429 MINISODE Sarah Noked: Juggling Business and Kids

Women Innovating Networking Growing Scaling – that’s WINGS … I’m Melinda Wittstock, my mission is to help women take flight to soar to the success of our dreams in business and in life– and create and grow businesses in alignment with our passion and purpose.  On this special Mentoring Minisode of Wings of Inspired Business … we talk about why you need to focus on building a team. No matter how good we are at ALL that we do … we cannot succeed alone. We also talk about the best team leadership: Be clear about your goals, be proactive not reactive, communicate and automate as many processes as you can.

Here with us today to provide her insights and inspiration is …

Sarah Noked

Sarah is what’s known as an OBM – that is, she founded an Online Business Management Agency.  She helps her clients learn how to think like an “owner” rather than an employee in their own startups and businesses … how to get better at delegating and asking for help, plus other systems for automation and management.

Sarah will be here with her advice in just a moment on our Mentoring Minisode and first …

And now to the inspiring Sarah Noked

Founder of Sarah Noked OBM, an online business management agency, Sarah helps her clients systematize their businesses’ back-ends, hire and manage successful virtual teams, and prime founders for successful online launches. Her mission is simple: to empower entrepreneurs, keep everyone accountable to their goals, and increase her clients’ profits.

Sarah is one of just 3 worldwide Certified OBM® Trainers, offering a variety of training and certification courses, and resources to empower and educate highly-skilled VAs and OBMs around the world.

Melinda Wittstock:         Sarah, welcome to Wings.

Sarah Noked:                    Thank you. Thank you for having me here.

Melinda Wittstock:         I’m excited to talk with you and always interested to know what’s inspiring you right now?

Sarah Noked:                    Yeah. I would say what’s inspiring me right now, that’s a great question. I feel like what’s inspiring me right now is changing every five seconds. What’s inspiring me right now is having enough time for myself to actually take some time and practice self-care. That’s what I’m finding inspiring, is like time for myself because I’ve got three little kids. That’s so interesting, you know how it goes. You find it’s hard.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah. But it’s so, so difficult for women to find time and in a way, the more time we create for ourselves, the more we bizarrely expand time. It’s counterintuitive, but it’s [inaudible 00:01:01] so I’m glad you’re doing that. You need to do… how old are your kids?

Sarah Noked:                    Oh, I’ve got a one year old, a four year old and a six year old, so it’s crazy. Its crazy.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, and balancing all that with business. God, I know that drill. But you know what? Here’s a good thing. I think motherhood, this is my theory anyway. Okay? Motherhood makes us better at business and business makes us better at motherhood. It all works out.

Sarah Noked:                    I like that.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah. [crosstalk 00:01:28] So here’s the thing. I mean, I’m going to ask you what’s challenging you in your life right now? I already know the answer.

Sarah Noked:                    Finding that time for myself to like… because at a certain point I was looking back at all the things I used to love doing. I used to love yoga. I used to love going for walks, I loved cooking, I used to love doing all these things that would really inspire me. Now for me it’s like I need to go back to that first step of like, “Okay, hey Sarah, nice to meet you again. Let’s chill out with myself for a little bit as I get it back into,” some of the things I used to love doing that really inspired me that I just don’t… I really put a lot on the back burner over the last six years.

Melinda Wittstock:         I think women have, we have seasons in our lives and we change, we go through different transitions at different points, right? Where when our kids are really young, I mean, gosh, we just have less time for our friends and we have less time for self care. We have less time for all these things and yeah, it’s impossible to do it all, all of the time. But know that one day again you’ll get back into yoga, I promise. I know I did. I took a long hiatus on yoga when my kids are really little. Then there’s a certain point where I really found my passion for it again.

Sarah Noked:                    Yeah. I’m hoping I get back to that at some point because I was really, I mean from the time I was 17, which is quite time ago, I mean, like 20 years of yoga. I really left a lot behind with the business and the kids it can sometimes be a lot to juggle.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh, that is for sure. What a lovely transition of sorts into the advice part of our mentoring minisode and I’m really curious what your top three go-to pieces of advice would be for female entrepreneurs, founders, women in business or executives that are thinking of taking the leap into entrepreneurship.

Sarah Noked:                    Yeah. I would say my stance in this industry is you need a team. You need to have a team even if you’re just starting off. A lot of the times people ask me when do I need to bring on a team? I’m like, “If you’re asking me that question, it’s probably too late.” I would say that my top three things are, being really clear about your goals. This is all around team and growing a really successful online business, but being very clear about your goals.

Also that means when you’re clear about your goals, many of my clients find that when they’re clear on their goals, they can hire in a proactive rather than a reactive mode. Goal clarity is really important. Being able to communicate with your team and just communication in general. Even if it’s a subcontractor that’s coming on for an hour a month to help you bang out that opt in or get that webpage up, whatever it is you really need to be communicating in one central place.

Use a project management tool. That would be my second tip is communicate, use a project management tool. Then my third tip is automate, focus on automation. I find that entrepreneurs really get attached to some of the tasks that are important to their business and they don’t know how to actually delegate it to somebody else. They’re always designating themselves as a doer. I think in the early stages of business building we’re so focused on being that solopreneur. I know I was for a couple of years, I was like, “I can do everything in my business and nobody does it better than me, but it’s just the biggest load.”

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, it’s so true. I see so many people do that where they just create a job for themselves rather than a business. Right? Making that transition to go from the doing to the owning, and not everybody knows how to do that. There’s a great book about this is The E Myth, right? I mean because you end up starting a business of around something you love to do and so it can be really difficult psychologically or otherwise to make that leap.

This is so good. I think what you said about team is so important as well. We cannot do this alone. We need team, we need mentors, we need community, we need masterminds, we need all that good stuff. Sarah, how can people find you and work with you?

Sarah Noked:                    Well actually I’ve set up a really nice, lovely page for your people over at sarahnoked.com/wings.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh nice. Thank you very much.

Sarah Noked:                    Yeah, so you can find me over there and I’ve got some really juicy, because I’m all about standard operating procedures myself. As an online business manager, that’s pretty much what I do. I’ve got a lot of juicy templates that they can download for free so that you can get focused on that delegation mindset, communicating and getting clear on the goals of you being that amazing CEO and not just giving yourself a job, like you were saying, Melinda. Don’t give yourself another job, focus on being the owner of the business and not just a piece inside.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh yes, absolutely. Well, Sarah, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us.

Sarah Noked:                    Thank you.