Look up “resilience” in Merriam-Webster, and you’ll find, “an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.” Sounds easy, right? But in reality, resilience is messy. For women entrepreneurs, misfortune might be launching a product that flops, losing a client you worked your ass off for, or watching a game-changing deal slip through your fingers.
As a mom, it’s facing mom guilt like missing the damn book fair volunteer sign-up (which, let’s be real, feels bigger than it should) or seeing your middle schooler struggle as their grades take a hit. The “ability to recover or adjust easily” to those misfortunes seems impossible.
For a mompreneur? Resilience is something else entirely. It’s learning to block out the noise, let go of the small battles, and zero in on what actually moves the needle, both in business and at home. It’s mastering the art of breathing through the chaos so you can be strategic in your work and fully present for your kids. Because the real win, the real resilience? It’s not doing it all, it’s knowing what actually matters and doing that!
Victoria always tells Beth she does her best thinking in the shower – yup, go ahead and be creeped out by that visual – but the truth is, she’s usually running through her weekly to-do list and locking in on her One Hard Thing for the day. If you’ve been following along with us, you already know our Golden Rule: One. Hard. Thing. A. Day. Not two. Not three today and none for the rest of the week. Just one. Every damn day.
This isn’t optional. It’s the thing that sets the tone for everything else. And let’s be honest, it’s probably the thing you’re dreading from the second you wake up. The one task looming over you, sucking up mental space until you finally just do it. Business or personal, doesn’t matter, it’s got to be done because it pushes you toward your long-term goals.
Maybe it’s a brutal sales call. Maybe it’s mapping out next year’s strategy (ugh, Gantt charts). Or, if you’re Victoria, it’s updating the dreaded quarterly calendar for her kids’ activities. But here’s the deal – You do it. You knock it out. And suddenly? Everything else feels lighter.
We’ve seen it happen too many times – hell, we’ve lived it – when you lose sight of the forest for the trees.
Victoria is a recovering to-do list addict. At any given time, she had six different lists running – sales, operations, kids’ sign-ups, mom’s bills, appointments…you name it. And yeah, the list could go on (pun absolutely intended). But when you’re drowning in to-dos, it’s time to pull the ripcord. Enter one of our favorite rules, when all else fails, do the exact opposite (we’ll get into that another time). It’s actually how One Hard Thing a Day was born.
Early in our last business, after buying out our partners, we were staring at an absolute mess. So much needed fixing that we had no idea where to even start. Finally, we locked eyes and said, “What’s the hardest thing on this list? Let’s do that first.” The rest is history. It became one of our core, non-negotiable rules.
So, when it came to building a business, here’s how we did it. Managing a growing family? Yeah, you might need a different expert for that one.
- First, take your to-do lists and burn them. Seriously. They’re a distraction.
- Second, commit to long-term goals. Outline them annually, then break them down into quarterly milestones.
- Third, create an execution plan. Each month, sit down, review your quarterly milestones, and map out exactly what needs to get done. We never missed a month to do this in the early days, and we don’t miss a month now with our third business.
- Fourth, make it daily. Take what you’ve built, and every single day, spend 5, 10, or 30 minutes locking in on the one thing you must accomplish.
We hear you, this sounds almost stupidly simple. And yeah, conceptually, it is. But executing it? That takes discipline, patience, and a little grace.
Whatever your daily dose of pain is, facing it head-on – every damn day – is how you and other women entrepreneurs will make real progress. String enough of those days together, and success is inevitable. We guarantee it. But try to rush it? Burnout is waiting. We’ve watched too many brilliant ideas crash and burn that way. Don’t let yours be one of them.
