Executive Coach Helen Dayen Interview.

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vanderkam. I'm a mother of four, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode one oh six that is first airing August thirteenth, twenty nineteen. Today we're going to be talking with our guest, Helen Dahan, who is an executive coach, a mother of three, including eighteen month old twins, and one of the reasons we were drawn to her story is that she was quite nervous about having twins as a business owner, that she worried her her business would disappear, but it turned out it is possible to lean in with infant twins and she had her best year ever the year that her twins were born. So excited for that story coming up, but in the meantime, Sarah. As we're recording this in late July, Sarah's dealing with a bit of a childcare issue that has been slightly stressing you out. I think it would be more stressful if I had infant twins. That's true, that's true. That would make it worse. Just the phrase infant twins gives me a little so yeah, but no, it's still been stressful. So our nanny, who we love and who you know, generally covers almost all of my working hours. And we've spoken before about how it is good to diversify and have other people. But one thing that happens when you do have a very dedicated and reliable employee is that you sort of get used to it at a certain point, and things happen. Even the very most steadfast and reliable person is going to have true family emergencies come up. And one has come up for hours. So I'm completely understanding of that, but it's still hard on my end because I generally have her do all the drop up and pick up. She's really the one who's been with Genevieve the whole time, and Genevieve hasn't experienced a group care setting so kind of scrambling to put her in something like that has been something that I just am not sure is worth it at this juncture. We don't have a ton of alternative babysitters. We do have some. We've been lucky enough to find a really nice neighborhood babysitter that has had surprisingly some weekday availability at very short notice, So that's been awesome, But mostly it's been a lot of a scramble, and I will admit that there is It made me realize how much her role makes me able to completely focus at work and not think or worry about the kids during the day, because all of a sudden, without her, I was finding myself having a lot of difficulty focusing. And it's not like, you know, from an objective standpoint, we've hir I hired a babysitter from like an agency, and I'm sure she's fine, but I don't know her and Genevieve can't talk yet, and I just wasn't I don't know, just didn't feel at peace. So we're still dealing with it, and the emergency is not over, and it's sort of unpredictable and it's also completely understandable, so it's there's no feelings of like, you know, she doesn't does it, like she needs this time and I respect that, but man, it's it's hard. So you're doing so you put your kids in like before care and after care at camp. The big kids I put in before care and after care, and then for Genevieve, I've hired an outside babysitter to come although, because again of the unpredictability, our nanny's been able to come back for a couple of days, but I know that at any moment she may have to to go again and I don't totally have a plan in place for that yet, although there is a backup nanny we views once before that maybe available next week, so depending on how things go timing wise, that might be the answer. But just all of it's been stressful, and I think I spoke on a previous episode how I was so excited for all these summer events coming up, and Josh and I had a couple's weekend that we really felt like we needed, especially because you guys probably remember that recently I talked about our family vacation and how that wasn't exactly my favorite family vacation, the world's most relaxing. I think we spent vacation exactly, and I think we spent the second half of it just thinking, well, at least we get to go to Colorado in two weeks and relax together and sleep in. And we've had to cancel that trip because you don't have coverage. We don't have coverage. Some people have asked, you know, if family could do it. We certainly have wonderful family that if we were in an emergency situation and had no other options, would help. But it's not easy for either set of family. So we don't feel like this is the right time to ad because, as you know, excited we were about the weekend, it's not any kind of emergency and we will take a weekend later in the year. And our nanny has already told us no problem, like, of course, just pick another weekend. So it's going to be fine. But I'm not gonna lie. It's it's been a stressful couple of weeks, but you know, it's been much worse for her, so yeah, of course, of course, yeah, yeah, I know. I mean that is the thing of having extremely reliable childcare is when it's when it's suddenly not you know, for understandable reasons. It's difficult because you don't have the backup in place whereas you know, years ago, like when when Jasper was in daycare, which of course he wound up missing like I swear like every other day for something. You know, I had tons of back up. We had like five different sitters with schedule availability that could cover any sort of hour because of that, and we don't have any of that now. But we actually have an interesting new backup that my parents just moved from Indiana out to New Jersey, and uh this we've never had this sort of you know, close living grandparents before. There they are about an hour away, so they're not right next door. I think they probably didn't want to live right next door, but there was a you know, it's they're not going to do like day to day stuff, but certainly for they can now come for kid performances for instance, or for you know, a special sports thing or something. And so if we have a situation where we didn't have coverage and say I, you know, one of us needed to travel and the other needed to be somewhere else, like, we could probably call them to to cover that. So that's kind of you know, yeah, No, it's definitely a nice thing to have because even if you almost never use it, there's a peace of mind in knowing that it's there, which is really nice. Yeah. I think it's that peace of mind you were talking about of having, you know, really reliable coverage that you plan a plan you just use stop thinking about it, because it's like, well, of course I can do this, and you know, I don't even you know, think about like a which which you know is something as we talk about with our guests. You know, you're building a business, like you need to make sure you have that. And one of the things that she talks about is having full time childcare in place. Even as she stepped away from her her sort of big quote unquote job to start her own business. You know, a lot of people probably been like, oh, well, I don't need as many hours of childcare, I don't need as much coverage. I'm not bringing any money yet while I'm launching this business, like we shouldn't be paying for this. She's like, no, no, no, no, Like if I don't pay for it, we won't be able to start the business. And I think, yeah, it's just it was an investment and it paid off. As we'll hear in the rest of the segment. You know, I also will say that as kids get older, I think this becomes less of an issue. And I don't mean older, like, you know, Jasper's twelve, he could probably just be at home for a biself for a while, but even you know Cameron and Nanabel. There's so many different aftercare options around here, and I'm sure in a lot of other areas, so it is kind of comforting to think this is a somewhat temporary problem. Like I feel like if this same thing were to happen three years from now, or even a couple of years from now, I'd be like, Okay, that's fine. It's just with Genevieve still being a toddler and having she hasn't even started school yet, so I just if I plunk her in a daycare where she doesn't know, she may or may not have a good experience, and then I just feel like that could color her whole experience of starting. I don't know, I'm probably making it much more complication. Should probably be okay, but it's but no, I see what you're saying is And plus it's also the question of calling on people because I think we've also discussed that, like if you were asking, you know, a friend or whatever to take Annabelle and Cameron for the week Yeah, they do it. It's to my parents really like that or you know, you're in laws or something, but it's it's it's taking the toddler for the weekend. That's the real ask. And so that is is less that somebody's like, you know, like one of Annabell's friends could just take them for the weekend or something like you know, it's hundred percent. Yeah, so the little kids, that is a complication that you know, it's temporary temper. They do grow up, they do grow up. But yeah, no, we uh yeah, it's gotten different for us too as the kids have gotten older. I mean partly even Alex. Now I can put him in front of the computer and have a reasonable idea that he won't stop, like, he won't stop doing that. I mean he might, but I could take a phone call, for instance, whereas you know for years that was that was not an option at all. So you know, good, it's good. Yeah, all right, well let's go ahead and head on over to our interview with Helen Well. Sarah and I are pleased to welcome Helen Dayan to the podcast. Helen, could you go ahead and introduce yourself to our listeners? Sure? Hello everyone. So I'm an executive coach. I'm also probably more importantly a mom to three kids. I have six and a half year old boy and I have boy girl twins that are one and a half. And executive coaching is my second career. I made a big transition about five and a half years ago from financial services into starting my own company, and now I run an executive coaching practice. Yeah, so what was that transition? Like, you're doing real, sort of intense finance stuff and looking for a change. I think I started looking for a change very early on in my career in general. I went straight out of school to Wall Street and it was very intense, very competitive, and I actually really loved that I thrive in challenging situations, which is probably why I was gifted with twins. But I could tell right away that ten years from now I didn't want to be sitting in that seat, So I was kind of always exploring. And then I had a hedge fund client of mine reach out to me and just share role in finance was a sales role, and I was on the phone with my clients all the time, trying to sell them something, but also hearing about their lives and their careers and their challenges. And I realized that that, first of all, that was a passion, and that was something that a lot of people were saying, you should be a coach, you should be a coach. I'm like, what is this coach thing you're talking about? And I started to research it and I really started to help this one hedge fun client as he was going through some really challenging things, and I discovered that there's this whole amazing world of executive coaching and it could be a real career. And it was kind of a combination of things. The timing was I was kind of getting to a point in my career where I'd been doing it for a long time and I could see where things were going and how many years specifically, Yeah, so I think I said that, but that's quite that's a lot of experience. So what a great basis And I went ten years of experience and clients and it's hard to walk away from that, right, But it was you know, I had already had my son, he was about a year old, and I was seeing him about forty minutes a day with my whole job, and I didn't feel fulfilled at work. And my mom was diagnosed with a varian cancer, which put life into perspective. And I think all that combined made me realize that I need to I need to do what feels fulfilling, and I need to do it feels worthwhile. And I never had that feeling like, oh, I want to stay home with my son. I never wanted that, but I did have an issue with being away from him for something that didn't feel like me, that didn't that just felt like a paycheck, even though it was a really nice paycheck. There is always that, Yeah, but it wasn't enough for me, and I think it's not enough for most people. Yeah. So you're, you know, building this coaching business, and you know, you're sort of getting your feet under You're getting lots of you know, clients, and then you decide to go for baby number two? And so how did that process shake out? So I'm going to be super transparent with all my kids. I needed to go through fertility treatment and to all my doctors, I said, whatever you do, I don't want twins. I was very very clear I think my kids are going to listen to this in a few years and go, you didn't want us kids. I wanted you, I wanted all of you. But in that moment, I did not think I wanted to handle twins. So I went through fertility treatment knowing there was a risk. I took us quite a while, and during that time, I'm just kind of plugging away, you know, taking care of my son and building my business. So I just want to clarify that there was at no point did I take away the childcare that we had in place for my son, even when I left Wall Street and took a hit to our income. So I walked away from Wall Street, started my company, and I saw keeping our nanny as an investment to the business. I really thought about it that way, because otherwise I would have had so much guilt it would had just gotten in the way. So I would walk out of that, you know. I kind of treated it like the old world, where I would walk out of the house and I would work for a certain number of hours and then after his bedtime, And the main difference was that you had more control over what those hours was. Yes, I definitely have more flexibility, but I At first, you know, when your first go off on your own, you don't have any structure, so you kind of overdo it in both directions. And then I realized, okay, I'm just going to set boundaries and frameworks and almost create a formula for my life and for my day. So at first I was saying, well, I work, so I can't take them to pre K none of the days. And then I was like, well, why, like, I'll take them to pre K twice a week and get that fulfillment and then maybe work later those days or something like that. So creating the boundaries was really helpful to me as well. Yeah, okay, so okay, let's get to the twin story. Say us take gets back. So you're undergoing fertility treatments, you're building up your business, and then what happens? And then I get the call that the blood work came back and I'm pregnant, super excited, and we go in for our first kind of ultra asonogram monitoring with my husband, and the doctor's kind of you know, in there taking a log trying to find the heartbeat and I look at him and I say, it's just one, right, and he says, oh, I wish you hadn't said that, as if me saying that caused we were already there accurate conception. Seriously, I'm like getting chills. I can't that moment must have been unreal. Yeah, And I said what, and he's like, well, here's one and here's two. And I just remember my husband was on one of those small stools that wheel around, and I just remember him wheeling all the way up against the wall and just leaning for support, and at that point I just started laughing. But moments later, when we left the appointment, that's when everything kicked in and there were months of anxiety around how am I going to do this right? So I don't know what version is more difficult. I don't know if having twins first is more difficult because you're learning everything you're a parent for the first time, or my version, where you already have one and you kind of know all the things that go into it. And so for me, I just knew. I knew what you needed to do to nurse a child. I knew what you needed to do to change a diaper. I knew what you needed to do to get around the city. I live in New York City, So for me, I was like, how is it possible to do that with too? And so it was this intense feeling that I was going to fail in every front. And I was really worried about my business because I had spent five years building it up and I really really wanted it to continue and you to thrive and succeed because I was kind of in a really nice momentum and I was convinced that the year they were born the business would fall apart. Well, we're going to take a quick break so that in a moment we can hear the rest of that story and we'll be right back. 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Yeah, so I assumed that everything was going to fall apart, but it actually turned out very differently. So the kids were born about four weeks earlier than they were expected, So that was obviously a challenge in itself. And I knew because because I had a child before, because some of the women I've worked with working moms, I've learned a lot from as well that I needed to make sure that I was creating a really large support network around myself, especially with twins. So we really put a lot in place. We had family help, even though we had a nanny for our older one, we had family help. We had help in the evenings because both my husband and I were working. One of the things I did that I probably wouldn't recommend is I went back to work at eight weeks. It wasn't full time, right, it was like a part time on my own terms, but it did go back to certain engagement, certain assignments that I was working on at the eight weeks mark. Go ahead, Yeah, no, I was going to ask you about how you even plan out the maternity leave, because when you work for yourself, and I can say this from having tried to do it four times, it's difficult to take any sort of maternity leave because the business is you. Like, there's not somebody else writing La Vanderkam's stuff when Laura Vandercam isn't available, and same with you. Your business is Helen coaching her clients. And so if Helen is not available, there is no business. So how how did you manage that with your clients and their expectations and planning for that ahead of time. Sure, so I hired somebody to help me operationally get cleaned up. That was one of the first things I did months before I was due. And do you mean like some kind of a like an executive assistant type of questa. Yeah, it was like an operations project manager. He helped me with some of the technology to put things in place that could kind of operate on their own, so certain emails could be automatically responded to. I don't mean like an out of office but some of the other things that were going through my website. Also, I made sure that I kind of timed a lot of the engagements I was working on so that they would kind of dwindle or weren't in the heat of the work. So in executive coaching, there are moments in an engagement, and engagement is usually three to six months long. There are moments in an engagement that they are kind of more intense, where you're doing assessments with a person, you're developing their goals, you're really kicking things into gear to start to make changes for that executive I made sure that none of my engagements were at that stage, so I front loaded a lot of that work and I try to be I was very hard, but I kind of had to say no or not invite certain engagements that I knew we're gonna, you know, peek at in January, which was when I when I had the twins. So timing, planning, the timing, saying no, I guess was a part which was very hard for me. But I also with some people I shared with them my concerns. There was a woman who was the head of leadership and development at a large bank who was a client of mine, and I said to her, I said, I'm really worried that because I'm having kids, because I'm expecting, because I'm expecting twins, that people are going to write me off and not call me for executive coaching engagements because they're going to assume that I'm not going to be able to handle an engagement like that when I'm dealing with three kids. So that was a real vulnerability moment for me because with some people, I didn't even tell them that I was expecting because they didn't see me all the time. A lot of our conversations were over the phone, over email in the people that we were talking about engagements, not the clients. The clients I see in person, so those always see me, but like the HR contacts, and I just wasn't. I didn't if we didn't have an engagement, I felt like, I don't want them to have an assumption. So that was an internal thing that I really had to deal with. And then I realized, well, this isn't going to serve me, and I decided to be vulnerable. And I read the book Daring Greatly by Brain Brown, which is really powerful and really moved me. And I realized that being vulnerable I can use as a is almost like a power move for my business. That was how I prepared be authentic about it. But then as you're scaling back up, you said yes to a lot of things. I think you and I talked earlier about how you basically said yes to pretty much everything in order to assure people that you know you are still in the game, like yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so then I did the opposite, right Like in preparation, I was starting to kind of shift down, and then when I came back, I started saying yes to things really early. So that particular woman that I mentioned where I shared my vulnerability with her at a month after having I think it was a month and a half after I had the twins, she reached out to me saying, I realized it's early, but I've got two engagements that I think you're perfect for. Would you be willing to come in and have a meeting? And I said yes, And I did not feel ready to say yes. I was, you know, like this is super transparent and maybe gross to people, but I was like topless all day long nursing twins. Like literally, you can't even put don't bother putting your shirt on when you're nursing twins, Like it's just a whole point. So and I'm getting this email like while the kids are on me, and I'm like, yeah, I'm going to have to go find something that fits and doesn't is leakproof, but yes, I'll come in, you know. So I said yes to everything, and it was physically very hard, but because I had such a strong support network and my my kids knew the people that were taking care of them, that was really helpful to me mentally. Yeah, and the good news with you know, meeting about initial stuff for engagements is there tends to be some sort of lag between like getting the you know, putting in the proposal and it's starting. So it's like if you hadn't done the early meetings, you wouldn't have been able to start up, you know, a couple months later. I mean that's the exactly all right, yeah, exactly. So that was that was something that I really knew that if I show up to this meeting, I wasn't going to have the engagement the next week. So I trusted, I trusted the process that there was going to be a lag and I was just going to have to And that's my style in general, like I say yes to things not always feeling prepared, and that's always worked for me. And I think I'm very honest, so like, oh, I'll have to develop this, I'll have to think through this, but I jump into things. I don't think I could have started my business having no L and D experience, having no coaching experience if I didn't do that. Yeah, So why don't we talk Why don't we pivot from this to some of the exercises that you do with your clients, Because of course, one of the reasons that we wanted to have you on is we've got a lot of you know, executive material listeners who are trying to figure out how to put their best foot forward. To share there are gifts with the world to be you know, confident leaders, and you've got some great exercises that you do, So why don't you talk us through some of your favorites. Sure. So, one of the topics that comes up very often in my coaching work. Some of the things that people want to work on is being more influenceuential and having more of a voice in their organization, in their business with their clients. So with that, I developed a model called the Mola model. It's a three step model MOA and I'll go through it, but before I actually go through it, I want to use it with an example of a client I worked with. So this was a woman who had fifteen years of work experience. She worked in a very large global pharmaceutical company, was at a relatively senior leadership role and she went kind of for the next leadership step. So she was applying to become the US head of her department and she was passed over. So she was not chosen for the role and a gentleman that used to work for her was chosen for the role, which was rushing to her as you can imagine. And the organization brought me in and it took me a bit of time to figure out why are they bringing me in? And then I realized that they really value her. They think that she's a massive asset to the organization. But she's not ready for these leadership roles because she is a head down type of individual. So she is brilliant, she's the statistical genius, but she is now trying to step into these leadership roles and doesn't have that influence muscle, doesn't have that visibility muscle where she can navigate across countries, where she can navigate across multiple cultures and work well with those people. So that's what I was brought in to do. As part of my executive coaching engagements, I always do a three point sixty where I interview about ten people that this person works with, and so I had a lot of learnings and so this is where the MOA comes in, which is the model that we used with her. So the MOA has three steps. The first step is m which is my objective. So Let's pretend you're going in and you want to have a powerful conversation with somebody. Maybe you're anticipating it's going to be a difficult conversation, or maybe you're anticipating you're going to have to convince them of something they're not on board with. So the first thing you need to consider when you prepare for this conversation is what do you want, what's your objective, what are your goals? And also what's going on with you? Kind of that self awareness piece. Are you nervous? Are you anxious? Are you somebody that when you're nervous and anxious talk too much or talk too little? Whatever it is. So kind of have that whole understanding of what do I want, what's my objective, and what's going on with me? That's step one. The second step is super important. It is the other person. So the O stands for other person's perspective. Okay, so that is what's going on with them? What are is their objective, what do they care about? What are their motivations? And oftentimes when I walk people through this extra size when we get to oh, they are thinking small, They're thinking in the scope of that particular conversation. So I'll say, oh, okay, you want to I don't know. You want to have five additional resources for your team, five additional people. And you are trying to convince the global head of the organization, and that person's going to think about their needs within the scope of that, And I go, no, stop, don't think that, like, go big, go global. What does this person think about at night, what keeps them up at night, what do they think about on their most anxious moments, what do they think about what makes them happy? Right, So we're not tapping into what do they care about around this one thing. We're tapping into the bigger picture. And that's when people go oh and usually I'll hear one of two things. Sometimes people say I don't know this person well enough to know what they care about just common right, we don't always have those close relationships with people, And that's when we start to tap, well, if you were in that seat, what would you care about if that was you? And so that really helps people have a sense. And then the third step is a which is aligned. So that's when you're aligning your objective from the other person's perspective. It's vital that when you're communicating with people when you're positioning your proposal, it is from their standpoint, yeah, because I mean, you know, it can't just be like I need five more people. It's like, well, the global head is working within the context of everyone's payroll with like what we've got cost cutting going on? How do I do that? You know if I'm taking five people from someone else that they're not happy about that, and so yeah, you have to think about all that stuff. And I love that because I feel like it works at that very big level that you just describe, but it also could work even within a family conversation that you're having or with one of your children, like you know, you may want them to do something, but you know, what are their goals and can we look for that common ground and getting into their heads? I use it. I use my husband all It doesn't always work because he knows my tricks, but but I do use it. And when it's done genuinely and authentically, which I think is really important piece of it. MOA, it works really well. Totally cool. Well, I have two executive coaching quick well quick questions. Number one, how does do you coach individuals? Are there? Because there may be listeners out there that are thinking, do I need an executive coach? So I'd love to know, you know, how could someone know if they would benefit? And then number two, do you have any specific I don't know, take homes or ideas about coaching for those specifically in the years that are in the thick of it with kids, since that's so many of our listeners. Yeah, so I'll answer your first question. So, executive coaching can be done in group format, but more commonly it's done one on one. So I work with leaders, I work with business owners. I work sometimes people come to me directly, not through their organization, although most of my work is like I mentioned, I'm brought in through the organization. But sometimes people come to me directly and say, you know, I think I want to work on visibility, influence, presence, leadership, whatever it is, and I don't need you know, I don't or I can engage my company. So sometimes they come to me that way as well. But yes, it's typically one on one, and as I mentioned, these are kind of face to face and work that we do on a regular basis. Usually people meet with me about twice a month for an hour to an hour and a half and you said over kind of a three to six month period. Yes, yes, three to six months. And the assessments are really powerful. So there's different assessments we can do like a three sixty where we interview others, or we could do the likes of different personality assessment to figure out kind of what are people's triggers, values and risks. But is it often in a situation like you described, like somebody has been passed over for promotion, or you know, an organization would like to keep people but they have some real problem that needs to get addressed, or a personal anality conflict. I'm curious what usually triggers it. It's not always that. Sometimes I'm brought in because this person is a really high potential and they're seen as a future leader, so there's not really a problem. They're very confident, but they want to develop their leadership skills. That's sometimes an opportunity and other times, I for example, I'm working with somebody who has a company that was relatively small and is now they've decided they're taking the company to grow a lot quicker. So this is this person is one of two partners of a boutique investment bank, and he's always kind of been boots on the ground selling and taking care of clients and always to manage people. And that's just not something even though he's you know, he's in his forties, that's not something they've ever done, right, and that's not something that he's skilled in doing. So that's where the leadership coaching comes in. I wonder well, so our listeners love these day in the life sort of talking through the logistics of what a day would look like for you with again the twins in the business, which you know, again I want to stress it. One of the reasons I loved your story is that that the year you had twins, you said was your business's best year ever. Yeah, I can't believe I didn't say that. That's that's right, that I couldn't believe it. And after being in business for five years and scaling nicely, and again remember, I was convinced when I learned the news that I was having twins that that's it. The business was going to be half of what it was the year before. When I was doing my taxes and looking at the numbers, it ended up being my biggest year. But it also wasn't just a numbers. Biggest year I was taking on engagements that I was really proud of, So there was kind of the two proncs. So, yes, the biggest year in business was the year I had twins. And it's really meaningful. Okay, so day in the life, yeah, the life. Okay, so not during the summer because during the summer my life is a little different. Well we'll get to that, Yes we will. I'm sure, Laura, you're dying for me to share that. But during the school year, my morning I kind of split my week into two because I want to have time with the twins in the morning, and I also want to do school drop off with my older one because I tend to find that that's right. Remind listeners of how old the kids are. So the older one is six and a half, so he's going into second grade. He's a young second grader. He's going into second grade next in September. So I kind of decided I was going to do three days a week. I would do bus drop off where we have to walk a little bit, so it's nice and I get to see others on the bus and it's kind of the social aspect for me. And then from there, I'll go to either the gym because his bus is really early, it's like seven forty five something like that, so I'll go to the gym, which is by his bus, and then I'll go straight to my office. So one of the things I decided, which was purely a cost, it was very little benefit to me, was to have an office like I did. I decided not to work from home. I think there's people that can, but remember I'm in New York City, I'm in an apartment. I've got twins at home. And I actually made this decision before I had the twins, but I wanted to have an office separate from my home office. So those three days I drop them off with the bus, I go to the gym, and then I go and I work for my office, and then I make sure i'm home for dinner by six o'clock. That's when we all have dinner as a family. I'm fortunate that my husband also comes home for dinner, which is really nice. And then we go through the intent evening of twin bedtime, older one bedtime, or while twins are getting put to bed, homework, and then it's insane. You don't want to hear it. It's a long, much longer podcast putting them to sleep, and then that's usually when I'm back on the computer to deal with certain emails because my day is with my clients. During the day, I'm running around the city coaching people. So I'm in my office, but oftentimes I'm also running around going to see clients. So that's my day the three days a week, and then the other two days, I stay in the morning and I hang out with the twins for a little bit, and then their nanny will do a bus drop up for my son reading off. Getting from time with each I try to because I felt that I needed to feel like I was a good mom to both. And the evenings are just They're not that because the evenings are just crazy. Evenings are hard. Yeah, evenings are hard. But your summer setup, which we just have to share because this sounds so awesome, Yeah, which is it's a benefit of having some extended around. Yeah, so I will say that. I So okay, first, let me tell the setup. The setup is that both my in laws and my parents have two separate small summer houses in the mountains. So living in the city, it gets really hot, it gets really smelly, and gross, and it can be very expensive to send kids to camp. So instead, what we do is we send our kids to be with their grandparents for four weeks, so two weeks at once one family and two weeks at the other family. My husband and I work throughout the week, so Monday through Friday we work, and Friday night we drive out to see them. So we have Saturday and Sunday with our kids. So we see them every week. It's not like we don't see them for two for four weeks, but during the week we have freedom, like the freedom, freedom that we haven't had in years. So we go out to dinners, we see our friends, we take walks after dinner, like which when you're a parent, you know this, like you can't leave the house. Somebody's kind of watch them. Yeah, it's glorious, And does your nanny go to there, Yes, so then nanny goes that's beautiful. They get this grandparent time. It's not super stressful on the grandparents because they have extra help. You get this break. And you were scared of sharing this, but I'm very glad you did. And I do think that a lot of people that say that to me, their first response is I wouldn't trust my in laws with my kids. Oh really, it looks like you guys are okay with it. But some people will say that like, oh, I don't think my in laws could do it, or I don't think they'd want to do it. But I have found that it's a bit you kind of build into it, like, yes, there's a bit of figuring it out and not being satisfied with the way things are done at first. But I think if you use MOA, if you communicate often, if you are clear about what you want, and if you also try to understand, you know your mother in law's perspective, you can figure it out. And I'm super blessed that both sets of parents are willing and eager to help. Well. My only suggestion is I think that you guys should do a couple strip for one of those weeks instead of just working the whole time. You're right, maybe next summer. It's almost over. We only have over the freedom is done. Yeah, we only have one more week left. But well, Helen, that could be your Love of the week if you want. I mean, we always do a segment where we do Love of the Week, something that's really exciting for us. Mine. Mine is a much shorter version of kid free thing, but I have been sometimes during the day I will go in the pool all by myself, like the fun little lunchtime break and then to go swim without anybody needing to be watched or spring me with a super soaker or otherwise messing with the relaxation that could happen in a pool. So that is my love of the week. Sarah, how about you? Well, my love of the week, I'm going to be talking a little bit about a challenge I'm going through recently, Well not me, but anyway, our nanny. It's definitely my love of the week because she is so reliable and so dependable, and it's been so rare that I've had to go to alternate means that I'm spoiled. So I just feel like she deserves a shout out. She's awesome. All right, Helen, how about you or do you want to go with the four week parent camp? That is definitely one and with that all the grandparents and nanny that are there. Yeah, I think it's I think it's hard to beat four weeks of freedom throughout the week day to be able to focus on growing the business, seeing my friends, you know, working out every day. It's it's really it's really powerful, wonderful, totally cool. Well, Helen, thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. I had a blast. This question this week comes from a listener who wants to know about transitions. She says, I am reading, I know how she does it, and I'm really enjoying it. So I did mean to just do my little book plug there. All right, I'm reading this. There was like you read it, Laura. I love how you're positive about the flexible work schedule. I have friends who feel blessed not to have to bring work home with them and work after hours as I do. But while I find my schedule exhausting, sometimes I also remind myself that from four to six pm, I'm one of those moms blowing bubbles in the park. All right. Anyway, onto her question, how do you handle transitions? It seems like you're constantly working on a multitude of projects. I have about seven clients, and I tend to need to do work for four to seven clients, and in a given day, I'm great at meeting deadlines and prioritizing blocking my calendar to get the urgent items done. But once I get pressing tasks out of the way, I find I'm never as structured or productive as I could be. Do you have any tips for transitioning from client client project to project within a short amount of time. Our listener adds that most of the clients pay her hourly, and making the most of her time literally means more money. This is such a well time question because well, I wrote my answers and I'm going to read those. But actually this was like my day yesterday because I had it was a GM day, and I had a big thing do There's this like annual program evaluation form that we have to fill out which has like you know, it's fifteen pages of data about your residence and what's going on. And I was totally stressed about it because it's my first one to do, and so that was like my main thing. And I was so efficient and got to work and I just like attacked that thing and I finished it at around ten fifty three am and was like, well, okay, now what I'm done. The day is over. And I really did feel like, you know what, my capacity for doing super high energy, high impact work was spent because it was like a very intense two and a half hours, But that didn't mean that I had to throw the rest of the day away because I had the hours left that I needed to catch up on other things. So I think this is kind of what our listener is getting at, and I'll just the way I handled it yesterday, and I feel pretty good about this is I then made a list of things that were not as taxing but that would still move the needle forward in terms of kind of setting me up for the next week or sort of clearing the decks of things that had piled up while I was working on that project, and then sort of the rudimentary getting started of some new stuff but without the intensity. And I guess what I'm getting at is, even though I know time is money for this listener, we do have to accept that we're probably not going to be able to turn out the most hardcore, intense work that we possibly can for the entire day. It's just not how our brains work, is not how our energy levels work. So I think that sometimes when you do your urgent work, and you've done a lot of it, maybe the best thing to do would be to allow yourself to do less urgent work. So I wrote, just you know, making sure that you are balancing your mental energy in a realistic fay And I wrote in my more thought through response and this is kind of what I did. Are there less mentally draining but still important tasks you can do in your more flexible time, like things that you have to read for your field, clearing out your inbox, which has to happen at some point, or even planning out your next week and making sure that when you do write your top priority list, and that can be your urgent stuff but also your important stuff. So maybe setting the ground work up for a future project so that it's not so urgent and stressful still counts, but it's sort of a different part of your brain than that urgent getting stuff done piece, so that that might make the list. But you write down your top priority things and then when you've done them, you do them and feel good about it, rather than you know, doing your one urgent thing and then seeing that there's three thousand other less important things and then feeling bad about yourself that there's a whole bunch of stuff left on your list. So for me, that really reduces friction and I'm able to accomplish more and feel better about myself. So, Laura, what are your thoughts. Well, my first thought is sort of a long term thing is you probably don't want to be billing out you know has well, because then there's no reward for being more efficient other than that you can you know, take on more stuff long term, or you can raise your rates if they're happy with you. But I think this also has that sense of the ticking clock constantly if you're if you're billing hourly, and if you think about it, like you know, think of yourself as like a movie star. Like a movie star doesn't bill hourly, like they get paid for the project. So it's it's you're being paid probably for your expertise, even if what that is is an execution of a project. So long term you might want to transition to more of a project based fee because you love that do that. I'm assuming she's some kind of a consultant intern. No, but I mean, you know how long it takes you, so you can have an hourly rate, but then you know, it's it's less of a sense of you know, I have to be doing this at X time, just just something to put out there. But yeah, keep the to do list shortened, man, and you'll feel on top of the world. Because if you make it long and unreasonable, you'll do the exact same amount as you would have but you feel bad, and so there's no point in doing that. I think her question is partly about lacking energy after the urgent things to tackle those sort of long term priorities like marketing or dreaming up new ideas or things that she can pitch her clients, so you know when you're budgeting your time. I actually suggest doing those things first, like maybe you spend the first thirty to forty five minutes of your workday on this long term speculative stuff, or maybe it's two hours on Monday morning, if that's more, if that makes more sense for your schedule, if the rest of the week is more unpredictable, but making sure that you have some time when you are fresh for thinking about those long term important things you're going to do the urgent stuff. I mean, that's what she said. She she always does, she meets her deadline, she does the stuff that's urgent. It's the other stuff she's not getting to. And so I think by doing those things first, she'll she'll feel like she's accomplishing them, you know, though she'll she'll definitely still turn in stuff on time. As for transitions, like when I'm working through my to do list, you know, I put the stuff that requires most energy in the morning when I have the most energy, same as you. But I try to think of other work as sort of breaks. So if I need to send an email about something that's you know, semi important, I'll do that as a break between writing projects, or I will you know, record some podcast episodes and then make a phone call or something. And so by doing work as breaks, you can shift back and forth and think of yourself as being in a different space, but you're still moving forward. Totally get that. I think I did some patient notes as a break from from the resident. It doesn't have to be a break break, but it don't have to be fun. A gear shift a gear shift, and sometimes they can be fun, and sometimes you need the actual rest. But when it comes to just sort of changing the mental energy you're using for different things, I get what you're saying. Yeah, well, great tips, Yeah great, all right, Well this has been best of both worlds. We've been talking with Helen dayan about building her business with infant twins, and we'll be back next week with more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.