You Don’t Have to Be Everything: Work-Life Balance with Tradara McLaurine

In this episode of The Mommy Pod, author, entrepreneur, and speaker Tradara McLaurine shares powerful insights on work-life balance, boundaries, and releasing the pressure to be everything to everyone.

We talk about:
• Learning to say no
• Asking for help
• Redefining self-care
• Balancing ambition and motherhood

This episode is a reminder that being a mom is only one part of you — and you are allowed to honor every part of who you are.

https://www.instagram.com/tradaramclaurine/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/tradaramclaurine/

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FLTRVRYB

Step into a world of magic, colors, and wonder with The Royal Adventures of Princess Liliana: The Rainbow Castle — the first enchanting book in a brand-new toddler series made for curious little minds and big imaginations!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FQ86RF9S

Living with ADHD: Getting Clean and Organized is not another rigid “how-to” guide that demands perfection—it’s a compassionate roadmap designed for real people with real ADHD challenges.  Living with ADHD will help you take back control—one small step at a time.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Hi everyone, today we're joined by Tradera McLaurin, an author, entrepreneur, speaker, and three-time graduate of Indiana State University with degrees in accounting, legal studies, and student affairs, along with a women's entrepreneurship certificate from E. Cornell. With over 15 years in higher education, Tradera has worked in career advising, student conduct, teaching, and leadership development, empowering individuals and organizations to grow and succeed. She's also the author of four children's books that inspire confidence, creativity, and was recognized as one of Trey Hawk's 12 under 40, and she also owns a Challenge Island franchise delivering STEM-based learning experiences for youth. But beyond the titles and achievement, Tradeira is a mom navigating work, ambition, and family. Learning that mom is only a part of who she is. Tradera, welcome to the Mommy Pod.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

Hello, how are you?

SPEAKER_00 1:55

I'm doing well. Can you tell us um about your accomplishments? You have such a resume. Can you please tell us about your accomplishments and um who you are outside of your titles?

SPEAKER_01 2:08

Sure, sure, sure. Um, great question because I really like I understand the value of the titles and importance of it, but I feel like we are so much more than that. Um, I am a first-generation college student, and when I went to college, I would say my goal was to make sure that I kind of leveled up and was at a different trajectory than what I've seen others go through. So, with that, I pretty much majored in accounting and legal studies because I felt like those were the two careers that could make me the most money. Uh, I didn't have an issue with having a debate or conversations with someone. And then I liked the math of the accounting, so I wanted to combine it. But it wasn't until I had an internship experience and I realized that I did not like accounting where I went and changed my path completely, and I went into higher education. Before, as I mentioned, being a first-generation college student, I felt like higher education was just the professors and the teachers. I didn't know how much was being done behind the scenes and that you can make a career out of that. But I was growing up and being told that having a plan B was important. So entrepreneurship, I feel like came naturally for me with making sure I had something being done in the background. So, with that, growing up, I wanted to be a children's, well, I wanted to be an author. I didn't really pivot it or like pinpoint it into something. Um, so I've written poetry since I was a little girl, and I used to try to write for TV shows because I enjoyed doing that. And then I published and wrote my first children's book in 2017 that is called uh Why Mommy Works and Why Daddy Works, with the emphasis being honestly, my daughter and her father were the real the motivation behind that. He started working a night shift position, and then my daughter didn't understand why he wasn't at home as much during the day as he was in the past. So I wrote the Why Daddy Works book to help explain to her why we we work because we had to do that daycare drop-off. If any of my moms know about how that life goes and that journey, that journey. And this book was written for her to understand it at her age level with being three. And then shortly after that, I continued to write children's books. I've written four so far. Uh, I want a nickname as one, and that again was kind of motivated by my daughter. She has a unique name, and she was like frustrated with her name being constantly mispronounced in school, and she wanted to have a nickname. She came home and asked for that, so it wouldn't be mispronounced. And then my most recent book is my first early reader, and that one is called MVP's Playbook. And that book was written honestly to introduce children to prayer. I wrote that for I taught my kids how to pray, and I felt like for me when I was being taught, it was more so the praying over your food and praying before you go to bed, but I wanted them to learn how prayer works and provide a format. And I written, I wrote it for boys. So it focuses on a um father-son relationship, it focuses on a father who gets injured. I mean, sorry, a son who gets injured playing basketball and his journey back to faith. So I love the connection between an earthly father and the heavenly father. Um, so I did that, and then I've been speaking uh since 2017 as well. So I go to different organizations and associations and I speak about work-life balance and how I believe that it's a myth and it doesn't exist. And recently, as early as 2023, I have a STEM franchise. So um that are part of I'm part of a STEM franchise, and we provide STEM learning experiences to kids K through A. Um, and it's all device-free. So we are taking the kids completely off of the devices and we're teaching them how to incorporate the components of STEM and problem solving without relying on our devices to help us solve our problems. So I don't know. Plan B, family plan B was the motivation behind all of this. And then, of course, increasing representation um for little boys girls.

SPEAKER_00 6:31

That is so great. And you answered the next two questions that I had. Uh, you answered what motivated your journeys. And um I guess you didn't really see yourself at first as an entrepreneur and author, but you became that, you made it happen.

SPEAKER_01 6:47

For sure. For sure. Yeah. No, I I actually enjoyed it. I took an English class my freshman year and wanted to change my major at that time. I wasn't going to do accounting and legal studies and I wanted to go into writing, but I had my English professor actually was like, Well, if you want to be a starving artist, go ahead and do that. And that was not my motivation at the time. I did not want to think about anything starving or not making money. So I stuck with my career. And it was my grandmother actually who read my first book and said, Tradere, there are probably a lot of parents and families that are going through trying to explain to their children why they have jobs and why they're working so hard. So you might want to see if you can turn that into something. So that's what I did.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

That is so great. That is so true. I love that. It's so good, it's so important to um create a business off of what you're already doing.

SPEAKER_01 7:41

Yes. It makes it easier a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

Um, so what does work-life balance mean to you?

SPEAKER_01 7:51

Yes. So to me, I don't believe work-life balance exists. I believe that the term work-life balance stresses us out. Or at least for me, it stresses me out because I'm trying to achieve something that is ever moving. It's a constant moving target. And my definition of balance or how I look at it is when you have a scale, basically you're saying balance is things with equal weight. Um, if you've ever seen those scales and you put marbles on it and everything, if you have three over here and one over here, it's rocky, it's constantly shaking. Um, it's never still. And I feel as if that is what us trying to achieve work like balance is is trying to achieve a stillness. So um you have to make a move, you have to pivot. Sometimes work will take 60% of your time, and sometimes it'll take 40%. Even right now, I say I'm working in this capacity. My kids are not, you know, they're doing school. So my attention isn't necessarily on them right now. But if I was to get a phone call that says, hey, you need to come pick a kid up, now all of a sudden this is about to shift, and I have to put up kids for, you know, that's gonna have a higher weight. So our lives are more collaborative than I believe we give them credit for, and we stress ourselves out trying to balance it.

SPEAKER_00 9:06

That's true. That's so good. And why do you think that so many of us stress ourselves out trying to balance it and feel so much pressure to do everything all the time?

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Yeah, I I think it just comes from society. I think it comes from that was a good word for us to say we're trying to take care of ourselves. And it's saying, yeah, let's we need to have more work-life balance. And we do um need to have it. You don't need to put all your time into one thing because you are going to neglect another by doing that. Um, I just don't know necessarily if balance was the right term that we should have, we should have said. And for me, I feel like the same thing comes even when we talk about self-care. I used to hear that a lot about how I did try to achieve balance. I would not take a lunch break if I didn't need to. But the reason why I would do that, I would eat at my desk because I wanted to make sure I got my kids to their activities on time. So I would rather work through lunch and get off earlier so I can take them to their activities rather than let me take a lunch break and just do that. However, listening to our bodies, I believe, is very important. And that is something that I believe sometimes we neglect. If there's a hard day or I'm having a rough day at work, I am no fan. I mean, I'm not opposed to saying, okay, this is a lunch break that I actually need to take and I don't need to work, and I need to just eat, or I just need to listen to music, or I need to listen to a book or a podcast. Like I know when my body is telling me I need to break and just do something. But um, I think we take the self out of self-care a lot, and we're listening to how others tell us we need to take care of ourselves rather than listening to our bodies and learning how to take care of ourselves and fill the our cup up the way that we need.

SPEAKER_00 10:57

Yeah. And how did you learn to um to say no and to be able to fill that cup and learn to stop and listen to yourself, see what you need, and be able to tell others your boundary?

SPEAKER_01 11:12

Sure, still learning. I can say that that is something that I'm still learning to do. Uh, guilt was something that was really hard. I also would say being a young mother and learning um professionalism and learning what it meant. I am listening to everybody who came before me. So when they're saying today, this isn't a healthy habit, I'm like, oh, it's not a healthy habit and I need to change it. But I realized it wasn't working for me. Uh, the best example that I can give it actually happened recently. I used to take my computer on vacations with me. And I feel as if an entrepreneur, sometimes you have to do that. Like your company is your baby, so there's certain things like you can have parameters in place for it to run while you're gone, but there are certain things you need to stay, you know, abreast to. So I took my computer with me and I didn't touch it like at all through um the vacation. And I said, I'm gonna try this thing. And because my mom used to say, you can't not work, you just feel like you have to work. So I brought it with me in case there was an emergency. But if there wasn't an emergency, I didn't touch it at all. And when I got back, I felt so out of whack. And it was it was like a horrible experience for me because I did devote a hundred percent of my time into family. That when I got back, I couldn't now send the family away. You know, they stayed there, so you know, when they wanted to, hey mom, let's watch a movie. Hey mom, just do that. I spent a hundred percent of my time with y'all last week, and now I have a hundred emails that I gotta read, and I gotta approve, you know, different payrolls, and I gotta respond to this and to do that, and all of that work was waiting for me, it did not go away. So that was where I learned the biggest setup of I can't listen to y'all because I don't have a job that I clock out of and when and the work is there waiting for me tomorrow. But there is a difference between emergencies, and I did learn that. Um, I also learned saying no to things that are not benefiting me to where I want to go. Um, and that's where, like speaking gigs, for example, um, I've started to be more strategic about the ones that I accept. I don't accept everyone. I have to weigh the options about whether or not it's valuable the time because ultimately you are gonna take me away from my family, you're gonna take me away with myself from myself when I start to travel. Um, I look at a kid's game schedule and see how I can do that. So figuring out what my values are, making sure I'm aligned with that, and making sure that the opportunities that I do say yes to are getting me closer to the ultimate goal that I want to achieve.

SPEAKER_00 14:46

Yes, that's really great. And I was gonna ask what changed in your life once you started to set those boundaries, but you kind of answered it. Um but if you want to touch on it a little bit more, but it seems like once excuse me, once you're able to set those boundaries and realize what you need, you were able to maybe schedule things a little differently, or yeah, what I would say what changed is I would say the example I just gave was more of validation.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

Uh, it is validation for a couple of reasons. It was proving people wrong. I can't go without my computer, I don't need it. It was also really me being able to put into practice what I was saying. This crap is hard if I do 100% of this all the time, and then I come back and do this when things are not gonna remove itself. Um, I just started to get tired. One thing is my memory. I pride myself on saying I have a good memory. I do know as I'm getting older that that will change, but I started realizing that I was forgetting things, like things that I should not forget, I was forgetting. And that helped me learn, okay, something's out of whack and I need to fix it. I also had to learn how to trust people and I had to learn how to ask for help, and that's where I was showing that I did not have that. Even when it came down to staffing, um, it was more so like, let me make sure I do this because I know it's gonna be done right. I know that it's gonna be done on time. But with doing that, I just kept stretching myself thinner and thinner, and I just couldn't, I couldn't do that anymore because it was stifling where I ultimately wanted to end up because I'm doing all the work that I have, I would say, like grown past. It's not that I can't do it, but I have to realize where my time is better used. And something as simple as in, which I was told it was bougie, but something as simple as a housekeeper freed up a lot of my time. So it's not like I can't clean my house and I don't know how to clean my house, but can my can that hour or two of me cleaning my house be better used to support my family in another way? And that's how I had to change my mind. And at first I was really telling myself that, oh, that's a waste of money, and you are, you know, are you too bougie where you can't clean your own house? Like I was telling myself all these things to talk myself out of that, and then I realized how much free time doing that did for me and for my family, and how much of that is an investment in me and my family versus the other naysayers and that was in my head, and what I was telling myself that I wasn't capable of doing.

SPEAKER_00 17:24

How do you nurture yourself and your identity outside of motherhood?

SPEAKER_01 17:29

Then yeah, so I'm learning that every day. Uh, one thing that I'm starting to with my identity, and I wrote a talk about this. It's talking about is change your shoes. So I say that we wear different shoes in our lives and they teach us different lessons. So with my identity and staying true to that, I stay focused to different things, whether that be church, I go there, you know, I go to church often, I realize my hobbies is music. I enjoy that. And then, like I said, learning how to listen to my body. And therapy has helped me a lot with learning that before I was trying to figure it out on my own. And there, of course, are those connotations for therapy, especially in a community of people of color. But going to therapy has helped me learn to listen to my body more, helped me learn to know when I need to refresh, helped me learn when I need to pour into my own cup and how to give myself grace because I realized I was not giving myself grace when I fell short. I was I'm my own worst critic, and I sometimes feel like I'm my own worst enemy. So going to therapy and learning those tools has really helped me stay true to myself, listen to myself, and learn how to pivot and navigate.

SPEAKER_00 18:43

Why was it a challenge? And why do you think that so many moms find it to be challenging to ask people for help?

SPEAKER_01 18:50

Yes, sir. For me, it's layered. I feel as if asking for help showed weakness, it showed that I wasn't capable. Um it just it showed all negative things, in my opinion, asking for help. It was like, you can't do it. So you're asking for somebody for help. And I feel I felt as if you gotten to a certain age, I should be able to do this. I it I don't know. I felt like you, it's kind of like when you say, I can't wait to be grown, or I can't wait to be an adult. I felt like everything was supposed to click. And so why am I asking for help? And I say the same thing at work. I'm in a leadership role. I'm I supervise people. I can't be asking for help. People come to me for help. So it just didn't sit right with learning how to ask for help. I looked at it really slow on me, but I'm learning that you're only as good as the team that's around you, and you have to be able to build your team as much and let your team build you, and allowing for failure on both sides. Like we learn when we fail. My team and those that are around me will never learn if I'm stopping them from opportunities to fail to fail. So making sure that I'm creating a culture where you know failure isn't the desire, but if it happens, we know how to get back up and overcome from it. So that's where I had to just reshape everything. And I took leadership very seriously. Once I got promoted in my position at work um years ago, I just took that seriously. Like I took that position of having people reporting to me seriously, I took that position of representing something bigger than me very seriously, and I needed to make sure that I was nurturing them and learning how to nurture them. I just felt like I wanted to know what I wanted, or I wanted to provide what something that I felt like I would have wanted if I was in their position. My favorite example, and I still tell my team to this day I don't want you to have to sneak around to find a job. I don't know about you, but whenever I would do a job search, I never told my boss that I was job searching. I did it on low, on the low, you know, I picked other people to serve as references, and I used sick days or PTO days to go do the interview, but I never told anybody, you know, never told my boss that I was looking for a job. And I realized one day that that was so, I mean, it's smart, but it depends on your relationship, but it's also kind of stupid too, because the who else is going to be able to talk about how well I work than the person that I report to, if that relationship is solid. So I would tell my team all the time, when you are ready to job search, I can't take that personal. I can take that as in something here you're not providing, you're ready to grow, you've learned what you need to go fly and go impact others. So let me know so I can serve as your reference. Let me know. So if I see a different position that's available for it, I can like push that to you. And I know that that's what you are trying to achieve. And sometimes I feel like that's where we fall short, is that we're so busy thinking about the II and the my company and the me and the impact of that departure will have on us that we're not thinking about the people that we're trying to grow. So once I stopped looking internally at Tradera and started looking at everybody else, that changed with the asking for help.

SPEAKER_00 22:23

Yeah, that's really good. Um, how can moms begin to listen to their bodies instead of pushing through exhaustion and then ask for that help?

SPEAKER_01 22:34

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I still push through exhaustion. Uh I I push through exhaustion. I'm gonna be honest. I will do that. Uh that's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_00 23:21

What is so then what helps you push through exhaustion when you are exhausted and you've you've had it? What is that one thing that helps you push through?

SPEAKER_01 23:31

Learning, staying true to my values. I I realize, like I said, my my memory is one. That's where I would say, look at the look at the things that on your normal day you know you're good at. So on my normal day, I know my memory is great. On my normal day, I have great patience, and little things don't annoy me. So, another example. If my kid were to drop a cup in his spill, on a normal, happy day, that's not gonna cause me to yell. That's not gonna cause me to scream. I'm not gonna have that adverse reaction because a cup fell and it spilled, and it's something that I can clean up, right? But when I'm tired, I realize oh, okay, I just yelled at something that I normally I know on a good day, if everything was going the way that it's supposed to go, I wouldn't probably yell at. That and that's what was helping me know. Okay, I might be tired. This is bigger than the kid, this is bigger than what just happened. Something else is what I need to pay attention and listen to. So go back to your core. And on a good sunny day, you're feeling great, everything's going right. Would that same situation make you respond and react in a way that it did? And if it didn't, something else might be the trigger. And it it's not the cup of juice that just failed.

SPEAKER_00 24:49

Wow. Yeah. Thank you. That's good. That's all you should listen. And redefining self-care. So you mentioned that self-care looks different for everyone. What does self-care look like for you specifically? Yes.

SPEAKER_01 25:02

For sure. Self-care actually depends on my day. It depends on where I'm at. So I will say at work, I have a playlist that honestly will help dictate the moods that I'm in. If I feel as if I am having a stressful day, I will put on my Jesus mix because that is going to calm me, that's going to center me, and I can listen to that. If I'm happy or I want to get happy, I will often put uh put on a Disney playlist. And those are things. If it's something that I cannot control on a computer and I feel as if I have to get out, I start moving. So whether that is I need to go to lunch, I need to sit in a restaurant, I need to go walk, I need to go work out, I need to read. It all depends on the severity and where I feel like myself is. And I've been saying this recently. Um, I'm a look at the cup half full type of person. I will say, I will recognize that something isn't right, I will recognize that something is bad, but I will recognize that it could be worse. I will recognize that, oh, I still have this, as you know, this is still that's going on. But recently, and I mean very recently, um, probably like a week or two ago, I was uh talking to someone and I said, my cup is still got empty, right? Like if I was operating on full and now my cup is half full, it was I still lost something, like some liquid candy, some liquid claim out, and I do need to refill that, but I gotta figure out where that is that needs to be refilled. And sometimes that's not a massage, sometimes that's not getting our nails done. Sometimes that is I need to eat candy today. Sometimes that is I need to walk, I need to figure it out. But as I mentioned, something as simple as the juice falling, you got to figure out at the core what is what's upset, so then that way you can refill that cup because all of your cups are not probably operating on empty, it's just the one where you experience the loss in it, and you got to recognize where that loss is in order to refill it.

SPEAKER_00 27:05

That's really good. Listen to your body so that you can refill your cups. And I like the idea that you have more than one cup.

SPEAKER_01 27:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:14

Is that like is that kind of true? Do you have more than one cup? I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 27:19

Yeah. To me, I I mean, I really do think it is. If I, you know, I can feel satisfied at work or I can feel satisfied at home, but maybe I don't feel satisfied spiritually. Maybe that's a cup where I've lost something. I'm not empty, but maybe that's my half-full cup. So I need to figure out and address how that needs to get full. I look at it the way that maybe doctors look at things, like your whole body isn't under duress when you're sick. Like there's an area in which you got to target. But if you're targeting and putting energy into something that is well and good, then you're still neglecting the troubled area. You're still neglecting the cup that is empty. So even identifying those cups of happiness, you know, we got our we got our health, you know, we have our mental health, we have our physical health, we have relationships, whether that be romantic, kid, friendship, which one of these cups are lacking? And when you look at it, figure out the ones that are, and then those are the ones that you need to figure out how do you take care of self and refill it.

SPEAKER_00 28:24

That is great. I was thinking I I think that's something new that I've never really thought of that we could have more than one cup.

SPEAKER_01 28:32

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:36

Yeah, I like that. Let's move on to encourage some moms and dads, whoever's listening. What would you say to a parent who feels overwhelmed and trying to juggle everything? What is one boundary or something that you could say to them to pick to practice this week to try to lessen that overwhelm?

unknown 28:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 28:59

What do I say to a parent that is feeling overwhelmed? Is that they're not alone? This is not gonna be the last time that you feel overwhelmed. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad time, bad thing, but this is not gonna be the last time that you feel overwhelmed. Um, give yourself grace for how you respond when you are feeling overwhelmed. Do not make a permanent decision in your feelings of overwhelmness over something that's temporary. Um, and as I've been saying, listen to your bodies and refill the cups that are empty. Focus on that one area that you need to focus on.

SPEAKER_00 29:43

That's really great. And you have so many successes, and you talked about how previously life and currently how life can get overwhelming and stressful. But what does success look like to you now compared to your earlier life?

SPEAKER_01 30:00

Success in my earlier life looked like it was selfish. I can say it was self-inducing, it was my name on the pedestal, people knowing Traderea for that. Now, success, I define it as in legacy. Success is in these babies that I have walking around. Success is what is being talked about behind me, you know, behind closed doors. Success is is community. So I would say success is legacy, success is community, and it's something that honestly I don't know when I will see it and when I will feel it. And I would say I probably got that with working with students. A lot of times, and I'll say maybe even with teachers, you're in a thankless job sometimes. You don't know somebody appreciates what you did to for them or how you poured into them until they come back later. And I deem that the same way. Um, my faith has gotten deeper too. So, with that one, I would say that I want people to I don't know, when it's all said and done, I just want to say, like, I want to know that I did a good job. And I want to know that I represented my kids well. I want to know that I represented my family well. Um, I want to make sure I really represent, you know, God well and all of that. So it's not selfish as much as it used to be. Now it's like I said, legacy and community.

SPEAKER_00 31:29

I really like that legacy and community. That's so important. And I think it's important to try to figure out and notice when we are making a difference and when we are leaving that impact. Because, like you said, we might not notice, but we are. So I think it's important to try to like take a moment and celebrate ourselves. If you could leave our parents with one sentence to carry us through this week, what would it be?

SPEAKER_01 31:54

But you are doing a good job. Keep it up. This work is not easy, this work is very hard. You have this is probably your first time being a parent of whatever you are. Right now, I am going into my teenage, into my parenting teenage years. I have never been the parent of a teenager. I have been a teenager, but I have never been the parent of a teenager. So give yourself grace as you are walking into parenting that you have never experienced it before. There is no handbook for how to do this. You're doing a great job. Keep it up.

SPEAKER_00 32:29

Thank you. That was really good. That was really encouraging. We all need to hear that. Thank you so much. And I'm gonna link all of your books and everything in the show notes so that we can all find you. But if you can, if you would like to tell us where to find you.

SPEAKER_01 32:46

Sure, sure, sure. So you can find me um on TraderaMcLaurin.com. There you will be able to see the speaking engagements that I do. I have keynotes listed there, workshops that I have there. And then you'll also see the books. I have the four books, why mommy works, why daddy works. I want a nickname and MVP's playbook. And then I also have a resource there for our mental health. And that is called One Piece at a Time. That is a puzzle journal that you can use for yourself as well as for your littles. Uh, there's two different opportunities for you. And with that one, you journal your day on a blank puzzle. I really want you to see that when you have a bad day, when the picture is all said and done, it is still pretty. And sometimes you might not even be able to recognize that bad day. So TraderaMcLaurin.com.

SPEAKER_00 33:35

Amazing. Thank you so much. This was such a great conversation. And I hope that you join us again on the Mommy Pod.

SPEAKER_01 33:41

Yes, ma'am.

SPEAKER_00 33:43

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 33:44

You're welcome.