5 Things a Single Mom Entrepreneur Does to Keep It All Running

5 Things a Single Mom Entrepreneur Does to Keep It All Running with Susie Liberatore

Welcome to episode 52, The Determined Mom Show. Amanda Tento here, and I have an amazing guest today. Her name is Susie Liberatore, and she is the owner of Visions to Images. She helps small to medium-sized businesses to conquer their branding. However, today she will talk to us about five things a single mom entrepreneur does to keep it all running.

Susie tells us the five things you do as a mom entrepreneur to stabilize business and family life. The five things are:

Time Management
Mindset
Outsource
Asking for Help
Quality Time

Time Management

So you have to be smart about how you take on time management. For example, if you think a lead could be better but want to talk to them, only arrange 15 minutes to talk on the phone. So that way, you can confirm whether they are clients or not. Also, another great practice is to have office hours and email hours. It’s always best when boundaries are set. So when I also onboard clients, I provide onboarding documents that set the pace for what to expect contact time-wise and turnaround times for projects or tasks.

MINDSET

So the mindset has been such a hurdle for me going through so much mentally, and this goes back to my self-coaching because there’s a lot of stuff that you have to overcome as an entrepreneur.

I’m grateful for every single day to grow as a parent, a person, and an entrepreneur because we can’t sit here and beat ourselves up every single day. So it’s best not to be in a negative state. There have been so many times when I’ve tried to turn the negatives into a positive because we can only do what we can do, and that’s the way life goes. So it’s important to have gratitude, which helps to set the right mindset for work and personal life.

Outsourcing

So outsourcing can be tough because you want them to be the best, but they differ from your employees. Finding the right fit is the hardest thing as understanding what you need to outsource. A popular mindset is that you want to make the money you could sell to somebody, but then you wear yourself down. You’re drained out mentally, physically, and emotionally. Then it may be too late to realize you have to outsource some stuff.

However, as long as you have everything in place legally, you know the work will get done, so you must let that go. I did, and my experience with outsourcing got much better. Especially now, I see more opportunities to make more money, and now I can give this to a freelancer to execute.

So there’s a lot to think about, such as what to outsource, when, who to outsource to, and all these different things. The biggest thing is seeing what will free up my time and make me more money. So I encourage people to outsource when they can.

Asking for Help

I think asking for help is great. It’s different from outsourcing because it’s personal. Let’s say many external issues affect you as a person, and you are the business. Therefore, things in life can slow you down, so asking for help with small things is important because it can go a long way. Some of us can be shy and try to do everything independently, and I learned to get over it and ask for help.

How much do you want to handle, even if it’s about independence? How much do you not? When issues arise because we’re adults and must deal with them, ask for help. Even if you don’t know the problem, call somebody. You’ll probably have to pay something somehow, shape, or form, but you should catch things and be proactive before it costs more.

Quality Time

Susie tells us, “Finding quality time was a struggle because I had to find the time for myself. I remember telling others I worked with that I would take some time off to relax. So I figured out, okay, I need to take this day off, and I did not schedule anything and told clients, look, I’m out of this office for today. When you think about it, everybody needs to take a day off. Sometimes they don’t have to know you’re taking a personal day. Just say I’m not in the office.”

So when you’re a single mom, parent, or entrepreneur, you’re just on the go and thinking about a million things. Even if you have one or two hours to readjust and remanage things, that’s amazing. My parents come in from Rochester now, and then they’re in right now and just helped me with my son. This allows me to catch up on sleep because sleep is so important. Finding time to relax and spend time for yourself separately from work and family is also important to create the right mindset.

We should be giving each other that credit. “Like you are amazing. You are killing it.” Like just getting that credit and looking at what you’ve accomplished. Look at what you’ve accomplished in a year. Look at what you’ve accomplished in a month. Like, however, if you want to break it down, really give yourself that credit.

That can be a really powerful thing to look back over a month and notice all of these amazing things, and you can do it for personal, business, parenting, whatever. Just write it all down; it helps you when you write things down; it changes your mind and perspective.