Today, I want to talk about having a routine for balancing business and babies. I've been working from home and have been a stay at home mom for 5 years now. Since 2021, things have gotten way more serious and I've transitioned from freelance to online business model.

There were some pivots I had to make when it came to going from freelancing to full time business owner. Motherhood alone is one of the most difficult jobs you’ll ever have in your entire life. Having a routine with systems for your kids, cleaning, cooking, and your business will help elevate added stressors.

Cleaning Routines

Personally, I thrive on having a clean environment.My brain gets scattered in a messy home and I start to feel really anxious. I notice that the reflection of my house is a reflection of my mental health.

It’s been like that since I was very young, so a clean environment is a priority for me. That being said, I have four kids under six. I have had 2 under 2, 3 under 2, and 4 under 4.

You can only imagine how messy things can get. You clean one room, you go to clean the kitchen, go to the living room, and that's destroyed by the kids. Hiring cleaning help has been something I have occasionally done and it has brought me so much peace.

Having someone come clean your house once a week to do the deep cleaning that you don't like to do can actually benefit your business. Some of you might be asking “how could someone cleaning my house benefit my business?”

For one, it allows your brain to be more composed. If you're like me and don’t care about having your house be a little bit disarrayed, then it's probably not a big deal. Hiring a cleaner has been an investment I choose to make for my business. That way I can go into my work day with a clear head space, and spend my days with my kids. A huge trigger for me is not being a present mom, so this is such an important support for me.

Another way that I keep the house tidy is having the kids involved in cleaning. We have a rule that I've taught my toddlers that multiple times a day, we’ll drop everything and do a 15 minute tidy. Everyone goes into a room, they pick everything up, they put them in a bucket. I'm a huge fan of having buckets, baskets and a toy box so everything stays organized and the kids can help put things away. They help me with the sweeping, they help me with the mopping and wiping tables. And this has been a routine since my oldest was one and a half. I helped him learn to enjoy helping with cleaning as soon as he could walk and pick up things.

“Whenever you feel discouraged, just remember, you are the centre of the universe to those tiny humans you made from scratch. You’re kind of a big deal!”

What is the true purpose of this offer and your business?

Quality Child Care

I remember moments sitting at my table trying to do blog work before going full time with Ambitious & Caffeinated. Do you know how frustrating it was to publish a blog post because someone messaged me and said “oh, by the way, there's a bunch of gibberish in the middle of your blog post.”

And I look and I'm like, “Mmm, I can tell my toddler typed something while I walked away to go help the baby.” Don’t get me wrong, I did have a laugh but I wanted to come off professional as all hell.

I noticed that for me, it was so nice when I had even my mom, my sister or someone I trust come to the house, take the kids outside so I could get an hour or two of work done. A lot of women come to me worried that they will spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on childcare, but reach out to the support system around you to help cut down on these costs.

That being said, I do have my children in a part time private school so they can have that wonderful, safe socialization, I get 3 good work sessions in, and the other 4 weeks are our adventure days. This has been a more costly option, but I weighed the benefits. I started my business with low child care support and I made it work!

Another thing that I love to do is go and have a really nice bubble bath while I work work on engagement, creating content, or catching up with client chats. I will run myself a bath, have their dad take them for a walk or to the park and I will sit in the bathtub and do an hour of “catch up” because it’s a really important part of work. This system, long term, has been very helpful.

I like to promote independence, as well. Example: I will put out a craft or an activity for my kids so I can do some work in the kitchen and they're going to be in the living room. Instead of having to ask me 800 million times for help, I will let them know and explain: “I'm gonna put out this toy, this activity, this craft and I'm gonna work for 15 minutes because I have some contracts to send out.”

This way my children stay busy, while I get some important tasks done distraction free. They also are seeing first hand how entrepreneurs can incorporate their lifestyle with work and not segregate the 2!

#Selfcare

You need to put yourself first above everything. If you are not taking care of yourself, your kids and your business are going to fall short when it comes to your mood or the amount of time you're able to invest in them. And yes, putting time into your kids is an investment in my opinion. Ask yourself “what do I need?”, “What do i want?”, “How do I make that possible?”, “where do i find that I’m lacking?”. Maybe it's grabbing a personal development book or having an audio book for it. Maybe it's realising that you want or need to eat healthier. Maybe it's the fact that you wanna incorporate more walking or maybe you want to do more exercise. Or maybe it's as simple as you need a little bit more quiet time in your day-to-day life. It’s really easy to lose yourself in motherhood. And when you have a business on top of it, I find that sometimes we just operate an autopilot in all of the areas of life. We need to stop and bring ourselves to the present moment and ask ourselves what we are needing that way we can operate to our fullest potential.

Work Routine

Let’s talk about the importance of having a work routine. I’ll give you some examples of what mine looks like to give you some ideas.

Note: let’s acknowledge habit stacking. It is not that I am doing anything different, but I pair things I get to do with tasks I have to do.

I batch all my content, podcasts, blogs, and some of my instagram stories. In fact, my current content/ copy bank is almost at 100 pieces of content, and then my reels are always ranging from 20-50 in my bank!

I built my business with an Instagram Story + DM strategy, I will share! It was an easy routine that allowed me to master sales, building connection, and also fitting it into my busy schedule.

I do engagement one to two hours per week, two hours is such a sweet spot because I'm able to build genuine relationships in the DMs. I love to have a warm bath with epsom salt and some essential oils in, have a cup of tea and I do engagement while I'm just in silence and luxury. While I’m engaging, I do not cold DM or have scripts. I just go through Instagram stories and reply and build those relationships and connections. I just have fun with it.

I want to feel like I have been their friend for a really long time. After every container has ended, every single one of my clients and I keep in touch. After all, my clients and I have become BFFs. And it's not a bad thing. That's my goal. I wanna work with people who I would want to have coffee or brunch with in real life. That is the importance of having a specific ideal client!

Lastly, we will get into my story strategy. I love Instagram stories because it builds my personal brand and it gives me the opportunity to take breaks from social media even though I am the social queen. I love taking a sabbatical from social media at least once a month, which is kind of funny because my job is on social media and it's online business, but building a personal brand has made that possible.

By utilizing your stories and using your offer as an ad break, I love to pop on with some juicy training. I'll talk about different topics like marketing, how to amplify reels, how to, how to do x, y, z, three ways to do x, y, z, two tips you didn't know about and give some value at least a couple times a week. Save them to your highlights so that when new people come, you’ve already built authority and trust, which is my favorite way of doing so.

I encourage you to check out ways to work with me here, or go binge on my podcast.