Business and Beyond's Feature Friday ft. Alyssa Wolff

Building a Business That Supports Your Life

Many entrepreneurs start their journey chasing freedom—only to end up working longer hours than ever before.

In this episode of #FeatureFriday, Alyssa Wolff shares powerful insights on redefining success by aligning your business with your life—not the other way around. This conversation dives into the realities of time management, setting clear priorities, and building systems that support both your professional growth and personal well-being.

One of the biggest takeaways?

Success isn’t just about scaling a business—it’s about creating a life you don’t feel the need to escape from.

Through intentional routines, removing guilt around work-life balance, and designing your business with purpose, it’s possible to build something that truly supports the life you want to live.

If you’ve ever felt like your business is running you instead of you running it, this episode offers practical strategies and mindset shifts worth applying.

🎧 Listen now and start building a business that works for your life—not against it.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Business and Beyond's Feature Friday. I'm excited about my guest today. Her name is Alyssa Wolf, and she is an entrepreneur who helps entrepreneur moms learn how to get on, get enough hours to work on their business, prioritize their time, establish a no guilt, yes, you heard it, no guilt work-life balance, and set up family routines that can hold it all together. She helps entrepreneur moms build lives that they do not need a vacation from. So help me welcome Alyssa today. Thank you for being here, Alyssa. Thank you, Tanya. My pleasure. So, Alyssa, tell me a little bit about what you do and more importantly, why you got into this line of work.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

I wanted moms to be able to feel like they could run their lives, the family, the side hustle, whatever it is, without constantly being on the hamster wheel, whether it's in your calendar, whether it's just the mental frazzle you feel, because that wasn't the way I lived my life. And I have five kids. And I wasn't hearing moms with even like one or two kids talk about being relaxed, being unbusy, unhurried. And I was like, if I have some sort of secret, I need to share it with everyone else around me.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

That is 100% too. I have two kids, and most of the time I'm frazzled. Having five kids in a business is definitely something to be commended for. So um is there an in? I mean, obviously, there's an industry to what you do, but how did you get into just moms? You know, entrepreneur moms. What drew you to that niche?

SPEAKER_01 2:14

I kind of figured it was going to need to be moms. You know, when you're starting in business, they give you all those questionnaires and forms about your ideal client. It's like, what I'm doing primarily is time management for mothers because there's time management of all kinds out there, but it is so generalized. They don't care if you're a man, a single girl, just running your career. And I was like, this needs to be specifically moms. This is who I'm interacting with. These are the who the strategies I've developed can help best. Like, if I'm talking about chore delegation and should you hire a housekeeper versus should you farm it out to your kids? That's something that only a stay-at-home parent is going to care about.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

That is true. So, what kind of issues do you see in your industry, like just in the industry in general? And how are you overcoming those? Or what makes you different?

SPEAKER_01 3:09

I think the biggest problem with the whole work from home business owner thing is time. We as women, we're doing too much, we're pressuring ourselves to perform too much. I mean, you've got family and the kids, the husband, and then all your business goals over here. And then we're losing ourselves in our spark in this process. But if you had a way to still keep up your own hobbies, you know, have the free time to hear yourself think, and you had a quality time to connect with your kids and your husband, you could still hit the business client revenue goals that you've been wanting, that you've been journaling and vision boarding for, you'd be happy, you'd be thrilled with your life. But people don't have that. And usually the problem they finger is time. Or the problem that's five years down is again time.

SPEAKER_00 3:54

Right. But we all have the same amount of time.

SPEAKER_01 4:00

We can't overcome that. But people aren't willing to prioritize the time. Not in a sense of how can I get faster and more efficient, but in a sense that says, okay, I admit I cannot hold all of this. Therefore, it's like the overflowing bathtub. I have to get some of this stuff out. And people aren't willing to actually look at it and say, okay, not everything can be the sacred cow. I've I've got five things on my plate that are five rolls, and that is too many. I need to ditch two of them. They want to say, no, no, I have to do it all. I have to be it all to my clients, to my kids. Otherwise, I will not be a good mother. See, now you're tying into all the cultural worthiness type of stuff. And the result is you still have too much to do. You can't get through your my long to-do list because you are still stuck in your head saying, but it has to be me. I have to do this, I have to show up this way. And yes, we all have the same 24 hours, and you cannot physically fit everything you're doing into that 24 hours. So I'm actually like a calendar minimalist or to-do list minimalist. I'm taking things off of people's plates, I'm showing them what they can stop doing, not how to get more disciplined to fit more in.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

I love that because it is so true. And I want all entrepreneurs, not just I want all entrepreneurs to get this. You do not have to do everything by yourself, right? You do not. There are certain things that are just busy work that you don't even have to do at all. Okay. And being busy is not something that you get a medal for. Being busy only leads to overwhelm, burnout, and bad and negative things where you cannot continue to be the best person that you are. So I love Alyssa that you're talking about taking things off of the to-do list, right? And I would like to get into a little bit about when you take them off the to-do list, does that mean they're not getting done? Are you delegating them to someone else? Are there different things for different types of to-dos that you teach people how to do? Um, is that like basically the concept of it, or am I completely off and there's something else?

SPEAKER_01 6:22

No, those are the two separate paths we can take under delegation. I've got three pillars, and one of them is delegation. So we can look at it and say, but does this actually have to get done in this season, which could be this month, this semester, this year, this quarter? If the answer is no, I do want you to delete it and just say it's not getting done. If it still does need to happen, like maybe it's the cleaning, you're like, no, I don't need to be the person handling this, then yes, you're going to outsource that part of it. But fundamentally, it's getting off your plate.

SPEAKER_00 6:54

That I love it. So one thing I talk about business owners specifically about is your worth versus paying someone to do it for you. Because everybody says, Well, I can't afford to pay someone to do something that I can do myself. What do you have to say about that, Alyssa?

SPEAKER_01 7:20

Well, at a certain point, you can say, I'm frugal, I'm smart, I know how to do all of those things and be burnt out. Or you can love your family, pour into your kids, feel so lit up by your day-to-day life, and have a team that supports you. I mean, it's your choice, and I can't pick for you.

SPEAKER_00 7:37

That's great. Well, on another note as well, is if your time is worth more than the task, or more than you can pay someone else to do that task for you, then you're actually saving money by paying them to do it, right? Exactly. So thank you for these business nuggets and these amazing life hacks, basically, because it's helping other people see the different perspective.

unknown 8:08

Right.

SPEAKER_00 8:09

And that's all we could do.

SPEAKER_01 8:10

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 8:11

Right. So you've been in business for six years now, right? Correct. Okay. And how many kids do you have? Five. Five kids in business six years, and you seem very mellow and relaxed and happy. So I love that. How didn't you have any like obstacles as you were growing your business?

SPEAKER_01 8:43

Not so much on say the business growth, because once I set my mind to something, I'm one of those annoying people who kind of self-deliver. I tended to run into the obstacles more in growing the family first. Because before I figured out the business niche, I had to learn all the principles that I'm teaching my clients on my own. And one of them was you cannot do every single thing for your family. That's where the delegation really came in. Because at a certain point, if you have too many kids, you're gonna max out. And I think I hit that at like kid number three, but it was kid number four that really pushed me to figure out how many things can I let go of. And once I figured out how to do that on the household front, it made it easier on the business front. Kid number four was one of those high maintenance babies that he only wanted me, no one else, where he'd just scream all day. It's like, this is not what I signed up for. So once he grew out of that phase, I mean, that was a real light bulb moment of if you must hold the baby, what has to happen in the household? And how can you explain to someone else how to do it because you cannot? You know, you cannot go grocery shopping if the drive is longer than 20 minutes away. You cannot do anything if it takes longer than 20 minutes. So all of a sudden you're having to lean on tons of different people around you saying, I need the cleaning, I need the groceries, I need the planning, I need you to wrap the gift because I'm over here holding the baby, right? And honestly, everything other than that after in my life has felt easy in comparison.

SPEAKER_00 10:19

Well, so but this is what normally happens, right? Is you start out with the pain of not knowing how to navigate opening a business, growing a business, having kids, having a family, whatever it is that you just started out with, riding a bike, you fall, right? Everything, whenever you start it, you don't have the skills or the knowledge to be proficient at it, and you have to learn how to do it, right? And so I love that you're bringing that out because it's not just for your family where you need to use those skills. I mean, those are delegation skills, organization skills, prioritization skills, right? Um, it brings to mind the saying however you do anything is how you do everything.

SPEAKER_01 11:22

Yeah, it was almost like I had to be the CEO of the family. I was not allowed to work on the family tasks, you know, which translates so directly as the business owner. Even if you're like, but I'm so good at this, yes, but someone else could do that for you. And are you at a point where either your time is getting so squeezed, or maybe it's your creative energy, or maybe you feel a bit of burnout coming out, you need to hand off as much as possible. So it's just the big picture and the direction is what is on your plate. And it's like I had to learn that on the family side, and then I could be bringing on the business side. It's like been a theme for me. I learn everything, I learn all the lessons on the family side, and then I come to the business and they're like, oh, I already know how to do that, but it's because I did it kind of the backwards way. Most women start their online business and then they go at a kid.

SPEAKER_00 12:13

But I love how you just frame that you have to be the CEO and not the worker be, right? Because when you own your own business, when you're running your family, you cannot be the person doing everything because then there's nobody running anything, right? And so delegation and prioritization becomes such an important imperative part of your life. Those are skills that you have to learn if you want to have any kind of semblance of a happy life and a good family environment and a good business that's gonna grow or continue to uh service your needs. 100%. So I love that you learned everything from your family side and then you applied it into business. And I love how you put yourself as the CEO of your family because a lot of stay-at-home parents are the CEOs of their family, and then they think they don't have any skills for business when in reality they have the highest skills that are needed, right? Yes. So, Montpreneurs, do not doubt yourselves. You have so many skills that you have created and practiced that can be translated into the business world. So, are there any other obstacles that you have had to face in your business that I know you said you're self-motivated and when you put your mind to it, you make it happen. But that also comes with its own challenges.

SPEAKER_01 14:00

Yeah, in the beginning, it was that role shift that was difficult for me. I'm like, I'm a stay-at-home mom. That is my entire identity. I've spent what, 13 years at that point or something doing that thing. And all of a sudden I was going to shift to being a work-from-home mom. And the amount of identity work, delegation work, worthiness work, all that sort of stuff that needed to happen simultaneously to picking domain names and social media handles and blog content niches and stuff like that, that was huge because that was the foundation that set me up for all this six years later. Because if you feel like you're just playing, you're just pretending this is a little hobby, you don't feel like you can ask for the time, the workspace, the desk, the quiet, whatever you it is you need to deliver to your clients.

SPEAKER_00 14:55

That is absolutely golden. You cannot have the power to ask for what you need if you don't believe that it's worthy. Right. And so when you are starting a business, you have to give it the value that it deserves. You have to give it the attention that it deserves, which means you have to up yourself work and ask for help and ask for other people to step up and take things off your shoulders so that you can concentrate on this new venture. So I I love that advice. That is such a golden nugget. Um, so what has been working in your business? How did you get that to work? You know, we're talking about obstacles and how to overcome them and working on yourself and making sure that your mindset is right. Um, but to be successful and to have a business for six years and to continue to have a business and to grow it, there are certain things that have to work and they have to work properly. So, what in your business have you been able to get to work really well?

SPEAKER_01 16:15

Content and organization were always strengths of mind. It's like you said, you may not realize you've got strengths until you get into the business space. And those have been things that I've leveraged because I don't know about you, I consume a lot of entrepreneur content, and they usually talk about it's the disorganized creative. Yeah, you can't handle numbers, you run screaming from schedules, you don't want to be boxed in. And I'm like, but all my life, those have been my strengths. So I use that to nibble down the business elephant of how do I make this thing succeed and say, oh, well, here, we have some numbers, we have some reports. I love the personal budgeting for the family. Great, let me do the business numbers. What about your monthly metrics? Ooh, goody, more reports. I am thrilled with analyzing and thinking about stuff. Okay, so I'm just gonna go look through these and say what's working well, what isn't, what can we tweak? Because that's my entire mindset for life, anyways. Content, writing. I mean, for me, I do writing, not speaking, or at least I write first and then speak. Your business needs so much content. But since that was a strength for me, I was like, you know, I'm not gonna build my business around DMing in social media reels. I'm gonna build it around the podcasting, the email marketing, the blog posts, uh, the freebies that people can download, the next step things they can download, because that's what's easy for me to put out. And then it's also very easy for me to say, what am I promoting this quarter? What kind of pre-launch content supports that? It's all content, it's all thinking, and that's what I'm good at.

SPEAKER_00 17:49

Oh, I know they're golden nuggets. What is your strength and lean into that? What aligns with you and lean into that. Yes, that content writing is something that can really help with marketing and getting clients and attracting the right fit clients, right? Because you're writing to the audience that you want to work with. Um, but you also have other ways of attracting clients. There are other things that you could do, but Alyssa's not doing them because they don't match her and she's still still successful. So that is a big nugget. Alignment, right? What makes you feel good, what you're good at, strengthen your strengths and delegate your weaknesses.

SPEAKER_01 18:43

Yeah. And if necessary, prune your business model or pivot it so that it aligns with those strengths and learn to filter out all the business mentors who are telling you what worked. It's true it did work, but it was because it worked for a different set of strengths. And you will always feel like something is off or this is really hard, and you're forcing yourself in business if you're a content person trying to do a DM strategy, or if it's the reverse, you are great at all the social media connections and someone's just telling you pump out more and more content so people will see you're the expert. No, it's not gonna work for you. So learn to just say, no, thank you. That's not meant for me. I don't need to pay attention to it.

SPEAKER_00 19:21

Self-awareness, right? Self-awareness. Just because your next door neighbor is doing a certain thing that is crushing it for him or her does not mean that that's gonna work for you because you both have different strengths. Thank you, Alissa. That was I love this interview. Um so, where do you see your industry going? Where do you see yourself going in the next five years or so?

SPEAKER_01 19:52

Such a fun question. So I feel like the work from home entrepreneur space is tired of the course world and also tired of the big like group program mastermind world. We want individualized support and we don't want a vague one-on-one coaching of, well, we're just gonna level up your mindset somehow. You'll feel more alive, more aligned, right? We want actual tangible takeaways, but we want it personalized and customized to us. We want that attention. So I feel like that's tangible results, personalized frameworks, a deep understanding of whatever expert you hired and them understanding your situation. And that is exactly the sort of thing that service-based businesses, in my opinion, are poised to deliver. So if you do coaching, can you add a framework onto that, excuse me, so that there's something specific your people are walking away from? If you have a course, can you say, well, the course is a curriculum, and now I'm gonna personalize it and add voxer access for people? That sort of a thing. So it's neither vague nor here's the videos, go watch them, bye, don't ask me any questions, right?

SPEAKER_00 21:00

But I love that. And I want to go back to something you had said previously with reports and numbers and analysis, right? Because I love that. I am a dork, I am a self-recrained dork. I think that you cannot have a business, you cannot have you know, you can't improve anything if you can't measure it. Right? Because if you can't measure it, how are you gonna improve it? How do you know that what you're doing has improved anything? You can't. It's just you know, like flying in the dark or whatever the saying might be. But when you track, when you measure, when you have reports that you can analyze, you can see what's working, let's do more of that. What's not working, let's stop doing that and take it off our to-do list, thereby making your work less time consuming, right? Um, so tracking, making sure you know what your numbers are, budgeting, seeing what is happening in real data, not just subjective feelings, is key to being successful. It is key to being able to work less but smarter. Um, and I love that you said people are moving away from all of these just self-paced courses and uh you know they want more one-on-one personalized coaching. Can you elaborate a little bit on why do you think that's the case from your, you know, your experience and where you sit in that industry?

SPEAKER_01 22:55

Yeah, well, just from the six years, those are kind of the swings, the extremes I've seen. The course phase where everything was a course. Anything you wanted to learn, you could get a course. And then the kind of the pendulum swung to no, no, no, no, we're not gonna have preset programs, we're gonna do just coaching and we're gonna talk about you and excavate your feelings. And I think the pendulum has swung back from that again. And now people are like, yes, but I want a tangible takeaway. I don't want to walk away having paid, I don't know, $15,000 for six months of coaching and say, well, I feel more able to hold my own boundaries. You know, it's like maybe I needed boundary help, but is that worth it? Can I justify that? But maybe you want someone who says, I really need to learn how to run Facebook ads. Well, I would like someone who's gonna walk me through it, and that means like screen sharing every single thing on the meta ads page and say, ignore this, ignore this, ignore this. If they tell you to put this in your ad, skip it. If they say this, yes, you're allowed to do it, and you have the video you can refer back to. And then says, okay, I recommend these hooks and these angles, and I recommend this mix of graphics and videos. And here's how to walk through and here's how to upload your first one. Now let me run through the metrics with you so we can see if your ad is high performing or not high performing, so that you'll be able to do this again for yourself. And oh yes, and if you are having issues recording it, maybe you need some help with your iPhone settings. Okay. So that's someone who has a specific service. They personalize it to you and they held your hand through the entire process instead of saying, here is a course, go watch the tutorial on meta-ads, right? That's the kind of combo service I'm talking about. It is something specific, but it is personalized attention getting you to that end result.

SPEAKER_00 24:45

And for me, I need that accountability. When I take a course, when right, I'm a self-motivated person and I will get whatever I need done, done. But when it comes to learning new things and new skills and figuring other things out that I'm just kind of interested in, having that self-paced course, well, I'll do it tomorrow. I have more important things to do today. I'll do that tomorrow. I'll do that tomorrow, right? Um, and you're correct. I have found because I truly believe in coaches and consultants. I think it if you get the right one that aligns with you and actually shows you how to do things rather than just talking circles, um, you really can get a lot more accomplished in less time with less effort. And it's a really nice, happy um endeavor, right? Whereas when you're just doing a course that's on your own, that's self-paced, there's nobody there to kind of help you see when you do something right, or help you see when you do something wrong, or help motivate you, give you a little bit of affirmation, you know, give you a little bit of accountability um as to making sure to do those things. And so I I agree with you. I think we are moving more towards that more specific, hey, this is what I need help with, come help me do it. And we all need mindset work, right? We all need it, but that's not the end all be all. That's part of being able to do things. So if you don't like numbers and you want to be a business owner, you have to work on your mindset to like the numbers as you're working on the numbers.

SPEAKER_01 27:02

Exactly. Same for selling, same for client relationships, same for how you're pricing yourself. Everything is that combo. You need to do it, great, but you'll never do it properly if your mindset is out of whack.

SPEAKER_00 27:17

So I love how you put both of them together, right? It's not just mindset by itself, and it's not just the numbers or just the um, what is it, time management. It's all together as one. And you had said when you started, you had to work on your mindset, on your self-image, on your self-worth, on your skill set, as well as getting the website and doing all those other things that you need to do for business all at the same time because they all go hand in hand. You cannot bifurcate certain things.

SPEAKER_01 27:55

Yes. Or if you do want to, you're gonna delay it. You know, I could have said, I'll spend six months figuring out how to up-level myself into a work-from-home parent. Well, it wouldn't have a business if I said I had to have this first.

SPEAKER_00 28:09

Uh, I like it. Jump right in and get it all done together.

SPEAKER_01 28:14

Yes, or conversely, some of my clients, they're like, Well, I feel like I should start a business. So every couple of months they do another business task. They haven't up leveled the mindset. So they're always cramming a business task into a corner of the day and then suddenly drops down the priority list, doesn't happen. Like, you've got to actually shift into my business is my part-time job, I need to treat it as such, or else you're never going to start that YouTube channel.

SPEAKER_00 28:42

That I love that. Now, if you were to only give business owners one piece of advice, what would that be?

SPEAKER_01 28:54

Everyone's got a frustration point, right? There's something that's bugging you about your schedule, your Google Calendar, whatever it is. I want you to pick the top thing that's annoying you and just fix that one. I want you to be happier with your day instead of saying, oh, I could be more disciplined if I did this. No, forget all the discipline. What would make you happier if you fix that sticking point in your schedule? It could be, I need more people to help me with my content production stuff. Okay, get people to help you with that. Or maybe it's really tiny. It seems stupid. You just, you've done the mindset work, you just can't get over the hump of, I really hate dealing with all the tiny little client questions. You know what? Maybe you need the support coach. Just fix the one thing that is so annoying about your day. You're just like, if I could get rid of this, like 60% of my frustrations would go away. Hit the big domino first.

SPEAKER_00 29:47

Love it. Love it. Because that is one task that is going to help you with your life so much. It is exponentially beneficial by doing one thing, but you actually have to do it. Okay. So, Alyssa, how can people get a hold of you? How can they find your content? How can they work with you?

SPEAKER_01 30:18

Sure. You can go to yourunbusylife.com. We'll have free downloads for you. If you're a podcast person, like I am, you can search for the Unbusy Mom. We do short under 10 minute episodes twice a week. And then if you'd like a really easy free download that's going to help you clear your two-fold plate as an entrepreneur mom, I'm going to break down how you can get three hours back for yourself and your business every single day. Because, let's be honest, reclaiming just one hour a day is not going to cut it. You can take it from a mom who's homeschooling five kids and running her business. But since there's no need, not in my world, to flirt with Berna to hold both the high achiever and the present mom identity, I've recorded seven episodes for you called the Time Back Secrets Audio Feed so that you can banish the pressure from your Mompreneur to-do list.

SPEAKER_00 31:07

That is so very generous. And how can people get that?

SPEAKER_01 31:14

That is a link in the show notes. I think we gave that to you in the media kit.

SPEAKER_00 31:21

Okay. So it will be in the um comments below. We will have Alyssa's information, her contact information at the end of this. So don't miss it. Take a screenshot of it. Download those comments so you can have her information and the link to this very, very generous offer and gift from Alyssa. Well, Miss Alyssa, thank you so much for being here today. It has been a true pleasure.

SPEAKER_01 31:59

Thank you, Tanya. I love talking with you.

SPEAKER_00 32:02

And we will see you all next time.