Life-Changing Habits For A More Wholesome & Happy Year
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Seasons of God by Richard Blackaby*
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If you're feeling like you're distracted from what really matters in life, you want more time with your loved ones and not more hyperconsumption, and then maybe somehow the goal post on "what is enough" keeps on moving for you, meaning that you're always chasing a higher and higher revenue number than this is for you.
I knew that a beautiful unhurried life rooted in contentment and time with those I love was my goal, but somehow that wasn't happening.
Maybe your husband has also commented that your spending seems a little bit much and why is there another Amazon package landing on the doorstep every single day?
And you know you want to change, but you don't know how. Then this interview with Nancy about her contentment challenge will be life-changing for you.
We are also going to speak about how she runs a business while being a very present mom to her four little ones, advice for parents on how to manage both work and family life, and how to plan for maternity leave from someone who has had four maternity leaves as an entrepreneur.
I love Nancy's podcast and I did her contentment challenge a few years ago, and at the end of it I felt less rushed, less stressed, more present, and more aware of what really matters in my life. So I hope you enjoy this interview with Nancy Ray.
Could you please explain your contentment challenge? But before you tell me about what it is, could you also explain what was happening in your life that showed you that you needed a change and that the challenge was a necessity?
Yes, oh I'm so excited to talk about this and it's been a little bit since I have and so this is like a good a good jog down memory line for me. So my husband and I, my husband's name is Will, when we were engaged to be married we got hold of Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University and I came up in a very wealthy family and was like a free spirit spender.
I spent money on everything and he was brought up in like a very hard-working family but he knew like value of a dollar. He had been working since he was in high school like mowing lawns and doing all kinds of things. When we got married we needed to have this course because we were coming from two totally opposite ends of the spectrum.
We got married, took this course and we're like okay we need to be on the same page about money and we dove in. We're so thankful for that course.
This is not like an endorsement but honestly it like changed our marriage and our lives, it was really really helpful for us and if you're not familiar with it Dave lays out seven baby steps.
Baby step one is: you get quick thousand dollars in the bank as quick as you can and then
Baby step number two is: like you pay off all your debt using the debt snowball and on and on and on he gives you like markers to hit for your finances.
Baby step six fast forwarding a little bit is paying off your house and
Baby step seven is live like no one else and give like no one else.
So basically you're completely out of debt including your house all you need to do at that point is like save money and give money and enjoy and that's like the goal right is to get to baby step seven.
So we were bullish about this Paige.
Will and I were like oh okay we are all in and now this was not without tears. I definitely cried a lot as I like had to learn to live on a budget and not get everything that I wanted all the time and um but one of the principles is like okay well if you if you want to win with money you have to live on less than you make right. You have to have that extra cushion so you can pay off debt and you can save and do these things.
So we started living really tightly like right when we were married and the same year we got married I started my photography business and he was working as a manager at Walgreens and we decided okay we're gonna live on his salary even on less than his salary and anything that I make in my photography business we're gonna use just to put on debt.
So fast forward a few years we buy our first townhouse I think it's like two and a half years into marriage we had saved like a pretty good down payment for it and we just get and we're like completely out of debt we just get completely on fire to pay off our house.
So by the time we were 25 and 26 years old we had paid off our house and this was a very affordable house but you know it's pretty rare that you would pay off your house at 25 and 26 and I tell you what we sacrificed to get there we lived on like nothing we never went out to eat we I mean we were so passionate about hitting this goal it really did amazing things for our marriage having this like joint goal together and we were like weird like according to our friends and family like we were living in a way that was just kind of weird but we did it and so we get there we're so excited so proud we hit baby step seven!
I think what happened next was that in my mind is that a switch happened and I'm like okay we made it like I can spend money on whatever I want to and I can go shopping at Whole Foods now for my groceries and I can go to Target and anthropology and whatever and buy clothes now because I have not had like a clothing budget and what happened right after we hit baby step seven Paige I started overspending on the budget in like every category and Will and I for the first time in our marriage started like fighting about money and he's like what what are you doing and I'm like well we're on baby step seven!!
He's like that doesn't mean that we get to buy everything!!
I'm like well I know but I've been living so tight for so long I thought that it would be like you know a reward and I'd get to live how I wanted to live and I quickly learned that there is still a finite amount of money that we were making and I couldn't live like that and I had this kind of like internal battle like we're here but I thought it would be this way but it's not this way and like you know we got our house payment that we didn't have to pay but that's only so much money I couldn't like spend everything and at that point God started working on my heart.
I'm a Christian and a lot of this comes from kind of a spiritual perspective because it really is like part of my walk with God which is where this challenge came from.
I went to this business conference and God just started working on my heart and I just felt like I heard this like not like the voice of God but I just had this idea kind of pop into my head that I needed to give up shopping for three months.
And I was like no no I'm not giving up shopping for three months like this is not what I worked so hard for and the idea just kind of kept coming back and it really just felt like it was God just kind of like putting that on my heart like hey you know what happiness is not found in spending stuff and getting stuff and living however you want like at the expense of your marriage like that's not happiness.
Happiness and real joy and contentment is actually found living within boundaries and having your focus on the right things
But I really resisted that feeling… the first thing I resisted was the time frame. Three months. Are you kidding? I don't know. Three months is way too long.
Like, okay, how about two weeks or like maybe at the most a month, you know?
And this conference I was at lasted for two days. And I remember the first day, I was like, I'll do it for a month. I'll do it for a month.
And then I was kind of mad about it.
But then God was just saying, it's gotta be three months. And looking back, I'm so glad that it was. I know I'll talk about how significant it was to do it for three months. But by the end of the conference, I was just like, okay, Lord, like I hear you and I'm not happy about it, but I'm going to obey this kind of prompting that I feel. And I'm going to give up shopping for three months. And it's not, you don't give up shopping on like food or like things that are like gas money for your car. Like, you know, you, you always buy the necessities, but I'm talking about, you know, Amazon target, anthropology, like all the fun things that I was just kind of spending on like needlessly that kind of shopping.
And it, it changed my life. Paige. It really changed my life and my perspective forever. And I'm certainly not perfect, but that's kind of how the contentment challenge was born.
And I have done it every year since then for the last 10 years. This was 10 years ago that that happened. And so for the first three months, I think I skipped one year when I had like a baby around that time. But it's now it's like a heart check that I do kind of every year to make sure that my focus is on the right things.
Can you tell me if someone's watching this and they're thinking, Ooh, sounds good. I might want to do it. What are the rules or like what, how, how does someone do the contentment challenge?
So the rules that I kind of live by, the first time I did it is three months of no extra spending. You can, like I said, you can buy necessities.
Please spend money if you break your glasses and need a new pair of glasses, like, you know, or if your car breaks down, please get your car repaired. All the things that you need to function in life, do those things.
That's great.
But you know, you know, the things that are like weak spots, it's, you know, home decor, clothing that you don't really need, but that you maybe tend to justify a lot of times, those kind of things. And so you just don't spend money on those things for three months.
And instead you replace that with experiences and relationships and getting creative with the things that you already have.
So, throughout the contentment challenge, I have challenges that you can do once a week. And one of those is like shopping your own closet, getting rid of a lot of clothes that you don't wear and creating new outfits with the ones that you already have.
Same thing with your house, doing a house refresh, digging through any old decor that you have, bringing that back out, rearranging things.
And it's amazing what you can do with the things that you already have. And it just gives you eyes to see all that you have to be grateful for. But those are, those are the parameters of it.
Three months of no extra spending with a focus on what you have and the relationships and experiences in your life.
(Paige:) I love that. Okay. So I can say I have done this and I thought it was fantastic. It was a very interesting eye-opening experience.
Wanna do it too? Here’s how & everything you need to know about Nancy Ray’s Contentment Challenge!
Can you tell me about the difference you saw after the challenge. What was different about your life? What did you notice about how you were spending your time in the challenge months? And also when you were shopping afterwards, were you sort of thinking at all differently?
The first thing I noticed when I did this was how many emails I get from stores giving me ads, how much I saw. Coz the first thing I did after noticing this in my inbox was I got to unsubscribe from all these stores.
I realized that it is not good for me to constantly see these new things that they are dropping in their stores. So I unsubscribed from all of them. I just was like, I can't see these things. These new fancy shiny things.
I also noticed that I would really spend unnecessary amounts of time just kind of dropping by stores in places that I liked just because, and I would, I would waste like an hour here, 30 minutes there.
Because when I cut that out and was like, I'm not going to do that, before I would just pull in to Anthropologie or like, if I'm out that way, because Anthropologie is not near me, I would always stop by there. So I decided I'm not going to do that anymore.
And so I'm like, oh my gosh, I just saved myself like an hour of time.
I stopped grocery shopping at Target at that point because I realized that my grocery shopping needed to be at a grocery store because my, my groceries at Target were not just groceries. I would always add a few extra things to the cart. So those were like little habits that I noticed.
But like the bigger thing I think is I saw this part of myself in my mind and my heart that was always looking for material things to satisfy me on a daily basis. And once I stopped that, I got really clear, like, Oh, this is not really the kind of person that I want to be.
I want to be someone who, who looks to God to get my satisfaction, who really focuses on being content and happy in my home. No matter what home that is, um, you know, who looks to the relationships in my life, like my relationship with my husband and, um, now my relationship with my kids and friends, like those are the things that really fill me up. And I was constantly chasing. And I think, I mean, we are just marketed to all the time and we don't realize how much we are marketed to. And our minds are just like,
Oh, that's beautiful.
Oh, I want that.
But, and even on Instagram, right? Like there are so many ads that are served to you all the time. It's just a really good heart check more than anything to be like, who is the kind of person I want to be?
And am I living that out in my daily life?
The first month for me was kind of ugly. I really struggled realizing that this is almost an addiction in my life.
And it's not like big.
I didn't spend like crazy, but it just was always looking for something new.
And then by month two, I was like, okay, this feels different, I'm getting settled here. And month three was really when I felt like I had a really big breakthrough and realized that this is the kind of life that I want to live. I am riding my bike, I'm knitting and doing different things that are crafty that I haven't done in ages. And it's because of the space that I cleared out of my life just from shopping, which is so embarrassing to admit on the internet, but also it's just real because that's the life that we live now.
We're being inundated with so many things that we have to have all the time.
(Paige:) I think that's so true. And I wouldn't even say embarrassed to say it on the internet I relate, I'm sure literally everyone who is reading this probably relates to that as well. I think it's so common. And I noticed the same thing. The reason that I decided to do it the first time was my husband. We had bought a new house. And when you move into a house, you need a bunch of things. And so there was literally an Amazon package on our door every single day.
And in Germany, you had to take the cardboard and you had to go take it to the dump yourself. And my husband’s job is garbage. So he had to take all the cardboard from all these purchases and he told me like - honey this is too much, like I don't think this is good.
And also this is an unbelievable amount of cardboard and garbage
Like it's really not great. And so that's what made me think, maybe I should try it.
And it was really fantastic. And I'm going to do it again this year. I decided that when this episode is going live, that's what I'm going to do it again for another three months.
(Nancy:) Oh, I love it. That's awesome. Yeah, it really is amazing. I thought it was like a one-and-done thing for me. But I had such a huge response from people saying like, I need to do this. I don't know that I can do it. Or like, I'm scared. And I'm like, yeah, it's, I know I was scared too, because you have to really like kind of look deep in yourself and be like, Oh can I do this?
What are the parameters I have to set in my life to be able to do this successfully?
But I got such a huge response from other people throughout that year, trying it saying things like, I can't even tell you how much this meant to me in my life.
It helped our marriage.
It helped our budget.
It helped me just my heart, like really draw close to God and say like, God, I really want you more than anything. I don't need all this stuff.
And I'm like, that is, that's the whole purpose of it for me is it's not it. I mean, it is like, yes, it's helpful and healthy to put a pause on the spending for like every household, but it's like a spiritual thing for me because I'm like, I, I need this heart check. I need to look around and be like, you have blessed me so much, Lord. There are so many things in my home and around me that I have to be thankful for.
And when I don’t have that heart check I live in this cycle of I need this, I need that. I want this, I want that. And sometimes you have to do something drastic to just break that cycle and be like, no, there's so much goodness around me and so much to be thankful for.
And for me, the contentment challenge did that. And that's why I keep coming back to it every year. It's so powerful for me.
Changing gears slightly. You decided to close up shop on your very successful photography business in 2019. And since then you've run a podcast and you've worked just one day a week. Tell me about the desire to close down the photography business. What was behind it and why did it feel like the right move?
Oh yeah. That's a big question. I will try to be concise with this story, but it is an amazing story.
So, um, a little bit of context first. So I had a photography business for 12 years, weddings, some families as well.
The first five years was just me and my husband. And then I started hiring. So I built a team of photographers and we served the Southeast doing weddings, families. It was me and three other ladies plus like three interns a year.
And it just kept growing.
It was doing great. And I loved it.
And while I had my photography business, I started having babies and I had four babies in six years. Now at the time of this recording, they're, they're ages two, four, six, and eight. They're so sweet. So fun.
So I had my first baby and then two and a half years later, had my second baby. And then very quickly when my second was like eight months old, got pregnant with my third, very surprising. And at that point, my husband and I went to this couples retreat, like a marriage retreat, newly pregnant and like overwhelmed running this business.
And at this retreat, the question is given to us. When is the last time that you've just gone back to neutral before the Lord and just said, like, here is my life. What would you have me do with it?
And I immediately just started crying. It just like was one of those moments where I was like, okay, that scares me to ask that question. And also I need to ask this question because I'm the kind of person that just sees something and I go for it.
And I just had been just going, going, going. But I needed to stop.
And that started this year-long journey for me of praying and asking God to help lead me in my work in my business.
And then I was introduced to Richard Blackaby. He has this book called Seasons of God*. And my husband actually heard him at a conference and came back and told me what he said.
And I just wept.
I'm like growing my belly about to have this baby, you know, but he said that, that a lot of times, businesses and life in general reflects seasons.
There's like springtime when everything is like new.
And then there's summer when you're just like grinding and working so hard and like just crushing it.
And then there's like fall and harvest where you're really enjoying the fruits of your labor.
And then there's winter and that you can kind of see that in like the arc of life.
Like spring is like when you’re a child, summer is like just when you're working really hard and you know, maybe building businesses or raising kids and just doing the work of life. And then harvest is when you get to see the fruit of all that labor. And then winter's kind of towards the end of your life.
And one of the things that Richard Blackaby said at this conference was there are seasons to businesses. And I was like, I never heard that before. And he kind of explains like sometimes you know, when you're new in your business, you're green, you're excited, you're learning everything. And then there's summer. And that's when you're just putting in like a lot of the hard work. And then there's harvest, you're seeing so much of the fruit of your labor. And then there's winter. And that's when you can kind of close down the business.
And that can mean just closing it down. That can mean selling it to someone else that can look a lot of different ways, but it's very rare that people keep a business alive forever or that you're in the same role in your business forever.
And after just praying throughout that year and really trying to listen to God's voice and then hearing this example - Hey, it's actually normal and natural for you to close down a business.
And I just was feeling very burned out at the time and very tired and about to have a third baby, very overwhelmed at the prospect of running the business and having three kids and all that. It just like clicked. And I was like, I think we need to close it. And it was so hard. It was so hard to make that decision because it was doing so well. My business was a source of joy for me and it was doing really, really well, but I knew, I just knew in my heart, like this is just the time.
And so because of weddings and the nature of weddings, we had, clients booked out for the next year, year and a half, but we went ahead and targeted like 2019 is the end of my business.
So I had the baby, my third, my little boy, in 2018. And then we spent 2019 closing the chapter of Nancy Ray photography and oh my goodness, right before COVID we closed it down.
We dodged a huge bullet with that because weddings were just so crazy that year. Like they were all canceled and it was wild and crazy. But at that point I just felt sadness. I like grieved the closing of it because I had spent so many years of my life giving to it. But then I also felt this relief and I was just so grateful to not have to be gone on the weekends now that I had like these little kids at home and, not having to arrange childcare all the time. Like I just really brought that back and, only have childcare like one day a week so that I could do my podcast. Something that's more fulfilling for me. And it just matched the season of my life as a mom of three little kids.
It felt right.
And I'm so grateful because obviously 2020, 2021, it was just very unpredictable and I was so thankful just to have the flexibility there. So that's kind of the long story.
I tried to keep that short but for me to keep that, that story short is difficult because there's just a lot of a lot to it.
But I think the bottom line is there's just seasons to life and seasons to business. And I think the sooner we can embrace that and know that, the happier we'll be.
Can you tell me, yeah, as you saw that happening, what were you thinking and what were you saying to God in that time?
Like, I don't know. Like this is nuts. I think 2020 is interesting because obviously the world got flipped upside down and none of us knew what was happening, but I had this immense sense of relief. I'm so thankful that I'll deal with these, the weddings and the clients and the contracts that like all my friends who are photographers were dealing with and I just felt relief that like my focus could be home, making sure that my kids were just stable and good and taken care of.
And they were really little, so we didn't really have to deal with a ton of like schooling from online or any of that, you know?
But yeah, I was grateful. I felt relieved. Yeah, definitely.
Had you thought about selling the business at all or what made just deciding to close it feel like the right decision?
So my business was branded as Nancy Ray Photography and everybody knew it as that. So I just felt like I can't really sell this because it's kind of attached to my name. However, one of the girls who worked with me became a wedding photographer and I did like a very small kind of transaction with her where she could just get all of the clients and then any of the new clients that came in, I would just push them to her, but it just felt peaceful and right just to be kind of done because I didn't really feel like I could sell something with my name all over it.
(Paige:) Learnt that lesson myself too. There are pros and cons to a personal brand!! More about those here!
Coming back to this theme of enough. I would imagine closing down the photography business has an impact on your family finances. A lot of people wouldn't be in the place to even have that decision be an option because their expenses are just to the point where they need both incomes. Nut you and your husband have spoken a lot about Dave Ramsey and budgeting. And can you talk about your sort of family philosophy on budgeting and finances and how that even gave you the option to close the business down?
Yeah. Well, going back to kind of the beginning of this chat, like that really long intro I gave circling back to that of us always just trying to live on one income, paying off our house at an early age - that has really set us up in such a way that we've had the flexibility to do that.
And it's fun to look back at our marriage and see how we kind of have like leaned back and forth, in supporting each other.
And so in the beginning he was working at Walgreens and I wasn't making any money. So he was like the income in our family. And then as my photography business grew, we were able to pay off our house and then get the financial freedom for him to step away.
He then became a youth pastor and then he stepped away from that to start his own business. So I supported us for a little while while he started his own business. And now he's continuing to grow. And he ended up joining a different team and is growing that now. It's amazing. And he loves what he does.
And now as I've stepped back, he's supporting us again.
So it's like, I think just starting out with this mentality of living on less than you make, trying to live on one income, if you can, gives you the flexibility. And I know not everyone's in that position. If you're watching this, you're like, great. Well, I wish I had done that when I first got married or I wish, you know, that we could do that now, but I'm like locked in now. I do think that there are lifestyle choices, that go with the income that you can make or change to get to that place. And also I just want to encourage you, it's just never too late.
It's never too late to start on that journey or do something different.
It'll look different and feel different than the way you've lived.
And sometimes that can be hard, but it's just a short, short time of sacrifice for a really long-term goal that will benefit you the rest of your life. So yeah, I think that has been like such a blessing again. I'm like so thankful we followed that plan from an early time because financially it has allowed us to kind of move and, and change, our path career-wise as we've grown in seasons of our lives have changed.
Can you also talk to me about what does your business look like now?
So I've just like thrown spaghetti against the wall and I've just tried different things and seen what I like. And then now looking ahead towards 2024, as I'm planning for next year, I'm taking a ton of time just like reflecting on the things that really brought me joy, the things that really felt burdensome to me and really getting serious about asking myself, what are the ways that this business and the work I'm doing, how is this serving my family? Is it bringing me joy? Like collectively, is it worth continuing? And if so, what are the key points that I really want to continue and why?
So I'm excited to see kind of what comes out of 2024. Because I've tried some things in this last year that like I haven't loved, some other things that I have. And then yeah, I'm just going to kind of go from there and try to like recreate things and make it really lean and streamlined and joyful. That is my goal. That's great.
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Do you have any inklings or gut feelings already about what you're like, "Ooh, want to add that or might drop that?"
Yeah, I think so I tried a mastermind for the first time. And it has been so great getting to know the ladies in it. But it has become clear to me that I really love one-on-one stuff a lot more than group stuff. So it was a really great learning experience for me. But I think I've decided I'm not going to do that anymore. So that's going to be dropped.
I do get a lot of joy from my podcast. So I'm going to try to keep that going in some capacity. But I think I'm also going to try to batch it so that I can take like a huge amount of time off next year while keeping that going. I definitely want to just be like full-on mom during the summer. I don't want to have to work. I don't have to do anything. So I kind of want to like plan ahead and have these little like spurts of really intense work, maybe just aligned with the school year with my kids, and then just be able to completely like take off and on the back end of my business, I'm streamlining so much and cutting so many expenses in my business. I just want it to be so simple. And that's I think that's just going to be really good for me and where I'm at so that if I need to just stop for a little while I can, if I have a new creative idea that I want to implement, it can be like easy and I can do it.
Yeah, and I'm thinking of restructuring some of my courses and putting them out there in a way that's kind of new, but I haven't totally landed on how yet I'm excited about it, though.
A lot of moms watch this. Can you give advice thinking back, especially in your photography days, managing like the time and the brain space for both business and life, any tips, hacks, advice you can give?
Yes. And it's a lot of different things that have worked for me, but I'm going to just share them all in a big pot of advice.
So first is theme days. So assigning themes to your days, like focus points to your day.
So Mondays for me. So my girls go to a university model school. So I homeschool them Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. They're in school Monday, Wednesday.
So Monday for me, I focus on my home and emails and like correspondence, admin stuff.
Tuesdays is like mom homeschool day, full on mom hat.
Wednesday is like my work day, like my one work day a week where I focus on creating content and my podcast and really getting like some of the meat done that I need to get them.
Thursday, again, my mom hat is on. I'm homeschooling, running around, you know, we do gymnastics, piano, all those kinds of things.
Friday is like our fun, free day.
And I just leave that with a lot of flex space for play dates or getting coffee with friends and like letting the kids play or just staying home all day or going to a park, going to hike. Like we just try to have fun on Fridays.
And then we also really prep for our rest day on Saturday.
We try to treat every Saturday like a vacation and let the kids like watch TV in the morning and sleep in and we go on a hike and we have a double movie night every Saturday. My husband and I will watch a movie after the kids go to bed. But right before that we like watch a movie with the kids. We just make it a really fun, really restful day.
And then Sunday is like church and like prep for the weekdays. We do all our chores. The kids do chores. Yeah, just clean up the house, fold laundry, kind of get everything back to normal.
So I think naming like the focus of every day really helps.
Batching work is another thing.
So that'd be the second thing is just trying to do your work all together, like similar work, batching it together helps you stay focused. I think as moms, like it's, we really lose a lot of our ability to focus because there's just, we're constantly interrupted.
There are so many different things to take care of so the third thing that I do is I make a game out of it.
I have this timer that's actually meant for kids, but I use it for myself. It's called the time timer*. It's like a visual timer. You can get it on Amazon*.
So for example, I’ll put it in the kitchen. I'm like, okay, Nancy, 20 minutes to clean the whole kitchen. And then I'll like set a timer for, you know, like cleaning up a room or tidying downstairs or whatever. I do it with my emails. I have like this game I play with myself with called email ninja and I just set a timer for 30 minutes and see how many emails I can delete out of my inbox in 30 minutes.
So yeah, just making games out of things, trying to stay focused and like batching the work together.
The fourth thing that I would say is going to regular therapy.
Like I truly believe this has been so healing and so helpful for me the last several years. Transitioning to motherhood is no joke.
I mean, there's just a lot that your body goes through that your mind goes through, your heart goes through and that's been really helpful for me just to have like an outlet to kind of process all of those things with and just take care of my heart, my mind as well.
And then lastly, like I feel so much clarity when I get enough sleep and when I exercise.
And so I think as a mom, that's those are two of the hardest things because there are certain times where we can't control the amount of sleep we get like newborn phase when your kid is sick or if you're just, if you just have a rough sleeper for a while, like it's just hard, but if you can prioritize going to bed early and getting enough sleep and just exercising, that has been such a game changer for me just to have like clarity in my brain space.
Those like basic things. So those are, those are like five quick things.
Theme days
Batching your work
Making timer games out of things
Going to therapy
Taking care of yourself, um, mentally and like in your heart
And also just physically like exercise and sleep.
Those would be like my biggest game changers.
Can you also talk to me about maternity leave as an entrepreneur?
I'm really passionate about this. I love talking about this because a friend of mine told me like minimum of four months, if you can take off a minimum of four months. And I just thought, that sounds so extreme. Like that sounds so long. I think I'll bounce back fine. I don't need to take off a third of a year.
And that is some of the best advice that I received. And I remember getting to the end of the four months and being like, Oh wow. Oh, I had no idea. And like, I really needed that. And I even could take a little bit more.
So my first baby, I took four months off.
Oh, and this is another piece of advice, if you can set up like an email responder and if you have a team or if you have someone working with you, you can let them kind of, you can train them to run your inbox for you. I highly recommend doing that. But I had this going away message was so extreme, not a going away message, um, autoresponder in my emails that was like,
Hey, I'm on maternity leave and I'm going to probably delete this email. So if you really need me, email me back in four months.
I mean, that was so extreme, but it really gave me such peace of mind to just know. And did I actually delete them? Like, no, I had someone looking in my inbox reading everything. They would pass along things that are important to me, but it gave me peace of mind.
Emails are just stressful and you feel the need to be in your inbox and you don't want to be in your inbox when you have a little baby. You just don't.
Your mind is in a completely different space.
So I, I did like an extensive, I have a whole podcast episode on how to prepare for maternity leave. I did a very extensive prep work to it. I did blog posts on like what my plan was, how it's going to go about it. And that was the best prep work I ever did.
And it also showed me that I can do the same thing for other types of breaks.
Now I don't need a maternity leave, but I can take a sabbatical. I can plan ahead and take like really big chunks of work off a year in and it not really affect things very much.
And that's pretty exciting. So I would say minimum of four months if you're considering it and try to be as hardcore about protecting that time as you possibly can delegate everything out, prep stuff ahead of time.
And when you have your baby, just be with your baby.
My last maternity leaves were like six months or like eight months. I was like, no, I want as much time with this baby as possible. It continued to grow with every baby.
Did you have any contact with your team in that time or was it like, I am fully unplugged or how did that go?
Yes. I told them to contact Will, if there is a pressing issue and he was kind of the, the in-between person about it, especially if there was something that was significant that needed my leadership in, but we had once a month meetings.
So once a month on maternity leave, I just had my baby and then like come to the house and like visit with me and just tell me everything that was going on. Give me an update on weddings booked and what was happening. And they’d let me know if there were any issues or if they had any questions. It was like half a day, once a month for the four months. And then if there's something that couldn't wait till that one month for them to reach out to Will, that was the plan.
You also have something really fun that you do with your kids. You have something called the five-minute method. I think it is where you spend dedicated time with each child for five minutes each day. And I thought this was such a genius idea. Can you share what that is?
Yes. So I learned about it in this course, called Positive Parenting Solutions. She calls it mind, body, soul time. She says you have to clear all distractions away. And she recommends 10 minutes, but I have four kids. So I'm like, five minutes will do for us to make this happen.
So my kids names are Millie, Linden, Beaufort, and Benji. We call it like Mama-Millie time or Mama-Linden time or Mama-Beaufort time, Mama-Benji time.
And the idea is that nobody interrupts.
I put my phone away and the kid gets to choose something to do for five or 10 minutes. If I have more time just with Mom, it's just our special time.
And they get to choose and I go along with whatever they say.
There are a couple of rules around it. We don't watch TV during that time. That's not really like quality time, but we'll, we can like play games or play pretend or have a tea party or, play Ninja turtles or, whatever the kid wants.
And it's just a really sweet way to kind of fill up their attention bucket. Because if you don't fill that up in positive ways, a lot of times they'll try to get your attention in negative ways.
And so I found that if you do that consistently, I do feel like their behavior is better because they feel like they're getting the attention in, right? Like a positive way versus a negative way.
Am I perfect about doing this? Absolutely not.
I honestly, during the school year, it's very, very difficult to get it in. But especially when we have like summer break or other breaks, trying to have that time with each kid has been really beneficial and it's fun for me. It feels like I don't feel as bad if I'm like, okay guys, go play. I have to go do this or watch this show for 30 minutes. I've got to do emails or, you know, I don't feel bad because I've spent time with them today.
But if I'm just like busy all the time telling them to go do stuff all the time and I'm never spending quality time with them. That's when the mom guilt can kind of creep in and I’m like, I have to do all this stuff. I just feel bad. I haven't spent time with them.
But if you do this simple thing, that doesn't take a lot of time. It really is like so sweet and so good for your relationship. The benefits are great.
Lastly, let's talk about social media. You are kind of present on social media but kind of not. There's times that you weren't on it at all. Other times where you did it like one week of a month. Can you talk about your decision-making process for that & how it affects your business?
Yeah. So, you know, social media, just love hate relationship with social media. I have grown my Instagram following not really meaning to and over the years, especially with kids, I feel like it gets kind of tricky, like knowing how much do I invest in this? Do I like this? How much do I post about my kids on this?
There are a lot of ethical questions that go into it.
Just the question of do I enjoy this?
What are the feelings I get when I go on social media?
And for a while, it was really fun and really inspiring. And as a photographer, Instagram, especially as like such a visual platform is just really like, I love this. This is so fun. And then as it continued to grow and ads became a thing and more and more people were on there, it's just like, oh, it's just started to feel heavy with kids.
So I've tried a lot of things.
I have not completely pulled back from social media. I haven't like deleted my account or been gone from it. But I have taken significant breaks. So, I'll kind of divide it into two answers.
First is like, I try different rhythms with it. So for a while I called it Instagram Tuesdays where I would only show up on Instagram on Tuesday, once a week, four days out of a month. That was it. Then I tried three weeks off and one week on every month. So it's just on social media, like one week a month. Or maybe I would take one week off every month. I think I did both actually.
I think I did a season where I was only on Instagram for a week and then I was on Instagram for three weeks and then I would take a week off. I've just tried different things because I'm like, here's what's not working
being on this platform a hundred percent of my time.
That's what's not working because it is, it detracts from my mental health, from my joy. Some reels will make me laugh every once in a while, but is it worth the time I'm spending on the app?
No.
So I've tried a lot of different things. There have been significant breaks - earlier this year, I took three months off while I did my contentment challenge. I also did a social media fast, which was so great when I had my fourth baby and took that six months of maternity leave. I also took the six months off of social media completely and that was the best decision I ever made.
I loved just soaking in that time with him away from social media and the pressure of posting about it. So I don't know where I land moving forward Paige. I feel like I'm going to try something new again because I feel like right now it's not working again. The app keeps changing. I keep changing.
I think the healthy thing is just to keep evaluating, just to keep evaluating your relationship with it and being like, Hey, do I need to leave this completely? Do I, what boundaries do I need a place in my own life? And you can turn it any which way. I think the biggest thing though is I just don't want to be a slave to the algorithm or like to the feeling that I have to do this to survive in business because I just don't believe that's true. I think that our minds and our hearts are way more important than doing what we think we should do all the time.
Can you say for anyone who thinks like, well, I have to be on it to be successful in business. Do you think that's true?
No, no, I think you can absolutely pull the plug on it and leave it. But I also think that you need something else in it’s place. And if you’ve been using it as a marketing strategy, it’s worth ramping something else up whilst you ramp it down so it doesn’t become a huge change overnight. Whether it's your email list or a podcast or YouTube or you know, blogging or whatever it is, just constantly pointing people from social media to whatever it is where your content is going to be.
Then when if you want to step away or like really tone it down and just be on there like once or twice a month, tell them where they can find you for real and kind of have that plan in place. But just choose something that brings you joy.
Like I definitely don't believe that you have to be on social media in order to have a successful business. but If you build your whole business off of social media, yeah, you do have to have social media.
I have a friend who's an influencer. She loves it, loves it, and builds her whole business off of it. She loves it. She thrives on it. And I'm like,get after it! That's awesome.
But if that is not you, just find something else that brings you joy and you totally can do something different.
(Paige:) Yeah, I love that. Nancy, thank you so much. I think this conversation has been so wonderful and I'm genuinely so thrilled for all of my audience to get to watch this because I think that there were so many bits and pieces in this from contentment to motherhood to maternity leave to social media that is going to be so extremely valuable for them. So I really appreciate your thoughts and your perspectives and your time.
(Nancy:) Thank you, Paige. I had so much fun. Thanks for having me.
So wonderful, right? Designing an intentional plan for your life and business so you have more room for what really matters isn't easy.
But I personally think that it's so much better when we get to have chats like these with friends, which remind us of what's important. And that's actually why I created a vlog all about my annual planning and how I'm decluttering and intentionally designing my business to leave more space for life and family. Definitely watch that video next right here.