The Visibility Impact Show: Marketing & Growth for Women Entrepreneurs

How Alyssa Wolff Built a 20-Hour Workweek Business (While Homeschooling 5 Kids)

• Crissy Conner • Season 15 • Episode 584

Share episode

This episode is for the work-from-home mom (or any woman entrepreneur) who’s tired of trying to “do it all.”

Alyssa Wolff, founder of Your Unbusy Life, shares how she built a business in just 20 hours a week while homeschooling five kids, and how visibility helped her grow her email list by 700%. We unpack time management, visibility fears, delegation hacks, and what real productivity actually looks like for women building online businesses. 

Find out how much time you can take back here.

More about Alyssa:

Connect on LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/alyssa-wolff-unbusy

Search the Unbusy Mom podcast on your favorite platforms.




Keywords: time management, productivity for women, work from home moms, business growth, visibility marketing, 

Drop us a message...

Don't forget to share this episode and tag me @itscrissyconner on Instagram and @crissyconner on Facebook to be entered to win!

Welcome back to the visibility impact show. I have an amazing guest with us today. And so I'm super excited. This guest had five kids in 10 years. And she went looking for her next challenge and found an online business. She is now a take your time back coach for other work from home moms who want to love their work from home lives again, she helps them spend more time cuddling their kids. less time cleaning up after them getting the workouts journaling and hobby time they need every single day to be able to do deep work for hours guilt free I might add as they scale their business and up their revenue not their hours. Welcome to the show Alyssa was Thank you, Chrissy. I am so excited to have you here. And I just want to dive into it right now. Can you share with us a little bit about how you went from a homeschool mom of five to a take your time back coach and what sparked that shift? Sure, well, disclaimer up front, I knew as the certain of everything in life, you know, 18 year old, I am never going to be an entrepreneur. I'd heard people doing side hustles with like, this is not for me, you have to be super creative, think outside the box. Let me just write that off completely for starters and say, I'm gonna go to university, I'm gonna get the first job after I graduate, this will be the wonderful normal career path. Except it didn't work out that way. I started in elementary education and very quickly realized that being a classroom maid is one thing, being the teacher responsible for 30 small children is quite another. And I realized I wasn't going to be able to make it even to my senior practicum. I had to get out of that major. So I sat around like, else can I do? It was an engineering school. I am not an engineer. There was very little that I could actually see myself doing. And the only major I found was not one that you could go get a job. It was interdisciplinary. In other words, study whatever the heck you want and get out with your degree. So I did that, got married, started having babies and was like, right, I will have kids while I wait for my purpose to find me. That was a 13 year wait. And one day I heard a podcaster talk about online business. I was like, wait, You mean I could do something. I have no idea what, but I could do something that would involve mentoring other women somehow from the comfort of my own home, raising my now five children because my youngest is six month old baby. I could stay home and have this purpose. Like I don't have to wait until I'm 50 something and all my kids are grown. Ooh, now I have to make the choice. Like step out now with all these kids around me or say, no, I don't feel comfortable doing that. sounds scary. I'm going to wait. Well, obviously I said, I don't feel like waiting till my 50s. I want to do this now. Like I'm sick of waiting. Let's give it a go. So good, so good. So one of the things that you talk about is you say it's not about being productive for productivity sake. Can you share what a little bit of that is really about? Because I think a lot of people do busy work, especially entrepreneurs, to make sure that they're putting in their time to get their dollar. Yes, I mean, it's whether you're an entrepreneur, whether you're thinking about the housework, life is full of busy work. You can expand practically anything to fill your amount of time. You feel like, you know, maybe your situation, empty nester, what are all the things you could be doing? Like, do you really want to go back to Pinterest meals and super deep cleaning routines? And I should go visit this slum spot and I should go over here and do this and I should explore my town thoroughly because you can. What about what you want to do? And that does not mean hitting everything on everyone else's bucket list or on everyone else's to be a good entrepreneur. These are the five hot new platforms you have to be on. This is how far ahead your content should be batched and scheduled. This is just never ending. So true, so true. What do you see? Because I obviously there's a lot of work from home moms listening to this podcast. And what do you see is like the biggest mistake that they're making with their time? not thinking they could actually focus, buckle down and get something done. Or on the other hand, if you're like, no, no, I have some results, not feeling like you're worth hiring someone to help you so you can offload some of the stuff you don't like doing. Because you're either finding that it's you are keeping yourself back, it's like your mindset. And I just feel like my family needs me so much and you aren't able to set those clear boundaries. Or it's the, no, I've got to practice. I've got the coaching business. I've got a course business, but I can't scale it any farther and still be a great mom because usually it's the back end, the admin, the customer service, the client concierge, you know, all that kind of a thing. And they are so afraid to upset the apple cart with the success they've already created. So true. So one of the things that I hear about when it talks to, when we talk about delegating, think a lot of people, especially entrepreneurs, we think, let me delegate my emails. Let me delegate my social media. Let me delegate this. But I've heard a lot of people actually start delegating the things that they don't want to do in their home life. So what do you recommend? Cause I mean, we can delegate laundry, grocery delivery, and so many house cleaning, lawn work, or we can delegate things to a VA to work on our business. Like what If someone wanted to start delegating something at first, what would you recommend and how would you recommend them making that decision? What's the right decision for them? Whichever one annoys you most. You're probably going to need both to be honest, but start with whichever one is going to free up the most mental white space for you. Maybe you're like, actually, I'm good with laundry for now, not perpetually, but I can handle it. What's really bugging me is answering every single person in Slack. I would really rather them filtered through a, you know, a support coach and maybe you're the flip side. I hate breaking my workflow to go get all the groceries and library books and this and that the other. I would like a part-time house manager and then I could just work, work, work, work, play with my kids. That sounds wonderful. That's a great idea. That's a great idea. I love that. I love that decision making process. So when you started, one of the things you said is you do all of your work in 20 hours a week. So was there a point that you noticed you were working more than that and you're like, wait a minute, I need to streamline this back. Or did you automatically start out building your business to work within 20 hours a week because of you already knew your capacity going in? Well, I started with the 20 hours a week because that's how much I could afford with the six or seven month old baby and the four older kids. And now, I'm over five years in, I realized, hey, I need to take some of my own advice again and see how much more I can delegate. So I can now work more like 25, 28, maybe even 30 hours a week if I want to. But that is only because I offloaded those additional 10 hours of the housekeeping. Yes, mostly by training my kids in some more life skills. That actually goes to my next question. So I know when I started working from home, my youngest was five and in kindergarten. And one of the things that she loved doing was helping me. So do your kids ever want to help or are there little things that you delegate to them that they have fun doing to help mama? We have a little bit of that. I would say they're not so much tagging along for fun being around me as some of my kids are kind of service oriented. So it's more like, can I serve you by doing something for you? Which is really precious to watch it rise up in each kid in turn. And then it's more like, well, thanks, honey. Yes, actually, I need someone to go get the laundry. I was about to go do that. Could you do that for me? Okay, you know, when they're in that mode of like, what else can I do to help you? There's a bazillion things. That's so good. That's so good. Like, and I think as business owners, have, I think we have a servant's heart, right? We want to give, we want to give value. We want to serve and support other people and help people in some sort of way. So you're literally creating whether you mean to or not little entrepreneurs probably right now. Actually, some of them are thinking about entrepreneurship, so extra cool. That's I mean, that's a great idea. I've seen a lot of people teach their kids like they're when they're teenagers before they even graduate high school that they're already created six figure businesses, even if it's like something like drop shipping or something like that. Like there's so many opportunities. So I absolutely love that. I love that. So let's shift gear gears a second. You mentioned that visibility grew your email list a lot. after you participated, I think it was a giveaway. Can you walk us through that and tell us a little bit about what visibility did for you in that instance? Yeah, so in the beginning of my business, I'm sitting there with, you know, 30 people on my email list, this random collection of family and acquaintances, and hearing the standard advice to everyone, you need to do collaborations. You need to get in front of someone else's audience and going, yes, but like, how do I start? I know how to post on my own blog. I know how to start with a blog, not like YouTube or podcasting. Yeah, I know how to do my own content or website, but How do I network? So I forget exactly where now, but someone invited me to be part of their promotional summer bundle for moms package. And I was like, okay, great. This sounds scary. That must mean I should do it. I created, whatever the best freebie was I could do at the time. I'm faithfully posted with all my swipe copy, everything that she sent to do. She's a great organizer. and my email list grew by 700%. I was just gawking at the numbers. amazing. That's so cool. So I love giveaways, but even more I love what we call leveraging other people's audiences. So and that's obviously what you did. I think that's just a brilliant idea. And it's also like a really soft even though it was scary. It's a softer way than let me go, you know, speak on a stage with you know, 500 people there or something like that. So it is like a softer visibility way to kind of build your list and be able to turn those people on your list into your clients. I Bravo. That's an amazing idea. So if you guys listening have not done something like that, like invest in that, like look into that because it's a great, it's a great tool. So how has putting yourself through podcasts, collaborations, or even as a guest, like impacted your business model? How has it impacted your visibility, your growth and all of those sorts of things? Well, even before like the outward stuff, it's made a big difference to me personally and how I can show up even just for clients as a coach in sessions because there's a certain level of confidence you have to get when you are presenting workshops, being a guest speaker, even just guest podcast interviews like us right now to be with another person, sharing your ideas, not stumbling all over your words, being, I'm not sure what you can even share that's of value, right? So I almost see it as like a chicken and egg circle. You need to get out there to spread your message farther. But as you practice giving that message, you become more solid in it. And then you can take that to your clients. You can get faster giving them the insights. And then you feel like you have even more targeted things to go out there and share. It just feeds in this really beautiful way. It does. That's a great way to explain it too. So what would you tell someone who's afraid of getting visible or says that they don't have time because they're overwhelmed at home? Because I even see this even with some of my own clients and the people that I mentor, like visibility gets put to the end of the line, right? This is probably where we go into some of that, are you being productive or busy conversation too? But. What would you say to someone who was overwhelmed or had a fear of certain types of visibility and they weren't doing it? Well, number one, you can pick the easiest way possible to you, like my entry point, a giveaway where all of the swipe, like literally every social media graphic, every social media post, headlines for your emails was provided to me. All I had to do was format it and send it. That is a lot easier than being a summit speaker. Or we need to do the tough love approach and say, okay, zero visibility. So like zero growth for your business. Are you okay? with that in two years time. If your answer is yes, okay, yes, write it off, you're not in a good place. But if your answer is no, you need to say, all right, given that my priorities do not match my actions right now, what do I feel I can baby step myself into? Baby step being the key here so that you do not talk yourself right back out of it when you get cold feet. I love those questions because it's like the Marie condoing of productivity. If you think about it like that, like really asking yourself those questions, because I think so many times we act or react on our feelings versus the facts and the goals and the focus of where we want to go. So, so. decluttering productivity. Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. what's one of the most uncomfortable, but powerful decisions you've had to make in your business? Hmm. I think quitting a coaching program I was in halfway through when it was a very like go, go, go, do all the things, hustle, hustle, hustle, and we're checking up on you type of program. And I had gotten in saying, yes, I do the work. I participate and I learn I do every single thing you tell me. And I did for six months until I realized I completely hated their business model. I had no intention of actually doing it. Therefore, What was I thinking that I needed to stay in for the full term to prove a point to someone else that I was a hard worker when it's my business, my energy, my time? That pressed a lot of buttons for me. Yeah, yeah, that's a great one. That's a great one because I think a lot of times we are afraid to leave or afraid to tell people our real feelings about something. So I think as women we're people pleasers and so it's really hard to be honest about some of those things sometimes. So how do you balance being the face of your business and also being a mom? I just time block everything else separately. So I'm going to play business owner before my kids get up. I'm not going to do that on camera because I don't want to wake them up. But there's plenty of business work that does not need to be faced to camera. Then they're going to get up. We can have breakfast. We can start the homeschooling. I'm not playing business owner because I do not want to be distracted with client questions then. Yeah. then maybe late morning or right around lunchtime, since they can get their own lunch at this point, especially if I set out all the leftovers I want disposed of, I can go back and pop into Slack or check the email or look at my LinkedIn DMs and touch base with my kids right before nap time, getting everyone off to their rooms, settling everyone for the afternoon. And then I can go back and do things like this. It's a lot easier for me. And I'm like, OK, kids are elsewhere and quiet. So I'm just shifting during the day. It is a schedule because I function best with schedules, but it's not everything at once. It's a fairly repeatable thing. And some of my kids have even taken to coming out saying, okay, Mom, how many calls do you have today? When just so I know, and you know, I know what I want to ask you for homeschooling help. Because if I say I have a two hour block and 30 minute podcast interviews, they know I probably don't have four booked up. Therefore, okay, is it interviews first homeschooling later or flipped? Right. I love that because I feel like so many moms, whether they're homeschooling or not, I feel like it's the mentality of I've either got to get up early, or I got to stay up late to run my business. And it seems like and maybe you do some of that too, but it seems like you've really integrated it into your life. Yes, because I do not function while staying up late. My brain kind of goes to mush after 8 p.m. And getting up early is more of a mandatory. My husband has the at-home office, so I don't get it, which means I'm also kicked out of the bedroom, so I can't sleep. So it's not a getting up early as in I would rather be sleeping. It's a get up early in the sense I'm not allowed to sleep anymore. So I might as well do something useful. You So when it comes to visibility, what is your favorite way to get visible? And is that the way that you also teach your clients, specifically the moms that you are clients for or that are your clients? Definitely the podcast guest interviewing for me is just such a natural progression as a podcast host myself. For my clients, I will recommend all sorts of different things. Some people have great referral networks or in-person things or repeat clients so they can kind of go back and renew into their programs. Some people like podcast interviews too, but Everyone seems to have their own particular favorite strategy. Like, I don't think I would run Instagram giveaways myself, and some people kill at those. Yeah, yeah. And I think some things so one of the things that I struggled with because I'm an introvert and I never want to be the center of attention is back in 2016. I was like, I am never getting on video. It is never happening. And that's my main it's became my favorite way of actually creating content because it is the easiest thing for me now to press go live or record. Whereas back then, it wasn't easy because of all the fears that that came up in it. So How do you stretch yourself to always be stretching your visibility and your growth? Primarily by not staying in that comfort zone since yes, I can definitely resonate. Video, the first, that first year of business, I was convinced I would never like it. I would never be good at it. That included any kind of speaking. So also podcasting. I had put myself firmly in the, am a writer box and I intended to stay there. Whereas it's like, there's a difference between what are you gifted at and what are you simply inexperienced at? You need to push your edges until it comes inside your comfort zone. So. You may need to give it more than three months. You may need to give it six months or some expert help, know, intensive or something from someone else about this area of visibility before you can actually make the call. Is this right for me or is this not? Yes, I love that. I love that. I love talk to me all day about getting uncomfortable because that's like one of my favorite things. But you know, it's crazy because every time it's crazy. Every time I say I'm going to do something crazy, or I'm going to do something that's going to push myself. That's when I saw I see my business start to blow up. So I do believe there is a huge correlation between how much are you willing to get uncomfortable? And are you willing to do it consistently because things like I always feel like amazing things happen. Have you ever put yourself in a situation like that where you did something uncomfortable and you saw results soon after that? Yeah, I think a lot of the collaborations and workshops I've been doing recently, I would never have picked that in the first few years of the business because I wasn't even comfortable enough on podcast interviews. I was sitting there with nerves, doing breathing exercises before going live, trying to rewrite scripts as much as possible, like all the coping mechanisms. And now I'm like, yes, you just show up, you teach, you present, it's comfortable. So her core students happen to be watching, who cares? You know, it's just another podcast interview. It's easy. And then people like by magic start popping on your own email list and letting your own freebies. And you're like, of course, because my stuff is valuable and worthy. And I give value like, everybody told me this would work. And it does, but you have to have so much. I don't know, inner trust, confidence, to get to that point where you're willing to push those edges and show up in those spaces first. Yes, so true. And I'm just gonna say this, like I when I do this to obviously I see success or results. But also like that's how we build our confidence. That's how we build our trust in ourselves. And I always say after I do something uncomfortable, I didn't die. Like it didn't kill me. And what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. And so especially when I started out on video and then spoke on stages and things like that. And so I've just noticed that growth. And again, when I feel like when you do something uncomfortable, you know, I'm sure people who run marathons and do things like that feel the same way. It's like I can do anything. If I can do this, I can do anything. And although I've never bungee jumped, I always have that feeling of like what you would feel like bungee jumping like that pit in your stomach is like the butterflies. But I always feel like that. And then after it's done, it's like, my gosh, I'm a powerhouse. Like I just did that. I love that, I love that. and sometimes we underestimate, I think the amount of times it's going to, reps is going to take to build that confidence muscle to raise no longer a big deal. think I'd hit maybe four dozen guest podcast interviews before I was like, Hey, this isn't a big deal. But if you told me up ahead, you know, go do 50 first, I think I would have said, nevermind not doing that. exactly. So good. So good. I could talk about getting uncomfortable all day. But I want to switch gears a little bit. And I want to do some rapid fire fun questions with you. So our audience can get to know you just a little bit more on a personal level. So first thing is, what is your dream bucket list vacation? Staycation, I'm really kind of a home buddy. love that. I love I love being home. So I totally I, I love to travel, but I also love being home. So I totally get that. I love being with my dogs and my family. What is one thing that you secretly love doing when you have a free 30 minutes? Well, not so secret. I like pinching other people's podcasts. You like to what? Binging other people's podcasts. that's it. Yeah, I love that. I love that. What's your go to comfort snack or drink? Mmm. Snack is probably just any fresh baked good. So like a roll, a muffin, I don't care. Yeah. I love that. so what's something that your kids would say that you're amazing at? Tidying up. Sometimes I put away things they were still using because they went off and left it for 10 minutes. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. This question is stem. I actually have a client who actually helps homeschool moms. And so I was just thinking like, what is your favorite part of being a homeschool mom? Like, what led you to be to be a homeschool mom? I love seeing their own unique talents and then getting to shape this homeschooling subjects they're studying, particularly in high school, around what that future career path is going to be. Like, why wait till college? Let's start doing this now. Yeah, I love that. And just watching their growth, I'm sure too. Just seeing every part and being a part of it because, know, traditional schools, obviously the teacher is a part of it and you are the teacher and the mom. so I love that. So good. Okay, so where can everyone connect with you and dive deeper into the work that you provide? Yeah, well, number one, you're in busy life.com. It'll have everything. Number two, all things LinkedIn. So Alyssa dash wolf dash unbusy that will have your podcast episode daily work from home on hacks. So there'll be something every day of the week. And then number three, search for the Unbusy Mom in your favorite podcast app. You'll have a new podcast episode every Tuesday and Thursday. They're super short and bite-sized, so think four to seven minutes. So I know you have a lot of things on your plate. Get in, get out with your little negative transformation. I love that. love that. And then also you mentioned a quiz. Do you want to share a little bit about that with my audience? Yes, if you've been teetering on the edge of, there has to be something better for me, for my kids, my whole family than this current hustle way of living. And you want to know the exact number of hours that you could take back each week as the mom or the busy entrepreneur. All you need to do is take this quick 30 second quiz. It's going to calculate everything for you based on your answers. And then you will know exactly how many hours each week that you could free up. And that link will be in the show notes for you. love that you said it only takes 30 seconds because they cannot say I do not have time to take a quiz because it's literally 30 seconds. Do it one handed while you're doing something else, seriously. I was gonna say, you know, it's like that free time moms have. Well, I don't know how free it is, because it used to be my kids. But now it's my dogs. Like every time I go to the bathroom, it's like finally personal space alone time. It's like when everybody wants you. But maybe that's your time to take the quiz. All right, um, Alyssa, any final thoughts or encouragement that you would like to leave our listeners before we go? Go ahead give yourself permission to be uncomfortable but I want you to pair that with something else. Take something off your plate so you don't feel like this is more more more. It's yes I'm going to step forward and stretch in this way and I'm going to get rid of this so I feel like I have the space to move into this new version of myself. So good. This episode has been amazing. If you love this episode, make sure you share it. Make sure you connect with Alyssa. Check out her quiz so you can free up time and we will be back on the next episode. See you soon.

Podcasts we love

Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.

Turn It Up! Artwork

Turn It Up!

Danielle Nicole La Rose