Hi, everyone. Welcome. Just give a few seconds here. Let people get um situated in in the session before I get started. Ok, that's good with it. Thank you all for joining me today. Um We're talking about working mothers and the work life balance myth.And uh before my quick introduction to myself, you know, can I get some virtual hands for those of you who feel like overworked Barbie here? Uh I know, I certainly do. Uh Thank you. Thank you for the hands. I can see you. Um So my name is Colleen Murphy Gomez and I'm the vice president of marketing at a software company called Wave and this is my family, my husband Gabriel, my son John, who is about to turn seven next month. And for me, uh some of the ways that I describe myself, mother, wife, marketer, book lover, daughter, friend. I'm a dancer, sister, boss and wine connoisseur. Although that last one is a little questionable because these days I mostly drink boxed wine out of my kids toy Story cup because it holds a really nice pore. So that's a little bit just about me and I wanna share with you um of uh my journey and we're talking about work life balance, myth. Uh And I actually hate that term work life balance.

So I get on the soapbox about it, but it's because I think it's really unattainable balance means things are equal, right? Equal on both sides. And since I became a mom, I've never, for one day ever felt like both sides were equal. Uh and all parts of my work and my home life were in balance. And I like to think of it more as this teeter totter. Some days or weeks, months, years. Uh my family gets much more of my time and energy and attention and sometimes it's my work life and it goes back and forth. So I like to think of it uh in this context instead of as a balance. And so let me just start kind of back it up to when I first became a mom. I'm in the working world. Um And my son is, was three months old when I took my first work trip. Ok, thankfully, it was back home to where I was originally from. And my dad and my stepmom still live there so I could bring my son with me. They'd give baby time. I'd still get to be with him while I was working out of um working out of another office. And I thought this is gonna be great, right?

And all that good balance uh until I realized that it was even more work to try to take my kid with me on a work trip than if I hadn't. And like all of us working moms uh who can do two things at once. 100 things at once. I found uh the best time to breast pump was on the 45 minute drive from my house to the office. Right. Trying to get all of the things done in a limited amount of time that I had. And that first year after my son was born, I found things were really, really hard. And so I was looking for advice, right? How can I find this illustrious balance? Where can I get some of that? And so I found a lot of articles and tips like this one, enhance your productivity time management king. And I thought ok. Ok. Uh I can do that until I realized I was already doing that and it really was not helping. Ok. I didn't find any of these tips terribly helpful. And so what I hope today is to kind of move past some of this basic platitudes and give you what I would consider some moderately helpful advice. That's what I hope for today. I've got kind of six tips and hopefully uh some of them resonate with you and if any of them uh can help you uh even just a little bit um that's the goal. So tip number one be ok with 90%. I found expectations everywhere.

Um uh myself, I had expectations, my family, my bosses and I was 100 and 20% kind of person. That's how I would have described myself still today. Right. Overachiever I'm ambitious. Give, give my all and then some and all of a sudden I wasn't, I wasn't meets expectations employee for the first time in my performance review after I had my son and I cried for like a whole week. So I'm like, I'm not a meets expect, I'm exceeds, I'm an exceeds expectation kind of employee. But I really, I, you know, I wasn't, I couldn't be that 120% everywhere all the time at work anymore. And what I came to realize was that it's ok if I'm only 90% sometimes I'm still that 120% at heart, I'll be that again someday. But I found you really have to give yourself some grace for certain periods in your work life that you can be ok at 90% you're still getting things done. You're still productive employee. It doesn't mean you're any less. It just means maybe your home life needs more of your energy and then your work life does at that moment. So be ok with that 90% tip. Two, no excuses or apologies.

I had somebody explain to me once that when you walk into a room, stay late for a meeting and you explain why you were late whether it was, uh the bus broke down and you had to drive the kids to school or you needed an extra coffee. Whatever your excuse was, when you give it, you give everybody in that room, um, the opportunity to determine whether they think your excuse is good enough or not. So their advice to me was don't give excuses and don't give apologies, just simply state why you're late and move on and maybe you have to tell your boss specifics. But I found I was quick to explain away. Right. I wanted you to understand why I was doing what I was doing. And uh I got this email last week. Ok, apologies. And if you are on this uh program listening and I'm calling you out. Uh but it's a perfect example of excuses and apologies and I used to do this all the time as well. Right? But you don't need to give anybody else a reason for why you need to adjust your schedule, why you have to prioritize your family and certainly don't be flexible on that for other people.

If you don't work Fridays, don't give me an option to steal your Friday that you'll make yourself available. See, that doesn't work for me. I mean, you know, what else, what else can we schedule? So tip two, no excuses or apologies. Ok, I don't know how many of you feel, but I certainly did reality when working from home, especially with COVID kids are back in the house, they can't go to school, they can't go to daycare. Thankfully, for the most part, in most places we're out of this now, daycares are back open after school programs are open. But I found that even though they were back open, I wasn't utilizing them the same way I was before COVID. And so my tip number three is to kick your family out or kick yourself out. Ok? And by that, I mean, put those boundaries back in place because when we don't have them, frankly, it becomes even more exhausting. We can't actually do two things at once, even though we are, I'm sure all multitaskers, uh you can do one thing at a time. Your brain can just switch back and forth between multiple things really quickly. Uh But when we do, it means we can't dedicate and give focus to one or the other thing really well.

And so the advice here is to go back to a bit more of the division that there was before COVID, go back to the office two days a week, put the physical separation between you and your family reschedule those aftercare programs after school and pro tip, try not to feel guilty about it, right.

That's what I always dealt with was that guilt like I'm not spending enough time with my family or I'm not giving my all at work. Uh And the advice there is really try to try to let it go. So tip three, kick yourself or your family out to provide some boundaries and distance between your two, your two worlds. Tip number four, get someone else to do it. Now, if you have really involved, uh, significant others, great, I give up certain things. One of the things that I had to learn was that it really doesn't matter how the laundry gets done as long as it actually gets done. And even though I would really like everything folded perfectly and hung up nicely at the end of the day, it really didn't matter if it stressed me out. Right? So utilizing not only your significant other, your kids can do more. I have the best video of my son at 2.5 unloading the dishwasher. That's the one kitchen chore I hate doing is unloading the dishwasher. And so it's still my son's uh job today uh to do that. Now, maybe if it's, you don't have the significant other kids to do more work, then my advice is to pay somebody else to do the things that you aren't passionate about and you don't, that don't bring value to you in your day because your time is valuable. Ok?

Even if it's half an hour, even if it's an hour a day, whatever that looks like that time is valuable, whether you can put that back towards your career growth, you can put that back towards spending time with your family or spending time on yourself, that time is valuable. So paying out somebody else to do things easy ones, cleaning meal preparation, but some other things too like personal styling. So I, I called up my, my former coworker Ann who owns a styling company called MS Mira said, hey, I don't know what to do with myself for this presentation I'm giving. Like, can you, can you help me? Because I don't, I'm not passionate about it. I don't love it. I didn't have time to be worried about it. And so they styled me for, you know, for today. Um, personal assistant, you can hire people, virtual personal assistants, even for five hours a week that will uh schedule your kids summer camps that will schedule your meetings at work. Uh They can order those groceries online so they're ready for pick up that might feel like only 15 or 20 minutes in your day, but it all adds up into the week.

I mean, imagine if you got an extra hour and a half, two hours back of your work week just to do something for you. So time is your time is valuable. Get someone else to do the things that you aren't passionate about and don't find joy doing. And so before I get to tips, number five and number six, they're specific to job change. So I'm gonna give you just a little bit of a story for me in changing jobs. I've been in my current role now just under a year and I knew that it was time for me to leave my former job. I've been there about eight years and, you know, things change. I needed new challenges. I needed a new environment. So I had made the decision to start job hunting, got everything ready and I got pregnant. So I found out I was pregnant while I was about to switch jobs. I thought, well, crap. Now, what, now, what am I gonna do? Well, because, you know, there's benefits to consider and trying to, uh, interview while pregnant. Um, certainly switching jobs. And again, that feeling of I'm 100 and 20 you know, I wanna give my 120% to my new job. And I realized that how was I going to do that with a new, with a new baby? Right. The teeter totter of my life I knew would weigh much heavier on my family. And I didn't think I could be that 120% in a new job.

And so I decided to stay at my former job. I'm like, well, just stick it out. I guess it's another what year and a half, maybe of being unhappy. And so that's what I decided to do. And I was resigned to do it. And lo and behold, 23 months later, I found out I'm not pregnant anymore and things shifted again and suddenly, uh, you know, for my own family, we were deciding, well, we're gonna try again. But ok, now, do I start looking for a job again? What does that look like? And so I spent a lot of time reflecting and I decided that no matter what happened, I needed something different because when I'm unhappy, really unhappy in my work life, it bleeds over into my personal life. And even if it was gonna be challenging and I'd have to do things differently. I felt like it was important for me to switch careers at that time. So I went back to job hunting. But now all of a sudden, I had a whole lot more questions that I had to ask because what if I got pregnant tomorrow then? What? Right. Um What kind of boss did I need to have? It was really eye opening shift for me of uh even interviewing styles. And so the advice for tip number five is to ask the hard questions. Now it's awkward right to ask. Do you have Children?

How old, how many, um, the, the trick I think for these hard questions is finding the right time in the interview process to ask them. But I found it was imperative to understand, especially going into a leadership role. I needed to kind of know. Did my boss have kids? Uh, because I certainly found in my career that bosses that don't have kids, uh Even if they're really empathetic, even if they're great, don't get it. They just don't have that same understanding. And frankly, some of the bosses that I had that had older kids had forgotten how crappy it was in the trenches. Ok? Of little kids and the demands of, you know, babies and toddlers. And so I found this really critical to understand. Do you have Children? How many, how old? And I was asking questions like, how does leadership support working parents? And one of the, the eye opening moments for me is I was, I was sitting with a CEO and a coo and I asked them that question said, hey, as a, you know, membership of your member of your future leadership team who might have young Children, uh how will, how will you and the leadership team support that dynamic and make um make things more flexible to account for it.

And they didn't know what to say. They kind of sat there with a little bit of a glazed look on their face and then came up with some nondescript answer that I can't even remember. Um But I remember that feeling that they don't know how to answer this doesn't mean they wouldn't be able to support. But it, it left me feeling like I needed something different. Now, the juxtaposition of that is when I asked the same question to my now boss. Uh he said, listen, whether you want one more kid, five more kids, whether you need to go part time after you come off maternity leave or you need flexible time. It doesn't matter to me. Family is the most important thing and no matter what, I think you can help us grow this business. And I want you on my team for whatever amount of time you can give us. And that was like this weight lifted off my chest all because I asked the question and I asked the uncomfortable questions. And so I put these up on the screen uh for you in hopes that, you know, maybe some of these will resonate with you as well. But some of the other tough questions to ask, how long do I have to be an employee before I qualify for your parental leave? Right? Uh There, you know, it's, it's a short term disability in FML. A oftentimes it's a year.

So what do you, you know, what do you do? And that kind of led me into needing to work on negotiating once I decided this was the place for me once I knew I could get pregnant tomorrow and maybe I didn't have any benefits. I had to figure out for myself. What was most important for my family. For me as the breadwinner, it became significantly about monetary compensation. And what would I do if I got pregnant? And I had no short term disability and I had no FML A because I couldn't not make money and work. And I couldn't, uh and I didn't want to not work either. Right. Um So I wanted to leave, but I needed, um, I needed some sort of fall back. And so I asked for things like additional vacation time, sign on and retention bonus or one things that, um I negotiated about pretty heavily because if I had a little bit of extra chunk of money, I could use that towards supporting my family. Should I not have additional money for leave? I couldn't negotiate benefit activation date changes, but that's potential for others. You can negotiate companion travel, uh even termination parachutes in case you know the economy shifts and they have to let you go.

So lots of different things that you can negotiate around. So overall the 56 tips be ok being 90% don't make apologies or excuses, take your family or yourself out, pay somebody else to do the things that you don't find joy in. Ask the hard questions when you're looking for new bosses and new companies and negotiate based on whatever it is you most need for your family. So that at the end of the day, you don't look like overworked Barbie. Thank you very much.