115. 6 Ways I Design My Business Around My Large Family

So -- crazy story. 

I recorded this entire episode while I was in active labor. I didn't even know it yet. I had one day left to record a training for a friend's summit, contractions started, and I just thought "it's fine, it's early labor, I'll pause when I need to." So that's what I did, for over an hour. I edited out a bunch of minute and a half pauses where I was literally breathing through contractions. Sent the file off, and a few hours later my daughter was born in an ambulance on the side of the road, delivered by my husband. Wild story for another day, maybe.

But it's honestly the perfect backdrop for what I'm covering in this episode, because if there's ever proof that "waiting for the right season" to build your business is a myth, it's this. That season is never coming. You have to build your business around your actual life, right now, chaos and all.

So in this episode I'm walking you through the exact framework I use to run my business with a house full of kids (including my baby daughter, born literally hours after recording this). Not "someday" advice. What I am literally doing right now, days out from a newborn.

Here's what you'll walk away with:

• The 100/50/10 rule I use to figure out what actually needs my brain (and what can happen while I'm wiping butts, literally)
• Why I ditched weekly live calls in my membership and what I do instead
• My "Emerald City" offer strategy that keeps money coming in even while I'm on maternity leave
• Why I design for my worst week, not my best one, and why that's the only plan that actually holds up
• The one question that shifted me from reactive to proactive in my business AND my life

Resources mentioned:

• CEO Mom Collective membership: yaelbendahan.com/ceomomcollective
• DM "planner" on Instagram @theyaelbendahan for my CEO Mom weekly planner
• My friend Briana's C5 assessment to help you identify the primary place your business is leaking momentum

LINKS
📈The CEO MOMS Growth Matrix - feeling stuck or plateaued at your current revenue? Snag your custom roadmap for sustainable growth from $0 to multi-6-figures in this FREE training! >>> yaelbendahan.com/matrix

🔥Join my FREE 3-Day Program, LEVERAGE - the process that’s creating multi 6 figure years working nap times and being a full time mama of 6. Claim your spot here >>> https://yaelbendahan.com/leveragepod

💰Offers in Your Pocket - 11 Offers You Can Pull Out of Your Pocket and Sell This Week! Only $9 - yaelbendahan.com/pocketoffers

💃 Apply for the CEO Mom Mastermind if you're ready to scale sustainably to $15-20K+ months. Read more about the mastermind here OR go straight to the application here.
Want to chat about the mastermind before you join? DM me on Instagram - instagram.com/theyaelbendahan

Transcript

0:00

This episode actually has a really funny backstory. I literally recorded this while I was in labor, and I had my baby a few hours later. I think I was recording this around 12:30... No, 11:30 AM. My daughter Leora was born at 2:20 PM. And the really funny part about this is this training was actually created for a new friend of mine, Brianna's C5 Summit, and I- it was the last day I could record it, and I was like, "That's... i've gotta do it. I've gotta do it today." I started having contractions, but I thought, "It's fine. It's early labor. I'll just pause whenever I have a contraction." So I actually had to edit out a whole bunch of a min- minute-and-a-half pauses while I breathed through contractions. Somehow, I still did not think I was in active labor. Recorded this, sent it off to Brianna. My husband was like, "Do you wanna maybe focus on having a baby?" And I was like, "Okay, sure." And two hours later, we were on our way to the hospital, and my daughter was born in an ambulance on the side of the road, delivered by my husband, all alone, just me and him. It's a crazy story. I'm debating whether or not I wanna actually do a podcast about it, but I just... It just cracks me up that my head was so not in this place of possibly being in active labor, that I was like, "Sure, I can record a training. No problem." So if you get to hear some weird pauses in there or anything odd, it's probably because I edited it really quickly in between contractions. And I'm really excited to share this. But because I wasn't able to promote Brianna's summit the way I wanted to... it was so good. There was such good content in it. But literally, while she was promoting it, while it was happening, I was in the hospital, like very freshly postpartum, and my computer monitor had broken down at some point while I was in the hospital. And I came back home to find that it wasn't working. I had to get it sorted out, and I didn't have a chance to actually write an email about the summit. So I'm linking Brianna's C5 assessment below. This is just a really cool assessment that she has to help you find the thing that's holding you back the most in your business, and I think it's really fantastic. So I wanted to share it just to, get more eyes on her stuff because she really is fantastic. The summit was really great, and I really wish I coulda promoted it more. So without further ado, let's dive in. Six ways I designed my business around my large family. I can't wait to have you hear this. Let me know what your biggest takeaway was

Speaker 3 2:41

Welcome to the Raising Your Business podcast. I'm your host, Yael Bendahan, founder of CEO Mom Academy, mom of six, and lifelong reading addict. This podcast is here to empower moms to run their businesses and lives like the powerhouse CEO they are. I want you to believe that you can have the business success you desire and be present with your family, and to give you my best tips and strategies for how to make that happen. I'll be sharing the honest reality of balancing business and motherhood, biz models that work for you, marketing simplicity, and the mindset of a CEO mom. Now, let's dive in.

Speaker 3:22

Hello. I'm Yael Bendahan, and I'm a business coach for ambitious moms who want to build wildly successful businesses, mostly online occasionally not while still being really present with their families and building their business around their family life, right? Building a mom-friendly business. And I'm pretty qualified to do this because I started my business back in 2017 with four little kids. I'm now pregnant with baby number seven, which it should be arriving any day now at the time of this recording. And to me, it's really important that even as you are building your business, obviously it is going to take work. But If you're a parent and you are waiting for a less chaotic season to build a business that actually fits your life, I've got some news for you. That season is never gonna come because there's always gonna be something, okay? So you have to build your business the way your life is now and around the way your life is now, instead of waiting for the perfect time, 'cause there's never going to be the perfect time. So today I'm gonna be giving you some strategies that I use. These are not like, okay, someday when things calm down sort of strategies. I'm talking about what I'm actually doing right now, days out from having a newborn. And the fact is that a lot of business advice assumes that you have consistent hours, a predictable brain, nobody needing you at random times for snacks, and that's not my life. And whether you have children or not, it's probably not yours either, because life is fluid and busy. We are so busy. There's so much going on. So I'm gonna be sharing the five shifts that let your business keep making money even when your life is chaotic, without, burning out or white-knuckling it the whole time or feeling like you're always behind. You are gonna always a little bit feel like you're always behind because that's the life of a mom, but not feeling extra like that. So let's get started. The first thing is building your business model to fit your life, your capacity. When in my scale system my first st- step in my scale system with my clients is setting your capacity, knowing exactly what you can do and what you can't, right? You cannot copy another coach's business model if she's living a completely different life than you, no matter how attractive it looks, no matter how much money she's making. And it's really important to think about that, when you are hiring a mentor. I- I've learned a lot from mentors who are not moms, okay? I'm gonna start there. But as far as an ongoing long-term mentor, I will always hire a mother because I know that she can hold space for the reality of my life in a way that someone who is not may not be able to. And this is nothing against them, but they don't understand that seismic shift that happens when you have a child and suddenly all your priorities shift. And and it's really important to be able to work with that and have them understand that, right? And that's why my clients work with me because they know I understand their reality. So the first thing you're gonna wanna do is start with your non-negotiables and your real average week, right? Not an ideal week, right? But an average week. When I had my daughter back in 2020, she was home with me for the whole first year, and in that time I made over $250,000 working maybe two hours a day. Now, I had a lot in place to make that happen, to make it possible. But when I, when I built that business model, it was very focused around, okay, what is the minimum viable live time I have to be on with clients in order to give them the best results possible? So for example, I know right now, like I can work with a newborn nearby, like up to, three, four, five months, six months even. Especially when they're tiny. A little bit less so when they're mobile, right? But that's why I really like doing podcasting, right? That's why I really like doing asynchronous coaching. And my coach Julie spoke about this thing called the 100/50/10 rule, which is how much brain capacity tasks require. And this is something that's really important for you to know. So the 100 tasks need your full brain, deep focus, zero interruptions, right? The 50 tasks can be done at half capacity while other stuff is happening around you. You don't need to have full focus. And the 10 tasks barely need brainpower and can happen alongside major chaos. So examples for 100 tasks could be things like strategizing a launch, writing sales copy, actually writing your content or writing your emails, big picture thinking, even planning your week, recording videos, presenting a webinar, right? That kind of stuff does require your full brain capacity. 50 tasks can be done while doing other things. I have personally voxed and sent voice notes to my clients while literally wiping butts, and they actually... they, it cracked them up. They thought that was hilarious. Outlining content once it's planned, right? So maybe you could plan content. I used to literally do my morning walk, and I would plan my weekly content while I was walking. Like what, what my main topic would be, and then the subtopics, which I'll talk about in a second Things like DMing and having conversations with prospects or researching content topics or brain dumping into Claude or ChatGPT. So those are fifty tasks. And ten tasks are stuff that are really like do not require your brain at all and you could do other things. So like for example, if I'm, if I am exercising, right? Or if I'm folding laundry or doing dishes, I could listen to a training, I could listen to a client voice note, right? But like those tasks don't require all of my brain, so I can do other things during that time. So those are all just examples. The example of are not just to be like it's like that productivity corn, right? So to speak. It's knowing what you actually need to protect your time for and what can live in the cracks of your life. So before you're building your business model, start by mapping out your actual week, your average week, and then build your model around that. Because anything else is just setting yourself up to fail by month two. Okay? The second tip is around your offers. So you want to structure your offers around what you can actually deliver. And when you're thinking about offers, instead of looking at what other people are doing and how they're doing it it's really important it's really important to make sure that you are deli- designing the delivery of the offer around what actually makes sense for, again, for your capacity. So I, as a mom, I try to do as many things asynchronously as possible. What actually requires you live and what doesn't? Most peop- most people will default to live because that's what they've seen. They've been in group programs, there's a live call every single week, right? Or they're like, "Okay, we need to do... I need to do sales calls. I need to do I need to do things. I need to be on at certain times." And, weekly webinars as is an example, right? I personally right now am about to have a new baby. I cannot currently run a group program with weekly live calls because I have zero predictability of getting to my desk at a set time every evening with my newborn plus a full house, right? So what I did instead is I now have my CEO Mom Collective membership, which is my main scalable offer. It is a coaching membership. I do coach my clients in there, but it is asynchronous, which means they come in throughout one, twenty-four-hour period each week to ask their questions, and I will coach them through voice notes asynchronously so currently that is my main coaching offer in my business. When I relaunch my mastermind in the fall, which is where it's coming back, that's like my highest proximity coaching currently that I'm offering. I'm gonna probably have maybe two live calls a month max, that way I know that I can like enlist a babysitter or know I can do it, have my husband be home those evenings. He's a paramedic, so he works on shifts. So I'll be like, "Okay if you could, not, block off this evening and this evening so you could be around," and then I know that I can show up for the call without everything being on me, right? And everything else is gonna be asynchronous. So content reviews, copy reviews, voice note feedback. There's a, there's very high proximity inside my mastermind, but the majority of it is going to be through voice notes, through back-and-forth messaging and not through live calls. Because to be honest I do think I love doing live calls. I love the group vibe. I love the group energy. But it actually, since my clients are also busy moms, this actually works out better for them as well. So I'm able to offer a high level of support for my clients, whether they're in my membership or they're in my mastermind, without being chained to a clock at just specific times and being stuck to, okay, I have to show up at a computer with my face on at a certain time. So the idea is not to lower the quality of what you deliver. I just changed when and how I delivered it. Because your clients don't necessarily need you live. They need you good, okay? And depending obviously on what you do, if you're like a sleep coach and you actually go to people's houses, and then they probably need you there live. But I wanna make sure that I'm able to deliver the highest level of support I can, and the highest quality support that I can, while still adjusting and embracing the reality of my life. Because thank God I am a very busy mom, and I have kids of all ages that need attention. And so it's really important that I design it around that. The third thing is marketing, okay? So obviously, we have, you have your offers, you have your marketing, you have your sales, you have your systems, right? When I was coaching back in 2020, I remember when I had my daughter and I was pregnant with, I was pregnant with her during the pandemic and my, all my four little boys were home, and my husband was working overtime because he's a paramedic and so there was a lot going on. I was still able to show up really consistently. Why? Because I had my anchor pieces of content. When I was in my first trimester with my son last time, I, and I was going through a really hard time and I was just not feeling well, I had my anchor content, which was like my podcast and my weekly newsletter. So at the minimum, you wanna have your, I call it my Mom Viable Marketing Method, knowing your anchor piece of content each week and then you can repurpose that into multiple angles or formats from the same core idea. So I definitely recommend if you can batching your brainstorming, knowing what you're posting, what emails you're sending, what content you're creating before the week starts, so you're never starting from a blank page, and batching your production, meaning give yourself a day or two a week to cr- actually create the content. I personally love audio over video right now. I know that I do want to do YouTube. I actually... it's in my plan, in my two-year plan. But I currently... Audio makes the most sense for me. A podcast makes the most sense because it's just too much prep with a new baby, all right? It's just not the move right now. And my clients, all my clients who have come to me have all listened to my podcast, okay? Plus, I have about... I have over 100 episodes at this point. That is a goldmine I can just repurpose into blogs and SEO content. So it's not just a podcast. It is my own IP that I can reuse over and over again. So you wanna be able to pick the marketing formats that fit your capacity, not the one everyone says you're supposed to be on. I know right now everyone's talking about yapping, and I actually joined the app challenge if you guys have heard of it the Jessie Jean's yap challenge, because I did want to get more in the habit of showing up with my face and talking to the camera. But I don't think that is the only content that's doing well. Carousels are also doing really well. Static posts are also doing really well. B-roll reels are also doing really well. My people don't need me to be on YouTube right now. They need me to be consistent, and having an audio anchor piece of content allows me to be consistent. The fourth piece is building a one-path sales system. I want to simplify my back end so everything funnels towards one main offer instead of promoting five different things at once. I know I've had these people say, "How I sell multiple things at once." That's really cool if you're not a busy mom, but I cannot... I don't have the mental capacity to sell multiple things

15:02

so my basic core principle in my business is that all roads lead to one main thing, right? So this w- the year that I had my first, quarter of a million dollar year, that was what I focused on. So I had my one group program, and all roads led to there. Paid workshops, freebies, free webinars, everything all led back to that one offer, and I call it the Emerald City offer. Anyone who buys anything from your front end gets pointed to the same core destination. Currently, that is my membership, the CEO Mom Collective. And why this matters and why I think you should have this always is because when your life is unpredictable, you're not managing five separate funnels, five separate offers, five separate schedules. You have one consistent front-end message. You can sell different things. You could sell lower-ticket offers. You can sell, You could put out freebies. But all roads eventually will lead towards that one simple offer. And the cool thing about this is that it can run largely on automation, right? Once it's built, it does not need you live to keep working. And that is what I'm actually-- Like, I'm literally in the process of doing this right now because I just launched my membership and because I switched it out from my mastermind to this membership. So in Kit, where I currently have my email list, it is simply a sequence that every time someone buys something low-ticket from me, they get the delivery email, and then it waits a day, and then it invites them to a special one-time offer to join the membership for, X amount off for the first month. And every single time someone comes into my world, that is what they are offered, okay? And the cool thing is that when you have this, it does not really matter what you're selling on the front end because you can create back-end sales anytime. As I'm going into my maternity leave, I have a bunch of collabs lined up, right? I have this one. I have this summit. I have a few bundles that I'm gonna be part of. And the cool thing about this is that as people come into my world, they are gonna be invited into the collective. And you know what? The thing is, they may not join right away, which is totally fine. But now I've created offer awareness, and I highly recommend having that in your business, at least giving them that awareness that offer exists, so they can keep it in the back of their mind. And next time you decide to launch your main offer or for example, if you're doing like a sales push for one particular offer, then what you have is basically people who know it exists. They maybe had it in the back of their mind. Maybe they even bookmarked it "Oh, I wanna join that later." And now that they have a reason to join, maybe you have a special promo, a special discount, or a special bonus. Now they're like, "Okay, now I'll jump in." So giving people awareness of your signature backend offer is actually not just something that can make you money right away, but it's something that overall will feed your backend sales ecosystem. So I don't have the bandwidth to run multiple launches at once, right? And neither do you, I think, because I think it's way too complicated. So you pick that one destination that everything points to, and then whatever you choose to sell on the front end, whatever you want to promote, whatever freebie you want to promote, you know that the system is doing the juggling for you. And my last tip is designing for your worst week and not your best one, right? The plan that only works when everything goes right is not a plan because like I said at the beginning, most things are not going to always work when everything goes right. If your business only functions when you're firing on all cylinders at 100%, sleeping well, kids are healthy, no surprises, right? It's not actually built for your life. It's built for a fantasy version of your life. So you ask yourself, what happens to my business in the week that a kid does get sick or I have to deal with a parent or a family emergency or I don't know, I'm sick, I'm not feeling well. If the answer is everything stops, then that is the gap to close. Not with selling something else or just doing another quick cash injection, although those are fun and I'm a big fan of them, but figuring out how you can add more leverage and automation into your business, right? So that's why, again, I have my async delivery. That's why I have my one path funnels, my Emerald City offer. That is what makes a worst week, in quotes, survivable instead of catastrophic, right? So when you plan for your worst week, because your worst week is going to happen guaranteed because we're human beings living on this planet, your business needs to survive it without you having to white knuckle every single piece and every single bit, right? And one last bonus little tip that I wanted to add in is What can I do now? This is actually, I got this from The Lazy Genius Method from Kendra Adachi. It's a really great book, highly recommend it. And she has this question that she asks herself, like the magic question, which is, "What's one thing I j- I can do now that'll make things easier later?" And if you live your life and your business thinking that way, right? What's one little sequence I can put in place? What is one little one, one ManyChat bot that I could put in place? What's one l- nurture email or one sales upgrade or one order bump I can add to a funnel or a tripwire, right? What's one little thing that I can do now that will take me half an hour, maybe two hours right now, that can pay off in spades later on? If you live your life thinking that way, whether, again, whether it's your business. In my house it could be, maybe it's, I don't know, is the, I'm making rolls, and so instead of making a single recipe, I make a double recipe and I put half in the freezer, right? Like, all that stuff is going to just shift the way you live your life, because you're not living in a reactive way, you're living in a very proactive way. You're thinking about the future. You're thinking, "How can I be intentional about what I'm doing right now? Is what I'm doing now going to pay off later?" And I very much think whenever I'm launching anything, whenever I'm creating promotional content for things, whenever I'm writing emails for things, I will save them. I'll hold onto them because those emails can turn into an evergreen funnel, right? That content can turn into content that my VA can schedule later on. Because when I had my daughter back in 2020, I remember, like I,

Speaker 2 20:56

I can't thank you enough for listening to Raising Your Business. I hope this episode has inspired you to take another step towards building a business and life that you love and growing your income in a way that works for you and your family. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a second to rate and review, and let's connect on Instagram. Screenshot and share it on Instagram stories so we can get the word out to more mom business owners like you. Tag me at theyaelbendahan and share your biggest breakthrough from today. See you next week.

21:44

I had been creating daily content for months, for six months. I had six months worth of content sitting in Google Docs, and my VA was able to take that content, take all the promotions that I'd done for different offers, and literally run my business without me. I had money coming in from random sales that entire s- time that I was off, that entire maternity leave, because I had built that out, because I had those things in place. 'Cause I created content that with small small shifts, could be reused Okay, so to recap, the five shifts plus the bonus one. Number one is building your business model around your real capacity, okay? Thinking about looking at your capacity before you do anything, before you design offers, before you create a marketing plan, knowing what you can minimally do every week on a regular basis. The second one is designing your offer delivery, again, around that capacity. Before you design the offer, before you copy someone else's offer, before you try to do these plug-and-play ideas, thinking about what actually makes sense in the context of my life and that I can deliver fully without, without letting my clients down, but also without overwhelming myself. The third one is, again, marketing with the formats and the batching and the way you market that also fit your actual capacity. Thinking about is this... Am I going for audio? Am I going for B-roll? Am I am I doing, what social platforms am I gonna, am I gonna be on? And being realistic about making that happen for yourself. Building a one-path business, meaning all roads lead here, right? That Emerald City business where all roads will lead to one main end goal, one main end offer, and having those backend automations to move people towards that. And again, if you're a service provider and you're not, a coach or course creator, that's the same thing. You wanna get people onto a sales call with you. So pitch your service, talk about your service, and, all roads lead back to that sales call with you or that application, right? And designing for your worst week, not your best. And last of all, thinking about what can I do now that'll make things easier or simpler later, right? Again, this is not theory for me. This is the only way I've been able to run my business as a mom from the beginning. I started with four kids. I'm about to have seven. This is the only way I've managed to keep it going, all right? Using these principles. So if you have any questions, I would love to connect with you. I am theyaelbendahan on Instagram, and if you want me to share the CEO Mom's weekly planner that I personally use to plan my week to make sure I can fit everything in a way that makes sense for me and my life and my family, then DM me planner on Instagram, and I will send it directly to you. And let me know how you like this training. I'm really excited, and I cannot wait to hear how you are implementing these shifts in your business.

Speaker 2 24:31

I can't thank you enough for listening to Raising Your Business. I hope this episode has inspired you to take another step towards building a business and life that you love and growing your income in a way that works for you and your family. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a second to rate and review, and let's connect on Instagram. Screenshot and share it on Instagram stories so we can get the word out to more mom business owners like you. Tag me at theyaelbendahan and share your biggest breakthrough from today. See you next week.