Season 2, Episode 5: Balance Is B.S.
Guest Ciera Krinke is a new mother to a baby girl and wears several business hats. She works as Director of Marketing for a non-profit, she operates C. James Innovations, a consulting and website business, and is a founding member of SheWolf Collaborative.
Host Jordan Lacenski is the founder and Chief Innovation Officer at Brandboss Creative, and co-founder of SheWolf Collaborative.
Host: Jordan Lacenski
Guest: Ciera Krinke
Show Notes:
2:21 - “There was genuinely this large part of me that expected to live my life pretty much as I had, in regard to work specifically.” - Ciera talks adjusting to her work life after becoming mother, the unexpected changes that she had to make, and how she is okay with an unbalanced life.
6:17 - “I had so much feedback from the outside even before I had Quinn of people telling me what the experience was going to be like for me.” - Ciera shares the challenges of people making assumption about her life and her wants after she became a mother, and going through her own experience of loving her child without losing her identity and love of her work.
11:49 - “Balance is bullshit.” - Jordan and Ciera discuss how people’s life experiences are so different from each other, whether you’re a workaholic or a stay-at-home mom, and the concept of balance in life doesn’t apply to everybody’s life. Life, business, and family are always changing and presenting new challenges.
18:43 - “You can’t all day, every day, every second be everything that everybody needs.” - Ciera and Jordan talk about how their responsibilities in business, in life, and as a woman fluctuate every day, but also that it’s not necessary, sustainable or possible to be 100% all the time for everything.
20:32 - “Especially when you are a business owner, you can see things from other business owners’ perspectives...At some point, they’re running a business and it doesn’t excuse me from meeting expectations.” - Ciera talks about how people have granted her grace and time around having her baby, but she still understands the needs and demands of a business, and how she has to show up in her role in work and as a mom.
23:33 - “When I have moments of feeling guilty about not being with Quinn or not giving enough time to her, I also think about wanting to set a good example for Quinn. When she gets older, I want to be able to tell her about the things that I’ve done and look at me as a role model.” - Ciera thinks about advice to other moms who are really dedicated to being the best they can be as a mother, in work and meeting expectations.
26:40 - “Now it’s about disrupting the norm of as a female, I can lift weights if I want to and as a female, I can own my own business if I want to. But generationally, even legally, not that long ago in our lifetime, women could not own businesses without a male co-signer.” - Jordan and Ciera talk about how so much has changed for women in recent history, and because of that, how they will be drastically different mothers than their own.
31:45 - “And that can translate into the business world too where there’s so much that’s unspoken, and you’re going through something and you feel really isolated in it.” - Ciera talks about the overlap of personal and parental experiences with experiences at work. People having permission to talk about hard things and speaking their truth can make people feel less alone.
Links:
Ciera’s consulting business, C. James Innovations: https://www.cjamesinnovations.com/
She Wolf Collaborative: https://shewolf.co/
Brandboss Creative: https://www.brandbosscreative.com/
Quotes:
“I remember in those moments being really, almost offended in a way, like you don’t know me. Maybe you couldn’t handle it but I can handle it. I also don’t like being told that I can’t do something so when I had a number of people being like “Oh no, you’re not going to be able to continue working the way that you are” I wanted to be like “Oh no, I will. I will show you.” ” - Ciera Krinke
“I think it’s so important that as females, we can have more real conversations, whether it’s motherhood and there’s so much within motherhood too, so many conversations that aren’t had, whether it’s about depression or not being able to breastfeed… For me, there were some really hard parts of going through pregnancy and having the baby and I felt very isolated and alone because nobody talked about these things.” - Ciera Krinke