168: My Typical Week

Introduction 

You're listening to Biceps after Babies radio episode number 168.

Hello and welcome to Biceps after Babies radio. A podcast for ladies who know that fitness is about so much more than pounds lost or PRs. It's about feeling confident in your skin and empowered in your life. I'm your host, Amber Brueseke, a registered nurse, personal trainer, wife, and mom of four.  Each week, my guests and I will excite and motivate you to take action in your own personal fitness as we talk about nutrition, exercise mindset, personal development, and executing life with conscious intention. If your goal is to look, feel, and be strong and experience transformation from the inside out, you, my friend are in the right place. Thank you for tuning in, now let’s jump into today’s episode.

 

What my typical week is like  0:48  

Hey, Hey, Hey welcome back to another episode of Biceps after Babies Radio. I'm your host, Amber Brueseke. And this episode is going to be a little bit different than most. A couple years ago, Amy Porterfield, who has a ginormous freakin podcast and is amazing, did a podcast episode about her typical week. And I loved it. I thought it was genius. She went on every morning during the week and would kind of talk about what her day was going to be like, and then she checked in at the end of the day, and kind of,  got you up-to-date on what actually happened during that day. And I just thought it was so fun to be able to hear somebody else's week and the things that other people we're focusing on and the things that come up in other people's lives. It's kind of like, you know, pulling back the curtain, and being able to see, like the real person behind there, like what they're doing, when they're not on Instagram, what they're doing when they're not in their coaching programs, and all the things that go on behind the scenes of running a business, having a family, taking care of 4 kids, and all the things that go into it. Anyway, I thought it was fascinating. I actually really love that episode, like it's an episode that stands out to me as one of my favorites. And so I've wanted to do this episode for a while and I've had to battle a little bit of the like, nobody cares, that comes up. When I think about sharing this. I'm like, “Why would I share my week? Nobody cares.” It's not interesting. And I think a lot of us have this, this thought of like, well, my life's not really that interesting, like, who the heck would care. This actually comes up a lot for me on Instagram. One of my team members who is focused on, you know, social media and helping us grow our social media presence, she has often been on my back, telling me that I need to be on stories more. And like, you know, letting people into my life and letting people into like the things that I'm doing throughout the day. And it's been a challenge, because I never really initially think nobody cares. Like nobody cares what I'm making for dinner. Nobody cares what I'm like, running errands again, nobody cares. And she has to keep reminding me that like in fact, people do care. And that I actually like watching the behind the scenes of a lot of other people. And I think that's you know, that's one of the things that we just like to know about other people's lives. So I'm telling that part of my brain that nobody cares about this, to be quiet for a moment and take a seat, sit down. And I'm going to record this week all about what my typical week is like. So I picked a week, that is really like there's nothing crazy going on this week. I don't have any webinars, like I'm not doing anything super out of the ordinary. This is really just like a really typical week, and I would say between launches,  because when we're in launch season, when we're getting ready for like Macros 101, that's a very different time. And maybe that would be fun. I don't know if you guys can let me know if you like this, and that would be fun for me to record a podcast episode when we're deep in launch prep, you know, a couple of weeks before our challenge. But this is not that time. This is like a little bit cooler, chiller time. And this is just like a very typical week with me running around picking up kids, me working on things in the business behind the scenes. And so I picked this week, because I think it is just like a very average typical week. And what I'm going to do is every morning, I'm going to get on here and record a little bit, you know, just a little snippet about what my plan is for the day. And then at the end of the day, I'll check in, we can kind of see what I plan to do at the beginning of the day and what actually gets done at the end of the day. And hopefully, this will be fun for you.

 

Crossfit is a great way to start my day  4:36  

So I am sitting down and recording this. It's almost 10am on Monday, October 18th. And I was supposed to do this first thing before I did any work, but I have done a little bit of work this morning. So let me just kind of talk to you a little bit about you know, my days so far and what I have in store. So Monday through Friday, every day, I get up and go to CrossFit. I go to the 5:30 class. So, TJ and I woke up at 5am. He goes into the backyard, and he's been doing some weightlifting, like olympic weightlifting training, and his friend typically comes over, he lives like a neighborhood over and so they work out in the backyard together and I go to CrossFit. And today we did a three second pause from squats, which was terrible, and we did a thrusters workout with burpees, which was also terrible. But CrossFit is like a great way for me to start my day. Like I said, Monday through Friday, I'm usually there five days a week, and I love it. Hiding not from buddy, your macros are there, I have friends there. It's just like the time that I start the week for me. And so that goes from 5:30 to 6:30.

 

My usual morning routine 5:47  

And then I pick up my daughter from seminary, which is where she goes to seminary every day, which is for our church, where she's like learning things about the religion and about, you know, scriptures and things like that. So I picked her up on my way home from CrossFit. And then it's all about getting the kids already. So if you don't know I have 4 kids, ages 14, 12, 9 and 7. So they're all in school. And so when I get home from CrossFit, it's like Okay, everybody, you know, getting everybody ready, backpacks packed, make sure their iPads are charged and plugged in and everyone's had breakfast and all of those things. And then typically, at eight o'clock, we leave and I take them to school, it takes me about a half an hour. We live in California, so we do not have buses. I grew up riding a school bus to school, I grew up in Washington, and my husband grew up in California, and he grew up not riding a bus. When we lived in North Carolina, there were buses, and I loved it. And my kids went to school on a bus. But there are no buses here in California. If you heard the ages of my kids, you probably deduce that I have kids in three different schools, I have my daughter's in high school, I have a son in middle school, and then I have two sons in elementary school. So every day, this is like drop off and pick off at three different schools. So anyway, it usually takes me about a half an hour to go drop my kids off at school. But today, my husband was amazing. And he said he didn't have to be at work until a little bit later. And he offered to take the kids to school for me. So that was really awesome because it gave me like an extra half an hour this morning to do things. So during that time, I actually like making some pumpkin muffins because my daughter and I have been embracing the fall nest that's going on. And I really wanted pumpkin muffins for breakfast. So I made some pumpkin muffins really quick. And then I put dinner into the crock pot. We're having French dip sandwiches tonight. So I seared my meat and got it into the crock pot, so that it will be already this afternoon and evening when it comes time for dinner. And I don't always do that. But I do love those days when I'm like on top of it enough to think about, okay, what are we having for dinner and what can I do ahead of time to kind of prepare for it.

 

Typical start time for work  7:56  

And so after that, that's when I dive into work. And I usually try to like my start time for work is typically around nine o'clock. Like that's kind of when I start my day. And the first thing I always do every morning is just get out like a planner, and I just kind of say, Okay, what do I what do I need to get done today? What's on my list? What has to get done today? What would I like to get done today, and I plan out what I'm going to be doing. I even tried to go down to like the hour, like from 9-10 I'm gonna be doing XYZ pretending to love and I'm gonna be doing this. And I will say it almost never goes away that I think it's going to go but I do like starting the day with a plan and specifically knowing what are the highest priority things that I have to get done that day. Because I try to do those first, I always try to knock out the things that I have to get done during the day. And then kind of fill in with all of the other things that need to happen.

 

Podcast recordings  8:52  

So top of my list today, of things that I needed to do was doing this, recording some podcasts. So I typically like to batch our podcast episodes, meaning I will do I usually take like 1-2 weeks, and I'll batch 6-7, sometimes even 8 episodes, so that I'm just taking you know, a couple weeks doing a bunch doing all my interviews or all my solo episodes and batching them all together. And then I can go a month, month and a half without having to record anything and then I do that again. So I typically like to batch podcast episodes, and we're just coming up on where I need to do another batch and so outlining some podcast episodes and doing some recordings were top of my list today because I need to get those done so that they are ready to come out for you guys.

 

A bonus coaching call for Macros 101 clients 9:43  

Another thing that was really high on my priority list, I was at CrossFit today and I had this thought and idea while I was there that I wanted to do a bonus coaching call for our Macros 101 clients. So we're in the middle of our fall round of Macros 101. Our next round will be in March of 2022. So if you want to get on the waitlist for that, go to bicepsafterbabies.com/waitlist, that'll be the next chance you can join and get coaching with me and my team. But we're in the middle of our Macros 101 right now. And I had this idea we're in, we're starting week 6. And so we're coming to the end of the 8 week program. There's 3 more weeks left, 6, 7, and 8. And I just had this thought, as I was thinking about the clients of having this understanding that there are some people who joined the program and didn't get started, or people who got started and like, fell off the wagon, and are in that place where they're probably telling themselves some stories like, oh, my gosh, I failed again, or I started this thing so excited, and why can I stick to it? Or you know, I'm never gonna be able to be successful. And that's the last thing that I want anybody experiencing when they're in my program. So I had this idea this morning that I wanted to do a coaching call, a bonus coaching call because we like to throw in lots of bonus things that people don't expect in our programs. A bonus coaching call specifically for those people who are just getting started. They're recommitting, they fell off the wayside in the recommitting. And I had this idea that I could really speak to those people and coach them because they're in a different space. Sometimes they feel like Oh, I'm behind, I can't ask a question or I'm behind, I shouldn't take up a coaching call seat, because all these people are ahead of me. So anyway, I thought that was gonna be a really fun coaching call to do and a fun bonus for our Macros 101 clients. So I had to get that all scheduled out in zoom and send out the email so that our clients knew about that. So that was like the first thing I did this morning, because I wanted to have clients have as much time as possible to be able to kind of pencil that in. And we're gonna do that tomorrow. So I'm really excited about that bonus call.

 

Prepping for the coaching academy  11:54  

And then the other thing that's high on my priority list for today, is working on our information page for our coaching Academy. In the business, we want to run on quarter cycles, so Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4 and during each of those quarters, we always have some sort of revenue generating activity. So something where we're making money in the business every single quarter, and it's different, right, like we don't launch Macros 101 every quarter, we have other programs, we have build your workouts, we now have this coaching academy, we have done other stuff in the past. But we always have some sort of revenue generating activity during each quarter. And for the fourth quarter of this year, we are going to be opening up our coaching Academy, which I'm super excited about. And actually, I just looked at my schedule, and this podcast episode is going to come out the week before we open our coaching academy. So if that's something that you're interested in, you want to learn how to become a coach, you want to learn how to be able to coach and help and guide other people through their fitness journey, then I highly suggest you come and join our class, we're gonna have a free class next week. It's called: “Make Money and Change Lives Becoming a Transformational Coach.” And I'm going to be teaching about what a transformational coach is, what makes it different, and why this is something that really anybody can learn, why coaching is a skill, not just something that you're either born with, or you're not. And so if that's been anything in your heart, where you maybe even had this passing thought that you might want to become a coach, I highly recommend coming and joining us in our class for free. It's a free class next Tuesday at 9am. And if you want to register for that class, go to bicepsafterbabies.com/becomeacoach. So bicepsafterbabies.com/becomeacoach and you can register for that free class. During and  after that class, I will be opening up enrollment into our coaching Academy. And so today on the docket, I need to put together the information page where I'm outlining what the coaching Academy is, who it's for who would be a really good fit, what they're going to learn and what they're going to come out of the program knowing and understanding and being able to implement and that how that's going to impact their lives. So I've been working on some messaging for our registration page. I worked on that last week. And this week, I will be working on that information. So I'm just gonna be flushing out the program and how it's going to run so that we can share that with those of you who are interested in becoming a coach.

 

Videoing reels  14:32  

And then the last thing that's on my list, we'll see if I get to this as I tend to put it on the last thing on my list and then sometimes I don't get to it. I think there might be a little bit of a mental block with these. But I have on my list to spend an hour videoing reels. So reels, I don't know. I like reels. They're fun. They're fun when I like to start doing them and I get into the rhythm. But men, they take a lot of effort and they take a lot of setup and I also often have a mental block with sitting down and actually like knocking out some reels. But when I'm done, I'm really happy with them because they are fun and you guys seem to like them. So that's on my list of things to do. I have some reels that I want to create. I blocked out an hour to just sit down. And I know that once I get started on them, I will kind of build some momentum. But that's one of the last things that I have on my list and scheduled to do today.

 

Weekly team meeting  15:24  

Oh, and one thing that I didn't talk about that we'll be doing here shortly is our weekly team meeting. So every Monday at 10:30, we do our weekly team meeting where the whole team gets on. That includes let's see, I think there's Okay, I just had to start, stop and like count on my fingers. There's 7 team members, not including me. So 8 of us get on our weekly team meeting call, we you know, set the intention for the week, what are we working on? What do people need help with? What do people might need my help with? What needs to be on my radar? You know, what are we seeing in different areas of the business? And so we have that time to kind of come back together, say, hey, what did we do last week? What are we working on this week? make sure everybody's on the same page. And those are always really fun. So I love having our team meetings and being able to, you know, put our vision hat on and talk about where we're going to go and get people excited about what that's going to look like. So that will also be something that I'll be doing today. And then other than that, it's going to be picking up kids doing after school homework and things like that. And so I will be back later today to kind of tell you how the rest of the day went.

 

Getting out of an all or nothing mentality  16:32  

Okay, so now it's Monday night, and I'm checking in after the day. It was actually a really good day, I felt like I was pretty productive. I ended up recording another podcast episode. In addition to starting this one, I got information flushed out about the coaching Academy for Information page. We'll definitely be working on that the rest of the week as well. But I at least got started on it. The one thing that maybe I didn't check off my list like I had kind of planned to do was spending an hour on reels. Now, oftentimes, I'll get to something that I know I don't have time for, like I didn't have an hour at the end of the day, or even in the middle of the day like to spend on reels. But I realized that instead of defaulting to the nothing mentality, which is kind of what sometimes will happen for all of us, where I had planned to spend an hour and my brain did this thing that it often does, that you probably are familiar with where it's like, oh, Amber, if you can't spend a whole hour on reels, then you might as well not create any reels. And I was able to coach myself out of that. And instead of not doing any reels, I ended up recording one, I figured one is better than zero. So I recorded a reel, I wrote a post, and I'm counting that as a win, I was able to get out of that all or nothing mentality. And I think that's something that's important to understand, too, is that, you know, as a coach myself, I coach clients through this stuff all the time. And it doesn't mean that I don't have to coach myself through it. In fact, I was telling my team this morning at our team meeting we were talking about things and I was talking about something that was really scary to me. Something that terrifies me. And I tell my team all the time that like, you know, if you're doing something scary, if you're doing something hard, it means you're growing, it means you're stepping outside of that comfort zone, we need to do that. And I'm always coaching them through that. And I told them that I was having to do the same thing for myself with this thing that feels really scary. And I'll even tell you what that thing is. That's really scary. It is. Dun dun dun, YouTube. YouTube feels very scary to me. And I have all these stories in my head about how it's so hard and how it requires all this time and all this effort, and I have to put makeup on and blah, blah, blah. Anyway, that's the thing that's scary for me right now. And we're looking at embarking on doing more on YouTube. And I know that there's a lot of growth there because man, like that platform scares me.

 

Update on the team meeting earlier  18:57  

So that was the day our team meeting was good. Oh, I did make a mistake, I felt really bad. Earlier, I said that we had seven people on the team and I counted today at the team meeting and number eight. So I forgot what I was counting earlier. So there's eight people at the team meeting. And it's always good to be able to meet with the team and just kind of be in touch. We all work remotely. And none of us are the same. Well, a couple of us are in the same state but none of us live very near to each other. So everything we do is all on Zoom. It's all remote. And we use project management boards and things to keep us all on track. But it's always nice to come together and have you know a weekly touch point with everybody on the team and then we're doing you know our different things during the week and having smaller meetings with team members throughout the week depending on what we're working on. But on Monday we come together and it's always good to be able to see everybody and kind of check in and see how everything's going.

 

Wrapping up our day  19:52  

And then I wrapped up dinner or I wrapped up work today around five o'clock. And they finished making dinner and my kids actually all have dinner, which like, never happens. So French dip sandwiches for the win, because all four of my kids ate it. And then we had a really nice evening, we had ice cream as a family. We told some stories, and we played games together. And it's just been a really nice evening, I think my husband and I will watch a show. We need a new show. We've kind of wrapped up some of our other shows, but we'll probably watch a show and then we are in bed lights out no later than like 9:20 Because we're grandparents. So good night. I'll see you tomorrow.

 

Split Jerks  20:39  

Okay, it's Tuesday morning, and we're diving into work stuff. It's about 8:20 in the morning, TJ took the kids to school, I have already done my workout we did and pause split jerks today. And it was really fun. I actually am really enjoying learning about and getting better at split jerks. It's not something that I've done a lot of. And it's been fun to kind of learn a new movement and be able to get a little bit better at it. So for those you don't know, a split jerk is where you take it from your bar from your shoulders, and dip and then drive and punch the bar overhead and drop under the bar. And it's a split jerk because your legs split one leg in front, one leg and back. It's like a lunge. And typically, it's combined with a clean. So the clean and jerk is what it usually is. You should clean it off the floor, from the floor to your shoulders, and then from your shoulders overhead. And that's an Olympic weightlifting movement that you'll see, you know a lot of lifters do in competition. So it's been really fun to learn a new skill. And that's one of the things I love about CrossFit is just that I am thrown into learning a bunch of new skills. And I really value the process of learning and growing and getting better at something, I actually don't mind sucking at something at first, because to me, it's really exciting to start something and then see that progress over time.And it's been fun for doing that with the split jerks.

 

Metcon  22:09  

And then we did a Metcon and this one and all, it highlighted my weakness, which one of my weaknesses is stringing our toes together like big sets, and definitely exposed my weakness, and I was down to singles by the end of the workout. But it's good, I really enjoy always having things to improve at and that's honestly one of the things that I really love about CrossFit.

 

Cleaners time  22:33  

So now I'm sitting down to record this, you may hear vacuuming in the background. That's because our cleaners are here, we have cleaners that come every two weeks or so. And that is really nice to be able to just have the house get clean once over clean, we tend to do you know, I cleaned some during the week. And we tend to do things like some pickups and cleans on the weekend with the kids. But it is nice. And I really enjoy as a working mom to be able to have cleaners come in and be able to help keep the house clean. So that's going on.

 

Coaching call  23:08  

So let's talk about what I got on the docket for today. Big thing is first and foremost, I have a coaching call with my clients in about 45 minutes and we're going to be discussing. I'm going to be direct to the people who feel like they never got started in Macros 101 or they started, start and quit. And they're like trying to get back into that recommitment phase. And one of the reasons that this is so important, and one of the reasons that I'm doing this coaching call is because we are all going to be there at some point. I don't think there's a journey that I've ever been on where it's like, you start and then you always finish and it goes exactly the way that you think it's going to go. I think that's silly. Most of the best things that have happened to me in life are things that I've had to try multiple times that I've had to pick myself up when I feel like I haven't done well and get back on the horse. And that is part of the process. And so learning how to do that, learning how to recommit, learning how to not beat yourself up,  learning how to take those actions to be able to get the result you want is so important. And so I'm really excited, that coaching call. I'll be doing some teaching and then we'll be doing some live coaching with our clients. So we can dive in a little deeper with their particular struggles and help them to start to take that action so that they can move forward in their journey.

 

Live coaching class with me and with the coaches in Macros 101  24:28  

And I'll be spending, you know, a couple hours typically on a coaching call and then also one thing I didn't mention that I'm doing everyday this week is coaching inside of our inside of our community. So in Macros 101, we have a community and I'm in there coaching with our other coaches and helping clients to be able to get clarity on the questions that they have. I always say that you know Macros 101. We have the content and that teaches you the A-Z process of how to develop your plan and how to create your own customized plan that's going to get you the results. But then inevitably, people have questions about how to apply those concepts to their own journey. And that's what we do with coaching. That's what we do with the live coaching calls with me or with the coaches. And that's what we do in our community where people can get specific feedback on what they're struggling with. So I'm always there spending time, you know, responding to clients' questions and coaching. And it's what I love to do. Like, the highlight of my day is to be able to work with our clients.

 

Coaching academy, podcasts and reels 25:25  

So that's the biggest thing that I have to do today, I'll be working more on the information page about the coaching academy trying to flush more of that out. And if I could get another podcast outline today, that would be fabulous. I'm really trying to batch a bunch of these podcasts together. And so I want to do one on reverse dieting. It's been a while since we've had a podcast on reverse dieting. And that's always a topic that people have a lot of questions about. So I plan to outline that podcast episode, and then on my list is reels again, so I'm gonna be working on batching some reels, so that we have content for social media.

 

I did 5 reels  for the day  26:05  

Okay, it's Tuesday night, and I'm checking in, I'm tired working. We just sent the kids to bed. So we're getting close to going to bed ourselves. But let me just kind of fill in the day, I would say probably the most, the thing I'm most proud of for the day is that I did five reels. And you've kind of I've alluded to my like, sometimes my block with like actually making reels or like content like that happen. I just get in my head that I'm like, not creative. And anyway, I got out of my head, I recorded five reels. And every time I sit down and actually do it, it actually is a lot of fun. I just have all these stories about how much time it takes, and how much effort and energy. But you know what, I did it. And I knocked it out of the park today. And I'm pretty darn proud of that.

 

Takeaways during the coaching call with my clients  26:55  

Other highlights of today, I did my coaching call with our clients, and it was so good. Like, I get off. I don't know, maybe you can relate to this. Maybe you have something else in your life that feels the same way. But like I get off the coaching calls with these highs, like I feel so energized, I feel so excited. And I think that's really a reflection of doing what you're meant to do. And maybe you can relate to that in something, maybe it's not coaching for you, maybe it's something else. But I think when we get into alignment with what our purpose is like, what do you know, dharma is what we are here to do, it brings that energy with it. And I always get off of coaching calls just like with so much energy. So we talked a lot today. Like specifically, this coaching call was for people who felt like they hadn't started with Macros 101 or felt like they started and fell off the wagon. And when I asked people on the call, who was on the call, I did like a poll because I wanted to know who fit into what categories. So I can kind of speak to those individually. And a majority of the people who were on that call were people who had started and then fallen off the wagon, and for most of them, it had been a pattern. And maybe some of you listening can relate where it's a pattern of like, yeah, I get started, I take action and then I fall off the wagon. And then it's like, I have to recommit and I do it all over again. And then I you know, part of me also knows that I get into this pattern. And so I almost expect that like, over the weekend, I'm going to have a hard time or when I go on vacation, I'm going to have a hard time because I have this pattern of starting, recommitting, failing, restarting, recommitting, failing over and over and over again. And we saw, we spoke directly to that. And we had some really big breakthroughs from people who were on that call. And just to quickly highlight some of the like the big takeaways that we had that I shared, and Coach through during that call, one of the big ones that came up over and over was this idea of shrinking the change is that oftentimes we create a definition of success that is much more lofty, than is really valuable for us.  And I shared in the call the meme that maybe you've seen, if not, I'm going to explain it to, so you can kind of imagine that there is meme with two ladders and the ladder on the left has rungs you know, every six inches or so, and a lot on the right has rungs every you know 5, 6, 7 feet. And there's a person at each of the ladders and the person on the left is climbing the ladder, right? They're climbing up the rungs. And the person on the right is standing at the bottom because they can't even reach the first rung. It's just too far away. And that's often what I see with people especially as they dive into their journey is that they are creating this expectation, they are creating these changes, they are creating this definition of success that is like the seven foot ladder rung that they can't even reach. And so we talked a lot about shrinking the change, and about making the change something smaller than necessarily you think that it should be, and making sure that we're always defaulting to doing something, rather than defaulting to doing nothing. So that was a big takeaway from the call. But we had a lot of other really, really great conversations. And like I said, Man, I just love coaching. It just lights me up. It's just so exciting. 

 

Registration page for our masterclass  30:30  

Also, something that I did today was I signed off on our registration page for our masterclass that we're going to be doing, I talked about this before, but when this episode comes out, the Tuesday after this episode comes out, I'm going to be doing a free masterclass about how you can become a coach, and what that looks like, and how it can change your life and transform other people's lives. And what it means to be a transformational coach, and how you can really step into that role. And so we needed to create a sort of a registration page for that. So when you click the link to go sign up, there's a place to put your name and your email so that you can get all the information about the class, and we can like give you the URL to be able to get in and all that stuff. So we have to create that registration page.

 

A little bit of behind the scenes of the things that I do in my business  31:18  

And it's interesting, you know, just to let you in a little like, behind the scenes of the business. For many years, I was a solo entrepreneur, I did everything. So creating a landing page, I did that. Designing a landing page, I did that. Writing the copy for the landing page, I did that. Like everything. Integrate the page with our email CRM, I did that as well. And so that's where I started. And that's where a lot of people start, right? As a solo entrepreneur. And as we've grown as a business. And as we have gotten to a place where we're serving more clients and we're doing more things in the business, I've had to get really good at delegating, I've had to get really good at letting other people take parts of the business, and help me out. And so I've gotten to the place now. And that was challenging. Like, that's something that anybody who has done that in a business, or even in not in a business that like delegating can be hard, letting go of something, and trusting somebody to do it well, can be very challenging. But I'm at the place in my business where I have let go of a lot of things. And it's, you know, been one of the reasons that we have been able to grow because I don't do everything myself, I have a really awesome team behind me. And so we got to the place where I will write all of the copy, or all the words for the page, and I'll write it up in a Google Doc. And then I'll hand it over to my team, and my team will take that and they'll design out the page. And they will create the page in our landing page software. And then somebody else will integrate the page, meaning they'll connect it to our CRM, so when you put your name and email, we're able to email you and give you all the information and things like that. And so that's really cool, because it used to be me doing all of those pieces. And now, I really just get to do the parts that only I can do, which is like craft the messaging and craft the how we're going to approach this, how we're going to talk about it, what the title is going to be of the class and what I'm going to be teaching it. Like, that's all the things that I get to do. And then I hand off the other things. So anyway, I had written the copy for the registration page last week, and I handed it off to my team. And they came back with the product. And so I got to go through and make edits and tweaks and sign off on the registration page. So that, you know, that's checked off of one of our things that we need to do to be able to get ready for this masterclass. So, a little bit of behind the scenes of the things that I do in my business and the things that I don't do in my business. That was something that I checked off today as my team got back with that registration page, and now it is live. And if you want to see the registration page, that's kind of fun, like so you could see here, I mean that's creating it in real time, but by the time this comes out, it will already be live. You can go to bicepsafterbabies.com/becomeacoach and you'll be able to see what I'm talking about when I say the registration page.

 

Outlined a podcast episode about reverse dieting  34:13  

And then the last thing that I did today was I outlined a podcast episode about reverse dieting. So I went through and flushed out all those ideas. When I do a solo episode, I will sit down. I typically will kind of just outline what I want to talk about and where I want to go with the episode. I don't like writing it out word-for-word, but I do have an outline so that when I start I stay on track. And so I did that today. I did that outline and then I will most likely record that podcast episode tomorrow. So that's it. My husband and I are going to watch a show. It's about 8:40 right now. We'll watch a show and we'll be lights out by 9:20.

 

My typical working time  34:54  

Well, good morning. It is Wednesday morning and I went to bed thinking last night, you know, when you say something, and then later on in, you're like, did I say that right? Like, did I make myself clear? So I went to bed thinking about the fact that I recorded that at 8:30 last night. And I didn't want you thinking that I was like, working all the way until 8:30. And maybe that's not what you're thinking. I don't work all the way until 8:30. So typically, I would say my days typically start at 9, and they end around 3'ish when my kids come home, every once in a while, I'll go until 5, actually, the last two days, I've gone until 5. And that's only because I kind of get my kids home, like get them set up with homework, see whatever they need to do. And then sometimes they're in a space where they are like, really good at entertaining themselves. Like yesterday, the kids went outside and like we're playing basketball altogether. And so I was like, “Okay, cool, I can sit down and like, hammer out a couple more things.” So I don't usually plan to work between 3-5. Because that's when my kids are home. But every once in a while, like the opportunity presents itself. And if I have things then and the kids are doing well, then I'll pull them out. But typically, my day ends around 3 when it's actually more like 2:30 because that's when I go and pick up my son. So I didn't want you thinking that I was working all the way till 8:30. I don't do that. I also don't think well at 8:30. I don't know if you can tell the difference in my voice between when I talk in the evening and in the morning. But I definitely am a morning person and wind down. And like I said we're asleep by 9:30 usually lights out around 9:20. And I hit the pillow and I'm out.

 

Crazy Wednesday  36:39  

Okay, so what do we have going on today? Wednesday's are crazy days for me. Mostly because, I had mentioned that I have kids in three schools. So we have an elementary, two are elementary, one in middle school and one in high school. And our area, at least our area of California does late start early release on Wednesday. And I don't know who created this schedule, but they were not somebody who had kids at multiple schools. Because my elementary kids go to school at the same time as the normal but they get out early, while my middle schoolers, go to school late and get out at the same time. So now rather than like going and dropping off all of my kids at the same time, and then having a couple different pickups, I literally drive the road between us in the school like we counted, it was 10 times, I think on Wednesdays, because I have to go drop the little boys off and then I go drop the big kids off. And then I go pick up the little boys and then I go pick up the big kids or my son in middle school and then I go pick up my high schooler. It's just like so much back and forth. So I don't know who created early or late start early dismissal and having them opposite for the different ages. But it drives me nuts. So Wednesdays are typically I would say my least productive day because so much of my day is spent driving back and forth. Driving kids places plus Wednesdays, my daughter and son have gymnastics. So we're always rushing to that. And then right after gymnastics, it's like we come home, we have dinner, and then we have youth night.

 

Youth night every wednesday day night  38:17  

So I am a leader in my church in our youth program. And so does my husband as well. So both of us have leadership responsibilities, and we have our youth night every Wednesday night. And so, two of our kids participate. So we have two kids who are in the youth group. And my husband and I are in charge. So Wednesday nights are always a rush of going, you know, doing gymnastics, that's when I do my grocery shopping. I drop my kids off at gymnastics, I go to Costco, I go to Walmart, I go pick up my kids from gymnastics, and we go home. So I get home, unload the car, I make dinner really quickly, I actually have something already going in the crock pot, just make it as easy as possible. Wednesday nights are just crazy. And then we got to the church by 7 o'clock, so that we could do youth night. So Wednesday is just 10. And then we're home, you know, around 9:00 pm, and then we have to get everybody to bed.

 

Today is more of a kids and house day  39:11  

So Wednesdays typically are my craziest. Like I said, they are probably my least productive day. Today, I actually have a doctor's appointment for my daughter. So I'll be taking her to that as well. So I really don't plan to get a ton of stuff done today. I'm sure we'll have a little bit of time. But today is really more of a kids and house and taking care of those things. And I will say that I am incredibly grateful to be able to work from home and be able to do those things. Well, something I haven't mentioned is that my son has an early release all of this week, because you know, why not? Middle school hasn't really released this week. And so I'm picking him up at noon every single day. And I just was thinking like, what if I had a job where I couldn't leave in the middle of the day? it just would make some of these things so much harder, and I am grateful that I'm able to do what I do from home and be so flexible so that when I have to take my daughter to an appointment, I can do that. And, you know, when we have crazy random days off of school, it's not a big deal. I'm home and I am grateful for that.

 

Record a podcast  40:21  

So in terms of work and things that I am looking to get done today, there's really three things. I would like to record a podcast, I think I will, that'll probably be like, the top of my list is like, when I have some time, I want to get that podcast recorded so that I can send it off to the editor. Speaking of, you know, delegation, and using my team and having them help me through things, the podcast is a really good example, where all I do is outline and record the podcast. And then once I do that, I pass it off. And we have an editor that edits it, we have someone who does the show notes, we have somebody who uploads it to Libsyn, which is how it gets broadcast to everywhere. And so we have someone who makes the graphics. We have somebody who passes those graphics to the guest, if that's the case, I have somebody else who tends to write like the posts that we're going to do about the podcast. So you know, I've gotten to a place where it's nice, I just hit record, and then my job is done. And then the team takes care of the rest of it. But I would really like to get that podcast recorded today. 

 

Information page for the coaching academy  41:19  

The other two things, one is just like a continuation of something I've been working on and I've been talking about, and one is like a scary thing that I'm doing today. So the first thing is just that I'm still working on the information page for the coaching academy. This is like a long process, it takes time to sit and think and craft messaging and write it all out. But so that's the phase that I'm in right now is like going through putting together that information page. And then just like the registration page, I'll be able to send that over to my team and have that designed out.

 

YouTube ad  41:48  

But the thing that is scary today, I kind of mentioned before, is that YouTube really scares me. We are in the process of trying to expand in terms of marketing, and doing YouTube ads was something that we wanted to test out and try and you know, see how they perform. And YouTube scares me. I will be very frank with that, like that platform intimidates the heck out of me. And I also am one that knows that I like a challenge, I am not going to like just because something scares me, I'm not gonna do it. And this is something that we want to test out and drive. So we got information back from our ad people about what I need to do to create a YouTube ad, because it's like a video and there's a process and usually I need to do it in a certain way. And so they sent that over to me. And now I need to sit down and create a script for the video. So I'm not recording anything. Today, we're not doing it like in the video. But I just need to sit down and write the script. And that feels like  this whole experience feels very scary. And also it's been a while since I've done something that feels this scary in my business. So I always know that means I'm on, you know, the right track. So that's something that I want to do today. I want to knock that out.

 

How I deal with things that scares me  43:03  

One of the ways that I deal with things that are scary, and maybe this will be helpful to some of you listening is that I just focus on the next step. So rather than focusing on things like, “Oh my gosh, what is it going to be like when that video is playing on YouTube, and people are watching it?” instead of focusing on that because that's like, scary and way too far away and feels very overwhelming to me to be able to get to that point I really just focus on like, what is the next step? And so the next step, right now, is creating the script. And that is like, okay, I can do that I can create the script, like creating a script is not that scary. And then when I take it chunk-by-chunk and just say “Okay, what's the next step?” and that doesn't feel quite as scary. And then what's the next step? And that's how I break it down. So when I'm feeling overwhelmed, or when I'm feeling a little bit nervous about what I'm doing, that's one of the ways that I push myself.

 

My priorities to do for today  43:53  

So if I get those three things done today, like I actually have time to work on the information page, I get the podcast recorded, and I create the YouTube script, that will be amazing. I'm not sure that I have enough time for all of those things, but that's what I'm going into the day planning to do.

 

Quick recap for today  44:09  

Okay, it's Wednesday night, and I'm exhausted. It is almost 9 o'clock. And if you know me in real life, you know that I basically turn into a pumpkin at 9:00pm. Like I'm that person who goes to book club and is like, guys, I gotta leave by 9:45 because I just cannot hang. So I'm tired. I just got back from our youth activity. We did a Boolean activity. So that is where we made little plates of cookies, all the girls want cookies. And then we put like a cute poem on it and then we went and dropped it off at people's doors like knock and run. And then like a ghost that says “Boo!, you've been booed.” And now you're supposed to do the same thing as put together cookies and go drop it off on someone else's doorstep. So like, just like pass it along. Anyway, the girls had a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun doing things like the doorbell ditch, but it's 9 o'clock, and I'm exhausted, I'm tired and ready to go to bed. But let's do a quick recap. So today, I recorded my podcast episode, even though we had construction going on in the house. If you have followed my stories, you know that we've had construction literally for the last year and a half. We started by taking down a wall in between our dining area and our kitchen. During quarantine. We got bored and like one day, we decided to take out a wall and it has spiraled into us basically redoing the entire interior of our house. And we're like a year and a half in and we're like almost there. We're really almost there. But I swear every time I go to record a podcast is like when the guys are working and banging and hammering and sawing and all the things. So that happened today. I had to push pause a couple times. Hopefully you can't hear it in the episode. But I did get it recorded. And I got my YouTube script written, which I'm pretty proud about because that was the thing that I was like resisting the most. I just did it. And that's the next step down in the process of getting those ads up. I'm so happy today. Had some time with my daughter. I took her to a doctor's appointment, we went and got stuff at Starbucks afterwards. She got some bread and I got an egg sandwich. And that was kind of fun just to hang out with her. But Wednesday she was busy, like I drove everywhere. Go shopping at the store, gymnastics, youth night. It's just a long day. So I'm tired. I'm gonna go to bed. See you tomorrow.

 

Good morning Thursday  46:44  

Good morning. It's Thursday. And I'll be honest, I thought today was Friday. When I woke up this morning. I am feeling pretty sore from this week's CrossFit. And typically by Thursday and Friday, I'm ready for the weekend for my rest days. So I typically work out Monday through Friday. And then I take rest days on Saturday, Sunday, and that's my recoup, recover and get ready to do it again the next week. But by Thursday, my body is feeling it. I'm feeling triceps and pretty sore today. I did have a fun day at CrossFit though, we did. More just like a movement of the body. Thursday's tend to be like an act almost like an active recovery day. So you are moving and we're not lifting super heavy. We're doing a little bit more cardio focus work, double unders and, and row and we did med ball slams today. So I am feeling tired. And I am feeling a little bit sore. But we're almost to the end of the week. And then I get to take recovery to recovery days back-to-back.

 

Batching things is such a game changer  47:56  

Okay, so for today, I am going to record another podcast. And if you notice a thing about this week, it's that I'm recording podcasts. My goal is by the end of this week to have recorded five podcasts. And I usually try to batch in groups of 6-8. And so I have two more podcasts that I kind of want to get done for this batch that I'm going to do and I'll do those next week. But if I get 5 podcasts recorded this week, I'll feel really good about that. And for anybody who is an entrepreneur, or, you know, I even find this to apply to just mom life as well. Batching things is such a game changer. I found that instead of just doing, you know, if I'm going to do something, I might as well do all of it, and then not have to flip back to it. So for example, it's like if I'm going to make dinner, I'd rather double the dinner. And then we will have two dinners out of it, you know, freeze one and have one. If I'm going to record podcasts, I'd rather batch 6 or 7 of them in a row over a week and a half period of time, and then have the next 6 weeks where I'm not recording. And so I've gotten better. This is something I've had to learn and how to teach myself a little bit of how to really sit down and batch and group things together. But it has been a game changer in being able to knock things out a little bit faster, be a little bit more productive, and then also kind of go in spurts of like, there's a lot of energy and attention that has to go in when I record a podcast and I can do that for a little short sprint and then have no weeks of not having that and then I can short sprint it again. 

 

Finish the information page of the coaching academy  49:36

So other things on my list today. This week I need to finish the information page about the coaching academy. It's been one of those things it's been kind of on my list and I have chipped away at it a little bit this week. But really today just needs to be the day that I get 90% of it done at least because I need to have that done by Friday so I can pass it off to my team so they can create the page and I can sign that off so that we're ready to go when we do open doors to coaching academy. So that's probably the thing that I'm going to spend the most time on today.

 

Batching Instagram posts  50:08  

And then I'm also going to be working on batching some Instagram posts. I talked about batching some reels earlier this week. I'm going to sit down and write some posts. I had a conversation yesterday, a really good conversation with my social media manager. And we have some really fun ideas that we're excited about to test out with Instagram. Now, any of you guys who have Instagram accounts, I don't know, I've been on Instagram. Let's see, I started my account in January of 2016. So I've been on Instagram for not as long as some but a while and been through a lot of the cycles and the trends and things that have to do with Instagram. And if there's one thing that I've learned about Instagram, it's literally that it's always changing. And there is an element of having to try and keep up with what the trends are, what's working now, because what's working now is not what was working 6 months ago, or a year ago. So you do have to be a little bit agile. And I'll be honest, there are moments when I just friggin hate social media. It can be discouraging, you can put a lot of effort into it without a lot of reward. But we've found over and over again, as we've looked at our paid programs, that our paid programs come from our community, it's not, when we go get cold traffic, people who are just introduced to me, they come from our community, they come from our Instagram account, they come from the podcast, they come from our email list. And so after this last lunch, we sat down as a team and kind of analyzed our numbers. And we realized we were spending a lot of money and time on trying to recruit a cold audience to our launch. And we've learned that we really need to double-down on that warm audience in that warming up period of getting people to know me, getting people to be able to see what's different about the things that I'm teaching, because I'm talking about a lot of things that a lot of people talk about. But once you get into the realm, you realize it's a completely different way to approach it, than many coaches.

 

Utilize Instagram and  increase engagement 52:03  

So anyway, that was kind of a long tangent, but I had a conversation with my social media manager, and we have some new ideas on how to utilize Instagram and increase engagement and make better content for you guys. And so I'm going to get started on kind of diving into that and being a little bit creative this afternoon of how, what we want to be putting on to our Instagram account. So if you're not following us on Instagram, BicepsafterBabies is the way that my handle is my handle. Come on over and see what we have sorted, because we have some new ideas. So I'll be flushing those out today.

 

3 big things to focus today  52:38  

And then other than that, those are really my 2 big things. 3, I guess that's 3 big things that I'll be focusing on today. I don't have any meetings scheduled today. I do have kid pickup and drop off which is like every single day, but you know today's really just gonna be like a Put-my-head-down-day and just get some crap done. And Thursday is similar to Wednesday in that after school is pretty busy. My son has gymnastics, my daughter has practice and for color guard. And so my workday will end at 3 today because I'll have all the making dinner and running kids places. So it's almost 9 now. I'm going to sit down and put my head down and just get some work done.

 

Yesterday’s recap (Thursday)  53:25  

Alright, so it's supposed to be Thursday night right now, but it's not. It's Friday morning. And that's because I forgot last night. And I remember just as I was climbing into bed, and there was no way in heck that I was getting out of my nice warm bed where I was tired and recording the podcast. So I just decided to combine the recap from yesterday with the plan for today. So yesterday, I wrote a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of copy, and made a huge headway on our information page for the coaching academy that's coming up. And that felt really good. I also did some stuff with Instagram posts and planning those out. And I did not record the podcast that's gonna happen first thing today, tomorrow or first thing this morning. But other than that, yesterday was a pretty normal day. I worked all the way until about 3 and then had kids run to gymnastics and you know, color guard and all the places. And then we just had a nice chill evening with the kids when we started watching Titanic with them a couple days ago. And we ended up finishing Titanic last night. And that was fun. It was fun. Just a fun family evening to just hang out. And then I was in bed by 9 o'clock last night because, man, I'm tired and I'm feeling it.

 

Friday morning Crossfit  54:45  

So this morning. We had a great time at CrossFit. I PR'd my overhead squat, which was super exciting and I hit 135 and I think I probably could have gone a little bit heavier than that. Honestly, the hardest part for me with overhead squatting is getting the bar up over my head. So taking it out of the rack and then jerking it up over my head in a snatch position in that wide hand position was the hardest part. And then once I do that, and I find my balance, then I can go down into the squat. So I'm excited to work in that. We typically in CrossFit, when we do lifting cycles, we find a 1 rep max. One on the first week, and then we go through the next six week cycle with percentages based off of that one rep max. And then we retest usually at the end of the six weeks. So starting out a cycle with a PR is huge. And hopefully, I'll be able to get even higher than that as we go through this next lifting cycle. So that was that.

 

Mommy duties on a Friday  55:40  

Today, I have some mommy duties that I am very grateful that I get to do. I'm going to be volunteering at my kids' school today. They're doing a fun run, and I'm going to go help with the fun run. And that's been something that I have wanted to do for a while. It's been something I work from home. And so my time is a little bit more flexible. And recently, I've been thinking about how I want to make sure that I am using that time well that I have, because I work at home, and being able to like being a part of my kids lives, as well. And so I don't feel super guilty about not doing a ton of volunteer work. But I do want to do it every so often. And you know, go to my kids' school and be there with them. So I'm going to be going and helping out with the fun run today. Which again, is really awesome that I can do that in the middle of the day. Because I work for myself and that's nice. My son has a half-day at school, my 12 year-old son. And so my husband's actually at home most of the day working from home as well, which he doesn't do all that often. So I suggested that we pick my son up and take him out to lunch. So it'll be like a mom, dad, kid date. So we'll be doing that again, another thing that I'm grateful I get to do. So that kind of cuts my work day a lot.

 

A little bit about the business and how it's set up on the back-end  56:59  

But things that are on the radar, today, I am 1 minute finished this podcast episode. So it'll be a check off. And then I'll also finish another podcast episode that I'm gonna record literally right after I hit stop on this one. That'll be the very first thing I do. And then, it's just going back to the Instagram posts and having a plan for that. We actually have a growth meeting on Monday. So just a little bit about the business and how it's set up on the back-end, we have three departments in the business, we have a growth department, we have a customer fulfillment department, and we have an operations department. And so I meet with everybody on the team on Mondays. But then, in addition, we'll have meetings with different teams that are responsible for different areas of the business. And you know, one of the things that has happened as I have a bigger team, and as we have more people involved in the vision and in the mission, I do a lot more meetings. And that's, you know, not awesome in some ways, but also awesome in a lot of other ways. Because I do one, you know, one meeting and then people go out and they execute and do a lot of the doing and take those things off of my plate. So I do have more meetings these days than I used to have when I was a solo entrepreneur, obviously, when I wasn't really meeting like a meeting with me, myself and I. And I also am really grateful to have a team that can be able to go and implement a lot of the things that we talked about. So we have a growth meeting on Monday with the growth team. And we'll be talking about some of our new plans for Instagram to kind of step up our game a little bit in Instagram and with the organic stuff that organic free content that we're putting out. So I'm going to spend a little bit of time thinking about that and thinking about my role in that versus the team's role in that and how we can work together to be able to make it as awesome as possible. So focusing a little bit on Instagram today, dnd as well as getting the information page done. That needs to happen. I need to have that done so we can pass it off. So that's today. 

 

Recap for today 59:02 

Okay, we did it, we made it to the end of the work week. So quick recap today, I slayed our information page. I'm mostly done with that and can hand it off to the designer now. And man, I'm so excited about our coaching academy, if that's something that you are interested in, and you are wanting to become a coach or wanting to uplevel your ability to coach clients, then I would really invite you to our free class that we have coming up next Tuesday. It's called “Make Money Change Lives, Become a Transformational Coach.” And you can get to that free class and sign up for it at bicepsafterbabies.com/becomeacoach. And I'm really excited about that class. So I wrapped up that information page. I did a bunch of stuff for Instagram, so I batched some content for Instagram so that's all ready to go for you guys. In the next coming weeks, I also recorded the podcast that I needed to record. So today was the three check days 1, 2, 3 got those things done. My husband and I took our set out for lunch. And it was really fun to just hang out with him. He's 12. And getting older. He actually just like a week ago got taller than me. He was so excited. Now he is taller than mum, but he's grown up. And it was fun to just kind of hang out with him and chat today. And I got to go to my other two son's school and do the fun run. So it was just a good day. Then this afternoon, we are going to evening we're going to wrap up just with some family time and roll into the weekend. I don't like 99% of the time. I don't do work on the weekends. I don't work out on the weekends. I don't do work on the weekends. Weekends are for fun and relaxation and family time. And I am looking forward to it.

 

Wrapping up today’s episode 1:00:55  

I hope that this was fun for you to listen to my week. I hope I gave you a little bit of insight. Like I said at the beginning, I have to remind myself, I think oh, this will be boring to people. People don't care about my life. But I know that I love listening to other people's lives. So I'm just going to put this out there. Hopefully you found it enjoyable, somewhat fun, a little bit different podcast episode this week. And that wraps it up. I'm Amber now go out and be strong because remember my friend, you can do anything.

 

Outro

Hold up, sister friend. Do you love Biceps after Babies radio? If so, the best way to say thank you is to subscribe to the podcast and leave a review on iTunes. I know, every podcaster wants you to leave a review, but it's because those reviews help the podcast to reach more people. And I do truly want to know what you think. If this particular episode resonated with you, will you also please share it? Either send the link to someone who would find it valuable or take a screenshot and post it to your social media and tell your friends and family why they should listen. Make sure you tag me @biceps.after.babies so I can hear your feedback and give you a little love. And you know, if you aren't already following me on Instagram or Facebook, that's the perfect time to hit that follow button. Thank you for being here and listening to Biceps after Babies radio.