Balancing the demands of motherhood while managing a business or career is challenging, to say the least, but armed with this secret, you will uncover the path to success.
If you’re looking to overcome obstacles, thrive in your business ventures, and create a fulfilling life for you and your family, this episode will give you the key to unlock your full potential and achieve your biggest goals!
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Episode Transcript
Welcome back I’m Traci Simkins and this is Refined By Divorce, the place for recently divorced women who are considering entrepreneurship. We talk about divorce, mindset, small business, and today I’m going to give you the #1 secret to success as a working mom, but up first, she was a jack of all trades and a master of all of them.
Refined Rebel - Margaret Hamilton
This week’s Refined Rebel found a love of mathematics during high school. After graduating from college, Margaret Hamilton began working at the Meteorology Department in MIT where she developed software for predicting the weather. At this time Software Engineering and Computer Science were not yet established professions, making her work that much more significant. She worked on the SAGE project and began writing software for a prototype computer which was then used by the Air Force to search for enemy aircrafts. She was a top candidate for NASA and the first programmer hired for the Apollo project.
She was responsible for the team writing and testing all onboard in-flight software for the Apollo spacecraft’s Command and Lunar module. Her software was put to the test and passed with flying colors as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin successfully landed on the moon. She received many awards for her groundbreaking efforts in the Apollo 11 mission.
She then co-founded a software company and her products were used in many government programs including NASA and the US Air Force. Margaret’s achievements during this time were monumental since computer tech was in its infancy, and she is credited with developing the term “software engineering”.
You can read much more about her on the website.
#1 Secret to Success
Despite her social conditioning, but with the support of her family, Margaret went against the social norms of her day.
That social conditioning is strong. It’s what shapes your identity and influences you to conform to certain expectations, often along gender lines. And if you were born female, you were explicitly taught to be subservient, to take orders, to take care of things, to clean up the mess, to find the solution, implement it yourself, and never, ever, take the credit.
You were taught to put everyone else’s needs above your own, which is important when you have babies and small children whose survival depends on you, but you were never taught another way to be. You learned to follow, not lead.
Thanks to women like Margaret and the other rebels I spotlight every week, things are getting better, but we still have a ways to go. And in the meantime, it’s on you to learn how to put your own needs first, to be authoritative and to lead. Women in the workplace are still often viewed negatively for doing the same things that a man would be praised for, so it’s not an easy thing to do.
My own career started in Hawaii where the majority of women work outside the home.
Hawaii is a melting pot of different cultures, where many generations will live together in one home, all supporting one another. Grandma and Grandpa will stay at home with the grandkids, while Mom and Dad go to work. For many, a double income is necessary to cover the bills, and society is built to support it. Now it’s not perfect, but there is less gender discrimination and bias, and the conditions for families with moms who work outside the home are much better.
When I moved back to the mainland some 23 years later, to a place where the majority of women do not work outside the home, I was shocked at the gender discrimination I experienced in the workplace, the stigma and shame I felt as a mom with a career, and the difficulty I faced in a society built for moms who don’t have a 9-5 job. Now I love living in here, at least 3 of the 4 seasons, but it was a challenge at first, and I made a lot of mistakes along the way, but that stark change is what helped me uncover the secret to success as a mom who works outside the home and/or owns a small business.
And that is learning to delegate and outsource.
Learn to Delegate & Outset
You can have a successful career or small business, and a successful home and family life, fathers do it all the time, but you will need to prioritize and delegate.
Learning to Delegate is a process, particularly for women. You don’t go straight from believing you need to be subservient to becoming the boss, there are several steps to getting there, and each one of them is important.
Step 1 – Overcome Your Social Conditioning
Acknowledge that social conditioning exists and that it reinforces gender stereotypes
Internalize and reinforce new ideas like “leadership qualities are not limited by gender” and “putting your needs first is not selfish, it’s necessary”
Find a mentor or role models who have achieved the kind of success you want
Find or build a support network that will support you as you become a leader
Seek opportunities to lead, especially ones that are out of your comfort zone
Speak up and use your voice to raise awareness about the importance of gender equality and women in leadership, and challenge inequality and bias in the moment you experience it
You can never truly “overcome” it, but you can make new connections and prevent yourself from slipping back into negative patterns.
Step 2 – Learn the Importance of Delegation
It frees up real estate in your mind, and gives you more energy and processing power, so you can take a step back and focus on the big picture, have more clarity to make better decisions.
It gives you back your most valuable resource – time, and it allows you to focus on the important things.
It increases your productivity and efficiency.
It builds confidence and self-esteem.
It highlights the importance of putting your needs first and it reinforces that you’re a leader
Step 3 – Brainstorm – Identify & Prioritize
Do a mental dump of all your personal and professional tasks and responsibilities, especially the routine, mundane, and time-consuming ones.
Make two lists, one for home and one for your business. Doing it in a couple different sessions will give you more solid lists.
Determine your hourly rate – this is easy if you’re an employee, but for those on commission or who own a small business, it can be a little more complex. But if you can get a rough estimate, it will help you decide what makes sense to outsource.
If you’re a manager or business owner with employees, assess each of their strengths, capabilities and availability, along with their personal development goals.
Once you have it all together, you’ll determine the best course of action for each task/responsibility, whether it’s delegate to an employee, make a new hire, outsource or stick with the status quo.
Sometimes it’s a good idea to get feedback from someone outside your inner circle, because they may have a different perspective or idea.
My sister once told me a story about someone she worked with who wanted to make cookies with her children so she would get up an hour earlier, at 5am, to make all the dough so that they could bake cookies when she got home from work. My sister said to her the point of baking cookies with your child is the time spent together, not the quality of the product. I say Just buy the ready-made dough and keep that extra hour of sleep.
So figure out what is important to you and what you’re willing to let go of.
When I went back to work after my youngest was in all day preschool, I struggled with balancing it all. So I hired a retired couple who would come once a month and spend all day cleaning and organizing the house. Each time they would do a special project like reorganizing a closet, and they would always do all of the laundry, fold it and put it away.
Coming home to a sparkling clean house with all of the laundry done was magical, but the highlight was when the kids would run out of their room laughing and say “Mom! Ming put your pants in my drawer!” They thought it was funny and I cherish those moments.
Letting go of laundry being put in the wrong drawer gave me some of my time and energy back. I just wish I would have done it sooner and had them come more often.
Step 4 – The Hire
You don’t need to hire an employee with a contract, you can hire a service or outsource tasks on an as needed basis.
Come up with creative solutions.
AT HOME
- You can have your laundry done, hire a cleaning service or order ready-made dinners. It’s so much easier nowadays to automate.
- You could hire a college student to pick your kids up after school, help them with their daily homework and make dinner. You could even have them stay for dinner as part of their compensation, and then have them do the dishes with one of your children, so you can spend some quality time with another one, or help one work on a school project.
- You could find other single moms and establish a carpool or share in the responsibilities. If you’re old enough to remember, there was a sitcom called Kate & Allie about two divorced moms who decided to live in the same house and raise their families together. That might be a bit extreme, but the concept works
IN BUSINESS
- You can hire a virtual assistant part time or in a block of hours,
- You can hire consultants and service providers for a one-time engagement to complete a specific project or achieve a specific outcome.
- There are so many options now, and ways to automate your business without taking on an employee.
- You can even hire a personal assistant to do tasks for both your home and your business as long as you define the expectations and requested outcome up-front.
Once you come to an agreement with someone, trust they will do the job you hired them for and provide them with all of the information, resources and authority to do it without needing you.
Couple other tips:
- Establish clear communication
- Allow for failure because it’s going to happen
- Be patient and
- Deliver and request feedback, it’s good for everyone
You know I have enjoyed my career, I enjoyed mothering and parenting, and I wanted to do both, and yes, you can do both, but Delegating and Outsourcing is the key!
Because once you do that, you will open up so much time and energy to spend on your business or spend with your family and that way you can do both.
If this was helpful, please let me know in the comments, I would love to hear some feedback. Also like and subscribe, I would appreciate you doing any of that. Everything is linked below in the show notes. I will see you next week, I hope you have a good one!
Love In, Peace Out.
Bye.
