you're listening to the Marisa raider shell, I'm a mama of three farm wife and creative entrepreneur who thrives on helping dreamers endures make the most of their God given talents, You can consider me your newest BFF who will be in there to cheer you on and give you practical tools to use in your business and your life all while empowering you in your faith, providing you with hard truths and much motivation to get you chasing your dreams. I am bringing you actionable tips to uplevel your life and business as a busy mom and believer, I'll share laughs and encouragement with you as you chase after your God given dreams, I believe that you've been given this one life and purpose for you to live out and if you're ready to be the rock star you're meant to be then you're in the right place, let's get started, Welcome back to another episode of the Mersa rader show. I am super excited today actually, I'm super excited every day that I get to chat with you but I have my friend and mentor and coach Marley on today and she is just going to be sharing her knowledge and wisdom, she is one of those people where I get approached by a lot of people that want to coach me and when I met Marley, it was just one of those things where she totally understood exactly where I was, where I wanted to be and how I needed to get there So I am so excited and Marley, why don't you go ahead and just tell us a little bit about you, thank you.

That was made my heart so happy to hear you say that. So yeah, I've been in business for just over 10 years I guess we're like slowly approaching 11, which is crazy. I started off in network marketing and I quickly rose to a leadership position. I spent 10 years in that role um absolutely in love with being a work at home mom. Um that was always my dream. My mom worked at home with growing up, she always my parents own their own business and so she was always there, she got to be with us, she got to do all the things and I knew I wanted that too, so that was really appealing to me um and yeah and so then I just transitioned the last couple of years into online and I knew I wanted to work solely from my computer um and not have product and not be you know having to go out and run meetings and all the things that we used to do that. I loved so much, I just wanted even more freedom and flexibility and I sort of dabbled in online and did all the things I did blogging, I tried Youtube, I tried all these things to try to find what was going to appeal to me and I realized really quickly, once I learned about online business coaching that it was really almost an identical position to what I was doing in network marketing and it was all the parts that I loved about leadership.

Um and and, and more really so that's how I kind of found my way into online business coaching. That's amazing, I love that. And, and that's exactly right. I look at a lot of those network marketing Businessly and the model that they run and so much of it is just coaching your down line and building them up and making them successful. And so you've been doing exactly that for, for 10 years. So the fact that you recognize that those are all the parts you loved and then built a business around it is so amazing. You are a mom, two boys, right? Tell us a little bit about, they range in age too, and they, your oldest ones are in hockey, right? Which I don't know if you're not a hockey mom, like you just don't quite get it, but you're a little bit about that and why flexibility is so important to you with that lifestyle. Yeah, absolutely. So it's a bit of a funny story when I, when I started my network marketing business, I was fresh out of university and I was single.

Um and I, you know, had got my business started and then I met my now husband and he was recently divorced, he had three young boys. Um they were 57 and nine at the time and we were just like instantly this is life like we're now together forever, right? So it was, it was a very quick transition into, we just knew we were right for one another and so I became an like, remember I said my goal was to be a work at home mom one day, it was like be careful what you wish for because surprised now you have a family of five, good luck at, you know, at 25 years old or whatever I was so um yeah, it was um, It was really, really evident to me how much more important my vision was um stepping into that role because I'm a bit of an all or nothing kind of kind of gal. So I was like okay, I guess I'm like, you know, a step mom and a hockey mom and all the things now and you know, it was a 50, custody situation. So you know, I was now 50% you know, running this family um when we had the boys with us and so that was really important to me very quickly to be able to be there for them and show up and and go to the activities and you know, obviously just, I took that role very seriously and being that I had the flexibility that I did, it was, it was just um, it makes me wanna cry like it was so special number one that I could be there for all the things hockey is, we live in a Northwestern Ontario community, so there's a lot of travel involved and I never had to say no, like I could go to all the things.

Um, And that was really, really important to me to be able to show up for them and be there for them and you know, obviously that was a hard time and transition for their family and being able to just, you know, have one less stressor of, you know, trying to navigate a 9-5. Um, the freedom and flexibility, it gave me to learn that role, to navigate that role, the emotional side of it. Like it just, it gave me so much more than I even knew what I needed and in retrospect even more sort of gotten older and matured as well. Yes. And now now you have a young, a young son as well, you guys have welcomed. So now you have four boys, right? We do. We have, we have Childers and teenagers. Our oldest is 17, almost 18 and our youngest is 2.5. Um, and so we've got four boys in the house and it is never a dull moment. I will say that we were laughing last night about like even the dogs, a boy, we used to have a cat. He was a boy. I said, I bet you the fish and the hermit crabs were boys back in the day when we had those. So we were laughing that I'm the only the only lady in the house.

Oh my gosh! That that's so funny to me because we're the exact opposite. So we have three girls and then we are dogs are all girls. You know like it's just that's kind of the running joke in our family. Like my poor farmer husband, all we wanted was a boy. And also you can get is girls. And we had we had this cat so this it's a complete just random story. But we had this cat that I adopted at like six days old nurse it to health like whatever Miss Kitty was was her name. We called her missy and even she was a girl, you know and we took her in to be fixed and they called me in the middle of surgery and they were like we are so sorry. It was like I swear if I just like raise this baby kitty with a syringe and made it go to the bathroom because it's mom wasn't there to do it for it like and you killed it during a surgery, like a routine surgery. I was going to be so sad. I don't even really like cats but I was going to be sad about this one and they were like, no, no, not anything like that. Um we opened him up and there's no parts to fix, he's actually a boy.

Oh my gosh! So that's that's like also the running joke was like, well we gave you a cat with a gender identity crisis if that helps you feel better about it. Like, so that's my husband has has a cat that he does not like the only boy he's been privileged to have in our lives. Yeah. That's funny. Oh my gosh! So a lot of the women that are listening, they are either thinking about starting a business or they own a business. They're definitely moms. They're trying to juggle it all and they're listening and they're like man for freedom. That sounds amazing. And I think one of the biggest, at least when I talk to women, one of the biggest things is is there like, you know what I started my business so that I would have that time freedom. I would have financial freedom and they maybe have one or the other. But they're struggling to find that balance between both. You know, they are either just full out businesses taking over their lives and they found out that they're not really having that freedom because they left their 99 to 5 to work 24 7.

We've all seen that quote that circulates the internet. So how how would you suggest they take a step back and start to focus on finding that balance between the two. Oh gosh, where do I start? I have so many thoughts. Um they're like there's a lot to impact there. We love what we do. So it's easy to become workaholics and when you wake up to literally, it doesn't feel like a job, but your job that you are excited to work when you're in flow and it's just feeling easy and fun, it's easy to overwork, it's easy to sneak in, you know, checking your phone after dinner or you know, when you're watching a show with the kids or like, it's just easy, it's easy to get caught up and I'm guilty because I love what I do, I love working. So I mean, yeah, I can be very guilty of this myself even still even after all these years. So it's, it is something that is very important to talk about and navigate. What I, I will say is that in any business and this was in network marketing and this is in um, you know, being a solo preneurs, online entrepreneur, your job is to take this very unstructured thing and give it structure period.

So it has to have an off button, it has to have some, some rules and boundaries and that is not um, to say that you can't, you know, check your boxer in the evening, even though you're not technically working, I do it all the time, Sometimes I'll exit to the store and I'll just be like, you know, I'm gonna check box or check in with my girls in the parking lot before I go in. Um but that's because I've gotten to this place now where I can trust my intention and my boundaries. So I know am I workaholic ng or am I just really excited right now inflow, feel at peace with the boundaries and the balance between work and home life because there's a very big difference. So boundaries are really, really important, having full days off are really important. Um and even more than that, I think this conversation always brings me back to delegation because we didn't get into business for ourselves to work ourselves to the core. Um and I think one of the topics that I don't see talked about enough in this world is that we need to delegate sooner than we feel like we're ready for financially organizationally, you know, systematically we often will tell ourselves we're not ready and um that's actually what keeps you not ready, you know, telling yourself that you're not there yet and delegating is such a superpower.

Um it's such a release of control, but it actually gives you more control and power back in your business. And if there's anything that I can say it's like even if it's hiring a housekeeper to come clean your house for an hour a week, like just to do your floors just to strip beds, like just one could you just get somebody in your life, whether it's home or business? I don't care like when my clients hire housekeepers, I'm like I've done my job, I'm so proud, like it, it brings me so much joy to know that a work at home mom has helped. Um, but that, that freedom that it gives you, I'll tell you that I hired a sec. I've had a cleaner for years. That was something that became a non negotiable very quickly in my career, but I hired a virtual assistant this year in my business and I'm guilty of all the things perfectionism, afraid to delegate, well, I'll need to get these systems set up so that I can teach her, teach them to her, right? Like I put so much pressure on myself to be like, I don't know, some superhero before, before I was in order to justify hiring and when I released that, that perfectionism that was really keeping me stuck and I said, okay, I'm gonna hire someone.

I'm going to tell them all my fears about hiring them. I'm going to have them build this with me. I'm going to be very clear about what I would like, I'm going to let them build the system so that if they leave me, somebody else could take it over, that's what they're great at. And so we did that together and let me just say that in the 1st 30 days, the amount of creativity I got back in my business, the amount of energy I got back in order to create more in order to show up better for my clients in order to think about my product suite and my bigger vision. Um it just was it was priceless, so that is that I could go down so many rabbit holes with that, but I'll just summarize it by saying that your energy is the most important thing in your business and I talk about that a lot and your energy is used up in every activity you do every single day in your business, so what activities require you and what could be delegated. And that comes down to really thinking about it from the perspective of what's a paperclip task and what's a people task.

Generally those of us in business need to focus on the people stuff, showing up for your brand, showing up in your content, talking to people lead gen um you know, hosting, if you're in the coaching industry hosting master classes workshops, if you're maybe product based, I know a lot of your ladies are our product based, like just showing up in your business on social media, um getting in front of humans and talking to people about what you do, paperclips stuff can all be delegated and doesn't require you. So making e mails, sending e mails, um and you know, anything paper that can all be delegated and that distinction will literally save your business and save your sanity when you can really embrace it. Yes, no, I 100% agree with that because like you I when I was teaching full time and trying to grow my business, I re delegated having a house cleaner right away. Like, that was one of the first things that we did, because I, what I found was that I was trying to have these boundaries of, I work during this time, you know, I put the kids to bed and then I'm gonna, because I'm a night, I'll, I'm gonna spend time working at night and then, you know, do all these things, but what I found was then when I was home with my kids on Saturdays, Saturdays and Sundays were filled with me feeling like I couldn't spend time with them anyway, because then I was busy running the household and doing all those things.

So if I could delegate cleaning, we started off with just once a month and then it was once every other week. Now we're two weekly because we've just found that it seriously frees up so much time in our lives to just be intentional with each other that even if I wasn't working a business, we would probably can still consider that to be of importance of, you know, delegating that in our lives and something else that you said was that you need your energy to do these certain things because when you show up with, you know, top notch energy and you're excited about something that's how you sell your product, that's how you sell yourself, that's how you book your clients and if you are using all of that before you even show up because you're like, I have to get this done, I have to make my social media posts, I have to get them scheduled, I have to write that blog post. I have to do whatever it is that is draining on you. Then all of a sudden you put off the most important part of it, the money making part of it where you show up and be yourself and put yourself out into the world.

And I think that that's so important because we do, we only have a certain amount of band within in our brain in a day and usually it takes a night's rest to like reset that and once it's gone, it's gone. It's scientifically, you cannot get that back. And I honestly feel like our energy is the same way. And so that's one thing that I've learned from you and I wanted, I did want to bring that up was that you know, start your day with something that fires you up. So today I went to breakfast with my husband and my daughter, we went to the dentist, which doesn't necessarily fire me up with my mouth feels real good right now. Like nice and clean, ready for the day. Um, but doing like a podcast episode, you know, just spending this time with you, I will probably have high energy from now until the end of the day. I mean lay my head on the pillow because just because I got this opportunity to talk with you and so I have started looking at how I structure my day and so tell us a little bit more about what you do to start your day, because I know that you have specific routines that get you ready to just show up as your best self, so share a little bit about that with us.

Yeah, okay, so let me get one thing out of the way I am, I have boundaries, I have systems, I have routines, I am not routine and I will say like I, I cannot, don't tell me that every monday at nine a.m. I got to send emails uh I have to time block so that I have, I don't like being told what to do even by myself. So it's like this balance because if you don't give, if you don't give yourself structure, you'll feel like you're floundering and that doesn't feel good. So if you're like me, which a lot of us are in the, in the entrepreneurial world, you don't want to be told what to do, but you're flailing in, you know in space and and it doesn't feel good, so you have to give yourself some boundaries and structures, so here's how I do that with as much freedom and flexibility as possible. Um I actually more so assign days of the week tasks and then I have sort of like what I tend to do in the morning and afternoons? Like I have very rough routines but they're not dedicated to a specific time.

Um It really depends on my energy. Um My mood, how our morning what? Because I've got four kids to get out the door right? Like I don't, I need to prioritize what feels good. So what does that look like that looks like? Um I see clients only on two days a week so they can book calls with me on specific days. There are three days a week then left for me to focus on tasks, focus on delegation, focus on um product suite improvement, creating offers that I have holding those offers. There's there's tasks that I do certain days of the week. So for example, I used to take my client calls. Excuse me. I used to take my client calls on Mondays because I love starting my week with my clients. It was so exciting to me. I love strategy, it lights me up And I was finding then that my first day of the week was me giving to other people's businesses and then Tuesday would come and I would feel behind and so for the rest of the week I was feeling behind and it was, it was unsettling.

So I had to learn really quick. I am very, very good at problem solving at looking for problems and creating a solution that is your one of your biggest jobs as well in this business is to become a professional problem solver. So what's bugging you, are you paying attention to, what's bugging you? Are you paying attention to what you've been dying to say yes to and then creating solutions to those things consistently in the beginning it's weekly almost daily. Over time it'll become like quarterly. Right? Um and so monday's, I quickly switch that to Tuesdays and Mondays is now a day where I don't book calls, I don't book personal appointments. I have that day to um you know, prep for the week ahead to plan my content strategy based on what I'm launching to delegate to my V. A. To check back in with my clients after the weekends. I have many of my clients have access to me on an app called boxer, which is like a walkie talkie, you know, voice app, I checked that first thing in the morning or so. And one of the last tasks I do for the day.

So it's one of the first tasks of the day. One of the last tasks to end my day that is a routine that I have, it is not dedicated to a specific time. I stopped working before 10 a.m. Because I was finding my mornings with my kids to be really scrambling on school days as they are if you know, you know, and I was then rushing them out the door, rushing the baby to daycare and then rushing to work and I was like, this isn't what I built this business for. I don't take appointments now before 10 a.m. So I have, you know, between an hour to an hour and a half of at least buffer space. So I don't have to get up at the crack of dawn to shower and get ready or I can and I've got time to just maybe clean the house a little, maybe it's used that time for me, Maybe it's relaxed and me alone with myself and maybe it's work, maybe some days I hop on my computer early, but it gave me that buffer space to decide based on how the day went because that's freedom and flexibility.

That's what it meant to me and and rushing my baby to daycare was not why I started my own business, you know? So if he needed an extra hour at home with his mom that day, I wanted to be able to do that and then show up to daycare peacefully and not, you know, the other way? Yes. Because we've all been there the other way. Yes. Gosh, And it's inevitable. But it's, I'll tell you, it doesn't happen very often anymore since I made that show, Which is amazing. And that was, that was one thing that I really struggled with coming from a 9-5 job to, you know, all of a sudden, that was gone. And what does that look like? I still thought that I needed to work from the time that you know, I dropped my kids off at school or at daycare until the time I went and and picked them up and what I soon found was that why, why am I feeling this need, why am I feeling you know this way? And so I actually, I've had neck issues for almost a decade now, I was in, I had an accident that you know and so I have to, massage is a month, like that has just become part of my routine and I used to feel so guilty that my kids were at daycare for that afternoon while I was you know driving to my appointment, having my appointment and then I would drive straight to daycare and pick them up afterwards and that used to make me feel so guilty and I was like no, you know what, that was the point of having this business because I can do that while they're at daycare and guess what I can do while they're sleeping, I can catch up on business things if I have to or I don't have to at all, like that is the beauty of of owning your own business and that's the freedom that I left the classroom to have because I had it during the summer when my kids were at home but I wanted it all year round and like you said, I'm a perfectionist, I love have to be productive, I love to work like I thrive when I am like jam packed schedule, like that is literally when I feel I am at my best but I also know that that's not sustainable.

So being able to look at like you said those problems like what lights you up but what's too much and then finding that happy medium and then not feeling guilty about it. Yes, I have, I have a kind of a mantra lately and and the goal is really that I'm trying to work the least amount possible right now, that's that's the season I'm in. I'm like how can I do the least amount and still make the most amount like impact income, all the things, how can I grow my business at the same rate by working less? And I'll tell you when I started working less, I started to see more progress, believe it or not, I started to spend less time micro micro critiquing all the things I was doing. It took me a quarter of the time to put an offer together because I didn't allow myself the space to sit there for four hours and overthink every detail of my messaging. It's so freeing when you step back and go what do I actually have to do every day to be productive because we're doing a lot of busy work, we're doing a lot of shooting on ourselves and um and it's just unnecessarily because we think we need to be doing the most to get the most and that's just not the case.

Our energy is so important. So not only is your massage for your health which is important and you deserve time for your health, but even if it wasn't um it is for your energy, it's for your yourself, you are a human being outside of business and mom and home manager, are you living that are you giving yourself space to be a human and live your own life because we get very caught up in being busy and and like I said those of us that love what we do, it's easy to get into hustle and wanting to work all the spare minutes um but it's just not productive in the long run. Right. Exactly. And I think that that is one of the biggest struggles that with the women that I work with anyway is that defining what's busy and what's actually productive and we have been so convinced that just by being busy that that equals productivity but it really is not. And once you can realize that and take that step back and really analyze, okay, what does productivity really look like in my life, like what really is moving the needle forward, what are the things that I love doing that are simultaneously moving the needle forward.

So I like podcasting, I love podcasting, but guess what's the first thing to go in a busy season podcasting? Why is that? You know, so I'm still guilty of it, still learning, but just being able to identify that and then knowing like, okay, so this is the problem, how am I going to solve it? And you know, just being able to recognize that is the main, I mean we've all heard the, you know, like the first step is admitting you have a problem, like it really is the truth. Yeah. And then adding that to your like, so your energy is lit up. You said, I'll be, I'll be buzzing all day. Imagine the difference when you show up in your stories, you know, hey, I've got this, you know, this is my phone's in my hand, this is my phone and it's really great because versus you get off a podcast episode an hour ago by your Still jazz and you're like, you guys this phone, seriously, have you seen it yet? Have you tried it? Have you done it? Like you're just, it's just different and that energy is literally magnetic. So how are you showing up in your life, in your business to your kids?

Like that's the energy, they deserve that version of you, you know, not the other one who we've all, you know, we've all been and we will all be, it's part of being a human, but if you can prioritize being that best happiest version of you the most amount possible, Like why? Why wouldn't you? Exactly, well, and that's what I found that was ultimately what led me to leave the classroom was because I had to be that person all day long for other people's kids. And then I was coming home to my own and guess what? They never got that version of bomb because yeah, they just got, and it was, I was like running a negative empty at that point, you know, because I always had high needs classes. You know, we, that's just the way it was and I would get home and my kids would want to snuggle and they would want hugs and I was touched out even then it was like cringe almost and I pains me to say that, but you know, because now now I beg my kids for snuggles and they're like, mom, really?

I'm like, really? Yes, yeah. You know, and what's coming up for me too is there's, there's a lie in this industry that we tell ourselves invite this industry. I mean like any work at home industry, um especially as women because we have this vision that like, I'll be at work at home mom, I'll raise my kids and I'll have a business and like, what other business do people raise their kids while working. It's not a thing that that's a lie and then we feel guilty like my baby was home with me and I actually had the most successful year with a newborn in tow because for me and my newborn, it was easy. He was sleep on me. I would work, I'd passed him off for one hour to do, you know, a live event of some sort and you know, it was never, I never had to be away from him and he was easy. Once he started moving, you know, around a year, it started to get more challenging and I had so much guilt around the thought of putting him in daycare because that wasn't in my vision. Well, my vision was based on a lie. Yes, yes, 100% that you're supposed to be able to do it all and that other moms do it all without any support.

And that's, that's 100% a lie. And yeah, oh my God, I'm talking about three via is working for them doing all the back in. Like the ones that do keep their kids home, they have help, they have support. You just might not see it right where they have family that can come and watch the kids for, you know, there's always something more to the story in that case. And like I mentioned earlier, you know, what's bugging you, what are you trying to say? Yes to is a big exercise that I teach my clients because I call it a bug list for me looking at at that situation was okay. It's really bugging me that my baby's only napping once a day now instead of twice. That means I only get one block of time to work not to, that's not easy. I don't like this, this is bothering me, I'm then resenting that he's not sleeping or not as long as I wanted that, you know, this isn't working. But then I was dying to say yes to daycare, even though I had too much guilt around actually and I didn't want to put him in, but I was dying to say yes to I want to work more.

I really want to work more. I love working and I want to work. So I look at both of those lists and I go, okay, well what's where are the patterns? I mean, the one pattern is, it's bugging me, I can't work as much as I want to. And then the other one, I'm dying to say yes to working more into daycare. So that told me that that was a big priority because it was on, I looked at from both sides of the spectrum, right? When you ask yourself really good questions from different angles, you end up pulling different things out of you that you might not realize, you know, was as big of a deal to you as it was. So that was really, really important to me and when I recognized that you better believe I made the call and I got him in daycare and it was the best thing I could have done. It wasn't easy, it was, you know, it was hard, but it was absolutely the best thing that I have have done in my business and and gave me and him so much more than we lost. Yes, no, I completely agree with that. And I feel like there is this stigma around sending your kids to daycare, like only people, the only people who send their kids to daycare are the ones who cannot run the business at home and have their kids with them, you know?

And the thing for me was that my kids started off in daycare, I was working a full time job, my kids were in daycare, my first two were covid hit, so Greer had only been in daycare for like nine months when we stayed home, well then going back and I didn't go back to work afterwards after everything shut down, we brought an Annie in and just had somebody watching the kids at home because we had two girls that were at home and only one in school At that point and it seemed to make sense. I wasn't having to do the driving because we lived, it takes me 40 miles to drive to daycare and back to drop them off, which is completely out of my way. Like it's just, that's just the reality of life. And so we're bringing somebody in and what I was still finding was that I was still hearing every argument the girls had, I was still hearing every wine, every snack demand because we were all still in the same house and so then the nanny would leave and I would go downstairs and I'd sit there and I'd be like, I was still reigned as I would if I had been with them all day.

I mean, to some extent, and so we thought about it and same thing, okay, let's weigh this out. What does it look like if they go to daycare and Greer and Lennox, our youngest to, we're having a hard time separating at that point. I mean they've been home with us for two years during a pandemic, like what? Of course they were. And so we just came to the conclusion that you know what, it's good for them to go and meet friends, it's good for them to go and have structure provided by somebody else. It's, you know, all of these benefits for them going to daycare and it wasn't just me being like, ha ha, somebody else can have my kids for, for the day while I get stuff done. It was really developed mentally appropriate for them and they were gaining things from being at day care that they were not getting from me at home and that almost hurt me worse than sending them to daycare in the end that I felt like I was actually holding my kids back from like making friends because we live in the middle of nowhere, there are not friends just next door.

Like we don't have neighborhood friends. Yeah, so I totally understand that and so I think that it is really important when you are feeling that something's not working, you know what would make it easier and then do weigh those pros and cons and and step outside the box when you're weighing the pros and cons, it's not just that somebody else is raising your kids for eight hours and that makes you feel terrible or six hours or whatever it is. What are they gaining from that experience though? Like what experiences are they getting that they wouldn't be getting at home with you and are you a different mom at night then when you go to pick them up and you put them to bed and you read the stories and you do all the things like it's okay for them to see you do both. Rock being a mom, but also have set times and boundaries for for your job, for your work because all I can think of is that we're setting our kids up for really unrealistic expectations that they literally have to do it all and they're gonna grow up thinking that and it's gonna, it's gonna set them up for failure and they're gonna wonder what's wrong with themselves, There's gonna be mental health issues that surround it.

Like I really do feel strongly that it's okay to send your kids to daycare. It really is that that was actually the first thing that we outsourced was sending our kids to, to somewhere somewhere else to be happy and play and make friends and learn things. Yeah and you just said it like well let's put on our ceo hat as a work at home, mom work at home are very muddy, they're not two separate things. So you said I outsourced childcare and that's exactly it. What do you need help with in home and business? This is a big conversation. I have all the time with my clients because they are not separate. They are one of the same. Your house cleaning is a job, your child care is a job like your husband isn't trying to do both. So why are you? And if you don't want to like amazing, find a way to make it work and if you do want more time by yourself, amazing. Find a way to make it work. Um and and you don't have to have guilt around that. I know that there is guilt because I definitely have had it, you had it, it's part of it, but even if we look at it from like not just what are they gaining now and what are you gaining like in the day to day, but what about your future?

Like are you thinking about your future? I mean your kids are only little ones that was a big part of how I made my decision and we started with part time daycare and it ended up going full time before I even really realized it, but I was, you know, I could keep them home today, but then I'm not going to get, you know, the house cleaned up before the weekend so that I can actually enjoy the weekend with. So there, you know, there's always those other little tasks that it's like, well who's doing that? When is it getting done? And are you then spending the quality time with your family that you have dreamed about? Or are you, you know, again just taking on another task list when your family's home and then resenting the time that you have with them because it's not going according to plan or what you had envisioned. Um So yeah, absolutely. Put on that ceo hat and look at your life as a whole and and how can you solve those problems? Exactly. Well, and that's something else that Trent. And I, you know had a lot of conversations about was what did we enjoy about our childhood, Like what what was it that we really appreciated about the lifestyles we grew up in.

We actually grew up in very similar um lifestyles, you know, and traveling and having experiences was a big part for for both of us and we want to provide that for our kids, but what does that require that requires us to have excess income to be able to provide those experiences for them. We don't want to have to say no to dance because there's three girls and it's expensive. You know, we want to be able to do gymnastics and do whatever traveling sports or whatever it is that they want. But that requires me to bring in income. It just does. Okay. So we knew that we knew that me just being a stay at home, mom was not going to give us that lifestyle. So okay, what does that look like when I was teaching? I did not have flexibility like cool. Yeah, I could travel when everybody else travels on the day off, you know, christmas break and you know, presidents day weekend in february or whatever it is. You know, like I could, we could have a little bit of flexibility that way, but I only got two days off the year to spend how I wanted to spend it, you know, think about that, you know, that's really not that flexible.

And so that was one of the things my mom only worked two days a week when I was growing up. So guess who was at the field trips, who was doing all those things. My mom was and looking back, I loved that about my childhood that my mom had that flexibility. Okay, so did teaching allow me to go on field trips with my kids, nope guess who went on all the field trips with my first two kids during preschool years, my mom did. So as much as I love that she was able to do that with them, that I wasn't the one getting to go on those because I was with my own class, I couldn't leave them to go on every field trip that my own kids were going on and that killed me. Guess what I did yesterday. I got to take the morning off and go on a field trip with my youngest, the pumpkin patch like and that was, you know, it took a lot of reflecting and a lot of deep diving into what do we really want this to look like for our kids and not just in the now, but when they're in high school and when they're going to college, like what do we want our family dynamic to look like?

And so how do we start putting those pieces together now? Because life is just one big giant puzzle that's never really quite finished And you know, I just think that that's really important to look at the whole picture and not just the right now, what isn't working right now and how do I fix this? If we can look out ahead, it gives us the ability to not just put out fires, but to actually build the life that we are envisioning. Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. And there's a big financial aspect, we, we often, you know, don't want to talk about money because it feels, you know, we all have probably grown up with the, you know, a questionable money mindset. Um because money is bad, money is greedy, right? So when we talk about like I want to make money, I wanna make, I wanna make a lot of money. It's hard to say that out loud to people outside of this world because it just, it sounds very odd. It sounds very greedy, but you know, if you ask me, yeah, I want to make a load of money, I want to make, I want to have so many so much choice and freedom.

I want to be able to go, oh, you wanna go away for the weekend on some kind of crazy. Yeah, absolutely. No question, no problem. Like I want to have it. So that is part of the vision. The long term vision are the things that you're doing today. The systems you're putting in place the amount of support you're bringing in. Is that serving the long term vision or are you, you know, staying stuck in the guilt over putting your kid in daycare one extra day week because you want that time to be able to work and you might need sometime to prioritize yourself as human in between the work hours and the mom hours and all the things I used to. So I like, I love to have my nails done. I have them done once a month. And that was the biggest thing for me was I always had to arrange around my husband's schedule because he works six days a week and does chores on saturday twice a day on Sundays as well. So I mean he really worked 6.5 days a week. So me finding a time outside of my work hours to go and have that one thing done that took an hour was so hard to fit into our schedule.

I always had to do it over his lunch hour on a saturday. He always had to, you know, take an extended lunch break that one saturday a month and that just seemed like such a hassle. And now now it's like no big deal. It's those are the things that I can do during the day because I know I can do the other things later on when you know in other pockets this time. Yeah, exactly. I literally am the ceo of my own schedule and that's okay and it doesn't have to look a certain way as long as you feel good about what you're doing and you know you are. I mean by no means am I saying like, yeah, run a shoddy business and don't put any time into it, expect to make money, that's not what we're talking about here. But you know, like you do have that you have that control and we're not used to having that control and we want to put ourselves in some sort of box and it's time to, to climb out of it.

Absolutely, yeah, I I specifically have usually it's Wednesdays is my me afternoon. So today I'm going to get a mani and a pedi because I'm going to a wedding this weekend. So I added the pedicure, I get my nails done at the same thing consistently because it makes me happy. It makes me feel good. And that was something I started to do that didn't cost a lot of money. Um and it was something that I could do to prioritize feeling good and feeling um you know professional. I like having my nails because it made me feel professionally feel successful. Like it just something about it made me feel good. I stood, I stand taller when I have my nails done and that little thing was one of the ways that I started to prioritize my energy and now I rotate between that I get massages when I can um or if I have nothing booked on a Wednesday, I just tell myself okay, but Wednesday's your day. So like what are you going to do in the afternoon? I get the data work and then I need the afternoon to do something for me. So if what is that going to look like today and I get to schedule in that time knowing that if I'm not scheduled, I'm not just gonna work and fill the time with more work, you know, this is intentional time.

So that's another way that I created a boundary around work and energy and and being a human being. Absolutely absolutely. Oh my gosh, you are amazing. I love working with you. I'm so glad that I got to introduce you to everybody today. What is one thing like if you had one thing to tell everybody that you know like you'll get off off this chat with me, you'll be like dang it, I wish I would have said this, what is it I'm gonna put you on. I actually know exactly what it is because this is a big conversation right now in my world and it's just like you are ready right now for whatever the thing is that is on your heart, if it's starting a new business, if you already have one and you're thinking about expanding it in some way. If you're thinking about creating something new, if you're thinking about hiring help, whatever the thing is that has been that seed that is like you know, nurturing inside of you, you are already ready. If the idea is there, you are ready and the solution is in, you looking for the solution, you stay stuck in your circumstance, you're going to stay stuck in circumstance.

So that's why I say let's put on our ceo hat. If you notice I've got a black hat I wear all the time and I got uh Ceo embroidered into it in black. So it's subtle but it's just something that I know is there and it's like I put on my ceo hat every day, A cute little black ball cap. But it tells me what it's like. How can I focus on solutions? How can I make that a reality? What if I what if I did believe that I was capable of creating the new thing? What if I did just decide to go for it anyway? What's the worst thing that could happen? Right? What's the best thing that can happen? Usually there is no worse thing that could happen usually. Exactly. Exactly. Well and I just, somebody asked me about this, we did like a Q. And a panel at the conference that I held a few weeks ago and somebody said okay how do you get over that fear of failure? Because I said I've conquered it, I no longer fear failure. And the women were like how like share your secret. And it's literally because nothing is a failure. I do not approach anything. Like it's a it's a learning experience.

I mean they're gonna learn something or I'm gonna learn something like that. So it's a win win, no matter what because no matter what task I'm taking on or I'm pivoting my business right now to a little bit because I need more of what brings me joy in it and that's creating things and so what does that look like and how do I fit that in and if I was afraid of failing, I just would sit there with that plot and be like, that's good enough the way it is, I'll just keep going the way I am. But if you can look at it as this is teaching me something, then none of it's a failure. And I think that's so important. Absolutely. This is a big topic right now. We've been having a lot around launching because there's a big fear around um launching something and having it, you know, quote unquote flop and this is this is so passionate about this topic alone because, you know, the only person that knows how your business is doing and the results you're getting is you like, your audience has no idea.

All they see is the energy you bring to the thing that you're promoting. All they see is how you show up every day. That's it. They don't know what's going on. They don't know how many people said yes, they don't know what the sales look like, they know who you are, what your brand is, about, what you believe in and how you show up. And so even if you have a quote unquote flopped launch, let's say there's no downside to that you learned, what worked and what didn't work if you choose to reflect on it, you learned, what do I want to do next time you learned what part of this did I like and then you also planted a ton of seeds in your audience whether or not they hopped in on that thing specifically they're watching and that might not have been the right thing for them. Maybe not the right time for them. So if its product, if it's in my world where courses and offers, um, but maybe that was the seed, they needed to be really curious around what you're doing and the next thing that you launched because you chose to persevere to push through to do it any way to do it, afraid to show up louder and prouder when it felt like it wasn't working.

That was the day that they decided, okay, she's still here. She's rocking, she's moving, she's going places. I resonate and I love what she does and I'm ready now. Imagine you had let that flopped, you know, and I keep saying quote unquote flopped because it wasn't really a flop flop launch stop you. What if you had let that thing be the thing that defined whether or not you were confident in what you were doing and in yourself and in your ability. You know, we're not going to have crazy, amazing, huge, massive results when you're first starting out, when you've got 300 followers right. Like it's, it's a different world and followers. That's a whole other conversation doesn't have to define income and you know, I talked about that a lot in my journey and in particular, but you know, it does impact a lot of things, you know, just inherently traffic is lower when you have a smaller following. There's a lot of factors there, but you know, your, your energy and what you bring to the table and what you're doing, what you're promoting is so much more important than any result will ever be. Oh, 100% well, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for sharing all of your wisdom with us today.

Where can our listeners find you because they need to come find you. Thank you so much. This was so much fun. I also love love speaking and it totally lights me up. So I'm over on instagram at Marley Allison. Um, it's felt kind of goofy. It's M A R L E Y A L L A S O N um, and so I'm always over there. I have, I'm on facebook a little bit, but mostly instagram. Um, come hang out, send me a DM let me know you listen. I would love to hear what your takeaways for and and what you plan to action after you heard our conversation today. Yes, because action takers are our kind of people. That is that is how we connected because that is, that's a common ground that you and I share. So once again, thank you so much for being here and I'll be back with another episode here next week and until then both Marley and I are going to be here, cheering you on. Yes, bye!