Caitlin is a first time mom who has developed a passion for helping other moms create beautiful homes for their little ones at her biz called Childs at Heart Nursery Design and Decor.

Caitlin is here for all the mommas in the group! She’ll be sharing her best tips on how she overcame feeling overworked and burnt out and started thriving in my business!!

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Caitlin’s website: https://www.childsatheart.com/

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Here’s a transcript of the episode

Brooke Logan:

We are here with Caitlin and I’m so excited. So before we like dive into the managing yourself as a mompreneur, which is going to be all you lady cause I got fur babies, but that’s it. So I’ll just be asking questions.

Caitlin Childs:

Okay, cool. Totally work.

Brooke Logan:

So before we dive into that then, let’s just have you kind of introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your business and how you got started.

Caitlin Childs:

So my name, as you all know now is Caitlin Childs and I’m the owner of child’s at heart nursery design and decor, which is basically just, um, interior decorating for nurseries. But I also do, um, like custom work, custom bedding and things like that. And, um, it’s just really become a passion of mine in the last year and I’m really excited about where, where it’s gone.

Brooke Logan:

Yeah. So how do you, how do you run your business like that then with the custom orders specifically? So do you have, I know you told me you have an Etsy shop. Um, do you just like go do, do you work in person with the nurseries and like you’d go in and you designed something for them or is it all online or how does that work?

Caitlin Childs:

That’s basically how it’s been working so far, is that I’ll go in person, look at the nurseries, get an idea of what they’re wanting, and then we custom make the pieces that they want. And then we also do a little just interior decorating if they’d rather have that. But I’m actually working on making a new package that is for anyone where, um, um, like I’ll design it for you. And then, um, I think I’m going to call it like nursery in a box. So I should get to you in, uh, like according to the directions. And so that’s something I’m excited about. Rolling out in a couple of months.

Brooke Logan:

Yeah, that’ll be cool. And then you can like work with people anywhere, not just in your, in your town. That’s awesome. So what made you decide to start this business?

Caitlin Childs:

Well, when my son was born, uh, made pretty much everything for his nursery and then I’m posting pictures of it online and people freaked out. Like it’s over everything. And so I was like, well I could do this for you guys too, you. And it’s really just kind of exploded more than I expected it to and then just made it into a business and they’re really brilliant.

Brooke Logan:

afar. Good. So have you always, have you always done stuff like that? Like made stuff yourself or just baby stuff?

Caitlin Childs:

No, I’ve, I’ve been knitting, we’ll see. I’ve been sewing since I was eight years old and knitting since I was 15 so it’s been a lifelong journey.

Brooke Logan:

That’s cool. I remember my grandma, my grandma tried to teach me how to sew when I was a kid and I can, I can like put a button back on pants and stuff. But I remember one time I got my brother and I would get grounded all the time for fighting with each other. So we weren’t allowed to do anything. And like my dad took the doors off the hinges and everything. So we, we sowed dolls out of felt and like stuff than with toilet paper. And that was the last time I tried to make anything. So I think it’s really cool. Like I’ve always been really intrigued by it. Like that whole process. Sorry, my dog’s in here. I don’t know if she’s, she’s being annoying with her collar anyway. Okay. So the next question I like to ask everyone then is what is your definition of branding and kind of how has that affected your business?

Caitlin Childs:

Um, for me the branding was just about injecting some personality business because, um, before I really was familiar with what branding was, I would just be like, hey, you need baby stuff. And I make baby stuff by the baby. And now it’s more like, Hey, I see that you have a problem, I see that you’re struggling and I have a way to fix it, so let me help you. Yeah, and it’s just adding personality to the business instead of it making it about the customer and not about me.

Brooke Logan:

Cool. I love it. I love that answer. I think that’s the first one I’ve the first answer that I’ve gotten that talks about personality and I’m all about that, so I love it. Okay, so let’s dive in then. Let’s talk about managing yourself as a mom for newer. I love when we make worse than to Preneur you can, I love all the new words. Mompreneurs, let’s go. What are we got?

Caitlin Childs:

Well, I’m in my journey as a mom, like I’ve only been a mom for a year. Well, almost a year. It’ll be one year old on Wednesday and I’m not ready for it. It would be birthday party planned I’m going on, but there’s, there’s basically three things that I’ve learned in my first year of motherhood. There really helped me in my business and really, truly I think it could apply to anyone. Just manage managing your time wisely and not just being lazy all day. I can do that and I don’t have kids. It’s very tempting. It’s very tempting. But when I, when Kellen, that’s my son, when Kellen was born, um, I was just strung out, you know, I was trying to do way too much. I was trying to do everything, you know, focusing on feeding him at all hours of the day, changing all the PPI furs and then cleaning the house, getting the laundry that I’m cooking supper and then having some kind of time for my business. At the end of the day I was strung out. Yeah. My husband kind of sat me down and he was like, look, you are doing too much. Like you’ve got a dally back and figure out what works, you know? And so I got online and all of the advice that I’ve found from other mompreneurs was not really working for my situation. And so I decided that I needed to figure out a new system. And so this is just what works for me and if it works for any of you, then Yay, I’m glad I could help.

Caitlin Childs:

The first thing is to get organized and I know like everybody hears that word and they’re like, yeah, no I don’t want to say boring but I love organization. So that wasn’t my opinion. That’s what I hear though. Every time I talk about it for me, I, I’m not organized at all. Not Normally. Um, at, well what I would call it is organized chaos. So like clothes everywhere. But I know that the remote is under those pal of clothes would between the theme, you know, I know exactly what it is and all of that clutter in my house I found was making it really hard for me to focus because I was constantly like, oh I need to do the dishes, I need to do some laundry, I need to figure this out. And so really what I started to do was I took it one thing at a time and I would, I started with the living room cause that’s where I do the most of my work. That’s where my son plays all day. And so I started with the living room and I organized his toys first, got him a little toy box, and then the second thing was organizing under the TV. Like instead of it just being a jumbled mess, DVDs go here, a station goes here. And so just not taking it, bite size pieces, I was able to get the whole space organized. And now when it’s time at the end of the day, I just take like five minutes to clean up and then the next day I wake up and it’s all clean and ready.

Caitlin Childs:

And so that really helped me in my business a lot, just being able to focus on the task at hand.

Brooke Logan:

Um, I, um, one of the things when I work with clients one on one, I have like an orientation packet that I give everyone that’s like get started on the right foot, you know? And that’s one of the things in there that everyone’s like, wow, but like it seriously makes a huge difference just having your space organized and like, I love doing that too. Like, I love cleaning stuff that actually spent like four hours cleaning all the crap out of my bathroom cabinets last week. I was like, this is ridiculous. I have like 87 bottles of shampoo. Just it makes you feel so much better though. And you’re like, yeah, I got my shit together, I’m ready to go now.

Caitlin Childs:

It’s awesome. And I’ve, I’m that nerd that like watches organization videos on Youtube to get up.

Brooke Logan:

Oh my gosh, I didn’t know that thing to look him up. Now I have like my books and my DVDs,

Caitlin Childs:

B’s and CD. We still have CD’s because my husband likes to keep them for some reason, but

Brooke Logan:

they’re all in alphabetical order. I’m like that person. It’s, it’s bad.

Caitlin Childs:

I aspire to be that person now that I know what organization can do for you. Yes. That’s my goal. Awesome. I love it. But I’m so diving into, the second thing that I learned is to follow lists and not schedules. Okay. And this was a big one for me because when I was looking for, um, advice from other mompreneurs and I said, every everything I read said, get on a schedule, get on a schedule. Okay. You try to tell him a two month old baby that he wants to be on a schedule. It doesn’t work. They don’t follow schedules. Like that’s the whole reason I don’t have a to job is because I don’t like being told what to do and when to do it.

Brooke Logan:

I get that man,

Caitlin Childs:

I’m a creative person at heart and so I follow more energy searches then schedules. So like if the mood hits me, like I’m ready to go. And what I started doing is that morning I’ll make up a list of about three things that I want to accomplish that day. And, you know, nothing crazy like building a whole website in a day or anything like that. Um, just emailing my email list or contracting, you know, three potential clients reaching out to people or things like that. Um, liking posts on Instagram, things like that that can just, um, boost it will take me somewhere in my business, but it doesn’t take up a whole lot of time. And then I just work when I can. And so during his nap times or you know, if he’s watching his shows or playing or eating breakfast, I can send out an email real quick and I don’t have to follow this rigid schedule. I don’t have to wake up at the same time every day to get work done. So that’s been the big thing for me. That has made a huge, huge difference in my ability to, um, get my work done.

Brooke Logan:

I love it. I love that cause I’m, I’m like super anti schedule. Like I tried it for a while and I was like, I don’t even like telling myself what to do. So like I hate it. So I love that. I love that. So how do you, like how do you break down the bigger tasks then? Like I get the putting the smaller things on there. So if you do have a big project or like custom stuff you’re doing for a client or customer, whatever you call them, clients or customers,

Caitlin Childs:

uh, clients is what I call. Yeah.

Brooke Logan:

So do you just like break it down into, into smaller pieces or do you just like, you know, say I’m going to spend two hours today and that’s your list item.

Caitlin Childs:

So that’s, um, kind of a bigger picture kind of thing I’ll take like, cause most obviously most of the women I work with are pregnant and we have a debate so down by like what we have to do before their due day. Okay. So if I have, um, five projects that I have to get done before their due date and I have five months to do them, that’s one project a month. And I will break it down by like, how many hours I need to spend a week on this thing to get it done by that time. And so even if it’s just like, I need to spend one hour a day doing this in order to meet my goal, you know, then that I put that hour towards that. And if, if something happens to like throw me off majorly like killing gets sick or um, you know, he refuses naps or something major like that, then usually when my husband gets home I’ll be like, okay, this was my goal today.

Caitlin Childs:

I need to spend an hour on this and I need you to like just give me, and so then we work to get it done. Yeah. Well that’s good. That’s awesome. I love it. Okay, so the third and final thing that I think everybody can get on board with this too, so, okay. So, um, basically this is just giving yourself something to look forward to so that you don’t get burnout. Awesome. So me self care is like major for me because I’m, I’m a better mom when I’m mentally relaxed. And so for me it’s, it’s a bath. At the end of the day, I just want a bath and I go all in like bath salts, candles, face, everything I know. And you know it doesn’t have to take a lot of time. If you’ve got like a bajillion kids and your husband works 17 hours, it’s like, hey then you know, only 30 minutes is all you need to unwind. It could be a glass of wine, it could be a bath, it could be, you know, just taking a jog if that’s your thing. That’s not my thing. But that’s some people’s thing, mom’s thing. And so it worked for her and I’m like, all right, go for it.

Caitlin Childs:

And then just every day having some way to wind down and reset yourself for the next day. And then like maybe once a week or twice a month you could do a bigger thing like a massage or a girls’ night or just something that can like reset you for those bigger tasks that you need to tackle. I love it. Those are so good. Those are also good. And you’re right there. There’s definitely overlap. Even if you don’t have, if you don’t have kids for sure. So I love it. That’s so awesome. I love it. So you had mentioned too that you were having an auction, right? So do you want to talk a little bit about that? Yeah, so basically, um, what I do is whenever I have like scraps left over from a project, I don’t like to throw anything away. I don’t like to be wasteful and he had to go as save all of the scraps. What I like to do is like if I have yarn leftover, I’ll knit it into a blanket or if I have scraps of fabric, I’ll make little teddy bears and things like that. And then, um, I like to do an auction to auction them off at prices that are less than what you would normally pay so that, um, you get products for less than they would normally costs and then I can invest that money back into my business and we’re recycling. So you’re not throwing stuff way.

Caitlin Childs:

Yeah. So when does that start? I don’t have a set date yet and right now I’m trying to get a certain amount of projects finished before auction them off. Um, I’m planning to do it did definitely before Christmas, so like within the next month I would think. And that will be on my Facebook page on your Facebook page. Okay. And that is, um, in the events tab under this event as the link to your Facebook page. And we’ll also, once we get off your wall, so put it in a comment. So it’s really easy to find for everyone. So anyone that has a baby on the way.

Brooke Logan:

or knows any cute babies at all, that would be an awesome Christmas present. Right? Like that would be an awful thing to check out for a Christmas present. Absolutely. Everybody knows that. Everybody knows a cute baby for sure. Awesome. Well thank you so much Caitlin. I’m so excited that you got to come in here. We’ve been talking in the group for a long time. I’m so excited to finally get to like talk to you in real life. Well, more real life than in Facebook or used to face. Yeah, I’m so excited. Thank you so much for coming in, and I will be back in here later this week. I have some big announcements this week for anyone who is not on my email list. You should be up my email list because there’s a really good one going out tomorrow and I’m really excited about some new stuff, so that’s going to be really cool and I will be back in later. Thank you so much, Caitlin and everyone. Have a great Sunday evening. Bye.

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