How I Life-Proofed My Business For This Season

AnnMarie doesn't believe in balance. She believes in harmony. There's a difference.

After recording another "With Friend" episode, AnnMarie's friend Jaymie asker her to dish about she's actually life-proofed her business enough to be a present parent to 2 boys, while growing businesses and having a full life beyond business and motherhood. 

So that's exactly what this episode is: the real, specific choices and systems supporting AnnMarie in this season.

 If you've ever tried to figure out how your dream business and your dream life can actually fit together, whether kids are part of that picture or not, this one's for you.

Dished on this episode:

• Why AnnMarie prioritizes harmony over balance, and what that means when  things get off track
• The real reason she doesn't work on Fridays, and when it's nice to have it as a  flex day
• How she keeps her head on straight serving so many clients so deeply each day 
• Why she only does async client support via specific communication channels 
• How mornings, naps, and a full time childcare look with two kids under four
• The CEO Schedule process that keeps her workweek life-proof and productive even when life is life-ing

Bottom line: Life-Proof isn't a formula. It's knowing exactly what needs need to be met in any given moment, and having the systems and structure to meet them without stretching yourself too thin.

Did this one hit? Subscribe and share it with your own Friends With Businesses.

Want to actually Life-Proof every aspect of your business from offers, to positioning, marketing, sales, and beyond? The Life-Proof Business Leader audio series walks you through it, completely free.

Resources mentioned:

• Life-Proof Business Leader (Free Audio Series)
• CEO Schedule Tookit

Stay connected:

• AnnMarie's website
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Book a complimentary consult

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Business is very, very important to me. I say it's my purpose, but not my everything. So when I say that, I mean that without business, I would not feel super fulfilled professionally, creatively, almost like spiritually in a way. You know that feeling you get when you're hanging out with a business owning friend who just gets it learning out on strategies, ability, really fully going there about work and life, maybe even left to be for money. Yeah, that's exactly what we're doing here. I'm gonna be rose, I'm a founder, one of the sisters, friend, and business trending over the game and maybe multiple business with multiple and work on the highest and levels on the journey, and you know what we can be coming and promoting through these conversations with friends who also happen to have businesses. This is where those conversations happen at level for you and with you. Around here, it's all on the table because around here we're all friends with businesses. Thank goodness it's just us, friends with businesses. Today we are getting into a topic I would say I'm most known for at this point, which is this idea of life proofing your business and specifically the specifics of how I've life proofed mine. After all, I refer to myself as a life proof business strategist. And then in some of the recordings I've been doing with my friends with businesses, one of my friends who's known me a very long time, shout out to Jamie, who we will hear from at some point on this show. I asked her, I was like, I need to record another solo episode today, but I have tons of ideas, but it's the second episode. What should I just tell me? What should I, what should I share? And she was like, I think talking about what you've done to life proof your business, to be a very present parent and have a thriving business within that and a full life is I think that's what you should talk about. I think that's what we you should lead with. And I she mentioned to me that that's something that a lot of people have mentioned to her when I'm not in their room and even had some misconceptions about what my life actually looks like. Um, you know, what kind of childcare I have available to me and different things like that. Um, she's like, so I think you you talk about that. And I think that's very relevant even for people who don't have kids, people who are imagining their business looking one way, their life looking another way, and wondering, like, how do I get this all to fit together? And that's what we're gonna get into today is just real examples of some of the structural choices I've made in both my business and in my life to support life and business looking and feeling how I want and getting the results that I want and getting making sure that my needs are met, my kids' needs are met, my the people I care about's needs are met, my business's needs are met. That's really a lot of what it comes down to. And when I say life proof for me personally, business is very, very important to me. I say it's my purpose, but not my everything. So when I say that, I mean that without business, I would not feel super fulfilled professionally, creatively, almost like spiritually in a way, because I do feel like the work I do through my business is the thing that fills my cupboards, the thing that makes me feel like I'm leaving the mark on the world that I meant to leave here. Whereas parenting and wifing, those feel like areas of my life that add rick richness and texture to my experience here, but not that they are like the why I'm here, if that makes sense. And I might catch the flack for saying that, but that's just my truth. So, because of that, and what I just know with every fiber of my being is the truth for me. My business has to be able to thrive and to leave an impact and to give me a creative outlet and to get people results while I'm also having this rich, full life that adds important texture that I also know is meant for me. And I don't have to compromise in the important areas of my life. Like my kids' needs don't need to go and met in order for that to happen. You know what I mean? I don't need to compromise my health in order for that to happen. That's that's what it means to me. Um, and it looks different for everybody. So that's what I want you to know as we dive into this is that whether you want kids, you don't want kids, you've got an autoimmune disease, you love to travel, whatever it is, life proof. There are things about your business that you want. And maybe you are someone who's like, I'm just building this business so I can exit, so I can invest all the money and like be a full stay-at-home mom. Amazing, great. There's life proof, like your business can be life proof in the process of that happening. It can give you exactly what you need in this season of your life, whatever that looks like for you. So as I get into these specifics for me, you may pick up with some ideas to borrow, ideas that match your season of life exactly, something that sparks an idea for you. Like, take from this what you need. I'm just gonna get into like the details of what it looks like for me. I am a wide open book, and because this is life-proofness, is the lens through which I measure everything, like any decision that I make in the world or in in life, in business, I'm always asking, like, is this gonna allow all the things that matter most to me to have their needs met? Like, you know, my business, my kids, my me, my husband, my like, you know, not necessarily in that order, allowing me to be a friend, allowing me to be healthy. Like, are all those needs gonna be met if I make this decision? Because I don't, you know, is everything in perfect balance all the time? Heck no. I don't really believe in balance. I believe in harmony. So if I make this this decision, is it gonna create more harmony or less? And there are the occasional moments where you make a decision knowing full well it's gonna disrupt some of that harmony, and you know it going in. So then when that happens, you're not surprised, you're not like wondering what went wrong. And the for me, always the outcome of momentary harmony disruption is ultimately greater harmony on the other side, right? So just normalizing that and just also being upfront about this is how I look at literally everything. So I could create, I could have an entire podcast that releases weekly episodes, even multiple times a week episodes on different ways of life-proofing your business and structuring your life so that it supports your needs. So I could go on and on and on about all this stuff. I'm gonna keep this as like just the top three things in business that I've done, or just three things, really, not even the top. Um, and then three things in life that contribute to like if someone were to ask me, Amory, how do you have a thriving business and a thriving life and make sure everybody's needs are met and whatever? Do I do it perfect all the time? No. But in general, how do we like harmonize those two aspects of my world? Here are three things I've done to to make that possible and via my business, and here are three things in life that helped to make that possible as well. Okay, let's get into it. Business structure. So in 2021, I believe, I decided I was no longer gonna work Fridays. So I remember way back in the day, I that was my CEO days, and I've always found myself like getting to Fridays and the CEO work on the business is, you know, thoughtful, very thoughtful, very intentional work, and I never had the brain power left for Fridays. So I for years now I've had my CEO days real deeper work on the business where I don't do, like, I don't take any calls on Tuesdays other than my team call. Um, that that day has become Tuesday and been that for years. And slowly but surely, then I just started to back off any like obligations from a business standpoint on happening on Fridays, I just slowly but surely kind of phase those out. And so I have Fridays have been my off day for years now, even before I had kids. And that served me very, very well in this season because it can be a flex day. So if I have another day of the week that goes off the rails, I and usually still, again, it's gonna be work that I that needs to happen on the business that didn't get done, I can push that to a Friday if I need to. I it's also a great day for like meeting up and and connecting with people, appointments for myself, uh, having an extra long workout. Like Fridays are kind of my day for my flex day for whatever I am needing in that moment in that season. And but I don't, I never open it up for calls. Um I don't want to say like absolutely never, but there's very rare instances. And like my advisory clients know they have kind of an on-demand couple of calls that we do. So, like technically an advisory client or a one-to-one client could like request an in-the-moment call of me on a Friday. And if I'm available, sure, I'm gonna take that. Like that's that's within my within my scope of what I do, and I've made that decision. And I because I want to do that and I want to be available in that way, but in terms of having like any sort of other preset calls on the calendar that's not happening on a Friday. And I'm not generally not going to have any significant work initiatives that I'm scheduling on a Friday. So that's one thing with my business structure, is like my business operates Monday through Thursday. That's pretty much the deal. Then another thing, having a very clear and detailed roadmap with every single client I work with for any length of time. So outside of a single session uh client, or outside of maybe we're doing an in-depth one, like one month intensive. Any client that I'm working with past a month has an incredibly detailed roadmap that we start, we have a kickoff call together, we go through, we're working on their entire business strategy in that call. And then within 48 hours or so, they are getting a full roadmap for the next phase of their business and how exactly we're getting there. It's usually mapped out into four phases, and it's very detailed. And in some cases, it's like who's owning what, if they've got team members involved. So it's very, very detailed. It helps me as their strategist, as their consultant, as their coach, to keep tabs on what exactly is happening and when. And to, it's a working document. So we can update it at any time as new opportunities come through as things shift and change, as new discoveries happen. We can evolve that roadmap, and we do evolve that roadmap over time. What it does is keeps my head on straight. It allows me to go really deep and be all up in lots of different clients' businesses and actually know what's happening at any given time, not have them showing up to calls and being like, so what are we doing again? Like, what do you want to work on today? I know what we need to work on today because their roadmap is telling us, and because also, spoiler alert, my next thing is having async support available to my clients. So again, any long-term client I'm working with, even sometimes short-term clients, I will leave this in as well, is having an async support option for them. So, with most of my clients, we're doing this in Slack. Sometimes it, you know, varies, but if it's like a short-term thing and they prefer Voxer, whatever, we'll use Voxer. It doesn't really matter. But there is, I never am using email. I can tell you that much I'm not using email for in the moment async support because I love about a voice note. I love the ability to easily share files, stuff like that. So I have async of support available to all of my longer-term clients. And that allows us to continue a conversation in between calls. It allows us to get more work done. It allows me to have that through line of communication and of awareness of what's happening so that they're not needing to do a bunch of catch up every time we're on a call. And it also is allowing me to like keep help, you know, keep their roadmap up to date so that I always have a nice thing to check in with. Again, keeping my head on straight so that I can support them. But that async support, we're getting so much more done. And I'm able to do it on my own freaking time. So I don't have a, you know, you're guaranteed a one-hour response time. Different clients, different situations. There's, you know, uh, there may be certain expectations there, but usually it's like my expectations, like I'm checking in once a day, Monday through Thursday. My clients know it. This sometimes will pop in multiple times, and especially if there's something more time sensitive they want me to look at. Like if it fits within what I'm, what I'm doing that day, sure. Like I love, I love my work, so I'm happy to do it. And I'll be up front if I'm like, hey, I got this going on tonight. I'm not gonna be able to get back to this, you know, on this till the morning, or how's this timeline look for you? Like, I'm super up front and just communicative about that. But I, yeah, I do a once-a-da check-in Monday through Thursday for pretty much all my clients. Some clients, it's a little bit more. Um, and that just allows us to have that continuous thread of communication for me to constantly have context about what the deep stuff that's happening in their business, to be able to, you know, get them what they need when they need it without it requiring me to jump on a call. And um the voice note capability is really important for me. And I like with Slack, at least on desktop, you can transcribe it as well. So if they're someone who prefers to read something, they can. Um, and also I can read through it when I need to, and I can be like on a walk with my kid and responding. Now, in um some of my spaces, if someone wants an in-depth like review of an asset, like a sales page or multi-part email sequence, things like that. I actually have a process for them requesting that so that I can intentionally schedule that in the time I know I'm gonna be sitting at my desktop and not taking a walk. And then I don't forget it if it goes if it's a Slack message that if they were to drop in a Slack message, I touch it, it goes it becomes on red, I don't see the notification anymore. You know how that can happen. You can select it to be to be mark as on red or whatever. But so it shows up as red, then I don't see it again, and then I might forget that it was there. So there's a specific process that, hey, if you want me to review something in-depth, I want to be sitting at my desktop in a specific window of time that my brain is in that headspace to do that in-depth work that you your stuff deserves. Um, because giving quick, you know, strategic hits and things like that, be voice notes, that's like I can do that in my, it's like my gift. It takes no, I don't need to be any in any specific headspace to do that. Um, but when it comes to like looking through a sales page, it's a little bit more detailed work, right? And I want to give that the attention it deserves. Therefore, I want them to request that review in a particular way. And they know that. Um, so that I can schedule it. So, anyways, it's that communication that supports how my brain works, but doesn't put too many, like doesn't put a lot of constraints on them. I'm like, drop stuff in anytime. I don't care if you drop something at two in the morning. Please do. Like, I my notifications are turned off. I'm gonna pop in when I'm gonna pop in the next day. I'm gonna see it, and yay, we can get into it. So, like, you have that freedom. I have the freedom to check in when I want. We don't have to be on a call to go deeper. Async support all day, every day. Thank you so much. I won't invest in long-term coaching, consulting, mentoring of any kind for myself that doesn't include that because I need it. And it works really well for my clients, it works well for my brain, it works well for how my life works, and it helps people get results without me having to be on so many calls all the time. And it actually gets people better results because we're in touch so frequently. Okay, life structure. So, a few things. So, my husband Jeremy works from home, he has his own consulting business, does completely different stuff than I do. It he has his hands in a few things. Like we we also run a separate business together. Story for another day. Um, at one point we were full-time business partners in this business, realized okay, we probably don't need like two full-time people in this business, um, which we don't. So we had a lot of entrepreneurial ventures happening in our house, but he works from home. His schedule is flexible. So what we do at this moment, so at the exact moment I'm recording this, I have a three and a half-year-old or almost four-year-old who Grant will be four in October. Nolan will be one in September. I'm recording this August 7th. So I have an 11-month-old and an almost four-year-old. Um Nolan is home with us full time right now. So the baby's home with us full time. And that is how I prefer it for the first year. It just like I can't give you another reason other than my intuition knows like he should be in my proximity most of the time. Do I need to be the one explicitly caring for him? All that time, I do not. My husband is a fantastic dad. He's incredibly present. He's not the dad where I have to say, like, did you do this? Did you, you know, here's how bedtime goes. Like, no, he and as a matter of fact, he kind of owns bedtime with our toddler most nights. Um, so very present dad, very active dad. Like, I don't take the kid and run. If I weren't breastfeeding, like they'd probably disappear for six hours a day sometimes, and it'd be perfectly fine. Um, so he is home with us full-time, but our rhythm at this moment, and that's pretty much been the case for this whole year that the parts that I've been back into work mode, um, has been I kind of get the mornings for in the zone time because I am more of a morning morning person, and he gets the afternoons. So, and he's Nolan's still at the age where he's taking a couple of naps a day. So, you know, he's got his morning nap. I'm working, working, doing my thing. And then usually until like 12:30, one o'clock-ish, um, I'm able to be in the zone on whatever I need to be in the zone on, with maybe a break to feed him here and there. Um meaning like breastfeed him here and there. And then the afternoons, he's gonna have a nap in there at some point. So I'm in the zone during that point. But then any like wake time that he's awake during the afternoon, I'm having, I have him. So a lot of times that's when I'll get done. Like, if there's anything I need to talk out, like talking out a podcast outline, I will do that. And I will use AI to um just like dump my thoughts into and then help me uh shape them into an outline, for example. Or that's when I might voice note clients when I'm on a walk or doing those, I have those specific tasks that I know can work well when Nolan's awake. And am I taking time to like play with him and do things like that? Of course, and and feed him. Like if you had a kid, you know, feeding a baby an 11-month-old is a process, like meaning feeding them food. They are very messy and it's a whole ordeal. So that's a lot of in our afternoons doing that. And you know, any work that I'm getting done is more like, you know, respond to DMs and do some things like we'll take, we'll usually take like an hour-long walk or something, and that's a lot of hours spending the wake window, and then between his nap and that, then it's usually kind of four o'clock, and that's typically when I'm wrapping up my day. So there's that grant who will be four in October, is in full-time daycare/slash preschool. He goes to a little home daycare with a provider who's, you know, she's coordinated preschool programs and she does lots of, they do basically school there. And we've been very happy with that. They do amazing outings all over San Diego, and we love that about it. So he is there, he is there full-time. We started sending, we we did a nanny share initially with a family that we're very close with. And we did started him out just two days a week when he was 15 months old. And then we went to a three-day week nanny share, and then some stuff like with scheduling. It just wasn't gonna work out for us to do that long term. So we found this this home daycare that came recommended and started him there. I think initially, so he was about two. We went, we went four days a week. And he was there four days a week until he was probably maybe until I got pregnant. Yeah. Until I got pregnant with Nolan. And then I was like, okay, I would love that fifth day for me to relax, to rest, to have my doctor's appointments, whatever. And so he's been five days a week and he loves that routine. He's living his life, doing his thing. Um, and so it works out good. Plus, it gives me that Friday with Nolan to do more one-on-one stuff with him if I want. Um, and we occasionally will keep grant out on Fridays for fun stuff, but that Monday through Friday just works well for the stage that our family is in at this particular moment. Okay, last but not least, because it's actually the most important thing of all this, I save the best for last. And that is my CEO schedule. This is a process I have all of my clients go through when we start working together. And basically, what you do is you look at all the things that need to be happening in your business. So marketing tasks, delivery tasks, admin things, anything that needs to get done in your business, we should have listed out on a piece of paper. Whether it needs to get done every day, every week, every month, every quarter, we need it listed out. And we categorize it based on basically like you call it department if you want. So for me, I'll tell just tell you a couple of my categories like marketing and business development. I should make those one category. Offer delivery. Um, and then another example would be uh what I call my my focus time. So like any new initiative that I'm putting out into the world. So any at the time I'm recording this, we have not even launched this podcast yet. So I've had meetings with like an editor and things like that that are not going to be, they're not like typically part of my regular work there because I have this new initiative that's coming out in the world. And so I have intentional focus time that's for whatever project, whatever new initiative is happening in my business life at that moment. Um, so those are a couple of examples of category, a few examples of categories that my tasks would fall under. And so I know, hey, here's about how much time I need for offer delivery every week, meaning like serving my clients. Here's about how much time I need for marketing and business development or like sales work. Hey, here's about how much time I need to dedicate to like whatever my focus project is at the time. And I have the tasks that fall underneath that. Obviously, focus project's gonna change depending on what the heck the project is. And but the other ones, there's some like there's many recurring tasks that happen within those. And I know about how much time on a weekly basis I need to dedicate to those different things. And I know, and then I have a rough plan. Right now, it's a very rough plan because I have a baby home with me all the time. Um, very rough plan of like when those things are gonna get done throughout the week. So Tuesday, if I'm if I like my content creation time is a lot of times gonna be on a Tuesday and then spill over maybe a little bit into Wednesday morning. Does that always happen and go according to plan? No, it doesn't. But I know about how much time I need to get those tasks done. So if I need to shift them to a Thursday or use a little bit of my Friday flex day to do them, I can. I know what can get moved around when. It's like here are the puzzle pieces that need to come together for this business to continue functioning and growing. And we can rearrange the puzzle pieces within my week so that everything gets done and is still fitting into place, not being left kicked off to the side or totally forgotten. And there are also some of those tasks that are deemed like with an asterisk, I guess, if you want to say that, where if something needs to get pushed, that's the thing getting pushed. And that's all ladders back to my strategy. And like this is what's happening with my clients' strategic roadmaps as well. Is we know here are the essential things that absolutely need to get done to get you to this outcome. And here are some things that would be nice to get done, but these can be a get to them later if need be. And or like we can push them if a week gets crazy. And I have those for myself as well. So it helps me to prioritize, it helps me to utilize the random pockets of time I do have to know which tasks I can get done on a walk versus which ones I need to be sitting down at my computer and in a certain frame of mind. And it just allows me to really function and go with the flow, which is what this season of life for me requires. Again, your season of life may look totally different to where you can have pretty structured days if you want to have them, or very, very loosey goosey days if that's what you want to have. It just for every single one of my clients, the way they function is going to look a little bit different. The way they function best is gonna look a little bit different, but it's about knowing what is required to get me the outcomes that I want in my business and in my life and making sure that there's time prioritized for those things throughout my week and that I have flex space so that when things inevitably don't go according to plan on a regular basis, we can move those things and they're not getting totally chucked out the window. So that is huge. That is like how my whole world is life proof is by knowing exactly what's required to get all the people and entities' needs met, the bare minimum of what's required, and then what's the nice to have, and then having space for the bare minimums to get done, and then space to fit in the nice to have when um the flow, the when thing all things are moving in in glorious harmony and there's space for it, right? So what I covered today in this episode is a slice of the life proofness of it all. If you want me to walk you through the different functions in your business, like offers and offer delivery, and how you position your business. So, like knowing how to talk about your stuff and your marketing and sales and like actually life proofing those functions in your business, that's what I get into inside the life proof business leader free four-part audio series. I walk you through that whole thing, including mindset, including your identity and so that really your whole business world starts to become more and more life proof because the decisions that you're making as a result of what I walk you through in that series. So listen to that if you want me to really take you through a process around this life-proofing of it all. But the biggest thing I want you to know is like this should become a decision-making filter for you. Like what needs to get what needs need to get met for yourself, for the people who matter most to you, and for your business. And that is what you should be running every decision through. It's gonna really support you. And it might take a little bit of work to really get down to the bottom of like what actually are those needs? And you need to have an outcome for your business to be aware of what needs to happen in order for that, those outcomes to happen. And that's, I mean, that's obviously what I help my clients with, but it's something that you can run through as well. And in that the Life Proof Business Leader series will help you to do that. So it's exactly why that exists. Don't sleep on that. It's in the show notes. You can grab it, it's completely free. Listen to it as you're on a walk, whatever you're doing. It's gonna help you to start seeing things through that lens as well. And then I want to know from you is there anything that came up in this episode or question marks that remain for you that you want me to dig deeper on? I want this to be a continued conversation and I want to create episodes that are gonna serve you well and support you in your season of life and business. So feel free, show up in my DMs. My contact information is in the show notes. Just let me know. What do you want me to dig deeper on? What should my next episode be about? Where should we explore this concept of lifeproofness a little bit deeper? I'm happy to do that, and I can't wait to continue this conversation with you. Thank you so much for hanging out. If you loved this conversation, please, please subscribe, follow, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps us connect with a lot more friends and businesses. For even more life-proof business goodness for me, be sure to check out the show notes for a free four-part private audio series of ways we can stay connected and more. I can't wait to hang out with you next time.

SPEAKER_01 26:38

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