Today we talked about a book Rachel read recently that helped unlock accomplishments both in the home and in the business. Rachel shares about her three main takeaways from the book and how she applied them to the business right away. The results were simplified processes and the team crushing goals!

 

Show notes

 

 

1:11 One of the top things that usually falls through the cracks when you have a baby

 

 

2:30 Rachel opens up about her childhood and why it’s especially challenging for her to have a messy home

 

 

3:40 Enter Rachel’s new favorite inspiration for organizing the home

 

 

5:07 The home inspo takes on business applications

 

 

8:06 Rachel shares why having achievable goals is essential

 

 

9:06 Processes don’t have to be as complicated as we make them

 

 

10:53 It all comes down to this one takeaway for Rachel

 

 

Mentions & Resources

 

 

How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind —book by Dana K. White

 

 

EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

 

 

Below, you will find a transcript of this entire podcast episode. Enjoy!

 

 

Avram Gonzales: Hey, hey. Welcome back to the Babies and Business Podcast. This is your host, Avram Gonzales, joined by the fabulous Rachel Gonzales. Today’s topic is Declutter Your House Declutter Your Business, and this is gonna be fast and furious short interview with Rachel because she had some powerful insights that we both felt like would be of value to you, our listeners, when you are building a business and raising a baby, time is short. Things fall of the cracks, and what’s one of the things that usually falls to the cracks? Basically everything at home. , you know?

 

 

Rachel Gonzales: Yep.

 

 

Avram Gonzales: Like we’re, we’re like, Facing the embarrassment from time to time of like, I don’t know if I wanna be able to see like how much shit is stacked up in the living room right now. You know, today we’re recording this episode. I think it’s December 12th or 13th. We don’t have the Christmas tree up yet. Sh don’t tell anybody. Secret’s out, but I want Rachel here to kick us off here and you know, let us know what things, like what is the inspiration for this podcast because we had a lot of like emotional turmoil, I think

 

 

Yeah. About how much things changed after the birth of our child, like. It was just you and me. Yeah. The house was pretty dang immaculate. Like we’re pretty tidy people for the most part.

 

 

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.

 

 

Avram Gonzales: And that changed a lot.

 

 

Rachel Gonzales: Yes, it did. Well, and you know, it’s over these last six months of Lincoln’s life, I’ve had the opportunity and burden to do a lot of reflecting. Seeing the house and how it’s just gone in decline as far as like keeping up with things and simple things like we used to cook a lot and I that’s true together a lot. And we don’t cook together most times. It’s, it’s more like, okay, divide and conquer.

 

 

I’m gonna take care of the baby. How about you make breakfast that kind of thing? So for me, you know, growing up I grew up in a very disorganized, very actually kind, oh God, how do I describe my childhood home? I would say hoarders maybe. I think it was, very messy, a lot of things and some of the rooms that were in my home had dirt as a floor. And if it did have some kind of flooring, it was maybe carpet on top of the dirt floor. We had leaky roofs all the time, most of the time. So you take a pot or a pan and you catch the leak, it doesn’t really help. Still humid in the room and it’s really weird.

 

 

So I grew up in that situation and now I’m living in a home that is so different and beautiful and I want to be able to keep it clean. And so while we did take care of our house prior to the baby, I always felt a little bit inadequate in housework. Not because I don’t like clean things and our house wasn’t clean.

 

 

I’m not saying that it wasn’t clean, but it just wasn’t what I wanted it to be. I thrive on systems and I didn’t really have a system. So what I did probably about, maybe two weeks ago-ish, I was, I had to use some credits on Audible, and so I found a book that was talking about organizing things.

 

 

It’s called How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind by Dana K. White. And you know, I just started listening to this book and gave me some ideas about what to start with. And you know, the first thing she says is, do the dishes. And she’s like, I know, I know. You’re thinking do the dishes. What if my house was just as simple as doing dishes then I wouldn’t have picked up this damn book. So she has these other strategies. Really, it was really amazing because I walked away with tools. It’s a simple read. And I actually listened to it and I have been able to implement simple things as system. And doing certain things regularly makes it so that your house stays clean and you’re able to do the different things that might come up here and there.

 

 

And it’s kind of like business too, you know when you keep. In order. Then when the things that come up that are more urgent fires or urgent, then you’re actually able to deal with them and it doesn’t feel like a huge thing. So I was able to take what I learned from that book and apply it in our house, but then I was able to apply to our business as well.

 

 

Avram Gonzales: Right. Well, you touched on something really important. We go on almost daily walks. Sometimes our schedule doesn’t allow it now. And it’s just tough, right? But there is this, this spot where this summer, every time we went through this area, there was a tremendous amount of water flowing down the sidewalk from upstream where they were overwatering the grass and I was pointing out to Rachel the other day as we went back up this loop, this area we haven’t been to in a while on our walk. And I showed her where the sidewalk had eroded in a very dramatic way. All because of that water that had just been pouring down throughout the entire summer. And I said, look, this is what happens when a small problem becomes a big problem.

 

 

And if they would’ve just paid attention to this early on, it would’ve never become a problem. And I think that’s sort of like what you’re talking about. Yeah. With some of the strategies you learned from this book?

 

 

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah. You know, I learned from this book that you have certain non-negotiables in your house.

 

 

You know, we’re talking about keeping up a house and, you know, our business can be the same thing where we have non-negotiables in our house that we do every single day or every week, however, often and frequent we need to do those things to keep the house up. And then we add things to that as they come along.

 

 

You know, like if our house is always kept up to a certain level, If the, if the dog vomits in the bed, sure, then you can immediately put that in the washer and you don’t have to actually have anxiety about the fact that, oh, you might need to add socks and underwear to that because none of your family or kids will have socks and underwear to wear tomorrow. Do you know? Then you don’t have those emergencies pop up.

 

 

Avram Gonzales: So I think you had a couple of points that you wanted to discuss and how this really applies to business, what you learned from this book, and, you know, what is essentially like a book on decluttering and what feels like a housekeeping book in some ways.

 

 

Why don’t you walk me through those? I know you have at least three of them. Your role at Digital Harvest, our business is a flex between a couple of different things right now. One of which is project manager. So I know that some of these things directly apply to that. Yeah, but let me know what are, what are some of these points you wanna make here.

 

 

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah, so one of them, the first one is that this book helped me understand that you need to have something that’s achievable.

 

 

Avram Gonzales: Achievable?

 

 

Rachel Gonzales: Achievable, okay. If it is not achievable, then it’s really not a goal. It’s more like a hope or a wish or a dream. You’re not ever, ever, actually, , see that finished or completed.

 

 

And so I was able to begin the process of applying this to our business by having an achievable goal.

 

 

Avram Gonzales: Okay. So making things smaller, more tangible, maybe doing the floor in one room of the house instead of all of it. Yes. All right. What’s the second one?

 

 

Rachel Gonzales: And the second one is, you know, we have processes in our business right now to help the clients get served to the best of our ability. That lines out every single task that we do and how frequently and all those different things.

 

 

Avram Gonzales: And these team members are responsible.

 

 

Rachel Gonzales: Exactly. But they’re very complicated. And I had the epiphany, I thought, okay, so we are still actually testing out these systems. They’re, some of them don’t work quite seamlessly, yet.

 

 

Avram Gonzales: It’s always a process making processes.

 

 

Rachel Gonzales: Yes. And I’m always changing things or updating things and there when there’s a million tasks, you’re going through millions of tasks to change them up. So I thought if we could simplify this down to just a couple of tasks, then it, it’s going to be easier to change them and modify them to get to that efficiency spot that we want to get to. So I simplified the processes.

 

 

Avram Gonzales: Cool. We might end up having to follow up on, on that. Cause there’s actually a lot to that, that individual point. Yeah. What’s the third point you wanted to make?

 

 

Rachel Gonzales: And I took that, so I took an achievable goal, I took the simplified process and I applied it to one role in our business.

 

 

So I was able to streamline one team member’s role very, very well. Get some very good visibility into that role and the weekly task, daily task kind of system and really just blow it out.

 

 

Avram Gonzales: Yeah. And it only took like one or two days once you got there. I mean, Rachel’s been doing a tremendous amount of things for the household and the baby as we transitioned back into the business.

 

 

And so becoming reacquainted Yeah. With processes and things that she hadn’t looked at or touched in a long time, I think gave her fresh eyes, new perspective. And like she said, touching on these three different points made it very possible and powerful. When these things were completed. So yeah, I mean, how do we, how do we sum this whole thing up and like, what’s the point that we’re trying to make here?

 

 

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah, so I think it’s just really, the one that really sticks out to me is very achievable goals. Okay. When we have very achievable goals. Then everything else falls into place because that was the first thing that sent me into the thought of like even having the energy to do any kind of project management because before this time I felt so overwhelmed over our processes.

 

 

Were absolutely insanely complex, the visibility of it was not great, and I was just really depressed about it. And once I got the clarity from the book, that was about decluttering my home, it helped me have clarity about so many different things and I, I actually was so excited to apply it into our business.

 

 

Avram Gonzales: Much more simple.

 

 

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.

 

 

Avram Gonzales: Easier to attack. I think overwhelm is the keyword. Yeah. Gosh, what? New parents aren’t overwhelmed yet. Alone building a business on top of it.

 

 

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah. So it, it gave me a lot of peace. Like in our home, our home is starting to have some normalcy with our routines, and then with those routines, it also gives me time to put towards these things that are feel a little bit more passionate to me right now.

 

 

I know you don’t have to have passion in the work that you do, but it sure is nice when you do.

 

 

Avram Gonzales: It sure is, babe. It sure is. Well, that’s gonna be a wrap today for our episode on Declutter and Declutter Your Business. We’d love to hear your feedback. You’ve got questions and things like that. You can certainly connect with us on social media and all the popular channels.

 

 

You can also shoot us an email at hello@babiesandbiz.com. But more than anything, we would just love your subscription. Hit that subscribe button on iTunes. Stitcher, Spotify, wherever it is you’re listening so you can catch new and updated episodes of Babies and Business every single time they drop. Again, we appreciate you listening.

 

 

We can’t wait to bring the next topic to your inbox at a time coming soon. With that, we’re gonna bid you adieu and see you on the next one. Bye for now.

 

 

Rachel Gonzales: Bye for now.