Achieving work-life balance: 9-5, running a business and being a mom!

Recently when I did the update video, I got a question from Bukola. This is the question right here. Thank you for asking me this question. And you had asked about work-life balance. And so I want to talk about that in today's video. Hey there boss and welcome to this video. If this is our first time meeting, I'm Gertrude Nontra. I have been a side entrepreneur, full-time entrepreneur for about seven years and I make these videos to inspire you on your own entrepreneurial journey. So work-life balance. Okay, let's talk about that. First of all, I feel like anybody that tells you that they have it all together, they are lying. They are lying or they have a lot of help. And having a lot of help, there's nothing wrong with having a lot of help. Actually, I'm hoping that one day I get to that place where I can get reliable help with so many things in my life. Right now, I do have a virtual assistant, Kristen, who helps me, especially on Twitter. We're scheduling tweets to go on Twitter for the Bold PhD, which is the business that I run. But yeah, if Kristen wasn't around, I'd be struggling with that. So I owe a lot to her. So a lot of the time it may seem like people have it all together, but usually it's because somehow they have some help somewhere. It may not be a lot of help. It may just be an hour of help, but it's still help and it does a lot. So the first tip maybe I'll share here is if you can get help, get some help. In my case, I was just saying that Kristen helps me with Twitter for the Bold PhD. But if she wasn't around, and actually before I even got a VA, I definitely depended on automation, right? And so if I wanted to make sure that I was consistently posting to social media, I would use tools like Buffer or Hootsuite. Currently, I have the paid version of Buffer, and that really, really helps me stay consistent with social media posts. I'm quite active on LinkedIn, pretty active on Instagram as well, but LinkedIn is my main base. Okay. And the only reason I've been super consistent with LinkedIn is because I actually create the contents ahead of time and then use Buffer to schedule it out so that every day there is a post on LinkedIn that speaks to my specific audience and is impactful and is helpful. And that keeps me consistent. So in a way, the software is helping me. So that's what I can recommend is to find help. There's no way you can get all of this stuff done that we have to do these days without help. So get help. The second thing that I would say helps me a bit with my work-life balance is really being clear on the goals I want to achieve in a particular quarter. Notice that I didn't say a particular year. So after I read a book called the 12-week year, and I didn't read the whole book. I just read a few pages. And actually I had one of my mentors say this once that he never really reads all of the book, but usually he gets a lot of wisdom from the first 10 pages. So like, I'm not saying that just read the first 10 pages of a book, but a lot of the time you can still gain a lot of wisdom from just the first 10 or 20 pages of a book. So this book was kind of like that. I read maybe the first three chapters and already I had gained so much. And in the first three chapters of the book, the author makes a case for planning your year so that you're not trying to do things in 52 weeks. You're actually trying to do them in 12 weeks. So what that means is that, let's say you want to write a book and you're like, oh, this year I'm going to write a book. A lot of us on January 1st will say, okay, I have 52 weeks. I have until December 31st of that year to write this book. So let me chill. So maybe you'll start writing it in January, February, you fall off the wagon, you say, oh, there's March. And then you start, and it goes. And then by the time you realize it's October, November, and we're about to have the end of year celebrations, Christmas, and all of that. So his argument is to plan your year such that you would break it into four 12 week chunks, right? And if you think about the year, we have 12 months. So essentially 12 weeks would be three months. So I now operate, and I learned this thing about two, three years ago, but didn't really implement it until this year. Yes. Until this year, where I got really intentional about the quarter system, planning things quarterly. So in the first quarter of 2022, for instance, I have three major goals. My first goal was to hit 2000 subscribers on the Bold PhD channel. I wanted to get a thousand email subscribers, and I wanted to launch a course. These three things, they were the main three things I had. And I made sure to share that with Kristen, my BA, who has been amazing. I made sure to share that with her. Why did I share that with her? Because she is a part, even though she's a contractor, she is a part of my company, right? And so it's important that we are on the same page so that she can do things that are on the same page as me. So, you know, and she, she has been phenomenal, right? And so this is really important. If you are planning right now, I don't consider myself or the Bold PhD a big company, but it's just me and Kristen right now. But, you know, whatever you do at the smaller level, I believe goes when it becomes bigger. And so even at this level, I'm intentionally setting these goals quarterly, discussing them with Kristen. You know, we may hit it or we may not hit it, but we should have some clear-cut goals. I'm happy to say two of those goals were met, even though on March 31st, I hadn't hit 2000 subscribers. I was around 1950. So I was very, very close. I did not hit a thousand email subscribers. We only had about 200. So we actually like really, really did not hit that goal at all, but I did launch the course, right? So two out of those three goals were met. And in previous years, it could have taken me so long to get to those goals because I'd keep on thinking, oh, I have so much time. Whereas now I had created urgency for myself and giving myself a deadline, like this has to be done by the end of this quarter. Right. And so I find that when you have goals like that, it's really, really helpful. There were just three goals. They were clear-cut, they were simple, and they were time defined. And thankfully I was able to hit two out of three of which I'm very grateful because most of the time that hasn't happened because I was thinking I had a lot more time. So this third one I'm going to share with you is one that I think it can be controversial. So it is that I wake up early. So typically I wake up between five and 6 AM. Sometimes I wake up a little earlier than that. When I was actively creating the course, I wanted to launch in the first quarter of 2022. I was waking up at 4 AM. All right. And what does this do? So what this allows me to do is that it allows me to have a time of prayer, of devotion, right. Of that silent time where I'm just by myself, just, you know, having a good time in prayer, having a good time with my devotion, gets me ready, sets a really positive, good tone for the day. Then, um, I get into the work that I need to do for that day. And it was during those wee hours, I would film videos between 5 AM and 6 AM. And those videos were what went into the course. I had already planned what was going to enter the course. And I'm going to do a video where I share with you the tools I use to create a video course. But yes, I actually spent, um, woke up really early and then would use the first hour to hour and a half of my day to actually create the course. So that actually helped me. I did that over the course of about four weeks. And within those three or four weeks, I'd say I had finished creating the course. I had edited most of the videos. Like I was so, so proud of myself because again, I had never, you know, set the intention this way. So setting the intention this way and actually waking up early to do them was really helpful. Now, after that, about that month, I will say that I fell off the wagon a little bit. I still wake up between five and six. The latest I may sleep is past six o'clock. So I still do wake up relatively early. And, um, I try to wake up before my family. Okay. So most of the time though, recently my husband has also been waking up early. So sometimes that throws a wrench in my plans, but thankfully he kind of moves to different parts of where we live and then, you know, does his own thing as well. But mostly, mostly I try to wake up early to avoid my son because all the mamas know that once the babies are up, it's over. Okay. It's all about them at that point. And so, um, I find that when I wake up early, this is super helpful. Using a habits tracker has also been helpful in helping me have some sort of work-life balance where I actually get my work done and also have a life. Right. And most of the things I track on my habit tracker are sort of personal daily habits I want to build. So, um, one of the things I do pretty regularly is walk about 30 to 40 minutes on a daily basis. There are times I do fall off the wagon still. I want to say this, that I'm, I'm trying not to make this video super rigid because like life shouldn't be so rigid. Right. I believe in routines. I believe in discipline, but I also believe in also enjoying life. And so I don't want you to feel like I have to do this. I have to do it. I have to do this. There are all these, um, you know, teachings and things out there that say, okay, this is what a millionaire does, what billionaires do. And that's good. It's fine. And you can follow whichever one you want to, but I find that the things that work best are the things that just suit me. And I try, I try so, so, so hard not to fit any other mold, but the mold that fits best for my life. So I'm just saying this to say that as I'm sharing all of this, I hope that's coming through as well. So yeah, using a habit tracker, right. And so using my habit tracker, I track things like the steps I take on a daily basis, how much water I've drank. I wanted to lift weights for 10 minutes every day. I know that's a lot of time, but it was enough time for me. Right. And so, uh, lifting weights, uh, things like reading a book or even working on some of the novels that I've been working on. So having these habits, daily habits, I want to build using a habit tracker helps. Now, the thing with having this sort of a habit tracker and how it fits into this whole work-life balance conversation is that during that time, when I walk during the day, it's me time, it's enjoyable time. It's time to like, just really, to just unplug from most things. I may be listening to an audio book. I may be listening to music, but it's a really, really good time for me to just not think about much. I mean, which is really, really hard for me as actually my mind is always working a mile a minute, but I really do try to use these times to unplug and then things like drinking water, right? So if you leave me by myself, let me tell you something. I'm not going to drink water and that's no good, right? So being intentional about drinking water, things like that. That's what I use the habit tracker for. Also, because I have a full-time job and a business, I try to batch create content. Okay. So as I'm filming this, my goal tonight is to film two videos and to have those ready to go. And for, for my, for the bold PhD brand, I do Instagram reels and actually Instagram reels have been super instrumental to helping me build that account fairly quickly. So let me just, let me just like rave about Instagram reels for just a minute. Some of you, I know you hate it, but let me, let me say this, that I started getting SEOs with Instagram reels in December of 2021. Okay. And now as I'm recording this, it's April 9th, 2022 and just about four months or so. Yes. About four months. Yes. Four months. Can't count. Okay. So just about over the course of four months, right? My account has grown by almost 800 followers just by doing Instagram reels. I've also done other types of content like carousel posts, but if you go to the bold PhD Instagram, most of what I do there is reels. And so, yeah, I'm going to sing reels praises because that's about 50 followers a week. And I'd never gotten that before. Not even on the account. Like the account has been stagnant for the longest time, but this is actively growing all the time and it's amazing. So I, but one of the things I do there is I batch create my reels. Yeah. I will create three, four reels on a Sunday evening, maybe on a lunch break or something. I will stand there and then talk to my camera. Um, and a lot of the time I repurpose the content I create. So earlier on, I was telling you, I create a lot of content on LinkedIn, right? So I repurpose a lot of that content. Sometimes I cannot repurpose it, but I repurpose a lot of that content onto Instagram reels. I give it a different flavor. I fry it up. I saute it. I add some, something, something, some soy sauce, make it into fried rice. Okay. And then turn it into a reel. And doing that has again, helped me be consistent. So just choosing a day or an afternoon or something to batch create some content can be super helpful. Especially if you're trying to build a business, you're trying to build an online brand. You're also trying to also have a life, right? So I'm not always like trying to create Instagram reels because I created like four of them on Sunday and they're good to go for the rest of the week. Like I said, at the beginning of this video, nobody has it a hundred percent together. And it is absolutely important for you to unplug. I find that during those times of unplugging, and if you follow me on the Jeanantra channel, on my Jeanantra Instagram, you'll see how I share how me and my family, we go on walks. We are like walking in the countryside. That's real for me. That's a real thing that we do a few times a week. Apart from me walking in our neighborhood as part of my exercise routine, we really do drive out into the country, which is actually, we sort of live in the country right now. But anyway, we will drive out there into the mountains and then take walks and just relax, enjoy the fresh air, enjoy the quietness. And believe it or not, like that can spark a lot of creativity. You're resting, but imagine like you're resting, your body's resting, but you're also getting like all of these ideas flowing to you. It's just the best of both worlds. So anyway, this is how I maintain some work-life balance. I do the work. I do try to rest. I wish I could rest more, but by being intentional in these ways that I've shared, it really does help me have this work-life balance. If you enjoyed this video, smash that like button. And what? You're telling me you're watching this and not subscribed? Girl, subscribe. All right. I'll talk to you later.