668. Juggling Business and Life? Here’s How to Make It Work for You

Hi, I'm Jacqueline Snyder and this is the Product Boss podcast. I've helped launch and grow thousands of product based businesses, even one of my own. And over the last 20 years, I've seen behind the scenes of businesses just like yours. Whether they are makers, manufacturers, artists, or food and beverage businesses. I have spent so many hours studying it all. I've discovered what makes them successful, what mistakes they could have avoided, how did they turn their ideas into a successful business, and what are the strategies that they have used to make more sales and be discovered by more customers. And this is what this show is all about. Whether you're just starting out or you're looking to become a million dollar product boss, I'm here to give you the permission to chase your dreams, no matter how big or small. All you need is the right mindset, a little courage, strategy and support, and. And you too can be the next million dollar product boss. Let's do this. Oh my goodness. Friends, if you are anything like me, you probably spend more time running errands than running your business. Am I right? Like, everything needs something, we got to run around. And I knew that this was like a major issue for me back in the day, which is why I decided to get help where I could. And I decided to let Instacart handle all of my grocery shopping. So I no longer had to worry about running all the errands and having to run out and get more almond milk for my lattes. Rather, I was like, you know what, we're just going to let Instacart handle that. So I want you to imagine skipping the store and getting back to designing packaging, orders, making, or maybe actually taking a break, even a nap. Remember those? Okay, so with Instacart, you can get groceries and essentials delivered in as fast as an hour so you can focus on growing your business without sacrificing a meal. Plus, less stress and more focus. And here's a tip. I've actually used Instacart before to order gifts from my daughter's friend's birthday parties because I haven't had time to run out and get presents. And I've been able to get the packaging like the gift bag and the gift, like hello, Sephora Aura delivered to my house while I was in the middle of coaching sessions so that I could have the present right. It's like having a personal assistant without having a personal assistant. So if you want to do what I do and get the help where you can, you can try it. Now, if you head to the productboss.com Instacart Hey. Hey, product Boss. Welcome back to another episode of the Product Boss podcast. I am so glad that you're here. It has been several weeks since I've talked to you about the blended life. And if you're new here, the blended life is a principle that I've created in the idea that I call BS on balance, right? We're all told, oh, you gotta balance this, you gotta juggle this, you gotta do this, you gotta do that. And guess what balance is bs why is that true? Because you never see that guy walking on the tightrope, right, with like his pole and he just has one job, he's walking on this tightrope and he's balancing. Now let's give him kids a product business, maybe a full time job. Needing to feed themselves, cooking, eating, drinking, not you know, drinking drinking, but drinking water, self care, all the things that come in with actually needing to perform. If there was one focus, one thing, sure, I will, I will balance on a tightrope and walk, but otherwise, no, it's blending. I think of it like a smoothie. The smoothie is the idea of like you put a banana and almond butter and protein powder and maple syrup. I'm telling you my recipe. And some dates. Maybe one day you want dates and maybe one day you don't. Maybe you want honey and not maybe one day you use the wrong protein powder and your, your shake tastes kind of like crap. That is the idea of the blended life. Every day is going to look a little different, the blend is going to look different. And, and I'm sharing this with my students inside of the Product Boss Academy. And that is our membership for product based business owners. So whether you are just starting out and you're trying to figure out how to come up with this product idea, we help you all the way through. Or as some of you are, many, many of you have already started, but you've missed some of the foundational steps. Like you don't have the business infrastructure. You're not thinking through this as an entrepreneur. You know, you jumped into making something, you jumped to selling it and kind of skipped everything in between. And you're curious why things aren't working. So, so this membership, the Product Boss Academy, is absolutely incredible. We meet once a week, we talk about your blended life, we talk about your ways to grow your business. So all the way from the idea to making it brand, how to market it, how to sell it, how to delegate and get help and how to scale it, right? And everything in between. So I wanted to bring a little bit of what we're sharing with them to you here on the podcast. And I want to go over the blended life principles. So this is something that we work through inside of the academy. And that's because while we're growing our businesses, we also also have to tap back in to these principles that I've established of how to just keep going with our days. Especially I know so many of you out there are women and you take care of other people and pets and all the things, right? Whether you're a parent or you have parents that you take care of or grandparents that you take care of, you've got pets or animals, right? You might have a farm, you have plants that you think we're always taking care of other people, but how do we also take care of ourselves and continue to grow our businesses? Right? Because we really want to make sure that those are growing. So I want to support, support you in the foundations of it and the templates and the tools and all of the business stuff. But I also wanna support you on the personal side. So let's go over these principles. So principle number one is flow over force. I want you to trust your natural rhythm and it's different for everyone. So let's talk about flow over force. Listen, we all have different energy patterns, right? Some of us are more motivated in the morning, some of us are night owls and we stay up late. I know for me, I definitely am a night owl. I don't know if that was trained into me in fashion school. I wish that I could get up early and do the work, but nighttime just works really well for me. So knowing that what is my natural rhythm of when I'm going to work, I want you to release the rigid schedules. This is the part that makes us feel like failures. We're like, oh, the perfect morning, the miracle morning. This person does it like that, you know, so many times I'm like, nah. Cause you know there's like men that will write their perfect morning and it does everything but wake your kids up, get em dressed for school, pack lunches, drive them to school, try and get them to not kill each other because one is late from and the other one doesn't want to be late, right? All the different things that we have to do in the morning. So if the morning is family time and you're blending family, then let that be and then find your rhythm of when you're going to get to it. If you have a full time job and you have a flow to getting Ready for your full time job. Then find when your natural rhythm works for you and your flow that you can schedule in working on your business or the other things that you want to do. Right? I want you to move with your natural flow. Now, if you're listening in my academy students, if that are listening for the product boss academy, check out the blended life portal because they've just dropped in some like an amazing workbook AI to help you with prompts to get this all done. There's so many things in there, so go check it out. My academy members, if you're not a product boss academy member and you want to become one, I will drop a link in the show notes just to take care of you. If that's something that you're like, I want to jump into this and do this. All right, Principle number two, simplicity wins. That's principle number two. I want you to get the help that you can afford. I want you to align with your values and live in alignment. So here's the deal. Can we just remove the complexity already? All the shoulds, all the. We could do it like this, this, this and this. Like, let's just get rid of the complexity and keep it simple. I want you to focus on what matters. This is why so many times I teach my students, you know, to focus on the products that actually sell versus the one that aren't selling. Isn't it easier to get behind the winning pony versus the one that's hobbling along? Like my analogies are always amazing. Right? I want you to choose ease over struggle. It does not have to be hard. Can we choose ease over struggle and lean finding the simplicity? Because simplicity wins. Now let's talk about Principle 3, which is seasons change. Every phase has its own needs and demands, right? Like Taylor Swift and her ERAS tour. We gotta embrace where we are. It could be a busier time. You know, I hate doing big things in May because May tends to be a time where, you know, it's the end of the school year, the kids have performances and parties at the same time. Like right before the holiday season where my kids require more of my time. So I know in those seasons what I can do and what I can't do. And then I know when I'm like, at it, going hard. My busy seasons, my busy months, right? You know this as well. So first I just want you to embrace where you are and embrace what's happening in the moment. Then you adjust as needed. Maybe you've launched in times that really you shouldn't have launched in Right. You, you've put your products out there, you've signed up for a bunch of in person shows. Like you've got commitments, but then there's other stuff happening on. So want you to create flexible plans and trust the process and knowing what kind of strategies you need to adapt to for your schedules during certain seasons. Okay. So important to give yourself a break and know that you're in different seasons. Also, random things can happen. Right? Things come out of nowhere. You just gotta flow with it. Uh, I wonder if I should share this with you. I'm like on. So if you know anything about this entire time that I've been, you know, I had an episode that I was talking about me having an anxiety attack and like the fires in Los Angeles. So as I reflect back on the year so far and I think through everything we're gonna talk about seasons. I had plans for the season. My kids are back in school after the holidays. I'm going hard. We don't have spring break yet. Let's go. Then there's wildfires in Los Angeles. I live in la. We had to leave our home. Everything's safe. But that was a huge thing. My husband's out of town filming a TV show. He's in another country. He's not here for the fires or any of this. Then I come back and I get neurovirus. So then I'm like, so, so, so sick. I'm out for a week, even though I had major deadlines coming up. Then I go enter into my family's birthday season. My mom's bir. We always do a big event. Family came in, we went away for the weekend. Like, we celebrate her. Then the next week is my husband's birthday and my son's birthday and the Super Bowl. Okay. So I've got all of these personal commitments that I knew were happening, but in the time that I was available to do the other things I needed to do, got scooped up by fires and being sick and all the things. And then this is what I'm gonna share with you that I have not shared yet. We were doing our Bestseller Secrets challenge launch and I got a message from my sister that our whole family has licensed. She's got toddlers. And I'm like, oh my God. We were just with them yesterday. Can you get them that fast? You know? And so I'm like freaking out. And I tell my husband, like, I'm in lodge. I can't. I don't know if my daughter has it. Like, let's. Can we. And lights are Going around the school, can we just take her to the hair wizard and see if she has them? So they go, my husband's fine, my son's fine, but my daughter has them. Luckily, it wasn't Whoville living in there. It was just like, you know, it's all gross. It's disgusting. I'm sorry. So they tell me this, and my daughter is. We're very close. We hug a lot. Like, she's my. I call her my starfish. Because if you think about a starfish, like, she's on me a lot. I love it, but that's just how she's always been. And I'm like, oh, crap, if this girl has it, do I have it? I have had not had lice since I was a kid, though. I rush in the middle of this launch and I go and turns out I do so through my entire launch. If you guys are a part of. You're like, why does Jacqueline's hair look so crazy? It's because I had to wash it every single day and do this treatment. And it was so hard to like blow dry. It was just a nightmare. So I'm looking at my. I'm like, why am I. Why has this been so hard? It was like the hits keep coming, so seasons change and plans change, and we can only embrace where we are and we can only adjust as needed to what's happening. So I share this because that was like, my daughter comes to me later, she goes, mom, I'm really proud of you. I was like, really? She's like, yeah. You didn't freak out because I know you have a lot to do right now. And I was like, you are correct. All I can do is keep stepping forward. Right? That's all I could do. So I just want to share that with you because it was a bit of a nightmare. And I'm sorry if anyone's like, itching as I talk about it, but it was a nightmare. This girl's almost 10. Why are we getting it now? But I digress. Let's move on. Hey, friends. Okay, so I don't know if you're anything like me, but sometimes it feels like my self care routine is slipping through the cracks. Because when I'm juggling and wearing all the hats in my business and doing all the things, I mean, the last thing I have to do is like really fulfill that self care routine that my daughter's talking about. She's like, mom, so listen, so when it comes to running a successful business, you can't really pour from an empty cup. And a lot of times that self care is like one of the first things to get yourself recalibrated. So that's why I want you to meet Glossy. Now Glossy is my favorite daily beauty supplement designed to transform your skin and gut health from the inside out. And I'm actually an investor in this business because I so believe in this idea of science backed ingredients for digestion and skin hydration. And Glossy makes it really easy to look and feel your best without that whole 10 step routine in the mirror. The thing I don't actually have time for, all I have to do is simply mix a stick into my water and I'm good to go. So if you want to try this because I so believe in this business, I think it's amazing. It's done so many wonders for my skin and my gut, which are two things that I need help with. And you want to simplify your wellness and your beauty. All you have to do is click in the show notes and you can use the code Jacqueline Snyder. So it's my full name. Use the code Jacqueline Snyder and I'm hooking you up with 15 off your order. So cheers to glowing skin and a thriving business. Hey friends, are you unsure of what to say on social media or what to even send in your weekly emails? Well, what if creating content could be easy? Would you be looking for a shortcut to creating consistent content? Yes, consistent content. Because you know, consistency is key. Well, let me tell you, you are not alone when you feel like you're struggling on what to post or what to write in emails. And we know that you have that product part of your business down. But as you're listening to this podcast, you probably already know that to get more people to your products, to buy your products, you need to great content. No, I see, I keep saying content and that's the dreaded C word. And we can't tell you how many product bosses tell us that they want to create great content for their audience and their customers, but they don't know what to say. Or they are so busy they can't find the time or they really, really, really don't want to be the face of their brand. Well, no worries, because that's exactly why we created a year of content. It is your shortcut to creating consistent content that resonates with your audience and brings more loyal customers who can't wait your products. If you want to see how easy this is and how easy it is to create content for your audience and your customers, head to www.ayear of content.com. all right, principle four, support is strength. So for everything in your life, I want you to have the support you deserve support. And you're going to need support. So what's important about this principle, we need to build a support system. Whether it's your spouse, your family, your friends, a community you're a part of, you need to find the support system. Your neighbors doesn't have to be a bunch of people. It could be one person that you go to and rely on. And I want you to also cross that bridge with me because it's not great for me and ask for help. My husband is so good at asking our neighbors to take the trash cans in. I'm like, how could we ask them to take the trash cans in? But he's real good at it. And if you need to invest in assistance for that support, so you've heard me talk about it, but I'll Invest and pay $99 a year for Instacart so that it can buy my groceries, so that I can sit here recording an episode while somebody else is shopping for my groceries and we'll deliver it to my door and then I just have to put it away. So, like, your assistance and help could be as simple as that, right? When I lived in New York City, you could get anything delivered to your house. So pre. All of this stuff, pre pandemic, I remember moving to New York and I could get cookies delivered at 2am I could get coffee and a bagel delivered in the morning. Just everything was deliverable. Then it kind of turned into like mass market. Now, most places have a version of this, unless you live in the mountains or the woods or like kind of somewhere Iceland, isolated, which I get that you might not have this, but you know the saying, it takes the village. It takes the village to raise kids. It takes the village to support us in our lives. It takes the village to grow your business. I just don't want you to do this alone, okay? So think about what you can afford and what you can invest in to get the support that you need, okay? Principle five is your values. Your values will guide you. So when you align with your values, you're never going to regret your choices. This is so important and way that we teach it inside of our program is this value alignment that goes through the special, like, questionnaire this way that we teach it. But what it does is it helps you make decisions from alignment. It helps you realize I'm trusting my gut, right? Oh, this isn't like your brain doesn't Take over and lie to you about all the reasons why something's gonna work or not work. You actually trust your gut because your gut's telling you something and it's important. And I want you to choose what lights you up. It's really, really important. Now let's get to principle six, which is boundaries serve. So creating clear boundaries will help you create the freedom you love and want and desire and need. First, we have to set loving limits. It's okay to say no, my friends. It's okay. As someone said, no is a full sentence. It's okay to tell your kid, I can't do this right now with you because I have to work on my business. And it's okay to put your business to the side for a sec because you have to go to your kids, play. There's so many different things. But the other thing, especially as women, what we do is we let go of all of our boundaries for our own self care and we help all the other people. This is, it's not for everyone, but it's a trend. So I want for you to honor your needs and protect your energy. This is so important to you as the pilot, as the captain of the ship, we needs you to protect your energy and your needs so that everything else can work. And then our final principle, our seventh principle is so important, is that joy matters. I want you to bring choose what brings you joy. I know it's different for everyone. So don't look around and say, oh, this thing works for her and this thing works for them and da, da, da, da, no, no, no, follow what feels good to you. Okay? Social media peeking into other people's lives has done all of us such a disservice. We are all unsatisfied with what we currently have and looking outside for what other people have. I. And same with me, like, it has been a problem that I have had to work on. That's probably something I've had for a very long time. What is happening around you, what feels good to you? And let that be enough. I want you to trust your preferences. I want you to trust what brings you joy. And I want you to embrace your own unique path. Okay? What works for you is different than me. I used to think, oh, people who go to the gym, like they actually like working out, you know, and then I hear from people who are like, so fit and whatever, they're like, I don't love it, but I do it because I have to, right? And it's like all these different things. And so I'M like, okay, what do I love doing? I love walking. I'm wearing a weighted vest. I can listen to a podcast. I can listen to a program that I'm in, you know, and I can combine these things together. But that's the way I'm going to do it. I'm not going to beat myself up because I'm not in the gym in the morning or I'm not hitting Pilates in the middle of the day. I'm going to do what's best for me. That brings me joy. And it's different. And you might be the one in the gym, you know, like, you get to choose what works for you. And this is across the board. Some people like to travel. Some people want a simpler life and they only want. Some people want to grow their companies to a million dollars, 10 million. Like, they want to just keep going. Some people want enough to just leave full and live an enjoyable life. Pick what works for you. It's different for everyone. Pick what, what feels good to you and brings you joy. So I hope that this was helpful. Talking about the seven principles of the blended life and the blended life principles. Right. This is inside of the Product Boss Academy. So my students, again, go check your blended life section of the program because we have the workbook in there for you. We have AI prompts to incorporate this into your life. So to help AI really like help you nail this. And we've also given you another workbook to kind of reflect on your energy and your schedules and your non negotiables and all things. Okay? So make sure to check that out to my academy members and if you are not in the academy yet, but you're like, this sounds really interesting again, I'll drop that link in the show notes if you want to come join us because it's absolutely incredible in there. I'm. We're live weekly coaching. There's the program, there's community, there's templates and tools and swipe files and workbooks and just it's such a supportive environment that I know you're absolutely going to love. Plus, we blend in there as well. All right, my friends, until the next episode, thank you so much.