Entering the New: Taking on the #workingmomlife in Consulting

Happy New Year everyone!

This time last year I was 12 weeks pregnant and envisioning what worklife would be like to navigate while growing a human inside me. Under the comfort and security blanket of the holidays, I became aware that I was expecting my first child. With no external forces at play, yet, I enjoyed the small moments of cocooning with my husband and family during the Christmas and New Year festivities. 

I was hopeful for 2024 and entering the first work week back did not scare me or phase me much, if at all. I was healthy and still early on in my pregnancy that I wouldn’t need that many adjustments made to my schedule or to my workload. I was also thrilled with the response I got from colleagues and clients when I announced my pregnancy to them – working in the NPO consulting space, I expected/hoped for the positivity I received. 

Last year, I had one of the most productive and lucrative Q1 and Q2 my business has seen since I started in 2022, and I am so thankful for the amazing colleagues and clients I had who went out of their way sometimes to make sure that I was comfortable and it was possible for me to do my work with a growing belly, multiple bathroom breaks, constant snacking, sporadic stretching breaks and mini brain fogs in the middle of a meeting. This is why I love working in the NPO sector, mostly with women and non-binary folks, with BIPOC folks, in the LGBTQIA+ communities, love and access to love is felt and shared with so much care and thought.

Working as a consultant in organisational development with multiple clients at once and juggling personal and professional expectations and prenatal appointments taught me many valuable lessons I want to bring with me in 2025. Now that I head back to work as a mom of an almost 5-month old, the lessons will come in handy for sure!

To start the year, I thought maybe it would be a good time to take a seat and share some perspective while also granting myself some grace to take up a new challenge. In the spirit of sharing and community building, here are some things I want to leave in 2024, some things I want to continue in 2025 and some new things I was to start doing this year.

Things I am leaving in 2024:

• Being loose with my time. I wasn’t always listening to my body, to my mental capacity and too often I would let a meeting run longer than planned for. This happens sometimes, and it’s totally okay for meetings to spill over when conversation topics are heavy, and we need to make space for that. But with a baby, my time management needs to get tighter, so there will be a lot more spill control in 2025.

• Booking Back to Back meetings. We are DONE with back to back meetings, there will be at least 15 minute buffers between meetings because this momma needs to breastfeed, power down and power back up.

• Giving 110% of myself to my work. I work hard, I hustle and I give a lot of myself to work that demands a lot of myself emotionally and mentally. As hard as it is to say and to say out loud, it’s very important for me to be real to myself and to my clients and for this to be okay: I will do my best and it will have to be enough. And some days I will not be able to be at my best because there are new factors that influence my productivity and energy now, there are new pots on the front burner that are non-negotiables.

Things I am continuing in 2025:

• Working in teams and delegating. I like working alone and going at my own pace and doing things the way I like them to be done. But I love collaborating with people more! I love to learn new ways of doing things, embracing new processes and making them my own. Collaborating with different people last year exposed me to new methods that really helped shape contracts and also allowed me to relax mentally when my partner took on tasks.

• Asking for more. More time, more resources, more money. The last part is a big one. I have been running my own business for 3 years now. But I sometimes forget that I have been working in this sector and these fields for almost a decade now. I can’t continue to minimize my talent and my experience. And I can’t expect my clients and my employers to read my mind. I started asking for more because I needed more and my community and circles stepped up and recognized my worth.

• Leaning into my interests. This one is simple, I want to soak up all the knowledge I can when it comes to things that interest me, whether it’s for work or for personal growth.

Things I want to start in 2025:

• Dreaming Bolder. More than dreaming of doing what I already know, I want to start dreaming with more imagination and find out what I can do that I haven’t already done. I want to branch out, try more things and take some risks in my business. Let’s see what this brings my way.

• Seriously tracking my overhead. I KNOW, ROOKIE MOVE TO START SO LATE. As consultants, as women, as someone with a minority identity, I spend a lot of time, a lot of NON billable hours learning and perfecting and preparing for contracts. Writing blog posts, reading and reviewing books, working on my social media, researching and gathering free resources - all of this is not billable time. This time that I spend is not time that I regularly attach a monetary value to and I often don’t take into account when I price my services. I don’t know why I do this. Is it because I don’t think it’s valuable? Is it because I don’t think this counts as work? If I were a salaried employee, this “prep” time would be paid labour, so why am I not paying myself for this labour? Working for myself needs to mean that I am more generous with myself, too. 

I wanted to put these thoughts and goals into writing because I want to use this blog post as an accountability tool. I want this to be seen by my peers and I want to be held to them so that I can stay on track. I will also be adding these as factors to check off when I take on a new project or when I make decisions in the back end of my business. A goal without an accountability measure is just a wish, it’s not action. 

What are some things you’re changing up this new year? What are things we want to try? What are we leaving in 2024? Let us know, we are so curious to see what is in store for you!