As a parent and partner, along with being a business owner, it’s often a continual juggle to keep it all from crashing down.
What You’ll Discover In This Episode
- Tips for surviving school holidays
- Key strategies to making business and home life work
- Ways to avoid (or lessen) mummy guilt when working
This is the Bringing Business to Retail podcast, episode 20, with Michelle Keefe from Speed of Life Coaching. Welcome to the Bringing Business to Retail podcast on SelenaNight.com. Stay ahead of the competition by opening your doors to business experts so you can learn, grow, and be inspired. Passionate about bringing business strategies to independent retailers. Please welcome your host, Selena Knight. Hey there, and welcome back to another episode of the Bringing Business to Retail podcast. Now, last week was one of those weeks for me. It was a public holiday on Monday, and I had an all-day podcast recording and networking with some lovely ladies who run handmade business on Wednesday. And Friday saw me sitting around an office in the city just waiting for most of the day. Now, that left me with just Tuesday and Thursday to fit in a week's worth of work. And throw into the mix that I'm trying to find myself a new superstar assistant after the last one had to leave due to family commitments, and it's a recipe for feeling like you're drowning in work, like big sigh. So, when I recorded this episode with Michelle a few weeks ago, it was the school holidays, and I was laughing about how lucky I was to have a daughter who loved going to vacation care, and how that gave me time during the week to continue doing my work. Well, this week brought it home to me that life really is a juggle. Sometimes even the best laid plans don't go the way that you expected them to. Today's guest is Michelle Keefe. She started speed of life coaching, motivated by a combination of her desire and passion to challenge the status quo and change her work environment. After 15 years in an industry that's typically male-oriented, she learned that regardless of gender, cultural background or level of qualification, every individual has the ability to bring a new perspective to any situation. Now, Michelle and I get pretty frank in this episode talking about issues that have severely affected our health in the past, what the warning signs are and ways of coping. At the beginning of the audio, it's a little bit stilted because there was a really, really big storm when Michelle and I were recording, but you can understand what Michelle is saying, and they're really, really important nuggets of information. So, bear with the first sort of 10 minutes or so. You can understand what she's saying, but it is a little bit broken up and it gets better towards the end, I promise you. Now, Michelle also has a great download for you this week, so make sure to stick around and get the information for that. So, let's jump into today's episode all about juggling motherhood and business with Michelle Keefe from Speed of Life Coaching. Hi there and welcome back to another episode of the Bringing Business to Retail podcast. Now, today's guest is quite pertinent considering, as we record this, it's currently the school holidays in Australia. Those will probably be passed by the time you listen to this, but Michelle Keefe is a life coach and the founder of Speed of Life Coaching. She supports expectant and new mothers in the transition to motherhood and beyond, and beyond is what we are talking about today. She's going to be talking to us about the dreaded work-life balance and how to juggle a family and your business. Welcome to the show, Michelle. Thank you very much, Selena. I'm really happy to be here. Okay, so tell me a little bit about how you got into this field. It's quite a niche field in terms of the whole life coaching thing. So, how did you end up choosing this person to look after and to support and how do you go about doing it? Well, the main reason for choosing this field, I guess it's one of my former selves. I'll call it that, is that I have been that mother who has been feeling like she's constantly pulled between the demands of having a career and a family and wanting to pursue her own dreams and aspirations and being a wife and trying to maintain that juggle and to be very open, I wasn't very good at it. To the point that I just kept on giving and giving and giving to everyone else, that I ended up so stressed out to the point of having a breakdown. And it was when I hit that point that I turned around and I sought professional support, and I also sought the support of a life coach to help me with that planning forward and implementing tools and strategies in my life that would allow me to try and find that balance, not that the balance that everyone else was telling me that I should have in terms of being a career woman and a mother and a fabulous wife and a friend for everybody, but finding that definition of life balance that fit for me and that really spurred me forward to looking at this a lot more as a career and then it just fit for me all the pieces clicked into place and I found what I wanted to do and how I wanted to go forward and give back and support other women to do the same for themselves. Okay so can I just back up there and if this is not too personal can you tell us from the other now that you're on the other side what does a breakdown look like like obviously when it's happening you don't know what's happening and now that you've been through it and you've obviously you can see where it all went wrong what are the what are the markers that somebody should be looking at like what are the questions and what are the words that they might be saying to themselves where if they're doing it right now they should go well hold up this is this is the sign I need to slow down. Yeah absolutely the markers that I found and I find when I talk to other mothers as well they're constantly feeling I'm trying to think of the best way to describe it they just feel oh in their stomach anytime someone asks them to do something they feel really heavy inside they're not sleeping very well they're constantly feeling exhausted like they want to sleep but once they head hits that pillow their eyes are wide open and they're just running through the to-do list that they've got going on and how am I going to fit all of this into my life we find and I you know this is a marker for me as well we tend to get a lot more irritable with our children we find that we're snappy at them we find them irritating and as moms we feel guilty for that as well but we just find ourselves in this circle of snappiness and getting irritated and then we beat ourselves up for being a really bad mother and then that cycle continues and we might find that our eating is all over the place one day we have no appetite whatsoever and the next day all we want to do is each chocolate because our body is all out of balance in terms of where its energy sources are lying and the other one and it was a big one for me I was highly emotional my emotions were all over the place I would cry at the drop of a hat but I would try and hide it and sometimes we would just go oh I don't know why I'm crying over that that seems like a really silly response to someone asking me a question but it's simply because our body is so busy trying to process everything around us that we just end up completely out of alignment and the other big indicator is we sense that there's something not right but someone will ask us how it's all going and it's perfect it's great the kids are great business is great work is great and you know we look like that duck that sitting calmly on top but underneath us is all this other stuff going on and it feels very hard to reach out and go what I'm showing you is not really what's happening for me right now I'm trying to be perfect I'm trying to show you that I can hold it all together and really I don't feel like it I don't feel like I am but I'm really worried if I reach out everything is going to fall apart around me so I die out you know a lot of the things like yeah oh this is not actually where I was going with this interview and this often happens and do you have some like obviously that's probably a whole a whole different episode but do you have just a few tips on what you can do if you're feeling that way and we want to get too deep into it because I do think we could probably spend a whole episode on burnout but before we move on to the next question I don't want to I don't want somebody to be listening to this and going yes that's me oh crap what do I do so have you just got a few tips of where to go next if you're feeling like that yeah absolutely um my first porta call was actually my GP when I first hit this day and I went you know what there's something not right going on I felt like they were in an impartial party and they wouldn't judge me and that was the biggest thing that went through my head was if I reach out to my friends I think I've got it all together what are they gonna think what's my husband gonna think um so my biggest tip is to reach out you may have that go-to girlfriend that you know no matter what you go to them with they're going to be there and they're that shoulder and they can help guide you you might see the support of a medical professional like a GP and they can then refer you on or someone like myself a life coach who specializes in those areas and but we just can hold this space for you and I have clients do it they're on the phone and our session that just starts with a blah this is what's going on this is where I'm at oh my god that feels so good to get that off my chest all right now I need to work out how I can move forward and what I need to do next and often that's I think having that that third party that impartial person makes it so much easier because you don't feel that you're going to be judged that's right and that's that's the biggest thing I think has my arms it doesn't matter what we do and how we do it we're always so conscious of someone's going to think I'm doing it wrong someone's going you know they're going to think poorly of me they don't think I can hold it all together that third party really we just sit there and we hold that that space that you can be whoever you need to be in that moment and there's no judgment and then we help you to move forward and and create what you need you don't get the support that you need to to continue on and I think that's the key here is if you are feeling those things that Michelle mentioned before is to go and find some help because the longer you leave it and I know this from experience because I've been there and in fact one of the things I had I lost my voice several times in a couple of months and now I find that whenever I'm really busy in under stress I will lose my voice again and in fact it happens merely every week because the stress doesn't have to be high grade stress it can just be low grade stress so one point here is don't let it keep going so long that months down the track you're still suffering after effects and that's right and I think you raise a really important point the benefit of the third party or talking to someone is identifying exactly what you're saying you know about losing your voice I start to not sleep and I get a little bit more irritable with my children and they're my little flags that I hold that I go okay hang on I need to stop now and work out what's going on around me do I need to change something that I'm doing or do I just need to make sure I get that little bit of extra time out so I can do this stress and relax in my week okay so taking those small steps early on it doesn't I think that from my experiences sometimes you can't do it alone like I think sometimes you can but sometimes you can't so if you're feeling that way please go and see someone about it or if you can even contact Michelle and talk through those but we'll move on to something a little bit more upbeat which was I don't know how much more upbeat this was but my original question to you was going to be that you came from the corporate world so can you just give us just just a couple of minutes background on where you are there because I'm going to ask you another question about that sure so in the corporate world I'm an engineer by degree and was very successful I'd work through from project engineering working on mine sites with my company right through into project and to attend the management roles so a lot of nine to five but a lot of travel in the mix and then adding two little boys when I was in the corporate world as well into that mix so finding that juggle and that balance between trying to maintain a career but be on call to my children and be a mum when they needed it and trying somewhere in the mix to find something for myself and what I wanted to achieve okay so my question there is and I am not the poster girl for these like I am probably the person who you do not come to me for advice when it comes to work like I have I have one child who I am quite lucky loves before and after school care and vacation care and in fact when I started working from home earlier on this year I told her she had to cut her before and after school care days down because she was going five days a week at which point she threw herself on the floor in front of the teacher and said how could I do this to her um her life would be a misery like she would be miserable and then she said to the teacher please don't let mummy take me out so I am quite lucky but I am definitely not the poster child for the work life balance because my kid doesn't necessarily want to be at home but my question is do you think it's necessary to give up family time in order to move your business forward because the people listening to this podcast are they have their own business but do you know what it doesn't matter if you've got your own business or you're in the corporate world each of those jobs or positions are going to require a whole bunch of mental energy and physical energy and a whole bunch of your time so the question because I keep talking is do you think it's necessary to give up that to give up a portion of family time to move the business forward you raise a really interesting question and it may seem to go against the grain for for some of your listeners right now but yes you do um one of the key things that I have learnt um both in being in corporate and having my own business is at times you need to be out of balance to make things happen so if you're starting a business or you're launching a new product or you want to push your brand into a new space sometimes you do have to consciously and intentionally shift some of your family time away from the family and into the business so you can propel yourself forward what I will say with that is that there needs to be a point at which you then start to pull back and bring balance into your life so you don't push yourself towards burnout okay so do you have some tips on how you how are we going to accomplish that I won't say you we can accomplish that without feeling a massive sense of guilt to either the business or to the family absolutely so one of the things that I do is I openly communicate with my family about what I need to do and why I'm doing it um I have an eight-year-old and a six-year-old I also have a 15-month-old um but I explained to them that you know I'm working on a particular project at the moment it needs a lot more time so what I'm going to do is I'm going to work on it now but this afternoon we are going to go and do the following so what I do is I actually make it really conscious of this is work time but this afternoon we're going to spend some time going to the park or going to the library or whatever it is that however you choose to spend time with your family and I also close the door on my office space at home so I work from home I close the door on my space so I'm not feeling that pull-in to going oh my goodness I should be doing this work right now no you know what I've done a certain amount of time I often I do it task-based as well I've ticked all of the following things off that I needed to get done today it's okay to go and spend some time with the kids when my toddler goes down through a nap I'll put a movie on for the kids on school holidays and then I'll sit down I'll get another couple of hours worth of work done and then I'm theirs again so it's all about having clear boundaries and being conscious about it and intentional and what I find is when we're conscious and intentional with our boundaries it's easier to rein in the guilt okay so in in that case you might say I'm going you might say I need two hours to finish this task so the key I guess the key also is to planning is that you have to you have to be realistic about how much time you've got and what you can achieve in that amount of time because inevitably whatever you think you can achieve you cannot probably only change about half so picking out that task and like you said communicating I need two hours to finish this thing and then we'll go to the park for or you know we'll do something for the next two hours and if you keep yourself true I guess the word is if you keep yourself true to those boundaries that you've said you won't be doing the not right now mommy's busy mommy's working can you just do it yourself get yourself a piece of fruit because that's the thing that makes you feel guilty isn't it that's that constant saying no or later or not right now mm-hmm absolutely and you know my kids are getting my older kids are getting to the age that they're slightly more self-sufficient with my 15 month old I have to be really I have to be realistic um you know he is a bucket of energy and then some spare so I know that I can't get work done with him around and I'm not going to pretend that I can um and that's exactly what you're saying is if we think we can do it all but the realistic outcome is that we can't that's where that guilt creeps in that's where all of the that internal head talk um comes into play so it's about being realistic so for people who don't work from home whether it's whether they they go to their physical store every day or they go to their their corporate job every day do you have any tips for assuaging the mummy guilt about having to put your child into daycare or you know leaving with your parents or whatever the situation may be the fact is you're not being there and I find a lot of people get really really hung up on it and they kind of dwell on it especially when you're going through you know lean times or businesses not necessarily the way you expect it to be so you kind of throw your hands up in the air and go I don't know why I'm even doing this the whole reason I decided to start my own business was so that I could spend more time with my family yeah which can I just say now if you serve the business to spend more time with your family don't start business yeah I agree with you on that one that that was an eye opener for me when I first started I thought it would be very different to the corporate world that I could you know be there and I was able to be there by creating those boundaries and structures so in terms of that when you're physically not available it comes back to actually something that that you raised in the question we turn around and go why am I doing this again that's one of the big things that I think helps from that perspective is understanding your why why did you decide to go back to work is it you know is it a financial need it might be a sanity need I've got a girlfriend who's gone back to work one day or two days a week and she's got a full untoddler too and she loves it because it's time for her so if you're really clear on why you are doing what you're doing it helps on those challenging days the other thing I would say is look at the benefits what are the benefits for you going back to work or you running your business and and getting to go into your story every day and what are the benefits for your child going into care is it that different social interaction is it that you know a child care facility or a family daycare or grandparents can provide different experiences to what you're doing so really looking at those those benefits that you're all gaining not just you and not just your child but also your family as a whole it might be that you've decided to go back to work so you can afford to have that family holiday one you know once a year and really holding those things and being really clear on them at the outset and when you're ahead you know you don't feel so stressed and pressured take some time to sit down and jot those down so you can come back to them when you are feeling that stress and that guilt to help bring you back into that space of okay this is why this is the big picture we get through it this is sorry uh i in your workbook and if you're okay with it there's a juggling stop the yeah um the juggle it i've got it i've got it underneath my book and i can't leave it back too much noise um juggling work and home life i think it is yeah you that is if you're okay with that we might pop that workbook up in the show notes yeah absolutely because in there you ask your why and can i just can i just call it out here and go you know what it is okay to want to work like oh no this is you know it's hilarious so i i don't want a baby shop and i don't really like it i mean i love the people who came in but i decided to have one child because i only want a one child i knew mentally that was all i could cope with i'm not a particularly maternal person i mean i love my daughter and we hang out loads but i was never going to be the person who had five kids that's my sister she hasn't got five kids but she wanted five kids and i had a day about three weeks ago where i was sitting at home and i had loads and loads to do but every single thing i had to do was kind of relying on somebody else to give me something so i needed the first thing to do the second thing which was going to somebody else and i needed that back before it could do the next thing and so my whole day had been planned around getting this first piece of information which wasn't forthcoming and so even though i had other things to do i was pretty focused on getting this thing done and it didn't come into quite like in the day and so i thought you know what i'm going to take that off and i'm going to watch some you know home renovation programs because that's my little you know thing that i do i couldn't actually watch i've discovered i don't actually ever have 60 minutes to sit down and watch tv so i couldn't actually watch a whole one i got halfway through and realized that i need to put a load of washing on and then i sat back down and spent another 15 minutes before i realized that dishwasher should go on and then by the next time i'd done that the washing was ready to hang out and i think it took me the whole day to watch a 60 minute program and when my husband came home i said to him do you know what i said you should be really really happy that i am creating this this course that i'm doing because i would go freaking insane if i did not have to work on everything like i can go on holidays but i like working i really really love helping people and do you know what it's okay if you want to be stay home too it depends what your motivator is but my why is helping people be something bigger so for me sitting down watching tv i mean i'm quite partial to you know the shark tank and all those types of things and this is very very sad but i often take notes in those shows um to see how i can you know how i can use that information to help the people who i talk to but you don't have to feel bad if you really really love work i i'm just calling that i look and i agree wholeheartedly with that i'm not i'm i'm very similar i want to be working and i want to be contributing and i want to be having you know having an impact and making a difference to people which is exactly why despite the days that are challenging and you wonder how in the world you actually going to get through part of your to-do list and then the washing and then cook dinner and then collect the kids and go to soccer training at night but that's why that's you know that's why i do that as well it's like well you know it's part of me it's who i am and embrace it all right so it's so if you if you do nothing else after listening to this episode apart from downloading Michelle's awesome workbook is just even think about like take a moment sitting in the car in the traffic and tune out the kids and just think why am i doing this because maybe the answer is you don't want to be doing it anymore like i'm not saying that the answer is always going to be rosy and fantastic or maybe when you work out why you want to do it it actually gives you this newfound you know appreciation for what it is you're actually doing and all of a sudden i think you find like i find occasionally when this happens to me and i go for a run and you know running i do it but i can't say enjoy it this stuff comes to you and all and and when you're not actually thinking about it so it's kind of like you know put yourself out go and sit down have a cup of coffee do whatever you need to do but think about why it is you do what you do why are you a mother why are you you know why are you in business why do you do have the job that you do because when you appreciate what it is that you're doing i find all of a sudden it all makes sense and the guilt isn't there anymore it becomes really logical it's like okay i'm doing this because and you know what that's okay so i'm you know i'm going to go forth with my newfound strength and say it is okay for me to work and i'm going to have x number of hours per week or you know what it's okay for me to not work whatever it ends up being but like you just said you need to own your decision yeah absolutely oh i've got got our renty pants on okay so end of rent moving forward uh right now it's school holidays and probably won't be when people listen to it but the people in America will be coming up to Thanksgiving and you wrote a fantastic blog post if you haven't already checked out Michelle's website it's speedoflifecoaching.com.au is that right yeah yeah i'll pop it in the show notes but she's got this great blog post call called the school holidays ate my homework so can you tell us some tips about how to survive school holidays i mean but you've kind of already mentioned it in this stuff before about setting the time aside but the school holidays are pretty intense for those people who go off to their their job or their retail store every day there's 12 there's 12 weeks of the year we've kind of find someone to look after their kids because nobody i know has shopped chucks down for 12 weeks so some tips on kind of you know making it through like do we you know should we be hiring more staff or should we be doing them more about ourselves like what should we be doing to not feel so guilty about where we're at in the holidays um i think there's a few things that we can do i mean to focus first and foremost on you know our kids aren't at school so someone has to look after them during the day um there are now you know a myriad of different ways we can do that as you said your your daughter loves vacation care my kids love vacation care they're not in vacation care these school holidays because we've just had a holiday um but normally i'd utilize a combination of vacation care um time trade with friends um a lot of mums are in the same situation on school holidays whether they work a corporate job or they've got their own business or they've got their own their own retail store um arrange play dates whole day play dates um what often happens in those scenarios is that the kids entertain themselves anyway and you just need to feed them and maybe resolve the odd um tension over a particular piece of lego um but time trade with friends take a chart you know i'll take your son or daughter on monday if you could take them on wednesday um if you're lucky enough to have grandparents around that can help out grandparents lego this is a fantastic um or just pocket our time of your your day that you know as we've said before you know half a day for work if you you know it's not so easy if you have a bricks and mortar style store um and as you said maybe consider whether or not you need to do a casual hire on school holidays just to give you a bit of a hand um in terms of being able to spread yourself because one of the biggest things um as much as we can plan and plan and plan and plan life with children and life in general can be unpredictable at times so we need to whilst we can have a routine and we can have a plan we need to allow for some flexibility and sometimes on school holidays you need to have that plan B or plan C of what happens if a child is sick or a carefuls through or something like that so i've got i've got another little tip there yeah when you are really really busy and you have the slightly old kids so probably in the you know pretty much able to look after themselves for a couple of hours when you're in another room in the house working is uh i'm only this just because i only have one child but i i make up lunch boxes and so i'm just oh you know like a snack box or something like that so if i know that i've got yeah when i'm recording i usually take about you know an hour and a half sometimes two hours is i'll just be like okay so your lunch box is in the fridge you can help yourself to anything that's in there i'm downstairs if you need me you know make sure you're not first but it just means you kind of a i'm really really big on independent and cultivating independence with children and i mean they do it at school it's not like they can't work it out so having just having something simple like that or maybe if it's smaller children um and you're going to be at home you could set up little stations of things to do so even if you're doing it with them but i find that if you've kind of pre-planned what's going on you don't get frustrated so you're kind of like okay so we've got we've got play over there we've got painting over there we've got you know beads over there and i kind of know that if i'm working really really hard and the crap hits the fan i can just go out to one of those little workstations and spend half an hour and know that i'm gonna get down my bed i'm not the fun mum thing so that that's mother's if i'm gonna add yeah and another thing that i often do with my bigger kids is sometimes they just like to be near me so they will sit quietly and read a book and i can tap away at the computer and and do what i need to do um so you know sometimes it is that that middle ground of okay you can you know you find my chair comfy or you find my rug comfy find go ahead but i'm working you can sit and read quietly but if you're going to be noisy you've got it you know you've got to go um so yeah just i think the biggest thing with school holidays that i in particular learn is sometimes you've got to be a bit flexible um otherwise you will go um you will get frustrated and go a little bit crazy during them and then you're feel guilty afterwards as well so i'm taking away from this because i am the classic overachiever and i can't say that like i said at the beginning i can't say that i think i am the world's best mum love my kid to be it i'm not the fun mum oh great mum but i'm not the fun mum so i'm not the mum who goes out and plays in the sand or does the painting and stuff like that i will cook with my kid and i'll you know i'll go outside and we'll throw the frisbee around and all those kind of stuff but i'm not the artsy crafty kind of person and i think when you embrace that you kind of you've said this all the way along it's like it's putting up the boundaries and then embracing the stuff that you're good at so i know i'm not the crafty the mum so i did exactly what you said earlier on this week on tuesday is i had the little friend over and i did set out the work stations i was like okay you guys can do the painting you guys got beads over there and then we had some games and stuff like that so they pretty much kept themselves months seven years old so they kept themselves entertained for about five hours and it was great and i was here and i was working but i i didn't have any arguments and stuff like that i didn't think i would get that much time but i felt okay because she was still getting to do the things that she liked to do but with her friend like it didn't have to be me yes where and then and then we left we all went out and we cooked and zap biscuits together so little girl got something to take home and we had some treats and that was the thing that i did with them together so taking away from this when you work out your why is it's like business isn't it you kind of work out your strengths and weaknesses and almost like what you can outsource so i outsource the craft and stuff to your little friend and and knowing what you're good at so it's funny because all those little friends when they come over they all want to cook and i'm okay with that like i'll find a bunch of things to them to cook because that's the thing i'm really happy to do whereas some parents can't stand the idea of cooking with kids so yeah outsource the stuff that you're not so great at whether it's in business or in your life as a mom and embrace the stuff that you're good at and let you can be known as the mum where all the kids go to waterbake that's okay i'm more than happy to send my key to you on a craft just to pop your dress in the comments all right i am very very mindful of the time so do you have any top tips apart from everything that we've said that we should know about apart from after you listen to this to go over to thecelynandite.com website and download that's juggling work and home life work I think we have covered quite a bit of of ground so i'm just trying to think if there's any last little tips probably my last one that i will put in this is because i've not been very good at it in the past and i am improving so i'm definitely not the poster child for this one either is just in all of the busyness and all of the juggle we need to factor ourselves in alongside the needs of our kids our family our business our job or whatever it is in our life and just take some time out to practice self-care now people go but i don't have time to go to a 30 minute or one hour yoga class three times a week so i can go and relax and get my ome on it's not actually about that it's finding five minutes in your routine in the morning around lunchtime or the afternoon and in the evening to either re-energize yourself or relax or whatever it you need to get you through your day and stay sane and it doesn't have to be big or glorious either in terms of the self-care and one of the other things that i did send through to you was a self-care mini workbook as well that i'm more than happy for you to share in terms of working out you know having a look at what self-care is and then how you can integrate it into your daily routine with that being another cause of stress and I overwhelm of oh my goodness i've got to look after myself it's in the mix that doesn't have to be big so i quite often it's very very hard in your house to wake up early because we all quite often are awake at five seven in the morning so there's not often the waking up early but sometimes it's as simple for me is at sitting at the dining it so the family's in the lounge room is i'll sit at the dining table with my nice cup and my nice saucer and i'll have a cup of tea just by myself and they're there like they're in the background and but sometimes i have a notepad or you know just to dump some stuff out of my head if that's right i've got a big day on um but just like you said it's just that few minutes that helps you recharge like it's great i love running and i've i've kind of worked that into my very very busy day sometimes my husband will take our daughter to before school i'm so lucky there like i do not think that it's the answer to everything but i tell you what when she threw that tantrum i was like you know what i'm okay i'm embracing the fact that she likes to go and in fact about every two weeks i say to her so did you really want to go this afternoon yeah like she looks at me like i'm an idiot yeah okay just like and and oh this is a great one sorry i'm just so gratie um as much as i don't like children so it was school assembly last week and she was getting an award and they'd sent a night home but she didn't know she was getting involved and i said to her art school assembly and i don't usually go and she goes i don't know you know same old same old i'm not singing or anything i'm like oh no it's end of term i might come to this one she has no no i don't worry about it it's okay you've got better things to do and i worked out afterwards the whole reason she didn't want me to come was because she thought she wouldn't go to school care oh no so when i assured her that even though i was coming she could still go to after school care and i would just come back and figure out it was okay for me to come along with so it's okay like i i feel so empowered thank you so much for for what you've said today because i have to say the last couple of weeks i've really been struggling i've been really really busy with the the launch of the boat if you can me and i've been spending a lot of days and nights working and feeling really bad about maybe i'm not being the best wife and mother but now that you've been talking to me i'm sort of you know spouting out all this stuff that i've been doing and i'm okay i'm i'm doing okay i feel okay now that i'm not neglecting my child and my family we eat i am getting some exercise she seems quite happy she's offered the movies today vacation care and she's had a play date so it's not like i've just shipped her off for the whole school four days so thank you i really appreciate that i'm more than welcome now when i remember i like to ask my guests what makes you go wow when you walk into a retail store i quite often forget because i get a little bit caught up in the conversation but today i remember so what makes you go wow when you walk into a retail store i the biggest thing for me that makes me go wow is the customer service when i walk through and someone looks and smiles and says good morning or good afternoon or how's your day it's that acknowledgement of myself more than you might just come and buy something it's actually that the atmosphere that they that the individuals uh you know provide in in that store um that's you know for me that's the biggest thing and as a mum of a toddler the second thing is whether or not i can steer a pram around um without knocking things off the shelf um so yeah really for me it's that personal customer experience that makes me go wow that makes me remember a store or remember a brand um if i walk in and no one talks to me and i walk out again i typically a won't go back or and typically don't remember the store for the experience either other than you probably won't go back there yeah i love that that is my big thing about like i have i'm so fussy about people saying hello and i've done the same thing i've i've walked out of places that i i've literally had money in my hand waiting to buy something and if someone can't acknowledge me in a small store when i walk in and even if they're on the phone do you know me like even if they just nod and smile or wait just it just like i see you're on the phone perhaps you can't get off because you're in the middle so yeah but you see that i'm here i'm good i'm okay now i can browse for a few minutes while you finish up mm-hmm yeah absolutely well thank you so much for that where can we find you for those people who maybe didn't take note at the beginning okay so i can be found on the web at www.speedoflifecoaching.com.au um also on facebook um speed of life coaching um and i'm coming up to launching a program soon exactly focused on juggling the work in the home and the family life balance called managing the mother load and if you want to pop yourself on the waitlist for that that's at www.managingthemotherload.com we will pop the links for those up in the show notes along with the workbooks that Michelle said and i thought i have one more question for you that you just said oh you uh also i noticed that you are offering some consultations for those people who get in quick absolutely so i'm opening up for some complimentary 30-minute consultations where we can jump on skype and have a chat about your overwhelm or your stress and or if you've just playing got some concerns about what's going on and what you're not sharing with other people in terms of how stressed or overwhelmed you are um if you jump on to my website there's a form on there pop a request through and we'll be in touch that is so generous of you so that's at speedoflifecoaching.com that i use but well you have a lovely day i hear it's not the evil storm that i currently use outside i don't know if you can hear in the background but the trees are lashing and i do know that i apologize if you're listening at the beginning and the internet was a little bit crackly that was all my fault because we are going through a fair storm right now but we soldered on and i'm glad that we did because there was some fantastic truth bombs in there thank you Michelle wonderful thanks so much for having me Selena you have a great day you too thank you i hope you enjoyed this week's episode of the bringing business to retail podcast you can find all of the show notes over at selenenite.com if you found something that you heard today particularly useful i'd love it if you could leave me a review on iTunes or Stitcher and of course feel free to share this episode with someone that you think could benefit by listening to it want more retail business strategies you can watch the bringing business to retail tv show where each week i'll answer a question or provide you with a simple actionable retail business strategy that you can implement in your business right away if you have a question or a gift i'd love to hear from you drop my team an email at pogcast@celenenite.com and i'll see you on the next episode have a great week you (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]
