Phylicia Pough (00:00:00) - Hey, friend, motherhood gets hard. Entrepreneurship gets hard. But together we can do hard things. This is the Moms CEO suite. In the suite, there is no shade and no shaming, just sharing and support so we can all thrive at this intersection of motherhood and entrepreneurship. I'm your host, Felicia. Wife, mom and entrepreneur. Join me as I share my journey, challenges and aha moments, along with the experiences and expertise of other modern day moms and.

Phylicia Pough (00:00:34) - This. Welcome to this week.

Phylicia Pough (00:00:38) - Hey, friends, we are back. We're back from our spring break. And I'm excited to be back here with you guys chatting. Things are going to be a little bit different here in the sweet. And so before I get into today's content, I want to share with you why we took a little break, what you can expect moving forward from the podcast, and then we'll have right into the four steps for openers. In finding freedom in business. So we took a little break. From producing content for the podcast.

Phylicia Pough (00:01:16) - Because while I love the podcast, I love connecting with our guests. It wasn'trillioneally integrated with the business. And so right now I'm all about creating sustainable business practices. And the podcast was more of an extension of the business instead of it being integrated in the business. And so the goal moving forward was to really integrate the podcast, to be a part of the business, to generate leads so that everything could. Just be a part of the same ecosystem, right? Not just having a podcast as something nice to have, but really having the podcast work for me. And so the content that you will hear on the podcast, yes, we will still be talking about the intersection of motherhood and entrepreneurship. Yes, we will still have guests coming on and sharing their expertise, but you will be hearing more about the business side of what we really do at the Moms CEO suite, which is related to operations and systems and automation and all of those things. So you'll hear more about that. And then the guest experts that you will hear on the podcast that they will either complement what it is that we do here through the mom CEO suite or they are people that you should connect with before or after reaching the mom CEO suite.

Phylicia Pough (00:02:47) - So it all will be integrated and it's not random. I think also what prompted me to do this is because, you know, as a mom and business, your time does become limited in in a sort of way. And I want to be able to maximize my time and shout out to Andrea Singletary. She was a guest on the podcast in the beginning. If you haven't listened to her episode, go ahead and check out episode five, where she's talking about launching your podcast. She's a podcast coach strategist and, you know, she recently released a course talking about podcasting and profiting from your podcast and really using it again as a lead generator. And so that's the direction that I am moving in for the podcast. So again, those are the new types of content that you can expect to hear. And we'll still be here weekly. We'll be dropping episodes every Tuesday. They'll still be solo and guest episodes, but this will just be more integrated into the business. So what is the mom CEO suite all about? If you kind of, you know, just jumped into listening to the podcast and you missed the intro episodes.

Phylicia Pough (00:04:07) - So the mom CEO suite, we are really about curating experiences and safe spaces for mom partners. We recently just launched our virtual networking mixer for Micronauts, which has been so much fun and amazing. So that is the first experience that we have launched and there will be more to come. But again, we are curating experiences and safe spaces for mom partners. That's the community side of it. When the business side of it, we automate business and podcasting processes for my partner service providers. And so your business processes, specifically in the areas of email marketing, sales and client experience. And then if you have a podcast, we help you to automate your podcast guest management workflow. And you'll hear more about that in the upcoming episodes. And if you're connecting on social media, you will hear about that as well. So that is what the mom CEO suite is all about. That is the direction that we are moving towards. We're constantly refining what we are doing so we can just present and create the best experience for you guys.

Phylicia Pough (00:05:27) - So I hope you will continue to stay along on the journey with us. So let's go ahead and hop right into these four steps from my partners to finding freedom in business. I have a four part framework that I am calling the mom CEO Freedom Framework. Okay, This is a four part framework, and throughout my years in entrepreneurship, I've had a framework for the work that I've done is related to systems and operations, and it was called Different things. But at the core of it, the steps in the framework is the same. I've just changed the name a little bit to suit the audience that I am now focused on. Okay, so I am going to share with you all the Mom SEO Freedom framework. Okay. So the first step, number one is to define and identify. This is something that I think we skip over not everybody, but we're really excited to get into business and we really don't take the time to really define what freedom looks like for you. So in your business, what does freedom look like for you? And this can look different for everybody, right? So for one person, you know, maybe you don't want to be full time in your business.

Phylicia Pough (00:06:44) - Maybe you just want this to be kind of a supplemental part time thing, right? Or you just want to work 20 hours per week for somebody else. Maybe you don't mind working full time and you just want to be off the clock at 5:00. Or maybe you don't want to work on the weekends. Maybe you want to take certain months off, right? Maybe you want to stay a solopreneur and that's fine. Or maybe you want to build an enterprise. But for you, you know, the first step in this finding freedom is first defining what does freedom look like for you and what you define what that looks like for you right now with the Internet says and that what you say it should be, what does it look like for you? Then you can really identify where it is you are right now and you can begin to think about the steps that you need to take to get to where it is you want to be, where it is you desire to be. Okay. So that is the first step.

Phylicia Pough (00:07:43) - Number one is to define and identify. The next step is process development. Now, this is something that people do skip a lot, right? Coming across my line of work and process development is really thinking about simply how you operate your business. How do you do the things that you do in your business. Now, of course, when you're first starting off, you are trying to figure that out. And so it's okay if you don't know, right? But as you go along, as you work with more clients, you'll begin to find a rhythm and you'll understand how it is that you operate. How is it that you engage on social media? How is it that you market through email? What is the experience that your clients are going through? How is it that you book sales and you should begin to develop a standard process for how you do those things in your business? Some people call them SOPs or standard operating. Procedures. And those are so necessary in your business if you are looking to find freedom.

Phylicia Pough (00:08:48) - Again, we're talking about finding freedom in your business. Right. And these are the steps to get you there. You need to have some SOPs in your business standard operating procedures, right? You have to build out your processes. These are all interchangeable terms and phrases. And this is important because, number one, you want to get to the place where you are able to either automate your business processes or delegate them. And the best way to do that is to first develop your process so you can look and see, okay, this is the step that can be automated. This is something that can be delegated. And when you delegate or you automate before you have really mapped out your processes, it really creates more work. You'll have to double back. Sometimes you'll find that you automated something that really should have been delegated out to somebody else or in the delegation process, you're finding that it's challenging to keep people on your team is supporting you because you don't have, you know, these written steps for how you operate in your business, the standard for how you want things done.

Phylicia Pough (00:09:56) - And so it's really important before you begin to think about automating. Automation is very popular. People love automating, but before you do that, you need to make sure that you have your processes in place. You want to develop some sort of SOPs, standard operating procedures, and with that, just know that when you build out these processes, it's not just a one and done situation. You're constantly going to be refining your processes and making them more efficient. You might find that a process doesn't work and so it's constantly going to be evolving and changing. Okay, so just don't think you've created your process one time and that's it. You will constantly have to revisit your processes as you change and shift and grow in your business. So that is step two process development. And then step three is automation implementation. And this is the fun part, right? This is the sexy part of it. People love to automate. And now, especially with all of the AI, the artificial intelligence tools that are out here is all the craze right now.

Phylicia Pough (00:11:03) - Right? And so automation allows you to have these softwares in these programs to handle certain tasks in your business instead of you doing these things manually. And I love automation. It's one of my favorite things. That's what we really focus on. And the Mom SEO Suite is automating your business in your podcasting processes. And so again, you can do this for your email marketing, you can do this for your social media marketing, your client experience, how you book sales, even with your podcast guest workflow, there's different things that you can automate so that you are not doing these things manually. This is saving you time is freeing you up to really focus on the SEO things in your business, right? And so the things that are repeatable, the things that you do over and over and over again, these are the things that can be considered for automation. And in further episodes, I'll dig deeper into this. I'll dig deeper into some of the tools that I use in my business, all the fun things, right? But just know that this is a piece of you.

Phylicia Pough (00:12:13) - Finding freedom in your business is using and maximizing automation to your benefit. And then finally is team building, right? So once you have your processes, well, let's back up. Once you've defined what freedom looks like for you and you understand where you're at, you develop your business processes or SOPs, you've begun to automate parts of your process mail. It's time for you to really identify. Okay. Who are the people that I need to help execute this vision? And depending on your business and your business goals, that will look different for you. I'm reading a book is called Who Not How You Want to Think About Who You need on this journey to help you, not necessarily how you're going to get these things done, but who it is that you need to help you execute your business processes. And again, this is helping you to find freedom in your business because you yourself are not handling you're not having to handle these tasks. Someone else now is overseeing or executing the task. Okay, so you have automation working for you.

Phylicia Pough (00:13:27) - You have some human resources in the form of a team working for you. So again, you're freed up to do those things that you desire to do through your business in the first place, right? You're able to leave your 9 to 5 job. You're able to be at home with your kids through the day and still run your business. You're able to attend all of their functions and sports events and parent teacher meetings, all of these things right for you. That might be what freedom is. And when you take these steps in your business, these four steps that I've shared with you today, you will be on the road to finding that freedom in your business. And so I want you to think about what does freedom look like for you? Go ahead. Make sure you connect with us on Instagram and let me know what does freedom look like for you in your business? And if you're thinking, okay, yes, I need to go ahead and start implementing some of these things in my business. We have an operations VIP intensive through the mouth CEO suite where I walk you through this four part framework where I walk you through the CEO Freedom Framework.

Phylicia Pough (00:14:43) - And we work one on one. We have a VIP day and you'll have support for four weeks as we go through helping you to define what your freedom looks like, helping you to develop your processes and SOPs, helping you, not helping you, but actually doing done for you automation in your business and helping you to identify the team that you need. And so this is something that you are needing in your business. Feel free to connect. In the show notes, you will see a link to schedule a clarity call and you can hop on a call with me and we can discuss if this is a best next step for you in your business. Okay, so I hope these steps were helpful for you. I'm so excited to be back from spring break and make sure you stay tuned. If you haven't listened to our past episodes, make sure you catch up on all the goodness that we have, and I look forward to seeing you guys in the next episode. Thank you for listening to the mom CEO Suite podcast.

Phylicia Pough (00:15:44) - If you enjoyed this episode, can you do us a favor? Leave a review on iTunes and share with other moms and business like you. Help us spread our message and empower others who are at this intersection of motherhood and entrepreneurship.