Erica: Hey, girl. By now, you know I have Her Collective, my online community for ambitious women who are done doing it alone. Her Collective is for the women who are smart, capable, and driven, but they find themselves stuck on the sticky floors like self doubt, burnout, and waiting for permission that quite honestly never comes. Inside her, you get more than motivation. You get real support, real strategies, and real momentum. We work on things like clarifying what you want now and what's coming next, building confidence without burning yourself out, navigating hard conversations, career moves, and leadership moments with clarity, and surrounding yourself with women who actually get it. This isn't about hustling harder. It's about moving intentionally with the right tools and the right people in your corner. If you're ready to stop spinning, start choosing yourself, and build a career in life that actually feels aligned, I'd love to welcome you inside her collective. You can learn more and join us at www.joinhercollective.com. Because honestly, girl, you were never meant to do this alone. Question I get asked all the time, it's how do I do it all? Now if you're listening in on this podcast, you probably know me that I'm a wife, I'm a chief people officer. I have two kids, Hudson who's seven and Hallie who's four. I'm a fitness fanatic. So I love movement. I try to get in at least thirty minutes of something most days. I love to cook. I host this podcast. I write for my blog. And I'm an active member of Chief, which is a private group for women in leadership. And I actively do HR coaching and executive coaching and HR consulting in my air quote free time. I even recognize that that is a lot. And when I talk to people about what I do, I am often asked, how do you do it? Which is quickly followed up by, do you even sleep? And y'all, yes. I am a bed queen. I get at least seven to eight hours of sleep a night. I am very serious about that. I wish that I could thrive off of less. I know there are plenty of people who can, but I need sleep to function. So if you're wondering how I do it all and how you can too, I am so glad that you're here because I'm gonna give you all of the real, the honest truth about how I do it all. Are you ready? I don't. Say what? Yep. You heard me. It is impossible to do it all all the time. When I am giving 100% at motherhood, I am not giving 100% at work. When I'm giving a 100% at work, I am inevitably failing somewhere as a mother. I've even had my kids say those heartbreaking things to me such as, oh, I wish you stayed home like the other moms. Y'all, I miss baseball games. I don't sign up for extracurricular activities. I don't go to after dinner drinks with my coworkers. And quite honestly, it has been a hideous amount of time since I have seen some of my very closest friends who live just in the other town. I do not do it all. I can't. But I do what's important when it's important. Big days at work that keep me at the desk late mean it's takeout for dinner. Important school events mean that I miss the company meeting that I typically lead. And those days when I have big deadlines at work and kid stuff, well, fitness usually takes a back seat and, yeah, sometimes so does sleep. It's about balance. It's about letting go of perfectionism and society's expectations of what a good mother and what a hard worker is. It's about putting myself and my mental health first. You cannot fill others cups if you do not first fill your own. But I have nailed down some things over the years that have really helped me stay balanced while doing it all. Are you ready to hear? I'm gonna give you this list in rapid fire. Number one, I time block the hell out of my calendar. I prefer to keep my own calendar so that I can schedule what's important, and I can push whatever isn't until a slower day. I've learned that if I have a thirty minute window free, someone's gonna book over it. And I've also learned that what other people think to be a big priority are not necessarily priorities. They're not emergencies. They can wait for another day. I also knock out all of my mentally taxing items at the start of the day. So I'm naturally a morning person. I wake up super early and I am more focused in the morning. My brain is not tired. I can get more shit done in one hour at the start of the day than I can at two hour in two hours at 4PM. So if I've got stuff that I really need to focus on and give my all to, I do that at the front of the day so that it doesn't take me twice as long at the end of the day. I also don't go to all the school events. So I don't know about you guys, but my kids have the most random events at school. Like, we're talking field day from nine to eleven to which the school then tells you, like, oh, you can take your kid home early if you want to. Y'all tell me how I'm gonna go to school. Number one, to drop them off. And then number two, go back to school to watch field day of all things. I see my kids play outside enough. And then number three, back again for pickup time. No, ma'am. No ham. No turkey. Not doing that. So what? Is my kid disappointed? Sometimes. But we talk about my work. We talk about what I do. And we talk about how I am always there for the things that matter. I also meal plan and meal prep. So on Sundays, I do all of my shopping. I plan out the meals that I'm gonna have. And then when I come home, I wash and I cut all of my produce for the entire week. It makes it so much easier to stay healthy and stay on track when I can just reach in the fridge and grab something. I also don't have to worry about my kids grabbing fruit that's not washed because we all know they are not going to do it. But I try to find meals that I can cook that are simple and delicious and healthy. One of my most favorite food bloggers, recipe professionals is the blog, half baked harvest. She's got a lot of great easy recipes. And just today, I cooked a white chicken chili this morning while my kids sat there and ate breakfast because it only took me thirty minutes, and I would much rather have that done this morning than at the end of the day. I also rely on my village. Right? We've all heard it takes a village to raise a child. Yes. And it also takes a village to keep mom from not going crazy. So my my own mother helps out a ton by picking up my kids twice a week and feeding them dinner. That is a huge load off of my plate. I also carpool with my neighbors so that I don't have to go every single day twice a day, and that is a huge help. Now for those of you wondering about my coaching and consulting business, I batch create all of my content. These stepping stone episodes, everything you see on my Instagram and my LinkedIn, I batch everything that I create, and then I use scheduling tools to help post on a regular basis so that I don't have to think about it. And this has saved me time and time again when I've either been really tired, super busy, or just not feeling creative. And then I also work remote. Now I know that this is a privilege that is not afforded to everybody. But if I can help it, I will never do work that requires my in office presence on a regular basis. I just won't do it. When I am home, I cut out the commute time, I cut out the get ready time, I cut out the traffic time, and I get to do all of the things in the middle of the day in between calls and in between tasks that I wouldn't get to do if I were in the office. Like switching over laundry in the middle of the day or taking care of a random household chore, and this is a luxury that I will not live without again. And also, I hate to say it for a lot of people out there. This one's gonna be a really hard one to to hear, but I gave up alcohol. And by giving up alcohol, I am so much more focused. I have so much more energy. My brain is on point. My creativity is on point, and I just feel better. I have no time where I'm sitting around being sluggish, being tired. Like I said, I know a lot of people aren't gonna love to hear that one, but it is one that has really allowed me to do all of the things that I do. So there you have it. Cat's out of the bag, y'all. I do not do it all. And I love that people think that I am, but I don't. I do have a pretty good way of making it sound and look like I do, you know, but I don't. And I'm not ashamed of that. I'm not embarrassed about it or upset about it. We need to celebrate everything that we are doing. And I'm pretty damn happy with myself and what I managed to do in a day and in a week and in a month and a year. So my advice to you is if you're looking at someone who appears to be doing it all, just know that they're not. And if they look like it, they probably have a lot of help at home, which is great. So stop trying to do it all. Do what makes you happy and what makes sense for your life. Don't do what society tells you to do. Don't feel obligated to go to every baseball game. It's okay to RSVP note to parties that you're not excited about. So I just wanna take a moment and just tell you, you don't have to do it all. You really don't. You are amazing and you are enough. And I think as women, we don't hear that as often as we should. You are enough and you are doing enough. Cheers.