Ep 220 A Hack to More Time and Energy for Your Goals, That No One is Talking About with Guest Brenda Schmidt
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Sara Mayer: [00:00:00] welcome to the bold goal crusher podcast for anyone looking to stop letting life get in the way and start crushing bold goals. I'm your host, Sara Mayer, and I'm thrilled to navigate this journey with you because it's time to start boldly achieving without working double time. So let's dive in.
Sara Mayer: Hello, bold, gold crushers. I'm super excited about my guest today. I think you are going to love this conversation. So let me introduce you to my friend, Brenda. Brenda coaches women in entrepreneurial families with her kick ass modern mom method. To build their own village of support around them with household outsourcing and family systems.[00:01:00]
Sara Mayer: So they can focus on their unique zone of genius in their business, homes, relationships, and also make more meaningful memories with their families. Brenda gifts, women, freedom, time, and energy to start living those some days today. And she lives in Arizona with her husband, three kids, dogs, and guinea pigs.
Sara Mayer: With time to herself, she can be found unicycling, paddleboarding, playing pickleball, or some sort of other new hobby. With her family, she goes on epic adventures around the country and within her own city, and she truly shows others how to live those some days today. Welcome to the show. I'm so excited to have you on this episode.
Brenda Schmidt: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited.
Sara Mayer: I have to ask you about this unicycling thing.
Brenda Schmidt: I saw you pause.
Sara Mayer: I read that [00:02:00] unicycling. Tell me more about
Brenda Schmidt: this. I have been wanting to learn how to unicycle for years and years. And It's like that thing that's in your Amazon cart in the save for later, that just keeps like reminding you remember how you wanted to buy me.
Brenda Schmidt: And so I was like, I would keep thinking like, I'm gonna buy myself a unicycle and learn how to unicycle. And I never would. And I was pregnant with my third kid and I was like truly going to do it. And I thought this is probably a really terrible idea to start unicycling while I'm pregnant. So I'll wait.
Brenda Schmidt: So anyways, but, I was walking around a neighborhood for Christmas Eve this year, and I came across this family, and this girl, this young girl that was about the same age as one of my kids was unicycling, and I thought it was just the coolest, and so I asked her, I said, Hey, I've always wanted to learn how to unicycle.
Brenda Schmidt: What tips would you give me? And she started giving me some tips. Little kid tips. And then I talked, I started talking to her parents. It turns out they are like world class unicyclists. They are they travel the world. They don't live anywhere. They go all over the place and ride their unicycles all over the world.
Brenda Schmidt: And they're like we're in Tucson for two weeks. Do you want us to [00:03:00] teach you how to unicycle? I said, yes, I do. So this just this is like one of my newest goals that I was like, I want to learn how to unicycle. And yeah. So I took lessons from them over the Christmas break. My oldest my 11 year old daughter, she also got really into it.
Brenda Schmidt: And now my middle child, he wants to do it too. So I think I'm going to order him one. So we ordered our own unicycles. There's a tennis court right behind my house cause we live next to a school. So we just go over there and practice. And my daughter is now zipping all over the place on hers. I still have to grab the fence every now and then.
Brenda Schmidt: But it is so fun. And it's one of those things that I feel like who am I? Who am I? This busy mom to just decide I'm going to start unicycling, but that's just how I roll. And so it's just been cool to the self development that comes along with learning how to unicycle. It's an absolute metaphor for everything in our life.
Brenda Schmidt: And so it's just been so fun to learn and to challenge myself in that way. And yeah, we are hoping to go to the [00:04:00] unicycle convention. Or the big conference, there's this world con this summer. And the kids want to go to that. And yeah, I'm hoping to my goal is to be able to be like, go and no fence, no holding on to anything by the end of January.
Brenda Schmidt: But it's been so rainy here in Arizona that we haven't been able to go out there. And I was like, tempted to just go out there with an umbrella and a pole, like straight up circus and make it happen.
Sara Mayer: I can honestly say I have a lot of things saved in my Amazon cart for later. A unicycle is not one of them.
Sara Mayer: I don't think it is
Brenda Schmidt: for most people.
Sara Mayer: But I love this and I love this growth mindset and learning like you're teaching not only yourself, something new, but your kids and the spirit of curiosity. I think that's
Brenda Schmidt: pretty cool. Yeah, we I'm a hobby collector for sure. I I get interested in things and I'm like, let's do this.
Brenda Schmidt: And I jump in and I commit to it and I really do. [00:05:00] And I like, I go deep. And then if I get to a point where I'm like, okay, I had what I needed from this, then I move on or otherwise it stays with me. And I just keep it in my back pocket and come back to it and then keep, investing in new hobbies.
Brenda Schmidt: And so we are for sure hobby collectors in our family. My husband, as you can see we have this pinball collection behind us. We do all kinds of other crazy stuff too. He's into all kinds of drones and. Classic cars and all this stuff. And so we just love the richness of life and all those different facets that all those things can bring.
Brenda Schmidt: And yeah, so we are, I we're like. The ultimate adventurers. And I had a friend who was asking a question about has anybody heard of this? I know Brenda has, but has anybody else?
Sara Mayer: I love the curiosity. That's awesome. Now you mentioned like you're a busy mom and now you're fitting in this new hobby where you're learning something new.
Sara Mayer: You're probably failing a lot. And now you're going to convention. How do you seemingly do
Brenda Schmidt: it all? Okay the secret [00:06:00] that I tell everybody is you cannot accomplish your goals if you're doing them by yourself. You got to find people that support you and your goals and cheer you on and you also got to find the people to handle the stuff that you really don't want to be doing.
Brenda Schmidt: Because you want to do this other thing instead. And so finding those two pieces of the puzzle is the only way that you can truly have that freedom to use your time and your energy the way you want to spend it. And so there's a lot of stuff in my mom life that I'm like, you know what? I don't care if people think this is what defines motherhood, it's not going to define me.
Brenda Schmidt: I would much rather go do adventures with my kids than do their laundry. Or I would much rather go, like unicycling with my kids on the tennis court than, prepping dinner or whatever. I love cooking, but I don't like having to do it. all the time. So I outsource that. I outsource the laundry.
Brenda Schmidt: I outsource a lot of these roles in my household so that I can go make meaningful memories with my kids and serve my community in my business and [00:07:00] help my husband with his business so he can serve his people. And so these are all of our big goals. And it's, we, I just think of it as what are those?
Brenda Schmidt: Things in your life that are like the entry level. If, when you first got a job straight out of college and you're like, okay, just take this piece of paper and type it. So it goes in this other place in the computer, like the things that are the easiest to explain to somebody else. Those are the things I'm like, okay, I'm going to give them away to somebody else so that the stuff that is okay, this is going to take forever to explain.
Brenda Schmidt: So maybe that's the stuff I hang on to or figure out a system on automation to take care of that kind of stuff. So that's truly how I get so much freedom is by surrounding myself by people who cheer me on and also surround myself by the support for people to actually handle some of the tasks for me.
Brenda Schmidt: I
Sara Mayer: really love this concept because I think so often You know, you use the term like motherhood. People think it's this and I'm not going to let that define me. And I think back, I have a foster daughter, many of the listeners know. And I think back [00:08:00] to that and I don't think she would ever say the greatest.
Sara Mayer: thing that happened when I lived with Sarah was that my laundry was always done. No, it was always about the adventures, the places we went, those type of things that were memorable. And not to say that she or anyone takes for granted the amount of work that goes into that, but it wasn't the experience that she would call upon to really describe our relationship like, Oh, our laundry was done.
Sara Mayer: It was great.
Brenda Schmidt: And we hear it and we think yeah, of course my motherhood, Like my kids aren't evaluating me based on that, but for some reason, then whenever we are ready to hand it off, we feel guilty for doing so we feel like, or we don't want to tell people about it. We don't want to admit that we are not doing any of that stuff.
Brenda Schmidt: Because for some reason we feel like I should be doing it myself. I am like, Nope. Nope. I'm going to change this conversation. They're all just jobs. They don't have to be our jobs. It can be any anybody else's jobs. We can give them away.[00:09:00]
Sara Mayer: And I also think back to, and I want to get your take on this too, like chores or having your, I don't want to call them chores cause they weren't really weren't chores.
Sara Mayer: She loved them, but tasks that your kids can help you out with and stuff like that. Like I always think back to the fact that she loved like absolutely. Loved having the sink totally scrubbed out and the, she loved doing that. She just loved the smell of all the cleaning products and everything like that.
Sara Mayer: And I just was like, all right, more power to you, sister. You can do this every night. And she loved that part of her day, like tidying up the kitchen and making everything look nice for the next day. And I let her take that over and that brought her joy, which to me brought me absolutely zero joy, but okay.
Brenda Schmidt: Yes. And that is exactly right. Is the people who you have to support you, whether it's your own family members in your own household, your [00:10:00] neighbor. whoever it is that you actually let them help you. You accept the help from them. They love contributing in that way. And they love collaborating on a team because they can see that it's working towards this bigger picture.
Brenda Schmidt: And so one of the coolest things is whenever you can build out your team in your own household where it's okay, like you let your kids when you let your kids. Help create the systems and then collaborate on the team with any kind of household help that you may have that you're outsourcing to and then everybody works together as part of this collaboration process because it's teaching my kids those life skills for one, like, how do we create the process and have it duplicated by other people?
Brenda Schmidt: How do we work together on a team and give them feedback? How do we have leadership roles and how we can communicate and delegate these things, but how do we also know how to do it ourselves? And so that way we're not just assuming that everyone else is just going to take this off of our plate forevermore.
Brenda Schmidt: Sometimes it goes back on our plate. And so just knowing how to actually do the work when you need [00:11:00] to, but also valuing your time and knowing that you don't have to trudge through it. And that is a question I get asked a lot. You didn't ask this question, but I know that there's a lot of people who hearing your question are hearing this other question in their head which is, yeah, but I don't want to outsource things in my house.
Brenda Schmidt: Cause then my kids don't learn the responsibility and have those values. Or even like some wives are like, yeah, but I want my husband to want to help out more. I don't want it to be handled. And I say is what if that person was part of your family? What if you saw them as a family member?
Brenda Schmidt: And then it feels good that they're doing it for you. What if your family also saw them as that part of the family unit, they are truly part of a village. And so it's just really all about collaboration and just seeing like the ebbs and flows Hey, can you do this for me? Great. And I'll do this for you.
Brenda Schmidt: And so these ebbs and flows of the dynamic of how that all works.
Sara Mayer: What's really funny, your whole topic is brought me back to my old neighborhood and I forgot about this. We had, so my dogs absolutely hated [00:12:00] me rolling out the garbage can. I don't know why, but my dog would always be in the front yard.
Sara Mayer: He was a shepherd lab. He never went anywhere. But when I rolled out the garbage can, it was like Cujo came out. He was like barking at the garbage. And it was funny to one of my neighbor kids, and he just got a ride, got a hoot out of it. So he was like, I want to take out the trash. So Easton can go crazy.
Sara Mayer: And that became a thing. And then this kid ended up being the neighborhood garbage kid. And every week he would just come around and put take everybody's garbage to the curb and then bring everybody's cans back. And. It was so helpful. I ended up, giving him money every month, but some people didn't, but he loved it.
Sara Mayer: He thought that was the greatest part of his entire week was taking
Brenda Schmidt: trash. What if you wouldn't have seen his joy with the reaction to the dog? What if instead he would have just been like, Hey, can I just take out your trash every week and you would have been like, no I [00:13:00] got it. It's fine. I can do it.
Brenda Schmidt: And then you not only would have removed his joy of doing it for you. It probably wouldn't have spread to all those other neighbors. Yeah. And so we always think that we're putting people out when we let them help us. But truly we're like taking away their joy when we don't let them help us.
Sara Mayer: Yeah. And then it blossomed into, I was one of five people who had grass. He obviously grew up, but I had a, Arizona, your patch of grass is like two lawnmower, like things. That's that there's not a lot of grass. And so he ended up being the kid in the neighborhood that. He just went down the road and mowed everybody's grass.
Sara Mayer: Now was it perfect? He
Brenda Schmidt: became this little budding entrepreneur just from this little first step.
Sara Mayer: Now was it perfect? No, they didn't have lines. If you were the guy who needed like Rows and designs. He was not your kid, but if you just needed to turn grass cut.
Brenda Schmidt: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What is it like? Dan Martel says 80 percent done is 100 percent awesome.
Sara Mayer: Yeah, and it was one last thing I had to do I [00:14:00] actually didn't even own a lawnmower. So I was using like a landscaping service I was able to save money because I cut that because really it came around it I love it. So you talk a lot about outsourcing things in your household, either within your family or other people.
Sara Mayer: What are some of the things that people may not think about tapping into someone else for?
Brenda Schmidt: Laundry, I know is the bane of motherhood existence for a lot of women. They're just like who we, you and I were having a little conversation. And we were talking about how it's Sometimes it's, we don't have the problem with putting it in the washing machine and then switching it over the dryer.
Brenda Schmidt: Like I know I would be pretty good at switching it over. So I didn't have to do that rewash thing where it starts getting mildew. Cause I forgot, but I would get that part handled and then it would go into a laundry basket and then it turns into the laundry basket graveyard and they're just in laundry baskets and so it's if you are.
Brenda Schmidt: Already behind on doing that for yourself and then you add family members and the family member, especially when they're too young to do it themselves, then you do theirs. And then there's they use so many towels [00:15:00] and linens. And so then the amount of linens that you have is all multiplied. If your husband doesn't do his own it just becomes like this bigger and bigger laundry basket graveyard of all these clothes that never get a point.
Brenda Schmidt: And so for me, that was the part where I just felt like I. Okay. I would do just I would always like to batch things. Batching is how I make things really doable whenever it's like a lot of the tasks that I don't want to have to be focusing all the time, but okay, here we go. We're going to get it all done right now.
Brenda Schmidt: And so every two weeks I would do all the laundry and watch Mrs. Maisel. I would have Mrs. Maisel marathon. I would go in one of my kids room or a guest room, I think had a TV and I would just put it on and I'd be in there for hours, just like folding and then going and putting it away in everybody's rooms.
Brenda Schmidt: But then once I. Handed that off and I'm gonna tell you the magical way. I did it at first. It was like, I got a whole Saturday to myself. And I was like, wait a second now I like, and I felt I, that was already my day. So I'm not going to give it back to some other job and chore. So now I gained a Saturday.
Brenda Schmidt: What am I going to do this Saturday? So that's when I would like, go drive up to Phoenix and go on [00:16:00] adventures. Unicycle. Yes, exactly. Or go paddleboarding or go do all those other things that I'm like, I have a free day now I'm going to go do something fun. And so this is the easiest way that I handed that off is we already had a cleaning company that was coming, a cleaning lady.
Brenda Schmidt: And She would come every two weeks, and I'm like, wait, I'm doing laundry every two weeks, and I was like, what if I have, you just stay a little bit longer each time you come, so you can put away, fold and put away all the laundry, like I'll have it all washed and dried, I'll have all the laundry basket graveyard ready for you, and then you can just put it away, and so it would take her like an hour, maybe an hour and a half, to do something that took me an entire Saturday, And so the amount that I was paying her, it was just this incremental amount more that I paid her to have it completely handled.
Brenda Schmidt: And I was like, how is it possible that she's getting it all done in an hour? Why does it take me so long? Because when we do it, we get squirrel brain and I go to put something away and I'm like, oh, wait, that doesn't go there. Or, oh, that's not organized. And we start fiddling with it. And then we go back over here and we're like, oh, now I remember I needed to [00:17:00] go email that person and fill out that form and do it.
Brenda Schmidt: And so we start squirreling all around and doing all these other things. Then I'm like trying to fidget with the Mrs. Maisel and it's not playing right. And then I'm like what's my other show I want to watch. I'm Oh, what's in my queue. All these things happen. Yeah. And then you get an email and you're like, yes.
Brenda Schmidt: And it just, it becomes, and so a task that you can outsource for one hour and what that would cost you, and it's taking you a whole Saturday to do. And so a lot of moms are like. Oh, I don't have enough money to hire someone to do all my laundry because they think it's going to take a whole lot of money to get that accomplished, but it's just layer it on.
Brenda Schmidt: And I always think of it like we've been entrepreneur family for a really long time. So all the business books, my husband would read for his business. I would read and I would just apply it to our house. And so the same thing for a business where you're not, if you need a person to answer your phones at the front desk, a really important job, you're not just going to post a sign.
Brenda Schmidt: Help wanted to apply within and the first person who says me, then you're like, great, cool. You'll do go into the phones. Like you want them to be embedded in your culture and [00:18:00] really understand their role there. And so the same thing is and this, but you're also going to like layer people on.
Brenda Schmidt: You're not going to go from. Nobody to like a staff of 15 and so all the same things that you would apply in a business can be applied in your house, where it's just like layer people on incrementally higher as needed at first. You don't even have to bring him on his staff. And then thinking of it from a culture perspective make sure that person understands how what they're doing contributes to the bigger picture and so that they get it.
Brenda Schmidt: So yeah, so it started out with just having that one. Yeah. Person stay for an hour longer and then eventually I'm like, okay, I actually don't even want to put it in the washer and dryer either because I would always have to be like, oh, no, she's coming tomorrow and I haven't done it all. And I'd stay up till midnight, like running all of
Sara Mayer: them.
Sara Mayer: It's like cleaning your house before the cleaners come.
Brenda Schmidt: Yes, which I don't do. I am like, no, please come fix my chaos. I don't want to fix my chaos. And then you just polish it up.
Sara Mayer: What's really interesting is I had a mom on, I can't remember her name, but it was like years ago [00:19:00] when I first started my podcast and she talked about gamifying everything in her house.
Sara Mayer: And so she had laundry day and she, like us did not putting it away. She didn't mind folding it, but it was carding up three. She had three kids and a husband carding it up the stairs. And putting it all away. And so she would make little baskets. And I always love this. She'd make little baskets.
Sara Mayer: She'd put all the stuff in there. Now it was folded and she would lay it out. And she'd say, this would be like on a Friday night. And she say, the person who puts away all their laundry carts it up the stairs, puts it all away and gets reports back here for duty gets to pick the movie for the night. And they would like gangbuster, even her husband gangbusters up the stairs to get all this stuff put away.
Sara Mayer: And like she said, she didn't even care if they just threw it on the floor as long as it was out of her sight, but they would go put it away [00:20:00] and come running down to pick the movie. And that became the thing. And then later she added second place, got to pick the snack. And that was
Brenda Schmidt: that. That's awesome.
Brenda Schmidt: I love that. And the reason why that worked for her to break this down for everybody, like when you gamify stuff like that in your house, cause it doesn't have to be outsourcing it right away. It can just be a system. And so the reason that worked for her, if we look at it from a business perspective is she was.
Brenda Schmidt: Not only creating the system with the expectation of what done looked like for everybody involved on the team. She was also having a designated time block that got accomplished in a deadline. And so she was taking these business practices of systems and processes, communicating expectations. What does done look like?
Brenda Schmidt: What is the time block we're going to achieve this in? And she made it into this. Process in her household. And so we don't think of it like that because we're not business nerds like me who try and apply all this [00:21:00] stuff to your household. But that's why that kind of that stuff does work. Because she's using all those same some the same ways to implement it.
Brenda Schmidt: And so we can think of lots of ways in our house that we can implement these same exact strategies just to have a better. Oiled machine that we all get our time and energy back because then they all got to enjoy family game night together and enjoy that meaningful time together and not having it weigh on their shoulders that they had to spend Saturday doing laundry.
Brenda Schmidt: Yeah.
Sara Mayer: And it was like, it became a thing. And then she did have an older and some younger kids, there was a gap there. And so some of the younger kids got a minute headstart or whatever, but she tried to even the playing field. So it wasn't always the
Brenda Schmidt: same winner and it makes it fun. Like my kids. We outsource a lot, but they also have a lot of responsibilities.
Brenda Schmidt: We are big on systems in our house. And so they fight over who gets to use the duster buster. Like that thing, I ended up having to get a second one because one of them was starting to get like kid [00:22:00] ified and beat up and I'm like we still need a real one. But they love it. They love like who gets to clean up the mess.
Brenda Schmidt: That's like the rule in the house. It's okay to make a mess. As long as you clean up after yourself and so sometimes they fight over who gets to use the cleaning tools.
Sara Mayer: Yeah. I love that. Now I want to address the elephant in the room. So many women are stay at home moms. They don't have a job outside the house.
Sara Mayer: They're not building a business and you brought it up the guilt a little bit of feeling guilty asking somebody to help. How would a mom get over that if they're Thinking I'm the stay at home mom. This is part of my job. How can I justify getting other people to do this, asking my family to do it or even paying when I don't have an income?
Brenda Schmidt: Yes, that is a really great question. And that is the thing that everybody thinks, but maybe doesn't even ask. Some people do come right out and they're like, yeah, [00:23:00] but like that is my thing. That is my job. Here's what I will say is, take a step back before you even think about any of the stuff that you would outsource or systemize.
Brenda Schmidt: Think, take a step back and think about what were your goals? What did your ideal mom life look like to you? What, before you were in the throes of it? So if you are feeling really overwhelmed right now, if you're a stay at home mom and you're feeling just overwhelmed and struggling and resentful about a lot of stuff what did you used to think it was going to look like?
Brenda Schmidt: And how can we make it possible? And so sometimes it just is about just getting yourself more rest. And then you're able to tackle everything with more energy. And so maybe you don't have the money to outsource, but like your number one thing is rest. And so when your husband comes home from work, or if your mother in law or people are overvisiting, like just telling them, Hey, I need to just go take a nap while you're here.
Brenda Schmidt: Since you're here, tag, you're it, can you handle some stuff so I can go rest? So just [00:24:00] asking for the rest you need, that's one of the easiest things that you're technically just like outsourcing right there. But as far as okay, cause, cause I did, I worked corporate and then I became a stay at home mom.
Brenda Schmidt: And so this was something I felt yeah, but if somebody else does this my, my father in law used to tell me the whole what'd you do today? Eat bonbons? Sit around, eat bonbons. Drive me crazy. But then eventually I was like, okay, I don't even know what bonbons are. And maybe I should find out.
Brenda Schmidt: Maybe I should be eating these and enjoying my time. And so it's as a mom, are you being your full self that you want to be for your kids? Do you feel like you're being like yelly mom all the time? Cause you're tired and resentful and angry about what you have to do? Because if so, you're not.
Brenda Schmidt: Yeah. Like you, we become a stay at home mom because we want to spend more time with our kids and we want to shape them and mold them and just be there for them. But if we're not being our best self around them, then what, we're feeling guilty that we have to do this other thing, but at the same time, we're not getting to do the true [00:25:00] thing that we really set out to do, which is love our kids and be patient with them and show them the world and be patient teachers and model good behavior.
Brenda Schmidt: But instead we're modeling this like behavior. And so I look. I like to just zoom out, right? And just say, wait a second. What does my motherhood existence? What does my experience look like? And what would I change if I could? And so if you're not getting enough rest, if you're not eating well, if you're not spending enough time, developing yourself, because it's not just raising your kid and helping your kids grow. We need to always be growing ourselves as moms. And so if you're not taking the time to learn new things, surround yourself by different environments and different people and challenge your beliefs in those ways, then how are our kids ever going to really truly believe what we say if we don't?
Brenda Schmidt: They don't see us doing it. And so I feel like for stay at home moms, like maybe you don't have the budget and the money to be hiring all the help yet, but you can still implement a lot of the same practices. And it all comes back to what are your goals around this? What is your ideal motherhood [00:26:00] experience look like?
Brenda Schmidt: Like. When your kids look back, do they, you want them to describe you as like mama's always tired and yelling at us and in a bad mood and always saying later, we're going to do that activity later and we never end up doing it. No my kids are like, never let's go to the park. Oh, I'm too tired.
Brenda Schmidt: We're going to go this weekend. You don't go to this weekend, oh, let's go do this thing. Oh, can I go play here? Can we have this play date? All the things that they ask for that you're like, don't have the time and energy for. Yeah. And then they grow up and you feel Oh yeah, I always wanted to do that thing.
Brenda Schmidt: And we never did. So just zooming out and realizing are there areas that you, it's harsh, but here's the phrase I'm going to throw out is it's not what it costs you to get the help you need. It's not what it costs you to outsource. It's what is it costing you not to truly as a mom, is it costing you your mental health?
Brenda Schmidt: Yeah. Is it costing you your. Like body are you deteriorating? Are you having pain in your body? Are you having ailments? Are you having manifestations of illness that surfaces [00:27:00] because of all these other ways that you're not taking care of yourself
Sara Mayer: and what's costing you and your relationship?
Sara Mayer: Yes,
Brenda Schmidt: and you're really in your marriage like I joke, but it's not even a joke is the best marriage counseling you could ever get is having a third party come and do all the things that you and your husband fight about. If you fight about finances, get a financial advisor. If you fight about.
Brenda Schmidt: Picking up shoes, hire somebody to pick up the shoes, , or give your kids that job. Yeah. Whatever it is that is like the tugging thing that you're always in conflict about. Bring in the third party and have them take that off of both of your plates. And it's the best way to be able to reconnect with that person, for them, not the things they do.
Brenda Schmidt: So I yeah, so the whole, my backstory, you heard about me in my life right now, but my back backstory, I grew up on a ranch. In southern Arizona on the border of Mexico and my, and it's my family had been ranching for years, like since the 1860s. And so it's like in our blood [00:28:00] and my, while my dad managed the ranch and he had.
Brenda Schmidt: Other ranchers that would come and help him for roundups and all hands on deck whenever you need it. Oh, we're building this fence. We need extra help. People come in. He had his village and then he also had hired help on the ranch. And so he has this whole collaboration teamwork unit for that business and then he, so he had created like this well oiled machine, and that was something that he didn't have to come up with. It was already in place from his father and his grandfather and all these people who had been running the ranch. That's just how you operate. Then my mother she did not ask for help and she did not accept help on anybody would offer.
Brenda Schmidt: She was just like, I put your head down and you just suffer through it because she really was like, she had left her job to raise all of us kids. And there was six of us. I'm number two of six. And it was very like, like she just became this martyr. And her mental health suffered, her physical health suffered, she became a very terrible person to be around, her relationships were awful, and so by the time I [00:29:00] was probably like 8th grade and on, I recognized that she was a very unhealthy person, a very unhealthy person that was not.
Brenda Schmidt: She was my mother, but she could not parent me. And so I sought out role models in other women, my coaches, my ROTC instructor just teachers that you recognize wow, they know their stuff, their wives. And they are, and they take you under their wing and they are like, this poor kid has a crazy mom.
Brenda Schmidt: I'm going to help her. And so I had all these wonderful mother. Figures and mentors early on in my life to help me realize that's not how things have to be. And so now like people ask is she still alive? And yes, my mother is still alive, but she is not in our lives. She's not in our lives at all.
Brenda Schmidt: And so my goal was setting out to help moms in this way is I do not want somebody I care about. One of my friends who's a mom. To turn into that version, where she's no longer in her family's life. And this is where I get, it was like this, [00:30:00] looking back now, I get to see oh my gosh, I lived in both worlds at the same time.
Brenda Schmidt: I lived, I got to see how a village really truly works. How a support system really truly works with the ranch, but then how, when you don't have that, how just detrimental it is to that one person who's just trying to do it all themselves. There's no way, there's no way that she should have been doing all those things all by herself.
Brenda Schmidt: We were on like a hilltop in the middle of nowhere, a literal island, like away from everybody. And she had all these
Sara Mayer: people coming to the ranch.
Brenda Schmidt: Yes, and so like there could have been the, this guy is coming to help my dad on the ranch. His wife probably could have helped my mom and like the, my uncle when he would come and his wife, I'm sure offered multiple times and, but my mother didn't accept the help, cause she was just like, so all these opportunities that it like, yeah, she couldn't afford to hire a housekeeper back then.
Brenda Schmidt: But there was for sure ways that she could [00:31:00] have asked for help in whatever ways that were available to her. And so this is where I'm just like on a mission that we get to and even like my, my like our grandparents generation, right? There's just like a lot of pride around all this where you get the cleaning person, but you don't talk about it.
Brenda Schmidt: You don't want to like, you want your house to be wonderful when people come over, but you don't tell them how it got that way. You want them to think you suffered through yourself. I'm like. Nope, I don't want my kids to talk like that. I want that by the time my kids are grown, that everyone is just oh yeah, I built a team around me and we all collaborated.
Brenda Schmidt: That's how I want them to talk.
Sara Mayer: You know what's really interesting is my grandmother said one time the best gift anybody ever gave her. Now she was probably in her seventies at this time. She probably received a lot of gifts in her lifetime. Some big, some small. The best gift anybody ever gave her was a lady to come in two hours on Thanksgiving and do all the dishes.
Sara Mayer: [00:32:00] That was the best gift because she was able to enjoy Thanksgiving. Yes. And that person got time and a half and of course they tipped her pretty well. And I think about that because that person really did want to work on Thanksgiving and make that money and help somebody else out. And of course they treated her to Thanksgiving dinner and all that stuff.
Sara Mayer: But that was my grandmother's. Most memorable and best gift in her entire life. Yeah.
Brenda Schmidt: Because for her, it wasn't just the gift of that person coming to help, but it was the gift of all the time that she got to spend with you guys. Because she got that time back. So yeah, it was like, again not what it costs to hire that person, but what would it have cost her if she didn't have that it would have cost her that time with all her grandkids.
Sara Mayer: And that experience, I think about it because I remember I, I'm not sure I actually remember the day [00:33:00] that happened, but I remember lots of Thanksgiving's where it was like, all right, time to go. And we would leave and there was a mound of dishes there, and it never occurred to me to be like, Hey, can we, as a five year, six or seven year old to be like, Hey, can we help grandma with all these?
Sara Mayer: But that was the burden that we left them with when we walked out of that house. So
Brenda Schmidt: what's interesting is I'm number two of six kids. And there's 15 years difference between myself and my youngest sibling. We all are very different because we all had very different parenting experiences. So I saw parenting through other people.
Brenda Schmidt: Some of my siblings did not. And so they are still very similar to that mindset. And so it's interesting. I love hosting. And so for Thanksgiving for holidays, we always have everybody over here and we always have, but I know that because my siblings aren't used to thinking about collaborating on teams, they are sometimes [00:34:00] terrible houseguests.
Brenda Schmidt: Certain ones are. Like, they just sit, they bring their bottle of whiskey, and they proceed to drink their bottle of whiskey. And it doesn't even cross their mind to say, hey, do you need help stirring that pot while this other pot is being You know, drained or whatever, or do you need me to take out the trash or do you need me to help wash dishes?
Brenda Schmidt: None of these things even occur to them. And so what I have started doing, and this is something you guys can steal from me is I now send out a list of expectations before those holiday gatherings. Whoa, I love it. And so what I will do is. And it started because we would do like potluck style and you're like, okay, bring side dishes.
Brenda Schmidt: And they would seriously bring a bottle of whiskey and a bag of chips. And I'm like, those are not sides. Like I get it that maybe you don't cook, but can you at least go to the like deli section of the grocery store? Yeah. And get the little pre made sides that you tell them how I want one pound.
Brenda Schmidt: Yeah. And so I then was like, okay, I would have to like [00:35:00] clearly designate, I want you to make a vegetable side. I want you to make an appetizer that's something we dip chips into and I will provide the chips. I want you to make a dessert that is enough for everybody. And so I would have to be very clear on my expectations of and I would even say it needs to be prepared and ready to serve.
Brenda Schmidt: When you arrive at my house, you need to bring your own serving utensils and you need to take home all your own serving dishes and serving utensils when you leave so that I don't have to go and figure out who. Belongs to what afterwards and so it started with just that just around the dishes and now it's turned into like they already know that expectation now so now we can layer on other ones and so this year when I sent the list of expectations and I keep it like just I don't want to make it where I'm like going on a big rant so I keep it like three or five.
Brenda Schmidt: Is like the list, right? Just like when we look at content online, we can digest 3, we can digest 5. And so the same thing for our relatives and our family, you got to keep it a short list and just be very concise. Also some expectations don't apply to everybody else, but I put on that list, do not [00:36:00] feed my kids sugar behind my back because the ones that don't have kids, they still love doing that.
Brenda Schmidt: And I'm like, and then later, when everybody's in a bad mood and my kids are having meltdowns and it's like, they think my kids are misbehaved and they're like, why are your kids acting like that? Because you like. And but that's on there even ways to interact with my dogs. So I have two young puppies and they're giant but I love dog training.
Brenda Schmidt: And so part of dog training as cause you take your dog out to the park and everywhere is like teaching other people how to interact with your dog. And so not. Everybody interacts with their own pets the same way that I interact with mine. So setting an expectation around that. But I put in there that I expect that when the meal is over that everybody helps with cleaning and that includes dishes and taking out the trash.
Brenda Schmidt: That way I, and the reason I put it in, I put in there not to be like, these are your chores, but it's I really want to spend time with all of you guys because I don't get to see you that often anymore. Will you please hang out with me in the kitchen? While we do this together and [00:37:00] then I can also sit down and play games with you guys afterwards and we can all spend time together and so I do cast like the overall vision so that they understand why I'm even asking them to do these things.
Brenda Schmidt: But yeah, I send this my husband laughs at me. He's they're probably not even going to come anymore. If you keep giving them all these rules and I'm like, no, they come and now everyone behaves really nicely,
Sara Mayer: I think it's so interesting because Many times, if we just put out the expectations, we give people the opportunity to choose if they want to participate or not.
Sara Mayer: And if they just want to sit at home and drink their little whiskey in home with their TV dinner they're going to throw in the trash, then that's the choice that they're making.
Brenda Schmidt: And maybe that's what they've been wanting to do all along and now we finally gave them the out.
Sara Mayer: Yeah. But often we really, and maybe more as women, like we expect things that we don't Articulate, and then we're disappointed when those expectations aren't met.
Sara Mayer: And I think about this, I've lived with a couple of people in my life. I don't currently [00:38:00] live with anyone, but I was not, I don't care how the dishwasher is loaded. It cleans the dishes. As long as the dishes are clean when they come out. I don't really care, but there are people out there that are very particular on how the dishwasher is loaded so much so that if they have dishes that don't meet their schematic, those dishes stay in the sink, even though I could make them fit in the dishwasher, they stay in the sink or and get hand wash or wait for that load to be done.
Sara Mayer: And. I didn't realize this was like a big expectation of one of my partners that I loaded it exactly that way. And then finally we had the conversation. I was like, this just doesn't make sense to me. And they finally were like, how about I do this? Because I don't like doing this other task. So if you do this other task, I'll do the dishes every time.
Sara Mayer: And it was fine. Yes. But we had to have that
Brenda Schmidt: conversation. [00:39:00] Yes, absolutely. And there's a lot of things like that, that we might care really deeply about. That we haven't articulated or vice versa. We don't realize somebody else. Has a really big expectation around that and I feel I forget who I was listening to somebody's podcast and they were talking about whoever has the more detailed complex expectation needs to be the person that like delegates that.
Brenda Schmidt: And so for your situation where it's okay, the person who has a very specific way to fill the dishwasher. That should just be their job and then you are the person that empties it. And so then it's it's both sides of it are taken care of, but it's not always this disappointment on the other side of Oh, it's not Tetris the way I like it.
Sara Mayer: Yeah. To me, I was like, I think I cleaned, I didn't even know this was a thing until for months, but I was also listening to somebody else. I think it was. Was yesterday and growth day and they were talking about there. It's not often not about the task. It's about the [00:40:00] value that people are assigning to the task and she used the example of making the bed.
Sara Mayer: So she wanted the bed made every day. And by the person who was the last out of bed, that was a value that she had. And the reason is she felt like that was a great way to start the day. And she valued having a clean space to walk into and she just liked the way it looked. Her partner, she just thought was lazy.
Sara Mayer: That was what she assigned him. Oh, he's just lazy. And he said, no, I value my time. And. The time it takes me to make the bed the way you want it made, like military style. Is not worth it to me. And I also know I can't live up to that expectation and I value our relationship. So I don't want to attempt to make it in a way for you to then come at night and say this isn't how I like the corners tucked in this, isn't this.
Sara Mayer: So he valued his time and his relationship. So [00:41:00] he just was opting out of doing it. And until they had that conversation. And she realized it was about values, not about the actual task. Yes. She realized, Oh, okay. I'll just, yes.
Brenda Schmidt: Yes. Yeah. One, my, that for me, I'm the got to start my day with a nice maid bed, my husband.
Brenda Schmidt: He'll walk in and out of that room all day long. And whether it's made or it's not made, he doesn't even notice. So to him, he's like thinking 10 steps here, whatever. It doesn't even faze him at all. If I walk into my room and there's an unmade bed, I'm like, I must stop everything and fix that before I can move forward in my day.
Brenda Schmidt: Like I just can't. And so it is like I value something. He values something different. I will say is, Oh, what was, I had a Thought. Okay. So you touched on a really good point there in the feedback we give people. So when people do the roles that we want them to help out with the way we give them feedback.
Brenda Schmidt: And so [00:42:00] again, like the household I grew up in, everything was like, nothing was ever good enough. No matter how hard we tried, like I was that kid that if I got an A minus, I had a three hour lecture and I had to answer for it. Like, why wasn't it an A plus? And so this perfectionist mentality. And so when we are stay at home moms, sometimes we have the time to give, to really put the care into these things that we care deeply about.
Brenda Schmidt: It's our environment. We're in 7, more so than like when I worked my corporate job and I had my workspace and I could keep that organized and I would come home and my house Might have been chaos, and I would be like, whatever, it's fine, because when I go to work and I'm concentrating, that area is focus.
Brenda Schmidt: Like outer order, inner calm. And so I know it's sometimes the same for other people in our household. They might come home and this place of refuge is like this messy nest that they don't mind. Whereas if we're home and we're in it all day, that is our workplace. And so we want that outer order, inner calm.
Brenda Schmidt: And so when people. Try to help out if you are telling them it's never good [00:43:00] enough or up to your expectations, they will stop trying. If your husband loads the dishwasher, if he puts away the dishes the same with when you hire help. If the first few times your house manager does your laundry or your personal chef makes a dish, if it's not the way that you We're really hoping it would be or what you had visualized.
Brenda Schmidt: The way you communicate that can affect how much they try or how much, how invested they're going to be in that process as you go along. And so you really do have to let go of. The idea that everything's going to be this perfect military corner life, just having it done and existing in, in a you know what, that's better than it was a state gives you so much freedom.
Brenda Schmidt: And and then I know I like, I'm like a military corner bedmaker kind of person, my whole house, I'm not going to have that same level. Actually, my house manager is she's better than me at a lot of things. So it's fun when you hire people and you're like, holy cow, they're even better than me.
Brenda Schmidt: Like she is so [00:44:00] meticulous. But I know that my whole house isn't going to be Brenda ified to the level that I would make it if I lived here all by myself and had all the time in the world to make it that way, but I can have little pockets of my space and so like my kids know that my bathroom, my master bathroom, that is my Zen sanctuary.
Brenda Schmidt: Do not bring your toys in there. Nobody leave your clothes on the floor and they're like, that is my little space, my Zen space. And that's where I can do my military corners. I can make it meticulous. I can keep it clean, keep it tidy, but that's also where I'm taking care of myself. And so I really need that space to take care of me and I don't want chaos in there.
Brenda Schmidt: And so by having those little pockets and I have a rocking chair in my bedroom and that rocking chair is another one of those little pockets. And so maybe the rest of my bedroom gets a little crazy because my husband's also in that room. And so he has his version. I have my version, but my rocking chair, like that is my one little spot.
Brenda Schmidt: If I want to read a book, if I want to cross stitch, if I want to take a nap on that chair, like that is another spot that nurtures [00:45:00] me. Therefore it needs to. Reflect that and not just be greeting me with chaos whenever I'm looking to be comforted and recharged and so we can let go of this idea of like our house needs to be so perfect.
Brenda Schmidt: Just have the pockets of spaces that we feel nurtured in and let go of the rest. It's fine. Yeah,
Sara Mayer: I think about Pinterest a lot in your examples and. So many times moms are trying to live up to the Pinterest standard, especially with treats and making cookie monsters out of vegetables and whatever else is going on Pinterest.
Sara Mayer: And that has been become the standard in a lot of schools. And so I think about this because there are women out there who, and men who truly love making those little whatever Pinterest desserts and. Snacks and everything for class. And then there are the others who are like, here's some celery in a bag with some peanut butter.
Sara Mayer: Isn't that good enough for [00:46:00] the snack for the class? And I was just thinking about how that's such an opportunity to give that person joy. And maybe you just ask that mom to do your snack for you.
Brenda Schmidt: Oh my gosh. One of my best friends from growing up, she is the mom that she like makes the little reindeer candy canes at Christmas for all her kids classes and the little dum dums with the Kleenex over it with the ghost, for Halloween, like all those things that you see.
Brenda Schmidt: And so she is that because it's a creative outlet for her. That is her me time is making those is her me time. And so what we don't realize is that. Those are the pictures that get posted is look at this creative outlet that I got so much joy out of and you see the love in it and they post it.
Brenda Schmidt: But for all of us. Who are like, yeah, I'm not making the little dum ghosts or the candy cane reindeers I will opt out of that. My version is if the preschool hounds me for long enough that I need to pitch in to the snack calendar, then when I do my [00:47:00] target drive up order, then I'm just going to pick some target snacks and I actually make it a completely separate order.
Brenda Schmidt: So it comes in a separate bag and I take said bag that has my name and barcode on it and I give it to the preschool and say, there you go. And so that's my version. I'm going to outsource it. I'm going to delegate. I'm going to make it the like systems automated version of it. That makes it still doable for me that I'm like checked off the list.
Brenda Schmidt: Cool. I participated. I am like being part of this process for you guys. But at the same time, I know I don't have to do the reindeer and the dumb ghosts, because that's not my creative outlet. My creative outlet is like the cool thing to do in my business. Yeah, and unicycling. Exactly. And paddleboarding and all these other things.
Brenda Schmidt: So for her she loves that. That's her thing. And so sometimes we are measuring our creative outlets or this other thing, and that's their creative outlet. We're measuring our expectation of what we think we should be doing to what somebody else's creative outlet is. And so we don't look at somebody's [00:48:00] amazing oil painting that they spent three weeks on and then rethink to ourselves.
Brenda Schmidt: Oh, I should be painting that oil painting. We don't think that because that's their job. That's like their thing. They're that's our, their artistic endeavor. So we just need to realize that like some women who get really into doing really great makeup or some women who get really into fashion, right?
Brenda Schmidt: Like these are all external things that we wear and we do. So it looks like something that everyone should do, but no, that's their creative outlet. They are getting that creative joy from that. And so we can just let go of it. I don't need to do the fashion. I don't need to do the makeup. I don't need to do the baked goods.
Brenda Schmidt: Any of those things that we feel that pressure we could just let go. Cause it's like the whole Pinterest or Instagram worthy. We just have to remember like the person who is posting that got a lot of joy in that process. I love it. We didn't, we don't get joy in the process.
Sara Mayer: And I love that you're having the conversation about the hack that Many people aren't talking about and that's getting help and managing your household like a [00:49:00] community and bringing these people into your fold.
Sara Mayer: I feel like I could talk to you forever. And I know many of our listeners are probably wondering, like, how do they have more of this conversation? How do they get in touch with you? And what might
Brenda Schmidt: they expect? Yes. So Instagram is the best place to follow along on all the things I share and teach. And it also has all my unicycling and crazy adventures.
Brenda Schmidt: Oh, the other one I was so my son wanted a Rubik's cube for Christmas. When I was a kid, I used to be able to solve them. And so this has been another one of my goals recently is I wanted to relearn how to solve them. And also for January, I wanted to be able to solve it in less than three minutes. On a unicycle.
Brenda Schmidt: Not yet, but that actually my kids want to do that next and I met a guy on Instagram who is going to send me a video of him doing a Rubik's Cube on a unicycle that I'm like, so you see, you already meet people that you're like, I would not have met this really cool, awesome person. If I had not shared these fun things that I'm doing with the world [00:50:00] I just love it.
Brenda Schmidt: Ah, people are amazing. So yeah, Instagram is the best place for people to catch up on all things. Kickassmodernmom. com is where you can find out about what my latest programs are. I'm also on Facebook as Brenda Noon Schmidt, and there is also a business page, Kickass Modern Mom. YouTube. TikTok, everything kickass about our mom is the handle across all the platforms. So yeah, I would love to connect with you on there too. I do. Yes, I have a membership. So for any entrepreneur families it's primarily moms in there right now, but as it grows in the entrepreneurial family member could join that membership.
Brenda Schmidt: There is a video course in there. It's the village builder course to get you started on how to tackle that whole process. And then there's also a lot of great resources. I have lots of printables. Like there's a family binder system that you can implement. There's lots of charts to use with your kids.
Brenda Schmidt: So yeah, so lots of printables available in there for you and it gets. More and more stuff added as soon as I discover them from other cool people. And there's also lots [00:51:00] of great interviews from other moms. We call them super mom sessions. And the goal is to have like a Netflix for your mama's soul, for your entrepreneur family to really just learn the strategies to get over the overwhelm and make friends along the way.
Brenda Schmidt: I love
Sara Mayer: it. All right. Thank you so much for being on the show. It's always great to connect with you. I loved our conversation and I know everyone else probably did too. So I hope you connect with Brenda and bold goal crushers. It's time to crush your goals and everything that gets in the way because you do not need to work double time.
Sara Mayer: So let's get to it.
Sara Mayer: Thank you for tuning into the bold goal crusher podcast where we crush goals and everything that gets in the way. I always love to support my community.
Sara Mayer: I look forward to seeing you crush your goals this year.[00:52:00]
