I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t want to be more productive in one aspect of their life — even my guest, who is a productivity coach! Meaghan Langston, the Meaning Mentor, joins us to kick off season two of the podcast! Meaghan has a similar background as previous guests in that she had a standard job but wasn’t loving the hours, so was searching for something that was more flexible and aligned with her skills. While she was having these thoughts, her and her husband had just recently become foster parents to two littles (so not stressful at all). While at work, she benefited from a perk at her job that included a coach to employees. After seeing the benefits in coaching (and with the encouragement of her coach) she started to coach on the side. Meaghan dives into how she built her clientele, where she pivoted when she saw the need and how she chooses professional decisions.
While Meaghan talks about her story, she highlights a common myth about coaches that you are going to want to hear! It was so fun talking to Meaghan and I know her unique story will be so helpful for many of you. Make sure to visit Meaghan’s feed and take advantage of her gracious offer of 10% off coaching or calendar insight (I promise you will benefit from either!) with code AMIDSTTHECHAOS.
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Meaghan Langston (aka The Meaning Mentor) is a success coach and productivity expert helping working women set and achieve meaningful goals at work and at home. Meaghan combines practical time management tools with thought provoking questions to help clients maximize their personal and professional potential. She offers 1:1 coaching, productivity training and online courses that help women align their life and work with their values and pursue their dreams with more intentionality. Meaghan and her husband have been foster parents for almost 4 years and are expecting their first biological child in March 2022.
Full Transcript:
Dana: Are you dying at the thought of missing a single one of your babies first, we have no idea how you’d give up the security that your nine to five droppings. My name is Dana Graham, and I had no clue how to escape that vicious 40 Hour Workweek cycle either until I did. As the wife of a traveling husband and mom of two tiny humans, we made the terrifying and totally bizarre from Health Insurance Program to successful newborn and family photographer, all with the amazing craziness of a two year old and newborn into but I’m not the only one. I’m so glad you’re joining me as I chat with other moms who took the leap into entrepreneurship and created the ultimate best of both worlds life doing it all amidst the chaos Alright everybody, welcome back to another episode of amidst the chaos. I am here today with Megan Langston. She is the meaning mentor on Instagram and actually anywhere you want to search for her. But we are going to hear all about her story of how she’s built her business and become an entrepreneur while being a mom and she has a totally different story than a lot of the other moms that we’ve interviewed on the podcast. So I’m excited to kick off season two today with telling her story. So Megan, welcome.
Meaghan: Thank you for having me. I’m really excited to be here. I love the podcast. And so it’s a pleasure to be a guest here today.
Dana: Oh my gosh. It’s one of those situations. I followed Megan on Instagram forever and ever and it’s one of those weird things where I feel like at least now it’s acceptable that I like am a fan of yours even though we’ve never met in real life. Fine, like COVID has made it totally okay to know a lot about your life even though we’ve never met it’s fine. It’s fine. So tell everybody what you currently do about your company as it is right now.
Meaghan: Okay, so I’m a personal coach. I work with working women and helping them maximize their personal professional potential through time management skills, work life balance, gaining clarity in their career.
Dana: And it’s really cool because obviously, that’s the nuts and bolts of what you do. But there are so many tiny tools and tips that you give to people that aren’t even your clients that really can change the way that you’re operating on the day to day. I think that’s how I found you is one of the I think somebody had posted about calendar consults. And before we jump back to talk about your story, can you just tell me about the magic of a calendar console?
Meaghan: Yeah. So I mentioned I’m a coach. I work one on one with women. And mostly we talk about setting goals that are going to be meaningful or make meaningful change in their lives. And so many of my clients time was a barrier for their success as we move towards, you know, the action planning process and holding them accountable towards their goals. was sort of week after week. It was always time was a barrier for them moving forward. So I was coaching a lot on the basic tenets of time management I sort of bundled all of those concepts together into a one hour training that I call the calendar consoles. And I made that available to whomever wanted access to it even if they were interested in working one on one with a coach. And I’ve done almost 200 of them this calendar year so it has hit home for a lot of people but we talk about how to manage time tasks and email.
Dana: So, so awesome. Okay, so let’s talk about what you did before you had kids before you were you know, in an entrepreneurial position like what were you doing with your life professionally and personally.
Meaghan: So out of college, I worked at a ad agency for a few years realized that that’s a very competitive industry to be a part of very fast pace and it felt like it was the right fit. I did not like the work life balance. So from pretty early on, I had like Gone willingness to work late nights, which really set me back in that industry because you have to be a hustler. You have to be a go getter and be willing to sacrifice a lot of your personal time for it. And I just found that that really wasn’t the right fit for me. So I ended up in a communications management position and a dental firm for several years. And I honestly I loved that job. I have a lot of flexibility in my schedule. The work that I was doing was aligned with my skill set. But ultimately knew I wanted for myself. I think things did change when I became a parent and that sort of happened overnight, literally because my husband and I signed up to be foster parents. Where we lived and if you’re familiar with foster care really is a temporary situation for children who need a home. And so pretty quickly after we became licensed, we got a call to take two kids at the time they were 18 months and almost 3 year old. And so one day I had no children the next day walked into work and I had an 18 month year old and a three year old and there was no maternity leave. There was no baby shower for these kids. And so no plans to get childcare. So I pretty quickly we went from a work being my number one focus to all of a sudden being a working parent to my husband work shift work so that left me doing a lot of the solo parenting on my own to and not a lot of support from the company that I worked for which you know, just in general, there’s kind of a lack of understanding of the foster care system, what it means to be a foster parent and the challenges unique challenges we face so no fault on them, but it wasn’t really set up to accommodate all the changes. I was experiencing in my life.
Dana: Wow. So okay, so rewind just a tiny bit. Can you talk to me a little bit about fostering in general like what made you guys decide to go ahead and foster that if you’re one of the few people that I know who have fostered before having biological children or adopting or any of those things like that was it’s so fascinating to me that you guys did that. And I think that’s just awesome. So what talk to me about like, the decision to do it and then actually doing it?
Meaghan: Sure. So yeah, we did not do it to grow our family. Foster Care really is not intended to grow a family a lot of times foster care get looped in with adoptions because you are caring for children who don’t have biological parents that can support them at the time. However, foster care is meant to be temporary children come into your home, you’re caring for them until they move to a permanent home which is either back with their biological family or into an adoptive home. And really, we just did it because we knew there was a great need in the city that we live in. And we felt like we had the capacity to give in that way. So we had space in our house and in our hearts and we thought we can handle something like this. And it was it’s definitely been probably the most challenging and most rewarding experience I’ve had I think we’ve fostered about seven or eight different kids over the last three years and two of the children that we’ve fostered are we’re not a now in the process of adopting ourselves.
Dana: So cool. It’s so awesome. We have talked about doing this in the future as well. But to me after doing you’re going through the whole motion of you know, hey, we want to have a baby. How are we going to do this? We were going to start with biological children. So you know if you get pregnant and grow your baby for nine months, and then first the baby that can’t move or, you know, sit up or do anything for itself, but it can’t like cause problems like a toddler can’t. So like just the shellshock. I can’t I literally can’t fathom the Shellshock, that you guys must have had to have welcomed two toddlers into your home while working full time. It’s just like my brain is spinning. So how did you manage that time? Obviously you made a pretty big career shift and we’ll we’ll get to that. But how did you manage that headspace because I feel like that’s a lot at once.
Meaghan: Yeah, I think it’s sort of like you just you rise to the occasion a little bit and maybe in some ways, it’s easier than someone who has planned to become a parent and went through all that because, you know, we didn’t have any expectations for ourselves. So we weren’t really comparing ourselves and we did a lot of googling what does an 18 month year old eat when doesn’t mean two year old sleep? What does a three year old milestones that means? No So, but in a lot of ways, didn’t have a lot of expectations for ourselves, which opened us up to have a lot of flexibility in how we approached parenting, meeting their needs, among the commitments we already had in our careers and things like that. But pretty quickly I became discontent being a working parents because I mean, many properly working moms would say that they didn’t quite understand the demands, doing both until they were in the position. And that couldn’t be more true for myself. The kids at the time were that we were carrying forward in a daycare for probably 11 hours a day from the time that I had to drop them off drive 30 minute commute to my job spend, you know the full workday there and then hit traffic on the way home. By the time I picked them up. It was just enough time to put them to bed pretty much and so I feel like I was missing out a lot on the important role that you play when the children are young and the raising of the kids. I think we were meeting their physical needs but weren’t able to emotionally give everything that we had to them. So that’s when I started thinking about what it would look like for me to work for myself. And so where did you even start because there’s so many people that are probably listening to this episode right now that are thinking the exact same thing and that’s exactly where I was. I was like, this is not sustainable. Like I cannot do this wherever and I missing everything like it was it was heartbreaking for me and there were many meltdowns but I wasn’t sure what, how I could monetize my specific skill set or even what my skill set was at that point. So how did you even go into the down the rabbit hole and obviously you said you would want it to work for yourself but how did you even go into down the rabbit hole of okay, what am I actually going to do? What services am I going to offer and how am I even started? Yes, I started by thinking about all the things all the skills that I had that I enjoyed to do doing the most and compared that with what I thought people might pay me to do. Very structured about it, but I thought if I can come up with my dream career, this is what it would be. And some of the things on that list. I realized weren’t possible to automatically get paid to do or to convince other people to pay me to do it. But I started brainstorming what are the skills they do have that there’s also a place in the market for and it happened to be that I had a Coach assigned to me in the position that I was given. At the dental office. We had a consulting company and I was assigned to coach and I really enjoyed working with her and so I started inquiring about what she did and maybe what if I could do something like that? And so she suggested I look into coaching, decided to get certified on my free time and start coaching other people for free. Eventually, I had a paying client who was willing to refer me to someone else and that’s where I decided I could take the risk and try to sustain myself this way. First off, I’m laughing that you said free time with you know, your children and your full time job and you know, it’s fine, it’s fine. So how did you even go about finding free clients because that’s a really hard topic. I think for a lot of people, especially in a service based business because you don’t want to offer your services totally for free unless you know for a fact those people one value it and are going to get something out of it, too will then turn around and actually refer you and enjoy the process.
Dana: So how did you go about finding people that you knew were going to make you a better coach and you know, kind of build your business?
Meaghan: I would say networking was probably the most important skill that I learned during this process. And just being comfortable talking about what I do or what I want to do in a confident way that demands that you would might get paid, but also offers it you can eventually offer for free but to show that you have value you know that you could offer a service to someone. But yeah, you’re starting out and you’re just talking as much as possible. I mean similar if you have a background in marketing as mentioned that the first step of marketing yourself raise awareness before anyone even considers purchasing. You have to make them aware of what you’re offering. So I think about the same way with the business is how am i How am I making people aware of what I do? So they can determine if that’s a need of their own? So typically, I would just get in conversations with people talking about what I do even if I wanted to do and I wasn’t actually doing again, more speak about it in the present tense. This is what I do. And then if the opportunity felt right or felt like something someone I want to work with and I would just offer to coach them for free.
Dana: I love that and I think it’s so important to is even just to first off be able to say what it is that you do again in the present tense, but also to be willing to share it because there are so many times where it just doesn’t you know maybe it doesn’t feel right or maybe you you know you’re second guessing yourself or you’re not fully confident and that doesn’t put yourself out there. It doesn’t put you out there enough to be able to have a sustainable business and you keep growing even when you’re just first starting out. So I love I love the confidence tip because even if you’re not even if you don’t actually feel confident, just pretend
Meaghan: Yeah,
Dana: That is a category where fake it till you make it is tried and true. So talk to me about the transition, like what did the timeline look like of you, you know, getting the kids and then you know, realizing it? How long did it take you to realize, hey, this wasn’t gonna work. And then how long did it take you to get certified? And does that make sense? I just want to give some people like, yeah, obviously everybody’s different but it’s interesting to hear different timelines because some people move really quickly and some people take a little bit longer. So what of yours look like it all happened within a year. I’d say I’m trying to think back now that I got the kids I started feeling this content.
Meaghan: So I guess the backstory is my mom was a business owner. Had the entrepreneurial spirit in me and I’m even today when I talk to some of my clients who are looking to get better work life balance, often it comes up what if I transition from a nine five to working for myself that comes up a lot with clients and they’re sort of wrestling with Would that work for me? I’m obviously a huge encourage are going off on your own. But I do think there is something about running your own business. That’s not the right fit for everyone. It is high risk. You don’t have the same security. Not everyone can financially take that risk, or whatever life circumstances they have. So it’s not right for everyone. For me, I was willing to take the risk. I started to build up a base savings for myself so that I could give myself a period of time to figure out if I could make it work. So when I started thinking about this, I immediately started thinking about what what can I do to prepare to go off on my own and determine during a designated period of time if I could sustain it or go back and get another job. And I it does take the confidence of knowing that I have skills that are hireable so I could find a job if I needed to. But I started saving up that money looking into coaching programs that I can get really just to build my confidence and coaching is a regulated industry so anyone can call themselves a coach. So I could have started immediately. But I wanted to be confident in the service I was offering and I also think it helps clients feel confident in the value that you provide as well. So I started looking into that. It wasn’t a long process to pick one and to go through with it. I guess the biggest part for me was the transition because I respected my employer and I didn’t feel right about leaving so quickly. So I sort of had a gradual exit. I’m doing both at the same time.
Dana: Yeah, and on top of, you know, parenting children and you know, living your normal life and that’s the thing that people forget is that when you do start a business like regardless of how you do it, it’s it can be so mind consuming. Like I feel like especially those first like, I don’t know, however long it may be for you but that hustle season where you’re like you’re so excited about it and you want it to do well and you want to get the clients want to succeed and grow and you know, the list of things to do is so long that you feel like you just can’t get to it all i It’s hard to remember that you have to have balance even that right like you have to do the other things in your life even when you are in that stage where it is so exciting. And you are sort of desperate to see if it’s gonna work, you know, so how did you how did you manage that mentally because again, the point of you going off on your own was to kind of be in charge of your own schedule and have your own time and make it work for you. But to get there takes a lot of extra work. So how did you manage all of that?
Meaghan: Yeah, that’s a great question. I tried really hard from the beginning to design my business in a way that wouldn’t require me to exhaust myself to make it work. So I was pricing my services high enough that I wasn’t going to be desperate to collect a mass quantity of clients when I knew that I didn’t have that much of a reach at the time. So I set really realistic goals about what I thought I could accomplish. And I really tried to not buy into a one size fits all success story, which is something I help my clients with now. But I don’t think that there is you see a lot of coaches out there especially business coaches that say just follow these few steps and you will have a functioning, successful business but that might not be right for every person because a lot of times it does require a lot of hustle. And I knew that that wasn’t something that I was willing to do. I would rather stay in my nine to five job that gave me the security I needed and still a little bit of balance and I would like to stay up all night working on a business and still not get that flexibility. So I tried to be really strategic about only doing the activities that would have the highest return and cutting out all this stuff that I was quote unquote supposed to do as a new business owner, if I didn’t think it was going to be successful for me.
Dana: I love that. And so do you think including certifications that you took, helped you as a business owner, like do you think you would have started your business successfully? If you hadn’t been in the industry? You’re in?
Meaghan: No to your question. I think the mindset that we learn in coaching that’s really what we we work on or what a coach does, right? They help you discover what success looks like for you and then plan accordingly. But it starts with creating your mindset casting a vision for your life. And so that process of learning and I guide someone else through that helped me because I was able to do that for myself.
Dana: For sure. Yeah, I feel like it’s so interesting because there’s so many different industries and people that I’ve interviewed for the podcast that you know are do totally different things, right. They’ve built a product or they’re, you know, they have a service based business or they built an app, whatever it is there. It’s so different that I wish that there was some sort of magic pill that you could give people that would like just hand over some of the knowledge that you have because you don’t know until you do it right like right times, you know, coaching somebody in starting a new business is like, I never would have known that unless I had actually done it and then to even be told that even be told something about who or you should do it this way or like this is probably what’s gonna be best for you. Sometimes you don’t believe people because you know, you’ve never been there. You just can’t understand until you’ve actually been through. So much like parenting. Like there are so many things that I’m like, people kept telling me that and I was like, I don’t whatever. I don’t want to hear it. Like I’ll get there when I get there. And then I was like, oh, like Yep, that was right. So I feel like being a coach must be here. Here’s where I’m going with this. Is it more rewarding? Or sometimes frustrating to be a coach like there are there are times as a coach where you’re like, I know the answer, but I can’t tell you because you have to kind of figure it out on your own. Like is it frustrating or is it rewarding to be able to like walk through somebody’s story like that?
Meaghan: Well, I would argue that I don’t know the answer. I don’t think I knew the answer for most of my clients and I think I’m just walking alongside them as they’re figuring it out. So I really see it as a privilege that I get to be invited into that space. And I as you were talking I was thinking about how this podcast that you have really is a great resource for women who are considering going out on their own because it’s not a it’s not a self help book. It’s not a guide to launching your own business because the reality is what I just said there isn’t a one size fits all success story. I think if I was a consultant and I mentioned I’m background in marketing and I’m working with someone on how to create a six figure business or get their product or service in front of the right target audience and I I believe I would be frustrated because I want them to fall in line with what are some tried and true practices. But what I mentioned I guess what I love about podcasts is your people are just telling their unique stories and we can learn from other people’s stories for sure. But trying to replicate someone else’s experience would just be pointless because we all experience life a little bit differently and we all have different things that we value. And so your willingness to sacrifice in one area might not be something I’m willing to sacrifice in and your definition of success might be different than mine, as well. So, yeah, I don’t I don’t think that I never feel like I really have the answers for clients. So definitely if you’re considering working with a coach, that’s a good thing to know going into it. They’re not going to tell you what to do. That’s not the purpose of it. But helping you figure out what that is for yourself is a really exciting, fun thing to be a part of.
Dana: I love that and it’s so true and you know, gosh, now, I feel old. I’m like nowadays but really like with social media. It is impossible not to play the comparison game. It is exactly what you’re saying it not only does everybody have a different definition for success, a different definition for you know what they think is okay for their day to day schedule would be like and how much hassle they want to have. Like, even if you have a similar defined metric for success even if you’re like on the same scale like hey, to be successful, I need to make like let’s say like this, I have to net over $100,000 That’s but the thing is even within that the scale of what they’re willing to do to get to that level and what is okay for them to say okay, I’m willing to give up X amount of hours a week or time with my family or you know, invest money into it. Every single decision that you make as a business owner is going to be different from somebody else and not just black or white yes or no on a scale of one to a million. You know, yeah, it’s crazy because really, it’s great to have friends in your industry. It is and it’s great to have friends and like business owners in other industries that you’re friends with, but you can never ever ever have a better opinion on what what is right for you then yourself because you’re the only one that knows what the level of okay you are with any of those given any given metric
Meaghan: Yeah, and it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Yeah, there’s not all the other factors are that are at play. And that kind of reminds me of how we started the conversation off as with with parenting rooms sort of the topic, the secondary topic of this discussion, but as foster parents, it can be sometimes isolating because our kids have distinct needs that maybe a traditional family wouldn’t experience and so trying to balance their mental emotional needs but also with the demands of you know, the guardianship and dealing with social workers and going to court and the time commitment that that takes, and so I try not to pretend that I know what it would be like for anyone who has maybe the same number of kids with same age kids asked me because their kids have their unique needs and their parenting demands certain amount of attention and time and focus for them to accomplish too.
Dana: So yes, there’s so many new actors. Yeah. And even with even when people have kids like friends have kids right around the same time as you and I both have girls we both have boys and whatever it may be is not comparable. Like you can empathize sure but like you have to remember that what’s okay for you and your family might not be okay for them and their family and I think that’s just take you got you have obviously have that experience on a whole different level. So talk to me about growing your business with fostering like how did you because like you said, it’s a huge time commitment. So they’re going to walk into your business saying, okay, these are the hours I can dedicate. You’re like the flex hours when a home visit comes up or a court date comes up, like how did you know? I guess I’m sure it wasn’t black and white. either. But how did you kind of grow your business within that constraint of having to work it around the logistics of your life? Affected I think about this one.
Meaghan: So for me systems and processes have always come natural for me, hence, the why the calendar console has because even though I’m a sort of a deep thinker, and I want to vision cast and get clarity and dream about things and help people think that way, eventually I like to boil it down to some sort of practical solution to put in place to support whatever vision is created for a client of mine and also for myself. And so after I was able to clarify what I’m trying to accomplish, I really systemize my process was to support the lifestyle that I wanted. So that meant coming up with a pricing model. That was doable. So if I could get X amount of clients at this dollar amount, it would require this amount of work. Load for me that could be spread out across a month’s time. That would allow me this level of flexibility. So I really did a lot of the math and thinking about what this would look like on the and probably the biggest challenging challenge was learning that running a business is a completely separate job than actually doing the work the service that you have. You’re providing clients and so I learned that pretty quickly and then had to build in all that extra time that it takes to promote yourself and manage the backend and do your own taxes, all the things that you have to do that you don’t really realize when you’re first starting out. So there’s a little bit of a learning curve there. But for the most part, I tried to put systems in place that would support the lifestyle that I want. And I did that mostly through my calendar, managing my time in a way that would allow me the flexibility that I want, which meant I was really intentional with the time that it was working. I like to lie.
Dana: Yeah, and I think I think that’s crucial. And for so many of us I know like especially when Sean was gone last year. You know, when you work from home, right? You work for yourself and it’s COVID times anyway so you’re really isolated, but then you know you’re your spouse is gone. And I have two little kids and can’t just listen to yourself yell all the time. That was not a thing all the time, but it does it can feel like that when that’s the you know, you can’t even hear yourself. And there’s no other way around and I feel like I escaped a lot into social media and like definitely which was it’s a good and bad thing. You know, I made friends and I had all this. You know, I grew my business actually, significantly through social media that way but you don’t really realize how much time it’s taking up. And I think that becoming intentional, like you could do so much more in 30 minutes, an hour, whatever it is 15 minutes if you have your phone on the other side of the room and you go into it knowing exactly what you want to do. So are there any like give me like a like your favorite calendar tip for productivity for somebody who like let’s say just can’t focus and then maybe a little bit of add involved?
Meaghan: Well, I always tell people the start of the calendar console. I know it’s cliche, but I say we we can’t create time we can really steward it because I think everyone wants more time. And of course if I could create time I would and I would sell that and be a millionaire and I will have to do with Calendar comm so there was like great, I’m happy I decided that I needed. I see that because there’s a misconception that people think they need to be more productive and efficient versions of themselves to be happier. And I disagree with that notion even as someone who claims to be a productivity expert and helping people with that because the reality is we don’t necessarily need to be more efficient because we can become robotic about our lives at that point. And they can our lives can still lack meaning we could be the most productive version of ourselves and we we could lack eating. And so instead, what I try to help people think about is being intentional with their time. So using their time in a way that honors their values. So thinking about what you do value first, and how you want your days to be added up. to equal a life that’s meaningful to you is the first step before you start implementing any productivity strategies. So it could be that you want to scroll on your phone or you want to take a nap. And you should be able to do that if you want to. What you don’t want to do is lose track of your days and at the end of it say what did I accomplish or what was the point of today so I try to help people think a little bit more flexible about their their days and static oriented around whatever is most important to them. So in any given moment. They’re being intentional about the activity that they’re working on. It has a purpose.
Dana: You know, I am having a lightbulb moment because like you just mentioned there are days where I’m thinking about even specifically at my corporate job my boss and I used to have this conversation all the time, where I could just call her the end of the day and be like hey, it was she was like how, like how is today how you know what did you get done about that? I was like, honestly, I worked all day and I couldn’t tell you like I don’t know what I actually got done. And that’s exactly now looking back. That’s exactly what it was because it wasn’t something that had meaning. It wasn’t something to me that, you know, made made me feel good about what I was doing. It was kind of, you know, monotonous tasks that have to be done. But it might say maybe I should have spread those out over the week and put in some meaningful tasks on that day instead, because you’re right, I would get to the end of the day and be like, What did I do today? Nothing like nothing of importance at all. And I feel like so many people probably have felt that way. So I guess maybe I answered my own question that I should have spread it out over the week. But it’s it is really, really interesting how that works. So how do you coach your clients to better I mean, I guess that’s the whole point of it and everybody’s different, but what’s one specific thing that you could say to a client to remind them and force them to get that meaningful moment or whatever it may be in their day that makes them tick into their schedule?
Meaghan: I would start with the goals. So if you have no goals set out for yourself then we have nothing to compare your time to. So we can’t say that your time is purposeful or intentional or not unless we have some bigger picture that we’re looking to see if it’s achieving. So I always tell people if they don’t have goals to just answer the question, what does success look like for me in this position in this season of my life? So what does success look like? As a mom, in this season of your life, or what a success look like? As a business owner or in this career field that you have during this season? What does success look like for you if you’re able to first define that then you can look at your time and reconcile the time with the goal to find out if it’s if it’s aligned and say, am I giving enough time that I need to be successful at this accomplishing this goal? And if not, what can I cut out or what sort of thing changes do I need to make to be able to accommodate those goals or modify the goal to be a little bit more successful based on that? Or to be more realistic? I mean, based on the needs that are demands that you have in your life?
Dana: Yeah, see there again, like it’s on such a wide scale and it’s just not in a vacuum like you really it for everybody. It’s going to be so very, very different. So talk to me about your obviously you have a relatively flexible schedule that you pretty much dictate. So talk to me about how that has changed over the years of of running the meeting mentor you have you run into things where like, Okay, this doesn’t work or this does like have you obviously grown and changed how you run your schedule since starting?
Meaghan: Yeah, absolutely. I think I’m always asking that question about what has the highest return. And when I say that, I don’t mean just financially I’m not saying like, you know what? Am I making the most? How am I making the most money in my business? I’m actually thinking about return on meaning like for talking about what is giving me the greatest satisfaction to work on what allows me to grow my business in the way that I’ve dictated is, is the way I want the business to grow. So I’m constantly analyzing where I’m going and what I’m, what activities need to be done to get there. But that being said, I feel like every week looks different. So I’m really I’m I’m taking the week by week and I’m thinking about yes I have big picture I have quarterly goals and the annual goals, things that I’m working towards. But I’m always comparing that to the needs of my family and other things that are important to me and my own personal needs at the time. Some weeks I need to rest a little bit more I don’t quite feel like working or it’s a holiday and you know, want to take some some time off. So I’m being strategic about backfilling my time knowing that the amount of work that it’s going to take and creating space to get that done while also honoring the time that I want to take off as well. I love that and I feel like it does. It does get easier. To take time once you’re a little bit more established. And you know, like, Okay, if I take these two weeks, I can just do XYZ to kind of make up for that time. Yeah. And I feel like you you can’t predict that at the beginning until you’ve done a couple of seasons of sharing, you know, getting through the process.
Dana: So if you’re listening to this and you feel like it’s all hustle like there’s hope like there is Yeah. If you can kind of figure out what what works for you and your family. So you are expecting a child a biological child, right?
Meaghan: I am Yes.
Dana: So talk to me about how like pregnancy has changed working and how you anticipate you know, a new baby coming into the fold. Like talk to me about what what you’re feeling and thinking about both mom and entrepreneur and now mom was three which is different than mom of two.
Meaghan: Yes, I think I mentioned this at the beginning but it almost seems easier when it was a sudden shift. The build up is scary to me. Nine months to worry about this. For the anxious person it’s that’s a very good point for the anxious person. I like that. Yeah. And it’s funny to be around other women who are expecting it and watch how they’ve kind of gone about preparing for and thinking for the baby and I find myself kind of defaulting to Oh, you will figure it out when it comes. That’s what we’ve done in the past. That’s just what we know. And so I think I am leaning a little bit more on that I’m doing less planning than I would have expected and less preparing because I found that I adapted as needed with my other kids and I think I will do the same here but I’m also trying to take in all the advice that I get and not pretend when I’m a seasoned parent in this way. I don’t know I really don’t know what to expect. But I will say I’m taking it with a grain of salt. Is that the same? I’m trying trying to be flexible and open to whatever might come and stick to the things that are really important to me that we’ve been talking about today. Like getting clear on my values, our family values, what we’re trying to accomplish as a family. What does success look like the months following the birth of the baby? And then how does that impact my business? What is what are my expectations for myself as a business owner? Not just you know? Financially, what am I going to be able to accomplish it? What sort of output can I do? But also like how am I viewing myself in that role of founder or CEO so I’m a solopreneur. So sometimes we have the hardest expectations on ourselves, not other people. So I’m trying to get get that right now. So that when the time comes, I’m not disappointed in myself and I can feel good about what I’m able to give to the issue.
Dana: It’s so hard because you know you’ve raised your business like you raise kids, it’s the same thing but if your baby does it feels similar where you’re like, Okay, how now I have to return you’re already dividing your time but you know, when somebody that’s for me, it was like somebody that’s touching you all the time like your con Yeah, there, you know that to me. I needed to like create some space to be able to feel like I was really, you know, working. And so again, it’s just one of those things that like, you can’t really explain it. You just have to wait to do it and then ask questions and be like, Hey, how did you get through this because this part is hard for me. And everybody has different hard parts. And you’ve done like you’ve done the toddler years like you’re you’re golden you’re good.
Meaghan:: Is this toddler harder than baby?
Dana: I mean, obviously not like everything, everything we’ve talked about in this entire episode. It depends on the person and the kid right? It’s just louder, louder. I’m like, I’m like, always like I have like some noise claustrophobia going on. Just very loud all the time at my house. And that’s a guitar. Yeah, in that sense, but now that they’re in school, and that’s that’s a whole different stage of life. That’s right, it has right so, again, it’s one of those things that like, whatever’s hard on that day is going to be different the next day or even you know, might take more than a day but it will be different in a month or two months or three. So I feel like that was one thing that made it really easy with my second baby is that I was like, okay, he’s not sleeping at all. But I know this ends like I saw with my daughter that this does and with my daughter, I was like, oh gosh, what have I done? You know? Right once you see you’ve just gone through the light at the end of the tunnel you know, so you know that that there’s always something new and change happens so quickly with them so well. This is so exciting. I’m so excited for you. How does your family feel about the new addition like what’s How’s everybody feeling? Is everybody getting pumped?
Meaghan: Yes, everyone is very excited about it. So where she’s due at the end of March and so we right before the summer when my other kids are getting out of school, so we shouldn’t have a lot of mental
Dana: Yeah, that seems like a challenging experience, but also have a lot of time together and those first few months hopefully to kind of transition us to becoming a family of five. I know that’s so well that’s so exciting. So obviously there you know, plenty of words of advice out there but if anybody is listening and wants to check out Megan definitely please go and look her up for all the things not just entrepreneur but obviously mom and foster parent and she has lots of information on all of that stuff on her on her I guess it will be on your website right for some some links.
Meaghan: Yes. Yes, I’m building up my new webpage or website for everyone to engage me in a lot of different ways. But for now, you can check out my Instagram at the meeting mentor. And it is so exciting.
Dana: Well thank you so so much for doing this. This was like I always joke that anytime I have somebody that’s like a coach or like you know, into wellness or like for me it was someone who manages overseas moves so that’s what her job Oh, I I’m like this is my like I invited you in my bag gas but it was for me like it was my own thing. So today definitely had some undertones of that. So thank you so so much for being here and I cannot wait for everybody to hear.
Meaghan: Thank you for having me.
Dana: I am so honored. You spent any minutes of your day listening to me babble about living this entrepreneurial life amidst the chaos and any mom’s normal day to day. If you love what you heard any more snippets of knowledge about this mob boss life, head over to our website at amidstthechaospodcast.com For show notes and links to anything mentioned in today’s episode. If you’re really feeling inspired to me and my family if you take the time to Thanks for joining me, Amidst the Chaos.
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