Sorry guys, this one’s for the ladies….

I’ve learned many things by being a mom. I’ve learned that Ferrari-Carano Chardonnay pairs terribly with Pirate’s Booty (for those of you without kids or grandkids under ten, think highly addictive edible packing peanuts laced with white cheddar flavored powder). I’ve learned that the public education system smells blood when looking for volunteers and that if you make eye contact you will not only be volunteering in the class but also coaching P.E and organizing the holiday party (and yes, that means cutting reindeer parts out of construction paper instead of responding to emails). I’ve learned that the most annoying Disney or Nick Jr. song will get stuck in your head for no less than a week (Yeah, I’m looking at you Dora the Explorer). I’ve learned the value of humility, patience, roots, reflection, appreciation, eloquence, efficiency and grace. And, I’ve learned that I never truly understood my ability to love two little human beings more than life itself.

I was self-employed before I became a mom. And before kids, I thought I was busy. Boy, was I in for a rude awakening. Therefore, more recently, I have learned the art of guerrilla multi-tasking. This is the ode to the not just working, but also self-employed mom.

Do you throw on lipstick in the car, rushing into the office feeling like you already worked a full day? Been there. Grab for your phone out of your purse at a business lunch only to pull out two Legos, a Power Ranger and a fistful of fruit snacks instead? Been there too. Sneak into the back of the room for the small school performance that you didn’t find out about until twenty five minutes prior and halfway through a meeting so that your child sees you and knows you were there to witness their debut? Yup, par for the course.

But, there are those moments of brilliance. Those moments where you truly feel you can juggle and do it all. The Martha Stewart meets Meg Whitman meets June Cleaver side of you that can bring home the bacon AND fry it up in a pan.

There is a very agrarian part of me that regrets not taking the stay at home mom route. The part of me that believes I would make homemade organic baby food and feed my kids nothing packaged, enthusiastically helping with homework, playing board games, doing word problems, playing catch and having rock hard abs from the extra time I have to work out. But then reality hits and I realize that no one is getting out alive if I were to stay home. I am the type of person that needs to work. Hungers for that intellectual, if not stressful, outlet. And I can count, without taking a breath, at least one hundred of my self employed or high-level professional girlfriends that are in the same boat.

We are our own toughest critics. When we are with our kids, we feel guilty about not working. When we are at work, we feel guilty about neglecting our family.

So how do we do it all?

Step one – Cut yourself some slack. So you didn’t bake four dozen cookies for your kids’ teachers this Christmas? Let it go. And, that proposal you were supposed to have done on Tuesday that will now get there on Wednesday? It’s all right. The world will go on.

Step two – Get organized. Think of the life of the working mom as a riptide. You get on top, you are fine, but the second you are sucked under, forget about it. The more you struggle once you are under, the worse it gets. Staying organized means getting on top of that riptide. No one can stay on top of it all the time, but staying on it even for a little while makes a huge difference in your feeling of control. Do you pack your kids lunches every day? Make up bags of lunch items when you get home from the grocery store and are already in unpacking mode. Get swamped with demands first thing in the morning in the office? Set aside a set time for questions, signatures, etc and then block out specific time to get things done. Put it on your calendar. If you make an appointment with a project, it has a better chance of being completed before you are dragged in a different direction.

Step three – Touch everything once. A large part of getting organized at work or anywhere means touching everything once. How much more time would you have if you just either dealt with or discarded everything you touched? Believe me it makes a huge difference.

And lastly step four – Make to do lists. Not huge overwhelming lists that make you want to run and hide. To Do Lists that give you a feeling of accomplishment without creating a sense of guilt and pressure. You’ve got enough of that already!

My personal favorite tactic for To Do Lists is to take a yellow pad of paper and draw a line down the middle. Sorry – this isn’t very green, but I have found that electronic To Do Lists are easier to ignore. On the left hand side of the line, write a list of everything you have on your To Do List right now. As new demands are made of you, add them to the right side. If anything you are adding to the right side is critical and takes precedence over the left side, put a star next to it. Complete tasks by first completing anything on the right with a star. Then complete everything you possibly can on the left. Once everything on the left is done, move on to the right side. At the end of the day, start a new sheet with a line down the middle. The list on the left should now include everything from the left that you didn’t complete plus everything on the right that got added and not completed. If you want to get really crazy about this method, put estimated time to complete next to each task.

You are able to accomplish so much. Look at you! You’re a working mom. You love your kids. You kick butt at your job. You are doing your best. Your biggest weakness right now is that you may be beating yourself up to do more, be more, accomplish more. Sit back and appreciate that you are one person. One amazing person. You will get it all done in time. Better yet – you will get the important things done in due time. Focus on your strengths and your passions and you will be the best you can be to your family’s and your company’s success.

“Change the way you look at things, and the things you look at change.”
– Dr. Wayne Dyer

Not too long ago I came home after an exceptionally bad day. A day where you don’t know whether to tell the world to go to Hell or just sit down and cry. Every entrepreneur has days like this.

A little while later, I was putting my four year old, Ashton, to bed. He leaned over to me with big blue eyes and tousled blond hair and out of the clear blue sky said “Mommy, did you know the good guy always wins?”

After choking back my tears and desire to scream, I realized that I certainly wasn’t feeling that way, but, in that light, this was just what I needed to put the dire circumstances of my horrible day in perspective.

Did you know that the reason a prophet is so successful or considered all-seeing is that, in almost every case, once they tell their student their fate, it becomes so? This is because that student believes it to be true. Think about it in a negative light – if a fortune teller read your fortune and told you that your fate was to be hit by a bus, would you not starting looking over your shoulder just a few times more to look out for careening motor coaches?

What if we use this theory to our advantage? How often have you needed to cover payroll only to find that exactly what you needed, after much work, was produced? What if you aimed for a higher amount? Say $5,000, $10,000 or $50,000 above what you believe you need? Then, covering payroll doesn’t sound so hard does it?

It reaches to other areas of your business as well. Raising capital, producing dividends, increasing sales, it all works the same way. You expand your outer boundaries and what you can accomplish as a business owner or in any other facet of your life expands as well. It is all in your perspective and belief in this to be true.

Whatever your goals are for this New Year, sit back down with them and add ten or twenty percent. Add more if you want to. Are you projecting 20% growth in sales this year? Make it 25% and get out there and make it happen. A 10% increase in net income? Up it to 12% and go do it. You are the new vision that will make it so.
I had let my bad day get the better of me. It beat me down. Instead, I needed to be my own prophet. Just like you, I felt I was a good guy and, damn it, come Hell or high-water, like the old saying tells us, I was going to win.

As a business owner or business leader, we are our own worst critics and sometimes our most staunch barriers. Break this cycle with a belief system of success. Because when you change your view, what you are looking at will most definitely change. Be the prophet in you.

“You are Intelligence. Capable of knowing the right idea at the right time to make the right decision.”
Raymond Charles Barker from The Power of Decision

The power went out at our house tonight. And I had just sat down to start that “second shift.” You know, the one that starts with every entrepreneur after the kids have gone to bed and the chores are done and then – all of the sudden – no power.

Now, the power usually doesn’t go out for more than a few minutes these days with the new technologies and what-not that keep us continuously, mercilessly connected in everything we do. But with the wind and new snow approaching that night, the power stayed off for over an hour or two.

At first, I had the immediate response that most of you would have: the “Oh, crap!” moment; the “I really, really, REALLY needed to get caught up!” moment. I paced around the house lighting candles, grabbing every connected device with a battery and then paused…

The only conceivable sound in the house was the beep of the UPS in our home office every few minutes – beeping desperately with a broken heart for my attention. Other than that… silence. And, I may add, quite serene from the myriad of candles burning in order to light the way for another late night of work on an iPad, phone or anything else that didn’t need electricity.

What did I do? I poured a glass of wine, grabbed a throw and sat down. I mean, really sat still. And it was awesome.

I have recently had the luxury of a very valuable coach and dear friend in my life, Mary Morrissey. Among other things, Mary has taught me the power of time dedicated to thought. Thought and nothing more than thought. With the onslaught of demands on a business owner, the crescendo of chaos can rise to a fever pitch to the point that you become desensitized, numb to it. This desensitization is detrimental to your success!

Let’s face it. We can all be masochists at heart: committing to everything, pursuing new ideas, working the bugs out of our product or handling the little details of our companies until the wee hours of the morning. But, never underestimate the power of reflection or just sitting still and taking the time to think.

There was a man named Dr. Elmer Gates that lived in the post-depression era. Dr. Gates held over 200 patents with the US Patent Office. He would sit in a room he called his “personal communication room” with basically a table, a pad of paper and a switch for the lights. He would sit in this room, turn off the lights and ideas would “flash” in his mind through his Creative Imagination. His method was so proven that Dr. Gates earned a substantial living “sitting for ideas” for fees from some of the largest corporations in America.

So, go and sit still. Turn off the power if you have to. Draw on the knowledge and intuition you have to manage your own success. Channel the ideas that are just below the surface if you just gave yourself a chance to think about them. You will be amazed at the answers you already have.