Latest / The Matriarchy Would Never | A Promote Yourself to CEO Podcast Series / Why Women CEOs Need Real Support Systems

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Why Women CEOs Need Real Support Systems · The Matriarchy Would Never | A Promote Yourself to CEO Podcast Series

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Are you ready to grow from stressed-out solopreneur to confident CEO?
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: You're in the right place.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Rachel Cook, and I've spent the last 15 years helping women entrepreneurs to sustainably scale their life-first business.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: If you're serious about building a more sustainable business, it's time to put strategy systems and support in place to make it happen.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Join me each week for candid conversations about stepping into your role as CEO, the hard lessons learned along the way, and practical, profitable strategies to grow a life-first business without hustle and burnout.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Hey there, CEO.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Rachel Cook here, founder of the CEO Collective and host of the Promote Yourself to CEO podcast.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Over the last few episodes, we've been talking a lot about how we're going to navigate this current climate of political chaos and economic uncertainty because we have not just weeks or months ahead, but likely years of things being unpredictable.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to make sure that as small business owners, we are all equipped to face it.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: We are equipped to handle it head on, and that we're still able to thrive as small business owners.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: So if you've been following along in the last few episodes, we talked about how to manage your capacity, how to increase your capacity, how to make sure you're caring for your nervous system, getting enough rest, leveraging your thrive list and taking great care of yourself.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Again, so that you have the capacity to take care of business and to take care of your family.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then in the previous episode, we talked about how to stay focused, how to eliminate some of the decision fatigue, how to eliminate some of the stressors by making sure your financial house is in order, making sure that your systems are aligned and streamlined so that you're not wasting a ton of time or energy on things that aren't moving the needle for your business.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: And we also talked about why you need to really stay simple and do less but better in your business, making sure you're only saying yes to the things you know truly work for you instead of trying to do all the things or be everywhere.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, today I want to talk about something that I think a lot of women wish they had, but aren't sure how to create.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that is a real support system for themselves and their business.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: When I talk to women entrepreneurs, I know that a lot of women feel very alone in this entrepreneurial journey.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of women entrepreneurs go off on their own to start their own businesses and might be the first person in their family to start a business, might be the only one in their friend group to start a business.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's often the case that they don't know many other people who are doing this thing called entrepreneurship.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it creates a sense of isolation.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: It creates the sense of I'm all on my own.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really, really exhausting and honestly hard long term.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: When I talk about my experience as a small business owner, and I talk about my experience being raised by two entrepreneurs, growing up in small business, always knowing small business owners.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like that has been such a central, like defining point of my entire life that I've always been surrounded by people who own their own businesses.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I realize that it's a very unfair advantage that I have because I've been living this entrepreneurial life my entire life.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: I've never known anything different.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Neither of my parents ever worked a traditional nine to five.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: None of them ever had a boss.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: I worked a traditional nine to five for a few years before I decided to leave consulting and start my own business.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, this is very natural and normal to not only be an entrepreneur, but to be surrounded by entrepreneurs.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: And if that's not the case for you, keep on listening because I want to talk about the different ways we can start building your support system.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because great entrepreneurs who are in it for the long term know that you can't do it alone.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: You need to be surrounded by others who truly understand what you're going through, who understand what you're up against, who understand what's happening, not only for the strategy and the masterminding, but for the emotional support, for the personal support.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: So we need to build our own support systems.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna tell a quick story though, because I think this really drives home my perspective on this.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you haven't heard the story about my family, then maybe this is the first time you're hearing this one.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: But both of my parents were small business owners growing up.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: My dad owned an insurance agency, and my mom had a soil consulting business, which basically she would go out and do environmental impact studies.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: She would take her augers out in her alchemino truck and go out into these fields or go out into these woods and dig up soil, test the soil, write up environmental impact studies before any real estate developer could go out and build homes or build neighborhoods.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: And this was the early 80s that both of my parents were small business owners.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, when my mom started her small business, she was the only woman in the entire state of Virginia who was running a business like this.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: So in 1987, my mom was in a car accident.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: She had just dropped me and my two younger sisters off at our babysitters.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: And she was at a stoplight making a left-hand turn going to her office.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: And as she was going through the intersection, a 18-wheel tractor trailer plowed through the red light and hit her directly on the driver's side of her minivan.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: She was in a coma for three months after this and in the hospital for about two years, basically relearning everything because she experienced a traumatic brain injury and partial paralysis.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: So my mother has now been disabled since 1987.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: And currently she's fully wheelchair bound and has full-time nursing care.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: When this happened, my dad was only a few years into owning his insurance agency.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: So he was still in that building stage.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: And my mom had one employee in her business.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Clearly, she was not able to continue her small business.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: She was the only person who could do that kind of work in the business.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: And because she was so injured, it just had to close, right?
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Her business did not survive the accident.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: But my dad's business did, even though he also only had one employee at the time.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: And he spent the three months my mom was in a coma at the hospital.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like he did not leave her side.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: He was sleeping in the room right alongside her.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: He did not leave.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: He was there to fight for her the entire time.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: And my sisters and I spent many, many months at my grandmother's house, who thankfully lived right around the corner.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: My mom's siblings came home to take care of us.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone came home.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: My dad's family came down from Michigan.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like we had a ton of family to take care of the three of us.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: I was four and a half.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: My sister Katie was two and a half.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: And my sister Liz was a year and a half.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: That everybody put their life on hold to come take care of us kids so that my dad could take care of my mom.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because there were many doctors who thought she was, you know, not going to wake up or that we should just unplug the life support.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: And he had to fight every step of the way to take care of her.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: So there's that personal support.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of us have, thankfully, loved ones who, if something like that happened, friends and family would come and help.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: But what really blows me away about this particular period in my life is how my dad's business community really stepped up to support him.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: See, at the time, my dad was very much in the early stages of starting his insurance agency.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: And he was the one going out there, you know, pounding the pavement, going out and finding new clients and signing on new clients and signing deals.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: But he had a great group of guys who had all started at the same exact time.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: They had all gone through all their training together.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: They had gone through all their licensure together.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: And for the three months that my mom was in a coma and my dad was by her side, those guys passed around his agent number.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: They literally, each of them took a week where any of the um contracts they wrote, they would put in my dad's agent number so he would get the commission.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: And because they did this, they kept my dad's business going.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I think about that all the time.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think about that all the time.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think about how incredible it is that those guys sacrificed a week of commissions that would have gone to their family in order to take care of my family.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that was paid forward.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, over the years, my dad being an insurance agent, I remember so many times he had clients who went through something devastating.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: There were times when I was a teenager where one of his clients went through a crazy accident and they had little children.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so he was like, Rachel and I are coming, and I would go babysit while he was helping them figure out what their next steps were.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Or living in, you know, the Bay Area of Virginia off the Chesapeake Bay.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: If we had a hurricane and there was tons of trees down and everything, the first thing dad would do is load up the back of his pickup truck with a chainsaw and a cooler full of water and snacks to go check on clients and make sure they were okay.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm very, very much someone who believes in the power of community and believes in having a support system.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm also someone who has learned that you are not weak to ask for help.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Asking for help makes you stronger.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Asking for support makes you stronger.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: And when you allow people to support you, you're actually helping them too because they want to help.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: People want to help you, people want to help you.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: So how do we do that?
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: How do we start building that support system?
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: How do we make sure we have people in our corner who've got our back?
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Especially as our businesses grow.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because hopefully you'll never go through what I went through as a kid.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: And in my decades of running my own business, I've never gone through something that extreme, you know.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I have gone through periods of needing to lean on my team when I had to step in and take over my mom's nursing care.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: It was because I had to put my dad in rehab.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: He was really, really struggling during the pandemic.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it finally got to the point where I was afraid he was going to die.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: And the only way was going to be to put him in rehab and for me to take the next three months to basically go stay with my mom, find all new nursing care, take over everything.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: And thankfully, my team was there for me, and they kept my business running with minimal input from me.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: They really were there for me so that I could prioritize making sure my mom was safe and that she was going to be well taken care of.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: When I went through periods of grief, like um when I lost my cousin Holly last fall, knowing that I had people in my corner, I have a support system to lean on was so crucial because I needed time to process that.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I needed people in my corner.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: I needed my team and I needed a more of an emotional support system as well.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: So when I share these stories, I'm sharing them because I've been through the hardest times I think a lot of people can go through.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the people who were in my corner who made it possible for me to get through them.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: And not only to get through them, but to continue being able to take care of my family, to continue keeping my business going.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: And for a lot of small business owners, the one of the fastest ways to shut down their business is because they have an emergency.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: They have something catastrophic happen to them, and they have no support system in place to help them through it.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: So let's talk about how we can start building your support system.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now there's a few different layers of this, okay?
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: There's several layers I want to get into.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, the first layer I want to get into is what a lot of us think of when we're talking about getting support in your business, and that's building your team.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: I know a lot of small business owners are owner operated.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: Most small business owners in the US are owner operated.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: Most women-owned small businesses are owner operated, meaning you are doing all the things, you're wearing all the hats.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: But long term, that's a really stressful place to be because it also means if anything happens to you, whether it's a loss, an illness, a divorce, like if anything catastrophic happens to you, you're the only one who can handle the business.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I know, again, it's really easy to believe that nothing bad will ever happen to us.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Chances are all of us will experience something.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: All of us will experience some disruption that has the potential to completely shut down our business.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: So building out your team is one of the best ways to protect yourself against that because it's very, very unlikely that something's going to happen to you and your entire team at the same time.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: It means that you have people in the business who can cover for each other, who can make sure that the day-to-day of the business keeps going.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I want you to be thinking about this.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: Even if you plan to have a very small but mighty business, which I think is awesome, I love a small business.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: I love a very lean business with a very lean team, but you still want to make sure that if you had to be pulled out of your business, let's just say for like two to four weeks, if something happened and you needed to leave and you were not going to be accessible, how would your business keep running?
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: How would your business keep running?
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: So think about who you need on your team.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: I always start with your vision for your business.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: And if you are to think out like five to 10 years, what do you envision your business looking like?
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: And who do you envision having on your team in that business?
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: For me, the most essential person on my team is my right hand.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: My right hand, Amber, has helped me so much to make sure that the day-to-day of the business runs smoothly.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: They handle all of the administrative tasks, all of the, you know, managing financials tasks.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: So making sure that all of the payments come through, tracking payments, tracking invoices, all of those types of things.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: They make sure our clients have access to everything they need to have access to.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: So all of that can happen if even when I'm not available.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: They can manage the administrative, they can manage all of the billing and invoicing, they can manage all of the day-to-day in the business.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: They can handle keeping all of the marketing system and the sales system and delivery system as well.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: And this is something that you build out over time having somebody who can make sure that your marketing keeps going, your sales keep going, and your delivery keeps going.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: If anything, it's great to have somebody who is able to step in and be a buffer between you and your community and your clients in the event that you need to step out of your business for a short period of time.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: If you have someone who can step in and re-book your clients or reschedule people, or can answer questions and keep things moving along.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I always love having at least one person in your business who's your right hand who can be kind of the buffer between your clients in your community and you.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: They can keep the admin going, the administrative, the day-to-day operations going in your business.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: And as you get the systems built out, they can keep some of the basic marketing going, make sure that as sales come in, those people are taken care of, and make sure that your current clients are taken care of if you have an emergency.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: For me, that is such a huge relief knowing that we have that kind of contingency plan to make sure that if anything happened in the business that was unexpected, my team can keep things going for me very, very easily.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, we've built this out in our systems.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: In all of our systems, including scheduling for clients, including the delivery of the CEO collective or the CEO retreat or anything we have, we have contingency plans in place.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: If this happens, then this is the next person who's gonna handle that.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: So if I let's say I were to get incredibly ill for the CEO retreat, if I were to get ill for the CEO retreat and couldn't show up to do it, then this is who has been trained and can run the CEO retreat.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: We've never had to do that, but that is something I think about all the time because it does depend on my ability to show up and teach.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: At the CEO collective, every week I have calls.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: If something comes up and I can't do my call, this is who steps in and does that call.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: And we have this kind of system out for anything that's client-facing as well.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: This is also something we think about for all of our marketing systems and our sales systems.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: So if Rachel isn't available to do, you know, sales calls with potential clients, then here's who does them and here's that process.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: They've been trained, they know how to step in.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm not available to create new content or to post new things on the podcast, which is my core marketing channel, here's what happens.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what that process looks like.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: So because we've built that out and we've kind of built out some contingency planning, it makes it so much easier and it eliminates the stress that everything falls on me.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: And it allows me to step out of the business for a few weeks or even a few months if I needed to, and know that my clients will be taken care of, my community will be taken care of, marketing will continue, sales will continue, everybody will continue getting, you know, what they have signed up for.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: And there's not going to be a disruption in that level of service.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: That is such a huge relief to me.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's such a huge relief to me.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: So that's one layer of support system, is just knowing that your business can keep on going, even if you need to step out of it for a little bit.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: So let's talk about the next two layers of the support systems.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, the next layer of your support system is building out your home team.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: This is something that, again, I think a lot of women really struggle with because we believe we have to do it all ourselves.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: And the research shows that this is pretty true.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: Women disproportionately take on all of the mental and emotional labor of running the household.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: And even if you have the most equitable husband on the planet or equitable partner on the planet, and you try to balance things out, when things are stressful, if someone's sick, like it can really start to fall apart very quickly.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: It should be no surprise to anybody here that I love using systems at home.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: I systematize running my life just like I systematize running my business.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so basically anything that we are doing on a regular basis, I make sure we have essentially an SOP for it.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: And my husband and I sit down and decide who is going to be responsible for what.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, illustrate to my husband the mental load that I was taking on.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because even though he's incredibly helpful, I was still responsible for seeing that something needed to be done and bringing it up and giving him the to-do list, right?
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I had to find a way for him to start to see and understand all the things that needed to happen.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: That book was really, really powerful.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: There's a whole process behind what she does with the fair play system.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: But we decided that we needed to sit down and look through all the things that are happening on a recurring basis in our life.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: And we need a system for it, and we need to decide who's in charge of that system.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot that happens in the day-to-day that I no longer do.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: I have to say, I'm kind of spoiled.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: I have a stay-at-home husband who is an amazing cook and he handles all of the day-to-day stuff here at the house.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: And now that my kids are older, they also handle a lot of the day.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like they handle their own laundry, they handle cleaning their own bathroom, they handle cleaning their own rooms, they handle feeding themselves.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: That makes it so much easier.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: When they were little, it was such a grind to keep up with all of that.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm really grateful that we have all of those things.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: But we looked through everything going on in our life and we had to get really clear about okay, what is the standard of care that we both can agree on?
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: And just like your SOPs are saying, here's the standards we have, that's what we're talking about for the home front, right?
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: On your home success team, you want to think about what's the standard of care?
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: What's a standard of care for housekeeping?
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: What's the standard of care for laundry?
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: What's a standard of care for meal planning?
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: What's the standard of care for lawn care and maintenance?
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: What about managing all the mail that comes in and managing our bills?
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: What about home maintenance?
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: What about van maintenance?
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now, amazingly, a lot of this stuff is pretty repetitive, right?
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: So if you can decide on what the standard of care is and then decide who's responsible for it, then you can just like in your business, you can give ownership over those particular roles.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: So in my family, we decided that I'm going to do more of the bigger picture planning and management.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: And Jamison's going to do more the day-to-day planning and management.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: So in coming up with those systems, we decide as part of that standard of care, how frequently does this need to get done, right?
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: And what do we need to do if we feel like we fall behind?
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: And this is something that we came up with that has been such a game changer for us.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just having a built-in reset every Sunday.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: So if we've kept up with everything all week long, then the Sunday reset is pretty easy.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: But let's say we've fallen behind on the dishes or the laundry or the kids forgot to switch something or something happened.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: Knowing that every Sunday we're going to have like a little hour-long reset, the whole family is going to get together and we're all going to tackle what needs to happen at home, it just makes life so much easier.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: It just makes life so much easier and nothing really falls too far behind.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: So we build systems in place.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: We also look for how else we can reclaim our time because it doesn't make sense for me or Jamison to spend all of our time doing these things.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: So if you can figure out a way to automate some of these things, that can be a major help.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: I automate as much as I can at home.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that might sound strange to you.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: You might be thinking, well, I can't automate stuff at home.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: You can.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: I automate all the medication and supplements that I need.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: I have it all on auto ship.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: It just comes to me every 90 days.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: And because I have it set up on auto ship, I don't ever have to worry about running out.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: I auto ship all of our household essentials, things like toilet paper, hand soap, paper towels.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: These are things that we need on a regular basis.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so I just put them all up on an auto ship and it just eliminates something else to think about.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: It takes a little bit more off the mental load.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: I auto ship all of my personal care products.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're anything like me, you find the skincare stuff you like, the makeup you like, whatever it is, auto ship that stuff.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: Stop worrying about running out.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, just set it up however frequently you need it to show up for yourself and auto ship it.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: I do this also for all of my mom's stuff.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: If anybody has elderly parents, I highly recommend getting them set up on auto ship.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I have all of my mom's medical supplies are on auto ship, all of her um medicines are on auto ship, any supplements she needs, like anything she needs on an ongoing basis, I just have it automated because it takes the stress out and I don't have to be thinking about it.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm also, you know, a little over an hour away from her, so I don't have to go check inventory.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: I was always like, I'd rather have a backstage of things instead of running out.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: You can automate your bills and automate your savings and automate your investments.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: Automating these things takes the stress out.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: For me, knowing every month all those things are getting automatically paid, it's one less thing that I'm worried about.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: I also automate um every summer, we automate things like our lawn care coming or any outside maintenance coming.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: I just sign contracts with those guys.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't ever have to stress about it.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's one less thing that I'm having to keep up with and I'm having to think about.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: And the final thing when it comes to reclaiming your time, when it comes to your home, is coming up with like a weekly reset or a monthly reset.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: This is really helpful.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: I keep these types of lists in my um phone notes.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: They're shared notes and everybody in the family.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that way at the end of the month, at the end of the week, we can all do a quick reset and we know that everything is back to like zero.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have any overflow of stuff.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I know that's a lot of stuff for the home, the home team here, but I do find that that is a major area of stress for a lot of us.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: It takes up a lot of our bandwidth, it takes up a lot of our capacity.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: And if we can streamline it, if we can automate things, if we can outsource a few things, I mean, I would love to have a full-time house manager and a full-time chef, but since I don't have those things, I need to be thinking about how I can streamline and simplify those things, right?
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: Put it on a schedule, create an SOP, decide the standard of care, and ask for help.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: As your kids get older, they can support you, your partner can help you.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: And if you simply need to hire out some help, hire out some help.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: Just ask for the help.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: There were a lot of times when the kids were very, very little, where we would bring in people to help quite a bit because with twins, it was a lot to manage.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: And there is nothing wrong with finding help if you need it.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: Some of my favorite places to get local help.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: If you've not looked on Thumbtack, is a great place.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: Next door app is a great place.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, my neighborhood has a Facebook group that is very active and often, you know, shares referrals back and forth.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: It is where we have found housekeepers, gardeners, people to do the lawn, people to do little handyman fixing type of things around the house.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: Ask for help.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: Don't let it just snowball on you.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: You might be amazed that it's actually very accessible and affordable to get some support at home and free up that bandwidth for yourself.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, the final thing I want to talk about here on the success team is your personal success team.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: And this is really something that I have been thinking about more than ever before.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: Probably the last five or six years, I think.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I've been thinking about this so much because again, entrepreneurship can be very lonely.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I think when my kids were younger and I was in those early stages of being a mom, you know, when you have little kids, and maybe you do, whoever, whoever you are, if you when you have babies, when you have toddlers, when you have elementary school kids, like you are in the hands-on stage of parenting.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really hard to find time for yourself.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: It feels like you're just totally immersed in parenting and kids and all the family stuff.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: You're running them to all of their kid activities.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: You're always, I was always at the dance studio or soccer practice or Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so I didn't really have a whole lot of time to cultivate my own support system, like my own emotional support system, my own friendships.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: And over the last few years, I've really intentionally been cultivating these.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: I have been intentionally thinking about who do I need in my support team who, if something came up, I could text them.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: If I needed to call somebody, I could phone a friend, you know?
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: And early on in my business, I started my business right when I got pregnant with the twins.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: It was about the same time.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, well, I let's see, I had the twins about a year after I started the business because I got pregnant very quickly.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um and at first, I didn't really have a local small business community of people.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: I was finding people online.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: I was finding people on social media.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I was building relationships on social media.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: I was connecting on social media, I was talking to people on it, used to be Skype, and then it became Zoom.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: I was talking to people, doing video calls with people, but I didn't really have a local community.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then I started joining programs and masterminds, and so I was meeting people and really loving the time with them.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: But then that program would end, or the mastermind would end, and we would kind of fall out of touch.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: And there are some people I've kept in touch with who I just love so so dearly and so much.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: But I probably connected them maybe once every month or so.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so a few years ago, I really started craving real friends.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's it might sound so silly, but I really wanted to build real deep friendships because I felt like my only person who was there to support me emotionally was my husband.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: And while he's amazing, he can't be my only friend, right?
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I have to say, he actually inspired me in a lot of ways to build my own friendship circle.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: My husband, Jameson, has always been a gamer.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: He loves video games, he loves strategic board games, and he loves Magic the Gathering.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so over the years, he has this incredible group of guys that get together a couple times a month to play magic, to play board games, to do things together.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's so amazing.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so for me, as my kids got older and I realized I needed that, I needed that outlet, I needed more friends.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: I started showing up for things.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: I started going to events.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: And one of my dear friends, Shannon Siriana, launched Rebel.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: You might have heard me talk about it.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: It was a conference here in Richmond, Virginia, and she hosted it twice a year.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then there were a lot of community things happening.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then I got plugged into Nabo, the National Association of Women Business Owners here in Richmond.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so I kept showing up and kept putting myself out there.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then I decided to join a local peer mastermind group.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, not really a mastermind group, but Shannon was facilitating some peer support groups that would meet monthly.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, you know, I really want to find other women who are like me, who are very passionate about the work they're doing, who are very ambitious about the work they're doing, but they're doing it very thoughtfully and very intentionally.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I want to find more women who are values aligned.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that was a tipping point for me when I really started to find people who were dear friends.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: And now I'm just, I'm so lucky that I have these women in my life.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the reason I've developed these great friendships is because I asked for it.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: I said, just like if you were to go out, you know, and ask your friends to set you up on a date, I asked the couple of friends I had, hey, I'm looking for more women like this who value this, who are up for, you know, spending quality time together, really getting to know each other.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: I put myself out there.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: And because all the women that are now really a big part of my circle are all entrepreneurs, I showed up for them.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: I signed up for their stuff.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: I went to see them at co-working spaces, I went to the events that they hosted.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: If they were hosting a retreat, I went to their retreat.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I share all of this because none of this stuff happens by accident and all is very intentional.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I think whether you're looking at your dream team in your business, you're looking for your home team to keep your life running smoothly, or you're looking for your personal support team, you have to get clear with your vision.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: What is it that you actually want this life to look like?
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: What is it that you want this business to look like?
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: What is it that you want your home life to look like?
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: What is it that you want your friendship to look like?
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: What is it that you want?
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: And what is the standard that you have for that?
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: What is important to you about finding those people?
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: And then let it be known that you're looking for that.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: Don't hold back.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: Tell people, I want to connect with you more.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: I really enjoy spending time with you.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's so funny because some of my best friends will now be, they'll now laugh at me because they're like, yeah, Rachel proposed to me.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: She basically said, I think we're supposed to be friends.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I I literally do that now.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: I am just fearless.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I think there's something here.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: The vibes are good, the vibes are strong, and I feel like we're supposed to know each other more.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: Does that mean everybody is like my BFF?
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: I it just I have a wider circle of friends, and I have several who are just dear, dear friends who I text with almost every single day or see every week.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that has been such a game changer for me.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: That has been such a game changer for me in feeling fully supported.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: So now, no matter what happens, and over the last year, I can tell you having all of these different layers of support system, navigating the loss of my cousin was huge because my business was able to keep running when I really needed to step back and deal with my grief.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: My life was able to keep going because we already had systems in place and we already had, you know, housekeepers we could reach out to or people we could ask to come help us out.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: We knew how to keep things going even when we were really, really struggling in grief.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I had people who were literally by my side holding my hand as I was going through this.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't tell you the difference it makes as a woman, as a small business owner, as a leader in the community, uh feeling held and supported.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: It takes a lot of courage, I think, to say that you want support.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: It takes a lot of courage to say, this is what I want things to look like.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: This is how I want my friendships to look.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: I want friends who we can go away for the weekend and have really bougie dinners and drink a lot of wine and stay up all night talking in our pajamas in the living room.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: I want that.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I want friends who love me so much that when I'm going through a hard time, you know, they stop by just to check on me.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: I want to have that level of love and community in my life.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's something that a lot of us are missing, and it really, really holds us back from being able to be our best version of ourselves.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because when you have no support system, or you're only depending on one person to be your emotional support, or it's just you holding down the Ford at home, it's just start, there's gonna be a point where things start to feel way too hard.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I want you to think about your bigger vision for your life and your business.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: Who do you need on your business team so that if you had to step out for a couple weeks or even a couple months, they could kind of keep the day-to-day running for you, or at least make sure it doesn't shut down to a grinding halt.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: Who is on your home success team?
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: What is the standard of care?
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: What can you automate?
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: What can you put into a system?
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: Who can you outsource things to so that when you are either feeling overwhelmed because of life, or maybe you're just in a really busy season of business, you're not depleting yourself.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: As your business grows, you actually need more and more and more support.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_00: As your business grows, you need to be asking for help at home.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: You need to be asking for help in business, you need to be surrounding yourself with everybody who can keep you at 100%.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: And who is your go-to person?
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: Who are your people?
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: Who are your people that you can actually go have coffee with and you know, be there for you and be there for each other when things are hard.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: We need those people in our life.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it just takes being courageous enough to ask for it and to prioritize it, and to know that you don't have to do it alone.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you like this episode, a little different for me, but I just believe so strongly that women are meant to do life and business together.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: We are powerful, we are powerful when we can come together, when we can hold space for each other, when we can support each other.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: And this is how we can make an even bigger impact is by being each other's support system.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you liked this episode.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure you head over to Instagram and talk with me.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: Let me know what you think.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, I have more headed your way.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: And the next episode, I really want to talk more about building community and how to build like IRL in real life communities.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: This has been one of the most transformative things of my life.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: One of the most transformative things of my life.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I want to talk about building real community in person.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_00: I know I have an online program in the CEO collective.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: I have virtual CEO retreats.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: I also have in-person CEO retreats.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: I can tell you that there is magic that happens when we get together in person.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_00: There's a level of depth and nuance that comes into those relationships when we can actually meet and see each other.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it is so transformative and so life affirming.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_00: It cannot be replaced.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: And in times like we are in right now, I think community is going to be one of the most important things we lean into.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll look forward to talking with you about that in the next episode.