Women are capable of anything and we do everything at the same time. Until we reach a breaking point where we start to feel irritable, stressed out, overworked, and no matter what we do, there is a feeling of dissatisfaction. But even then we still have a hard time letting go of responsibilities for fear of disappointing someone or being a failure as a wife, a mother, or as a career woman. Well, it's about time to change the stories we tell ourselves. In this episode, CEO of ONE Way Life Coaching and author of Every Woman Needs a Maid, Dr. Bonnie Hubert talks about the expectations that we set for ourselves being High Drive High Vibe women and how unknowingly we jeopardize the quality of the work we do and our choices because of the load that we are taking on. Don’t miss out on this chance to learn ways to reflect on what you can let go of or delegate, gain back time for yourself, and prioritize the people and things that matter most to you!
Connect with Bonnie - https://www.wedevelopyou.com/hubert
Bonnie's New Book! Every Woman Needs a Maid-How to Stop Relationship Conflict, Overwork, and Stress so You Can Live Your Best Life
Mentioned in this episode:
The Laundry Fairy - https://thelaundryfairy.biz
Brooke Castillo, Life Coach - https://thelifecoachschool.com
Kindra Hall, Author & Speaker - https://www.kindrahall.com
Book: Choose Your Story Change Your Life by Kindra Hall
---
Listen to the podcast here
Why Every Woman Needs A Maid With Dr. Bonnie Hubert
Camille and I are talking about Bonnie Hubert. Bonnie has spent 25 years working in the education in the mental health field. She is an LPC or a Licensed Professional Councilor. She earned her Doctorate in Educational Leadership from the University of Houston in 2015. Bonnie is the CEO of ONE Way Life Coaching and runs a Facebook group called High Drive High Vibe Moms, where she supports and inspires professional working moms. Her ability to communicate and connect with youth and adults makes her a highly sought-after speaker and presenter. Even better, she's got a new book. It's Every Woman Needs a Maid: How to Stop Relationship Conflict, Overwork and Stress So You Can Live Your Best Life. Here we go with Dr. Bonnie Hubert.
Welcome to the show. With us, we have Dr. Bonnie Hubert.
How are you all? I'm so glad to be here with you.
Thank you so much, Dr. Hubert. Bonnie, tell us a little bit about you. I met you through Camille, which has been such a joy just the little bit of time that we've been talking. Tell us about you, who you are, and what it is that you do.
I am a wife, a mother, and a professional woman. I have different areas of my life that make me who I am. Now, I have three kiddos that are out of the house. I have one left at home. I am loving life and living it. Every day is a joy.
You look great. I thought you were going to say, "I have little kids." Not to imply that when you have older kids, you don't look great. There are lots of women who have older adult children who look great, but I was looking at your youthfulness. I thought that you had little babies still at home.
I have two grandkids, also. I have littles as well.
That is beautiful. Bonnie, tell us about your background. I'm so curious about Dr. Bonnie Hubert. I know you more from the entrepreneurial or business side. Tell us about Dr. Bonnie Hubert.
I have been an educator and a counselor for most of my career. I started out as a teacher. I became a school counselor and then a private, professional counselor. I have also dabbled, as many high-drive women do in lots of side gigs. We run a small boarding facility for horses. I've taught group fitness in the past. I was telling Cami this last time I spoke with her that we launched our first Airbnb. I don't know about you all, but I am a very high-drive, high-vibe person. Some people don't get that, and some people do. If you get it, you're my people. I had always had a goal since I was sixteen years old to be a doctor of something.
I don't know why, but I knew it wasn't going to be medical whenever I took my first Chemistry course in college. I wanted to go through and learn something to the proficiency of being an expert. That fueled me. I went to Sam Houston State University for my undergrad. I then got a Master's degree from Texas Southern University in Counseling. I got another Master's degree in Educational Leadership from the University of Texas at Arlington. I finished it out at the University of Houston with a degree in Educational Leadership. My whole life's passion is educating and counseling people, specifically young women and women of all ages.
I share the high vibe. I'm always doing something. Some people don't understand what you're saying. My husband's a great guy, but sometimes he's like, "Why are you doing this?" I love the challenge. I love to challenge myself, and I share that energy. That's amazing. I love it.
All three of us share the high vibe energy or the essence of who we are. I wanted to say a couple of things, Bonnie. Sam Houston State University, I love it. Texas Southern University is my alma mater, so we share that. That is fantastic. You have a very similar background to my husband, who also has climbed the educational, and academic ladders as well. Is that background or educational piece that led you to write your book?
No. What led me to write my book, which is called Every Woman Needs a Maid, is speaking to women like us who are high drive and high vibe. We have energy. We want to grow, learn, and serve. Sometimes women like us spread ourselves too thin and overwork ourselves. We have stress. There's conflict in our relationships because of those things we love to do, and people don't get. That is why I wrote Every Woman Needs a Maid. It's about how to stop the stress, the relationship conflict, and the overwork by doing specific things that we'll create a better work-life blend and create time for what matters to us most. That's the gist of the book.
In education, I have been around so many men and women that give all they have to serving and educating youth and also staff members if they're in the administrative piece of that. They're also real estate agents. They've got the side hustle they do all summer long or whatever. It's being around women that are doing multiple things. A lot of them have multi-level marketing businesses, they sell skincare or clothes, or whatever it is that they love, like nutritional products. They're doing all these things, yet they still feel like they're not on top of the water. That's whom I'm speaking to.
Let's talk more about the lady that you mentioned. Is that where your focus is centered now around your business or Facebook group? Who is the ideal woman that you're working with now?
I'm talking to the trailblazers, but the trailblazers who are trying to do it alone. If you think about a trailblazer, they're creating this path, a singular person going out and clearing a path through the wilderness, clearing away for others. I realized that we couldn't blaze these trails by ourselves. In my experience, it's impossible.
You and I could be at the front leading a charge to blaze this trail, like you guys are doing here on this show. There are always people along that will help us blaze that trail. If that weren't the case, we would run out of things we needed to blaze the trail. If we're thinking of a forest, we will run out of food and supplies. We couldn't carry the weight of everything ourselves. We would be stuck.
I'm talking to women that are asked the question, "How do you have the energy to do everything that you do?" Those are my people. Those are my clients. In 2015 when I graduated, I left education, the 7:00 to 4:00 education. I shifted and went to work for a company called Resilience for Youth. They have a curriculum called Why Try and Resilience for Youth. For a couple of years, I traveled all around and led teaching adults and these workshops. The pandemic happened, and no more travel. I had to think, "What can I do? I still want to educate people. I want to coach people."
I thought, "I don't want to do the heaviness of the therapy stuff, but I want to be a coach for people." I launched my business. It's called ONE Way Life. It's life coaching, essentially. I work with women that are high drive high energy to rein themselves to the point where they're feeling satisfied with life and not just chasing a bunch of things all over where they're more organized and take ownership of their schedule. They take ownership of their inner and outer environment and have a concrete plan for executing the processes and systems that are going to get them to where they want to be. Essentially, that's it.
That's amazing. I am this person. I chase everything. I love it. I can be focused, too. Even for me, just hiring someone to clean my home, I felt the hugest guilt. I went to this women's group meet-up, and they were like, "How do you do it all?" I said, "I have somebody clean my house." I'm finally getting people hired underneath me because I try to do it all myself. I don't know why we try to do it all ourselves most of the time. Some of it is probably fear. Maybe we don't want to pay someone. Maybe it's harder for us to explain what we want other people to do for us. I'm not exactly sure what that is. It's great that you're providing this for women. It's needed.
This was a comment that one of my group members posted in the group. I'm going to read this word for word. She said, "I tell myself I can work full time, parent, make dinners, and clean my house. I cannot, but I hate paying for things I told could do myself. I finally signed up to have a professional cleaner come and do the main living areas, kitchen, and master bath." She said, "They have been here two hours, and I'm almost in tears. It's amazing. Imagine if your kids did their house chores without complaining but then did a good job and cleaned stuff you had not even told them to clean."
"My house is clean. I was on the fence for a long time. Hiring a cleaning service was some failure as a mom or a moral dilemma, but they aren't even done yet, and I am sold. God bless any of you that do this for other people and any of you that can afford it. Seriously consider hiring help to do the cleaning." We had 319 members react to that, and 24 of them commented. That was one of the best posts I've had in my group for a long time. I was struck by that. What you said reminded me of that.
It's relatable. We all struggle with that, and we don't realize that everybody else is struggling with it too. This is great stuff.
I love the title, Every Woman Needs a Maid. You can't find a better book title than that. If you're a woman, and even if you've got fur babies and live alone, you would still like that title. If you're working, you need help.
It's all about outsourcing. In my book, I talk about being ADD. It's not the ADD you think of in terms of ADD with attention deficits. It's learning what you need to make your immediate action, what you can delegate, what you can delay, and what you can delete out of your schedule to free up time for yourself so that you can enjoy life and feel satisfied without a hamster running in a wheel all the time. Outsourcing is huge. It doesn't mean that you have to pay for outsourcing.
Learn what you need to make immediate action on, what you can delegate, what you can delay, and what you can delete out of your schedule to free up time for yourself, to actually enjoy life and feel satisfied.
Some moms have a carpool. Their kids go to baseball practice. The person that they play with lives two minutes away. It's learning how to go, "I'm going to drive this week. You drive next week," to free up time for both people. I had a neighbor with whom we did that with our kids. It was amazing because that week, when we would take turns, we felt like, "It's amazing." Outsource that house cleaning, guard work, and even laundry.
Maybe some people like to do laundry, but I don't. It's the bane of my existence to the point where my husband has done laundry in the many years of our marriage more than I have. I will give a shout-out. There's a business in Houston. Her name's Lila Taylor. She owns The Laundry Fairy. Anybody needs to hook up with The Laundry Fairy because it feels like the tooth fairy moment where you open up and have money underneath your pillow where the tooth was. I only started this in December 2021. For less than $100 a month, she does four loads of laundry for me at a time. It's $40, and then $40 two weeks later. For those eight loads of laundry, I can't explain it.
I don't know why I didn't do it before. I leave the bags out there on my porch. The next day they showed up hung up and folded, and I put it away. It's things like that. Why do we feel like we're failures as moms, or it's a moral dilemma to outsource some of those things? The biggest challenge in being a professional working woman and a mom is not having enough time to do all the things that need to be done at work and balancing time in all areas. It's being able to address all those things and having some tools.
Be among other women who are going to encourage and not be like, "I like to clean. I cannot have another person come into my home. That can't happen." I'm like, "You don't want it bad enough. You want to be in turmoil because nothing's going to change if you don't make some changes first." When somebody joins my group, the thing that I send out is called Three Ways to Instantly Create 30 hours a Week for What Matters to You Most. The amazing thing is that we can create time for whatever we want to create time for.
Nothing is going to change if you don't make some changes first.
I wanted to ask about a couple of things. On the note that you're talking about now, the first one is that if we are high performing high energy or high vibe types of women, we're probably capable of doing a lot of things that are not getting done because we're so weighed down with all of the other things in our lives that we could technically hire or have someone else do.
You're forsaking your purpose or your gift because of all the stuff you won't let go of because you're concerned about what your mother-in-law or spouse might say or something within you that's holding you back. What about purpose, Bonnie? Is there any room where we have to focus more on our purpose and let go of our preconditioned notions about all of the things we're holding onto?
For me, it's about priorities. When I work with a client, we talk about life theaters. If you picture a theater, there's a stage. In our lives, we are performing on various stages in these theaters of life. We might have family, social, and professional. We have spiritual and physical, like health and well-being, even financial. In all of these different theaters, we cannot perform on the stages at the same time and expect any good result from that. It's not possible.
It's about prioritizing, "What are the most important theaters of life that I want to focus on now? Where is my purpose now?" Our purpose changes as we grow and evolve ourselves over time. It's about saying, "I'm going to choose these three areas of my life to perform well in." The other thing is that having to set aside for later doesn't mean I have to give up on them. It doesn't mean they're going to go away. I just have to set it to the side for now. It's a hard thing sometimes for women like us to do.
One of my clients loves visual things. We had sticky notes. I put the different theaters on these sticky notes. Underneath that, she wrote in each theater what she was doing at that time. This was a person who created a product that she was selling online. She was high up in an MLM. She was homeschooling her children. She's teaching some exercise, health, and nutrition types of stuff. Those are five things all at once. She was always stressed out, feeling overworked, and unsatisfied.
What we did was we lined all this stuff out, and I asked her the question, "If you have to pick three, which ones would you focus on?" Not that one is more important than another. We always know family is way up there. Sometimes in our families, it's smooth sailing. We're pretty good. Our relationships are good and strong, so we might say, "This one's doing okay for now. That's not going to be my 100% focus." This was a difficult thing for her to do. I said, "Can we move this one?" She's like, "Don't move that one." We're moving the sticky note.
I said, "What about if we just fold it in half?" She's like, " I can handle that." It was interesting to me because it is something that goes down deep into our cores. What is our purpose? Where do we draw that energy from? What are we trying to focus on? By prioritizing, we free up ourselves. We also have the strength then to say no. If I have 3 priorities, and I've even let someone keep 4 one time, 5 is too many. It is. For example, I had a client who was an entrepreneur. She owned a business, but her kids went to school. Every once in a while, they would need subs. It was a private school, so they would ask for parents to come in and sub.
She would always say yes. Once we went through this, she had the courage to say, "I'm sorry, I can't do that." It didn't line up with the things that she was focusing on at that time. Before that, she always felt like she had to say, "I have to say yes to this. I have to say yes to that. I have to say yes to everything going on." It makes you want to pull your hair out. We have time to say yes. We have time to go and do something, be somewhere, and help someone with something. Guess what? We don't have time for it if we are doing too many things. What do we not have time for?
Both of us, ourselves.
That is number one. Also, we don't have time to follow up. We don't have time for the thoroughness and quality that we need to be able to give something. I have a client record. I have it online. If I'm rushing to the next thing, I may not always circle back and write down, "Where are we at? What are the next steps?" I need that for the next time I meet with a client. That's an example. Look at the various theaters where you're performing and what stages you're performing on, and decide, "I'm going to focus on these." It allows us to have more of a laser focus and be able to say, "I'm not going to say yes to anything that doesn't align with these things that I'm focusing on now." It's freeing.
I know how that is. I have a hard time saying no to things. I don't like the word can't. Instead of, "I can't do this," I'll say, "I'm choosing not to do this now. Maybe I can do it later or so." I don't know what that is. I don't know if I feel like I'm not as good a person if I say that or if I get my value from doing that. It is a hard thing to learn to prioritize and pick the most important things. You can't do everything all at one time. It's a hard thing to do.
I agree with you, Cami. The benefit of working with someone like Dr. Bonnie Hubert is that you can get coached through the process. It has to be done because you can't do everything. There's always an opportunity cost. Whenever you're saying yes to something, you are saying no to something else. Every single time I say yes and commit my time here, that means I'm saying no to these other things over here. Bonnie, were saying about family. There have been times that all's been well. It's quiet. Everybody's making A's and Bs. There are no teachers calling. Nobody's called to the principal's office.
We're not having any issues at school, no friend issues. All is quiet on the home front. My husband's happy. He works with his job. I can pick up some other things, but as soon as the home plate starts getting wobbly, I'm still holding onto those other things that I've picked up. That means now I'm saying no to my family because I've said yes to all of these other commitments, including things that are as small as cleaning the house, carpooling, or doing all these other things. We have to figure out a way to be okay with saying no to some things so that we can say yes to the things that are our priorities in those theaters you were talking about. That's something some of us have to learn. That's a coaching moment.
It is. Have you all ever heard of the Self-Coaching Model? Brooke Castillo is a guru of life coaching. She owns The Life Coach School. She teaches coaches. She has something called the Self-Coaching Model. You take the circumstance that you're in. Let's say your circumstance was everything's rocking along. You're shifting your focus over here because you can, but then some over here start going off. That's your circumstance, "I have got to put my family first again." What comes after that is the important thing, which is the thought about that. What do you make that mean? It's like, "If I don't, then this and that. I'm the only one that can't."
"I'm letting someone down."
It's all of these things. In these stories that exist in our heads, we make something mean a certain thing. That causes a feeling in us that creates action. If I am feeling bad that something's going on over here, but I'm over here with my work thing, I make it mean that I'm a bad mom if I don't. My action is going to be different than if I said, "I'm a great mom, but I have this commitment over here. What can I do to meet that need?”
We can work on the way that we think about things. If we can change our perspective just a little, sometimes it can have a completely different outcome.
“Maybe it doesn't involve me now, but I still need to keep my commitment. How can I look at it from a different way so that I can feel okay?" The truth is we're all okay. We tell ourselves we're not. We tell these stories in our heads that make us feel bad, guilty or lacking in some way. We then take action. Sometimes the result we get proves that our thought was true. That's the weird part about it.
It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. The inner main girl is always right.
Another thing that we work on is the way that we think about things. If we can change the perspective a little, sometimes it can have a completely different outcome. I will give a plug for a book I love, which I'm reading now. I'm almost done with it. It's called Choose Your Story, Change Your Life. It's by Kindra Hall. That book is practical because it talks about the stories we tell ourselves and how it can cause self-loathing, major obstacles, and slow our pace down. She talks about how we can choose our story. When we do that, we are able to move forward, feel happier, and essentially change the course of what could have been if we held onto one of these destructive stories, essentially.
Before we go, I want to touch on a couple of things you've mentioned. ONE Way Life is the name of the group. Is that your Facebook group or your coaching?
My coaching practice is ONE Way Life Coaching. You can find me at www.WeDevelopYou.com/Hubert. That's my website. I have a Facebook group online. It's called High Drive High Vibe Moms - Sisterhood of Professional Working Women. I'm posting there 3 to 4 times a week. I do a Thursday live, which is coaching and ten minutes during the lunch hour. Even if you're busy, you can fit that in. You can watch the replay. Coming up, I'll be launching my book, Every Woman Needs a Maid. I'll be taking pre-orders soon for that. I'm also going to be launching some group coaching opportunities. You can find out about that either on my website or in the Facebook group.
Give us the website one more time, Bonnie.
I love those names. Those are great names.
What you all are doing is phenomenal as well. How you're affecting women already affected me and helped me have the confidence to do something I've been wanting to do for a while and open up this Airbnb.
That is an awesome accomplishment for getting it through the whole process, getting it all done, and getting it launched, like getting the house out there.
I live on five acres. I told my husband this, and he's a little nervous. I'm like, "They have cute little tiny houses. We can put one over here on the side of the barn by the stables by the horses. We can call it Country with the Horses or something like that." He's like, "No." He's going to rein me in.
Don't let him rein you in. Do it. That's me. My husband's the same way. He's like, "Wait, hold on."
If we already have 1, we might as well have 2.
Find a good cleaner because that's what I did. You just sit back and watch the money roll in. It's great.
Readers, thank you so much again. Dr. Bonnie Hubert, thank you so much for being with us.
It was my pleasure. Thank you, Renee and Cami.
Thank you. You're wonderful.
Important Links
About Bonnie Hubert
Bonnie Hubert has spent 25 years working in the education and mental health fields. Her degrees include a Bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education with a specialization in Spanish and Master’s degrees in both Educational Leadership and Counseling. She has been a professional counselor (LPC) and earned her Doctorate in Educational Leadership from The University of Houston in 2015.
Currently, she is the CEO of ONE Way Life Coaching and runs a FB group called High Drive High Vibe Moms, where she supports and inspires working professional moms. Her ability to communicate and connect with youth and adults makes her a highly sought-after speaker and presenter.
Her new book will launch this fall!
Every Woman Needs a Maid- How to Stop Relationship Conflict, Overwork and Stress so You Can Live Your Best Life