When I first started my business, I remember being so frustrated that all the advice was ‘hustle harder’. I was actively looking for my own coach in the summer of 2010, when my twins were about 6 months old, and I was trying to work out how to move a more traditional boots-on-the-ground, in-person local consulting practice to an online model using GoToMeeting and Skype (yep – we were in the early days of being able to work from home finally). And so much of the advice I heard didn’t work because it wasn’t designed for me – a new mom, breastfeeding not just one but two babies, with a chronic illness, a spouse who also worked, and limited time, energy, and mental capacity. Attending conferences for education and networking? I was exclusively breastfeeding twins. Literally my boobs could never.Work 12 hour days? My chronic pain and fatigue maxed out at 3-4 hours of focused work before I needed a break.Fill your calendar with either sales calls or client calls? My husband was working as a teacher and didn’t get home until after 3PM. I didn’t have reliable childcare until then.Most of the business advice always had an underlying assumption that someone else was handling LIFE. Someone else was handing childcare, planning meals, keeping our life running. That’s because most accepted ‘good business advice’ or ‘best practices’ were created by men, for me. Specifically – for men who had a full-time stay at home spouse who took care of all behind the scenes details. So when I set the personal goals to ramp up my business to replace my six-figure consulting salary while working 25 hours a week (based on my actual capacity with chronic illness and as a new mom), most people didn’t believe it was possible. Over 16 years later, I’m here to share that it’s 100% possible when you deconstruct the systemic patriarchy and hyper-capitalism approach that only works when women are the unpaid labor and safety net. This is the first in a series of 5 episodes called The Matriarchy Would Never. Over five weeks we are going to take the things we have all been told are just the way business works, name the assumption sitting underneath them, and redesign so you can not only build your business, but build a business that continues to work for you even when your plans get derailed by a sick kid or a parent in the hospital. What You’ll Learn in This Episode → The book helped me explain to my husband exactly what the mental load looked like for me and the reason why ‘just give me a list’ was absolutely infuriating → Why I only build business strategy and 90 day plans based on 70% of my capacity (and what I focus on when I do have extra time available). → The questions I make every woman at the CEO Retreat answer before she writes a single line of her 90 day plan → Why the reason women entrepreneurs feel like they are constantly the bottleneck in their business → The difference between a massage that is self-care and a massage that is maintenance, and why only one of them protects your plan Key Concepts from the Episode The Invisible Assumption. Almost all of the business advice in circulation was written by people who had someone at home handling the school forms, the pediatrician, the shoe sizes, and the pickup when somebody spiked a fever at 10 a.m. That person was rarely paid, and she was never written into the plan. Every business plan has a person in it you cannot see. In most business advice, that person is you. Patriarchy in Pink. There are plenty of women in this industry using the language of feminism and empowerment while keeping the exact same structure underneath, where resources and power still flow up to one person at the top. The words changed. The infrastructure did not. A woman at the top of the pyramid isn’t matriarchy – it’s just patriarchy in pink. A Design Flaw, Not a Discipline Problem. A plan that requires you at full availability, full energy, and full focus for forty hours a week will hold right up until something bigger than a cold moves through your house. Then it collapses, and you read the collapse as evidence about your character. If your plan only survives your best weeks, you don’t have a plan. You have a streak. Resourcing Yourself Instead of Being the Resource. At the last CEO Retreat, before anyone touched a 90 day plan, every woman in the room had to answer two questions: who do you want to be in this stage of your life and business, and what does she need in order to be her. What came back was local friends, a housekeeper, a backup list of pet sitters, and one uninterrupted evening with a spouse. Nobody asks permission to set a revenue goal, but somehow women feel the need to ask permission to hire a housekeeper. Maintenance, Not Self-Care. We’ve been sold ‘self-care’ as the answer to our collective exhaustion when what we really need is more proactive maintenance and recovery built into our plans and routine systems. Waiting for self-care isn’t enough. We need to prioritize our regular maintenance! Resources Mentioned The CEO Ceiling Assessment. Free live class on Tuesday, October 20 at noon, walking through the five places your capacity is quietly maxed out and scoring each one green, yellow, or red so you can see where the actual constraint is. Replay goes to everyone who registers. The CEO Collective®. The membership where service-based, relational business owners install the 90 Day CEO Operating System® and build plans that account for the life they actually have. Fair Play by Eve Rodsky.The book that gave Racheal and Jameson the language for making invisible labor visible, including the difference between conceiving of a task, planning it, and executing it. F**k Patriarchy, Build Matriarchy Series by Wan Wan Luve. The Instagram series that inspired Racheal to create her own to primarily focus on women and business. Connect with Me: Instagram: @racheal.cookTikTok: @rachealcookmbaLinkedIn: @rachealcookYouTube: @the_ceo_collectiveWebsite: The CEO CollectiveSubscribe & Review: If you loved this episode, please take a moment to subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts! 🎤 Thanks for listening! I'll see you next week!
