Reina Pomeroy is a business coach for creatives, the Founder of Reina + Co., and mama to two little boys. She is incredibly talented and successful in all she does! She has mastered being the CEO of her business AND the CEO of her home (because doing both takes strategic balance!)
This episode is a super laid back conversation between two working mamas talking all things business, motherhood, pregnancy, infertility, rhythms and routines, getting it all done, and fitting it all in. I am so excited to share this conversation with you!
In This Episode Allie + Reina Discuss:
What “batching” is and how you can apply this method to various areas of your life.
A BIG way you can simplify your meal planning and grocery shopping (seriously, this is life changing!)
The systems Reina has put in place so she can fully show up as the CEO of her business and her family.
How important Team Meetings are to their families and what those look like each week.
Reina’s current reading list (there are so really good books on this list!)
Mentioned in this Episode:
The Supermom Vault is a library of inspiration I created for you. It holds replays of my very best online workshops that aren’t available anywhere else, tons of really actionable pdf’s that are downloadable with just one click, more than 20 audio and video trainings from me, and professionally designed printables for your home to keep you focused and inspired.
The Supermom Vault is only $39.00 and is available at alliecasazza.com/allcourses.
Check it out! It’s a really good simple start.
Want more inspiration than just the podcast? Do you wish there were more episodes? Want more details? Do you want videos? Do you want pdf’s? Do you want to download things and get your hands on something to really get you started when it comes to minimalism and simplifying your motherhood?
This is definitely the place to go!
Mom life. We are surrounded with the message that it’s the tired life. The no-time-for-myself life. The hard life. And while it is hard and full of lots of servitude, the idea that motherhood means a joyless life is something I am passionate about putting a stop to. I’m on a mission to help you stop counting down the minutes till bedtime, at least most days. I want you to stop cleaning up after your kid’s childhood and start being present for it. Start enjoying it. I believe in John 10:10 “that we are called to abundant life” and I know mothers are not excluded from that promise. Join me in conversations about simplicity, minimalism and lots of other good stuff that leads to a life of less for the sake of enjoying more in your motherhood. I’m Allie Casazza and this is The Purpose Show.
ALLIE: Friend, I am so ready to share this really chill, really friendly conversation with Reina Pomeroy. Reina is such a beautiful person and she actually has a really special place in my heart because she used to host this podcast, actually, it was co-hosted. It was The Creative Empire podcast. I’ll share a link to my episode. It was such a really great podcast. It’s not active anymore, but I did my first ever business interview on her podcast.
It was the first time that I ever got to share my business story, which if you have listened to episode six of The Purpose Show you know that’s a really emotional story. I sobbed and she sobbed and her cohost, Christina, another beautiful soul, she sobbed. We all talked together about the emotions that are involved in starting a business and seeing it start to succeed and getting through the hard parts.
Reina has been somebody that I have followed for years and she’s just amazing. She’s a certified coach and a founder of her own business called Reina + Co. She created this really amazing program called Dreamy Client Magnet. Basically, she helps creative entrepreneurs get super laser focused so they can book more of their dream clients with a lot more ease, get paid to do what they love, and have freedom and flexibility to enjoy the life they built, which I think is super important and one reason I love following Reina because she doesn’t just focus on business and marketing stuff. She focuses on life, living it well and enjoying what you built.
She’s an amazing speaker, a certified coach, an educator, an author, a podcaster. I just adore her. She has been featured all kinds of cool places including top itunes podcast Entrepreneur.com, The Influencer Podcast, Entrepreneur On Fire, Brit & Co, Huffington Post, The Rising Tide Society. This girl is everywhere and for good reason.
She’s an amazing teacher and like I said, a beautiful person. She is a mom to a 5-year old. She was about to have her second baby when we recorded this episode. He has been born and the family is happy and healthy. I’m so happy for them.
We really went a different way with this episode. I came into this conversation with almost no notes. I really wanted to talk with Reina about how she finds her version of balance in being a business owner, a mom and a wife. How do her and her husband connect and plan out their weeks? How’s she preparing for her baby’s arrival? How does she seemingly do so much, so well? What does life look like for her right now?
This is a really, really loose-structure episode. Normally I come a lot more pre-prepped and I really didn’t want to do that with Reina. I see her as a friend and I really wanted to approach this episode in that way. So, if conversations about all the things between two working moms is not your thing, then maybe this episode is not going to float your boat. But it definitely made me happy to sit and talk with my friend and just hear what she had to say about so many different things from business, motherhood, pregnancy, infertility, rhythms and routines, getting it all done, and fitting it all in. This is a great conversation that I’m happy to share with you.
There is so much that is mentioned in this episode, so many good resources. I’ll link to all of it in the show notes so you can go there if you want to see anything that Reina mentioned. She’s one of those girls that’s loaded with resources, so she shared lots of helpful things. I will link to all of them in show notes and you can check all of that out.
And now let’s welcome Reina and have a conversation about all the things.
ALLIE: Hi Reina, thank you for being here.
REINA: Thank you so much for having me.
ALLIE: I’m so excited to talk with you today. We just chit-chatted a little bit before we hit record, but I wanted to save all of the things for our actual talk because I feel like you’re a friend even though we’ve never hung out in real life. You give that vibe on social media, which I think is that you’re doing your job really well. I love watching your Instagram stories. You’re one of those people that I feel connected to. You’re so sweet and honest and it feels like we have so much in common. I’m excited to talk with you today.
REINA: I feel the exact same way. I talk about you all the time as though we are in real life friends, and we live in California now.
ALLIE: I saw that. I was going to ask you about it, like, “When are we gonna try to squeeze something in before you squeeze your baby out in the next two weeks? Tomorrow? Yes. Oh my gosh.”
Okay. There’s so much with you that I want to unpack and talk about but, first of all, you are about to have your second baby. So how are you feeling? How’s it going?
REINA: I’m feeling great. You know, people assume that at 38 weeks you’re just a complaining mess of stress and uncomfortableness. Rolling over in bed is like an Olympic sport. Let’s just be really clear about that. But otherwise I’m feeling great.
You know, like you said, I’m a business owner so I’m getting that part ready and I’m getting my son ready, who’s five, and just kind of getting everything here ready. I actually don’t know if your family is nearby but we have no family here in northern California. We are both transplants. We have no real family support system. So that’s been really hard. But we’re managing and we’re making it work and I’m actually pretty excited about this next phase.
ALLIE: Yeah, I totally get that. I just did an interview on somebody else’s podcast about when we moved out of state and we had no one. We didn’t. We went from being so immersed in…we had a church that we had gone to for years and all of our family was nearby and then we moved to literally nobody. There was somebody that went to our high school, but they were two hours from us. They were so sweet and drove and met us once, but it was not the same thing and it was so hard. So yeah, I get that.
So where are you in northern California? We’re in southern California.
REINA: We’re in Silicon Valley, so we’re right north of San Jose.
ALLIE: Okay. That’s not too far; we can make it happen.
Since we’re chatting about it a little bit already, tell me how you have been getting ready to be a mom of two. I know people will tell you, “Oh it’s so hard to go from one to two,” and “Oh two to three is really hard.” I feel like everybody has these usually negative opinions about growing your family. What has that looked like for you? What are you nervous about? How have you been getting ready? What’s been going on in your world in terms of mom’s stuff?
REINA: I feel like we’ve had so much time to get ready and also no time at all. And I’ve heard the same thing – that going from two to three is hard, from one to two is hard. Zero to one was hard, so I have no idea. I have no sense of what to really expect here. But I think the biggest thing is paying attention and giving myself space to do whatever needs to happen.
I think the first time I was very reactive to…I had to read all the things and make sure I knew all the things, read all the blogs and stuff like that. And this time I’m just paying attention to what my family is needing. What do I need right now? And making sure that all that is in check, instead of looking outside of myself to do all that research. Obviously, listening to my doctors and stuff.
ALLIE: I know what you mean. For most people and for me, I think after your first baby you stop being like, “I need everyone to tell me how this works,” and you start being more intuitive, I guess. And for me, my second, third and fourth and thousandth babies (that’s what it feels like)…
REINA: I have so much to learn from you.
ALLIE: But you’re on the right track like that. Having done this so many times, the one thing that I have learned is if you feel concerned about something or you think that you might need to prepare for something, I think there’s a reason that came to your mind. We’re all different. I was chosen to be the mom of these kids, like you were chosen to be the mom of those babies. There’s a reason that something is concerning you versus somebody else.
That’s why I think we should stop judging each other and decide what we think is right. You know?
I think it’s empowering when your intuition kicks in and you feel like, “I think I want to focus on this right now, or worry about this right now.”
REINA: Yeah, I totally agree with that.
ALLIE: Good for you.
In sharing whatever you want of this, but I know from being an Instagram friend that you guys have had a really frustrating journey to pregnancy and you’ve struggled with infertility in a way that’s unique I think. Do you want to share a little bit about that struggle?
REINA: Yeah. So, the first time around we got married and then we waited for however long we waited and then you’re like, “Oh, maybe we should start trying.” And then the next month I was pregnant. I felt lucky, it was great, and I had a really easy pregnancy. We thought we would have the same kind of experience the second time. We waited till our son was maybe 1 ½ then 2 years-old and started trying and nothing happened. Then they say, “Well it’ll take about a year.” You’re not “in trouble” until about a year. And then a year passed. And then a year and a half passed. And it always felt like there was no answer.
We didn’t start getting serious until we moved out to California and I was like, “You know what? My son is going to be five. That is a big gap.” We started to see infertility consults and trying to figure out what the heck was going on, and really started taking my health seriously. I was wondering what was going on with me. I assumed that it was about me, right? My husband got tested too, but neither of us had any sort of diagnosis about what was wrong.
We didn’t experience loss or anything like that, thankfully. But at the same time, it was equally frustrating to not know anything. They just call it an ‘undiagnosed secondary infertility.’ What does that even mean? How can you not diagnose what’s wrong?
ALLIE: And how can you try to fix it?
REINA: We were trying to figure out what was wrong and then how to make sure that we can have a second baby because we both looked healthy from the outside, and from the inside…all of the lab work, all the poking and prodding that they did to us. That was really scary and hard.
We started down the IUI path, which is the less invasive path. I think it has a 10% success rate each time you do it. Something might take; something might not take. But it’s usually the precursor to the IVF path and they decided that IUI wouldn’t be a good option for us. So we were like, “Okay, I guess we’ll go through the IVF path,” and it’s ungodly expensive. It’s like $30,000 or $40,000 to go down this path.
As an entrepreneur it’s a really big expense and you don’t want to think about it like, “Oh my child is going to cost $40,000 to create.” That’s not the mindset I wanted to go into this pregnancy with. But we were trying to figure out all those costs options and whatnot. We’re grateful because we have really great insurance and whatnot, but it’s still really scary.
As soon as we signed all the papers, I had this sense of relief that it was going to get taken care of, or we had an answer and we were going to get something to happen. Because I think not knowing was the most difficult part for me. It was like all the medications, all those shots and stuff that I would have to endure…fine, I’ll take care of it. But not knowing was really hard.
Once we signed the papers, I had this sense of relief. Two days later I found out I was pregnant. Once all the papers were signed and all the documents in…it was just a God thing, I think. One of those random things that I could not have anticipated, and maybe that sense of relief or whatever happened that the baby was ready to be brought into our lives. So, I feel really lucky.
ALLIE: Do you feel maybe the process of deciding to…I mean that’s a lot of money, especially as an entrepreneur. I immediately went to, “that’s half a launch.” Do you think you stating audibly, “Okay, we’re willing to do this,” maybe got you more ready for the baby or something and maybe your body aligned with that?
REINA: That’s really interesting that you bring that up. I don’t know if there was a moment or whatever, and that could be one of the speculations, but one of the spheres that I had, and I had journaled about it a lot right before we couldn’t figure out what was actually happening was “maybe my business is never going to be ready to have a second child.” Not that my body wasn’t ready, but maybe my business wasn’t going to be ready.
I had a little bit of a fear around will my business survive if I have another child. Because the first time around I took a maternity leave from a 9-5, so I had that cushion. And this time around we’re taking a maternity leave and it’s solely from me paying myself from my company. That was pretty scary to me. Maybe that was part of it and just being okay with the fact that I was going to be able to sustain myself.
ALLIE: There’s so there’s so many terrifying things about being your own boss. So many liberating. I mean you have those moments where you’re like, “Just forget this. I’m going to go back to how things were. It was way easier.” But then you think about all the freedom you’re losing. I totally understand.
For me and my business, I didn’t even start it until we were done with our whole family. So, I’ve never had that like, “Okay, time to make this transition.” It was…for a lack of not wanting to cuss on my show…a crap show from day one. We had all four of them and everything. It was just a different story.
When you need a break, whether it’s from maternity or anything, you’re giving yourself that or you’re not able to and it’s on you. Everything is on you.
REINA: I’ve gotten a lot of DM’s on Instagram recently, “Wait, you’re taking maternity leave? Are you paying yourself?” I’m actually glad that people are asking about these things because we should be asking about these things, right? You deserve as an entrepreneur to take time off for your baby, to recover, to bond with your child and hope to goodness that you can pay yourself in that time because it’s darn hard. I feel really grateful that I have a business that has allowed me to do that. I’m planning on taking four months.
ALLIE: Good for you! That’s amazing. Do you think you’re going to be like, “Oh I want to go back?”
REINA: I don’t know how you felt, but I will probably feel like a Zombie for a good 2 months, and then I’ll probably start trickling back in and be like, “Hey, tell me what’s going on.” My team has a pretty good system of how we’re going to check in and stuff like that, so I’m not completely isolated. But yeah, I think I’m going to be in the space of, “Can somebody just please talk to me? I just need some adult time.”
ALLIE: Well, we love what we do. It’s refreshing to get a break. I had a burnout last year and I took eight weeks off. After four weeks I was starting to…I would imagine if I was having a baby right now, it would be very similar. “I’m actually scared of how little I want to talk about my business. I think I’m done. I’m just so annoyed with everybody and burned out.” After the third or fourth week, I never wanted to work more in my life and I wanted to go back. “Let’s launch. Let’s just go all back into it.” I think it would probably be the same if I was having a baby right now. I just never did that in my business.
You have so much going on. You’re a very active businessperson. You do a lot. You’re one of those people that always seems to be coming out with the new content. You do these amazing challenges and videos. You always are doing something. I know that you have a client-based business so you’re always serving them in that way. I admire you for all the things you’re always putting out. Your Instagram is so inspiring. I really love what you do.
I know it’s an annoying question because there’s really no typical, but what does the most typical day in your life look like? How do you block out your work versus your family? Is Cato at home with you? What does your day look like?
REINA: I think it’s hard, like you said, with the “typical” cause there’s not really a typical, but my work hours are typically 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM. I work from 10:00 to 3:00ish and I try not to work in the evenings. I really try to focus on whatever is in front of me with family and stuff like that, unless there’s a launch or something like that happening. I will wake up in the morning and take care of my family, drop off Cato at preschool. He starts kindergarten in the fall, which is sad and exciting at the same time.
ALLIE: It’s such a fun and cute time. You’re going to love it.
REINA: Yeah, it’s just really exciting. He loves school and loves his friends and stuff like that. I love sending him to school because he just really enjoys that atmosphere. During the day…in the morning I like to get brainwork done, either writing or some kind of content creation or something like that. And then I’ll take client meetings in the afternoon or interviews in the afternoon when I have a little bit less energy. I’m an extrovert, so I love the connection process. The afternoon is a great time for that. I’m usually cutting off my “work” around 2:30 or 3:00, check my email one last time, wrap things up, and then I’m rolling out the door to pick up the Cato again. In the afternoon and evening we’re doing homework or school things that are required.
ALLIE: It’s like you shift into that mode, right?
Like I said in the beginning before we recorded, I’m being selfish and just asking things that I want to know because we have so much in common and I never get to talk to other moms. One thing that I really struggle with as an introvert is, I run out of steam. I will run out so early in the day. That’s why it was okay that this time was okay because I was like, “Well, it’s Reina. We’ll just talk and it’ll be awesome.” But if it was somebody that I never had any interaction with… it just takes a lot out of me. I would have been like, “I think I have to cancel. I’m dying.” My energy, it just leaves. This morning I had a creative meeting, then a decision-making meeting and then I wrote an email and I was like, “It is 11:30 and I’m done.” Do you feel that way or because you’re an extrovert is there any part of you that can always keep going? I feel like I need a nap and I’m done and then I still have to do all the mom things. Do you struggle with that still?
REINA: No, I think that…well right now I definitely do. Around 2:00 I’ll hit a wall because I’m pregnant. But usually when I’m not pregnant, I think that as an extrovert I feel like I need to get outside. I usually get outside around 11:00 in the morning to walk my dog. Then in the afternoon I’ll walk or go do something fun a little bit like sit by the pool or something like that. I don’t know what it is about being outside and the California sunshine, but it really does help me.
Maybe it’s an extravert thing, but when I connect with my clients and stuff like that, it doesn’t drain me. It doesn’t feel like, “Uh, I don’t want to do this.” But the things like the brainwork – that takes the most energy for me to sit down and concentrate. I have to get it done in the morning or I’m like, screw it.
ALLIE: Yeah, I’m the same way. And if there’s one big thing that can be done per day…I know you relate…in my DM inbox, there’s always like, “How do you get it all done? You’re always making up new things.” And it’s like, “Girl, you don’t realize those were batched way long ago.” Like tomorrow on my calendar is to sit and write the emails for a launch that’s coming in a month. And that’s the only thing on my calendar, and I’m done after that. It’s probably going to take me an hour and a half, but that’s it. I’ll be a Zombie.
REINA: I’m so impressed that an email series is only going to take you an hour and a half. Give me that brain of yours – that’s amazing.
Anything that’s not task-oriented where it’s just me doing the work, like you’re talking about…I have one thing on my list for today, which is my workshop workbook. Just complete the workbook. The workshop is already written. That’s already recorded. Those were done in batches last week. And then tomorrow I have to write this other thing. So it’s the same thing. What’s the most important project that you’ve got going on and focus on that.
ALLIE: Yeah. And then the rest of the day and I’m lounging on the couch shushing the kids so I can rest for a second and then I’m cooking or doing homeschool stuff or whatever.
REINA: I’m so impressed that you homeschool. It’s really incredible.
ALLIE: Oh thanks. Well it’s mostly Brian.
REINA: But it’s still really cool. I mean, you guys tag team.
ALLIE: Yeah, tag team. That’s the only reason that it gets done. And we only homeschool because we like the flexibility. It honestly is so hard sometimes.
REINA: Yeah. My husband has 12 weeks off for paternity leave and we were going to take six weeks of it after the baby was born and then we were going to take our family to Japan for six weeks and we realize that we can’t, even though I have flexibility and my husband has flexibility because my son’s going to be kindergarten. This is the first time we’re ever having to deal with the public school system. You can’t just up and leave for six weeks. Dang it!
ALLIE: Yeah. I know. Homeschooling is not for everybody. But it’s one of those things like we were talking about with work. You have to weigh out what you really want and if you want one thing more than the other, you make it happen. If you can only do one thing, you have to choose what it’s going to be that day. It’s all about balance.
REINA: I think it’s interesting too, and you talk a lot about this in the mom world, I talk a lot about this in the business world and how you have to focus on what matters the most right now. It’s not a matter of doing all the things, but like you say, it’s prioritizing the most important thing so that you can rest easier or know that things are going to happen and be taken care of.
I think people get so overwhelmed by the image and the facade of doing it all that it’s crippling. I don’t do it all and I do not try to handle everything in one day. It’s just not going to happen.
ALLIE: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve been thinking a lot and talking about this and just seeing what women, what their feedback is and what their take is. I’ve been thinking a lot about the difference between living busy and living full. To me living busy is busy for the sake of busy. You’ve just got too much going on. I look at the friends that I have that have their kids in eight different activities and then they’re basically just chauffeurs and I just can’t be busy like that. But then I have people that tell me all the time, “Oh, you’re just so busy.” And I’m always kind of thrown because I don’t feel like I’m busy. I felt like my life is just full of good.
REINA: Yeah. My friend Martha, she works for a big company and she’s busy. She does a lot of things and I think she’s full and busy at the same time. But she always comments about how how much I have going on. I’m like, “Not really.” I mean I do quite a bit, but it’s not like I’m constantly shuffling around or at least that’s now how it feels day-to-day. My days are full and my brain is full, but I don’t feel like I’m pinging from thing to thing to thing, which I think that toggling and that switching effect is really harmful for our brains and it’s just difficult for us to keep going.
ALLIE: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s where batching comes in. Are you a batch worker?
REINA: Yeah, I batch work.
ALLIE: It’s something that I learned in business that has translated over to motherhood with meal prepping and stuff. It’s just so powerful.
We need to talk about that for a second. Because I’m thinking that my audience is like, “Oh my gosh, talk more about that.” So batching for those who are listening and don’t know, batching is basically a productivity hack, right? Where you are in one brain mode working on something, so you might as well just do all the things that are like that task at one time so that you’re not switching like Rana just said, toggling back and forth from task to task. So how do you do that in your business? And then let’s talk about if you do that in your family, meals and stuff like that.
REINA: Yeah, so in my business we do that in a couple different ways. I have done all of my client work in one week, so I take all my client calls on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursdays on even weeks and then I’ll do all of my content on Weeks 1 and Weeks 3. So anytime there’s things that need to get out the door, those are the days when I have those chunks of time blocked out for me to sit down and do the work. I think that for me it helps because I need to be an extrovert mode where I’m interfacing with my clients versus I really want to get this deep work done during the content time. I try to do that as much as I can.
When we were podcasting, that was definitely something that helped because if you are in content writing mode and your brain is on, on fire and doing awesome writing and then you have to context switch to different parts of your brain, it’s just really difficult. It takes me a little while to switch over.
In my personal life, I think with the meal prep specifically, I love using Plan To Eat.
Basically, anytime you see a recipe online, you can just pull that link and pull it into this library. Oh my gosh. You have to check it out. It’s awesome. If you Pinterest something and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, this looks so yummy. I want to check it out.” Instead of putting it on a Pinterest board, you just drag it into Plan To Eat and then you have a library of recipes that you want to check out and then you’d just say, “Oh, I want to do this on Monday. I want to do this on Tuesday. I want to do this on Thursday.” Whatever. And then it creates a shopping list for you. Oh my gosh, it’s amazing.
ALLIE: So how does it know what all goes on the shopping list.
REINA: Because the recipe is already in there and so the ingredients are in the recipe and it just pulls it in. It’s insane.
ALLIE: OK. That’s amazing. I wrote it down.
REINA: That might be a potential sponsor for you in the future. It should be.
The cool thing about Plan To Eat…I don’t want to go too far into it, but our family’s favorite recipes…and you can collaborate with friends. So if you have friends who eat similar to you or whatever, you have a gluten free family or whatever, you can borrow from their menus too. What I love about this tool is that you can have family favorites and then plan in two months we’re just going to do the same exact month recipe.
ALLIE: Okay. You don’t even realize…I won’t go on a tangent, but side note, I have been cooking more than I ever have in my entire life lately. I’m so overwhelmed. I basically just figured out all of these hormonal problems that I’ve been having and I’m not going to have all these surgeries and these unnecessary things and I’m like, “I’m going to heal this with food, hormone imbalance is food.” So I’m eating Paleo and it’s so much food prep and I’ve just been dying. It is what it is. I’m going to be cooking a lot. That’s just the way it is. But to know ahead of time, “Oh, these were our favorites and we’ll just eat this again.” The planning is the hardest part.
REINA: It totally is. What I’ve been doing is as soon as I know what I need for the week, I’ll just have it delivered. Especially now that I’m pregnant, I’m not going to the grocery store, hauling that stuff, but I can log in, my husband can log in and he could go grocery shopping for me. Or if we’re out and about, he can just pick something up. This app has been amazing in just being able to say Allie likes this recipe and she’s going to put it two weeks from now so that you’re repeating and you don’t have to plan it out again. But also it’s been two weeks so you’re not going to remember that.
ALLIE: Exactly. Totally. And then you know what you like or what was a family favorite. Okay. That’s amazing. I’m going to link to that. This sounds like such a sponsored conversation. I know.
REINA: I know. It totally is not.
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This is definitely the place to go!
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ALLIE: Okay, so getting into that overly annoying term, work life, family, work, life balance and all that. I feel like you’re really good at being the CEO of your business, but also you show up and you’re the CEO of your home and your family and you seem to do both so well. I know that it’s all Instagram or whatever, but you show up really well where you need to show up. I feel like you have really good boundaries about like, “Well I don’t need to do that so I’m not going to feel like I need to that. I’m going to focus on this.” You seem really focused and that’s also what you teach in your business. You’re so good at that. Having said that, do you have any systems week-to-week in your home that free you up? I’m all about rhythms and routines and those things, but sometimes I’ll meet somebody who’s like, “Well those ones just didn’t work for me. This is what I found.” I’m learning that everybody is different. So what are the systems in your home that have helped you do all the things?
REINA: Yeah, so I’m going to answer one simple thing first. One of the things that’s really important to me as a human is that as a business owner, as a mom, I think the identity that gets lost often is the Reina identity, right? Being the person. And so, I like to think of my life as three buckets. My family and home life bucket, my Reina bucket and then the business bucket. And when I know that each of them are, maybe not equally replenished because that’s not ever going to truly happen, but if I know that I’m going to be in a heavy business season and the other two are going to be a little bit depleted, to make sure that I’m communicating that with myself and with my husband. Knowing that’s what’s going to happen. Or if I know that I’m physically going to be taxed, like going through labor or whatever, that the other two are going to be depleted and have that expectation and reality check.
I think that for me that’s what balance is, to know that there’s going to be these imbalances and to know how to accommodate for those. If I know that my family is going to be going through a tough season to lighten up on the other two things, like I’m not going be ice skating as much or maybe I’m not going to be reading as much for myself and that’s okay. The adjustment of expectations. That’s one way I like to think about life balance because you can’t get it.
And then I think at home, I mean I’m not perfect and I have plenty to learn from you here.
I think just one of the things to think about with life stuff is just communicating. We do ‘team meeting’ with my husband and I on Sunday nights. It’s a really quick check in to be like, “Okay, here’s what’s happening in my life. Here’s what’s happening with work.” It’s not a romantic meeting or anything by any means, but it’s our one time to check in logistically so I don’t have to hassle him, I don’t have to nag at him during the week. It’s like, “Here are my expectations. Here’s what we need. What do you need from me? How can I support you this week?” Those are basically simple questions to make sure that we know what’s going on on each other’s calendars at work. I found that when we weren’t doing that…even though it’s like, “Hey, how was your day? Fine.” You don’t really get to the core of it. In the seasons when we haven’t done as many team meetings or check-ins, it’s been a little bit more like we’re not communicating as well or just a little bit short with each other because things are happening at work or you had a really tough conversation with somebody at work or whatever is going on. Checking in is really helpful. That’s one of the things that we do.
ALLIE: I think also it helps us to have a meeting once a week that’s not date night so that date night can be romantic. Why is it so easy for companies and CEOs to know they need to have a team meeting but nobody’s thinking about that when you are a team with your husband? You’re running a family, a life, and a home, which is far more important than any company. Of course you need to have a meeting. It’s funny because we implemented that a while back before I ever knew that I would have a company. It’s something that everyone is always so like, “Oh wow, what a great idea.” I don’t know how anyone is doing all of this without meeting. Maybe that’s why the divorce rate is so high or communication….because you have all of these expectations and you have to have a time and place to communicate that. I think that’s so amazing that you guys do that.
REINA: Last night it was not perfect because we didn’t do it on Sunday and I had done all the meal planning and all that stuff, but we hadn’t done a team meeting. So late last night right before we went to bed we’re like, “Oh! Team meeting,” and we were checking in with each other because there are a couple of things that are coming up with appointments and stuff like that. It was nice to be able to know that we have a space for it and it’s like a recurring calendar thing on our calendars. Do you guys do it with your kids? I feel like your kids are old enough that you could probably do this with your kiddos.
REINA: It’s starting to get there. Bella is 10 and she’s a girl and she’s really wanting to be involved in everything. What we’ve been doing is we still do it on Sunday night and the kids are playing and then we’ll pull them in at the end and we’ll be like, “Okay guys, here’s what’s going on. Here’s what we’re doing in school.” Because on Sunday night we go over the homeschool curriculum for the next week and be like, “Okay, do we need to get any supplies on our shopping list for tomorrow?” Then we do meal planning and groceries all at the same time. Then we do what’s going on with my work and the business and what press stuff is going on. Am I driving anywhere? Meeting anybody? What’s going on? They’re really long. They used to be really short. Now it’s a couple hours of all the things, and we’ll pull the kids in at the end and check-in on everybody and see how everyone’s feeling. Usually they rabbit trail and talk about a show they want to watch or something. It’s becoming from a couples reconnect thing to a family team meeting where “How’s everybody doing?” I think it’s evolving into that for sure.
REINA: Yeah, I like that a lot and I think that as my kids grow I think I’ll want to include them in these conversations. I’m pretty excited about that.
One of the things that we started doing was in meal prep before I do a lot of the thinking about food stuff. I’ll ask my son, “What do you want to eat this week? What are your friends eating? What are you interested in? So that he continues to be interested in food, you know? That’s something that we’ve just started and he doesn’t have much of an opinion right now. He’s like, “I just don’t want to eat this.” And I’m like, “Cool. That’s super helpful.”
ALLIE: I’ve never heard anybody say that. And what a cool idea. What a cool way to get around a picky eater, to twist it and make it positive. “Have you seen anything that you want to try?” I’m willing to try. What a great mom.
REINA: I don’t know about that. I don’t want this to be the first response. He’s a pretty adventurous eater, so it’s nice to be able to include his opinion in the food.
ALLIE: Yeah, for sure. For sure. It’s his house too and you want to make food…I wouldn’t make something that Brian didn’t like. You guys are making yourselves this team, this group, that we all have opinions and we will respect each other’s opinions and I care what you think. We’re coming away from the whole time of parenting where it was, “Sit down. Shut up. Do what I say. You’re the kid. I’m the parent.” You know what I mean? It feels like we’re raising kids who could be a little more respectful because they were respected too and we cared about what they thought and we asked. “Yeah, we’re the parents but I care about what you think and I want to know how you’re feeling.”
Okay, so let’s shift gears a little bit and talk about your business kind of things. I know that this isn’t a business podcast (sometimes I wish it was because all day I could talk about marketing and all the things) but there are so many women who listen, who message me, “I love the business talks. I want more about that”. So while there isn’t a business podcast for now, let’s talk a little bit here about your content.
You seem like a content creation machine. Are there any hacks that you have? You’ve been at this for a while. You’ve been doing your business for years and you seem to have really fine-tuned what you are good at. You have your elevator pitch and the way that you succinctly say who you serve and what you do is so fine-tuned and beautiful. Do you have any hacks for how you create content so regularly? Do you batch everything? Your Instagram and your blog content? How do you structure all of that?
REINA: At this point right now we are not creating a lot of content, but for the past 2 ½ to 3 years, we had a podcast episode going out every week, twice a week, right? And so there’s a lot of content out there. The way that I’ve done it in the past is really thinking about who are the people that I’m serving? Who do I really want to be talking to? Making sure that I’m answering their questions before they even know that it’s a question so that we can kind of tackle those.
I know you do this too, where are you have a Q & A kind of thing and we respond to those. I love your podcast episodes where you were talking about business stuff because you’re just answering people’s questions which is awesome. Maybe you could have a business podcast. It’s just one of those things for me that whenever I ask for what people need, it’s just readily there. That’s the way that I like to create content.
For me, at the very beginning I felt like no one was listening and so I didn’t really know how to answer questions. Because there’s just not an audience. I was so grateful when I started getting feedback. It was like, “Oh, okay, this is working or this is what people are curious about.” It’s so much easier. If you’re in that phase of, “I have no idea what I’m supposed to be talking about,” just keep talking because people will start to pay attention. I don’t know if that’s your advice, but I would probably say don’t get discouraged by people who aren’t listening yet. We have to win over those people one by one and your audience will grow even if it doesn’t feel like immediate overnight growth.
ALLIE: Yeah and just sharing what have you learned? What have you struggled with? Start talking about that. Start talking about what was hard for you yesterday. How did you handle it? I had the funniest little random blog post topics in the beginning because it was just like yesterday I had a really crappy day and I just restarted in the middle of a day. And then I had a blog post called something like “How To Have a Monday Morning In The Middle Of A Thursday Afternoon” or something like that, “Restarting Your Day – It’s Okay.” And that gained following. Everything that you are learning is valuable to somebody. Just start talking. Somebody will listen.
REINA: Yeah, I agree with that. I love that.
ALLIE: For yourself, do you have any ‘rules’ in terms of when you know that your business needs to take a back seat, you need to shift gears and focus on your family? You mentioned your buckets. I have more of a seasonal base. I’ll know that I think I need to maybe bow out of that launch, push it to fall, and focus on my marriage this summer. It feels like that. Do you have any hard rules for yourself in terms of what you’re focusing on most?
REINA: It’s not really a hard and fast rule. I think one of the biggest things I do is, so I use Lara Casey’s Powersheets planners. I think that just looking at the full year ahead of when it’s starting and actually happening, to be able to know, “These are my life things that are going to be happening. I have a wedding to attend and we have to travel across the country.” Whatever things are happening and making sure that I know don’t plan anything crazy big for your business during this time, or I’m coming out of maternity leave, there’s no way that I’m going to be doing anything crazy right after this. And just easing myself into it. I think that looking at life first for me, then adding on the extra layers and making sure that I’m tempering or scaling my expectations depending on those seasons.
Then whenever I have a busy work season, I try to take a little bit of time, not off necessarily, but just kind of turned down, I guess, so that I have a little bit more spaciousness in my life.
ALLIE: Yeah, absolutely. I love that. Do ever feel like one area of your life is so busy that the other area never really gets to where you want it to go? Sometimes I feel like my personal life is so full and so busy. My kids are older so they’re into things, doing sports and stuff, and while we keep it toned down, I don’t want to be the mom that says, “No, you can’t do any. Just baseball.” It’s a lot. It’s three days a week. It’s so busy. Sometimes I feel like I’m saying “not right now” to things in my business so much that I’m like, “Man, am I ever going to get where I want to go because it’s having to grow so slowly?” Do you feel like that?
REINA: I feel like that sometimes. I think it’s really funny that you’re saying that because I feel like you’ve grown so quickly.
ALLIE: It’s always a perspective thing when you’re in it.
REINA: You’re like, “This is so slow” aka really fast to somebody else because you’re witnessing so many other cool people who are doing amazing things.
ALLIE: And you know in your head where you want to be and you’re not there, so it’s like, “Oh this is too slow.” When I look back it’s like, “Yes! So many things have happened.” I think it makes you choose, or at least for me, it makes me choose what I’m going to say “yes” to is a really good yes and then the “no’s” would have helped, but it’s not necessary. The growth is still there, but I think if you’re a driven person, you’re not ever going to be satisfied with what’s happened.
REINA: I think it’s really interesting. I have this inner dialogue with myself and I don’t know how you experienced this, but for me, “I want to go faster, I want to go faster, I want to go faster. I want to do this other thing and continue to pursue it,” and it’s tempered by, “Okay, well, I have these other responsibilities and it’s not that this other thing is more important necessarily, but in this season this is the most important thing that I need to focus on.”
For example, over the summer, I want to make sure that my son is able to swim. That is a huge priority. He’s 5; he needs to be able to swim. I was a water baby. I played water polo. You know, all of this stuff. And I’m not going to be able to do all of this other stuff that I had hoped for in my business. And that’s okay. It’s weird to think about business in the context of, “Oh well I have to balance my life against this,” because if I was in a corporate company you can’t do that. You don’t have the luxury of being like, “No I’m not going to do that because my son has to take swim lessons.”
ALLIE: You have to do what you were hired to do.
REINA: Right. I try to think about what would it look like in 9-5 world and also, “Thank God I don’t have to do that. Thank goodness I don’t have to abide by somebody else’s timeline and schedule.” There’s a give and take I guess.
ALLIE: Yeah. I think that’s why the phrase “work life balance” irks me so much. I mean is there even really such a thing? My business is almost like another baby to me. I love it. I care about it so much. I wish I could do more, but I also feel like I wish I could do more with my kids in other areas too. It’s the same thing of which thing is going to win this season.
REINA: Yeah, absolutely. I think people hate the word ‘balance’ because it feels like it has to be…
ALLIE: …perfectly even.
REINA: And it’s not, you know? It’s a juggling act. I imagine standing on a yoga ball and juggling at the same time.
ALLIE: Yes! Well put!
REINA: It’s not balance; It’s like trying not to fall and drop the balls all at the same time.
ALLIE: Yeah. I think that social media is so beautiful and no matter how real you are it always looks like that’s not what’s happening. And it is. It’s hard. Then you show up and you serve and somebody says something rude, like it wasn’t enough. You didn’t do good enough. You made this grammatical error and they’ve got to pointed out. And then that’s discouraging and you’re like, “Wow!” Then you come inside your house and I made this huge elaborate meal and one of my kids is like, “This tastes like dirt.” It’s like nothing is ever good enough, ever balanced enough, so all we can do in every area is just show up and, “Oh, this is what I did and I feel really good about it, so I’m going to move on.”
REINA: Yeah. That example is such a real life. I had a really a trying day a couple of weeks ago and everything I was trying was not working, and then I get to dinner and I was like, you know, sometimes it’s a hot dog and they’re happy and everything is Hunky Dory. And then the next day you try to make an elaborate meal where you actually served them vegetables. It was a healthy meal and you actually thought about it. Then it’s like, “Mom, I don’t want to eat this.” And you’re like, “Ahh, I can’t even deal with you right now.”
ALLIE: Yeah. This morning I did this Instagram story where I was talking about a time in our life and I said something like, “Oh, we moved to the Midwest and it was, you know, Arkansas.” I got this message that was like, “FYI Arkansas is not the Midwest. I love you, but get your geography straight.” Literally what she said. It just bugs you. It wasn’t a big deal, but I was already not super emotionally fit at that moment and it just bugged me. Then I came in and I made a giant amazing lunch – shrimp, that black rice, that Forbidden Rice or whatever that’s loaded with nutrients and it’s $25 a bag. Right? I made this amazing thing and my kids were like, “I don’t want…” and I just lost it. It’s okay that I’m not good enough for everybody all the time because my value can’t be in that…I don’t know, this is kind of a tangent…but my point was I’m learning that it’s okay.
I’m showing up. I’m doing a free Instagram story with a free podcast for you and if you don’t like that I called Arkansas the Midwest, then just get out. I just showed up and I cooked this amazing meal and it nourished me and my body that’s going through healing and it was good for you guys but if you don’t like that part of it then just don’t eat it. Just get out.
REINA: You cannot please everyone, Allie. Can. Not.
ALLIE: Ok, one more question about working for all of the work-at-home moms.
Your office is at your house. Do you ever struggle with the fact that it’s all happening in the same place and it’s distracting?
REINA: It always is distracting. I mean as you said that my dog walks into my office, right? She’s like, “I want to go for a walk. I’m ready to do it.” And now that I’ve said it, she’s going to get excited. Things are happening all the time. Thankfully my son is not at home and he has his own care. But at the same time, there’s laundry to be folded, there’s dishes to be clean. There’s stuff that needs to happen. I try my best to have focus time for each of those things so that I know they get taken care of, but it’s not perfect. It’s a matter of where do I want to put my focus on right now, and making sure that I dedicate the time that I need to, to the things that need to happen.
It sucks. It’s definitely not perfect and I have lots to learn in that regard, but it’s just one of those things that whenever I need to focus on work, I’m all in.
ALLIE: Yeah, and you just have to have that self-discipline that I’m working right now. It’s not laundry time. That’s amazing that you have that. The only reason that I even started figuring out rhythms and routines in my house stuff is because I don’t have that and it’s like if the other things are not rhythmatized, and I know in the morning the laundry is switched and done. Now the kids are older and chores are happening, they’re actually helpful, so the kids do the dishes. But you know those things are done. Then it’s like, “Okay, now I can work.”
REINA: Yeah, it’s about creating those habits and for me the rhythms are a little bit different than yours and I think that’s fine. For example, this is such a silly example, but on Sundays, every single week, I have a reminder on my phone that says ears and nails. I have to clean out my son’s ears and cut his nails, or else I will never remember.
ALLIE: Yeah, I know. Oh my gosh, yes. I have so many random little alerts on my phone. Especially with boys, they don’t care or notice. Bella would be like, “Mom, my nails look really long and dirty. Can you help me?” The boys are still being gross and playing in dirt with dirt under their nails. Eating dirt. “We don’t care.” Yeah, it’s a boy-mom problem.
REINA: Exactly. It’s one of those things that if I have them in my phone and I know that they’re going to happen, I don’t have to worry about it during the rest of the week kind of thing, unless there’s a problem obviously.
I like to have little homes for these little assignments for myself, so I guess that’s the way that I do rhythms.
ALLIE: It’s like you’re clearing mental clutter. It’s mental clutter to know that you have to do something, but you have no assigned place that you’re going to remember to do it. That’s totally raising your cortisol.
REINA: Yeah. No stress for me in that regard. Let’s handle it. It’s taken care of.
ALLIE: Yeah, totally. I love that. You easily say something so actionable and relatable.
I love it.
I know that you’re like me and you love to read. I don’t know if it’s changing for you lately but what are you reading right now? What are you loving right now?
REINA: What am I reading right now? I am reading Kristin Hannah’s Midnight Hour. I just finished The Tattooist of Auschwitz.
ALLIE: So you like to read novels.
REINA: I like to read novels at night and then during the day I like to read business stuff or other fiction stuff, I guess. I’m reading Shoe Dog by Phil Knight. He founded Nike. I’m obsessed with this story.
ALLIE: Me too. It’s so crazy to see the beginning of something so huge and so inspiring. It’s such a humble start.
REINA: It really is. He’s talking about a $1,000 shoe order like, “What? That’s amazing!” And now it’s a multibajillion dollar company. It’s really remarkable.
ALLIE: Yeah, it is. I love that too.
In conclusion, just a random question. I didn’t give you a warning so it’s okay if you’re like, “I dunno,” but what is one life lesson or something that’s been resting on you lately that you have been learning lately?
REINA: I think coming back to journaling a lot recently. I’ve been trying a lot of different formats of journaling recently. This is not a word obviously, but I got to the season of being a little bit too busy for daily journaling and I wanted to figure out what was happening and what I could try. And so, I’ve been trying a lot of different formats and I really like the simplicity of the Start Today Journal. I think it’s 5 pieces of gratitude in the morning and then 10 things you made happen. It’s Rachel Hollis’ Start Today Journal. She talks about it in her new book Girl, Stop Apologizing. I devoured that on Audible. I think she has an actual physical journal that she sells. I just made my own. The second part is really interesting because it’s all about the dreams that you made happen and so the things that you want to have happen, but in the, “I’ve already done it” tense.
It’s really cool stuff. If you look up the ‘Start Today Journal’ Hashtag on Instagram, you see all kinds of stuff, like hers is “I’m a New York Times bestseller author” before she was. And some people are like, “I lost 10 pounds.” It can be really different types of goals.
ALLIE: I love that. It’s the whole idea that I have seen over and over again in my life – speaking it out before it happens and saying, “This is mine and I’m going to make this happen.” I love that.
This was such a good conversation. Thank you so much.
I know that this isn’t your normal interview. Normally you are all business. Some people will want to go and chase after what you’ve got and some people won’t really have it be relative, but where can people find you? Because I know if people know what you do, you serve amazing entrepreneurs and I love when you share your clients’ stories and their wins and stuff. It’s so cool to see who you’re working with. But if people want to do that with you and work with you and find you, where can they find you?
REINA: You can find me over at Reina + Co. I am always hanging out over on Instagram at @reinaandcompany and I respond to my DM’s. That’s really the only place I’m hanging out during my maternity leave. It’s going to be a fun little transition time. Who knows what’ll happen.
Even though this conversation was more life stuff, I think it’s important that we talk about this and just because I’m an entrepreneur doesn’t mean that I can’t talk about mom stuff, you know?
ALLIE: It’s all woven together. Are you going to be sharing baby staff on Instagram?
REINA: Oh, for sure.
ALLIE: Yay! I’m so excited for you. Oh my gosh. Having brothers, too, in your home is one of the glories of my life and one of the things that I am so proud to be a part of. It’s so cool. I didn’t really have that in my house. My siblings are really far apart, so while we have two girls and two boys, we didn’t grow up together. It’s really cool to have the boys growing up together and don’t worry about that age gap. The ones that are the closest in my house are the farthest apart so it doesn’t matter. They’re going to be little friends. Especially when the baby gets to be 1, they’re going to start to play. It’s so magical. So fun. You’re going to love it. I’m so happy for you.
REINA: Yay. Thank you so much for that encouragement. I’m just looking forward to this sweet season.
ALLIE: We’ll link to all the good things that you shared, the journal and the powersheets, all of that good stuff, but thank you so much for having this conversation with me.
REINA: Thank you so much for having me.
This was an episode of The Purpose Show. Did you know there is an exclusive community created solely for the purpose of continuing discussions surrounding The Purpose Show episodes? And to get you to actually take action and make positive changes on the things that you learn here? Go be a part of it. To join go to facebook.com/groups/purposefulmamas.
Thank you so much for tuning in. If you are ready to uplevel and really take action on the things I talk about on my show, and get step-by-step help from me, head to alliecasazza.com. There are free downloads, courses, classes, and ways to learn more about what the next step might look like for you and to focus on whatever you might need help with in whatever season you are in right now.
I am always rooting for you, friend! See ya next time!
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