Finding Work-Life Balance As A Wedding Industry Professional

Juggling tasks between schedules, meeting clients, and keeping a home intact is a superhero’s job. This, for sure, is something that Jamie Wolfer and Heather Loree Fier are doing in their everyday lives. In this episode, Jamie Wolfer and Heather Loree Fier discuss the struggle to find a work-life balance. They also share the systems that are working and tricks that help them to keep balance, where improvements can be made, and their goals for 2020 in finding a better balance.

—

Listen to the podcast here:

Finding Work-Life Balance As A Wedding Industry Professional

Jamie: I don’t know about you, but I feel like I am constantly on the struggle bus when it comes to figuring out the work-life balance as a solopreneur. Heather, I’d be silly to say I didn’t know, it affects you greatly too.

Heather: It’s affecting me over here. I’d say the US work culture is crazy intense. My sister likes to say, “Capitalism is going to kill us all.” It’s pushing us to the brink of almost breaking because of bills and things like that. How, as an entrepreneur, solopreneur, do you find balance and a vestige of sanity? This is a big problem.

Jamie: It’s a huge problem. We’re going to jump right on into this with an example of a small get together network type thing that I went to. It was probably eight wedding professionals and one gal who was mentoring us in the world of Pinterest and guiding us a little bit. There was another planner there, and she was like, “I don’t understand why clients text me at 11:00 at night on my husband’s birthday. I have to respond to them.” All of us at the table, our jaws on the table and being like, “You don’t have to respond to them.” That’s a great example of it, but I even struggle with smaller elements of that in my life. I’m not going to text the client back at 11:00 at night. You text me 11:00 at night and I’d be frustrated because I do have some boundaries. Figuring out, even negotiating the minute of details is hard.

Heather: The world we live in is interconnected. You got your email. You’re getting texts in your pocket at any time at any hour. Putting those boundaries up and laying out clear expectations for your clients is important. I put some more boundaries up than you. People do not text me.

Jamie: People don’t text me either. In fact, I tell clients, “Please don’t text me.” I’m a terrible texter.

Heather: If it’s the wedding day and I’m there coordinating, that is when they get my number, and then I tell them to burn it after that day, “This is a burner phone. Don’t ever use that number again or give it to anyone.” I tell them that. That’s how they should, I hope, respect it and all of them have. Getting those boundaries, step one, you guys can’t allow your clients to set those boundaries. You have to set them upfront, putting that in your contract, making it clear. It doesn’t have to be something that’s a negative for them, it should be important to them that you are healthy and whole and not losing your mind because you’re going to do a much better job.

I listened to an episode of Jenna Kutcher’s podcast, Goal Digger. If you don’t know what it is, it’s a big thing. It’s almost as big as this show. She’s good. She’s new. It was episode 298. It was an episode all about the secret of rest and why it makes your business better. She talked about having breaks from technology and setting those boundaries and even with her team, setting boundaries. Unless there’s a big launch or major thing that they’re pushing to get done, they don’t even text each other and even when her team is needing to do that, they have to respect each other and go, “Can I text you? Is this okay?” Before opening up a conversation and a dialogue and intruding into their space. It’s important for us to have that time for our brains to recoup. It can be a lot. Boundaries, expectations, step one to set up a good work/life balance.

Jamie: Once I was able to communicate in an effective way to clients like, “I need you not to text me,” because one, I threw in little self-deprecation. I’m a bad texter. Anyone who knows me and I guarantee you my sister’s nodding her head. My brother is nodding, my husband, my best friend, all of them are like, “She’s the worst.” Don’t text me because I’m going to become a terrible wedding planner. I read the text, I cannot mark it as unread and I forget to get back to it.

Heather: It’s easy to lose track of a text. It’s a dangerous communication method. If anything, I’d say a system like Slack might be a better way. For those of you who like to have that more immediate conversation via text format. Slack, you can set your clients up in there in little chat rooms. It’s easier to keep tabs on what you’ve responded to, what you haven’t and also it’s not your phone number. It doesn’t have to get weird that they’re straight-up calling you at 2:00 AM because they can’t sleep because they’re worried about their dress fitting or something.

Jamie: I’m not kidding, I’ve had a mother of the bride call me at 5:30 in the morning of a wedding and I was like, “Heck no.” I’m not even due there until 2:00 this afternoon. I’m here to help. I’m a helper. I’m a wedding planner, this is what I do, but you don’t call me that early in the morning.

Heather: That’s intrusive. I’d say using systems like that to give yourself a little buffer. If that lady had been reaching out via Slack at that time, you cannot have the notifications on. When you decide to check into that and go into work mode and leave your normal life mode, which is probably later than 5:30 AM, you then engage in that. You’re now in control of when these work things are coming to you, when you’re diving into all of it.

Jamie: That’s powerful because in order to be able to have a work-life balance, you have to have some physical separation. I’ve never heard of Slack. You are the queen of resources, by the way. I’m always like, “That sounds great.” I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Hiring a VA can help take some weight off your plate. Click To Tweet

Heather: I love to try out different tools and things.

Jamie: She’s the tool queen. If I’m ever like, “I wonder if there’s a resource for this.” I’m not going to Google it anymore. I’m going to text Heather. I’m going to email Heather and be like, “What is this tool?” In order to be able to have those boundaries, you have to set up physical barricades, whether that be, having them only sending things to your inbox instead of text messaging or communicating through Slack. Something that you can step away from, whereas text messages automatically will pop up on your phone and then you’re going to have that notification anxiety where you’re like, “I’ve got to check it.” When you have it in your inbox or I’m assuming a tool like Slack, I’m going to pretend like I know what I’m talking about, you provide a physical distance and a place for those conversations to take place that doesn’t bleed into your normal life.

Heather: I will say at points during my career, even with email, I have taken email off my phone. This is not something probably a lot of people are doing, but I’m telling you it felt good. When business was cranking with my company before this, I would get many emails per day. It got to the point where I was like, “No.” I cannot handle having these on my phone because I know at any moment I can go check them and it wasn’t even enough of a barricade that it didn’t have notifications popping up, but knowing it was there, I was like, “Maybe I should peek. Maybe there’s a problem. Maybe there’s something I need to check into.” I fully deleted the entire access to it on my phone so I was like, “Only when I decide I’m going to go sit at my computer and I’m going to be focused on it, that’s when I will do it.”

One of the things that I’ve seen that’s been helpful on that email front is I believe Tim Ferriss outlined this in his book, The 4-Hour Workweek. It’s not a 4-hour workweek. I don’t know any business you can run for 4 hours a week. He gives a lot of great resources in that book. One of the things he talks about is putting an auto-reply on your email saying, “I check my email every day at 9:00 AM, and that’s when I get back to my emails.” He has a set time every day that’s when that’s done. Once he closes that for the day, he’s not jumping in there to get back to people immediately. He’s not using it as that digital leash that we’re accustomed to in this modern world. It gives him space, or anyone using this method, space to be creative, to be focused on the project you’re doing.

Many of us have the habit of we check our email then we’re working on something and it’s like, “Ding.” Another email and then we go over and look at it and it stops your flow. You can’t get into a flow state and be productive. If once a day is way too scary for you, maybe consider three check-ins a day. You check-in in the morning. You check-in in the afternoon, and then right at the end of the day to close it out. Some limitations on the email or any access point where someone else is coming to you bringing their priorities to you. Ultimately, when you’re running a business, you need to focus on your priorities and what you need to do in your business and that’s not going to get done by other people throwing their stuff on your plate, which is what email is.

Jamie: I see all the merits of removing your inbox from your phone or replying all at the same time every day. I know there are going to be readers out there that are going to say the same exact thing I’m about to say. My life is unpredictable. What if I value those five minutes every other hour where I can reply to an email? I can’t carve out three separate specific times a day because my life is far too unpredictable to do that. That’s where I’m at. I couldn’t sit down at 9:00 every day.

My toddler sometimes gets in the mood to smack my laptop close on my knuckles while I’m typing. I kid you not he’ll be like, “No mama,” smack. He gets reprimanded for smacking people with computers. It doesn’t change the fact that sometimes, he wakes up in a mood and I cannot be replying to emails at that time. I’m the type that sometimes I’ll sit down and power through a bunch of emails. I try to keep them within business hours. 98% of the time, the emails I respond to are between 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM. Every once a while, I sit down and replied ten emails because it got to a point where I keep missing out on my opportunities. I hate emailing outside of business hours, but I got to do it. It’s emotionally detaching yourself from the notification number. I feel anxiety looking at how many emails I have.

Heather: I recommend as far as a system for handling that. This is something that for me, I handle it well. I’ve got a way that I do it and it works. My husband, this is a struggle for him. His inbox gets backed up to 100-plus emails. Then he’s like, “I have to get to this.” He’s worked up and I’m like, “You need to use my system.” What my system is when I do the check-in on emails every day, I first scan the email and I go, “Is this something I can answer within five minutes?” If not, I’m going to start it for later if it requires me to do something.

Sometimes there are emails you get that you say, “Yes. No. Maybe. Okay.” That’s the whole response. You can bang those out fast. If it’s something where I need to look at it later, it’s going to take me to do some research or deeper thought, then I star that and then that way I know it’s something in there, it’s not looming in that scary unread number, but it’s n its own category of needs follow-up. I go into my Asana, which is where I keep my to-do list, and I add it to my to-do list where I’m like, “Email from Jamie. Follow up with her tomorrow.” That’s what I’m going to block off twenty minutes to think about an answer for her and write something back that is respectful and gives her some thought.

The third category is the stuff that someone else can handle. If you’re a solopreneur, maybe you don’t have someone else who can help you. One thing you can look into getting set up for yourself is an intern or a VA that’s based internationally. These things can be affordable and help take some of the weight off your plate. I have a category where it’s something that I don’t personally need to do and someone else can handle, I forward it to my team to do and that way I’m not burning 10 or 15 minutes on something that they can easily go in. Let’s say it was someone in the Wedding Hacker club who wanted to upgrade or something, they can go in and handle that and give the confirmation that it’s done.

Those are the ways I organize my emails and I find it to be anxiety-reducing because I’ve looked at everything, there’s not an unknown floating out there that I’m like, “What if one of these emails is this huge opportunity or a terrible notification or something that I need to see and know about?” I give it the time to look at it and then I sort it into one of those categories and make it low stress, makes it where if I do check-in once a day or even if I do the check-in on my phone, which is sometimes you do. I’m not saying I don’t have my email on my phone, I do have my email on my phone. A few years ago, where things were too crazy and I did not want that in my life. I will check-in and if I see a new email, I’ll scan it and then I’ll categorize it and that’s it. That way, it takes that anxiety away. At least that works for me.

Jamie: I find that if I can mark it as unread and be like, “Okay,” because I do scan the emails too. It’s not like I’m like, “I wonder what’s in here?” I’ll do a quick scan, but I’m also beholden to making sure it’s an intentional reply as well. I would have the hardest time being like, “Okay or sounds great.” I’d be like, “No. It’s missing at least 42 other sentences.” That’s one thing I’m working on personally within myself. I will also do that often of like, “I’ll scan it. I will get to it later,” and then have this feeling of like, “Why did I wait? I have many.”

Finding Work Life Balance: Always limit yourself to specific tasks.

Sometimes I will stop in the middle of what I’m doing. If I know that it’s quick and easy to answer, I’ll reply to it almost immediately. If I can’t, get it off my plate, get out of the way, learn to be less verbose, Jamie. Use less words. Be quicker. Get to the point more quickly. That helps out with my balance better. Getting sucked into all these emails where I’m writing novels back to my clients because I want them to know how special they are by the number of words that I use, if I keep getting sucked into that, then I don’t have a healthy work-life balance.

Heather: It makes it more difficult too with a toddler slamming your fingers into your laptop. Not a lot of time to write out a big long response with your fingers smashed. On that note, balancing having the schedule of kids at home and working, that’s a whole other level of gymnastics of the business world that you’re handling with the flexibility and things you’re dealing with. What works for you in your normal week? What makes things flow smoothly with all that?

Jamie: A loosely held schedule. For us, usually Mondays are a short day for my daughter’s at school. They come home an hour earlier and I would love to sit down with the district and be like, “Why are we short on Mondays?” That’s neither here nor there, that rant is saved for another time and another audience. Mondays are my filming day. Mondays are where I will sit down. As soon I’ve dropped the kids off at school, I’ve got the toddler in front of the TV, sometimes I have to do that. I put my face on, I write my notes for what I’m about to be talking about or I do my DIY from doing something like that and then I go ahead and record. I’m usually done with that by the time the girls get home from school. I can launch into mom stuff, which is picking up, helping with homework and then figuring out what to do for dinner. I’m oversimplifying it for the sake of keeping this show under 4 hours.

Tuesday is my editing day. I edit and upload depending on the length of the video and the complication of it. Wednesday is my family reset day. It’s the day where I’m like, “There are 42 loads of laundry to do. We had takeout so let’s be intentional about cooking something.” Thursday, I have a video go up on my personal channel usually. Friday, I try to not respond to any emails at all whatsoever. We oftentimes have Friday events and/or Saturday events. We don’t get a fresh full two-day weekend. For me, I don’t have a designated time where I can sit down and do emails or sit down and do the planning. I feel like I am a little bit behind the ball, where I’m like, “I’m going to get a plan set up in place,” which is why I’m enjoying this episode because I’m writing down everything you’re saying. I could do that.

Having that loose structure is helpful for me because by the time it hits 5:00 in the afternoon, I have to be done with work. I don’t have the luxury of jumping back on to my inbox or filming because the lighting is gone and it’s terrible. The kids are home, so it’s going to be loud. I have to be specific. Toddler naptime is one of the most precious things to me because I’m like, “Bye, boy. I’ll see you later.” I go. Anything that requires me to have a nice face or a quiet background, I try to power through during nap time. Also, it saves my knuckles from being slapped. I say loosely regimented schedule because I can’t hold to anything too tightly, but that tends to be how my week’s workout.

Heather: That makes sense to me. Can we say that mompreneurs are heroes because that is so much to juggle? Going off to a workplace that is quiet, peaceful, without little toddlers dictating what you should be doing at any given moment, which is what toddlers do, they’re the boss. It’s much simpler in this life. I saw one person makes a rude comment towards a photographer who was pregnant in a Facebook group that almost threw me for a loop where I was going to chew this man’s head off because he said, “Another mompreneur deciding she’s going to try to work when she should take care of her kids.” It’s like, “You don’t know this woman.” She may not be in a position where she wants to work for fun. Perhaps she’s a single mother. She has to feed her children. There is no need for judgment of that. It is a lot of work to balance being a mom and a business person. It’s terrible when I saw that it frustrated me beyond belief. Any of you out there who are balancing those two roles, kudos to you. It takes a lot of effort.

Jamie: Also, I probably would have had some choice words for that human in my head. I’m definitely not one to engage on Facebook or on platforms like that, but I would have had a witty retort in my brain that I would want to share.

Heather: I was like, “This person is not my type of person. You need to get out of here.” The one thing I can think of for me, I was a foster mom and we had many kids come in and out of our house over a few years and during that time, the saving grace for me was SOPs, Standard Operating Procedures. It sounds kooky to have that when you are a solopreneur, but you need to do it. You need to set up templates for things that way it’s easy and predictable, especially any routine tasks that you’re going to do over and over. Ultimately, as your business grows, a lot of those tasks are going to get handed off to someone else, whether it be an intern or someone you hire or whoever.

It’s hard to train someone and also develop those procedures. If you take the time to do it and write down the steps you do every time, let’s say you make a timeline for a wedding, every time you do the same process, as you’re going through at one time, make notes on that. What are you doing step-by-step? Maybe you don’t organize it perfectly and it’s scribbled down somewhere, but when someone comes and works for you and you’re ready to train them, you now at least have that to build off of. You can organize it into something like Asana or Trello, something like that where you can give them this process that they can use as a checklist and a guide.

What I would do with anyone that’s on my team is they have these templates and then I tell them, “As you’re doing your job, see a way to do it better.” If you see a shortcut, if you see a step I didn’t clarify, keep this as a working document, keep adding to it. That part of your job is to continue to make this standard operating procedure clear, better, more concise, optimized. If that person ever leaves your team, you now have an even better version of what you had to give to the next person and make training easy. I feel like that’s a stumbling block for many people and it’s something that starts with you taking that little bit of effort to write down your process.

Jamie: I’m in that exact position. I’m on the hunt for an intern to come in and help out with things. I’m also on the hunt for an assistant to come alongside me and help out with things and I’m realizing, “I have not written any of this down yet. I need or want to have it written down before I bring somebody on.” I’m in the process of doing that. I’m surprised by how easy it is because I’ve been doing this long enough that I’m like, “This is what I do with step one.” I could write that down as step one, “How did that happen?” I have enough experience under my belt that I’m like, “I’m not making this up as I go along anymore.”

I do have a pattern and I do have a rhythm and it ends up working out well. I’ve been surprised how easily those are coming together. It’ll be interesting once I bring someone on. If they end up reading blogs being like, “It was easy.” It’s been easy so far. It’s not as scary as I thought it was going to be. For a long time, I’ve had this fear if I have an email template that I send out, then it’s going to feel disingenuous. Me wanting to tell everybody how much I love them through the written word. Realizing that templates are perfectly fine and if you want to add some personality in there or some personalization, feel free to jump in there and add those in later. If you find yourself repeating the same things over and over again, there’s nothing wrong with a template.

If you find yourself doing the same things repeatedly, there's nothing wrong with a template. Click To Tweet

Heather: You can make a bubbly, fun, happy template. It doesn’t have to be like, “These are the words that I’m telling you. I’m a robot.” It can be something fun and warm and inviting to the person reading it and still not be something you’re writing from scratch. That’s a huge tool that folks can be using, and seriously, the templates and stuff, I live by these. In Gmail, you can make pre-canned responses. You can have that set up in your Gmail. If you have a customized web address as I do, you can host your email through Gmail and then it has the canned responses in there, you can write templates for all sorts of things.

When I was setting up the Wedding Hacker Expo, I emailed an ungodly amount of people at points to get them excited about the event, to promote the event, all of that and I used the template. It at least made it where I could get through the volume of things I had to do without my fingers falling off from cramping. Use these things. Think about processes you’re repeating, different things for maybe a single one-off project or maybe every month you do the same things. There are always ways to make your systems a bit better. It helps with the work/life balance.

To get back to work-life balance in a more general sense, are there any tips you’d have that might help people that have that chaotic schedule a little bit of flexibility week-to-week to keep the momentum going to get back to work? I feel like sometimes when you get back into family mode or normal life mode that it can be hard to dive back into work the next day or if it’s been a few days. Do you have any tips for that of how you stay motivated and fired up?

Jamie: I find that I am invested in my business that I have to remind myself to pull away for family moments sometimes. My work-life balance probably sometimes does a deeper dive into projects and weddings. I’m home with a toddler, so it’s not I can do that deep of dive into the work portion of the work/life balance. I don’t have a hard time falling back into it on a Monday morning. Usually for me, it’s like, “It’s go time. Let’s do this. Here we go.” I have a harder time relaxing on a Friday evening.

Heather: I can see that and I’m a little bit for myself a little concerned because if you didn’t know, I’m pregnant. Little baby girl is going to be joining us and I’m like, “What’s going to happen for this business stuff?” It’ll be a whole new balancing act to get in place as I settle in and heal and she settles in. Figuring out how to pull me away, especially from a squishy cute little tiny baby is going to be a little difficult. When you are passionate about what you’re doing, which absolutely I’m here, that it will be something that will pull me back like a moth to a flame. It’s going to be bringing in the help to support me and fortunately, I have a lot of families nearby. My husband and I bought the property next door to my parents so we can throw a rock at their house, but it would be rude to do that.

Jamie: I’m jealous that you have the option to throw a rock at your parents’ house. I couldn’t throw a rocket.

Heather: Maybe if you could get a launchpad.

Jamie: That wasn’t a good visual. My parents are 1.5 hours away from us.

Heather: Far enough away where it’s not convenient for a baby sitter and we’re in the fortunate position that we are going to have four grandparents who are all retired and within 10 minutes. If anything, it’s overwhelming amounts of grandparents. It’s helpful and when we had these foster children, it was easy for me to be like, “I have an important call. I can’t do mom mode now. Please, someone come help and entertain this child outside.” I could then focus.

Finding your support team, whatever that looks like to you and maybe you don’t have family close and you have to turn more towards other resources or maybe friends. That’s something to consider is finding other entrepreneurs who are in the same phase of life where they’re local and your local maybe at one of these networking events and you guys can trade-off like, “I’m going to do my work and you’re going to have my kid over there and then the next day flip-flop it.” Building those relationships where you don’t have to necessarily spend money out-of-pocket or doesn’t have to be something that’s a big investment. You give yourself the space to find that balance, so you can focus on your work and feel like you’re putting all your effort into that you want to and then return back and put your focus in on your life.

Jamie: I will say I don’t have any family in the area. We don’t have many friends because we haven’t been here for that long. We’ve been here before, but we haven’t developed a community. I don’t know anyone else. Hearing you say all these things, I’m like, “I don’t have that.” Not to be an overly negative Nancy, trust me, I would tap into a resource of a fellow mom that I could be like, “You want to borrow my kid for 1.5 hours? I’ll borrow yours next. We’ll take turns.” I don’t have those resources.

For me, I’m putting together The Master Plan, my online wedding course for an example. My husband goes to bed earlier than I do. My grind would happen when he goes to bed and that’s when I would put together all of my concepts and all of my ideas. My husband and I, we tend to fight more if we spend less time together. We don’t feel grounded if we’ve missed out on time together for long. During the busy month or busy months for wedding planning, we have to carve out time, otherwise we’re both like, “You annoy me.” It means I miss you. We’re strange humans. I’m aware of saying that aloud.

Finding Work Life Balance: There are always ways to make your systems a bit better.

Heather: That’s normal. I’m not a counselor or anything so I can’t give a professional opinion on that, but it seems like a normal reaction.

Jamie: Thanks for validating that.

Heather: No problem.

Jamie: For me, it was setting up the night before what I was going to do the next day. I even went as far as to set up replies to emails and not send them out until the next day. I didn’t want people to think that I’m responding to emails at 11:00 at night.

Heather: You don’t want to set that precedent. You do not want that.

Jamie: I knew the next day was going to be a busy one or I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to get into the next day. I would set updrafts. I’d set up draft emails. I would research video topics after the kids went to bed on the night when my husband decides to the game instead of watching TV on the couch or whatnot. I don’t have other physical people around me to rely and my husband goes into an office every day. I can’t force my toddler to nap longer. I have to get creative with how I use my time while still maintaining those boundaries. I’ll be honest, I still have no idea what I’m doing. I’m still struggling. I struggle with anxiety trying to figure out this balance.

Heather: What you are doing with the emails is an important point and another tool or tactical way to approach this is brain dumping at the end of the day. That was a situational, short-term thing for you that you don’t normally start drafting emails at 11:00 at night that you’re going to send the next day. I do like to end my workday whenever that is with brain dumping a list of all the things that I knew I didn’t get done, in that way it doesn’t hang on me as I go try to do normal life things or when I’m going to bed I’m not like, “That thing, did I go on that website and sign up?” I don’t want all the popping into my mind. For entrepreneurs, that is common. You feel ideas come to you at all times. I like to keep a notepad handy in the house that if something pops in my mind, I’m going to go write that down and it will be there tomorrow when I’m focused on working and not spin myself out starting to dig into some new projects at night.

Jamie: You’re going to laugh. I have five notepads around me.

Heather: You’re a note-taker. It’s part of your entrepreneurial thing. You come up with ideas and you’re like, “I need to put this somewhere so it’s not relying on my brain and weighing me down.” That’s helpful. I want to jump back to the idea of interns and finding help because that’s something for people who are solopreneurs getting going that haven’t hired people before. Where do you find these people? That’s a question and a stressor, but it’s something that as your business grows and as you get to the point where you can have someone help you and you want to find affordable help, there are resources.

Some that I suggest that you might look into, there’s a website called GenM. They have interns that you can get partnered up with all over the place. Their cost is about $150 for three months, $50 a month, for interns that are going to work 10 hours a week. It is a little bit of a process to find an intern. They’re normally untrained. Maybe they’re in college, things like that. I’ve worked with three different interns from there and I hired 1 of the 3. All of them were decent. One of them was a go-getter, who is in college and was working herself too hard and was having a mental breakdown, I was like, “You need not intern right now.” I let her go because she was pushing herself too hard. She did not have this work/life balance. I was like, “I’m not going to have you burn yourself out for me.”

Upwork is another great resource. You can find people to do all sorts of stuff. You’ve got to think as a solopreneur. You have your skills and some stuff are not going to be in your wheelhouse and instead of going and learning, let’s say how to edit videos, Jamie knows how to do that. Awesome for her but that does not mean I know how to do that. I might go on Upwork and hire someone on a one-off job to edit some videos for me if I needed one.

Playing to your skills and finding people like a contractor, one time or perhaps eventually many times hiring them to do these different tasks that maybe are out of your wheelhouse. It helps keep your work/life balanced because knowing your strengths and playing to those strengths and not setting yourself up to be overwhelmed staying up until 1:00 in the morning trying to learn how to use some Camtasia or something, one of that software, it’s not what you need to do. There are better ways.

To be a successful solopreneur, you have to know what you're good at and what you're not good at. Click To Tweet

Jamie: The power in the statement of what you’re sharing is you have to know yourself. In order to be a successful solopreneur, you have to know what you’re good at and what you’re not good at. There are going to be things that you’re going to have to teach yourself. No one’s saying like, “I don’t know how to do accounting. I’m not going to do it.” You have to do that.

Heather: That’s not optional. The IRS will not be okay with that.

Jamie: There are elements that you’re going to have to learn, but that doesn’t mean you have to be an expert in every single field. That’s something that I’ve struggled with for a long time. I will be the first to say it, “Give up ownership of a part of my business and let someone else touch it, why? I don’t want to. They’re going to do it wrong.” Realizing that certain things are not my gifts or I don’t have time to bring them up to the quality that they should be at, that I want them to be at and still be the type of wife I want to be and the type of mom that I want to be and run the type of home that I want to have. I have to stop every once in a while and be like, “Not my gift. Not my thing.”

In fact, I hired someone to put together a Pinterest campaign for The Master Plan. Can I make pins? I can make pins, but I hired somebody to do it because I don’t have time. I know what I’m going to do is I’m going to spend an extra seventeen hours scooting one word back and forth to make sure it’s perfectly centered in such a way to capture everyone’s exact amount of attention. I’m going to pour over all the images from all the galleries and find the punchiest of hero images that everyone’s going to look at that pin and be like, “It’s amazing.” Absolutely not. There’s a huge power that comes from being like, “No.”

Heather: That’s a good thing for you to outsource. It also would be a great thing for me to outsource because I would approach it the opposite of Jamie and I would slap the words on there, on some janky and people would be like, “This lady is not a designer.” You’d be right because I’m not. That’s not my skillset and that’s okay. I’ve got other skills. We’ve covered a lot here. I don’t know if there are any other things that might be good to mention.

Jamie: Honestly and truly, you have to know when to say, “No.” I’m going to be candid. We didn’t even plan this beforehand. I’ve struggled with this. I had anxiety attacks at a job a while back. I have these attacks sitting at my desk and they’ve started to come back. I’ve had to take a deep hard look at what needs to give. Running multiple YouTube channels and planning people’s weddings and still being a present parent and a wife who’s not snippy all the time, it’s a lot of balance. I will say I’m not doing it successfully, which is why I’m taking a step back and looking at my business and while I’m looking at stuff like GenM or posting stuff on Upwork because I have to bring someone in or something else needs to give. I know it’s not going to be my time with my kids. I know it’s not going to be my time with my husband. I know none of us to thrive in a messy home. All of us start to feel a little bit crazy and a little bit chaotic. Know yourself and know your limitations and know that it’s okay to say, “I don’t know what I’m doing. I have no idea what I’m doing here, but maybe I can find someone else who can either teach me a little bit so I can know a little bit more or who can take this on for me.”

Heather: Also, there’s something there to look at of like, “How can you outsource or give parts of the workload that are a lower priority for you even in your personal life?” One thing that I did when we were fostering and it was crazy, because in foster care, you have a bazillion meetings. I had to take these little children everywhere to see all the people. It was busy with that, suddenly something normally simple like going to the grocery store was hard to fit in. We started using things like Instacart. We started considering like, “Should we have someone come clean our house? It feels a little boujie.” Maybe that’s what we need to do because if it’s between me spending time with this kid who needs me to pour some love on them or me getting all the laundry done, if I can ask someone else do that, it’s worthwhile.

Finding those things where you and the mom guilt is heavy on women, that we feel like, “No. We need to do it all. We need to have this amazing business. We need to keep our house perfect. We need to develop these amazing children and work with them and support them in every way. Also, be their first spouse.” It’s like, “You got to give something up.” Things where you can either maybe food prepping and shortcutting your meals or using Instacart or skipping out on volunteering for every single thing the PTA asks you to do. Having yourself some space and knowing that it’s okay and you are not failing, because you decide to give yourself some self-care, sanity room to breathe.

Jamie: Also, I’m going to say this, maybe saying no to more gigs. I’ve gotten to the point where I realized I do not personally want to take on more than fifteen events a year, me personally. My business can take on more, but I’m good at fifteen. In order for me to be effective at growing my business, I’m going to be training up other leads. I already have other lead planners and I’m going to be making that shift and that’s a choice that I’m consciously making because something has to give. One of them is I’m going to write down what my pattern is, what my method is. I’m going to share it with other planners and teach them how to do it so they can do it under my company umbrella. Sometimes part of saying no is yes, less volunteering or yes, outsourcing your grocery shopping because Instacart, I love you. It can also be saying no to that client.

Heather: What you’re talking about is such an important transition for a solopreneur, entrepreneur is where you’re getting from working in your business to on your business. Looking at it at a higher level where you’re like, “How is this going to grow beyond me?” Letting other people have a place and not feel you are the only person in your business, and that’s it. That’s where the growth can be painful and hard because it’s your baby that you did this business and it’s difficult to give up some of that to someone else. With the templates, with the procedures, with systems and everything there for you to be able to make sure things are going the way you want them to, it can still work and it can thrive. Ultimately, it’s going to be more lucrative for you, it’s going to give you space to keep your sanity. I’m excited for you that you’re doing that, Jamie. That’s huge.

Jamie: It’s huge and it’s freaking scary, mostly because of the actual wedding days. I am processing. I’m not there yet. It’s not great yet. I know it will be and I can see that light at the end of the tunnel. I would be remiss if I wasn’t honest about my process. This part sucks. Our home is a mess and I desperately need to go grocery shopping. I don’t know the last time my toddler was bathed. I’m sitting in pajamas that probably should have been washed two days ago, but that’s where we’re at. It’s not always great. It’s not always sunshine.

Sometimes there are going to be seasons of struggle and then you’re like, “We’re going to come up with a new plan of attack.” It’s not always going to be like this. One day I will wash these pajamas. It’s going to happen. I probably won’t share that with the world though. Sharing that here on this show is enough. You guys can do this. Know yourself. Know your limitations. Know when to say no and that could be to social engagements, that could be to that pile of laundry, let it sit there for another day or week if you’re like me. Say no to those clients where you’re like, “I might be tapped out for right now.” It’s okay to do that.

Heather: This is wise, Miss Jamie. I hope you guys found some helpful tidbits here from all this that we’ve talked about. We were going to maybe touch upon goals of how we were going to improve our work life. Honestly, I’m going to have a little baby. I have no idea how that’s going to go.

Finding Work Life Balance: Playing to your skills and finding contractors help keep your work-life balance.

Jamie: Honestly, that’s the craziest part about having kids there are parts that are completely unknown, and then there are other parts that feel the same though. Your timing of things changes. I’ll say my goals are I’m going to bring on an assistant. I’m going to bring on an intern and I’m going to hand over my general inquiry inbox. That’s my goal. I want to have that happen by at least the beginning of 2020 because it’s a lot.

Heather: For me, I want to build out some affiliate systems. What Jamie and I are both doing with our courses, this is such a resource that those of you who are out there who have clients who are not affording your price point, send them to us. We can give them the guidance they need. I’m happy to shoot you a little cut of it for being kind to direct this person to us.

Jamie: Your goal is better than mine. I want to do that too.

Heather: I’m wrapping Jamie in this because I’m assuming she wants this too. Don’t worry, I included The Master Plan in there.

Jamie: Mine is to wash my pants and yours is to create more money.

Heather: I’m going to hope I have clean pants, but I’m not guaranteeing anything at this point. I may be in dirty pants, but I’m going to get this affiliate system built out. That’s one of the things I want to do. It’s something that can help those of you out there who have these leads that you’re like, “This person didn’t have the budget to afford me. That’s a throwaway.” With those folks, it helps couples because those couples need guidance and we’ve got that here. It helps me because then it brings a nice lead flow in that I know that I can help them and make something amazing for these couples. To me, that’s one of my big goals beyond managing life with a new little one in the home.

Jamie: This is going to be fun. I cannot wait to see your little squishy. Honestly, when this comes out, you’re going to be already holding your little squishy.

Heather: She’ll be here by then, God-willing. She’s still cooking. It’s going to be painful. Those are the goals. If you have goals that you want to tell us about. We have an Instagram that you can reach out to us at and we would love to hear from you. Always you guys are invited into this conversation. We love to hear from you. @UnionPodcast is our Instagram. You can also reach out to us on our website. We love to hear from you. Let’s talk about work/life balance.

Jamie: Let’s hold each other accountable. When you’re reading this, call us out, be like, “Jamie, did you wash your pants?” I’m going to be like, “No, but thanks for calling me out.”

Heather: “I’m still in my stinky pants.”

Jamie: I haven’t changed since we recorded this podcast.

Heather: That’ll be rough. Make sure Jamie wash her pants. Help the world. Make the world a better place.

Jamie: Help me help you. Help you help me at something, one of those. Help me. Thank you for tuning in. We love having you. Give us a follow over on Instagram.