Daisy Dowling, WORKPARENT: The Complete Guide to Succeeding on the Job, Staying True to Yourself, and Raising Happy Kids
[0:01]Hi, this is Vivi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
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[0:35]Okay, now back to this amazing podcast.
[0:38]Daisy Dowling is the author of Work Parent, the complete guide to succeeding on the job, staying true to yourself, and raising happy kids.
[0:45]She's the founder and CEO of Work Parent, an executive coaching and training firm dedicated to helping working parents lead more successful and satisfying lives.
[0:53]Daisy began Work Parent with a simple bold vision that all working parents could succeed on the job, and remain true to themselves while raising terrific kids, and take pride in doing so.
[1:04]As an advisor to working parents, Daisy draws on her 15 years as a human capital expert and executive coach, helping leaders at all levels improve their performance, drive success of their teams and organizations, and find happiness in their careers.
[1:16]She ran global talent and leadership development efforts at four Fortune 500 companies, and has worked as a consultant and advisor to clients throughout the US, Latin America, Europe, and Asia.
[1:26]An acknowledged expert on careers, personal development and work-life balance.
[1:30]She's published 16 articles in Harvard Business Review, author dedicated chapters in the HVR guide to coaching employees, the Harvard Business Review on managing yourself, and the HVR guide to work-life balance, as well as serving as series editor for the HVR working parents' collections.
[1:45]Of books, her original writing has also appeared in The New York Times Washington Post Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, European Business Review, Dallas Morning News, and Elle Magazine.
[1:55]And her advice has been featured in the LA Times Sunday Times UK and on CNN.
[1:59]In 2004, her book Remember Who You Are, Harvard Business School Publishing, on personal authenticity at work, became an international bestseller, and has since been published in nine languages.
[2:10]See how we hit that at the very end of that bio, and that was really exciting.
[2:13]Anyway, a graduate of Brown University in Harvard Business School, Daisy lives in New York with her husband, a proud working father, and their two young children.
[2:20]And by the way, Daisy's mother was my fourth grade teacher.
[2:24]So there you go.
[2:25]Welcome Daisy.
[2:26]Thanks so much for coming on Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss your book, Work Parent.
[2:31]Thank you so much for having me.
[2:32]This is such a thrill.
[2:33]I know we were chatting before, but your mom was my teacher who I have never forgotten, and I remember you, because you were like a celebrity in my mind,
[2:42]because you were related to her, and she was like, God.
[2:45]So, you know, to be interviewing you, I still like, gives me a thrill, and I'm 45 years old.
[2:50]It's crazy.
[2:51]So, well, everybody remembers their fourth grade teacher.
[2:54]You can ask anybody who that was, and we think back.
[2:57]It's a pivotal year.
[2:58]It's a big deal going from 9 to 10.
[3:00]It's true.
[3:01]It really is.
[3:02]Oh my gosh.
[3:03]Well, congratulations.
[3:04]You've had so much career success.
[3:05]I love it.
[3:06]It's like your bio is amazing.
[3:08]And of course, everything you shared in the book, which your work has informed.
[3:11]Would you mind telling listeners about, well, everything is sort of interlinked, but let's start with the book, and in whatever order you want.
[3:19]Your career, which became the book, the book is your consulting company.
[3:22]So, you tell it.
[3:24]Sure.
[3:25]So, so I'll say that my book is a travel guide book to combining career and caregiving without losing yourself in the process,
[3:35]so staying healthy and whole as you meet the responsibilities that are two big sets of responsibilities in your life.
[3:41]And when people say, well, why did you write this book or what was your inspiration?
[3:45]I feel like I should have a really sort of lofty, glossy answer to it.
[3:49]And the real answer is necessity.
[3:51]So, I wrote this book because I really desperately wanted to read this book.
[3:56]So, nine years ago, my first daughter was born.
[3:59]I have two little girls who are 9 and 7 now.
[4:01]And when she was born, I was working in-house at a big company as an executive coach.
[4:06]And I could give a lot of people advice about how to, you know, manage their careers and get ahead professionally.
[4:12]But I just didn't have much advice to give them on how to do that while being the parents that they wanted to be.
[4:18]And I felt a little bit on my back foot about that.
[4:20]And then you can see where this is going when I had my own first baby, of course, the problem kind of came home with me.
[4:26]And I didn't know how to do so many things like tell my boss that I needed to leave mid afternoon because I had to take my daughter to the pediatrician.
[4:33]So, I pushed the stroller literally down to the flagship Barnes and Noble one day.
[4:37]And I said to the very nice clerk at the store, where's the working parent book, right?
[4:41]Because there's a book for everything.
[4:43]And he said, well, there's the career section and went like this to hundreds of books in one part of the store.
[4:49]And he said, and there's the parent things section.
[4:52]And he pointed to the other part of the store.
[4:55]And it didn't seem to be anything that really brought this two together.
[4:58]And long story short, that sent me on the journey to kind of gathering all this advice and different kinds of supports and perspectives that working parents can use and then to ultimately collecting them in whatever.
[5:11]Wow.
[5:12]So where are they shelving your book?
[5:13]Are you in the parenting section?
[5:15]Are they going to put it in the career section?
[5:19]It's in the work section. And I come to this work as an executive coach. So I will readily say, and my children would probably also tell you that I'm not a parenting expert.
[5:29]I come from the angle of how do we succeed and thrive and be ourselves professionally while also holding what's really important.
[5:39]And so that's the sort of what I bring.
[5:43]And I think therefore why the book is written the way it is as an executive coaching conversation that happens on the page.
[5:49]And why it is in the category or the section that it is.
[5:53]Oh, I'm glad we're doing this particular interview now because I don't know if you've heard the screaming in the background, but my kids are in the other room and have these two friends over who are particularly loud.
[6:03]Anyway, so this is my intersection of career and home and everything else.
[6:08]Well, I'm in my daughter's bedroom and I've blurred the background so that you can't see all of her, you know, nine year old stuff.
[6:15]So this is how we're living.
[6:17]Yeah, we get it done.
[6:19]Work life integration.
[6:20]Yes.
[6:21]I think that I mean, obviously with the pandemic, it's all become blurred anyway, right?
[6:26]The fact that there are no really clear lines and that so many people aren't even going back to the office.
[6:32]And so home, you know, in a way, I like that people remember now that the people they work with are actual people.
[6:39]Right.
[6:40]I feel like it used to be so corned off.
[6:41]Like this is who you work and you can't like talk about your family or private stuff or whatever.
[6:45]And then this is who you really are or something off on the side.
[6:49]Right.
[6:50]That you were actually two people.
[6:52]You're one person doing two roles without any contradiction between those two things.
[6:57]Right.
[6:58]You can be yourself in both places.
[6:59]I do think though this blurring of boundaries is really good in a way.
[7:03]But it also leads to some really, really big pressures.
[7:06]So people feel like they're always on.
[7:08]They always have to be giving in both spheres of their life.
[7:12]Like they always have to be doing something or productive every moment of their day.
[7:16]So a lot of the works that I do with my one to one coaching clients now.
[7:20]So I work as support working moms and dads as helping them figure out where even really artificially because we don't have a lot of tactical boundaries, but where artificially they can draw a line and say,
[7:31]All right.
[7:32]After seven PM in the evening, I'm going to physically close my laptop and I will fully permission myself to be fully present and available as a dad to my kids for the next two hours.
[7:43]And if I have to get back online, I will.
[7:45]But having some of that clean break and that distinction is really important to showing up as your full self being able to focus not not feeling so sort of crazy and chaotic.
[7:56]And also doing better in both spheres, I think.
[7:58]So that's important to push us back to also.
[8:01]I was out with my kids yesterday and I had my phone with me and I had not allocated it as the time where I would just be with my kids in my head FYI.
[8:09]And I was just like, turning the day and so I was trying to keep up with everything else.
[8:13]And so I was, you know, my little girl who's I have four kids and the one who was talking is eight and she kept being like,
[8:18]Mom, Mom, and finally she was like, what about being just in the moment?
[8:24]I was like, oh my gosh, this is too much.
[8:26]I was like, okay, I'm in the moment.
[8:28]I'm sitting next to you.
[8:29]I'm playing with kinetic sand with one hand and I'm on my phone at the other hand.
[8:32]I'm doing my best here, you know, like it's never enough.
[8:37]Come be a break and you're eight.
[8:38]Right.
[8:39]It's like, what do you need me to do?
[8:40]Like make your own sandcastle or something.
[8:42]You know, this is like not the beach.
[8:44]It was sand on a table.
[8:45]Right.
[8:46]So.
[8:47]Oh, yeah.
[8:48]Even if you cordon off the hours, I feel like then the next hour comes and they're like, you're never available.
[8:53]There's just so much pressure.
[8:55]There is so much pressure.
[8:57]And and there's always something more to do, right?
[9:00]There's, there's your to do list and mine to do list.
[9:03]Like they would stretch across the country if we unroll them, right?
[9:06]And and everybody says, and we could go 24 seven and that list would never get shorter.
[9:11]So, so one of the techniques I encourage a lot of working parents to think about using is keeping some kind of list or scorecard for themselves about things they've already accomplished.
[9:21]So if you haven't done something, it's top of mind, right?
[9:24]It's always nagging at you.
[9:25]I need to call my child's teacher back.
[9:27]I need to get that report done for work.
[9:29]I need to do whatever it is.
[9:31]And you forget everything that you've done and accomplished that's so good.
[9:34]So if you can keep a running tally for yourself of I did have a really good parent teacher conference or I did spend just time snuggling with my toddler before bed last night.
[9:45]Or I did have a good meeting with somebody at work who's a really difficult customer and, you know, we got to a great resolution on whatever it was.
[9:52]If you can make a list of that and then actually read down that list on a regular basis, it sort of re-anchors you back.
[10:00]in this I'm doing a lot there's my commitment is total
[10:05]and I'm accomplishing things.
[10:06]I'm on the right path and I think that's a powerful feeling
[10:09]when you feel like the sense of frenzy and it's never done
[10:13]because that's not, the treadmill is not an easy place
[10:15]to feel like you're getting momentum, right?
[10:17]You want to feel like you're moving forward
[10:19]unless you're like a Barry's bootcamp or something.
[10:21]Correct, correct.
[10:23]And I wouldn't know much about that.
[10:25]I mean, either I just know I tried it once
[10:28]and I could not keep up.
[10:29]Like this is not, this is not for me.
[10:31]But to your point, like this is while the kinetic sand
[10:34]was going on, I start making it to do this
[10:35]just for what I had to do last night.
[10:37]And when my daughter and I was with my mom too,
[10:39]they saw my list.
[10:40]Oh my gosh, this is just like what I have
[10:43]for the next like two or three hours.
[10:45]Like then by the time tomorrow ends,
[10:46]I'll have a totally new to do list.
[10:48]They're like all those things.
[10:49]I'm like, that's what I'm doing when I'm like
[10:51]at my desk frantic, right?
[10:53]I'm doing stuff.
[10:54]But anyway, to your point I'm like,
[10:56]I should really write a new list
[10:57]because it's for, and I'm like,
[10:58]I don't just gonna admire the fact
[10:59]that there are all these things crossed out.
[11:02]You never put things on your to-do list
[11:04]that you've already done
[11:05]so that you can immediately cross them out.
[11:07]Yes, sometimes where I'm like,
[11:09]oh, I forgot I had to do that.
[11:10]Boop, boop, boop, yeah.
[11:12]Yeah, yeah.
[11:14]Because it gives you that sense of you're going,
[11:15]or put something really easy on the list
[11:17]so you can cross it out.
[11:18]Let me just wait.
[11:19]Done.
[11:20]Yeah, exactly.
[11:22]Well, the thing that was so great about your book
[11:24]is you start off by giving everybody a framework
[11:26]based on age.
[11:27]Like, you come at it from all the different spheres.
[11:30]First, just by age.
[11:31]Like, what do you need to know if you have toddlers?
[11:33]What do you need to know when you have teenagers?
[11:35]And then you go into different things
[11:37]and you're, well, towards the end,
[11:38]you go into different things
[11:39]like your own health and how to keep yourself balanced.
[11:43]And then what if you're an entrepreneur?
[11:45]What if you're a CEO?
[11:45]What if you run the show?
[11:46]What if you like all these different values and things
[11:50]and ways of coming at it?
[11:52]How did you decide to structure it?
[11:53]Because I feel like you had five or six parts
[11:55]and each one could have been its own book.
[11:57]You know what I mean?
[11:58]Like, it was great.
[11:59]There's so much information.
[12:00]It's amazing.
[12:01]Yeah, so when I first started writing the book,
[12:03]one thing that was really important to me
[12:05]was to have every parent who picked it up,
[12:07]felt like it spoke to them.
[12:09]And that's, you know, an ambitious thing to try and do.
[12:12]But in a lot of the working parent conversations
[12:15]and workshops and coaching I had done,
[12:17]there were so many parents who for a lot of different reasons
[12:21]told me that they didn't feel like they were part
[12:23]of sort of the group of working parents.
[12:25]Like, well, I have older children
[12:27]and I know the people who really have it tough
[12:29]are moms of, you know, of new babies
[12:32]or people who are just returning from parental leave
[12:34]or we're an LGBT family.
[12:35]And I'm not sure that some of my concerns
[12:38]are always reflected in that or I'm an entrepreneur
[12:40]or I, you know, I don't have the flexibility to work
[12:43]from home.
[12:44]So, you know, some of the conversation doesn't relate to me.
[12:46]So I came at the book from thinking,
[12:48]okay, from the person who just picks this up
[12:51]and who wants to feel reassured and included,
[12:53]how do we start there?
[12:55]And then I was able to drill down
[12:56]and try and make it digestible.
[12:58]So there's the chronological section,
[13:01]which is from, you know, birth or pre-arrivaled
[13:03]to teenage years.
[13:05]And then by different sort of category
[13:07]of how people thought about parenting,
[13:08]resources is one section.
[13:10]And then health and wellness and feeling yourself
[13:13]and together is another section
[13:14]and some of the tactical stuff around career
[13:17]is another section.
[13:18]So I was just trying to think about how to make it
[13:20]navigable with that inclusive lens on top.
[13:24]Love it.
[13:25]And then for people who that's still not enough,
[13:27]you'll do coaching with them.
[13:29]Yes. So I do a lot of one-to-one coaching
[13:31]and the wonderful part about my job
[13:33]is that I'm sort of surprised and challenged every day.
[13:37]So the book is 550 pages long and I felt like,
[13:40]wow, I, you know, I really captured a lot of stuff.
[13:43]And then every day I will have a parent ask me a question
[13:47]or make a recommendation or say,
[13:49]here's a habit of practice that really works for me.
[13:51]And I've never heard it before.
[13:53]I'm thinking, gee, I don't know how to answer that.
[13:56]And I think that's part of why I love this work.
[13:58]But it also, yeah, it feels like this
[14:01]book could have been a lot longer.
[14:03]But as you know, as an author at some point,
[14:04]you have to say, here's what I'm gonna deliver.
[14:07]I'm on a deadline and I've got so many pages
[14:09]and words that we can use.
[14:10]But 500, I mean, it's a lot of material.
[14:13]How did you do extensive outlining
[14:16]and then you tackle a section by section
[14:17]and how long did the whole thing take?
[14:19]And like all the research and, you know,
[14:21]there's a lot in here.
[14:23]Yeah, so I started by outlining.
[14:24]So I've just found in my own writing
[14:27]that it's easier to sort of pretend I'm an architect
[14:30]and put together the blueprint and the plans
[14:34]and understand how the structure is gonna work
[14:35]before I think about sort of like the drywall
[14:37]and the bricks and the decorative moldings
[14:39]and that kind of stuff.
[14:41]So I started with just a question,
[14:43]which is what would any working parent want to pick up and see?
[14:46]And I honestly took inspiration from a lot of other books
[14:49]that you and I and everybody else is familiar with.
[14:52]Like you think about like the lonely planet,
[14:54]travel guidebooks, you know, it covers your whole trip.
[14:57]So what would make people feel like that?
[14:59]And so I outlined appropriately.
[15:02]And then I went out and I did a lot of research.
[15:03]So a lot of the stuff that's in the book is based on,
[15:06]a little bit is based on my own experiences of parents.
[15:08]A lot is based on my coaching work.
[15:11]And then really kind of the meat and potatoes
[15:13]that the book is based on what I heard
[15:15]from other working parents.
[15:16]And I spoke to a couple hundred of them
[15:19]just on a pure play research basis,
[15:21]not in my coaching practice.
[15:22]And I deliberately went very broad.
[15:24]So I spoke to people, you know, with teenagers,
[15:26]with multiples, from different backgrounds
[15:29]and cultures and beliefs overseas
[15:31]or in different parts of the country.
[15:33]I spoke to people who are in frontline jobs, you know,
[15:35]police officers, a single mom firefighter,
[15:38]healthcare workers, some of this was going on
[15:40]during the pandemic.
[15:41]But I also spoke to people in every, you know,
[15:43]every different field I wanted to try and mix it up
[15:45]and make sure that I was grabbing all the different
[15:49]nuggets of advice from this broad group
[15:52]so that the kind of the crowdsource
[15:54]and distilled product would really work for people.
[15:57]It would give people the most traction.
[15:58]So I mean, it's hard to take all the research
[16:01]and narrow it down.
[16:02]But if there were a couple of things
[16:03]that stressed out working parents could do
[16:06]to show the kids that, you know, to maintain sanity
[16:10]or, you know, just do a better job.
[16:13]What would some of the things aside from having
[16:15]dedicated time with your phone off?
[16:17]What would like your top two tips be?
[16:19]Not to put you on the spot here, but.
[16:21]Yeah, no, no, no.
[16:21]So if I could leave people with no other task
[16:25]or idea or whatever, it would be to try
[16:27]and spend just a little bit of time mapping out
[16:30]and understanding and taking control
[16:32]of your working parent template.
[16:33]So your working parent template is sort of your
[16:36]mental model of what working parenthood is
[16:39]and means and requires.
[16:41]And particularly of what good working parenthood is.
[16:44]And it's made up of this sort of,
[16:46]it's a kind of a mosaic-like picture
[16:48]of all the different experiences
[16:49]and bits of advice and observations
[16:51]that you've made about working parenthood
[16:52]really over the course of your life.
[16:54]So if you saw your mom work full-time,
[16:58]but she always came home at 5.30 and cooked dinner for you
[17:01]and then helped you with homework afterwards,
[17:03]that's great.
[17:04]Your mom was a great role model,
[17:05]but you may have it in your template in your mind
[17:07]that if I'm going to be a good working mom,
[17:10]that means cooking every night for the kids.
[17:12]We're sitting down for dinner every night with them
[17:14]or always being available to help with homework.
[17:16]Now, that's not right or wrong,
[17:18]good or bad, it's your experience,
[17:20]but you're going to be in for some really rough sledding
[17:23]if you're always holding yourself in comparison
[17:26]to this template, if you're kind of working
[17:29]under this layer of shoulds.
[17:31]And those shoulds might come from your social media feed
[17:34]or from your own parents or from your career mentors
[17:37]or from your current colleagues
[17:39]and maybe the other moms at work say,
[17:41]oh, you know, when you have a second child,
[17:43]you should really tap the breaks professionally
[17:45]because that's just what you should do
[17:47]and you should think about flex time.
[17:49]Maybe you should, but maybe you don't want to
[17:52]or maybe that doesn't fit with your career
[17:54]or maybe you're not at the right juncture
[17:56]or you need the income or whatever it is.
[17:58]So figure out where all those bits and pieces
[18:01]are coming from, jot them down on a piece of paper
[18:03]and then step back and say,
[18:06]here are my own ambitions and goals
[18:09]and the contours of my job
[18:11]and my family structure and my resources
[18:15]in all different senses of that term.
[18:16]Here's the working parent life I want to and can lead
[18:20]and I'm not gonna kind of beat myself up
[18:22]with all these shoulds and expectations
[18:24]and images of what good working parenthood involves.
[18:28]And I think that really frees you up
[18:30]to start making your own decisions
[18:32]and to feel more confident and less burdened.
[18:34]I like that.
[18:35]I've had this experience where I didn't realize
[18:37]I was becoming a full-time working parent.
[18:39]It's kind of, I think when you start your own thing
[18:43]it just thinks like kind of ramp up
[18:44]until all of a sudden it's like,
[18:45]do I have a full-time job?
[18:47]Like I'm working all the time.
[18:48]So maybe that's what I was thinking about these issues
[18:52]which is why your book is so timely and so welcome
[18:55]because I've been like, well, you know, is it okay?
[18:58]Like how many, like what do I judge it on?
[19:00]Is it how many hours I'm in my, with the door closed
[19:02]versus working with the door open?
[19:04]You know, those are like different things, right?
[19:06]Like my dad used to always like
[19:08]I would sit on his lap
[19:09]but he would be like reading work documents.
[19:11]But like I was okay with that
[19:13]because I was still, you know, so I don't know.
[19:15]I think it's all like what, as you're saying,
[19:17]what you grew up with like what you feel okay doing
[19:19]and I guess, yeah, just owning it in some way.
[19:24]Yeah, and straight up, I think entrepreneurs have it
[19:27]the hardest, you know, I have a whole chapter in the book
[19:30]about people who are small business owners
[19:32]or freelancers or entrepreneurs.
[19:33]And I think there's a view and I've held it,
[19:36]I'm now working for myself also
[19:38]but there was a view when you're in a demanding job
[19:41]that like, oh, if I if I work for myself,
[19:44]I would set my own hours and I would have flexibility.
[19:46]It's sort of like would be this easier
[19:49]kind of happier, more work life friendly environment.
[19:52]And in reality, then there's no guardrails, right?
[19:55]If your boss isn't there to say you're on or you're off,
[19:58]when are you on and off?
[20:00]And as one working mom, entrepreneur I interviewed said,
[20:04]she said, I get to take vacation when my boss lets me.
[20:07]And she said, and I'm the boss, and my boss never lets me.
[20:12]So it can be very tricky to navigate
[20:16]when you are in that kind of self-directed career.
[20:20]I think vacation also is like, what does that really mean anymore?
[20:25]Because it's not where you are physically,
[20:27]because we're all working from everywhere now.
[20:29]But if you take a vacation, what it really means
[20:33]is you're just going to be really behind.
[20:36]It's not really a vacation.
[20:37]It's like, you're just going to decide not to get anything done
[20:40]and then have twice as much to go back to.
[20:42]So it's hard to, you know, where did I read somewhere
[20:44]that it wasn't the fact that people got so many emails,
[20:47]but the company had decided that they would take care
[20:51]of all of this employee's emails for her or him
[20:54]when they went on vacation.
[20:55]Right, have you heard this?
[20:56]It's like, somebody will cover for you.
[20:58]Yeah, but they do all the emails.
[21:00]It's like amazing.
[21:01]Right.
[21:02]Yeah.
[21:03]Instead of having to come back and face the music, right?
[21:05]Yes.
[21:06]I have 642 unread messages.
[21:08]I think some of this also goes to,
[21:10]and I see this a lot in my one-to-one coaching,
[21:12]it goes to our sense of identity, right?
[21:14]Like, we've all worked really hard to do all in school.
[21:16]We've all put in the hours professionally.
[21:19]We're all doing what it takes to show up as great moms
[21:22]and be there for our kids, like in all senses of that term.
[21:26]So the idea of just stepping back and saying, no, thanks.
[21:29]I'm just going to be doing whatever on a beach
[21:31]for a certain amount of time.
[21:33]It's not that we don't want to do that.
[21:35]It's that we feel like unprofessional
[21:38]or we're dropping our responsibilities.
[21:40]There's something that's deeply disconcerting about that.
[21:43]And you have to sort of manage yourself
[21:45]and figure out how to get past that
[21:47]so you can get what you need,
[21:48]because if you don't have that time to recharge,
[21:51]it just grind you down.
[21:53]Good point.
[21:53]So how do you recharge?
[21:55]I mean, you're doing so much stuff.
[21:57]Like, how do you do that?
[21:59]Yeah, so good question.
[22:01]And if you ask my kids, they would probably say,
[22:03]I don't do it well, right?
[22:05]I grapple with all these issues as much as anybody else.
[22:09]One technique that has really worked for me, though,
[22:11]is and I started this maybe, I don't know,
[22:14]six or seven years ago,
[22:15]is that I told myself that I was going to keep a Saturday Sabbath.
[22:20]And I'm using that word in a non-religious sense
[22:23]just that Saturday was going to be my permission day off.
[22:26]I will receive emails,
[22:29]but unless they're really urgent,
[22:30]I won't respond to them.
[22:31]I won't make plans unless they're plans
[22:33]that I really, really want to do.
[22:35]Like, I won't just sort of do something out of a sense
[22:38]of obligation.
[22:38]I try and find activities that are restorative to me
[22:41]and pleasurable and let me hang out with my kids.
[22:44]So Saturday is sort of like this great reset button for me.
[22:48]And even if my week is crazy
[22:50]and I'm emailing at 11.30 at night or whatever,
[22:53]I have that thing that brings me back to center.
[22:55]And it's just enough to do that without,
[22:58]it's rewarding without taking up too, too much time.
[23:01]So that's my one day a week thing
[23:04]that really works the whole day,
[23:06]like start to finish morning and night the whole day.
[23:09]I wake up and it's my day.
[23:12]I mean, I'm a mom of two young kids.
[23:14]So oftentimes I'm taking people to birthday parties
[23:16]or taking pre-pandemic times,
[23:20]doing things that I have to around the house
[23:22]or whatever.
[23:23]It's not a completely responsibility freedom.
[23:25]No, I know.
[23:25]But it gives me back that sense of control, right?
[23:28]I'm doing this because it's good for me
[23:30]and because I want to, as opposed to feeling like
[23:32]I'm sort of constantly spinning the plates,
[23:34]which I feel, you know, most moms are.
[23:36]Yes, very true.
[23:38]So what is coming next for you?
[23:40]You have this giant book out here.
[23:43]You have your thriving business.
[23:44]Like, where do you see it all going?
[23:46]Is there anything you want to achieve
[23:48]you haven't gotten to yet?
[23:50]Yeah, so listen in the near term
[23:53]and intermediate term.
[23:54]Given the pandemic's still going,
[23:56]I think this fall in a way is going to be more stressful
[23:59]for a lot of working parents
[24:01]than even things have been up to this point, right?
[24:04]Because we're all sort of depleted
[24:06]and we're facing some, you know, back to work,
[24:08]back to school, et cetera.
[24:10]So then, you know, the kind of immediate term for me
[24:12]is doing what I can to be of service
[24:15]to individual clients and to organizations.
[24:17]And as much as the pandemic has been awful, right?
[24:21]I've just had a dreadful time.
[24:23]It's been really exciting to see
[24:25]how many working parents networks
[24:27]and affinity groups are sprouting up
[24:30]in every organization
[24:32]and how different corporations and institutions
[24:35]are doing what they can to support working parents.
[24:37]So I've sort of told myself,
[24:39]except for my Saturdays,
[24:40]the next six months or, you know, intermediate term
[24:43]is not going to be of that balance for me.
[24:45]It's going to be about trying to jump into that fray
[24:47]and help where I can.
[24:49]So it's exciting.
[24:50]It's a little tiring, but it's exciting and good work.
[24:53]I know, I'm bracing myself for the onslaught,
[24:57]the fall onset.
[24:58]The onslaught.
[24:58]School is guarding.
[25:00]Yeah, but it'll be fine.
[25:01]It'll be great.
[25:02]Exactly.
[25:04]Do you have any advice for aspiring authors now
[25:07]that you're also published author
[25:09]in addition to everything else?
[25:10]Yeah.
[25:11]I think the thing that was difficult for me
[25:13]before kind of getting into the writing thing
[25:16]was that I always thought,
[25:18]maybe I had imposter syndrome or something,
[25:20]but I always thought that people who wrote books
[25:22]or who had really popular blogs or whatever
[25:25]had some sort of special magic or special experience to them
[25:29]like they had to have worked for the New York Times
[25:31]or they had to, you know,
[25:33]been A students in English or something.
[25:34]And that's true for a lot of people,
[25:36]but really the gating item to producing a good piece of writing
[25:40]is sitting down and really working on it
[25:42]and saying to yourself,
[25:43]I have, let me think about how I would say this
[25:46]to somebody, if I were just talking to them,
[25:49]how do I make that happen on the page?
[25:51]How do I make it valuable and urgent and readable?
[25:54]And if you can do that, then you're in business.
[25:58]And then the other stuff is, you know,
[26:00]it's kind of putting in the hours
[26:01]and then, you know, there's the whole business side
[26:02]of getting a book published.
[26:04]But I think it's having that sense of self
[26:06]and of confidence that I've got something to say,
[26:08]and I'm gonna work it getting it out there.
[26:10]Well, you, I have to say, you speak so eloquently
[26:13]that for you to make it sound good on the page,
[26:15]it will probably be quite, it would be easy.
[26:17]Where, you know, like,
[26:18]every sentence is beginning in like beautiful paragraphs.
[26:22]Well, we should have brought my editor for this book
[26:25]and on the, because I got to the point
[26:28]in the editing process, Kevin Evers,
[26:30]my incredible editor at HBR,
[26:32]who was absolutely fantastic
[26:33]and the father of two young children.
[26:35]He would get on the phone with him
[26:36]and I could tell by how he sighed,
[26:39]how good or bad my writing was.
[26:41]He would go,
[26:42]huh.
[26:43]And I would say, I'm so sorry.
[26:46]I'll rewrite that chapter.
[26:47]I know it's not good.
[26:48]And let's just say that there was a lot of sighing.
[26:50]He's a really patient guy,
[26:52]but it's just, it's rewriting.
[26:54]It's just, you know, just refining
[26:56]and refining and refining,
[26:57]like anything else.
[26:58]Lots of practice.
[26:59]It's very true.
[26:59]Oh my gosh.
[27:00]I don't know if I could have dealt with the size.
[27:02]I feel like when you put your words out there,
[27:05]it's like your, you know,
[27:06]whole layer of skin is gone, right?
[27:07]You're like so sensitive about it, but maybe not for you.
[27:10]I know.
[27:11]I know, but the fun part about it for me was that,
[27:13]because it's, it's coaching,
[27:16]that even if Kevin was sighing
[27:18]and my chapter was terrible and whatever,
[27:21]it was all in the spirit
[27:22]and all kind of moving the ball down the field
[27:25]of helping other people feel like, yes, I can do this.
[27:29]I can work, I can parent, I can be myself.
[27:32]There's a solution for this, there's techniques,
[27:34]I have options and I felt like that was such a powerful
[27:37]and goal that like I would, you know,
[27:40]I would risk the sighing and rip up, you know,
[27:42]40 drafts and redo it because that was the outcome
[27:45]I wanted to get to.
[27:46]That's amazing.
[27:47]I love that.
[27:48]It's when you have a mission you're working towards
[27:50]and especially something that's so, you know,
[27:52]altruistic, it's really amazing
[27:54]and has personal benefits as, yes, yeah.
[27:58]Not, and I wanted the advice myself, so there you go.
[28:02]So now the next person won't be, you know,
[28:04]in the middle of our snowball,
[28:05]trying to figure out where to go.
[28:06]Exactly. Exactly.
[28:07]Well, Daisy, thank you.
[28:09]Thanks so much for coming on.
[28:10]It's so nice to reconnect and, yeah,
[28:12]congratulations on your accomplishment.
[28:14]It's really awesome.
[28:15]Thank you so much for having me.
[28:15]Okay, take care.
[28:18]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms.
[28:20]Don't have time to read books.
[28:21]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram,
[28:23]at Zibi Owens and at Moms.
[28:25]Don't have time to read books.
[28:26]Also sign up for my newsletter at zibiowens.com
[28:29]And sign up for my virtual book club
[28:31]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[28:33]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan,
[28:35]at Textures Sound for the Sound Editing.
[28:37]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[28:39]for providing this fantastic intro and now trim music.