In Part 1 of this 2-part Coaching Corner Episode, I talk to lash business owner Ashley Lopez about finding balance between working on her business and spending time with her husband and kids.

Ashley is from Galloway, New Jersey and prior to opening her lash business in December 2018, she was in the corporate world. The corporate world was not very friendly with kids. Since she had a cosmetology license she thought, “What can I do with this to have a more flexible schedule, be with my kids, but still make the money that I was making at my corporate job?”

Her main struggle right now is finding the balance between investing in the business and also being able to have the capacity to be present with her kids.

Ashley says-“So I feel like my social media is the biggest thing I’m having issues with, because I’m either consistently making reels and posting them-or I’m just like, ‘Alright, I’m just taking a break’. Then I take a week break. And I’m just with my kids and my husband, and then I just have a hard time getting back into it. So it’s kind of just finding that balance of taking care of yourself, family time and running a business.”

Social media is such a struggle for many beauty business owners. When you’re inconsistent on social media it can sometimes make you feel like you’re not doing your business justice, or that you’re robbing your business of opportunity for growth. But in Ashley’s case both she and her one team member are both at max capacity as far as taking new clients and just did a price increase! 

I’m always a fan of continuing to market, but even if she was posting consistently on social media she still wouldn’t have the ability to take new clients that she generated from any marketing. So I asked Ashley: “Why do you feel like you’re not doing enough when your business isn’t struggling with getting new clients and you’re at capacity?”

Ashley says-“I feel like I want to also gear myself towards current lash artists to be able to launch my lash line and do things for them. Because I remember when I first started out the struggle that I had.” 

So now we’re talking about a whole different business model.

What Do You Really (Really) Want? 

I tell Ashley: “It sounds like you’re killing it with your business. You guys are both fully booked. So if that’s the case, why even have any other business model, why not just keep this one if money is the goal or growth or revenue or whatever-why not keep down this one same path of building out more team members?”

Ashley says-“I feel like I can be more valuable and I get excited helping other people honestly. So I feel like that’s where my heart is. I just want to be known. I just want to be like that person that people know that they can come to where they can get help from, that they know is credible. And if you ever have a question, you can reach out to them and they get back to you. I want to be known for something like that. It just makes me feel really good. And also, I feel like that can give my kids something to look up to.”

This is why you don’t have clarity in your business and why you’re trying to add in all these different services or business models. It’s because you’re looking for VALIDATION-but you’re looking externally for that. It is actually internal work that you have to do to recognize your own worth, your own value, and validate yourself. When you place your value in what you’ve accomplished and created and whether you have a six figure or seven figure business or a large audience that is a very risky place to be.  It’s risky to place a lot of worth and value and importance on that because it can be taken away from you. 

So if you have all of your worth tied up in external results like the success of your business, and COVID happens, or we say the wrong thing, we offend the wrong person, and all of a sudden we’re canceled-all of a sudden, we no longer feel worthy and deserving because of this external result being taken away or we make poor decisions because we’re afraid somebody is going to take it away. And then all of a sudden, we try to appease everybody, because it’s more important that they like us than us being ourselves. 

I’m not saying those goals are bad and I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have those aspirations. I’m saying that the motivation of why you’re wanting those things is actually not going to get you what you want.

For example we’re talking about wanting our kids in their 20s and 30s to look up to their mom and be like, “Wow, she really did accomplish something great”. But when they’re small, all they really need from you is time. That is their currency right now. The thing that makes the biggest difference in their life is not the amount of toys that you can buy, it’s not the nice house, it’s the quality time of you focused on them. 

We spend so much time hustling while they’re young, and when they go to school, we can hustle some more so that maybe in their 20s and 30s, they’ll look up to us and be inspired by us and really recognize all the effort and work we put into managing everything. When in reality, the bigger difference we can make is being present with them. It doesn’t have to be a lot of time-you would be amazed at how much you spending an extra 15 minutes a day of child led play will change your kid. 

Some business owners experience mom guilt- when they’re paying attention to their business, they’re like “I should be with my kids”. You can also experience the opposite- “I’m with my kids, but I should be with my business”. Isn’t that interesting? So if you were spending so much time in your business, and you felt guilty that you weren’t spending time with your kids, we would look at when can you spend time with your kids that’s dedicated and focused on them so that you feel like they’re getting what they need? You can do that in reverse with the business as well.  How much time in a week do you want to be able to spend working on the business, not in it-but ON the business?

How much time do you need to ensure you’re giving the business the attention it needs so it can still continue to provide for you because that’s important, too. Your goal could be: eventually I want to be spending (x amount) of time on my business a week handling things like administration, marketing, financial inventory, all that kind of stuff.

So what’s that number for you? 

 Once you figure that out, then you can look at-how can I get support in other areas? Maybe you have a babysitter for two hours in a day, drop the kids off at preschool or daycare for one day a week so that you have this dedicated time. Obviously, there’s cost versus benefit that you have to consider as far as budgeting-but it is important for you to spend that time working on your business. 

So you can build out efficiencies in your business to either get more time back, build out a new team member so you can train her so that you can then pull back on the time that you’re spending working in the business. If you’re working 15 hours a week right now working in the business taking clients, you could get another team member and then you can pull back five hours of clients because she’s taking them now. You have that five hours already built into your current schedule that you’re working on the business. Again, when we get clear on what the end goal is we can work back and look at strategies that might make that work. 

If building out a team is something that you really want to do, we have our momentum mastermind applications opening up again at the end of May. It is a six month group coaching program for those that wanting to build out a team legally and profitably. You can get on the waitlist for it by going to www.thelashpreneur.com/mastermind and that way you’ll be notified when we open.