How Women Entrepreneurs Balance Motherhood, Marriage, and Business

Time management. Let's talk about it. If you guys are struggling being a mom, being a wife, taking care of yourself, helping out with the kids, running a business, okay, maybe helping out with a dog as well. All those things take work, effort, energy, and every single person needs attention. And you also have to learn how to give to yourself. This is a very hard lesson that I've learned, and today it's going to be a personal episode on the journey that I've continued to go on and continue to dive into to truly understand the patterns of building businesses and what it takes to build a successful business. And I say that in quotes, so if you guys are watching this on YouTube, you can see me do air quotes, okay? And by the way, if you're listening to the podcast and you haven't watched YouTube, please go over to YouTube and subscribe @pelvibiz. Please do that. Okay, um, that being said, let's get into it. So what I realized when I first— when I first built my first company, and it was a physical therapy practice called Orthopelvic Physical Therapy— when I built it, it was purely out of pain. And I kind of recognized that as I was going through the journey, but now I really understand that it was purely out of pain. Every single day, what day was pain, pain, pain, pain. And I thought that was just part of the process because I was in a painful situation and painful state, meaning I was in a place that I absolutely hated. And so I knew the only way to get out of that situation was through me being successful, okay? Meaning, aka, um, helping a lot of people to be able to afford a different life. Okay. And I just this week had this epiphany. My COO, Julia, okay, she decided, she's like, Kelly, you know what, we're gonna, you know, I've been really changing just in general. Like I've been changing my lifestyle, I've been changing my whole self. I've been, you know, going to the gym every single day. But she's like, we're really going to put this down on a calendar. And you guys are gonna be like, okay, great. What's significant about that? But what we did is it wasn't written. It wasn't like I wrote out on a Word document. It was on my frickin Google Calendar. And there is a difference between my Google Calendar and me writing it down on a piece of paper because I will lose that piece of paper in 2 seconds. The Google Calendar, however, does not get lost and it will ping you on what to do. And to me, this is an epiphany today that I was like, oh my God, this thing pings me, like, and it just tells me what to do. Who on here that's listening would love to have someone just tell them what to do? Me. Okay, we don't have to think. And then I started— so this is what happened. This is what happened this week, and I want to bring this to your attention because I think this is a massive lesson. So on the Google Calendar, by the way, I start work at 6 AM and I don't stop until 8 o'clock PM at night, okay? And I would say over the last, um, 6 months, I have just been just going, going, like those hours, just going, going, 7 days a week, by the way, 7 days a week, not 5, 7 days a week, okay? And I will just sporadically fit in my workouts and then like, you know, maybe fit in my eating somewhere. And it wasn't like, there wasn't a system to it. And then sometimes I would feel guilty about going to work out because I had so much to do to catch up. I say catch up, that's how it feels, right? We all feel like we're behind, but we're not really behind. It's just that we have a lot on our plate that we're trying to problem solve at the time, and we feel we don't have time to take care of ourselves. But the reality is we do. It's just that it feels less painful if you handle the problems of someone else than of taking care of yourself, if that makes sense. And so what we did, and this sounds so simple, but I'm telling you guys, I would use this hack, okay? What we actually blocked my schedule out and said, gym, eat, like we literally put eat on my calendar, okay? Um, and Julia blocked it for like an hour and a half and then eating for another 30 minutes, so give me 2 hours. Oh, and then I also put beach so that I, you know, I live right by the beach, so it's like, go to the beach, Kelly, you're right there. Okay, so what I did was my brain had to restructure because how I built my first business was purely out of pain. So in my head, and I need you guys, this is very applicable to you guys, because in my head I thought, if I am not in pain every second of the day then I am not growing a business because that's how I grew my very successful business, the first business around, because I was just constantly okay with being in pain. Like, me being in pain knew I was growing. And I say pain, not physical pain. I mean, sometimes, but like mental pain. Like, there's just so many problems that you have to solve, right? And like being in a location I didn't like, like it was just a whole situation. That's the pain that I'm talking about. Okay. And here, by the way, I got positive reinforcement there because pain equals success in my head. But here I want to build the second company different. Now, for those that know, I've had PelviBiz now for 4 and a half years. I've been growing it in conjunction with Orthopelvic. It's insane. I know. Okay. But I really— when I went full force into PelviBiz, I really wanted to do it differently to make sure that I wasn't building a company out of pain. I was building a company because it truly resonated with me and it truly was my driving force of my deep why. Which for me, my mom was a single mom. She did everything to make ends meet. And I had a learning disability growing up my entire life, and so I had to do things differently. So I had to try harder than every single person. And my mom— watching my mom go through the struggle of being a single mom with 3 kids and her working 4 jobs and all the things, I mirrored that same behavior. When I got out of pt school, I had 4 jobs for 4 years straight, okay? Because that's what I saw my mom doing. To make more money, you just get more jobs. That's what I thought. Because that's just what my family did. We were very— we were not, you know, well off. Okay. So I just thought like, that's just how you do this. And my deep why is I don't want women to go through the intense amount of pain that I went through to build business number one. Okay. I don't want women to go through the intense amount of heartache and pain that I saw my mom growing up go through constantly. Now my mom, by the way, if you guys know my mom, she would never say that she went through intense pain or whatever. I know though, just by watching her, she doesn't have to say anything, that it was insane what she did. Insane. Okay? She would sleep like 3 hours at night, she was a teacher, she worked at Chick-fil-A scrubbing the toilets, she worked at my gymnastics gym just to be able to pay for my gymnastics. She did whatever it took. She did whatever it frickin' took to be able to make sure that us kids had what we, you know, needed minimally to have. And it was insane. And I just don't want women to have to go through that. So that is my very, very deep why. Not that I'm like, oh, I think I'm good at building a business, so I'm going to be a coach and just sell people some program. No, I have a massive reason behind it. And that's why I'm so passionate about it. And you can't, you can't train this passion. It's, it's just in you. And for me, that's like, that's where this, this coaching thing comes from, and strategy, and like change. It's really just life-changing. Like, I just feel like I'm a life changer. That's— I don't even call myself really a coach because I feel like that's so overused. But, but you gotta like, you gotta have a deep why. Right? And so my point to this is I'm obsessed with doing what I do every single day, and I want to make business fun, enjoyable, and do it with amazing people. That's what I realized for business number 2. If you're not cool and you're not willing to work 7 days a week and put in the effort because you have such passion behind it, you cannot be on Kelly's business team. You just can't. If you're not an A-player, if and you don't work out, you cannot be on Pelvi Business Team. Okay? These are just called standards. We have standards and I really uphold them now that I can in this company. Okay? If like, like I need you guys to have this for your business, okay? I need you to have this because if you don't have it, you're not going to have a business. And so I'm saying this because if I set the standards that high, then I have to live up to that. And sometimes you keep setting the bar higher and higher and you're like, shit, how am I gonna do all this? So my point is, going back to the schedule, is I wake up at 6— or I don't even wake up at 6, I wake up at 5, I start work at 6, and, um, you know, I go till 8. And so at 6 o'clock, we started blocking out immediately, this is what I do. And then around like 10, 11, I'll go work out. And to— and I always was afraid of that because I felt like I would lose my focus and lose my concentration and then wouldn't be able to come back. But instead, what I realized of this, just booking this out on Google and it pinging me saying like, you— it's basically telling me like, I don't have to think. Like, Kelly, go to the gym. Okay, cool. My schedule says that. I know because we plan out my schedule, so I know if I'm doing what's on my schedule that the business is going to move forward. I don't have to like guess. I don't have to have anxiety over it. I don't have to be like, oh, this isn't gonna work. I know it's gonna work because we set the schedule to make it work. Does that make sense? To get the things done. And so like, it was just like an aha moment to me where it's like, no, go to the gym now. Okay, well, I gotta go to the gym. So I went to the gym, and then it's like, okay, go to the beach. Okay, then I went to the beach because the beach is going to calm my nervous system. Gym hypes it up. Beach is going to calm. I come back and then I do the second half of my day. Right? And I feel good because I gave to myself constantly instead of giving to all my people constantly and then not giving anything to myself. And then I become resentful. That's what happened in the first business. That's what happened in the first business. You become resentful because you give to every single person and you forget about yourself because there's 20,000 things to do. And I'm telling you this because again, it was an aha moment for me that most business owners, you guys are not recognizing this yet. You're not recognizing it. But I'm telling you, just being able to block out your calendar and plan it for the week, saying this is what we're going to do, and whether or not you have admins, whether or not you have providers, if you block out their schedule and they just follow the calendar, that's the plan, how could you not grow? How could you not change? How could you not love your life? How could you not be successful? Okay? And by the way, I have to say this too. I used to classify success as how much money you made, okay? I now classify success in my second company as how much fun we can have and how much we can enjoy what we do. Because you can have all the money, I had it, okay? You can have all the money, but you can absolutely be completely miserable. Or you can grow something that's truly amazing and have fun while actually doing it and be able to continuously push a boundary and be so proud of yourself while actually taking care of yourself in the process. So that you don't go hard for a year and then be like, "Hell, I'm so burnt out, I can't do this anymore." And some of you guys, that might be 7 years. I mean, that's what I did. 7 years, just bam, just straight. I didn't take care of myself at all. Did not take care of myself at all. And now it's like complete opposite. I'm taking care of myself. I'm going to networking events, hang out with girlfriends, like doing stuff that's fun, that fuels, that fuels my cup so I can keep going. And I have a very deep why behind it. And so I'm making this podcast today because I really want to bring personal lessons that that I personally have experienced through lots of success and lots of failure. There's both to the story. And I, I, I would love to see you guys shine by literally just doing one thing. If you— one takeaway today from this: on Sunday, go to Google, and every single block— it could be 2 hours, 3 hours, 1 hour, whatever— put in something that you believe will move the business forward. And then when you see that pop up on your screen or pop up on your phone, you have to go do it. You cannot negotiate. You just have to take action. And most of y'all want to negotiate. You must, uh, I don't know if I'm gonna do that. Yeah, I'm gonna come up with— I'm gonna go do something else because this is more important, blah blah, and negotiate. No, the plan is the plan. Stick to the plan. If you stick to the plan and you do it repetitively— and by the way, it is so hard to stick to the plan repetitively because I was like, wait, You're now taking 2 hours of my day, Julia, out of my schedule that I would just grind, and I got to do the same, same level of work, but in 2 hours or less. Like 2 hours or less. And she's like, yeah, that's what you're going to do so you can take care of yourself. I'm like, oh shoot, how am I going to do this? So now I got to level up and I got to think about ways it levels me up. I got to think about ways how to be more proficient. How do I get those 2 hours back, right? And that's the level you need to operate at. That is the level. So hopefully this is really helpful and insightful today, guys. Please learn from my mistakes, or, you know, just the things I've been through. And please go block your Google Calendar so that it pings you and just, just set it there and just go and do it and don't negotiate with yourself. That's the biggest thing.