You are listening to the Scaling to Freedom podcast and if you are an online coach or course creator, you are in the right place. I’m your host, Christina Bernhard. I’m an ad agency owner that gets an inside look every day on what’s working and what doesn’t in the online coaching space. I’m here to share with you what we see works in our agency, as well as what we see happening and changing in the industry. Stay tuned to up level your coaching business to have the freedom you want. Let’s get started. Welcome to episode 193.

00:31 In this episode, I’m going to be talking about five things I’ve stopped doing in my business since becoming a single mom. My business journey has gone through quite a few phases and I’ve spoken before about the very beginning of my business when I was in corporate, and how drastically different it is from my business now. So a huge, huge contrast there. But just as a quick recap, in the beginning I basically had no boundaries with clients. I charged so little, I made so many mistakes. I said just had agreements and relied on trust and didn’t have a contract and, of course, I got burned and all of these things. I feel like this is really common with my business friends whenever we talk about the very, very beginning when we’re just trying things out Super common. But I pulled myself out of that really as soon as I quit my corporate job. I completely changed so many things in my business and so I pulled myself out of that. I was able to set boundaries. I changed a trillion things. I raised my rates to appropriate rates for what I was doing. I got everything to a really good place. I had a team. They were super integrated, everything was going great. I felt good, I had low anxiety, low stress, everything was great. And I became a mother and everything still stayed great. But they definitely went through another evolution. So, as everything does when you become a mother. So I wanted to share specifically the five things that I stopped doing in my business since that happened and what that evolution kind of looked like.

02:11 I like to share these things because whenever I was considering becoming a mother or even when I was pregnant, I just wanted to know everyone’s perspective of what it would be like to have a business. I had plenty of people in my life who were mothers and had corporate jobs, so I kind of knew what that looked like. But I wanted to know what it looked like when you had a business, when everything kind of relies on you or not, kind of everything does rely on you. You are the decision maker. The mental capacity that you have to have to become the visionary and to continue that on is a lot. It’s different. It’s just a different kind of lifestyle, and so I wanted to know so much really anything I could and there is content out there, there are people talking about this, but it just wasn’t a lot. I felt like I was able to get through that content, that it was at least findable really quickly and I just wanted to know more perspective. So I like sharing my perspective on this and they are actually some of our most popular episodes on the podcast. So if you want to go back and look at other podcast episodes about this, I do talk about my motherhood journey.

03:22 I talk about my maternity leave, how I mapped that out. I did one before my maternity leave of what the plan was and then also after my maternity leave and gave insight on things I would change and things like that, and then also just insights from the first year of my daughter’s life and getting through all of that as a business owner as well. So go ahead and check those out if you want to listen to those. But today we’re going to go over these five things that I’ve stopped doing. So, like I said, my business went through all of those different evolutions and I felt like everything was really really good, like I had my boundaries exactly where I wanted them and things like that, and it really just took motherhood to see. It made my business better in so many ways and it made me a better leader. I think I was able to make better decisions because I was. My attention, my energy, everything was pulled into another direction and so I was still able to show up for my business, but in a much like in a lesser way, not necessarily energetically well, sometimes energetically, mental capacity, all of those things but also with time. So before, if I needed to, I could just work in all nighter or, you know, I could just do whatever. But because all of my time was mine, I was also single, so there is nothing in between me and anything that I wanted to do at any time. So obviously that changed a lot.

04:48 So the first thing that I stopped doing was waiting to fire misaligned clients. So before, whenever I had all of this time and I had a client that was a little difficult. Now, if they were insanely difficult I would just let them go, but I put up with a lot still. I think I would, just because I had the time, I had the capacity. It really didn’t feel that heavy to deal with a difficult client. Again, if they were outrageous or something, then absolutely not. But if they were just a little difficult or a little misaligned or something like that, I would just put up with it.

05:23 But when juggling motherhood, life and business, a piece is everything. So no matter the cost that it was to fire that client, I started to fire clients right away. And, nope, not if it anything that caused any kind of anxiety or just stress or just overwhelm. It doesn’t take as much to cause the overwhelm whenever you are already overwhelmed Now. My daughter is one now, so everything is so much easier than it was before. But early postpartum and all of that stuff, I was really at my cap. So if there was a client that was just misaligned, was just too much or whatever, I would just fire them right away.

06:09 And even though things are easier now, this is a practice I wanna continue on. I think it’s a good practice and really is something that should have always been there, but it kind of just took motherhood for me to get to that point. And so it’s been amazing because all of my clients and, for the record, most of my clients are always like great. It’s honestly very rare that I run into someone who’s just very misaligned it’s super rare, but it does happen. And so having that value where I’m just like, nope, it’s not gonna happen, and having that practice has been a really, really great and a really great way for me to be able to juggle both, because whenever you do have those misaligned clients, it is heavy on your energy. So if you’ve ever worked with a client that is just misaligned, you know it’s just too much.

07:00 So that’s the first thing. The second thing is people pleasing behaviors with clients. So this has always been an ongoing thing, like I said, from the beginning of my business to where I am now. A very drastic difference here, but it’s always kind of a thing, and sometimes it’s in little ways. So before I would let calls kind of just run on and on, I would allow people to just break contracts, late payments, accepting late assets and having to have me and my team rush to get a campaign out because we received something really late, just little things like that, and some of them some people might say they’re not people pleasing, they’re just being flexible, and I think there’s a line there. I did actually do a podcast episode on the balance between having boundaries and also being flexible and so that you can actually work with your clients, give your clients grace at times when they need it, and I think that’s a good balance. But sometimes it is just people pleasing behaviors and it’s just not having those boundaries set in place and the boundaries. Evolution has been just a journey and these little things they were really just little things but I stopped doing those things. So I don’t let things just run on and on. I am more diligent about assets and if we get something late, we let them know that this campaign is going to be pushed. If we can get it on time, we will, but I’m not gonna have me or my team rushing or working through the night or anything like that to try and get a campaign up on time when we are very on top of requesting assets way ahead of time. So that those are some things that I’ve stopped doing. So the people pleasing behavior I just have not had, like I physically and mentally just can’t, so I’ve stopped doing all of those things.

08:59 The third thing is completing tasks that my team can do. So I feel like this I actually was pretty good at before. So whenever I did have, I Created my team and I hired my team, I had them integrated and all of that. I’m really good at delegating things. So I’m not someone who feels like I want control over every task or that I’ve struggled to hand things off Like that’s honestly never been a part of my journey. I’m more than happy to delegate things. I have really Clear SOPs and I’m very engaged in the training process. So I feel confident in In my teams where my team members whenever I do pass things off. So I don’t really have any kind of anxiety or hesitation with that. But there were times where I just kind of do things myself because I had the time. Now my time is a lot more limited and also my energy and just mental capacity is just way more limited than it was before, when I had All the time in the world and all of the mental capacity that I could ask for. So now I’m so much better at Delegating even more and I feel like I was even good at it before, so I now, if there is any task that my team can do and I don’t need to do it, I don’t do it. So that is the third thing.

10:15 The fourth thing is being in Slack and email around the clock. So this is something I I still am in Slack and email quite a bit, but it used to be literally around the clock. Almost every time I would pick up my phone, I would check my email or a check Slack, and now I have more designated times to do that. Now on the weekends I still check those things, but with you know the nature of what I do, we have things happening around the clock and globally, so it’s kind of important for me to I feel good about that, staying in touch over the weekend still, but I used to be in it around the clock. I don’t do that anymore. Also because sometimes, like I really need to sleep or you know things like that. So checking my work email right before bed is just not not a good idea. But it used to be a daily practice or something I would always do because, again, it was just like every time I would pick up my phone. But I know that if I see something that has a to-do item, it’s gonna be weighing on me and I’m gonna be like wishing that I could just go to my computer and take care of it or whatever. Or I’ll start like going into like creative mode and think of ideas for that thing. And I mean it’s not the worst thing in the world but like right now I really need to sleep when my daughter sleeps, so it’s important that I don’t check my Slack and email all of the time. So that is the fourth thing.

11:25 The fifth thing, fifth and last, is One of my favorite things, and this actually started during pregnancy. It did not it didn’t actually take having my daughter for this to happen, but is caring about the little things I feel. Like before my daughter I wouldn’t say I made everything a big deal like it was pretty good with the flow. I’m pretty low stress and Anxiety and anxiety growing up as a kid and a teenager and things like that. But by the time I started my business in all of that, I wasn’t really anxious like that anymore and so everything was pretty like good and go with the flow. But still, whenever something did happen, though, it was kind of my not my whole world, but definitely a big part of it. So it was a big focus and I would just focus on things that were Going wrong until I could fix them right. So which is it has served me well, but they were. They did cause more anxiety than they do now. So now, when things go wrong, it just doesn’t feel like that big of a deal, because I have my daughter and if Something is wrong with her it’s like the worst thing ever. So I just I guess I just have something to compare it to where it just everything else just seems so little.

12:41 And again, this started whenever I was pregnant and it was just every scan that I went to or any kind of test results that I got that were positive and good. I just didn’t care about anything else. As long as my daughter was okay and my body and all of those things were healthy and great, everything was good. It really didn’t matter. And honestly, when I was pregnant, I feel like everything not everything, but a lot of things went wrong. So I was doing a lot whenever I was pregnant with my business and we just had like team changes and things like that, and so it was something that it was. There were situations that if it had happened the year before I would have just been more stressed about it, but I was just kind of like Like I just really wasn’t that stressed about it. And it’s honestly a great feeling because I feel like it’s not that I don’t care about these things or anything. I just feel like things have been put into a different perspective that I had then, I had before, and I’m really grateful for that, and I I really don’t want that to change, because ultimately it’s true that I care about other things a lot more than these little problems. I think also, just with time you just realize that everything’s fine, like everything ends up being fine, but that is just a huge thing. That’s a shift that just happened overnight. Like as soon as I found out I was pregnant, it was just like that’s all I cared about.

14:06 So those are the five things that I’ve stopped doing in my business since becoming a single mom. So first one is waiting to fire misaligned clients. Now I just fired them as soon as I realized that there is just not an alignment here. I try to do really well with sales calls and trying to catch that ahead of time before signing a client, but sometimes you don’t realize it’s not, you’re not in alignment, until you start working together. The second thing is people pleasing behaviors, just letting the client just do whatever. This is a rare thing but it’s. You know, there are little things that I’ve done over time that I don’t do anymore, completing tasks that my team can do. So just being even better at delegating and being in slack and email around the clock, specifically at night just no more at night. And then the last thing is caring about all the little things that are like going wrong or maybe not going the way that I want them to go. All those things I just don’t. I’m just not as upset about them anymore. They’re just not that big of a deal anymore.

15:09 So I hope that you found this helpful, entertaining. I don’t know. I have been really enjoying sharing this part of my journey and whenever I do, I always get feedback and just hear from you about how appreciative you are of me sharing my story and just my experience and all of those things, and so I do love that and so I love, I love sharing this, this part of it. But yeah, if you have anything else that you are curious about, I am an open book. Feel free to send me a DM on Instagram at Christina D Bernhardt. That is what I have for you this week. I hope that you have a wonderful week. Thank you for listening to the Scaling to Freedom podcast. If you are a seven figure coach looking for ads management with an agency that partners with you to get your work out into the world and amplify your impact, see if we are a good fit by applying for a spot in our agency at ChristinaBernhard.com/apply. Find the link in our show notes.