If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff, do you know this children’s book? It is a favorite of my boys. We purchased it for the week we reviewed the letter C and they both loved it! If you are not familiar here is a reading by the author Laura Numeroff:
Check Out All the Cute things from this book:
In short, if you give a mouse a cookie, lots of different things happen and the cookie is the last of the worries. It is hilarious and all so similar to my life as a Mompreneur. It’s not so much about giving me a cookie, but if you give a Mom a business (or in reality if a Mom is growing a business).
So, if you give a mom a business (AKA my typical day)
If you give a mom a business, she will wake up early to get some work done,
She opens her email and her website to start to write,
The kids will wake up 10 minutes into her work time and she will be told they need to go potty,
In the bathroom she will remember she has laundry to do and start the laundry for the day,
In the laundry, she gets a messenger chat from a client who site is broken and who needs help ASAP,
She goes back to her desk to get into client website, and her email will show a mentor is doing a challenge to create a sales page,
She gets excited and starts to work on the sales page, her kids then come and tell her they are hungry,
She gets the kiddos some breakfast, and remembers she needs to wash the dishes,
She washes the dishes and realizes it is time to go to the park that she promised her kids …
It is 9:30 am and she is exhausted and not much has been accomplished ????????????
You can see this can go on all day long. Don’t get me wrong, I love my DIY Mompreneur Life, as my little sits in my lap, this is what I want but sometimes I can feel like I just gave a mouse a cookie. You may think, man, she needs some better productivity techniques (I probably do!), or some child care (that would be lovely), or just be a mom (let’s not go there). It is true these may be the things I need to do but there are still days that look like this even with the best planned and productivity tips in mind (I am a big productivity nerd and even have a course on Mompreneur Productivity).
That means that mistakes are made, things are forgotten and possibly launched too soon, these things happen, it’s a part of running a business and having kiddos. I choose to focus on helping other Mompreneurs because I find it so incredibly important to find others that get me. I ran businesses and did a lot before I had kids, at one point I worked full time, taught Zumba classes, had a side-hustle with my fiancé, was planning a wedding, taught two university education courses, and went to graduate school full time ????. It was a lot! When things changed I was about a year away from having my Ph.D., I had my son and things changed. Before, I was able to manage my autoimmune disease by taking naps in the middle of the day and adjusting my schedule as needed to still accomplish everything, suddenly that was no longer an option. My baby needed me to be awake, present, and able to take care of him. This meant changing things up, academia was no longer an option for the near-future and I worked my way to building a business. The key thing between continuing to pursue my Ph.D. and finding my place in the land of Entrepreneurship is that with my business, I surrounded myself with others who understood what it was like to be a mom and grow a business. Coming from the world of academia, I quickly learned as a perfectionist that it was unattainable. Sometimes you just need to hit publish and get it done. I follow this strategy in my business as well. I admit sometimes it is not the best strategy because maybe I send an email out before it is ready to be seen or create a sales page that wasn’t quite ready for prime time, my philosophy though is that if I am surrounding myself with fellow Mompreneurs, they should get it and if they don’t then they do not belong in my circle. I don’t make mistakes to harm myself or others, I make mistakes because I am human, a mom, and an excited business owner.
I apologize for my long rant. I just needed to get this out. I want my audience to know this about me deep down. I want to put it all out there. I am a mouse that has been given a cookie, and sometimes things don’t go as planned.
Who do you surround yourself with? Do you wait until everything is perfect and never quite get your magnificent ideas out there or are there times that you are willing to risk putting something out that may not be at the best possible stage. However it is, just keep in mind some of us are a mouse that is offered a cookie. ????????????????????
BY TECHIE MAMMA