Ep 66 - How to Build a Business That Works WITH Motherhood

Can you actually build a business and be a present mother, or is something always slipping? In this episode of The Flow Lane, Emma Maidment shares her honest, unfiltered journey of doing both. Not the highlight reel. The real version: the guilt, the recalibration, the seasons that didn't look the way she thought they would, and the framework that finally let her stop choosing. 

This is for the woman who is tired of being told she can have it all, and wants to know what it actually looks like to live it on her own terms. 

In this episode: 

- Why Emma stopped trying to "balance" motherhood and business and started integrating them instead 

- The both/and mindset shift that changed how she structures her week, her offers, and her energy 

- An honest look at guilt, the mental load, and the boundaries she had to build (and rebuild) 

- What she wishes she knew before becoming a mother in business 

- How she's redefined success now that small humans are part of the equation 

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📱 CONNECT: Instagram → @emmamaidment_ 

#theflowlane #femaleentrepreneur #mompreneur #businessandmotherhood #freedombusiness #womeninbusiness #workingmoms #flowstate

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Flow on friends, 
Em x

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

And I think that there's this common narrative out there that when you have children, you sacrifice your career, you sacrifice your business. And I'm here to tell you that that's not true. It just looks different. And if you're willing for it to look different, then you can use motherhood as your biggest advantage point in business, far beyond anything else that anybody has access to. Welcome to the Flow Lane with me, Emma Maple. This podcast is for the female entrepreneurs who want the both end big goals and a life that you can actually enjoy. We're talking sustainable scaling, working in flow, and creating a business that supports your energy, not trains it. Let's dive in. Motherhood and business, the and both operating systems. We are diving right on into that topic today. This is something that is so close to my heart because obviously I am a mum in business. I have two little boys, and when I think about the things that have happened in my business since becoming a mother, it has only gotten stronger and stronger and better and better. And I think that there's this common narrative out there that when you have children, you sacrifice your career, you sacrifice your business. And I'm going to tell you that that's not true. It just looks different. And if you're willing for it to look different, then you can use motherhood as your biggest advantage point in business, far beyond anything else that anybody has access to. This is because mums are superheroes. And if you're a mom, you know that. So one thing I think that holds women back from really leaning into this both and the B-O-A-S system is this idea of balance. Now, someone once explained this to me and it has stuck with me forever. If you are trying to balance, you know how you can go to Pilates and they have those balls on the bottom and it's flat on top and you try and stand on a wobble board kind of thing. You'll find balance on there for a moment, but then something will wobble. The weight will shift. You're kind of always on this wobble board. There's never, there's like maybe a brief moment where it feels balanced, and the rest of the time you're just trying to keep the balance. So all your effort is going into trying to stay balanced rather than actually just accepting that sometimes it's gonna feel like this, and sometimes it's gonna feel like this. Meaning sometimes the business is going to require more from you, and sometimes your family is gonna require more from you. And when you have a stabilized nervous system, when you're really clear on structuring your business for motherhood, then you have the discernment to know where to basically put that energy at any given time. So this is about building essentially capacity. If you want to be in this season of both and, it doesn't actually mean doing it all. It means that you have to be very, very intentional with how you design it because your capacity essentially becomes the business, and you really, really have to protect that in order for it to be successful. Some seasons are for scaling, some seasons are for snuggles, and both are incredibly valid. So how do we kind of know where we're at in all of this? There's a fourth-part framework that I like to work by for actually building a freedom-based business whilst in motherhood. Now I've built this from the trenches of motherhood. Maybe you're thinking about becoming a mom and you're listening to this, or maybe you already are a mom and this is something that you can implement for some changes. But number one is permission. I need you to release this idea that it has to be either or. There are no blacks and whites. There is no right and wrong. And I think because of the online world, we've lost our connection to what actually is right for us. Because we see the trad wife's and the sourdough mums, and then we see the boss babe mums, and we think we have to pick which one of those we are, rather than realizing that we actually live in a time where we have access to so much technology, so much information, so many things that we can actually leverage to create a life and business that we want. So, number one, I need you to give yourself permission that it this isn't an either-or. Release that from your vocab. Second is priorities. And essentially, this is what does enough look like in this season? That also takes you to understand deeply which season you're in. If you have a newborn baby and a toddler, you're in a very low capacity season. But maybe as those children get a little bit older, or if you have maybe, maybe you have incredible family support and therefore you get these hours in the day. I don't know what your situation is. Everybody's is going to be different and everyone's priorities is going to be different. It's also going to depend what your partner does, what where you're placed in your family dynamics. So it's really personal for you to actually go, what does enough look like in this season? Sure, there's a million things you would like to do. Maybe you, you know, have a big dream of I want to do a TED talk and I want to write a book and I'm going to do this and I'm going to do this. But do you need to do them all in the next nine months? Maybe not. It's kind of like when you're pregnant and you have, well, for me at least, that first trimester, I was uh dead. Second trimester, so much creative energy, third trimester that kind of carried on, and then towards the end, you want to rest. It's finding that natural rhythm within your own season of life. There will be seasons where you have so much capacity and can do all the things. And there'll be seasons where your entire house has gastro and you are in survival mode. I always tell my clients and the people that come into my world, prepare or run it as if it's the worst case scenario. So, worst possible case scenario, your family is capitulating. How are you still showing up in your business? How are you still designing this business model to support all this stuff going on around you? And that sometimes means, you know, letting go of certain things or at least releasing your attachment to how things were and accepting them for how they are and what is enough in this season. And then number three is parameters. So this is boundaries and essentially setting constraints by designs. So you can go back to the energetic ROI episode, a few episodes ago, where I really dived into the energetic ROI of decision making and also boundary setting. It's so important, particularly when you are a mum. I feel like for me, the second I got pregnant, my boundaries became so much clearer and so much stronger. I just knew straight away what I was and wasn't for. And even nowadays, there's an opportunity will come across my desk and I'll think, oh, I really want to say yes to that. Like to give you an example, I was invited to speak at an event. So right now I'm based in Greece. I'm from Australia. I'm based in Greece, and I got invited to speak at an event in Turkey. Now, sounds amazing. I love being on international stages. It was ticking all of my like ego boxes. It was gonna look great on social media, it was gonna be a great room to be in, really incredible people to be around. Obviously, I wanted to do it. But when I looked into the logistics of physically getting myself from the island that I'm on to where this was, it wasn't just like flying to Istanbul, it was kind of a mission. It was gonna be about 14 hours of travel. There was no direct path. So it was like a plane and then a train and an automobile, not really. But it was a mission. And so then I thought, well, am I gonna go on that mission by myself? I don't really want to be away from my babies for that long, or do I drag the whole family with me? And we only had a small window of time that we could travel. We had visitors coming. And so it was this consideration of whilst I wanted to say yes, was it gonna actually yield the results for the kind of effort and the like dragging my children all the way over there for a short period of time? Had I have had more time, could we have made a trip out of it? It would have been a better situation. So I'm constantly evaluating, okay, how does this fit through the lens of our values? How does this serve my highest priority in the business right now? Is this like something that is make or break for me? No, it was kind of more of a nice to have or a nice to be involved with. And then does this actually flow for everybody? Would this actually cause more friction? Yes. In that case, it's a no, but can you let me know next time? And I'll plan, you know, way more in advance and we'll go on a holiday to Turkey and make it a trip. So really, really being clear on those boundaries and the constraints by design. I knew I was better placed staying where I was, having already just been and done another international speaking trip. I was better to stay home and keep the family and the family nervous system grounded than I was to upheave everyone for a short little trip. And then the last point, the last part of this framework is pacing. So this is rhythm over balance, as I just explained before, and also seasons over every day needing to be equal. So some seasons you'll be in, you can give more to your business. Some seasons you'll be in, you want to give less. To give you a direct example, this podcast right now, it is wintertime here in Greece. And I know that I have family visiting over summer and I'd like to do some trips and some time off with my family in summer. So in this season, I'm choosing to double down and film a lot more content and have things ready to go, have my full content system full and batched and sorted so that I know I can actually take that time off. So that is me then being in this season of going, okay, well, right now I'm in a season of kind of more output of doing more of this stuff to then be able to be in a season where I'm not having to think about that as much. It's automated, it's sorted, it's just doing its thing. So not every day is going to be equal. And if you already are a mother, you will know that because every day with kids is like a choose your own adventure. Some days everyone's in a good mood, some days they're not. And you're trying to find this rhythm within that to keep consistency in a business. It also kind of means that you have to really choose ultimately where you're going to be in that season and then cultivate the support around that. So it isn't necessarily about balance at all, it's a rhythm. Can you find a rhythm and flow in your family that feels good? As women, we have a monthly cycle. Maybe you're planning it around that, maybe you're using that as a superpower so that you're not having to always be on. Doesn't mean that you're not always showing up, doesn't mean that you're not always consistent, but you're choosing these different parts of your business that you could think more strategically about to enable you the space to show up in a different way. For example, if I was trying to film this podcast episode once a week from my house, it would cause me so much more stress because I would have children in the background. I'd be like trying to quickly, you know, get ready and then making them quiet and then getting everything set up. It's it's just not gonna work. But if I come to this beautiful studio, I'm here, I have a team supporting it, I feel relaxed, I feel held, I feel supported. I know that my kids are with their nanny and they're safe and supported, I can actually then put in in this way. And so it's never end-or. It's just this idea of actually being able to allow it to look differently. So there's this other lie I think that a lot of mothers in business tell tell themselves is that if you're present with your kids, your business suffers. And if your business grows, your kids suffer. So I don't think that motherhood actually ends ambition. I think it just refines it. I think it gives you this tool where you become so clear, like a lioness clear, on exactly what you need to do, on exactly what's going to move the needle and what's going to pull your energy away. Your business will suffer if you keep trying to run it like someone that doesn't have children. And I see this all the time because I too will see someone online kicking goals, doing something, and I have to remind myself they don't have kids. That was me when I didn't have kids, and I was doing all the things and I was everywhere and I could say yes to everything. I don't take advice from those people. I take advice from people that have two or more children, because one child, again, it's different. Two children really is 20. And I look, okay, what are they actually doing? What are they actually saying yes to? What are they compromising on? What are the systems and structures that they have set up in their life to be able to achieve what they're achieving? Again, not that you have to give it up, just that you have to be okay with it looking differently. So the both and theory doesn't really mean that you're doing everything. It means that you're choosing with intention. So you're not choosing between them, your kids or your business, you're choosing the version that fits this season. And that is nuanced. That's really subtle. It might be that you're leaning in one way more so than the other, but you're ultimately there for what is needed and required of you in that season. And so it isn't that you're doing it all, it's that you're designing it on purpose. So if you look at the old version of yourself, and this could just be the old version of myself, but the old version, the pre-kid version, it's like speed, sale, constant scales, constant output. You're constantly able to be on because you have that energy to give to your business. Like how often do we hear my business is my baby? That was a phrase I used for so long before I have kids. It was everything. The only thing, if I wasn't, you know, with my partner or, you know, doing something fun with my friends, I was working on my business. I was in that world. That was my world because I didn't have the kid part. Then the kids come along and suddenly you realize, oh, the new version of success is actually sustainability, capacity, energetic ROI, actually being able to exhale at the end of the day and not just feel like I'm constantly giving to a business baby and actual babies. It's exhausting. So this is where you really have to lean into systems and structure and all these things that you're probably like, I roll, I don't really want to do that. It's not fun and creative, because you need the system and the structure to hold you so that you can actually give that energy to your actual humans, not to your business. So there's kind of metrics that I look at that matter now in this motherhood business season that I'm in. And that is actual hours work, not just revenue. How can I work less and earn more? And then the nervous system state. Is this actually causing a massive tax on my nervous system? Because as we know, the mother is the heartbeat of the home. And the mother's nervous system dictates how everybody else experiences their home, particularly when you have children that are under seven and they're co-regulating, I mean, children never really stop co-regulating with you, but particularly in that season, they're co-regulating with your nervous system. So they're kind of taking from it to regulate themselves. So if you're maxed out and they're maxed out, it's a recipe for a disaster. Then how often you're actually rushing, how often you are resentful, that's a big one for a lot of women. And then how does it actually feel good to be in your business? Not this heaviness of success. And that comes from this redefining success in your own mind. So for me, I actually look at success now, not just of the things that I can output, not just the book or the chorus or you know, the podcast or whatever it is, the output, but also what is the impact I'm having and how can I amplify? How can I have the most amount of impact that takes the least amount of my time and energy away from my family? It also means that anything that I do that takes me away from them has to have a really clear ROI and a really clear energetic ROI. Because if I come home totally depleted, the whole family is gonna go down with me. So if success costs you your piece, then it's too expensive. And that's only that's a line that only you will ever be able to kind of tell. So another thing that comes up a lot is mum guilt. And I hear this all the time for people. How do you not get mum guilt, mum guilt, mom guilt? Mum guilt is essentially a moving target. If you work, you feel guilty, if you rest, you feel guilty, if you're present, you feel behind. It's just this back and forth sort of thing. But I actually don't think that guilt isn't, it's not, it's not a it's a signal. Guilt is there to actually signal to you what is going on beneath the surface. So if you're feeling guilty, it's probably not that you're a bad mum or a bad business owner, it's that you're probably holding unrealistic expectations. It's that you're trying to be everything to everyone. That is what guilt is coming through as. It's not that you're bad at being a mom or a business owner, it's that your your internal processes is trying to signal to you that there's something for you to look at. Where are you holding an unrealistic standard, or where are you holding a pre-kid standard to what it is that you can realistically output in a day? Now, the caveat to that is I find that if I look at pre-kid me and how much I would get done in a day, I basically can get done in a week. Now, in a day, what what a pre-kid me would have done in a week. I'm so much more efficient because I have so much less time that when I sit down to do something, I am focused. That is the task I'm getting done. This is the time I have allotted to do that. So that again is boundaries, not rigid rules, but actually protecting your energy and then actually being able to look at, okay, well, then what is the mental load? It isn't just tasks, but it's also that constant remembering. So if you're constantly having these open tabs in your brain that just you're going round and around and around, I say this with my clients all the time: close some loops. As moms, we have a lot of open tabs because our children are basically open tabs, right? They never end until they go to sleep, then they wake up in the middle of the night. Like it's just, it's, it's a, it's a loop, right? It's gonna keep on going. But with business, there's tabs you can close. So rather than thinking in your mind, okay, I've got six million tabs open and I'm trying to do all of the things, it's going, okay, let's have, I spoke about this in a previous episode, let's have our CEO hour. Let's zoom out and look at what are all the things on this list. I love a list. I just, yeah, I live for lists. If it's not on the list, I'll forget it. So during the day, if I'm if I'm with my kids and I've had all these ideas or I'm working or I'm with the client, whatever it is, and I can't action that, I just brain dump it onto a big master list. And then I end up with this giant to-do list, which would stress most people out. It would have stressed old me out. But then what I do is I zoom out and look at that and go, okay, what are the three tasks on here that are realistically going to move the needle in my business towards what that goal is? Whether it's a revenue goal, whether it's a visibility goal, whatever season of business I'm in, whatever season I'm working towards, I see seasons as a circle. That's why I'm doing this. What's going to move the needle? Okay, I'm going to pick those three tasks. Then I'm going to look at my week. Where am I in mum mode? Where do the kids have, you know, tennis lessons or extracurricular stuff? Where are we driving? Where have we got visitors? What's going on in the social calendar? Look at the whole picture, not just your work calendar. Then I look at, okay, great. Then I have clients on these days. I have the deliverable side of my business, the things that I have to show up for. That's all scheduled in. Then I go, okay, now I have these three tasks that I want to get done to move the needle on the next project or what I'm planning for the next quarter. Where can I realistically fit them in? So it's not that I'm then having this to-do list that I'm just adding to and adding to and adding to. I then have three tasks for that week and I can see the blocks in my calendar where I know that either we have our nanny or my husband is with the children, or I'm actually happy to stay up late that night and get it done, or get up early in the morning and get that thing done, depending on what it is. But I actually set myself up for success because I can see exactly where it's going to go in the calendar. And then the big to-do list kind of keeps rolling, and you have to be okay with like there's no end point. The end, the limit does not exist, to quote mean girls. We we don't ever get anywhere. The journey is the destination. So you have to be okay with that. I heard it described once through the lens of washing. And I love this analogy. If you are trying to get your washing done, your clothes washing done, it's never done. Because the second that you fold that last pile of laundry and put it into your cupboard, something else gets dirty and the cycle starts again. And so if you obsess over having to finish the washing, my goodness. So then look out and go, what part of that sequence of washing, folding, hanging out, drying, are you actually the bottleneck in? How could you make that more efficient? And can you actually be okay with the fact that it's a continual cycle? And there'll probably be like maybe one hour of the day where every single clothing item that you own is packed away and nothing is dirty because it's going to get dirty again. So when you can become okay with that, it then makes you okay with this rolling list of things to do. And you just take out what moves the needle. This is where you need a strategy so that you can be so clear on what that is, what you're actually doing. So you're not just picking random tasks and not actually seeing any progress. You're super clear, you have your CEO hat on, you can see these are the three things I'm doing this week, and this is where I'm fitting it into my actual physical calendar so that I can actually get it done. And then that might look like letting it look different. For me, I never, pre-kids, I would never work in the evenings. I would switch off like 5 p.m., don't talk to me, kind of thing. Unless I was at an event. Now I'll actively choose maybe to work in the evenings. I'll sometimes see clients later at night because I work across different time zones, or I'll get up really early and do work in the morning before the children wake up. Again, not that any of those things are right or wrong. I'm just choosing how do I want my day to look? Where am I going to actually get this done? It's not adding extra pressure. It's actually just making the week designed to flow. So if you're feeling like I'm in that mom guilt, uh, don't actually think of guilt as proof that you're doing it wrong. Think of it as proof that you care and that there's something underneath revealing to you that something needs to change. Could you apply some of these strategies to be better structured in your week to actually be able to get it done? So the power hours, I love that. Like one to two focus blocks a day. Even if it's the first hour after the kids go to bed, I often say take the first 20 minutes for yourself when they're asleep, whether they're having a nap or whether they've physically gone to bed, meditate, do something that isn't just working. Like actually take some time to recalibrate yourself. Maybe you do some, I don't know, some gentle movement, some breath work, whatever. What you have a bath, take your makeup off, do your skincare routine, whatever. Have 20 minutes where it's just for you, and then go, okay, I'm gonna give myself an hour of power where I'm finishing that task, or I'm getting back to those emails, or I'm ticking off that thing that I'm closing that loop in my brain. And if you can close the loop, it's like when you physically close the loop on the tab on the computer, it goes. You're not then stuck in this mental anguish of feeling like you can never switch off because you actually close the loop. You finished the task. Hooray you. And then sitting back into that weekly rhythm. So your CEO day, your CEO hour of okay, what's going on here? And then do you have a content day? Do you have a client day? Can you actually structure your week so that you're not trying to fit all of those things in at once? A lot of the women that I work with and how I work as well will pick these are my kind of two or three days for delivery. And until they get absolutely chockers, then you might need to add more chockers, where I sound so Australian. Until they get so full. And then you can actually go, okay, cool. Now this this other day or this other hours, that's when I'm gonna fill my content. So that you're not trying to be with clients and do content and do this and do all the things and feeling overwhelmed. You're actually creating this structure and this rhythm. Okay, I'm getting I happen to be getting my hair done on that day, so I'll spend the next hour doing some content after that. Perfect. Then that's done. Then can you actually have like what is your minimal viable marketing? Basically, what is the minimal amount of things that you know you need to do for marketing in your business? Can you commit to that and anything else becomes bonus on top of that? It compounds. Thinking strategically about it. For example, long form content. This podcast, I can cut this up into so many different clips to use across a variety of different social media platforms. It's a fully leveraged use of my time. Rather than spending an hour just filming a reel that I'm gonna post once, I have a long form piece of content that I can share across so many different avenues. And then actually designing your offer and your business model to support your life. So that will really depend on what it is that you sell. But you know, fewer calls, higher values, boundaries baked into the delivery, automations. I cannot tell you how many women I work with that do not have automation set up in their business. Babe, please do yourself a favor and write down all the tasks that you're doing on a daily basis and look at where could you delegate, where could you automate? Because you need support in your business if you want to actually scale it, if you want to actually grow it and still be a present mom. It is not cute to be manually responding or manually sending invoices or manually chasing payments or depending on what how your business runs, all those little things that could be outsourced. I had a session once with a woman and she said, Oh my gosh, I took three days off work and I came back and there were 80 customer service questions in my inbox that I had to get back to. And I was like, Why are you responding to those? You need a team, or like, could you automate that? Or like, are they FAQs? Like, wow. And so she's spending all this time feeling so behind because there's no actual systems and structure in her business. When you're a mother in business in particular, you need a team. Whether that's an AI team or automations as part of your team and your structure, you need to buy back your time in a big way. Systems equal freedom. And ultimately your calendar becomes your business plan. That is your time, and your time is your biggest asset. So you cannot run a pre-kids business in a post-kids life. You your time is your biggest currency, right? And if time is your only constraint, it time sorry, time is your biggest constraint, it's also capacity because you only have so many hours in the day, but you only have so much capacity to give to people. And your capacity then dictates the quality of presence and attention that you're actually giving to your family. Because it's one thing to be in the room with someone, but to actually be in the room with someone, to not be sitting there playing with your kids and thinking about all the work stuff you've got going on or the emails you need to reply to, to actually be able to switch off, to know that that part of your work is held by a system so that you can actually be truly present. That is the true freedom. That is what all of this is for. So being consistent doesn't actually mean being constant. Consistency is such a different thing to actually having to show up all the time. You can be consistent in your messaging, you can be consistent in your posting schedule that doesn't require your constant presence. So I want to see if you can actually start to think a little differently about your content, about your business, about how you're showing up, so that you are acting as the CEO of not only your business, but also of your house. Can you bring in more structure to ultimately give you more freedom? So if you're listening to this and you thought, I have no automations, I have none of that set up in my business, please help me. We have a free seven-day challenge. It's called the Freedom and Flow Challenge. It's free. And for seven days, I take you through a step-by-step process for you to firstly realize the parts in your business that maybe need automating or outsourcing, and then actually build that. So building simple funnels, building simple workflows that give you back the freedom. Yes, it will require a season of you to show up and do that, but the trade off and the payoff that you receive from that is so much more. So I'll pop the details below. It's the Freedom and Flow Challenge. It's totally free. You can check it out. It's gonna help you really buy back your time. I'll be back again with you really soon.