Are you ready to achieve Work Life Harmony in the New Year? In this episode, I share essential systems that you can upgrade to create a more fulfilling life as a mompreneur.

We'll dive into improving your client experience, content creation and marketing systems, home management, and self-care routines. By implementing these practical strategies, you can streamline your processes and reduce overwhelm, allowing you to focus on what truly matters.

Join me as I provide tips and real-life examples to help you design a harmonious workflow that supports both your professional and personal life

LINKS & MENTIONS

• Harmony Systems Sprint
• Ep 27. Finding Harmony in Life & Business as a Work From Home Mompreneur
• Ep 53. 7 Things That Made My Life Easier as a Work From Home Mom in Business

RESOURCES

• The Mom CEO Suite Masterclass Collection: https://www.themomceosuite.com/masterclass
• CRM: Dubsado - Get 20% off your 1st month (if paying monthly) or 1st year (if paying annually)
• Website Hosting: Showit - Get 1 month free

Connect with Phylicia

FB: Phylicia Pough

IG: @phyliciapough

Connect with The Mom CEO Suite

Website: themomceosuite.com

Instagram: @themomceosuite

Join The Mom CEO Suite Email Community

Hey friend. Welcome to the Mom CEO Suite podcast where faith, family and business come together. I'm your host, Phylicia Pough, Christian wife.

Mom of two and life and business system strategist for mom entrepreneurs.

With over 10 years of experience working behind the scenes of businesses and ministries and as a work from home mompreneur, I'm here to share my personal journey and practical strategies to help you design systems that bring peace to your work and home life. While many strive for balance, I believe.

It'S harmony, an integrated flow that works for you that truly sustains.

Together we'll explore how to grow your.

Service based business in a way that.

Is sustainable and keeps your family at the heart of it all. Plus hear real life stories and expertise from other mompreneurs who are walking the same path.

Motherhood gets hard, entrepreneurship gets hard. But together we can do hard things. Welcome to the Suite.

Hey friend, thank you for being here. So the New Year is right around the corner and this is the time of the year usually when there's lots of reflection.

We've been doing some planning for the New year. You know, we talk a lot about Work Life Harmony here on the podcast.

If you're looking to experience that in a greater way in the New year, then this episode is for you.

I'm going to be talking about a.

Few systems that you need to upgrade if you are really looking to achieve Work Life Harmony in the New year. And I have talked about Work Life Harmony, what it is in past episodes and I will link those in the show notes.

But essentially Work Life Harmony is less about balance, so I don't believe in Work Life balance.

So it's less about balance and trying to make things equal and it's more about integrating your work and your personal life in a way that is peaceful, in a way that feels good for you. And so again, I will link those past episodes where I talk specifically about this and you can check those out if you need to.

If you are new to the concept of Work Life Harmony as I talk about it. So what are these systems that you need to upgrade if you really want to achieve Work Life harmony?

You know, I love all things systems and for me I tell this story a lot. How prior to having my first child, my daughter, I knew the power of systems.

I knew the power of having things automated in my business.

But once my daughter came along and.

I really began to try to navigate this intersection of motherhood and entrepreneurship, I.

Really saw just how much more important they would be for me as a.

Mom in business trying to navigate this intersection. And so I think it's super important.

If you are a mompreneur, to really have systems, and not just any old.

Systems put together any old way, but.

To really have some effective solid systems.

So that you can achieve work life harmony. So let's just get right into this.

So the first area where I believe that you need to have some upgraded systems is in your client experience.

Your client experience is so important.

I think this is an overlooked area.

A lot of times we focus on.

The marketing and we focus on getting the sale, but the work is just beginning once there is an exchange of funds. And so when it comes to the.

Client experience, you want to make sure.

That you are communicating in a way and providing an experience that is building trust between you and the client and that is also saving time for both.

You and your client.

And so when there is inefficient communication, when there are missed emails, missed follow ups, when things fall through the cracks that can really lead to frustration on the part of the client and then missed opportunities for you as well. So really quick, let me tell you this story.

I have been working on these home management templates in notion, and you'll hear.

More about this on the podcast in the upcoming episodes. Because one of my goals is to do a better job of talking more about home systems.

I talk a lot about business systems.

And I'm going to be integrating home systems into the mix more. And so I'm working on these templates for home management. And in notion, I hit a roadblock.

I was trying to figure out how to set something up and I could not figure it out. And so I spent maybe two of my working blocks trying to figure this out. After that, I said, okay, you know.

What, I'm not, I'm not wasting any.

More time on this. Let me hire somebody who actually is.

More proficient than me in all things.

Notion when it comes to their relations, their roll ups, their formulas, all those things. So I went to Fiverr and I.

Did some research on some people.

I found two people who I was interested in hiring for this quick project.

And I sent them both the same.

Message to see if they could handle this issue that I was having.

So the first person, they responded to.

Me rather quickly, probably within an hour or two. And you know, I asked them, can they do this?

You know, is this possible?

They said, yes, this is what your workflow will look like after I do what I do.

I said, okay, great, how much is it?

Okay, great, let's kick off the project. Because of the Time difference, I went to sleep. But the next morning when I was getting ready, they were sending me messages.

That my project was done.

I was like, oh, wow, okay, this is great.

Coming through. Before the expected timeline.

They told me it would take two days. This was like less than 24 hours. And of course I checked things out.

I had a couple of questions, they answer all of my questions, they reassured me and everything was good to go. Another day goes by and I still.

Have not heard from the second person that I messaged. So I ended up just sending them another message saying, just please disregard. This project is already completed.

So now in this scenario, there's two different client experiences that are happening. The first one was very good. He was very responsive and had good communication.

You know, there wasn't a whole lot of back and forth and things just were smooth and seamless and everything, everything got done quickly.

The second one, I didn't even really get a chance to go through what her client experience would have been because there was a lack of communication and lack of timely communication.

And so in this situation, what the second person could have done, you know, it could be her standard that she does not respond to messages within a 24 hour time period, but that can be made clear in your service offerings, in your pages, wherever you promote your business, you can communicate what your response time is going to be so that people are not just twiddling their fingers waiting to hear from you.

And you can kind of set that standard that, okay, if you take two to three business days to respond to an inquiry, somebody who prefers a quicker response time, they won't even waste their time in reaching out to you. Okay, so. So just some other ways that you can upgrade your client experience is of course using a CRM.

And I've talked about CRMs in a few of the past episodes, talking about if you need a CRM for your online business and how to choose the right one. So I'll link those two episodes in the show notes.

But if you use a CRM, this allows you to kind of centralize all of your communication and all of your information as it relates to your clients.

You're able to automate things like your client responses and your onboarding process and appointment reminders and all of these things, it just levels up your client experience. You're able to create email templates and standardize things so you are not starting from scratch every time.

And when you do this, when you have these templates in place, when you have this automation in place, when you have everything kind of centralized Then you are freeing up mental space for yourself. Right? You don't have to remember, oh, what is supposed to be happening in my client experience right now? Or where is this person in my process?

Like, the tool, the CRM is keeping all of that information and that data for you. You're able to capture information strategically so you can avoid that back and forth via email.

And you're presenting yourself as a professional and giving all of your clients a consistent experience. Okay, so that's the first area that you can look to upgrade if you really want to achieve some work. Life harmony is your client experience system.

Okay, so the next thing you can look at is your content creation and marketing system. So when it comes to marketing, you know, this area can seem overwhelming for a lot of entrepreneurs, especially mom entrepreneurs as well.

Because I feel like, you know, many times we start a business and we are the doers in our business, we are executing the service, but then there comes a point in time where we realize, oh, I can't just execute the service. I also have to market my business, I also have to sell. I also have to do all of these other things unless it is outsourced.

But, you know, a lot of times you're figuring it out as you go along and then you kind of decide what you can outsource or delegate. And so sometimes marketing can feel overwhelming, especially on social media. And so this is an area that you can look to upgrade.

And the way you can upgrade this area is really by simplifying it. We talked about simplification in a few of the past episodes. Simplifying it and also creating a system around it.

So this allows you to be able to make sure that you are still marketing your message, make sure that your audience is still hearing your message, but it's being done in a way where it's not taking up or monopolizing all of your time. Okay, so what are some ways that you can upgrade your content creation or marketing system?

So number one, you can implement a content calendar, right?

So instead of just randomly posting things or creating content out of the blue in real time, you can actually plan in advance and create a calendar that will allow you to plan out what your content is going to be for a set period of time.

And then you're able to, once you have that plan, you can batch create your content for, you know, however you market your business, whether that's social media or email or your podcast. Right. So having that content calendar just kind of simplifies your day to day when it comes to marketing your business.

Because you're not in real time trying to figure out what you should be creating or what you should be posting. You can also, of course, use automation tools for any channel that you choose to market your business on.

So whether that's email marketing, they have lots of automation possibilities within all of these email marketing tools, like ConvertKit, MailerLite, Flow Desk, all the things you can automate a lot of things. And then if you're doing social media, they have tons of schedulers where you can schedule your content out.

So find an automation tool that works for you for wherever it is you are pushing out content for your marketing. And then the last one is that you can repurpose your content. So I'll use myself as an example. My main marketing platform or channel is this podcast.

And so I create a content calendar based on what I'm going to talk about every week here on the podcast.

That content calendar is developed based on what, you know, what current offer I'm promoting, based on any launches that I might have, any special events or holidays that's happening. And so I'll just create my content based on that. Once I know what my content is, I create my podcast episodes.

Then from the podcast episode, I use that specific content to create my emails.

So my email list gets information about what's happening on the podcast and I will pull themes from the podcast episodes to send to my email community.

Now, sometimes it does happen where I'll just have a random idea or I am inspired to write about a particular thing and I'll just add that it doesn't feel hard because it's, it's inspired and I feel creative and it just flows.

But I am not forcing myself to come up with like something new and additional because in general, I'm pulling from whatever I already created from the podcast from there. So we have the podcast, we have the email. In terms of the website, I'm creating blog style show notes.

And so again, that's pulling straight from the content from the podcast.

And then in terms of Pinterest, again, I'm not creating just new, you know, clever quotes and all of these things for Pinterest, it's literally pulled from whatever I talked about in the podcast. So it's one piece of content that is repurposed for different platforms. Okay.

And so when you do this, you are simplifying your content creation and marketing system, but you are also positioning yourself to be able to be consistent in marketing your business. And you are saving probably hours per week by having this plan and by doing things in advance batching things in advance.

Okay, so that's the second area that you can look to upgrade. All right, so the next area that you can look to upgrade, the next system is your home management system.

And so I've briefly mentioned that I'm going to be talking about home management systems more throughout the Mom CEO Suite brand. We talk a lot about business systems.

But home management is also important in this whole concept of experiencing work life harmony because you can have your business systems running beautifully, but if things are disorganized at home or you don't have any type of systems that you are implementing at home, there's stress that's involved. You know, your time is not being maximized, there's distractions.

And so you want to be able to have a well run household the same way that you want to have a well run business. So this really supports this idea of having peace of mind and freeing you up to focus on what really matters to you, whatever that might be.

Okay, so a few ways that you can upgrade your home management systems is, and this is a very simple one, you can use a shared calendar to keep track of all of your family activities and appointments and things like that. So everyone is in the know about what is happening and things are just not falling through the cracks as it relates to activities and appointments.

You can also use some templates to kind of support you in your meal planning and your household tasks. And stay tuned. I'll be sharing some resources related to those things as well.

So just using shared calendars and templates to help organize and manage the activities of the household, the actual activities. And then another thing that you can do to upgrade your home management system is to really just implement some type of rhythm.

You might think of it as a routine, but I like to think of them as rhythms. Just what is going to be your rhythm day to day or what is going to be your rhythm for how you handle certain tasks in the household?

So whether that is cleaning, whether that's laundry, or other, you know, recurring tasks that happen in the home, or are you going to be outsourcing some of these things? Right. So think about what the rhythm is going to be. So I've mentioned before that I don't do laundry on a particular day.

I have a system set up where we already have laundry separated. So whenever that laundry basket for that particular load gets full, I'll just throw it in the machine.

So I'm eliminating the step of having to sort clothes before I wash them. So just finding little ways that you can again Simplify the process. And I found that that's helpful for me.

I'm not in one day saying, okay, Saturday, I have to wash all of the laundry for the entire week for everybody in the house. Absolutely not. That doesn't work for me. But it could be something that works for you based on your schedule. Right.

And so creating or implementing your routines or your rhythms is really based on what works best for you and your family. Okay, so just think about that in the common household areas. Cooking, cleaning, laundry.

I've mentioned how meal planning or meal prepping is, was like a pain point for me. And so I created an entire system about it and I'll talk about it deeply in a future episode.

But again, just implement some type of routine or rhythm as it relates to your, your household tasks. And then of course, you can even implement some type of automation as it relates to your home management systems as well.

So people have things like robotic vacuums that automatically just going around your house, picking up things and cleaning your floors.

Or you can do something like grocery delivery that's, you know, it's not necessarily automated, but it's using a tool to support you in your household tasks. So grocery delivery can be super helpful. And there's other tools that you can use to help support you in your home processes.

Okay, so when you do this, again, you're simplifying things for yourself. You're able to see, okay, I have the capacity to do these tasks.

These are tasks that I need to kind of delegate to maybe other people in the household or delegate to someone else outside of the home so that you can reduce your mental load. Mental load. When it comes to motherhood, it's a whole situation and a topic that needs a separate episode.

But just the mental load of running a home and raising children, it's a lot.

And so when we are, you know, implementing these routines and rhythms, when we are are leveraging tools to kind of support us in our tasks, we are reducing the mental load that comes along with motherhood. There will be less overwhelm.

It'll be easier to kind of integrate home and business life where we are at a place of experiencing that peace and that work life harmony, which is our goal. Okay, so then the final area that you can look to upgrade if you want to experience work life harmony. And I think this is really important.

I don't think we've ever talked about this in terms of a system here on the podcast, but I believe that we all should have some type of self care system. So what does it look like for you to care for yourself. And what is going to be that routine or rhythm for you implementing those things? Right.

So whether that is your appointments, it could be simply your doctor's appointments, Right?

Because a lot of times, not only that, but a lot of times we are quick to take care of everybody else in the household to make sure their appointments and their schedules are intact, but we neglect our own appointments and taking care of ourselves. And so what does that look like for you?

What doctor's appointments, dentist appointments, OB appointments, what appointments do you need to schedule and make sure you are sticking to and going to.

We have to take care of ourselves because if we don't, we're going to burn out, we're going to experience this fatigue, we are going to just be sluggish, no energy, we'll be less productive.

So when we prioritize this self care, we are able to show up as our best ourselves so that we can support our household, so that we can support our children.

And so again, some ways that you can kind of upgrade your self care system is make sure you're scheduling your self care appointments, whether that is your doctor's appointments or this is your workout appointments. Are you going to the gym? Do you have pampering sessions? Or are you scheduling time just to sit, be still, be quiet and have space to think? Okay.

Another way that you can upgrade your self care system is to create morning and evening routines that really support you as a person.

Like what are the things that are going to nurture you and set you up for having a great day and then, you know, set you up for good rest and closing out your day? Okay, so what are those things?

Whether it's physical, whether it is spiritual, whether it is mental, what are those things that are going to position you to have good days? So are you, are you doing devotionals or praying in the morning? Are you exercising? Are you journaling?

Are you sitting with a cup of tea, sitting in silence with a candle lit? Like what are your routines that are really going to around you and nurture you? Okay.

Finally, another way that you can kind of upgrade this system is setting boundaries. I've done past episodes about boundaries. Boundaries are super important when it comes to taking care of yourself.

So setting boundaries with you yourself. Yes.

Setting boundaries with your family and also setting boundaries with your work so that you are able to again have your personal time, be able to prioritize the things that you have designated as priorities and making sure that you are getting the proper rest. And so when we have consistent self care again this is allowing us to show up as our best selves in all of the areas. Right.

And it's really again supporting this greater sense of harmony that we all can achieve and experience. Okay, so what I want you to do, I've gone through the four systems that you can look at to upgrade.

If you want to experience more work life harmony, it's your client experience system, your content creation and marketing system, your home management system, and your self care system. And so just to start out, pick one of those systems and evaluate how you are going to make improvements to that system. All right.

So I would love to hear how you are going to improve. Shoot me a message on Instagram. I would love to hear from you. I wish you health, success, love, blessings, all the things.

I'll see you guys in the next episode and in the new year.

Thank you for listening to the Mom CEO Suite podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, can you do us a favor?

Leave a review on itunes and share.

With other moms in business like you.

Help us spread our message and empower others who are at this intersection of motherhood and entrepreneurship.