Chief Executive Mom: Run Your Home Like You Mean Business

By Jennifer L. Lopez

How do you feel about your role as a homemaker? Is your routine killing you? Are you feeling discouraged because your best days sometimes go unnoticed and unappreciated? Are you overwhelmed, always short on time and exhausted? I mean, what is so hard about putting your clothes away and making your bed??

Most people fail to see homemaking f

• Language: English
• Publisher: This Functional Family, LLC
• Release date: Jul 5, 2019
• ISBN: 9781733960113

Jennifer L. Lopez

Jennifer Lopez is the founder and CEO of Assistant Pro, a company dedicated to helping busy, middle class families get their time back. By taking care of daily, repetitive tasks, the company aim is to affordably give homemakers the break they deserve.

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This book is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. The author and publisher are not offering it as legal, accounting, health or other professional services advice. No income claims are made or inferred in this work. You are solely responsible for your results. While best efforts have been used in preparing this book, the author and publisher make no representations or warranties of any kind and assume no liabilities of any kind with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness of use for a particular purpose. The contents of this book are personal opinions and observations, based on the author’s own personal experience, and should not be taken as anything more than that. Neither the author nor the publisher shall be held liable or responsible to any person or entity with respect to any loss or incidental or consequential damages caused, or alleged to have been caused, directly or indirectly, by the information or programs contained herein. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. No one should make any decision without first consulting his or her own professional and conducting his or her own research and due diligence. You should seek the services of a competent professional before beginning any program. You are responsible for complying with the laws where you live and where you conduct business. You are solely responsible for the consequences of your use of this material.

Editorial Project Management: Karen Rowe, www.karenrowe.com

Cover Design: This Functional Family in collaboration with

Shake Creative, ShakeTampa.com

Inside Layout: Ljiljana Pavkov

Printed in the United States

ISBN: 978-1-7339601-0-6 (paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-7339601-1-3 (ebook)

To Everyday Moms

The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude.

– Oprah Winfrey

Foreword by Micala Quinn

Acknowledgements

1: Welcome to Your New Role

Your Household, Inc.

2: Get Out of Overwhelm

Break the Cycle

3: Mom First

100 Things That Make You Happy

Connect To Your Purpose

Plan Your Day

Jennifer’s Daily Routine

Get The Family On Board

What Change Looks Like

Know That You Are Valuable

4: Team-Building

Take The Players Off The Bench

Child Resistance

Gamify Chore Time

There Are Many Ways to Load A Dishwasher

If You Want Something Done Right …

5: Communications

Cheat Sheet

Look Beyond The Emotion

Communicate Effectively

Tools To Assist In Communication:

The Family That Communicates Together …

6: The Accounting Department

Managing Your Accounts

Your Home Budget

It’s 9 p.m., Do You Know Where Your Money Is?

Rule #1: Eating Out Eats Your Budget

Rule #2: If It’s Over $20 And Wasn’t Researched, Drop It And Run Out Of The Store

Rule #3: Save $10,000 First, Then Save For Your Vacation

To Allowance Or Not To Allowance

Holidays

7: Department of Food & Beverage

Meal Planning Is Cost-Effective

Make Meal Planning Work For You

Kids In The Kitchen

Build Your Kitchen Team

Age 2

Ages 3-4

Ages 5-7

Ages 8-11

Ages 12 and up

8: Organization within the Organization

Sort And Purge

Purging By Category

Paperwork Purge

Paperwork: Keep or Trash Quick Tips

Keep Indefinitely

What About Tax Paperwork?

Keep for 30 days in Budget Binder

Paperwork and Storage

Memorabilia

Everyone Else’s Stuff

Keeping Holiday Clutter To A Minimum

9: Prioritize to Organize

Everything Needs a Home

Creating Efficient Work Flow

10: Managing the Team: Department Of Janitorial and Sanitation

Relinquish Control

Implementing a New Chore System

Creating Your Weekly Chore System

Sample Chore Schedule

Tools for Systematizing Your Chores

On Rewards

Making Chores Less Of A Chore

11: Human Resources & Personal Development (aka Extracurricular Activities)

Let The Kids Control Their Schedule

Leave Room For Imagination

Keep Perfectionism At Bay

12: The Sweet Spot

Healthy Mama, Healthy Family

Cut The Sugar

Low-Sugar Kids

Stay Hydrated

13: Managing Stress

Conclusion

Appendix A: Assistant Pro 3-Step Methodology

Appendix B: Battle of the Bedrooms

Appendix C: Budget Binder Resources

Notes

About the Author

Once upon a time...

Isn’t that how books are supposed to begin? Or maybe just the books my daughter keeps asking me to read… We are in a princess phase. So, I will borrow that phrase.

Once upon a time, I was a full-time teacher juggling a virtual assistant side hustle, motherhood, marriage, and all that life entails. Juggling might not be the right word. That sounds like I was successfully balancing everything, and I was not. How about poorly juggling my motherhood, marriage, and life? Basically, things were getting dropped. A lot.

As someone whose podcast and courses are designed to help stay-at-home/work-from-home moms jumpstart their freelance career so they can experience freedom, flexibility, and financial stability while raising their families, I know that the content in Chief Executive Mom will have value for you.

As my side hustle morphed into my full-time gig, and then transformed into my group coaching program, I’m sad to say things did not get easier. Owning a business is hard. Owning a business and your life—sometimes that seems darn near impossible. But it shouldn’t be this way and it doesn’t have to be, especially with Jennifer’s actionable approach to managing your home.

One thing I learned when I grew my online base to over 20k+ followers in less than two years was that I could not do everything alone. When I heard about Jennifer’s work, we both knew that we had a shared mission. Jennifer helps moms free up time by systemizing and delegating, while I teach them how to earn extra income with that free time. Together we are one dynamic duo!

What I love about Jennifer and the work she has put into her career is how clearly it shows the importance of women owning their power in the workplace and the home. It’s 2019—it’s time moms should stop feeling like they have to choose between one or the other! We are allowed to be strong, powerful leaders with a baby (or babies) on our hips. Jennifer has made it her mission to give the most vital gift to women—their time. It’s no wonder her business was awarded Best Start Up & Best New Business in its inaugural year.

Unfortunately for the majority of us, Assistant Pro does not service our area (yet!). Fortunately for all of us, anyone reading this book can apply Jennifer’s tips and tricks today to step off that hamster wheel of never-ending to-dos & start running your household like the boss you have always been.

When you first think about running your home like a CEO, it seems daunting, right? Who wants to run around barking orders at their children or husband?

Well no one, obviously. And the most successful CEOs don’t do this, either. And let me just say from experience, husbands don’t respond well to this approach either.

As Jennifer demonstrates, the best bosses focus on team engagement, not management. We don’t expect our colleagues to read your mind, but we sure do have a difficult time communicating when we need help at home to our spouses, right?

Inside this book, you will learn the fundamental mindset switch to stop operating as the sole proprietor of your home and start allowing your partner and children to work with you—to build a true family unit. We are all in this together. Jennifer walks you through a step-by-step process to inspire and empower your entire family to take pride and ownership in helping you at home.

Are you ready to regain time in your schedule? Step into your power as Chief Executive Mom. You will never hold a more important title.

And all the moms lived happily ever after.

Because their kids put away their own laundry. And their partner did the dishes.

The End.

Micala Quinn

Mom of three

Owner/Founder

The Live Free Podcast

I would like to thank my children for training me in the ways of motherhood. Every day we have together is a day we learn together, and I am grateful for all four of you and each of your special gifts. Vanessa, for your conviction; Jacob, for your compassion; Lucy, for your courage, and Nora, for your curiosity.

Thank you to my friends and colleagues in the business world that held my hand as I re-entered adult society to follow my dreams. Thank you to my accountability coaches and partners with special thanks to Jodi McLean and Jeanine McCleod for being key motivators throughout the writing process.

Thank you to my editor, Karen Rowe, for taking a bunch of my words and turning them into my story.

And thank you to my biggest fan and best friend: my husband, Mark. I don’t know that I’ll ever have the words to express how much I appreciate you and your fierce support for my gigantic dreams. I love every lifetime with you.

Wife. Mom. CFO. Executive chef. Maintenance director. Event coordinator. Nurse. Psychologist. Sheriff. Scheduling manager. Landscape architect. Interior designer. Superintendent. Physical trainer. Nutritionist. Wife. Mom.

If you had asked me when I was 17 what I wanted to be when I grew up, the answer would have been very simple: a stay-at-home mom. I was in college at the time getting an education that I thought would lead to a few years as a teacher, so I could still have summers off. But after that, all I wanted was a school bus full of kids that I birthed and raised that call me Mom. It was the only thing I wanted. Most people would raise an eyebrow at my answer because I had so much potential. Why wouldn’t I want a real career? It was clear to me these people failed to see homemaking for what it is: a full-time, multi-faceted career in and of itself.

At that same ripe age of 17, I met a boy. We dated for a few years before I decided to hastily get a jump on my dream job. We bought a house, got married three weeks later, and three months after that I was pregnant with my first daughter, Vanessa. I had just about