Call Me CEO: Moms Building Businesses, a Woman's guide to Balancing it All

Solo 1: Mastering Time Management - Productivity Hacks for Mom Entrepreneurs

• Camille Walker

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Time management isn't just another business skill—it's the cornerstone of thriving as a mom entrepreneur. Drawing from my experience juggling four children, multiple businesses, and the ever-present quest for personal fulfillment, this episode delivers actionable strategies to reclaim control of your schedule.

The game-changing approach we explore isn't about cramming more into each day. Instead, it's about strategic time-blocking that aligns with your natural rhythms and priorities. I share my personal framework: reserving Mondays and Fridays for family and self-care, while dedicating mid-week days to content creation, client work, and team management. This simple shift transforms scattered productivity into purposeful progress.

The MIT Rule (Most Important Tasks) revolutionizes how you approach each day by identifying just three high-impact priorities that deserve your undivided attention. Combined with the Pomodoro Technique and strategic delegation, these methods create breathing room in even the most chaotic schedule. I've helped countless women implement these systems, and the universal response is always: "Why didn't I start this years ago?"

Perhaps most importantly, we tackle the challenging skill of saying "no" without guilt—arguably the most underrated productivity hack for overwhelmed entrepreneurs. Remember that protecting your time isn't selfish; it's essential to showing up fully for what matters most. Which of these strategies will you implement first? Screenshot this episode, share it on Instagram, and tag me @camillewalkerco so I can cheer you on as you take back control of your time!

Episode Highlights:

  • Time-blocking strategies for busy moms
  • How to prioritize tasks with the 3 MIT Rule
  • The power of delegation & automation in your business
  • Learning to say NO without guilt
  • Free Time & Energy Audit to help you get organized!

 Resources Mentioned:

 Let’s Connect!

Camille:

I tell you like I would tell a best friend take what rings true with you and leave the rest.

Camille:

You don't need to take every single one of these.

Camille:

I am a big believer in small steps towards big improvements. So you want to make an impact. You're thinking about starting a business, sharing your voice. How do women do it that handle motherhood, family and still chase after those dreams? We'll listen each week as we dive into the stories of women who know this is Call Me CEO.

Camille:

Hey everyone, it's Camille here from Call Me CEO and I'm so thrilled to tell you that I am picking up doing more solo episodes. It's been a time and a season where I was doing a lot of interview episodes, which those are so fun and easy for me and I love sharing other people's stories, but I got a lot of requests from you all. Thank you for saying hey, we want to hear a little more from you and some coaching that I have and ideas and my experience. So here I am Today. We are talking about time management and time hacks, how to take your time back, because, let's be honest, as a mother entrepreneur, time is of the essence. There are so many things that we are juggling hats that we are wearing. So today, I'm going to share with you some tools that have worked for me, as well as some ideas and concepts that you can implement into your life.

Camille:

So, with this being said, if this is your first time ever hearing me, I am a mother of four. I started an online business as a blogger in 2011, which I still manage and operate a blog. I also have a podcast, call Me CEO, a second podcast five-minute meditations for kids. It's an amazing way to build calm, confidence and peace within our kids' minds, and I also do one-on-one and group coaching. So, with all of this being said, I have a busy household. I have gone through many ideations of what that looks like online, from hosting a live cooking show for a year to sharing tips and tactics for having natural childbirth. I have done a lot of things on here. In fact, if you're watching this on YouTube, you can look back at the history of my channel, and it's always been content to serve moms, and that's where my heart has always been is helping moms to live in their purpose, to really feel connected to their why, and also to live the best life possible. So, with that being said, I do have freebies available for you. If you're listening to this episode and you're like gosh, I want to discover my why. I want more balance. I have those freebies in the link below If you are looking for coaching. I also help people to hire team members, virtual assistants and women. I help them to build their own virtual assistant businesses as well. It's been a really cool reciprocal way of helping women to not only grow businesses they love, but to create white space where they get to be more in control of their time.

Camille:

So let's get into this episode with these time hacks of how you, too, can manage your time a little more efficiently. Now, before we go into this anymore, I want to say that these are ideas to implement. You are at your own season in your life and this may or may not be. Every single point is going to ring true with you. So I tell you, like I would tell a best friend take what rings true with you and leave the rest. You don't need to take every single one of these. I am a big believer in small steps towards big improvement. So, as a mom, we are already building a life that is a full-time job. It doesn't matter if you're working inside the home, outside of the home, or, primarily, you are a caretaker. It is a full-time job with all of that between meal prep, client meetings, school drop-offs. Now we're into the spring swing and, I swear to you, this time feels busier in a lot of ways than Christmas time to me, because I have so many kids in different sports. So the very, very first thing is to time block. Now we hear a lot about time blocking and it's not necessarily a perfect equation of I'm going to work exactly for this amount of time and this is going to equal the outcome. But instead I want you to think about theming your days. So I time block my days for specific tactics or tools for building out my business. So let me tell you what that looks like.

Camille:

Mondays for me are days that I catch up on my house. I do a lot of maintenance of the home and recalibrating after the weekend, and so Monday I really try to reserve for personal activities attention to myself or to my home or to appointments for my children. Mondays and Fridays are generally pretty open for me in that way so that I can use them for the home management or taking care of myself or my kids, for appointments and things like that Tuesdays, wednesdays, thursdays I like to use for scheduling podcast interviews, coaching I like to use for scheduling podcast interviews, coaching, podcast and blog creation, as well as social media creation and any meetings that I need to have with my team members. Now, remember that managing clients or growing your businesses can be done sequentially, so if there is a day or a time of day that you find that you're more efficient, try focusing on that.

Camille:

One thing that really works for me is to have a workout block in the morning where I get my mind and my body moving. There are studies that have shown that if you work out, you actually increase your neuroplasticity, which means the synapses and neurons of your brain will be more pliable and have more clarity and also help you to work more efficiently, and I have noticed that I don't know if you noticed that for yourself, but the days that I work out and make that a priority first thing, I am so much more productive than the days that I don't. So for me, it's about creating a block for getting the kids out the door, a block for taking care of my physical, mental needs, which oftentimes they go together, and then having a work block, generally from 10 to noon, breaking for lunch I try to do a quick walk and then in the afternoon hours I'll get back to work again before I am picking up the kids at around 3.20, which is almost the time I am right now. So, whatever it is for you, I want you to take a really good look at what are days that you can be especially productive, what are times that you can sneak in productivity. Okay, hold the phone.

Camille:

Hey, my friends, just popping in here really quick to say if you are drowning in a to-do list but never actually getting anything done, I hear you. This is the time to take back control of your day, and I've created a product for you, for free, that will help you to do this. It's called the Ultimate Time Audit and Productivity System. It is a free resource to help you pinpoint exactly where your time is going and what you should be delegating. My coaching involves a lot of time spent with business owners who are losing time valuable time on menial tasks that they could either delegate or create a system around, but first needing to understand how their time is being used. So imagine having more time for your family, your business and yourself, without the constant overwhelm. You can grab your free copy in the link below or at camillewalkerco and start working smarter, not harder. Camillewalkerco is the website, but go ahead and grab that link below and I would love to help you.

Camille:

Take back your time right now. Take back your time right now. Okay, I had to do a little pause there because my daughter just got home from school, so I'm doing this outside of my normal block, which I said. I'm doing these solo episodes, squeezing it into times I wasn't before. Anyway, getting back into it, set a timer and commit to focus work sessions. This is the Pomodoro method, which means you do 25 minutes of work with a five minute break. So what this does is it is really good for engaging and focusing our minds with focused effort of work and giving ourselves five minutes off. Here's something to keep in mind ourselves five minutes off. Here's something to keep in mind.

Camille:

For many of us, our phones are used like a timer and that can be a very tricky thing because chances are, you're going to pick up that phone to turn off the timer and it can put you into a cycle of getting lost in the to-dos of what your phone is reminding you of, whether that's an email, a text message, whatever the thing may be. So my suggestion for you is for a timer to either use Alexa that is away from you in the room, that will set off an alarm without using your phone, or to use an analog timer, one that you can use that's separate from your phone, that won't give you the temptation to pick it up and look at it and have that distraction. Another thing is, of course, to schedule in your personal time. You deserve the recharge, and I've never met a successful entrepreneur who hasn't figured out, eventually, how to figure out really productive self-care time. What do I mean by productive? I literally mean that you're doing it. If you're taking any time for yourself, that is productive, and I think that that is a slippery trap that we can get into sometimes as entrepreneurs, as we think that taking time for ourselves is not being productive, when that couldn't be anything farther from the truth.

Camille:

All right, the next piece is that I want you to think about the MIT rule. Okay, is that? I want you to think about the MIT rule? Okay? Mit stands for most important task rule, which means every morning, you identify the three most important things to finish that day, prioritizing them over anything else and then making sure that you do not get lost in the busy work. This can be a really difficult challenge if you do not have team members in place, because we can get distracted by the busy work as if it's a fire that we have to put out in that moment when, yes, the little things need to get done. But if you focus on those most important tasks, that will actually to help your business grow. Hopefully, those daily tasks can be given to someone that you can delegate. That is why I help people to hire a virtual assistant. As a CEO, that is the first position that you should take care of is hiring a virtual assistant. This is something that I help people with every single week and every single time I do it, and I help people to build teams out. They say to me why didn't I do this a long time ago, like years ago, and sometimes it just can be tricky to remember. So, after this episode, I want you to write down your three MITs for tomorrow and see how much more intentional your day can be.

Camille:

The next part is that we're not meant to do it all. Delegation and automation are our friends as moms, and there are so many different ways that we can do this, whether it's hiring a virtual assistant or getting a meal delivery service or having a cleaning person come to help with your deep cleaning once or twice a month. Lightening the load truly matters, and this can be done on a family scale or on a business scale matters, and this can be done on a family scale or on a business scale. So in your business, you can automate your business with email templates, social media scheduling, auto grocery deliveries. I like to do mine on Monday mornings after I do my plan for the week on Sundays or to even consider having chat GPT help you with coming up with automations. You can have it help you with meal planning. You can have it help you with your workout schedule, or even I had it do an analysis of my recent blood draw to see what hormones I'm deficient in. Before I talked to a professional, I was just curious to see how similar and different they would be. So think about ways that you can automate your business wherever possible. Again, if you need that time back, consider exchanging that time for money by hiring a team member.

Camille:

Okay, number five, oh sorry. Number four is the power of saying no. One of the most underrated productivity hacks is learning to say no without guilt, because you're saying yes to something that aligns with your priorities more. That is such a hard thing that we have to navigate over and over again, but to set your boundaries and protecting your time fiercely is so essential, because there's always so many amazing things available to us and it's not that they're bad things. There are just things that come up that we want to be a part of, we want to say yes to, we want to be the team meal mom, we want to go on the field trips, we want to say yes to another online seminar. I'm literally thinking of things I've been asked to do recently.

Camille:

But if you are drowning and if you don't have people to delegate some of your tasks, to consider what is a heck yes and what is a, because if it's not a heck yes, it's a no, and I think that that can be a really hard thing. We just have to practice it, put it through the filter and if you have someone in your life that helps to filter for you meaning you have discussions with your best friend, your mom, your spouse, whoever sometimes putting it through that filter if you're on the fence about something can help and to ask and say, hey, I have this opportunity that came up. I'm really trying to decipher if this is something I should do or not do. Can you help Talk me through it for a minute? And I feel like sometimes, when we can say things out loud and have someone that is so fiercely honest and protective of us too, that can be helpful until we can learn those direct and clear boundaries for ourself. If that's something that you need help with, having a coach involved is such an essential and oftentimes helpful way to bounce those ideas. If you can't think of anyone that comes to mind, especially when it comes to business. All right, so let's recap.

Camille:

For today's time management hacks. We have time blocking. Structuring your day for efficiency. Number two the MIT rule focusing on three most important tasks of the day. Number three to delegate and automate. Freeing up your time by outsourcing and using systems. Number four to say no. Protect your time like it's the most valuable asset, because it is. All of these hacks are things that we want to do more of, but pick one, start with one, go back to this, listen again and decide how you're doing for the next week.

Camille:

You can screenshot this episode, share it on Instagram, tag me at camillewalkerco, or call me CEO podcast. I'd love to cheer you on and hear which one you are starting with. Thank you so much for spending your time with me today. If you found this episode helpful, please subscribe, leave a review and share it with any other busy entrepreneur that you know that needs a little help with time management. Until next time, keep going, keep growing and remember you're doing an amazing job. You can schedule a free discovery call with me with the link below. Also, grab that Mom Balance Playbook if that's something you might be interested in. Thanks, we'll see you next time. Hey CEOs, thank you so much for spending your time with me. If you found this episode inspiring or helpful, please let me know in a comment and a five-star review. You could have the chance of being a featured review on an upcoming episode. Continue the conversation on Instagram at callmeCEOPodcast and remember you are the boss.