Balancing Business and Motherhood: The Half-Year Wrap Up
Join Kate as she takes a thoughtful journey through the first six months of 2023, evaluating the highs and lows in both her professional and personal life. In this candid and introspective review, Kate reflects on her goals, the transformative experience of becoming a new mum, and the impact it had on her business while on maternity leave.
With refreshing honesty, Kate delves into the triumphs and challenges she faced during this period, sharing the moments that exceeded her expectations and those that didn't quite go as planned. With a keen eye for growth and improvement, Kate discusses the goals she set for herself, both personally and professionally, and examines her progress thus far. From celebrating significant milestones to navigating unexpected obstacles, she offers valuable insights into what worked well and what went awry.
Tune in to "Balancing Business and Motherhood: The Half-Year Wrap Up" to gain invaluable insights, practical advice, and inspiration from Kate's review of the first six months of 2023.
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Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00] Well, we're coming to the end of the first half of 2023. If you listen to my podcast at the end of last year, you'll know that each year I do a year compass, which is reflecting the last year and looking at the year ahead. And I thought being that we're halfway through, it's probably a great time to have a look at my year compass.
And as I'm recording this, now I can tell you hand on heart. I have not looked at that document again in the last six months. So let me pause this recording. And I'll go and have a look. And let you know how I've been going. We'll really see if the subconscious does follow through on your goals, even if you are not consciously working on them.
I'll be back.
Okay. I've had a read through. There are some things that I have surprisingly ticked off and other things I had forgotten about. So, if you haven't heard of Year Compass, you can go online and complete your own. It's something that comes out each year toward the end of the year, but you can do it any time. [00:01:00] And it's a great way to give you a little bit of structure on your goals. So looking at the year 20, 23, the things that I was curious about accomplishing:
one was about the adventure into parenthood at which I can say is currently an adventure that I'm on. It is fascinating, intriguing, exhausting. And something that I'm really enjoying.
I've had a lot of conversations with new parents about this sense of losing themselves during parenthood. And I think I've had a unique experience where five years ago, I had a vertebral artery dissection and mini stroke, and it really challenged my sense of identity of myself because I couldn't do the things that I always could do previously.
I have found that I learned to understand who I am without my connection to my work or any of the achievements or ways people see me. Coming into this new journey of being a parent, I have found that I didn't really keep [00:02:00] my identity attached to my work anymore. So I didn't struggle with that as much as I think I would have, if I hadn't have had the earlier experience. I do feel like I am the same person. I don't feel like I've changed drastically with having a child. I'll be interested to hear myself a year from now to see if that's still the case.
The other couple of things I was interested in doing was to have an adventure as a family. And we're off overseas shortly for six weeks for both work and pleasure and enjoying this experience of traveling with a six month old. Which I'm sure we'll have the full gamut of emotions and experiences.
Another thing that I had wanted for the year ahead of was this idea of ease in business and ease of working with clients. And I've found after having three months off and returning to work, it has been easy in some sense, contacting previous clients and [00:03:00] working together, just picking up where we left off. But in other sense, having three months off other clients had disappeared. So it was a real mixed bag work-wise and whether that would have happened without having time off, it's hard to know.
In a work sense. I've really been enjoying my one-on-one that leadership mentoring. Working with them over a three month period each fortnight and becoming the leader that they want to be, or the leader they wish they had. So people want to work with them. In the market at the moment, being a great leader is more important than ever. So I've really been enjoying that one-on-one client work and stepping back into workshops. I found workshop people tend to book a little bit further in advance, so a lot of my current work has been one-on-one leadership mentoring.
In the next six months, I hope to create more of a community around those that are working as leaders, because it can be quite isolating and lonely. And I'm also going to kick off a new program in the second half of the year called Founders Freedom, [00:04:00] which is all about how to step from being a Founder, where you might have a couple of contractors into a business that you can run that gives you the freedom, which means you need to set up some systems and processes, recruit team members and lead the team so you can get the freedom that you most likely wanted when you started your own business. So that's something that will be happening in this second half of the year called Founder's Freedom.
A couple other things on my goals that I am either ticked off or on my way to doing one was to return to cycling, which I have done. And the other one was to do some more theater or some singing. This year I really hadn't been interested in sitting at the piano and singing, which is so unusual for me. It's only been the last week that I have started to gravitate back there. So I'm hoping that that will continue because it's something that brings me a lot of joy.
In the last month I have also hit the one year anniversary of this podcast, the Level Up Leadership Podcast which is quite exciting. When I started it. [00:05:00] I. I never intended to quit on the podcast, but I actually hadn't really forecasted what it would look like in the future. The podcast has hit 5,000 downloads, which is pretty phenomenal and thinking about what I want to do with his podcast in future, I'd like to have more voices. So I have started interviewing people that have either had a great leaders and sharing what their secret sauce was or listeners nominating their leader, who they think is fantastic. And talking to them about what leadership looks like.
Also in the six months, there has been some challenging things like sleepless nights, a crash course on parenting and the challenges that come with that. We were broken into, different health challenges, losing clients and the business that I thought I would return to looked different than what I had been foreseeing.
But also I can say that I'm feeling quite grateful to have been able to build a business that I was excited to return to, that also works alongside my [00:06:00] life. So thank you for listening to this podcast for trusting me enough to open my emails and to be a client, or if you joined me for some of the free masterclasses, like the one on Imposter Syndrome. I hope that I've helped you navigate work and that life a little bit easier.
If you're coming to the end of this six months and you feel that there is something that you haven't quite solved in your work, or in your leadership and then you'd like a little bit of help. This is the last chance you have to book the Power Hour.
It's the only way you can work with me for a one-off one-on-one session. And it's a dynamic 60 minutes designed to overcome any current issue that's been keeping you up at night. So it's perfect for managers, senior leaders or founders who want to support in a particular area.
A few areas that other clients have explored: creating a plan to manage a wayward team member, designing an onboarding experience that feels great, developing a delegation plan to engage your team and avoid doing everything yourself again, shaping a vibrant company culture, [00:07:00] elevating your hiring process to compete in the competitive employee market, or just breaking free from feeling stuck.
So that's a bit of a six month wrap-up, I'm excited for the second half of this year. We're off on our overseas adventure for six weeks, which has a mix of both work and pleasure. And you'll still be hearing from me on the podcast and the emails, so if you are not yet on the email list, make sure you jump on the show notes and sign up for that.
So here's to the end of June 2023. And let's see what, the second half of this year holds.
