Mom Mastery: Pursue Your Dreams and Crush Productivity Challenges with Ruth Klein

Hey, welcome back. No problem parents. I'm Jackie Finneman, your host, and welcome to another episode of Wellness Wednesdays on the No Problem Parenting Podcast. Today, we have a special guest, Ms. Ruth Klein. She is the CEO of Expert Celebrity Branding, Brand Visibility Strategist, and a Master Book Coach. She's the author of seven bestselling books and works with high achieving entrepreneurs, coaches, sales professionals, and company founders. She's also the founder of The Universal Mom, which offers a variety of programs for children and teens to open up to their hidden treasures, exploring their natural gifts and talents that they may or may not be aware of. Ruth is a mom who knows how to balance and integrate raising children with self-confidence. She has an extensive background in clinical and spiritual psychology,

and Ruth is on a mission to empower kids and teens to reach their full potential by believing in themselves. You can check out universalmom.org to learn more. But today in our conversation, our focus is on the connection between taking care of yourself and how taking care of yourself actually helps you care for your kids. Ruth is going to share a couple of examples about how she intentionally made time for herself to pursue her passion of writing a book while her children were little. She included her kids in her goal and she made sure they knew they would be rewarded for their support. And then Ruth shares how instead of thinking she couldn't go to an out of town event because it was just much too late at night and she's a mom and she couldn't leave her kids. Instead, she asked herself, how can I make this work? Our conversation continues with a couple real life, simple self-talk examples of how Ruth acknowledged her needs and desires while modeling self-care and self-confidence for her kiddos. We're going to talk about productivity and Ruth also offers us a five-step guide to increase productivity and income and it's available as an e-book. There's a link in the show notes for you to grab the five-step guide to increase productivity and income in the show notes. Parents, we often have so many tasks to juggle from household chores to managing schedules. We're often natural multitaskers but it's crucial to

prioritize our tasks and delegate when possible so we're going to get into all of that in this quick 15-minute conversation. Whether you want to take charge of your time, pursue a dream, help your children find their confidence, or you need a confidence boost yourself, Ruth Klein can help. Stay tuned. Welcome to the No Problem Parenting podcast. From toddler tantrums to teenage eye rolls, this podcast is your go-to for updated and old school tips and tools that are going to help you become the confident leader your kids crave you to be.

We're going to turn your parenting problems into no problem, one episode at a time. All right, so welcome to the show, Ruth. Thank you, Jackie. I'm excited to be here and I love the name, No Problem Parenting. Oh man, that says it all.

If you take a word problem, look it up in the dictionary, it says right in the definition that problems are meant to be dealt with and overcome. But what do we do as parents? We have a problem and we pour all our energy and all our emotion into the problem. And we actually end up creating more problems.

It's so true. It's so true. I specialize in helping parents become the confident leader that I say our kids crave us to be. You have this focus on the kids, but also the parents.

Universal Mom is the, it's sort of like the umbrella, right? And underneath that, there are different programs. There's a program for building self-confidence for the introvert or the extrovert. We have another program called the power of yes and no.

Right. We have another program, which is the no judgment zone. No judgment zone. And I have another one that I'm just creating now and it's financial literacy.

And that came about because there is a financial executive who deals with high net worth parents. and he called me in to do the psychology part, the mindset part, because a lot of high net worth parents are concerned as they should be actually, that a child might feel entitled because they know the family has a lot of money or they might lose momentum in having a career because they know they have money. It's gonna be a fun project.

It's gonna be really, really fun. Well, I love it. And so just to be descript for the parents, you do work with parents, but a good chunk of your programs or a good number of your programs are specifically for those varying age groups of kids. Yes.

Yes. So even though it's called the universal mom, this is not just for moms. Yes. And that is why it's universal, because that could also be someone who is an aunt or someone who is a grandmother.

Anyone that takes the role, that nurturing role, that's why it's called universal. Gotcha. That's great. So I have background in clinical psychology and spiritual psychology with an emphasis in consciousness, health, and healing.

And the two together are just beautiful. So it's all based on helping the children become aware of their brilliance. And for many of them, they've never thought that they were that they had talents for whatever reason. So one eight week is on just building self-esteem and confidence.

OK, so Universal Mom is just one of your ventures and an effort to help kids at a young age gain that confidence and self-esteem. But in your day to day work, you're helping high achieving entrepreneurs, coaches, sales professionals and company founders. and you do have a special place in your heart for moms who feel like they don't have the time to do all the things, much less feed their passion. And so let's shift gears just a little bit and merge these two, the universal mom and your expert celebrity branding and your books, by just talking a bit about productivity and how you as a young mom were able to make your dream of becoming an author come to fruition? And let's just share a couple of stories about how you made that happen. Focusing on that five-step guide that you've created to increase productivity and income. It's an ebook and we're going to have a link in the show notes for that. But let's just talk about productivity for a minute. Productivity and time management, they go hand in hand.

And the interesting thing, Jackie, is time management is on one side of the coin and the flip side of the coin is money. How we spend our time is really how we spend our energy. And we only have X amount of energy units in a day. And when we are stressed out first thing in the morning, because we're feeling like we're overwhelmed, we have so much to do, relationships might, communication might be strained somewhere along the line within the family. That takes a lot of that exhausts us because it takes a lot of energy units. And so by the time it's 11 a.m., you know, a lot of moms are exhausted, really exhausted. First of all, moms need to have what I call healthy, loving boundaries for themselves as well as for their children. I believe children require loving boundaries. Otherwise, here's the deal. If you don't protect your time,

nobody else will. And so there are many, many ways, many, many ways to do that. You know, when I was writing a book and I had three young kids at home and I would wake up early in the morning and it was still dark out. I had this wonderful little lamp, which is nice and toasty.

And I started writing and I told the kids that mommy is writing a book. And unless somebody is bleeding not to come in. And so I'm a more of a morning writer at that time. And so my husband took the kids to school and I made their lunches before I started. And I would sit there and have a writing session for a couple of hours. And then of course I felt guilty. We moms have this guilty gene. And so I thought, oh my gosh, how can I bring the kids into this? How can I make this fun for the kids and not have it, you know, they have to bleed in order to see me. And so I thought, I've got it. And so I said to the three kids, I said, you know what, you could really help mommy write her book. And they got all excited. And I said, by allowing mommy, leaving mommy alone while I'm in my office and the doors closed, you know that I'm working on my book. And you can do that for anything, you know, for clients or anything. And the book gets bought, not completed because I am an overachiever.

It had to get bought from a traditional publisher, which it did. I said, once it gets bought, we'll spend one night at the Disneyland Hotel. Now I would never spend the Disneyland Hotel. I would go to the hotels around it, but not the Disneyland Hotel.

This had to be a big, a big one. Oh my gosh, they were so fantastic. So then I started writing my second book, Jackie. And one of the kids said, mommy, does this mean when your second book gets bought, We're going to spend two nights at the Disneyland Hotel.

So how do you say no to that? I go, of course. And so now I, you know, with seven books, I now owe him a trip to Florida. For a whole week.

You got seven books. For a whole week. Yeah. Yeah.

We're working on book eight now. I refer to that, Jackie, as healthy, loving boundaries. Here's another one. I was living in a smaller town two hours away from Los Angeles.

and there was a publicity group that I really wanted to go to in LA and it was at the worst time you know it's and I thought how can I make this work and that's what I want to share with moms ask how can I make this work don't immediately say I can't do it or it's not going to work because we we don't realize how brilliant we are we don't realize how our subconscious works for our favor. So we just throw out this question and we just keep it open to the possibilities.

And I always say, how can I make this work? And I didn't have an answer, but a couple of days later, I got it. And I thought, okay, you know what we're going to do? We had a van. We're going to bring everybody. We're going to bring their PJs. They're going to drop me off at my meeting. And then they're going to go have soul food at a deli. And then they're going to go play. They ended up figuring out they're going to play miniature golf. Then after miniature golf, they got into their 90s. Now, did I care that they didn't brush their teeth one night? No, I did not care. So they were in their 90s. They picked me up at about 10 o'clock. Did I care that they got to bed late that one night? No, I didn't care. They'll survive. And then we were all, they were so excited to see me when they picked me up at 10 o'clock and then one would fall asleep. Then another one fall asleep. Then a third one would fall asleep. And it was super quiet. And it was for the next,

you know, two hours on the way home. And then I knew it was a winner when one of the kids said, mommy, when do you have that meeting again in Los Angeles? And I knew that's a winner. Oh, I just love the reframe of this and how you can turn something that you think is just impossible and, and not right for a mom to do, you know, or I could never do that or expensive.

My kids, it's like, we need to reframe. How can I make it work? How can I make this work? I'll tell you another one. I am directionally challenged to say the least. Thank goodness for GPS. What I do now, I used to, I used to go, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, this is, you know, I'm not going to, I'm not going to find the way.

And now I say to myself, and sometimes out loud, I got this. And I'm telling you, Jackie, my subconscious comes and joins me. And I have yet to see that not come true. I've got this done.

No problem. And you did. I did. The other one I want to help share with parents, and that is have a SWAT team.

Create a SWAT team. In other words, we never know when someone's going to get sick, whether it's someone, an adult, a family member, a child. And if we're working or we're on deadline. So set up your SWAT team.

I will tell you so many people are so, they feel so special and honored to be part of your SWAT team. If you have young children, they're going to get sick. Who can watch that child? Who can watch that child?

Get that all set up because that's a last minute kind of thing. Who can take them to the doctor or who can be with them if you can't because you have a deadline or you have a really important client or business. Have that SWAT team who can come in and help you to clean the house. Teenagers are wonderful for that and they need the money.

And that's part of your SWAT team. You know, if you have a cleaning person coming in weekly, awesome. But if you have, even if you do, and you have kids more than two, you need that teenager every so often just to keep it organized. You can get someone in once a week for two hours. Can you imagine two extra hours to help organize? And that will take off so much stress.

to think about it. What could you do for two more hours? And I'm going to share with you something, Jackie, and then I'll quit. Prevention Magazine and other magazines have called on me to work with some of their readers to help them save time. I can save one hour a day, 99% of the time.

I don't care who you are. Can help save an extra hour a day and think about it. You know, What would you do with an extra hour a day? Exactly.

But so often we think we can't afford or we can't justify or we can't allow ourselves to have somebody come in. As moms, especially, we think, oh, no, it's too vain to ask for help in a certain area or it's too embarrassing to have somebody come in and see my disorganized mess and have to clean it up. And, but it is so true, Ruth, that when we have some of that help, it fills us up. Our mood is so much better.

Our energy is so much better. And so we're showing up for our kids and our relationship and our work, our clients so much better by just doing that one or two hour thing a week. Absolutely. And, you know, I often with my clients, they'll say, where's the money going to come from?

I said, you can't afford not to. See, that's what people don't understand. Once you use your energy units, you're useless. You know, you're useless. You don't have the creativity physiologically, physiologically. Right. Our creativity doesn't show up. And that's what's necessary for us to problem solve. That's what's necessary.

And so, you know, once someone starts it, it's like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I didn't do this earlier. And the boundaries, those healthy, loving boundaries have to start with the mom. And the boundary here, the loving, healthy boundary is I deserve to have someone come in two hours a week. I deserve that.

And it'll put me in a better mood, as you mentioned. I can have time to spend quality time with my children. And I have time also to get a little bit of work done. Think about it.

Two hours. How many times we work on something and we go, oh man, if I only had 10 more minutes, I'd be fine. Exactly. Exactly.

And if there's any dads listening today and you're feeling like you're a little left out in this, man, how amazing would it be to have your wife have that extra time and not be so pressured and we're investing the time. Something that you spend is gone. Something that you invest in brings that ROI. So I love that.

I love that. Whenever I see young families with children, I go, spending time and loving your children is the best investment you will ever make. If you're looking for some support as a mom and or for your child, click on the link in the show notes to schedule a 30-minute chat with Ruth. I really appreciate you taking the time to share with us and be on the show today.

Absolutely. Thank you, Jackie. All right. that's it for today's episode of the no problem parenting podcast. Hey, thanks guys for tuning in.

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