the bossbabe podcast - 429: CEO Mama: Redefining "Doing It All": Unpacking Ambition in Motherhood

Episode Date: October 26, 2024

In this thought-provoking episode of Motherload, Lindsay tackles the complex question: can ambitious mothers truly do it all? She dives into the societal pressures surrounding motherhood and entrepreneurship, emphasizing the need to redefine what "doing it all" really means. From the importance of support systems and community in balancing responsibilities to encouragement to believe in your capacity to achieve your dreams while recognizing the value of seeking help… it’s all in this episode.  Tune in for an empowering conversation that inspires mothers to embrace their ambitions while navigating the challenges of motherhood! TIMESTAMPS 02:00 - Can We Really Do It All? Exploring the Question 06:08 - Redefining 'Doing It All': A Broader Perspective 08:13 - The Importance of Support: Finding Help and Community 09:00 - Visionary, Integrator, Executor: Roles in Life Management 12:30 - Achieving Balance: Strategies for Having It All RESOURCES + LINKS Join Growth Day To Access All of Natalie’s Keynotes & Unlock The Best High-Performance Systems + Tools.  Join The Société: Our Exclusive Membership To Help You Build A Freedom-Based Business. Get Our Weekly Newsletter & Get Insights From Natalie Every Single Week On All Things Strategy, Motherhood, Business Growth + More.  Drop Us A Review On The Podcast + Send Us A Screenshot & We’ll Send You Natalie’s 7-Figure Operating System Completely FREE (value $1,997)  We are live on YouTube! Check out our show here. FOLLOW bossbabe: @bossbabe.inc Natalie Ellis: @iamnatalie CEO Mama:  @ceomama

Hello, and welcome back to the show. This is Lindsay, and this is another CEO Mama episode. And this one is pulled from the archives of my podcast, Motherload. And this is one of my favorite episodes because it's about one of my favorite topics, having it all, doing it all. And this conversation, this is a short episode, so I don't really want to ruin the punchline for you. But I do think moms and in general motherhood is kind of this limiting factor or there's a lot of conversation and belief and projection out there in the cultural zeitgeist, you know, that once you become a mother, you can't have it all, like that you will have to sacrifice, especially when it comes to work and that there isn't

a way to have it all. And I challenge that belief system in this episode. And of course, I'm not saying, and I would never claim that you can always have everything you want all the time in your way, on your terms with no help. Of course, that's not what I say here or that what I believe, even now two years later from when this episode originally aired. But I do think it's a really important conversation around what does having it all mean? And how do we determine what that definition is in our own lives? And how do we frame that up in a way that feels good and gives us the choice to define what having it all means and looks like? and what type of support enables us to have it all. And I just, mostly this conversation is about not, not succumbing to the belief that it's

not possible to have everything that you want, meaning the life you want, the business you want, the type of motherhood you want, with the, with the relationship that you want and all of that, that, that just by nature of becoming a mother, you have to expect that you won't be able to have it all. And that's really what I challenge in this episode. And so if you're a mama, I think it'll resonate. If you're not a mama, this is still applicable. I love these episodes, even if you're not a mama, because a lot of these concepts

are deep inner work concepts to really challenge belief systems and cultural constructs and ways of doing business that, you know, are rooted in a different time. And so, as always, I appreciate that you're here listening. And if you are a mama, you're not a mama, but you want to be part of this conversation, shoot me a DM. I love to hear your feedback and your thoughts on it, especially this concept of having it all. So enjoy the episode and I'll see you on a future episode. Hello and welcome back to today's show. Today's a little mini episode and I want to talk about

this question that gets thrown around a lot and that I ask myself frequently, which is, can we really do it all? Do we as ambitious mothers really have the capacity to do it all? I've thought a lot about this and I will always think a lot about this because I think this is a very big existential question. But I think it's important to have a conversation about it. And I have a couple of things I want to talk through today because I think a lot of times when I've been asked that question or I hear that question out in the discourse it feels like a loaded question that means can we do it all meaning you have to yourself do it all yourself no help nothing and if you can't do it doing it all means only you are doing everything like this

really big heavy heavy, ugly assignment of no way you can possibly do it all because you can't do everything yourself. And I want to first just even look at the question and understand that when we ask ourselves, can we do it all? Or someone asks us, can you do it all? Or society in general says we can't do it all for some reason.

I think a lot of times what's behind that question is the energy of you yourself, the individual, doing it all yourself. So if that is the question, can you yourself and individual do it all? Meaning have a great career or business and feel really great in your motherhood and all the other components of everything

of the mother load around those two things. If the question is, can you do it all on your own, yourself, no help, I think my answer is no. No, and I'll get into that. But when we look at that question and we remove that assignment of it, And I'll get into that. But when we look at that question and we remove that assignment of it, the meaning behind it,

meaning only you by yourself doing it all, and we look at that question as a broader life design question, which is how I'm trying to approach it for this conversation, letting ourselves off the hook of the assignment that by doing it all, we mean you individually have to take care of every facet of it yourself.

And we take a step back and go, is it possible to do it all and allow that to mean, is it possible to really love your life fully? Is it possible for you to have everything you want? Is it possible for you to have the career or the business you want, the partnership or the marriage you want, the partnership or the marriage you want, the relationship with your children

and the parenting relationships you want and all the other things? If that's what that means, but when I say do it all, have it all, then yes, I do think that's possible. Absolutely it's possible. Not alone, but it's possible. So I think before we go in any further,

there's this distinction even in the question of what does it even mean when you're asking yourself or someone is asking you, do you think it's possible for you to have it all? Do you think it's possible for you to do it all? Well, it depends on what you mean by that. Do I think it's possible for me to do it all, everything I wanna do in my life,

alone by myself where I have to be the executor of every single thing? No, of course not. Not crazy. I've tried to do that. Does it work? No. But do I think it's possible for me to do it all, meaning go out and do the big things

in the world that I want to do, go out and have the relationship I want to have with my partner, go out and be the mother I want to be for my children? Can I do or have it all? And the meaning of that be, have the life that I want, the life I envision for myself, everything I want, in a way that feels fulfilling and life-giving and that I love? Yes, I do. And I hope that you do too.

But I don't think that that outcome is possible without a bunch of help. So that's the number one thing I think to get clear on when we're looking at this question of is it possible to do it all. Well, let's figure out the energy behind that question first. And if it's a question you're asking yourself regularly, then maybe we need to reframe what it means for you to ask yourself that question. Is it an assignment of how much effort you need to be putting in or how much execution

needs to be happening? Or is it a question of, is it possible to have everything I want? Because if that's what you're asking yourself, that is an important question to ask. And I think when we stumble upon that question in our lives sometimes, and we are starting to ask ourselves, is it really possible for me to have all the things I want, to do all the things I want in the world. And if you're coming up with asking yourself that bigger, broader existential question and you're coming up with no as your answer, I think that's where there's an opportunity,

right? Where maybe there's a need there for more support. There's a need there for more community. There's a need there for more structure and frameworks that help you manage the day-to-day stuff so that the bigger things feel more achievable. So that was a really important distinction I wanted to make in the energy of that question. I know for myself, I've come at myself a lot in my life

as a mother going, it's not possible for me to do all the things that need to get done. Like I cannot possibly do everything on my mother load. And that's true. I can't. If I hold myself to some standard where I expect myself to have the capacity to do it all, I won't be able to. But if I know and accept that I won't be doing it all in terms of execution, but I do really prioritize

and hold sacred this question of, can I have everything I want in my life and can my life look and feel the way that I want it to feel, whatever that is for me? I have to believe that that's possible. And I need to do the things in my life that make me believe that and hold me accountable to that and keep the momentum moving forward in that direction so that I know that all the things I want in my life are truly possible for me. That's a

really important thing. And then the other little tool that I wanted to introduce here in this conversation because I think the difference between those two energies has a lot to do with whether or not you feel like you have help and support. I think when you come at that question around, is it possible to do it all, meaning I have to do all the execution myself? No.

But if we can find a way to get you help and support around the systems of your life that hold you in the alignment that you need to be in in order to go pursue the things you want, whether it's career, work, business, motherhood, partnership, most of us need at least some fundamental support structures to help us so that we can be our best selves. We can go build those things that we want in our lives.

So I think it's really important to look at, okay, no, it's not possible for me to do it all if I'm doing it alone. Yes, it's possible for me to do it all if I have help. Okay, what kind of help do I need? And there's this book in the business world called Rocket Fuel. And it talks about how every organization in order for organizational leadership to be optimized and to really build the best type of organization you can possibly build. There's three types of people or leaders. There's visionaries, integrators, and executors.

So let me just go through what those three are and then I'll give you my analogy here. So the visionary is the person who holds the vision. They see the big picture. They're the idea person. They are excited. They believe they have high risk tolerance. They are not good executors. Visionaries typically are the people with the big ideas, but if you make them sit down

and actually do the work, it won't get done. The integrator is the person who comes in and works closely with a visionary. An integrator understands the vision. They can see the visionary's vision and they believe in it, and it makes sense to them. And their brain works to take the vision and go okay if that's the vision that's what we need to accomplish then we need XYZ teams and structures and things to get done and they are almost the project manager to take the vision integrate it and turn it into projects and tasks that can get executed and And then executors are executors.

They're the people who get the work done. They believe in the vision, they are managed by the integrator, but they are the actual ones doing the work. And then that kind of goes in a cycle. So the executors create work, the visionary sees it, and says, yes, that's in alignment with my vision, or no, that's not in alignment with my vision,

and it gets refined. The integrator goes back, you know, so on and on and on. So that works really well in companies. It works really well in business. For a lot of us who are entrepreneurial and who are now trying to apply some of the same systems and rigor that we learned when we were learning how to grow and manage our businesses and now we're trying to apply that into our lives too, to keep the whole ship running smoothly. I think this same thing can apply to the whole entire mother load, to the whole picture of your life design to say,

okay, sometimes you're gonna have to be the visionary, the integrator and the executor of your own life. And hopefully you're not that thing at all times. You're not all three at all times forever. But we do have to look at our lives and say, okay, in this realm of my life as a mother, whether it's a parenting-related thing, it's a household-related thing,

it's a business or work-related thing, in this one, I'm the visionary. I just want to set the vision, say what needs to happen, and I want somebody else to take it and integrate it, figure out how to get it done, and go get it done, execute it. So there's this opportunity for us to look at, okay, what are the things that I just have a vision for of how I want this to work out, but I'm not the one who actually has to do the actual execution of this one. So for this one, I'm going to be the visionary or the integrator.

But for some of these other ones, I have to be the executor, even if I am also the visionary and the integrator. I also have to be the person to go execute because I'm the mom. You know, there's certain things that we absolutely do still have to do as parents to our own children, or our own well-being requires us to do it for ourselves, right, or our business, there's things that, or our work.

You know, we have to be present in the execution role in a lot of the things. So I wanted to use that structure to bring awareness into this question of, is it possible to do it all? Because I think when we start to look at the bigger picture of that question, is it possible to do it all? Well, yes, it is possible to do it all. You're gonna have to figure out which pieces of all

for you are you the visionary of where you see what you want and you know what you want, but you're not going to be the one in your life to go do that stuff. You need to delegate that or hire help for that. There's the integration stuff where it's like, okay, you see the vision and you're the one trying to figure out how to make it all happen. And then you're going to delegate the things you can. And then some of it is you are truly the executor. There's only you, and you are the one required to get some of the things done. And you know that by executing those things, it is in alignment with a vision, and you are bought into that vision, so you're happy to do that execution.

So when we look across the energy of, is it possible, do we have the capacity to do it all? And I say, yes. I think that that's true if you are also really aware within yourself of what the vision is in each of those million things. You know, like what's the overall vision for what you want that is constituting having it all to you? What are the biggest, most important pieces of that vision?

When you look at it as an integrator, looking at your whole life and asking yourself, is it possible to have it all? Okay, if you have a vision for that, then looking at it as an integrator and saying, okay, what needs to happen in order for that vision to come to life? What does the day-to-day need to look like?

What do we need to put into place? What do I need as an individual to succeed in my career and my business? What do I need at home to be the warm and devoted mother I want to be? What do I need so I can take care of my well-being? What do I need so that my relationship is thriving? So you have a vision for a thriving relationship.

Well, OK, you've got to integrate what's needed in order for the relationship to thrive. And then there's the execution and understanding what small task-based things have to get done and who's responsible for those things. When I look, take a step back and I look at, okay, is it possible then to have it all or to do it all? Yes.

If what you mean by that is I have the vision, I've integrated what the vision looks like and how to get it done, and I know what I'm responsible to execute and I know what I need to offload to somebody else or delegate or delete. And when you approach it like that, I think it's much easier to then say, yes, I can have it all. And I see now how I can have it all. And I see now that by what you mean by do it all or have it all is not me, the individual has to labor

through every single tiny piece of the process to do or have that thing. What you mean is, can I have a life where everything I want is present? Can I have a life where I have a thriving career and a thriving relationship and happy kids and I love it all? Yes.

And the way to do that is to understand this visionary integrator executor analogy and to start chipping away at all of the facets of what doing it all means to you from a value standpoint and a vision standpoint, the big energetic of that, and then start backing your way down into what does it then mean from an execution standpoint and how do I set the day to day up to support that vision. So I hope that was helpful. If you have any questions or thoughts on it, please reach out to me via Instagram.

I love DMs. That's probably the best way to get me. I love these little tools of taking little nuggets from business strategy and applying it to the bigger picture of life. And overall, I hope that you believe, I really am building this whole entire motherload movement because I believe and I want you to believe

that it is possible for you to have it all. Wait, wait, wait, before you go, I would love to send you my seven figure CEO operating system completely free as a gift. All you've got to do is leave us a review on this podcast because it really supports the growth of this show. This is my digital masterclass where I'll show you what my freedom based daily, weekly and monthly schedule looks like as an eight figure CEO, mama and high performer.

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