Ep 43: Working Moms, Stop Doing It All (Time to Build Your Village & Outsource)

If you’ve ever said “I don’t have time,” “I don’t have money,” or “I’ll just do it myself”—this episode is your wake-up call.

In this solo episode, Saidee is breaking down one of the biggest lies modern women—especially working moms—have been sold: that we’re supposed to do it all alone.

From building your “village” to outsourcing without guilt, this episode dives into the real reason you feel overwhelmed—and how to actually fix it.

Because here’s the truth:
 👉 Time, money, and energy are all resources—and you’re already choosing how to spend them.

Saidee shares her personal experience going from overwhelmed, resentful, and doing everything herself… to building a life where she can show up fully as a mom, spouse, and professional—without burning out.

If you’re a high-achieving woman trying to balance career, motherhood, and everything in between, this episode will challenge the way you think about:

•  Asking for help 
•  Outsourcing household tasks 
•  Prioritizing your time and energy 
•  Letting go of control and guilt 
•  Creating a support system (your “village”) that actually works 

You’ll also learn how to identify what’s draining you, what’s worth outsourcing, and how small shifts can completely change how you show up in your life.

Because you weren’t meant to do this alone—and you don’t have to.

Ready to figure out what you should stop doing?
Grab the Village Workbook linked in the show notes and start building a life that actually feels good to live.

 If you vibed with this episode, here’s how you can keep the chaos going: 

• Hit Follow so new episodes show up without you having to remember (because who has the brain space?)
• Share it with your favorite boss bestie so they know they’re not alone 🍷
• Leave a rating & review — it’s basically the podcast version of a compliment, and you know I live for those 💕
• Pop by instagram @saideegrimley or tiktok @wholetmedothispod and tell me what no ones saying out loud as a high achieving working mom

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I am here to tell you is if you are making the excuse that you cannot accomplish or live the life you want to live because you do not have the time, the energy, or the resources, you are making excuses. You are making excuses to not live that life. Hey Fraud Squad, welcome to Who Let Me Do This? I'm your host, Sadie, and this is the podcast for anyone who's ever looked around and thought, wait, who trusted me with this job, with these kids, and with this life? Here's the deal. I'm not here to hand you the perfect five-step plan to get your life together. I'm here to share the chaos, the fails, the small wins, and the oh my God, same moment of trying to be a working mom, a decent human, and occasionally a functioning adult. And because we are all out here winging it together, I'll also bring in actual experts to drop some wisdom and share tips that might make our lives easier. Just a little. So if you're listening, congrats. You're officially a part of the fraud squad. That's our little community of imposters, hot messes, and overachievers who are all just faking it together. So grab your coffee, grab your wine, or let's be real, grab the leftover food from dinner that your kid didn't eat, and let's dive in. Oh, and if you like what you hear, hit subscribe so you never miss an episode and share it with a friend who could, I don't know, use a laugh, or maybe just a little solidarity. The more of us in the fraud squad, the better. Hey everyone, welcome back to the Who Let Me Do This podcast. I'm your host, Sadie, and today we have a solo episode. Guys, it feels like it has been forever since we've done a solo episode. And truly the reason is because we have had the most amazing guests. So if you have not been tuning in, please go back and check them out. We've had the most incredible women on this podcast, everything from women who just have an amazing personal story to share, a story of resilience, of ambition, of success, heartbreak, and just perseverance to women who are expertises in a multitude of fields that are sharing their knowledge so that we can all be better, we can all be healthier, we can all be happier. This podcast has turned into so much more than I've ever expected. I have learned so much. I have met so many incredible people that I would have never met if it wasn't for this podcast, because these are people that I'm connecting with online, which I have always thought sounded so weird. Like I have online friends now, but these people live all over the country. Hopefully, we get to a point where we have people on the podcast from all over the world. But I could never have imagined that it would turn into this. Just this amazing community of women who are out there trying to change how society has failed us as women, trying to lift each other up, trying to support each other so that we can truly just be our best selves. You guys, this is what we have been missing. We as a society have created this belief that women are not there to support other women. Let me be the first one to tell you that is not true. And if that is who you are surrounded by in your everyday life, those are not your people. I have met now with dozens of women for this podcast, and not one of them has been self-serving, selfish. They have been incredible, they have been inspiring, and they have been inspired by other women. They are giving credit to where credit is due, and they are there to help and to support in so many different ways, whether it is purely sharing their story so that you feel seen and realize that whatever you are going through, you are not alone. There is someone out there that understands what you're going through. They empathize with you. They might have been trip tripped tips and tricks to get through it easier or faster or just get through it. There are women with specialties that have taken their specialty and they have zoomed in on the female livelihood, the female body. And they just want to leave their practice or their specialty better than it started. It's just been so incredible. And as you guys know, one of my favorite things to talk to our podcast guests about is the village. And I want to be really, really clear with people because as we're talking about the village on the podcaster even in my personal life, the responses are so interesting. So many people don't look at their village as their village. It's either, yeah, it's my family, or I have to have daycare. So how are they a village? When we say village, we just mean your network, your people, the people that are helping you thrive, the people you are paying for to be able to thrive. Call it hired help, call it outsourcing, call it your mom. I don't care what you call it. These are the people that are allowing you to live the life that you deserve to live. The other response I get that I actually struggle with so much is women that say, I don't need a village. I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be harsh here, but you're kidding yourself. You are kidding yourself if you think you can do it alone. That is your choice. You can choose to be the martyr that scrubs every toilet in your house, folds every piece of laundry in your house, never misses a pickup, never misses a drop-off, never misses a bettime, sacrifices your career for your family, sacrifices your social life for your family, sacrifices your happiness or your mental health for your family. Honestly, be my guest. But if this is you, I also want you to hear that you do not need to do that. You deserve so much more. Gone are the days where we need women, especially mothers, to be the martyr for their family. You are the rock of that family. You are the foundation of that family. If you crumble, the family will crumble. Okay. While I recognize that is a lot of pressure, it is also an incredible position to be in. You are smart, you are beautiful, you are capable, but you cannot continue to stand as the foundation of your family without the appropriate structures in place. Think about the most beautiful historical buildings in the history of the world. They have to have a strong foundation. We all know that if you're going to buy a house and the foundation is cracked in that house, the first thing your realtor will tell you is, do not buy this fucking house. We can fix windows in a house, we can fix paint colors in the house, we can even fix the freaking roof of a house. Do not buy a house with poor foundation. It will only cause more trouble. And so, you, my friend, my love, my girl, you are the foundation of your family. And if you continue to put pressure and pressure and pressure on yourself to do all of the things because you deserve to live a life that you are proud of and excited about and the life you dreamed about, but you do not put the proper structures in place of support, of help, of relief, you will crack. You will crack and the foundation of your home and of your life will be unsteady. I know that probably feels very gloom and doom, but what I want you to hear is that you do not have to live that way. If you are someone who has ever said to yourself, I would love to get back into running. I would love to try Pilates, but I don't have time. You're lying to yourself. You do have time. I have three kids under seven. I have a very demanding full-time job, a very big social calendar. My kids have very big social calendars. I also started a business. You have the time. Everyone has the same 24 hours in a day. I know I do say that moms don't have the same 24 hours in a day, but the fact of the matter, like objectively, we all have the same 24 hours in the day. It depends on how we spend that time. The reason moms do not have those same 24 hours is because there is more pulling on a mom's 24 hours than any other creature on the planet. Okay. And some of that is due to us taking on a lot. And some of that is society. All of that to be said, we are not victims. You have the time. It is how you choose to invest your time. Many people will say, I don't have the resources. I don't have the money that it costs to invest in the help that I want for my village, to invest in the relief. We're gonna have a tough conversation right now. I want you to turn up the volume. I want you to scoot your chair in. I want you to make eye contact with me. If you are watching this on video, money is a resource just like time. You spend money on things every single day. You spend money on the things that you prioritize. By you choosing not to spend money on outsourcing specific tasks for your home or paying for parts of a village that would bring you happiness, relief, comfort, or time. You are saying that your time, your happiness, your mental relief is not worth the dollars it would take to outsource whatever task we are talking about. Okay, I want that to sink in. Everyone listening has a choice to make. You might say, Sadie, I don't want to spend my money on a cleaning lady. That is fine. But do not say that you don't have time to spend with your kids because you have to clean your house. Do not say that you can't get ahead in your career because you have to log off at three o'clock every day because you have to get your kids up to school. No, no, no, no, no, no. That is an excuse. You have the resources to use as needed. And there might be trade-offs with that. Maybe you don't live in a million-dollar house. Maybe you don't go on a family vacation every year. I'm not here to tell you how to spend your resources, but I am here to remind you that money, time, and energy are all resources. They are things we trade for other things. You trade money for a service, you trade money for an experience, you trade time for an experience, you trade energy for a date night, you trade energy to help your child in the middle of the night, you trade energy to go to work, you trade energy to work out. All of these things are resources that you have to choose what to do with. And you are already doing that. More than likely, you are doing it very subconsciously. Most parents, most moms, aren't thinking twice when their kid wakes up in the middle of the night and needs something. You're not thinking to yourself at two o'clock in the morning, huh? Do I want to use my energy right now to get up and help this kid in the bathroom or tuck this child back in? Or do I want to save that energy for tomorrow for one of my meetings at work? No, you're a mom. You're an autopilot so often and you are making that decision for money. God willing, you are never having to think twice about spending money on something like a doctor's visit for your child or a birthday present for your child, but it's still a choice. How much money you spend on that birthday present is part of that choice. Is this going to be a year where your child gets a Barbie doll for $35? Or are you a family that spends a lot more money on birthday gifts and birthday parties? I am not here to tell you what you should or shouldn't spend money on. What I am here to tell you is if you are making the excuse that you cannot accomplish or live the life you want to live because you do not have the time, the energy, or the resources, you are making excuses. You are making excuses to not live that life. I am not saying it's going to be easy. I fully recognize that everyone has a finite amount of energy, a finite amount of money, a finite amount of time. But every single day, you are making a choice of how to prioritize those things. If you are prioritizing giving your energy to your family versus recharging and giving energy back to yourself, you are making a choice. If you are telling me you do not have time to get a good night of sleep because after the kids go to bed, there's so much to do in your household. You need to catch up on work, you are making a choice. What I'm here to remind you is don't lose the plot. What are you here to do? What are you here to accomplish? How do you want your kids to remember their childhood? Do you want your kids to remember a mom that instead of playing trucks on the floor was scrubbing the baseboards? Maybe that's okay. That's not what I want for my kids. I want my kids to know when mom's home on the weekends, in the evenings, when I'm not traveling for work, I am fully in. We are on adventures. We are at the park. We are at the museum. We are trying new restaurants. I want them to experience life with me. And I want them to have that vision of me as a mom. I also don't want my kids' vision of me to be one of stressed out, angry, resentful of my life and the life I chose and I created as being a full-time working mom in a demanding field. I made a deliberate choice to get this job, to go into this career. I made a deliberate choice to have three beautiful, wonderful kids. Those things are no one else's fault, but mine and a little bit of my husband, but obviously it was a choice. I am saying all of this because my kids don't deserve to have an overwhelmed end-of-fair rope, pissed off, resentful mom. My spouse doesn't deserve to have those things either. My company does not deserve to have someone with a negative attitude or at their wit's end or barely hanging on. But in order for me to be able to do all of these things successfully and show up in the way I want to show up, I cannot do it alone. Please hear me. You cannot do it alone. You cannot be the cook, the cleaner, the therapist, the employee, the mom, the baker, the party planner. You cannot be all of these people in one person. I'm not telling you not to participate in something that brings you joy. If you love to plan your child's birthday party, keep planning your child's birthday party. But if it is something that you put off until the very last minute and it causes you stress and harm and puts you in a bad mood, and you get to the point where by the time the birthday party rolls around, you're so freaking sick of talking about it and you're pissed off the whole day, it's not worth it. I'm not speaking from experience. But I will tell you that birthday parties are something that I no longer plan because I do not find joy in them. That is something I've handed off to part of my village, my husband. He finds value in them, he enjoys planning them. I have relinquished the control of the price, of the activity, of it all. And that's, I mean, that's its own game and that's a tangent we can go on a different day. But if there is something that is keeping you from living your best life, you need to stop doing that. There is quite literally an ability to outsource almost every single thing in our lives in 2026. If you are similar to me, you are a high-achieving, ambitious woman who does not like to ask for help. I'm gonna guess that when I ask you how you are leveraging your born into village, you're going to have one million of, you're going to have one million excuses of why you are not leveraging them and why you cannot leverage them. I'm not gonna press too hard. Okay. I understand how hard it is to call your parents and ask for a favor. My parents are young. They're living their best life. Does it feel like I'm being a burden? Absolutely. Do they think of me as a burden? Absolutely not. But I understand how hard it is to swallow, especially if you're an eldest daughter, to swallow the need to admit that you cannot do it all and ask for help. I am not telling you you have to do that. If you are not there, if you are not there, you don't have to be. But that does not mean you have to suffer in silence. That is when we are going to flip to our paid for village. If you are the ambitious, hardworking, going to reach the top floor, the ceiling of your career and break through that glass, you have the means to outsource. Hear me again. If you are working that freaking hard in your job, you have the means to not be suffering in silence. Sometimes what we think outsourcing looks like is not actually what it looks like. It doesn't cost what it looks like. It's not as hard to find as what it looks like. I'm not saying it's free. I'm not, someone is not going to show up at your front doorstep and tell you that they are here to do your laundry unless you book someone to show up at your front doorstep and tell you they are here to do your laundry. You are not a victim. You are very capable. You are very ambitious. You have gone after every other thing that you want in your life. You have gone after that job. You have gone after that career. You have gone after that family. You have made decisions to bring babies into the world. You have curated and imagined this life, but you are not fully stepping into the ability to fully embrace and enjoy it because you have this mind block that by asking for help, it is a failure and that you don't deserve it. It is not a failure, it is a strength to be able to ask for help. It is a strength in an incredible thing. And the power you see a woman step into when you see them recognize how valuable their time and their energy is and pour it into the things they actually care about. The power you see come from that is beyond. You see women's careers explode because all of a sudden they are sitting in meetings fully locked in because they're not thinking about what is for dinner or how full the fridge is. All of a sudden, you see families that are laughing around the dinner table that are playing a game on Saturday night instead of running around dividing tasks and yelling about vacuuming and scrubbing toilets, instead of that being what is the focus, they're focused in on their kids. Try and tell me that when you imagined your life as that millennial girl who was told she could have it all, that she got to have the big career and that she got to have the beautiful family, the full house full of laughter and sports and movie nights. Tell me that part of that picture for you in your imagination was you doing all of the cooking, the cleaning, the shopping, the doctor's appointments, the Amazon returns. Tell me one person that that was a part of the vision that they were hoping for. Seriously, please write into the show and let me know. Because I know for me, when I imagined that I could have any life I wanted, which I was consistently told as a little girl, I imagined the career I was gonna have. I imagined the rooms I was gonna walk into. I imagined the impact I was gonna make. I imagined the babies I would have, the man I would marry. I imagined the home we would live in. Never one time did I imagine going through my kids' drawers and taking out the clothes that they've grown out of. Never once was that a part of my vision for the beautiful life I want to create. Do those things need to happen? Yes. Yes, they do. Can I do them? Yes. Yes, I can. Is that how I want to spend my time and energy? No. No, it is not. Now, I recognize we cannot outsource our entire lives. I mean, you can, and maybe some of you will. More power to you. For me, I have to pick and choose. What are the things that I despise doing? What are the things that bring such a mental load to my plate? What are the things that are preventing me from showing up the way I want to in the spaces that mean a lot to me? What are the things in my head that are preventing me from showing up as a spouse I want to be? I don't want to be a nagging spouse. I want to spend the time I have with my husband that continues to be fleeting because our kids are getting bigger and they have a lot of needs. I don't want to spend that time being irritated that the dishwasher didn't get started last night. I don't want to spend that time being frustrated that I'm the only one who picks up the socks off the floor. I want to spend that time connecting. I want to spend that time on a date night. I want to spend that time enjoying each other. I want to be able to show up as the mom that wants to giggle and play and tickle and run around. I don't want my spouse outside biking around with the kids while I'm inside vacuuming. No, thank you. That is not the life I signed up for. I want my employer to look at me and say, wow, Sadie, your performance has been incredible. Your approach was so thoughtful. You're so incredibly strategic. Want to show up as me. I want to show up as the person I envision. But in order to do that, I need a village. And so do you. So I finally created something. It's something that a lot of people have been asking for. How do you know what you need? What should I pick? Who should I ask? It is all based on our village framework that we've talked about a ton. It's a workbook, guys. It's $47. It's inexpensive. What it will do is it forces you to really evaluate who is in your village and are you using them appropriately? Again, I can't tell you what is the right or wrong way to use your village because everyone's village and everyone's situations are so unique. Maybe folding laundry is a time of zen for you. Great. I'm not taking that zen away from you. You do you, girl. I can tell you though, that I am not going to be folding laundry. I hate folding laundry. For me, I don't mind grocery shopping online. I actually don't mind putting away my groceries. It would not make sense for me to outsource that because it's a mindless task that I do while I'm catching up on something else. I'm talking on the phone with a friend, I'm listening to A podcast. But what this will do is it will really challenge the way you think about your villages, recognize who is in what village, where you could potentially leverage it more, because more often than not, we are leaning way too heavily into one village. It is not going to force you to call your sister and ask her to pick up your kids every Thursday. It might ask, could you? But it's not going to force you to do that. But it is going to force you to make a choice and really look at what is not worth my time anymore? What is not worth my energy? What is something that is blocking me from showing up the way I want to show up in the spaces that matter to me? And recognize that saying, I don't have time, I don't have money, or I don't have energy is nothing but an excuse. And as a highly ambitious working woman who's making an income and looking to continue to grow in their career, you have to create time and energy for yourself to achieve those goals, both inside of your home and outside of your home. Money will come and go. You spend money every single day on the latte at Starbucks, on getting your hair done, on some TikTok purchase. Everything is a decision. But how amazing of an investment would it be for you to determine something that you can remove out of your life that would deplete stress, that would give you back time, that you could be with your babies, that would give you back time that God forbid you took a nap and then you refill that energy bucket. How would it feel to be able to say yes to that girl's night that you've said no to for the last six months because you feel guilty leaving your family? Because when you're not working, you are running errands, you are doing tests, you're in a crappy mood because of how overwhelmed you are with life. How good would it feel to say yes to that girl's night, knowing that your family is good? You've gotten really good time with them. Money is a resource, but it is meant to help us live our best lives. Why are you working if not for that? Like I mentioned, it's not going to force you to be a quote unquote charity case, which I have an issue with that statement. It is going to force you to think about what we are going to take away from your plate to make your life even 1% better, to make your mental health even 1% stronger, to let you see the beautiful life that you've created even 1% more. It's going to show you exactly if you are stuck on this money thing like I was for so long. It is going to show you how to apply a dollar amount of value to your time and recognize, even without the energy bucket, how much value you will get from outsourcing certain things in your life. How much is your time worth? I guarantee it is more than you think it is. I also guarantee that some of these outsourcing tasks are less expensive than you think they are. And what you will gain from them is so much more than you can imagine until you try it. Prove me wrong. Prove me wrong. Get the program, test it out, tell me what you're going to outsource, and then come back to me and tell me that that did not create additional relief in your life, that it didn't allow you to see the beautiful life you created 1% more. And it just gets better. I am telling you guys this from experience. I was the resentful wife. I was a resentful mom that felt like nobody was helping me and when I wasn't asking for help. Because I just wanted people to come and save me. No one is going to come and save you. You need to save yourself. You have gotten your own career going. You have had your own children. Why are you treating your home life any different? You have to communicate what you need. I wasn't asking for help when I started asking for help, which was not my first step. Let me tell you, guess what? People said yes. And there were things that people couldn't help with. And that's also okay. But then I looked into that paid for village and I was shocked by how much more affordable it was. And I felt it. I was spending money, fixed amount of money every month on something I didn't have before and something that is very easy to deem as not a necessity. For me, it was a cleaning lady. The amount of fights my husband and I got in when we had young babies on who was going to clean the disgusting toilet, especially when we started to potty train, was outrageous. The expectation for a clean house and the reality of getting that clean house can be very, very separate for people. The amount of time we fought about it, the amount of time I stressed out about it, the amount of anxiety that created, and the amount of anger it created in me because I didn't want to do it was not worth what ended up being $150 for a monthly clean. We made very minor changes in our life. And at the time that we started having a cleaner, we did not have a lot of disposable income. I will be very honest with you. We are at the height of our daycare bills, but it was affecting us so much that we made it work and it has made a world of a difference. I didn't want to do more. I will be completely honest with you. I thought to myself, having this woman come and clean our house once a month is such a luxury, and it is, and I fully recognize that. And I am so grateful. It is a luxury that we work very hard for because we work very hard in our jobs. But the mental load I have taken off of my plate of scheduling the cleaning service, having the cleaning service come is amazing. It's amazing. I still had resentment in my heart for other things that I don't enjoy doing that to me don't say motherhood. They just are tests. Anyone could do it. And so I started to chip away. I started to look at the things that caused me the most stress, the most anxiety, the most conflict in our house, whether it was with our kids, whether it was with my husband, whether it was outside the home, and started to look at what does it actually cost to outsource that? And again, I was shocked by how affordable some of these things are. Some of them aren't. And then you really have to sit back and weigh, what is the benefit I'm getting of it? When I say we have learned how to outsource a lot of our life, we have learned to outsource a lot of our life. So when I think about my responsibility, it is as an employee, it is as a wife, not a co-household manager. It is a wife. And it is as a mom, not a cleaning lady, not a chef. It is a mom. It is to be there emotionally for my kids. It is to have warm, fuzzy, cuddle moments with my kids. It's to create amazing memories with my kids. It's to be able to say on a Saturday, let's go have an adventure. Let's see what we can get into. It has allowed me to show up the way I am proud to show up in the spaces that matter the most to me. So if you are listening to this and you are not proud of how you are showing up in one area of your life, I don't care if it's at work. I don't care if it's as a mom. I don't care if it's as a sister, a spouse, a daughter. What is driving that? Is there outside pressures or stressors that you do not need to carry alone? What are the things that consciously or subconsciously are taking away from that beautiful life that you have envisioned and that you have worked so fucking hard for? It's time to build that village and I'm gonna help you do it. I will put the link in the show notes. I will also put the link on social media at Sadie Grimley and at Who Let Me Do This Pod on TikTok. Go figure out that village yourself. But if you don't know where to start, reach out, grab the program. I can't tell you what a benefit this has been for me. It will not to be dramatic, it will change your life. It will change the trajectory of how you show up and you will see it pay off in spades, whether it's in your relationships, in your career, or just in your overall happiness and stress levels. I wish someone would have given me this permission a long time ago because I had to hit ground zero. I had hit my breaking point before I was willing to really look into this. And please hear me when I say that is so not necessary. You don't have to be at a breaking point to build your village. Things actually could be going swimmingly. And you might say, Sadie, I'm actually just not that stressed out. Great. You don't have to do anything about this. But also, what if you got to take back an hour every week? What would you do with that? If someone literally came to you and said, hey, Sadie, here's an extra hour a week. You have no responsibility for that hour. How would you spend it? What is that time worth to you? If someone said, here's an extra hour of energy, how would you spend it? If someone handed you $100 off the street, rocking down, you fell out, found a $100 bill, you found $300 on the street. One, pretty good day. But two, what would you do with that money? What would you do? How would you use that to make your life better? If you're not thinking about those things on a regular basis, you could be missing out. So please hear me when I say, whether or not you are struggling or not, you were not built to do this alone. No one is expecting you to do this alone. You were meant to have the village. And if that village isn't providing what you need in this season of life, it's time for you to step out of the victim mentality. And it's time for you to build that village. And it's easier than you think. Make sure if you're not already to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode, especially when we have these incredible guests on that are talking about their villages, that are sharing their amazing stories. And make sure you're following us on social so you never miss anything. Thanks, guys. Talk soon. Okay, that's it. Thanks for joining this episode of Who Let Me Do This? Go drink some water, set a boundary, and don't forget, you're doing amazing, sweetie, even if you're spiraling. And hey, if this episode made you laugh or feel seen, send it to a friend, hit follow, or leave a review. You know, do all the things. See you next time.