A conversation about running a business, homeschooling and partnerships in America
In this episode of Work Family Me, I chat with Sara Vartore, a U. S. business owner, entrepreneur, peak performance coach, mother of two, homeschooler, and just general all-around awesome woman.
One of the things that I love the most about this conversation is that there's almost a step-by-step guide on how to start experimenting with having some time just to yourself. We really get into what some reframes around that might be and different things you could try to make it happen.
We have another really beautiful conversation around redefining masculinity as we redefine roles together as a couple, as a partnership, and as a family.
There is so much goodness around transitions over time, around intentionality, exercise, movement, and support.
Sara Vatore is an American national living in Massachusetts, US with her husband and two sons (10 and 18).
She is a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, Peak Performance Coach, and Level 2 MELT Method Instructor who runs a business working with humans, homeschools her children, deals with mountains of laundry on a regular basis, and files her taxes on time.
How? Let's ask her.
In this episode, we discuss:
The behind the scenes of growing a business
Some tips for handling the discomfort of handing over responsibilities
A different way of doing a week
What might help soften and shift self-criticism around time alone
The nitty gritty of chores and getting sh*t done with 2 working humans
Some conversation around what it means to “provide”
What it really means to “provide”
Prefer to listen to the podcast? Click here A conversation about running a business, homeschooling, and partnerships in America
Welcome to this conversation with Sara, a U. S. business owner, entrepreneur, peak performance coach, mother of two, homeschooler, and just general all around awesome woman. One of the things that I love the most about this conversation here is that there's almost like a step by step guide on how to start experimenting with having some time just to yourself.
What some reframes around that might be, what you could try around that. And there's another really beautiful conversation around. Redefining masculinity as we redefine roles together as a couple, as a partnership, as a family, as well as just so much goodness around transitions over time, around intentionality, around exercise, around movement, around support, I think you're going to get so much from different pieces of this conversation, and I'm really excited that Sarah showed up here to have it with me.
Again, she's based in the U S I will link her website down below for anyone who's interested in getting in touch with her. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for listening. Let's dive in.
Hi, lovelies. This is Maude, Women's Burnout and Leadership Coach. You're listening to the Work Family Me podcast, a series of conversations with women from different cultures and industries around the world about the behind the scenes of Earning money, parenting, being in relationship and adulting all at the same time.
Here we will discuss the challenges, ideas and support structures that show up in co earning dual parenting situations and talk through some helpful strategies and mindsets. Why? So that you, as a busy working woman, can learn from others, implement what could make your life a little bit easier, and share these with your family, friends, and colleagues.
We are at the forefront of working, parenting, and relating in a totally different way to previous generations, and there can be so much value in validating this and learning with each other. I'm so happy that you're here. Let's dive into the conversation for today.
Hi, Sara. Thank you for joining me on the podcast today. I am excited to interview you about how you're doing work and life and all the things in between. So great to be with you today. Thanks for having me. Do you want to talk us through where you are, who you are, what you do, what you hold in your everyday situation?
Sure. So I am in Massachusetts in the United States. So I'm on the East Coast and I am a mom of two boys. I have an almost 18 and an almost 10 and I'm homeschooling my youngest. So he is here to show us that there are other ways to do education other than typical schooling. So we unschool at home together and I have my own business.
I've been a somatic experiencing practitioner, which is a form of body work and nervous system support and a peak performance coach working with leaders and entrepreneurs and busy humans and athletes. All sorts of things. So I've been doing that. This is, I'm finishing my seventh year in business. I was a guidance counselor in a high school before that.
So that's sort of like my past life work. And now I'm in more of a soul focus, soul work, sort of awesome threads. So you've got two children at home. A business that you're running and a husband and a husband. Yes, yes, I do have a husband and he's an electrician and a solar installer. And he [00:04:00] was working full time when COVID sort of happened.
And after about a year in, I couldn't do all of it on my own. I was home with both the kids and working. And so he started to take one day off a week. And so he's down to four days. And our big dream goal is for him to be down to no days and for me to be taking over primary finances so that he can do some of his passion projects and doing the homeschooling with my youngest and starting in October, he'll go down to two days.
So this has been a very long time coming and really us working towards this goal of. Setting up our lives in the ways that would really feel good and juicy for all of us. Yeah. And it sounds like that's been a transition. If you're saying, you know, it's seven years that I've been running my own business, I've been slowly growing that now, what, two, three years that he's been working four days a week.
We're aiming to minimize that to three days a week. And so it also. Just noticing that that takes time to transition, because I think we often create a fantasy of I'm going to start my own business, so I'm going to jump into this, so I'm going to do that. And there's often a period of building and changing and slowly seeing what works and what doesn't work along the way.
Absolutely. And I think, too, this is really where some main differences of my husband and what he needs in order to feel safe and what I know and what I need to feel safe have really come into play. Because. From the very beginning, I'd been saying to him, quit your job. I'm fine. If you give me more space, the money will come.
I know that it'll be there. My business has been doing very well since the beginning and he has needed to move in the pace that we've been moving in, in order for him to feel okay. And so that first day going down to four days was a really big transition for him. A big letting go for him of it's okay to not hold.
Sort of, I've always, we call it big blind to little blind. I've always brought in more money than he has. It's always been the dynamic, but I think. In terms of sort of what goes on within his system and what he needs in order to feel like a man and a provider that it was very hard at first to let go of that full time of quote unquote full time.
And so rolling down to four days, you know, he really had to settle into that. So we've been talking for years about him doing less. So that I could have more space and I've learned where to push with him and where he needs to come to things in his own time. And he put his notice in for going down to two days a whole year ago.
So last October, he decided, Okay, I'm ready. I'm going to give them a year. That's what he needed to do. But that was a big deal for him because, you know, we go from talking about it and you know, [00:07:00] him actually taking the step to say, Okay, yes, I will go down even more days was a big deal. So I've waited a year.
We're almost there. This is a really great note that I just want to emphasize here around transition over time and creating slow change when we are moving from or maybe to taking on more responsibility or more money earning or shifting from full time employment into a business that we've started. And that this can look like a process over years because I think we've got this collective fantasy like we talk about in this conversation that it's overnight or it's instantaneous or it's from one to the other and just coming away from that and giving ourselves permission when we're building something new to slowly be doing that.
And I think another point here is around partnership, that there's often maybe a threshold for risk or change that is different in between two humans. And so if we're moving into something that feels a little bit more unstable into entrepreneurship, into a side hustle, into freelance employment. What do both people need in terms of safety, in terms of financial well being, in terms of providing for the future in order to make that feel okay for them?
I'm imagining a little advent calendar where you're like crossing down the days. Schooling a child and running a business are two quite big things to hold. Talk us through like a regular week where you're managing to do both of those things and also potentially some laundry slash feeding people slash all the other things that need to happen.
Yeah, sometimes it's funny, but I don't even know how I'm doing it. My work with clients as well, it's sort of like, how do we find ease in the fullness? Ease doesn't mean easy, but how do we sort of meet and flow in and out of these stages? And [00:09:00] I think my dance as a mom and a business owner, you know, has really contributed to being able to do the homeschooling piece and learning like, you know, how to move in the roles and dance in and out of.
Homeschooling and, and mommying and then moving into seeing a client and then doing some backend work in my business and being okay and moving through those transitions. So our typical week set up for our household is my husband is quote unquote on with the kids Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and those are his days.
And that took a while for me to let go of, of my control of what I thought or were needed to happen for the kids. Versus what my husband wanted to do or was in his own management. So that took some transition time, but we've got a really good system. So Saturday, Sunday, Monday, he's on and I am either at my office, which is I have an office in my home, but I also have an office outside my home.
So I see clients there in person and so I'll either go into the office or I'll be here in my home with a door closed and my kids know that I, although I'm here, I'm not home, you know, if I run across them in my day, I'm not going to ignore them, but I'm really able to give myself full permission to be on with my business.
And so those are the days where I, I've stacked stuff heavier, so I'll do more back end things those days. I see my in person clients those days. And then those three days are designed so that if I want to take space for myself, separate from my business, that's when I'm doing it. So I'll block off afternoons, that will be self care days.
I'll see practitioners those days. Those are really my days to play with that I can be gone morning to evening and not have to worry about my kids. And then the rest of the week, the Tuesday through Friday, is where I'm doing the bulk of the care and homeschooling for my youngest, um, he's nine right now, and he turns ten in October, and we have a really good rhythm.
He's a late sleeper, I'm very blessed, so he doesn't tend to get up till nine or nine thirty. So I will take my morning time, I'll tend to wake up when my husband does for work around 6. and that's when I have time to myself, I have my tea, my water, I'm doing my movement practice, I'm getting back to emails, I'm looking at my day, I'm posting on social media that I, you know, have set up for myself for the week, and starting my day off so everything's sort of organized, And then for the bulk of the middle of the day, we're doing our homeschooling activities.
We're going on field trips. We're doing our explorations at home. Sometimes I'll stick a client in the middle of my day when he has his lunch. Usually it's like a lunch and TV hour. And so I might throw a 12 o'clock client on my calendar. Otherwise I'm booking in after my husband comes home or sort of later afternoon, sort of four or five, six, I'll see clients into the evening.
And that's sort of how it works and flows. And sometimes I have more clients than I might, I'm very lucky. My parents live about 20 minutes away, so they're not people who will do full days per se all the time. But like, if I need a few hours here and there, or if I need them to take him for an afternoon, if they're around and available, they will.
So if I happen to had to book some clients in the afternoon, And wanted more coverage, I can reach out to them and have that set up. Typically, my son's at an age, I'm very lucky, like he's pretty self sufficient. So like if I needed to pop down into my office to see a client, I can do that and set him up with an activity or, you know, he has the things that he's interested in pursuing and he'll do something and be okay while I'm sort of navigating the client.
But mostly I'm trying to set my schedule up and that's really been the key, I think, to making all of this work as well as it does is being really intentional with my time and really intentional with my calendar of blocking off when I'm seeing clients and when is not available and when we're devoted to homeschooling and then, you know, When I want space, I try not to book most Fridays so that like going into the evening and afternoons, we can have family time, we can cook family supper so that family time can happen.
I think when I first started my business. I just was working all the time and I was working through being home and I had a lot more space because I wasn't homeschooling and there wasn't COVID and you know, I had more flexibility of alone time. And so I've had to get more intentional and more savvy since we started homeschooling and since people are home more.
Being really intentional about where I'm committing my focus and attention because it can be [00:14:00] so easy to just. Nod or to have the day go by or to feel overloaded and overwhelmed. Sarah really talks about being intentional with her time. But what I also really want to highlight is to find a rhythm that works for your life, for your family, for your business.
I often work with one on one clients who have got. An image of a schedule or a timing of the way they think that things should fit or should work and there's so much permission here to reinvent that, right? We can see Sarah and her husband and her partner have decided she's going to work full time Saturday, Sunday, Monday, he's going to be on with the kids.
He's going to be prepping food for the week. He's going to be cleaning the house in that time. During the weekday so from tuesday onwards she's going to be getting up early doing her thing schooling with her child and then having some time in the evening where she's gonna be working and seeing clients so they've created a schedule and a timing that works for.
Work, life, family and them in a way that's so individualized and so personal to them. So for me, scheduling out where I can see where I break, scheduling out where I can see where my clients are going or when we're devoted to homeschooling. Is what works really well for us. So it sounds like you've got an overarching plan of days of the week and then also times of the day where you're present with whatever you're doing.
And that sounds like such a theme in all of this is how do I be intentional with what I'm doing now and where I am so that I can be fully here. What would you say the biggest challenges are in holding the things that you have going on? So for me, it always comes down, and it's what my business is about for other people because it's so important for me, but it's about creating space, having my spaces to myself.
And over the last seven years, there's been sort of like a transition and evolution of what that's looked like. And at the beginning of my business, I could take space and go away and travel for work. Like that was really easy for me to do. I didn't have guilt doing that. Oh, I'm, I'm going to go to California and teach.
No problem. Then I'm excited because I have open weekend, but then I'd get there and I'd be burnt out because I was working. It wasn't space for myself. I might've been away from my family, but it wasn't alone space. So I've had to get again, back to that intentionality word, really intentional around my alone spaces that aren't work based or that aren't organizationally based.
And so, this year I made a commitment to myself to go away four weekends for the year, solo, with no work. And, uh, that has been life changing for myself. Uh, this weekend actually coming up, as we're recording this, will be my third weekend that I have planned. But what I've found, which has been fascinating, is It's not only about going away the weekend, it's about having it on the calendar to see that I'm going to go away.
So the weekend itself is restorative and replenishing and I have space. And leading up to that, when I feel like I'm losing myself, when I feel like I'm losing my sanity, when I'm overloaded, when I'm having moments of feeling burnt out, I then can see on the calendar, it's coming, it's coming, and that has been instrumental for my nervous system and settling.
To my system and giving me in those moments where I feel like so closed upon or like I'm making this motion with my hands over my face, like overloaded that it gives me space and relief to see that there's space coming up on the calendar in those big ways. Cause I think, you know, as moms we're playing so many roles and as business owners and we're wearing a lot of masks and we're masking a lot or we're dampening or we're tempering how we're actually feeling.
We might not be able to be in those full big expressions. And so to see where I can drop everything and just be in my own cycle and rhythm. Has been really healing for me and helping my capacity to navigate all of the other threads that I'm holding. What is the thought or the mindset or the frame that allows you to give yourself permission to take that time for you without?
Extra things to do, or a photo album to make, or extra back end project. What's that helpful for? So ideally, ultimately, and I say this with clients as well as to myself, like we want to be taking the spaces or we want to be making the choices because we love ourselves enough and we care about ourselves and we're enough to make those choices.
At the beginning for me, I just couldn't. I had so much guilt, so much mommy guilt around taking the space or that I was like, quote unquote, leaving my husband to fend for himself or whatever the story I had. And so when I first started taking those kinds of spaces. It was in service to everybody. So I'm doing this because it makes me a more patient human, a more patient mom, a more resourced wife, like to be able to hold all the things.
And so that really at the beginning and continues to be when I have moments of, of doubt about it, like if I don't have those spaces. I'm not as efficient. I'm not the fullest version of my mom's self, of my wife's self, of my, my being that I want to be. And so, for me, over time, evidence really started to help me.
So, like, just getting myself to do it. And then I would have evidence afterwards because like, Oh my gosh, I could go through that whole next week without losing my shit on anybody in my family. Or I had, you know, if I felt frustrated or angry, I had more capacity, more space in my body to pause, to slow down, to like go take a breath outside before I'd slipped out or yelled at someone or said things that I didn't want to say.
So that was sort of like the key for me at the beginning was if I couldn't do it for myself, doing it for others. This reframe around taking time to actually be or show up as a better or more patient human, or a more giving, more loving, more affectionate mother. Or a more productive and more energized employee or business owner is one that I see serve the women that I work with over and over again.
We often have this perception of, you know, taking time out or taking time for me or taking time to rest or taking time to prioritize things that I like or my fun as being something inherently selfish or wrong or something to feel guilt around. And when we can see that that actually adds to the experience of being in the workplace or being in the home life and allows more presence, allows more joy, allows more connection in the time that we have when we're there, it can often shift us into a different frame of mind around that.
So please try this on this reframe. I know it can feel challenging when you come from a people pleasing background, and this can be so deeply rooted in so many women, interestingly, not so much on men, right, there's often a permission around having hobbies or having relaxation or having a man cave or having time alone, that is often much more widely socially accepted.
So if we can reframe that as like, Hey, when I take this time away and I come back, it's actually nicer for everybody, not just myself, it can often make it much more possible to step into that. Like this was in service to my business running better. This was in service to my husband, in service to my kid.
And then having the evidence and starting to bank the evidence for myself, then allowed me to. You know, really double down on claiming that space and prioritizing that space because I just feel so much better when I do it. And I think really also normalizing here that it sometimes feels really crunchy the first time round and sometimes even the second time around, it's like, it's a practice.
Absolutely. And I think too, for me, and this is also a lot of work that I do with clients is that. Being in empty space when we're constantly doing or generating, like, whether we're doing our mom thing or our work thing or we're adulting and running a house and trying to get laundry done, like, for a number of us, like, not having anything then to do is a very unsettling.
In our bodies that we feel like we're supposed to be doing something we feel anxious or urgency energy for me. I would like meditate and be like, Oh, I like now have to like write something because like I meditated and so like I can like better reflect the shit out of this, how much self care can I fit into these two days and so it not only took a number of times.
You know, in getting into a good rhythm of myself of allowing myself to be an empty space because for me, I had to learn and this has been like, you know, the last 15 year journey of like, what do I actually like? What do I actually feel called to do? What do I actually want to be, you know, spending my time in?
Because there's so many shoulds and so many have tos and so many schedules. That I, and I was such a people pleaser growing up as a little kid. I know a lot of us, you know, a lot of you listening to the same profile. And so we do for others. And then that leaves sort of like knowing what I actually want or need to be a really complicated thing to uncover.
And what I've learned over time is in order to figure that out, I have to sit in empty space and I have to be uncomfortable and I have to like give myself permission to just feel out of sorts for a little bit. And the way that I would start, it wasn't a whole weekend, I would take two hours and I would go, we have a reservoir really close and I would bring a bag with markers and my journal and my tarot cards and a snack and some music and I would go and I would sit with my bag and look at the river until I felt called or drawn to like take something out of my bag so that I could start to learn like what I wanted.
Sometimes I sat on the sand and looked at the lake the whole time. Other times I stood up and I walked around a little bit and then sat back down. Other times I journal, like, it took a while to start to, like, let myself connect to that knowing inside around, ooh, like, this feels like for me right now, cause I'm just so used to doing for everybody else.
I love that calling to start small and to give ourselves time to experiment, right? Of what does this feel like? What does that feel like? Can I feel a yes? Can I feel a no? Do I actually just not know? There's a, it's reminding me of a scene. I think it's in, it's one of these kind of bride movies where the bride is jilted and then she, it makes eggs for herself all the different ways.
Cause she's like, I'm so used to eating the eggs that my fiance, you know, he liked scrambled eggs or whatever it was. And here she's got poached and she's got boiled and she's got. All the different, she's like, I don't know how I like my eggs. I love that. What a great example. Exactly. And I love that word you're using experiment, like, and that's often how I'll play with things.
It's like, can I go into this as an experiment? Like it doesn't have to be right or wrong. Like we can just like play here. And be in this reconnection to sell, which is so essential in order to be a good parent. Oh, taking a moment, so much permission for everybody, anybody listening. If I can ask you about the nitty gritty, when you think about all the things that go in between.
So we're talking about the big chunks here, right? You run a business, you see clients, you homeschool. But what about the stuff in between the admin, the medical insurance, the cooking, the shopping, the laundry, who and how is that being managed? Because then I had sort of the roles or tasks that we've fallen into, so.
In terms of like what we both gravitate towards. So my husband's domain is [00:27:00] outside. Like he takes care of all of the outside stuff. We have two acres mowing is a whole thing. And he, I'm married to someone, bless his soul, who likes to do all himself. He does not want to hire. Anybody and he's capable. He absolutely can do it all himself.
And it's why I would love him on war. So he would have more time and space to do all the things he wants to do. He does sort of like all the outside stuff. And in terms of inside stuff, he's also Really taken on all the cooking, which at the beginning of our relationship. So we've been married. Oh my goodness.
It's going to be 12 years this October. So I would say at the beginning of our relationship, we really shared cooking, but since COVID and since my business has really taken off because he'll come home from work and then I'm with, I'm usually with clients into the evening. So he's gotten into a really good rhythm and he cooks.
He's Italian, he loves cooking, he's gotten into a good rhythm, and he meal preps and cooks on Mondays for the whole week, and will cook four or five things, and then we have food all week. And so that has worked out really well. And then In terms of other things around the house, I'm laundry. I'm laundry and it never stops.
I am a teenager and three wives, including my husband. So I'm the one that does the laundry and The way that I do that is it's right by my office. So my office is in the basement. So I'll throw a load in me, like it's sort of weaving things in. So for me, I'm weaving in my chores as my day goes on. We share dishes.
My teenager who's almost 18 has a number of chores that he's responsible for. So my youngest son has chores that he's responsible for. So we really set it up so that. Everyone is contributing, and then [00:29:00] we're kind of like filling in those pieces. I'm responsible for finances in terms of the bills and doing the money.
My brain works in that way. It's not my husband's forte, like he could do it, but I'm running my business and the finances of my business. So it's just, since we've been together, we threw our money together and I've just always been the money person. It's what works for us. And I know that in relationships, money can be a really complex issue for us.
My husband has just been like, just deal with it. I don't want to deal with it. And so it's just worked for us and it's not been a point of contention. If I have an issue or I'm worried about something, I'll talk to him about it, but mostly monthly I'm doing all the bills and organizing everything in terms of the money.
One of the biggest concerns of my husband is to why he didn't want to go to less days at work is been health insurance. And so that has been something we've been in conversations about and negotiating. So we live in the United States and in Massachusetts, you have to have health insurance. I mean, I want it.
We have a family. We need it. We've been getting it through his work when he goes down to two days, we will have to pay for private health insurance. So I'm in the process of doing that research. You know, if I'm going to be honest and transparent, I'm a little stressed out. There are a lot of choices. It's very expensive in the States.
You know, I'm looking at plans that are ranging between 2, 500 and 4, 000 a month. For family plans. So, you know, it will be an adjustment and we're gonna make it work and I'm going to find something that will work for us and we'll sort that out. But otherwise, we've been getting it through his company, which we won't be able to do anymore when he goes down officially to Part time in October.
So when you think about finances, it sounds like you're putting all of your money together and then you're kind of seeing where that goes. How does that work with splurges or luxury buys or things that you want just for you? Cause I know that can sometimes be a point that my clients bring up. I'm like, I just want to, you know, buy shoes without checking with anybody.
Yeah. So, and again, I think my husband, I don't know if he's unique in this way, and it's just really worked. I do the money and a lot of stuff because of the nature of my business. Like as a somatic practitioner, like a lot of things are business expenses for me when I need things, I just buy them and it's not an issue.
And we kind of have a rule, like if it's an expensive thing, like, or if we're going to book a trip or, you know, if it's. Like I'd say, you know, probably over 400, you know, over 300 to 400. Like we're going to have a conversation about it. He's so funny. He'll always like, he, you know, he'll need a new tool or he'll leave something for outside and they'll always ask me, like, can I, like, it's kind of a joke.
It's a joke. Now. Like I'll say, can I get this? Answer's always yes. Or like, oh wait, let's push it to next month. Like if we have a number of expenses, so like. We're checking in together so that we're not having too many expenses within a month, like if we needed to have our septic pumped, and then, you know, something else happened household related, we might all know not to buy an extra pair of shoes that month, or You know, see a practitioner or something, you know, and we're not going to get an extra lawnmower piece that month.
So we kind of have that open dialogue about stuff, but we're also not people that slurge a lot. It's just not something where homebody is like, we save up so we can go on vacation with our family for the year. But like, we're not people that like buy stuff. Anyways, so I think that that I made a joke about shoes, but I'm not a shipper, like I'm not buying clothes and shoes, like that's not the stuff that lights me up and then in terms of like, when I go away and I'm booking my waitress, which for me, that's the, a bigger financial piece, that's a business because I need that in order to run my business and in order to function.
So. Being able to like, and because I work from home, we are running things through my business because I'm, you know, I'm working from home. So there's some give and flexibility in terms of our finances because some pieces are getting run through the business and then other pieces are home expenses. And when I do the money once a month, you know, in order to pay the bills and like move on to the next month and.
We'll sit down and I'll say, Oh, you know, we're great. Or like, I was able to put X into savings or I moved to this over here. Like I'm in communication around like what we're doing with things with him. Other than that, pretty smooth and seamless in that way. Like I don't feel guilty if I want to like. Go to the store and buy a deck of tarot cards or, you know, pick up some things that I might want for myself in the way that I don't want him to feel guilty if he needs a new leaf blower and wants to get that.
So it sounds like it's always been shared. There's monthly communication around where we're at, and there's a kind of also maybe a threshold of if we know it's going to be over X amount, then we're checking in and seeing what the budget says. Exactly. And I pretty intuitively with the money, I would say it's probably not what most people do, but like, I just know, and I've always known, like, if it's too much or not, like, without really looking, so it's been a, and my husband's a numbers guy, like, he's like, show me the numbers I need to see.
It's why it's been so hard for him to, like, go down to the two days because he's like, I need to see you making more money before I can go down. And I'm like, give me the space and I'll make more money. Right. And, you know, and I have, uh, more of a manifestation, trust universe, and he's very scientific, concrete, show me numbers, and so that I wouldn't say contention, but it's been a source of work.
There is tension there sometimes around my trust in his practicality. So you also trusting maybe your value and your skill and your business and that knowing of, I know that I can make more money, but I do need the time and the space and the energy to do that. And so how do we step into that? So that brings me to a question maybe around support that you pay for, because if he's independent and feeling like, well, I can do most of the stuff myself, then paying for support is maybe not something that he's familiar with or comfortable with.
And I know that you mentioned to me, like, I do pay for support, you know, I go to practitioners or I pay for X in my business. How does that work for you? And, and what is it that you've called in as support? Sure. So when I first started my business, I did everything myself. I designed two websites. I did all my backend things.
I can teach myself to do anything, which is such a blessing and a curse at the same time. Because I'm so incapable that it hurts me, no matter how many hours it'll take, I can like learn how to use that, um, you know, computer program. So for me, for supporting my business has taken time over the years to.
Admit that I needed support. And what was happening is things felt really bottlenecked for me. And I re there was a point in my business where I knew I could be doing and bringing in a lot more money, but I was spending so much, way too much time, like button pushing, like back end things. So in the middle of COVID was when I hired my first.
Business coach. I've always been someone who worked with practitioners. So I've always have practitioners. I body work, I'm a body worker. Um, you know, I work with people's nervous systems. I understand the importance of that for myself because of what I'm doing with clients and how I've just prioritize that.
So practitioners are something for me that are no brainers and non negotiables. Like, I have a somatic practitioner, I have a homeopath that I work with, like, for health issues, I have a chiropractor that I see when I need to, I have a physical therapist that's on call when I need, like, I have a lot of autoimmune stuff and some body issues, so, uh, body pain things, so I have my arsenal of practitioners that I have regular ones and then ones that I need in.
Emergency settings. And then in terms of my business in covid. So probably three or four years into my business, I hired my first like business coach and she's like a business strategist and I've stayed with her. She's amazing. And that has made all the difference. So I pay her monthly. I pay her quite a bit of money in order to have sessions with her and then also have access to her between sessions.
Where we voice know and like go back and forth in messages. And that has been just instrumental to be able to have someone who is in my corner. I mean, my husband always will listen and I could talk to him about stuff that's going on my business and he has great ideas, but like he is weighted in it in a different way than like a neutral third party would be.
So my coach has been just instrumental to my business running well and me having sort of like another brain to be in. Dissection with and conversation with, and, you know, anywhere from content building and like, you know, strategizing, like what we're doing to dealing with like issues that come up, which in any business, whenever you're dealing with humans, Conflict's going to come up, issues are going to come up.
And so to have someone who knows me and my business in my corner has been really life changing. And then two years ago, I realized I really needed backend support in my business, and I'm really. Couldn't be doing it all on my own if I wanted to be expanding in the way my business was going. So I hired my first virtual assistant.
I have a virtual assistant who does, like, all of my emails and, you know, a lot of my backend website building things and pulls together PDFs for me and my contracts for clients and all sorts of things that go on in the backend. And I also have a podcast called Multidimensional Transmissions. And I have a podcast team for that.
So they're a husband and wife team. When I decided to do the podcast, it really was a passion project for me. And I was really clear with myself that I didn't want to have to like learn a new thing. So all of the like editing and the technology things that go into doing a podcast, I just, my brain was like, you have no capacity to learn anything new right now, and you shouldn't have to.
And so. Paying them monthly to put out the episodes, um, has been amazing to have it just send over the audios and some information about my guests. And then to have the finished product come out has been awesome. And through adding those supports into my business. Things just run much better. I can spend time that gets freed up doing the things that I want to be doing, brainstorming and visioning more and being more creative or seeing more clients.
I can write an email and immediately pop it over to my VA with a date and I don't have to worry about formatting it and finding the photos to like put in the email and all those things, which again, I could be doing. But. Not doing it opens up time for me to do other things and really has allowed me to scale my business in the way that I have on and make more money, but it's been a learning curve for me of, like, letting go of control and letting go of my perfectionism.
Am I like learning how to teach someone else what I want and how to work with someone so that I can get what I need out of that relationship and dynamic. This piece here around health as the cornerstone for everything else is so, so important. I could not let it go by without saying it again. We often put our health on the back burner and we think we're going to get everything else done before we take time to exercise or before we take time to make good food or before we take time to rest.
And particularly when we are entrepreneurs or business owners or company founders or in management positions, it's so important for us to be physically healthy in order to do the job, to make the money, to provide for the family, let alone. Being healthy, being strong, being capable so that we can play with children, hang out with friends, go dancing with partners, all of those beautiful things.
We often see health or our health, our bodies at the bottom of the list versus the most important thing to be taken care of so that we can do everything else. And I love the amount of support and acknowledgement that we're hearing here around health on a physical level, on an emotional level. Sarah works with peak performance with her clients, with [00:42:00] athletes, with top sports people.
She knows how important this is and she's really giving herself this within her business and within her busy, busy context. So how can we bring that in? Yes, there's a level of privilege in terms of time or in terms of investment when we're thinking about. Engaging with people, but there are many simple, free things walking around the block, taking deep breaths, having a cold shower, taking time to make, you know, natural food that we can be doing to really serve our bodies and health.
What are you going to be doing today to shift that and really prioritize your body so that you can keep on going for everything that you're holding in your life? So when I hear you talk, I'm almost hearing there's support for my body. There's support for me to keep going in terms of a chiropractor or a physiotherapist or that regular upkeep and maintenance.
And I think that's so important to emphasize because so many of us like run our body into the ground in service to. The making of the money or the doing of the things and without body, there's nothing, right? Without help. Yeah, I mean, our bodies break down and this really is what my work is devoted to is helping people, you know, whose systems are crashing.
But when we do too much, our bodies let us know. And as we continue to ignore and override, they start getting really, really loud. And so if we can catch things earlier and if we can take care of things before that happens. It allows us to do the more that we want to do. It allows us to hold all the things that we're holding.
And I had to learn that the hard way. In many cycles of different Many iterations of the same message. And then it sounds like for your business, you're thinking about ways of freeing up your time so that you can be focusing on the things that take your business forward. So that also just sounds like A process of growth, really training and asking again and again and trying out a few things and learning a few things and then bringing support in.
And I think similarly to what you were saying at the beginning of, you know, the shift in time with your partner is that also sounds like it's been over a period of time. It hasn't just happened. Exactly. And getting comfortable with the support. Because again, I think, you know, we're mammals and so we are pack animals.
We need each other to thrive, and we're really taught, at least in, in the culture of the United States, that you gotta just do it all on your own. And if you need help, there's something wrong with you. And I think a lot of moms try to just like, you know, dig it in and like do it all and like not ask for help and.
Really, there's strength in asking for help, and we want to be at our very best so that our businesses run well, and our kids are healthy and happy, and our relationships are good, and we can't do that if we're running ourselves around, and so we really do need to be able to ask for help. And in the child care front, like, I'm just really fortunate that my parents look close because, you know, I can ask for them to have some coverage in the days if I need that.
I love that remembering of our animal selves. I often talk about that to clients as well in our one on one coaching of remembering that we are part of an interdependent human tribe with other humans. And I think in this individualistic. Western culture of I and me and alone and independence and where that's so valued.
We often forget the relief and the support that can come from sharing our human existence and our needs and our wants and our desires and providing for others, right? We're often so into the provision and the service and we don't extend other people the pleasure of serving us. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
When you think about culture and kind of background, what generational relationship pattern did you grow up with in terms of parents and what that looked like for you and your husband? So, In my family, I grew up in a very liberal area, live in Western Massachusetts. There's lots of colleges. It's very progressive.
My father is a peak performance consultant. And so I had a model of someone running their own business, you know, my entire life. So he's had that business. He's probably on 45. He's in the seventies. So about 45 years. And my mother worked at one of the colleges, Smith College in the career development office growing up.
And I think. I can't quite remember the timeline. I think I was in college when she retired and then went and like, quote unquote, worked with my dad. She did some of the like back end things. Um, but really he then was doing the rest, but I grew up seeing both of my parents work. I grew up with my dad traveling a lot because when he was growing his business, he was doing a lot of in person workshop.
type things. So he would travel for weeks at a time. And so we had a lot of babysitters and a lot of like care coming into the house to help while my parents were working. My husband grew up in the Bronx and then outside the city in New York. And. Growing up, his dad was a truck driver initially, and his mom worked in the court system as a clerk, and his dad got into a pretty bad accident when he was younger and, um, had to go on disability.
So, he had a model of a mom working and a dad being home for a lot of his life. So I think in some ways that's really helped where we are now, because although in his family, pretty typical roles in every other relationship. So like I know in his family, like his dad was given a hard time about not working.
Like that was like a really big deal culturally in that Italian community and also in his family dynamic. But his dad didn't care. Cause it just like, worked for him. So my husband had that model. And so I think it's been easier for him. I mean, he's still in his own process and has his own issues that, you know, as anyone would come up around, you know, his own masculinity about not working and what that means for him and how can he step up in other ways when he's going down to last days.
He did have an example growing up of a dad who didn't work. And it sounds like both of you grew up in that family environment of women working and parenting. That's not something that's unusual to either of you in that dynamic. Is that the norm amongst your communities, friends, colleagues, peers right now?
Where do you sit with that? So it's interesting because I'm in the homeschool communities in my area and so I would say there's less, I guess it's equal, it's hard to say, but I meet a lot more moms because they're homeschooling who don't work. I'm going to put work in quotes because homeschooling is in itself a full time job.
Job so that they're really dedicated to homeschooling multiple kids or, you know, they run co ops or, you know, they're invested in homeschooling as a job as opposed to being out and working and making money in that way. And my friends and colleagues and people that I know who aren't homeschooling all work, my women friends.
So it's pretty unequal. I would say I have a number of like powerhouse friends who have husbands who are like painters or creatives who might be doing their passion work and might not be bringing [00:50:00] in big money yet. But I have a couple of friends that stand out that come into mind who are running, you know, big organizations and companies and are making a lot of money and are existing in this new paradigm of dynamic of being the breadwinner and then also navigating what comes up for their husband in that, you know, because it does stir up different issues for sure.
But I would say there's less of a model of women not working, like most people in my life are working. Most people in your life are working, and then what do you notice around the domestic? Would you say that most men are active or More active or less active. How active would you say? In some of the dynamics that I was just sharing about with like my powerhouse friends who are bringing in lots of money, I would say their partners are really.
Amazing home providers, they're doing the cooking, they're doing the shopping, they're doing the care taking of the house, they're schlepping the kids practices and to school and to things. In a lot of the dynamics where I have friends who are staying home with kids, you know, or working, the women are doing the majority of all the home stuff while their husbands are working.
There's less sharing, like I know when I talk to friends, they're very surprised at how much my husband, Like, whoa, my gosh, your husband, like, cooks all the time and, like, just sets all that up. Or, like, he just cleaned the house for you on Sunday. Like, that can be surprising to folks. But a lot of my homeschool friends who are just, you know, focused on the teaching and the learning of their children are doing the bulk of the at home duties.
And the house management kinds of things, it sounds like when there's an ability to negotiate the difference and somebody to really pick up and hold the domestic, there's also that opportunity to go out and earn the big money. And I wonder, you know, we often think about it as the money comes first and then there's a support.
But what I'm hearing in this conversation is if there's the support, maybe there's also that ability to go out and be earning more and then be feeding that back into the family and the relationship. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think, you know, a lot of the conversations my husband and I have had, you know, he runs more anxious than I do.
Like, you know, he's a worrier. It's just kind of like his profile, like that you cooking for the whole week or you cleaning up the house or you get like that is invaluable. Like if I had to like also go do the food shopping and cook the like, I'm not, I can't do like I, I do. I need you. I like, we need each other to be picking up these different pieces so that then there's the space, like you're saying should be.
In whatever work in a bigger way or the money cultivation in a bigger way, we're really like reprogramming sort of like what masculinity is or what that divine masculine energy is of he gets to like hold the home front now. That container so that my feminine energy and my creativity and my business gets to like flow in that container that he's creating of, Oh, I'm going to have the house cleaned for you.
Like I am going to watch the kids or I'm going to have food ready so that you can eat. When you come up at eight o'clock at night from seeing four hours in a row, like I feel that I'm taken care of and that I'm not resentful. Because I think that that can come up a lot too in these dynamics of when there's not communication of that resentment building up and feeling or down or like taking advantage of or, you know, doing too much.
And I think one big thing that I'm hearing here and I'm loving is this redefinition of what providing is, redefinition of what. I think we've traditionally talked about in terms of, you know, what X does and what Y does with the gender roles and expanding that and saying, thank you. That is such beautiful.
service or holding or strength that you've got that allows this to flourish rather than seeing caretaking as easy or less than or being able to be squeezed into the corners and pockets of time. So, in closing, I would love to hear what you're most proud of in yourself as you've created this life where you work and parent and wife and friend and all the things.
What an interesting question. What am I most proud of? What comes to mind as you were saying that is just the word, like, I'm not proud of gratitude, but like, I'm just, I wake up every morning in gratitude, like, that I can lie in bed and it's still 7 o'clock or 6. 30 and I don't have the light. Rush out to school.
So I'm proud of being able to design my life in the way that really works. I am proud of. Really being able to let go of like societal expectations. And I say that around our dynamic, like my husband and my dynamics and like how we're setting up our life, but also in terms of how, like, we're choosing to school our young guests, I'm an outlier even in the homeschool communities.
Cause like I'm not using curriculum and I'm not kind of going the typical route with homeschooling too. And so I am proud of being able to. To be rooting in my own knowing around what works best for us and our family in a world that tells us right ways and wrong ways. And so that feels something I'm like, I'm pretty proud of, especially given how I was brought up.
And how I operated for so long of making sure I was doing things, quote unquote, the right way. So the last, you know, 10, 15 years has been a lot of unwinding of whatever that means. And he felt like, what is the right way even mean? And what's my right way? And what is true for me? And what do we need as a family in order to Thrive in order to, you know, create healthy little human beings to also kind of grow up in the world.
So I'm I feel really proud about that. I feel like the word intentionality, which you brought up a couple of times, almost encapsulates that of I get to check in and follow and create with intention. My business, my relationship, my parenting, my education, I get to make that and stepping into that choice and power, which can be so scary and liberating.
Yes, exactly. Beautiful. Thank you so much for the time. Thank you for spending it with me today. Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
Oh, I love having these conversations. So, so much. Thank you for being here for listening to the work family, me podcast. If you want to connect with me in real life, I would love that. You can find me on LinkedIn and I will put the link for my profile below. So you can just click on that and connect with me.
See you out there.
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Sara and the peek into her life. I’d love for us all to experiment with the discomfort of blank space. So edgy for all of us “do-ers”. How can you do that this week?
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“If I don't have those spaces of time for myself, I'm not as efficient. I'm not the fullest version of my mom's self, of my wife self, or of my being.” - Sara