have sessions to help you.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: You're a mum, you're in menopause, you're in business, or you've got a career you're you're you're working.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: You need support with recipes, you need support with food, uh nutrition, you need uh clarity on what's going on with your hormones.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: You're lacking in confidence, you want to find out more about yourself and what your next steps might be in life.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: There are so many different boxes that the summit ticks, it's absolutely phenomenal.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: So here's a two-step plan for you then.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: Register for free for the summit, February 11th to 13th at motherofallmenopause summits.com.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, we'll put that link in the show notes.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: If you want an easiest way to follow through, upgrade to the Menopause Momentum Power Pack.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're thinking about that, I would do that within the first 30 minutes because we're rewarding people who take fast action by offering it at a ridiculous price.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: That if I think I said the um total value of just the bonuses without all the other stuff, the ongoing access, etc., is about a thousand pounds, the cost is about a twentieth of that.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, it's less than a twentieth of that, it's about a twenty-fifth of that.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: So, within 30 minutes, that's the time to do that if you want to do it.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: And then finally, you know, if you winners running packs, right?
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: So, if you want to share this with a friend, you want an accountability buddy to do this together, you know, working mum has been saying she feels off, she's tired all the time, she can't think straight, she's struggling quietly at work.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: Send this episode or direct her to that link because it could just be the lifeline that she needs at this point.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: I promise you, it's gonna be amazing.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: I have not worked harder at anything in my whole life or been more excited by anything in my whole life.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: So we know you're gonna love it.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: Do come and join us because all that stuff we talked about at the beginning of the pod is all addressed in this, and like I said, we've thought so hard to put it together, we've pulled together the best experts that we could to help out across all these different areas.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be absolutely phenomenal.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: I can't wait.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: So, we're coaches, James and Julia, fabulous beyond four things.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: Remind you to stay strong, stay fabulous, and we'll see you at the mother of all menopause summits.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: Take care.