Don't fall victim to the Super Woman Syndrome with Andrea Arena, CEO TimeSquared

Hello and welcome to Shedding the Bitch Radio, where you can discuss, debate, and get advice on how to discover and shed the bitches of fear, insecurity, self-doubt, and negative mindsets so you can realize your dreams and life purpose and create and accelerate the riches you want in life. Join us here live every Tuesday at noon Eastern and dialogue with us at 818-572-2910. You can You can also chat with us at blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitch or share your stories on our website at sheddingthebitch.com. Whatever the bitch is that's holding you back from living your life to the fullest, it's not worth giving up the riches in life that you deserve. So call in now and let Bernadette Boas know what's holding you back. 818-572-2910.

Good day, good day, good day everyone. This is Bernadette and Deborah, if you can't hear me, you're going to need to start talking. Can you hear me? Oh, you can hear me. Great. Wasn't that just lovely? Alrighty, we had a little pause there, everybody. So sorry about that. We are in studio with our guest today, Andrea. Yes, hey, Andrea Arena. And we are videotaping this as much as recording this. And for those of you that are listening online, sorry for that pause. We kind of had a technical situation, and we weren't quite sure if you were hearing me. So welcome to Shakes the Bitch Radio. This is going to be an absolutely great show. Like I said, we are video recording this as well, so like many others that we've had recently, you can go out to YouTube tomorrow and enjoy our lovely faces.

Absolutely. Happy fall, everybody!

Woo!

It is fall. And we are going to celebrate fall all throughout the month of October, so I'll kind of give you some updates in regards to that in a minute or so. So some rich news before we get into all of this is— and we've been doing this a lot lately, and I'm sure people are just very burned out from the whole thing, but we need to keep doing it, okay? We need to continue to pray for those in Puerto Rico, those in the Keys, those in Florida, those in Texas. And Louisiana, those that have just been, gosh, getting slammed recently. Do you have anybody harmed or—

Fortunately everyone is safe and it's just stuff that's been damaged. So yeah, it is stuff that we can replace.

It is stuff.

The people are safe, so that's what's most important, but it's still devastating.

It is devastating. And yes, I've had a number of friends and extended family members, I'll call them like just lifelong friends, who were in Florida. I went to school in Boca Raton. So they're cleaning up, but they're safe and like you said, healthy. My concern is, and I was gonna do a shout out to my church women, Christ the King's retreat women, that I was on a retreat with my church this past weekend. And it was a women's group that I helped to facilitate and lead this retreat. And it just kind of hit me Sunday, I think it was, that one of the ladies, Maria, her family is in Puerto Rico. She's from Puerto Rico, and she's not been able to hear from them and find out kind of are they safe. You know, yes, one thing if the house is destroyed and the materials are destroyed, but she hasn't been able to communicate with them, which is very sad. And so our hearts go out to any of you all around the world who might have families in these places. Mexico City with your earthquake, devastating. I'm so sorry. And we're just going to, as we did over the weekend, for a good part of the time. Our prayers are going out to you, and just know, just know that there are people all around the world praying for you and sending you good thoughts and good healing and good recovery. But I do want to do a shout out and thank the ladies of CHIRP, as we call it here in Atlanta. It's part of the Christ the King Cathedral here, Catholic church. We welcome everyone though. So we were on what's called the giving team, and then there was women that spent the Saturday and Sunday with us, and they're considered the receiving team. And it was wonderful, and it was overwhelming, and it was awe-inspiring to have gone through it as an attendee in March and then see and participate in what went behind— what went on behind the scenes this time, because I had not known that at the time. March, and it was wonderful. And the idea of especially a select few women were on their knees from Friday night to Sunday afternoon praying and giving thoughts out to those petitions that came in from all around the parish. So it was wonderful, but thank you for making it a beautiful celebration of just ourselves and then each other.

The outreach around the world is really inspiring.

It is inspiring, and you must have been reading my notes because it's a great segue to just what's going on, this crappy situation like with the NFL. Well, it's not crappy with the NFL, crappy with the president and other people who are provoking it and inflaming the situation. So I'm going to give you my little take on it, okay, if you— if I may, and if you'll allow me to, because it is part of what we're trying to do here at Shed the Dish, and that is to, you know, really work on discovering who you are, shedding those things that you are not thrilled about in your person, in yourself, as well as honoring the riches that you possess, and then going on to create and accelerate all the riches in life that you want. Not monetarily, it could be, but everywhere. And I just think these situations that are happening lately are really providing an opportunity to kind of sit back and reflect on how you feel about it. Not because somebody's sitting up on a podium yelling and screaming, and then people are on the field kneeling or standing, but really how you felt. So I needed to think about how I felt about it, because I didn't. I was kind of going off of what everybody else was doing. So with this whole kneeling and the anthem, and the NFL, and now all across the sports arenas, I kind of had to think about it is First Amendment, free speech, First Amendment. You can express yourself in any way that you care to. And I support that. I don't support people inflaming it and creating division as a result of it. The one thing I'm not going to give my opinion of the president or not, but I just wish he had sat back and anybody would sit back, listen to what it is and why it is they're doing what they're doing, consider it and appreciate it for what it is, and then come to a conclusion as to how you feel about it, but you have no right to force that, your own beliefs on other people. So that kind of like started gnawing at me. Greatly. And yet at the same time, people are saying, well, they don't have, you know, they don't have the right and they shouldn't be coming out in such a strong force like this. Well, all I know is that my platform of radio and the work that I do is nowhere near at all what the NFL has. But if I was a star, if I was a celebrity, if I was an athlete, if I was, you know, in political office or just in a position of great influence, I would use it to help get messages out. I just wish they would consider how and what's the most impactful way of doing that, and it's not by creating strife and drama and division. There's ways to do it that are a lot more productive.

And to honor the perspective of other people, right? You don't have to agree. I think we should value that we live in a world where everyone can have a different opinion, right? Right. And to honor one another's perspective, I think, is— and create unity as opposed to division. I don't think there's any good to come up to creating a division.

Absolutely. And I would say that same statement to the NFL folks.

Right.

They could have done a much better job to express prior to doing it what it was or what it is that they're standing up for, because without doing that, people thought it was against the anthem and the military. Well, I kind of knew it wasn't because of Kaepernick last season, but majority of the people may not have understood that. They should have at least expressed that because I, you know, the Pittsburgh Steelers who chose to stay off the field, that pissed me off. I didn't mind the standing and the kneeling. Kneeling's harder, especially if you're Catholic, you're kneeling all the time.

Kneeling's harder than standing up.

Kneeling is not a big deal to me, of kneeling during the anthem. Staying off the field, to me, for me, kind of sent the wrong, definitely the wrong signal. And had they done that, you know, had they communicated anything out beforehand, may have helped. That's all I'm going to say. And I said already too much, but that's just, I needed to kind of get that out and use my platform for expressing that. So I would love to hear your thoughts, your opinions, your stand on it. So go to Facebook or Twitter, just send us a short message. You can disagree with me, but please respectfully disagree, respectfully debate, respectfully tell me I'm nuts. Respectfully, right?

Right.

All right.

Okay, so let's just keep positive, let's stay constructive, let's stay people, human, because what right now, you know, a few people are not being human.

Okay, next week, do you believe it's fall? No.

Gah!

I can tell though, by the temperature. It's nice.

It's 88 degrees. How the hell is that fall?

It's not the '90s.

Oh my God, it is 88 degrees in Atlanta, and what's close to October 1st, and it will be until I think October 1st, all of a sudden it will dip down into the high 70s, which I welcome.

But you open the doors in the morning, first thing in the morning.

I can, I can open the door first thing in the morning and on my walk, whatnot, but I'm going to share this because, you know, my community knows. I must be going through menopause again because this past like 4 or 5 days I've been sweating profusely, and so if you're watching this on YouTube tomorrow on our Shed in the Pit YouTube channel and I look like I'm sweating, I am. And there's no reason for it. So just if you're wondering why I'm so shiny and bright.

Not glistening?

No, it's not glistening. You should have seen me at this retreat. You know, normally I'm the first one in to do anything physically, whatever, and I was like, no, I can't go back outside again. It's bad enough I'm in here and I'm sweating like a, you know, it is what it is. And you know, so, and you ladies going through menopause, you understand. It happens. It happens, it happens.

Okay, so next Tuesday, let's get back to that.

Next Tuesday is AMA, that's my new handle for Ask Bernadette. You can ask me anything, AMA, ask me anything. Post it on Twitter, post it on Facebook, post it on LinkedIn, send me an email directly at BernadetteBoas@sheddingthebitch.com, and I will be addressing them next week. Alrighty, Deborah's out there, Parker House Virtual Services, she's out there tweeting and Facebooking with you. Do a shout out to her, say hi, but if you have anything during the program today, throughout the week, please do so. We want to just make sure that you have a community. And if you even have questions for our guests after we go live, because you're downloading us and taking us with you, we love that. Always come back either to their handles, which I'm going to provide, or right back to our Shedding the Bits Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn pages, and we'll make sure those experts get your questions, stories, or challenges. Alright, okay, let's dive into this, because I love this subject. My sister bought me a book of Superwoman, and it wasn't the Superwoman Wonder Woman thing, it was about business, and I was only in my mid-20s, and she said, "You're already a super, you know, you got that Superwoman syndrome." So that's what we're talking about. Don't fall victim to the Superwoman syndrome. You don't know what it's about? Guess what? We're going to tell you. We're going to talk all about it. It's about as accomplished women, we think we have to do it all. But attempting to do that can leave us feeling like we don't do anything well. Alright, who can relate to that? Raise your hand. Come on, come on, come on. How do we overcome this? How do you overcome it? Well, today we're going to talk about several things. We're going to talk about how to give yourself permission to outsource that which is not core. And I love this conversation.— so how to outsource. The fact that you're not alone in feeling overwhelmed. So you have to realize that you aren't alone. You're not on an island all by yourself. Other women are right there, and our guest is going to share with you how you can leverage that in order to kind of give yourself breathing room and consider what they're doing, what other women are doing to work for them that you might be able to do. That not shirking your responsibilities by outsourcing. So a lot of women feel as if they hire or delegate or outsource, they're not kind of being the mother, the career woman, the business owner, the friend, the wife, the spouse, the partner, whomever that they should be. And you know, there's a big ah, yes you are. When you focus on your core responsibilities, you make the greatest impact. Kind of self-care, right? Self-care ideas. All right, so your rich question today that we want you to be thinking about, and seriously thinking about this, is in what area, area of your life are you overwhelmed? And you can't say all of it, all right? You know I don't let you off that easily.

I want you to pick one.

Consider all the areas of your life. Jot them down, and pick one that you know you're overwhelmed. And think about it and consider what you're willing to do about it, because Andrea is gonna give us tons of tips and pieces of advice that you can leverage immediately in order to focus on that one. And start with just one, and she's gonna go into all of that. You don't have to start with everything. And rich tag with us. You can rich tag Superwoman. #SelfCare or #ShedTheBitch, of course. Alright, so when we get back, I'm going to formally introduce you to our guest and then we're going to dive into this question, but I want you to be thinking about what is that one area of your life that being a superwoman is fine, but you also have to take care of yourself if you're going to be that person. We'll be right back.

You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. We are inspiring individuals around the globe to discover, confront, and shed their bitches of fear, insecurity, and negativity so they can create the riches in their career, business, and life they deserve. Be sure to check out Bernadette Boas' book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch: Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business, available on Amazon and sheddingthebitch.com. We also want to thank our sponsors, TSR Consulting, who offers a broad range of tax services for small to corporate-sized clients. Go to TSRConsulting.com to learn more. And Parker House Virtual Services, who provides virtual assistance and social media support for small to medium-sized businesses. Email Deborah Parker at deborahparker78@gmail.com for more information. To become a sponsor or advertiser on our program, email us at mediarelations@sheddingthebitch.com. Shedding the Bitch Radio airs every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Be sure to go to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitchradio and follow the program for all of the updates and announcements of our guests and show topics. Now let's return to Bernadette and Shedding the Bitch Radio.

Welcome back everyone, welcome back, welcome back.

I am Bernadette Boas. In studio and talking with our fearless Andrea Arena. Say hi.

Hi.

She is the President and CEO of Time Squared Concierge, a company she founded after the successful sale of her previous business, Two Places at One Time, Inc. Two Places was the nation's first provider of employer subsidized corporate concierge services. After founding Two Places in 1991, Andrea expanded into the Atlanta-based firm to locations throughout the U.S. and Canada and garnered the honor of being named to Inc. Magazine's 500 fastest-growing privately held companies in the U.S. for two consecutive years. In addition, she was selected as one of Catalyst Magazine's Top 50 Entrepreneurs for 2002 and top 5 for 2000. Accomplished, aren't you? Yes, you are. All right, where are we? A regional finalist for Ernst Young's Entrepreneur of the Year competition and nominated as a 2002 Georgia Tech Woman of Distinction, Andrea was also featured in the first issue of Catalyst Magazine as one of the 5 professionals changing the way we do business in Atlanta.— and all around the world, by the way— and named an Outstanding Georgia Citizen by Secretary of State Kathy Cox. In addition to inspiring others through her speaking engagements, Andrea also mentors and coaches entrepreneurs. Known for her tough love approach, Andrea has worked with a wide range of startups in a variety of industries including social networking, mortgage brokerage, and custom clothiers. To name just a few. She thrives on challenging others to reach limits they didn't think possible and helps them grow professionally as they grow their business. I'm going to also say grow personally as well as they grow their business. While working her way through school at Georgia Tech as a concierge at the Hyatt Regency, Andrea realized that busy executives and professionals would benefit most from their own concierge. After receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in management in 1989, Andrea knew she wanted to develop a company that made a positive impact on people's everyday lives. Ringing familiarity, ladies? And she has been able to do so for millions of people through her company. With her life savings of $5,000 and a dream, she started Two Places at a Time— or I'm sorry, Two Places at One Time. Running errands from her home, Andrea is very much a part of the day-to-day operations of her company, Timed Square, and is excited to reenter the market, coupling 20 years of industry experience with the state-of-the-art technology. After all, who gets the opportunity to take a step back, examine a multitude of options, and follow her passion to the industry she loves? A caring, witty individual with a knack for helping others, Andrea continues to make an impact in Atlanta and around the country. Andrea currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her daughter. Woo-hoo! Welcome, welcome, welcome.

Thank you, thank you.

It's such a pleasure.

Yes, it's great to have you. Now, I don't know that it noted, and I want to note it, how long— when did you start Times Square Confier?

It's almost 2 years old.

All right, fabulous.

So second go around.

Second go around. Oh, you'll rock it because you obviously did very well the first time. The more is higher, right?

The second go around. It's like how much bigger, faster, stronger.

You're a superwoman.— but in the good sense. In a good sense. In a good sense. In a good sense.

All right.

So while we're talking, everyone, I want you to get to her websites and really kind of connect with her as we're talking. All right? So go to timesquaredconcierge.com, or you could just Google Andrea Arena, and you're going to find her everywhere. But I do want you to know that her Facebook page is Timesquared Concierge. Twitter handle is Your Time Squared, okay, Your Time Squared. So basically she's trying to square up, double, triple, quadruple your productivity and your time. Time squared, isn't that creative? That's so great. Alrighty, considering your risk question everybody, we're going to dive into this. Okay, help me understand, because obviously you must have been one of those professionals who was overwhelmed yourself, and therefore said, oh my God, I gotta do something, and you decided to do something, not only for yourself but other people. Describe what overwhelm looks like, so we can all relate.

Yeah, you've been there, you all can answer the question better than I probably, but overwhelm for me literally looked like having to pull off the interstate in the middle of a panic attack in my early 30s. I had a constant eye twitch, a constant, which I actually believed was normal. Oh, really? I thought everyone had a twitch. They just, I just haven't noticed it in others.

I have a drooping eye.

You know, I mean, it was so insane. The lack of sleep, the, you know, the mind constantly racing.

Yeah.

I actually got, for me, it got severe. I was actually diagnosed with adrenal fatigue. And that when your doctor actually says to you, you're doing permanent damage to your body.

Mm.

Like, you may think that, oh, well, it's just that, you know, I'm running my business, I'm real busy, I'm a working mom, you know, I'm just gonna push through this finite period of time and then, then I'll give myself permission to take a break, to do something for myself. It's like, at that point, you've already done permanent damage, irreparable damage. Why would you go there? What is the cost of that? Right? And then when I realized that not everyone had the eye twitch, but they, something close to it, right? Sure. I certainly wasn't in this boat alone, and it's not just women, right? Right. But women bring a very special component to it, I think, and it is the superwoman syndrome. So actually when I started my business, there weren't as many women in the workforce as there are today.

Right?

Okay.

Then, and most of my— more of my clients were male, and then all of a sudden more and more women started entering the workforce, but somehow their responsibilities at home, they didn't lag behind. They were responsible for being a superstar at work and carrying the brunt of the workload at home.

Right.

How is that possible? And then we as women, we absorb all of that and take— we take on it. Literally, I believe I take on the responsibility of everything within a 10-mile radius of me.

Whether at the grade level—

right, honestly, think about it. It's true. Think about it. It's my responsibility to handle everything within at least a 10-mile radius, right?

Right.

I mean, it's kind of crazy. Yeah. So it's this, and it's not only do you think you have to do it all, you have to do it all perfectly. And as a result, beginning, of course, dog tired, you know, can't sleep, all of the craziness, right? But in addition, you leave feeling like you haven't done anything well, right? So there's no win in that equation, right?

Right. Well, and the thing that I, that I need to kind of help everyone to understand is Why— and this is going to sound silly, but why? Why are women doing this to themselves? Because that's what they need to get under, right, is to really understand why am I doing this when there are so many other options, which we'll talk about options and tips and advice for getting yourself out of that state. But why do you feel, based on all your clients that you've had, that they operate the way they do.

Most superwomen feel that they actually measure their self-worth based on productivity. How many things have I checked off my list? How many things have I accomplished today? Someone asked me, wouldn't it be better to be a human being than a human doing?

Right?

Ooh, I like that. Men being versus women doing.

Did that hit a chord with someone in the room?

Yeah.

Not naming names or anything.

And I don't even have kids or a husband.

Right.

We wake up every day and have to convince ourselves that we are worthy of what we have accomplished.

Yeah.

That's insanity.

Right.

I guarantee you men don't do that.

Right.

And where does that come from? Does it come from a low self-esteem? Does it come from our upbringing of we are to do? It is our responsibility to do. It is our responsibility to keep a perfect home. It is our responsibility to have perfect, well-educated, beautiful, well-dressed children with their hair brushed. The hair brushing I would debate.

Let those kids go out with messy hair.

Some days I'm going to go with every other day, that may not be a battle worth fighting in my house. But, you know, let's see.

And wouldn't you say, and do you help your clients in such a way to realize that, yes, even though this might have been the social norm for centuries, you can't even say, you know, decades or generations, but for centuries.

Centuries, yes.

It doesn't make it right.

No.

It doesn't make that exactly different. It doesn't make it that it's the norm.—

but what it does make is that it is— no one's going to give you work-life balance, right? It's not in the script to provide work-life balance, right? So you have to create it or demand it yourself.

Right.

Okay.

Yeah, absolutely. So, okay, so I— yeah, so let's start off with— and we're going to cover like tips all throughout this conversation— so let's just start off with a one thing they could be doing to where it's not, to where they can change that demand?

Okay.

What can one thing that they can start doing?

To me, one very, I say easy, some of you are going, she's got to be kidding, thing that you can do, so recognize most of us are not ER surgeons, okay, so every single email you get is not —brain cancer. Yes, incredibly urgent, right? And aren't we setting an expectation when it is 10 o'clock at night and we get an email from work and we immediately respond? We respond by 10:02. Now we're setting expectation that she's going to respond within 2 minutes at any time, no matter what she's doing, no matter what space she's in, whether it's her home space, her parenting space, her her spouse space, she's going to respond within 2 minutes. So I say, you have set that expectation, you stop it. So stop responding. Be diligent about setting your own boundaries. We are horrible as women, I know that's a huge blanket statement, but generally we're not great at setting our own. Now we may be good at setting boundaries for our children. Right. Right. Right. Setting boundaries for ourselves, We're not good at that.

Well, doesn't that kind of come back to their ability to say no?

Yes, absolutely, absolutely. Sit on your hands if you have to. Sit on your hands. You can't be the first to raise your hand and volunteer for everything. You know, I get it, and they're all worthy causes, absolutely. The PTA is important. Girl Scouts, important. But you can't, you can't do it all, and you can't do it all well.

Yeah. So, and if they would just learn, even just to start, even like come up with like one a day, just say no once, right, each day. The, the, the, the change, what changes do you see your clients experience?

If you journal, if you journal, if you had a no list, like on your notes on your cell phone, if you had a no list, and each day You wrote down, you have to have one entry per day at a minimum of a time that you said no. And not only do you write down what happened, but write down how you felt about it. Because at the beginning it might be, ooh, angst and anxiety and how you've disappointed the entire society because you said no to the PTA, or you refused to bring cupcakes. I mean, okay, life without cupcakes, I get. It is a sad world. But, It can't be your responsibility every single time. So not only write down what you said when you say no, but how it made you feel, and watch the trends. Is it easier? Do you feel lighter? What do you do with that time? I think it's— and please turn off the alerts. Do you get alerts for Facebook and Twitter?

No, no, no, I don't. I mean, there's so many—

Yes. If you follow me on Facebook and you don't respond or like my photo of my 8-year-old, I'm okay with that. I really am. I hope that you're doing something with your own 8-year-old, or, you know.

Right, right, right. As opposed to just like feeling like you have to appease that person. Because isn't it appeasing?

You're learning to be, you know, people pleaser. Absolutely. Yeah. And it's complicated. I mean, the technology is great, but it doesn't let you off the hook. It is constant. But turn off those alerts. I mean, there are times when you can search social media and catch up and comment then, but it's not a requirement. We make it, we require it of ourselves. Yeah, absolutely.

Right? Yeah, absolutely. So you work with a lot of people, and they could be corporate professionals, they could be entrepreneurial professionals, right? Can you give us a couple of examples, paint their picture of what they came to you for and then how you have been helping them to kind of minimize the superwoman?

Yes. So we had this woman in New York and I was there with one of my concierge. My concierge walks up because she heard that this woman, this executive needed some help. The woman immediately, she had the eye twitch. So her eye started twitching. She was speaking in choppy phrases. The concierge literally started walking backwards. She was afraid of this woman. What had happened was she had just been told by her employer that she has to go out of the country again. She had to leave in the next 24 hours. So then at home, the nanny, housekeeper/nanny, was washing clothes because she's got to get all these clothes washed so the woman has clothes to take on this trip. The washer breaks. It's filled with her clothes, now wet, wet dirty clothes are in the washer. Her nanny doesn't speak any English. Oh! And this woman is just just pushing away and telling us this story. And I said, that's fine. And she goes, no, no, it's not fine. No, no, it's fine because we're going to handle it. She goes, what are you going to do? And what's really interesting is when they are so stressed out, they can tell you the problem, they can articulate the problem, they don't even have a clue what the answer is. Yeah. And I go— That's because there's so much in their head.

Right.

And so she's coming up, "What do you mean it's fine?" So she needs to know. So what she's really asking is, "What do you mean it's fine? What are you going to do?" And I said, "Okay, so we're going to send— I'm going to send someone over to your house to deal with the washer, someone who speaks English, to deal with the washer because we have to go and look at the make and the model and find out if it's still under warranty and then call the repair guy and tell him what it's doing, etc." She can't articulate that in English. "And then we're going to have your housekeeper," a Spanish-speaking member of my team, "contact your housekeeper and tell her to throw all the dirty wet clothes into a basket, and she's going to drive them to the laundromat, and she's going to get those washed while we handle the washer situation. By the way, where you're going out of the country, do you need converters for— do you need—" And she said, "What?" And I said, "Well, I don't know, your hair dryer, do you need—" "Uh-huh, yeah, I just have a bag." "Right, what about your—" "Sure." put them out, your very special, can only get, only know one place to get it here in the US, face cream, etc. All of your survival kit, your woman's survival kit, right? We've got to make sure all of that's packed up, she's leaving the country in less than 24 hours. Right. All of a sudden the eyes stopped twitching, and I was like, okay, and then I just need you to do one thing for me. And she's like, what? Breathe. The whole conversation I kept thinking, is she going to pass out? Okay, the eye twitch is bad enough, but I think she's actually going to lose consciousness, right? You need to breathe, just breathe. And she's fine. And she's still not verbal at this point.

Right, right. She's nodding.

Yeah, and then she just kind of eases back and we take care of it from that point. But how rewarding is that?

Yeah, yeah. But, and it's not just like corporate executives who are flying around the world that have these stresses and strains, and you know, it's the stay-at-home mom that has a bunch of kids, and even that schedule in itself, I always, you know, I have a number of sisters who are superwomen, superwoman moms and family keepers and CEOs of their household, and you know, so we're talking to all of you ladies, and you have an option, an opportunity to to kind of— we're going to talk about outsourcing, and we're going to talk about some other options for you. But in this, you know, very similar to this situation, you have to get out of your head in order to be clear and be able to figure out what those options are. Right. Although picking up the phone and calling Times Square Concierge is an option. It absolutely is an option. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we've been using and throwing around this term superwoman, but we— I like to visualize things. I'm a very visual person, and I want to help you do that too. So when we get back with Andrea Arena, TimesquaredConcierge.com, we'll get back into defining what does a superwoman look like and what does it mean to be a superwoman.

We'll be right back.

You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. We are inspiring individuals around the globe to to discover, confront, and shed their bitches of fear, insecurity, and negativity so they can create the riches in their career, business, and life they deserve. Be sure to check out Bernadette's book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch: Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business, available on Amazon and sheddingthebitch.com. We also want to thank our sponsors, TSR Consulting, who offers a broad range of tax services for small small to corporate size clients. Go to TSRConsulting.com to learn more. And Parker House Virtual Services, who provides virtual assistance and social media support for small to medium size businesses. Email Deborah Parker at deborahparker78@gmail.com for more information. To become a sponsor or advertiser on our program, email us at mediarelations@sheddingthebitch.com. Shedding the Bitch Radio airs every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Be sure to go to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitchradio and follow the program for all of the updates and announcements of our guests and show topics. Now let's return to Bernadette and Shedding the Bitch Radio.

Welcome back, everyone. We are talking with Andrea Arena, all around kind of helping you to prevent falling victim to the superwoman syndrome. And I was mentioning earlier when we introduced the subject, my sister did, my oldest sister Mary, she had bought me a book. I was in my 20s and she bought me the superwoman syndrome book that was introduced, you know, like in the '70s, I think. And this was probably the late '80s, and so I totally, totally get it, and I found myself wandering a parking garage, the Atlanta Airport parking garage, after multiple international trips back to back, hyperventilating because I couldn't find my car, and meanwhile it was like 10 steps behind me, but I couldn't see it because I was so in my head, so overwhelmed. So paint us a picture, if you you would, of what a superwoman is and isn't, but is.

And I think I'm glad you said you were so in your head because I think that's a big part of it, right? Mm-hmm. I literally, I always park on the top floor of the parking deck for that very reason because I am so completely consumed with my to-do list, with my action items, with my meetings, with dialogue about the next presentation, what have you, that I don't really know sometimes how I get to the airport. But here I am. So I'm sitting there. So every time I park on the top floor. I came out one day and it was— and also because you don't know if your flight is going to be delayed and if you're going to come out and it's going to be pitch dark. So I always park under a streetlight. So I come out, and this time it wasn't in the middle of the night, but it was crazy early in the morning, 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning. So, and I'm— practically empty parking lot, and there's my car, easy to find, under the streetlight. I'm so exhausted and still thinking about, okay, this business trip is over. I flew the red-eye home, and now what action items? Because I'm literally going to go straight to work. I get in my car and instead of putting it in reverse, I put it in drive and I run into the only object up there, the streetlight. I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh.

I mean, honestly.

And being the typical, you know, superwoman syndrome, I don't even get out of my car to look at the damage because I'm still thinking about 'Oh, that was an inconvenience, but I have, you know, these things I need to get done, and I need to write a draft for this next presentation or meeting,' because I'm actually going straight to work at 4 o'clock in the morning. Oh, yeah. I've done that. That's crazy. I could have been injured, right? Right. And the fact that they don't even acknowledge that, that's a little insensitive, right? So, and I don't, unfortunately, I don't think that's uncommon. You know, and then the scenario of what does a superwoman look like who's a stay-at-home mom? Well, you know, the perfect lunches, you know, how does lunch have to be perfect? The kids' clothing has to be perfect. The homework has to be perfect. You have to be the one to bring all the snacks. You have to be the one who is, you know, involved in every single aspect, volunteering for everything from field day to PTA to, you know, exactly. In the perfect, I think there's actually a competition among superwomen about the perfect birthday party. You're setting the bar too high, first of all.

Here's some ice cream, here's a cupcake.

Go for it. I literally asked a mom to lower the bar on hair, because there was a child who comes to school with her hair perfectly done in a unique style every single day. I was like, you know, you've got to lower the bar for the rest of us. It's unacceptable. I don't know what time you guys get up at your house to do all of this. Unacceptable.

Let alone if they're balancing also, because have you or clients ever felt a different dynamic between they have a corporate job, all the power to them, and then there's the entrepreneur who, and that's an added pressure because it's almost like they consciously chose to be on their own, and so when they're not making money or when things aren't going right, they just feel like they have to amp it up even harder and more strict on themselves than if they had a corporate job where they're getting a steady paycheck and they know that they will have it in 2 weeks, unless they got fired or laid off, which would be, you know, straining and stressful. What do you find when they are balancing kind of all of that? So how do you— like, for instance, what would you recommend and start advising a client to do to start that outsourcing, as you call it.

It is still your responsibility as a parent to put food on the table, right? To have a meal for your— to feed your family. It's still your responsibility. But how the groceries got there, not core. It is not your core responsibility. Picking out the produce is not your core responsibility. Sharing a meal with your child, much more important, right? So it's the little things. I mean, our clients outsource things like grocery shopping, picking up dry cleaning. Your dry cleaning is not cleaner because you picked it up versus me picking it up. It's just not. It's the same dry cleaning, right? Car maintenance. No one actually likes that, just FYI. No one enjoys just sitting, the quality time in the waiting room, the luxurious waiting room. That is not fun. For anyone. Right. And shouldn't that— can't that be done while you are busy at work? When you do it, when you don't need your car, do it when you're on vacation, you don't need it. If they even have to keep it extra, that's fine, right? So it's that type of stuff. Yes, having a car in good working order, imperative. You spend quality time at Jiffy Lube and watching what, Maury Povich? I didn't— you can't.

Yeah, it's not. So what if they can asked, what if they can't necessarily hire a concierge to take some of those things off their plate?

What other—

like, are there other options? Are there other things they could be doing? Do they just figure out ways to kind of hire that out or delegate that out or task that out? Should they not be able to hire a concierge as a service to do that?

There's a lot of different things today. There's— and depending on the city you live in, there are tons of services available. I injured my back, and I am a single working mother, and so going to the grocery store and physically carrying groceries— now I realize I should call a concierge, but my concierge works for my clients, not for me. I would never call them for myself. It's so silly because it's like the cobbler's children have no shoes, right? So I use Instacart, and it was pretty convenient, you know, when you think about it. So there are a lot of— So what's Instacart? Instacart is— so you You go online and you can order from— they deliver from Costco, they deliver from the grocery— Publix or Kroger, whatever the grocery store as well. And you go online and say what you want and they go and get it. And you pick a window, delivery window. So within 2 hours of me putting the request online, my groceries are delivered to my door. He carried them in and I put them away. Right. But he carried all the bags in. And you're trying, I mean there is a surcharge, I think it's maybe 10%. Right, right, right.

I mean, heck, if your bill is $200, let's say, and it's 10%, $20 bucks for somebody else to do your, I'd be all over that. Right, and what is your time worth?

And I think that's where as women we don't do that, not that we can't do the math, it's that we don't do the math. We devalue our time all the time. If you simply— if you can't get a good grasp on how much an hour of your day is worth, what is your employer paying you?

Okay? So I was going to say, how do they do that? Because I do this for myself and folks that I work with. But how do you— do you do a calculation with them to kind of help them understand what they're—

Yes. I mean, if you look at your fully loaded comp and then take— and then break that down into an hourly rate, what is your hourly rate at work? I guarantee you, you're worth a lot more than that. But at a minimum, that is your hourly rate, and you shouldn't be doing anything that is not core and worth— that you could pay someone less than that hourly rate.

Right, because you could be earning that hourly rate. Let's say it's $50 an hour. You could be earning that versus giving up that $50 because you're going to go off and spend $20 getting your groceries. Why not just spend that $20 getting your groceries so you can make $50 and therefore you have a profitable party? Exactly.

Or spending time with your children. I mean, I love hearing the stories of what people— when we free up your time— now first of all, honestly, we have to tell our clients, we have to suggest how to spend the time. They've never had free time, like quote free time. They don't know what to do with it. They're like, what would I do Saturday? Our intent as a company is to give you back your Saturday in hopes that you take this finite amount of personal time, right, and spend it doing higher-value tasks, and whatever you deem a higher value, right? Right.

Even if that's just sitting there and staring at, you know, watching the grass grow.

I don't care. Yeah. You know, do what is of value to you. Right. I mean, the stories of I went to my kid's game for the very first time because you guys handled all my running around in the middle of the workday. One, we did it in half the amount of time than if she did it dragging her kid kicking and screaming in the evening with all the other, you know, everybody else grocery shopping, right? But we went to Costco and to the grocery store and all of that in the middle of her workday, half the amount of time, everything is done, and after work she went to her kid's game. And so the call gets escalated to me, which usually means that someone is not happy and I've got to really do a number here, right? She said, "No, I wanted to talk to you directly to say thank you." She said, "For the very first time, I'm going to be in the stands." And all I could say to her was, "Cheer loudly." That is the game out of his entire Little League career, that is the game that he will remember, the one where he looked up in the stands and his mom was there.

How awesome is that? How freaking awesome is that? And it's so true because I remember when I left corporate and I had all this time on my hands and I went right to work. I started my business like the day after I left corporate, but then I just kind of started doing what you're recommending and trying to like prioritize and delegate and outsource as you call it. And the next thing you know, I'm sitting there on my couch on a Saturday, which was very rare for me, And I'm just like, I have nothing to do. Oh, yeah. Okay, well, we're going to take a quick break. When we get back, I have a couple more questions for her before we finish up, but we'll be right back.

You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. We are inspiring individuals around the globe to discover, confront, and shed their bitches of fear their insecurity and negativity so they can create the riches in their career, business, and life they deserve. Be sure to check out Bernadette Boas' book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch: Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business, available on Amazon and sheddingthebitch.com. We also want to thank our sponsors, TSR Consulting, who offers a broad range of tax services for small to corporate size clients. Tsrconsulting.com to learn more. And Parker House Virtual Services, who provides virtual assistance and social media support for small to medium-sized businesses. Email Deborah Parker at deborahparker78@gmail.com for more information. To become a sponsor or advertiser on our program, email us at mediarelations@sheddingthebitch.com. Shedding the Bitch Radio airs every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Be sure to go to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitchradio and follow the program for all of the updates and announcements of our guests and show topics. Now let's return to Bernadette and Shedding the Bitch Radio.

Welcome back everyone, we are in Studio with Andrea Arena, TimesSquareConcierge.com. And you can also tweet with her @YourTimesSquare. And then Facebook, Times Square Concierge. Just do me a favor, Google her and you'll find all of her connections. Link in with her. And as I mentioned, if you have any questions, if you want to work with her, if you want to figure out more tips and advice from her. Also, you can email her directly at, hold on, andrea@timesquareconcierge.com. Feel free to do that, or you can just go to our Facebook or Twitter Shedding the Bits page, put it there, and I'll make sure that she gets it, okay? We have a few more minutes, so I want to just kind of have you break down beyond the errand running and whatnot, what are some other efficiency productivity tips you can provide?

Oh, so also, if you follow us on social media, we always promote a bunch of different life hacks. We love life hacks. We love ways to make your life more productive, easier, and they are fascinating and amazingly simple. Everyone just goes, "Are you kidding me?" One of my personal favorites around this time of day is, you know how people will drink ice, because Bernadette thinks it's really hot here. So you know how people drink iced tea, coffee, well, but then they put ice in it and it dilutes it. So one of the life hacks is that you pour coffee, you make coffee ice cubes. Ah, yes. So then you're not diluting your coffee with your ice cubes. Little things like that that just make you go, ah, that is simple, why didn't I think of that? So that's a lot of fun. Also, I think it's really interesting with regards to productivity and We talk about saying no. We talk about setting limits. You've got to schedule in. So we all are slaves to our Outlook calendars, right? And we schedule everything, right? Probably when to go pee. I don't know. But we schedule everything. But do we schedule time for ourselves? Yes. Right? Yeah, sure. And what does that look like for you? Okay, so working out for me, means 5:30 in the morning at my house. That's not ideal, but that is what it is, and I set the clock and I do it, right, because it is that important, scheduling time for myself. I did not, in giving myself permission, I didn't give myself permission after I sold the first company, before I started the new company, I had a little bit of a hiatus. It took me 6 months to give myself permission to read a book for leisure, because I read business books. I'm going to learn something out of these books. I decided instead of taking a class on something I enjoy, whether it's Pilates or something, no, I was going to take a class on speed reading, because then I could read the business books quicker. That is mental. That's nuts. Right? That is nuts. What does time for yourself look like? For me, it's a massage once every couple of weeks. That's a bit of a splurge. I found a really good guy at a really good price. You can tweet me about it. I'll give you some information if you're here locally because he's awesome. But you know— Yeah, you have to. I put park on there.

I put when I want to go to the gym. I put my goal setting. On there, like 15 minutes every morning I set my goals for the day based on my other goals.

But there's also an interesting app that I found that is all about how to find that time. Okay, how to find that time. And one I want you to look at, it's called RescueTime. And it is an app on your phone, I mean on your computer that you download onto your computer, and it tracks how you spend your time on your computer. You may not want to know how you spend your time, but it will tell you how much time you're spending on Facebook and Twitter, and then you can decide, okay, I'm going to—

or maybe you set alarms to cut that off. That's awesome.

I love that. It's amazing how much time you can find in your day.

And they don't have an app that you can do it on your phone?

Because so many people are on their phone. Same one.

You can do it on the phone too. Because I do Facebook and Twitter and everything else on— oh my gosh. Rescue time. Okay, rescue time. All right, so I'm going to give you another like 30 seconds, because I want more tips.

More tips, okay. One thing is we have this constant internal struggle around quality versus quantity. And I want people to recognize, a tip from me personally is about the— We don't get to pick that we're going to spend more quantity of time with our children, with our family, but— How we spend it. For me, it's how we spend it. For me, it's really about being absolutely present in that time, in that very finite amount of time, and I think that is so critical, and that will pay back exponentially.

Right, and you can go back to our past episodes because we talk about being present, being self-aware, being now a lot, because that is, even if from what she was talking about, about getting, being in your head and being overwhelmed as a result of being in your head all the time, it's kind of being aware that you're in your head and taking that breath consciously and purposely in order for you to ground yourself, and I do, I want you to kind of connect with her in all ways possible and take advantage of those life hacks and those tips and advice and her services, if you're able. And though she's had her current business for 2 years, if I know Andrea at all, she'll have a business like her previous one that she successfully sold that will expand outside of Georgia. Maybe. Is that your goal?

Yeah, we're currently in 10 US cities. Nice!

There you go. There you go. So just take advantage of that, if you would. Andrea Arena of Time Story Concierge.

Thank you so much. Such a pleasure, such a pleasure.

And next week again is AMA, Ask Me Anything, so go out to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, email me Bernadette Boas at ShedInTheBitch.com and let me help you with your career, life, and business questions, and if I can't answer them, I'm going to put them out to the experts such as Andrea in order for you to get that information, alright? So for everybody here at Shed in the Bitch Radio, for Debra online. Thank you so much for joining us, and we'll look forward to having you right back here next Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Thanks, everybody. Thank you.

Thank you for listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. Join Bernadette every Tuesday at noon Eastern as she helps you shift your bitches to riches. And the dialogue is always going on at sheddingthebitch.com. See you next week.