Bossbabe is one of the largest online communities of ambitious women and female entrepreneurs in the world. With a digital presence of more than 4.2+ million followers and the top online membership for female entrepreneurs – we're passionate about creating content that supports ambitious women in building wealth + creating lives they love. The bossbabe podcast is the place where we share the real, behind-the-scenes of building successful businesses, achieving peak performance and learning how to balance it all.
Dive in. So a couple weeks ago, I flew to the UK, actually, about 3 weeks ago, and one of the big purposes of flying there was Steven and I had enrolled in a mastermind together, and there's 2 retreats that are part of that mastermind. I am such a big advocate of investing in myself. I invest in masterminds, retreats, coaching, therapy, courses. I invest so much money in my personal development, my business development, and with my relationship, it's no different. And speaking quite honestly, Steven and I have been feeling just different since we had Noemi. You know? We're coming up Noemi's second birthday next month, which is wild. And we go through seasons of being so intimate and connected and other seasons where it feels like we're just tag teaming, and we're like housemates and not really, you know, intimate in our relationship. And it's it's really common seasons, you know, seasons where it feels like Noemi's not sleeping. It feels like we're not connecting. And I'm not just talking about sex, but I mean, like, we're not connecting on that deep, intimate level that we used to before we had Noemi. And we both had recognized, hey. It feels like some months, things are 10 out of 10 amazing, and some months, we're, like, passing ships. We're working. We're taking care of no. It's like tag teaming a lot. We know we wanna have more babies, and we also know how important our relationship is to each other. And we just decided, okay. If we are really serious about our relationship being the most important thing, we have to invest in it. And so we invest in this mastermind so that we could both create intentional time together and be facilitated together and learn some new things together. And, yeah, that was the the big intention of it. So I was really excited to go to this retreat, but I was really, really nervous because we hadn't we've never left Noemi, the 2 of us. And so we were leaving here with my sister-in-law and my cousin who listen. I
Underpinning things that I really, really wanna touch on. 1 is building confidence and and really being able to show up as you. And I said this in one of the the q and a's. I I was like, you know, I think what is selling right now on social media. I think what will win on social media is the truth. And and I think the customer is so savvy. And I've said this on a bunch of podcasts. So if you're a regular listener, you you hear me say this The customer is so savvy. Like, there's so much noise. There's so much content on social media that, the viewer, the customer, the person watching your stories, or your reels, or your TikToks, they they know. They get it. And and I think it's so, it's it it feels obvious to me, but maybe it's not obvious to everybody where, if if you're mimicking or you're hiding something or you're not showing up fully authentically, it's not gonna work. And I think sometimes as creators, online business owners, we get really, really discouraged when something's not working. And and our tendency is, like, to blame ourselves in that. We're doing it wrong. Or the customer doesn't get it or, like, something more more, like, tangible tactical like that. When the real truth is, no, I think I think what you're selling, you really care about, and you really wanna help people with. It's it's the delivery or how you're showing up doesn't feel real. It feels It feels like you're not telling the truth. Not that you're not not in, like, a negative. You're hiding something away, but in, like, you're too you're, you're scared to be wrong. You're trying to be too perfect or you're holding back on what you really wanna say and you're making it a more vanilla version of it. And what people really want from you is the grit, the raw, the real. And so my first thing in the entrepreneurial mindset that I really want you guys to hear is is about confidence, and that confidence comes from being uncomfortable. That's the only way you get more confident in life is to go through things that are uncomfortable, to experience discomfort, to come out on the other side and know you're gonna survive, and know know that you can do it and learn for
Today with Laura Mae Martin, who is the executive productivity adviser at Google and just wrote a book called uptime, a practical guide to personal well-being and productivity, which Natalie and I are so thrilled to read. And, like, we were talking about before we hit record, Laura, that I think productivity and time management is, like, the entrepreneur's crux. Right? It's something that maybe we don't talk about that much, but it's so, so important. So I'm really excited that you're here and for this conversation. Yeah. Thanks for having me. I'm so excited. So as we jump in, this tie this word uptime, I was I was reading through everything before we chatted, and I was like, this is such a good way of thinking about time management. So can you give a little bit background on the word itself and also how you you came into being an expert at this and how you think about uptime and time management? Yeah. So uptime in the computer world is the time that your device is on and productive and working and doing its best. And so that's how I define uptime in the book for you and your personal life that everyone knows that feeling where you're kind of like, wow. I'm I'm on top of it. I'm getting things done. I'm feeling good. I'm having new ideas and, you know, this is the book is about how to both find and sustain that in in your work and personal life. And so, the way that it all came about was, you know, I've been at Google about 14 years and started doing all of these trainings on the side of my role. I was a a salesperson, but I was training other people how to manage their email and time, and it just was such a need that people wanted to fill. And I ended up developing the productivity at Google program. And so for the last 8 or 9 years, I've been doing that and executive coaching and, all of these tactics are things that I teach others. I'm so I'm so intrigued because I think from the outside, you know, at Boss Baby, we work with a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of small business owners, people that are either working by themselves or maybe have a small team. And so when we think about productivity at Google, I'm sure I'm like everybody else. I'm like, oh my gosh. I think of Google as being the ultimate. You know? And
Fanciest none of it because I was so busy building the product. I didn't even think about the marketing of it, but we just relaunched to our hot leads. Like, I always talk about that's the easiest way to launch is just tell people that actually care what you're doing. That's all we did last year, and it worked really, really well. And we actually ended last year with a higher profit than the year prior, which is insane given I didn't do the launches. I didn't do the things, but I did a lot of the business y stuff, the unsexy stuff. But slowing down was incredible. This year, we have rebuilt our product suite to have 3 products, which includes CEO Mama, and we're getting back into the swing of launches. We just closed the best launch we've ever had. And, yeah, we're back in it, but I took time. Love that. Congrats. Thank you. Sweet. Yeah. Clap for that. I love that. Let's talk about your product suite, but more importantly, let's kinda work backwards and then talk about your top of funnel. Yeah. Because whether someone has a brick and mortar I mean, all the businesses in here are very diverse. Right? So whether someone has a brick and mortar, whether someone does courses, whether someone does memberships, whether somebody has a publishing company, all that matters is you getting people through the door. So describe your product suite real quick again, and then describe your top of funnel and what's working. Okay. So the product suite, I kinda describe it in a graph. So I feel like every product suite should have a through line. What's the one sentence through line that your business does? So mine is help you build freedom based businesses. So that's the through line of everything that we do. And then on the top bar, it's level of support. So the through line is the same of what we do, but the level of support changes. That's how I build my product suite. So I actually class my newsletter and and podcast as 2 products in the product suite because they get them the same amount of attention. So they're the kind of the first two entryways, the newsletter, then the podcast. My core product is the society, our membership. It's 997 a year. The next product is called Freedom Fast Track, and it helps you build a funnel in your business in 8 weeks. That's 2997. And then I have CEO Mama, which is at the top end.
Calls after my due date. But I really that cadence really works for me because, in my first pregnancy, I took all calls off my calendar starting from 37 weeks because everyone told me, Oh, your mom was early with you, so you're going to be early. And I ended up waiting for another 4 weeks, literally just sitting around being like, When is this baby going to fall out of me? And that was the worst decision ever. It was so hard. So it really worked for me to plan to work up until my due date, obviously tapered off and not, you know, super intense, not starting big new projects, but, giving myself the white space and the leniency with my clients. We gave ourselves a range and a window of like, Hey, Kate's going to be back in Voxer, and I sort of staged how I'm returning back to work, anywhere between 3 6 weeks, depending on this birth, depending on this baby, depending on this delivery, depending on this postpartum. So we planned really far out in advance in the business and really planned to have tons of support at home, and it's made a huge difference. And I have to say, I am just so freaking proud of my team because they have been absolutely rocking it for our clients and programs going super smoothly, clients messaging me, being like, oh my god, this amazing person. You know, just all the guests and all the people that we've brought in to support our clients in the meantime has been extraordinary. That's incredible. Was it hard for you was it a practice for you to be able to receive support and to be able to step back and let other people step in, or have you always found that easy? I don't I wouldn't say I've always found it easy, but it's something since becoming a mom. I think especially since becoming a mom of 2, I have, like, trained myself to be able to do it. And because I've witnessed firsthand, my nature is very much like the doer, the giver, the one who provides the support. Right?
