Ep. 38 Balancing All the Things with Heather Ramos

I'm Lacey Jones with Elevate the Individual. Episode 38 Balancing All the Things with Heather Ramos. We get to spend time with my dear friend Heather Ramos. Heather is a mother to five fun, fabulous, and active children. She's a wife, mentor, instructor, nonprofit board member, PTA, and classroom volunteer. And most recently, she was awarded Rookie of the Year as a top producing real estate agent. Within her first year, she sets goals and gets after them, whether it's in her personal or professional life. It hasn't all been sunshine and rainbows. But through it all, she has learned what does and doesn't work for her and her family. And she's excited to share it with you in hopes that you'll find even just a small nugget of encouragement as you two attempt to balance all the things on your plate. So let's jump into the conversation. Let's go into balancing work life and family life. All the things.

Yeah.

How do we do it?

I feel like it's very difficult. There's just a lot going on when you have you're passionate about your family, you're passionate about your job. So you want to give 100% to each. You want to give more than 100% to each. And so it can be very difficult. I found it very difficult when I started back into real estate and then having the five kids and a husband and all the things that go with both of those parts to my life. So I had to actually my therapist was like, you need boundaries. And I didn't realize I did not have boundaries. My children are respectful of me. They do talk back to me, kind of, but they don't really I'd say more pushed back sometimes if I ask them to do chores and stuff and stuff. So I felt they were respectful of me. But my therapist, I was telling a story of trying to study for my real estate exam. And I said, it's really difficult because I'm in my office and I'm studying, and I have a revolving door on my office door. One kid comes in and sits down next to me and kind of breaks my distraction. That kid gets up and goes away. Next kid comes in and talks to me, next kid comes in and talks to me, it's just a revolving door. And he said to me, you don't have any boundaries. And that really shook me, and it really hurt for two reasons. I felt like I had boundaries. And then two, I didn't ever want to deny my children time with me. I thought setting boundaries for them and being like, I'm studying right now, and I can't have you in my office, was denying them. And what came about was not that by setting boundaries increased their independence emotionally. My kids are very independent. They do their own laundry. They cook their own meals. They can clean their own rooms. They can do a lot of stuff. But the emotional piece, whereas I felt like I needed to always be there for them.

Well, and not to totally interrupt you, but my thoughts are just going over here because it's a really pretty thought. Like, I want to be there for my kids. I don't want to deny them access to me if they need me emotionally or if they need help. Right. I work from home so that my kids I can be there for my kids when they need me. That seems really pretty.

Right, and that's what I thought.

Yes. But it actually can be toxic to you because if you don't have the boundaries in place to honor. All right, mom's actually working right now. This is my protocol. I work from these hours to these hours. And actually during this time, if you need something, you can talk to your dad or you can write it in a little journal or write down a note and say, let's catch you afterwards. And when you have the boundaries, you can then maintain health for yourself and your kids. And that way you are better able to show up for your kids, which is what you want all along for them.

Yes, totally. Because it wasn't helping anybody. Yeah, right. I wasn't giving them 100% when they were in my office sitting next to me. I was still trying to study. And then the next child would come in and you're just worn out and you're not getting anywhere on either front, right. You're just spinning your wheels. So creating boundaries with my children, I'm working. This is what's happening. Also, I've never been a good calendar girl, and I really have to live by my calendar now. Everything goes in my calendar from even calling doctors, calling the kids doctors, they need new prescriptions, whatever the deal is, I have to put everything in my calendar. If any phone call needs to be made, it needs to go into my calendar. But one thing, I really probably in the last six months now that the business is going really well and just more things have added to my plate, if something goes in my calendar, I'm very selective as to what goes in my calendar every week. And so if it's a lunch date with a girlfriend, it means I can't do another lunch date. I've had to balance myself that way because if I stack too many either fun things or I stack too much business into my week, and I will do it every now and then where things will kind of go askew. But if it happens every week that I'm over stacking on one end, I feel as though my other side falls apart.

I'm just dying over here. This is beautiful. Right? Because again, I hear boundaries. I also hear protocol.

Right.

So you have your boundaries of when you're available and when you available for kids or available for work, that sort of thing. But also protocol in there is yes, I understand that I want to have fun. I understand that. I want to do some of these things that are considered non work. Okay, well, how many times a week will I make myself available for those things? All right, is it once, is it twice? Is it three times? What is it? And then I will honor that and use my calendar to say, okay, well, I'm not available this week, I can do it next week. And so you've got to do a lot of thought management within that because sometimes it can be really easy, like, well, I can handle it, right?

Yes.

We'll talk business while we're out to lunch. It'll be okay. I can classify this one as business and this one as friends. You've got to do a lot of thought management so that you do honor the boundaries that you put into place previously when you were in a healthy place and realizing, okay, I need to look at these boundaries. What is my protocol going to be?

Yes, very much so. Like today, I have a client who reached out to me last night. I've been working with this client, they're moving from out of state. And so this client reached out last night. And so I said, I have time today. And what was really nice was pulling up my calendar and being able to say, well, at 03:00 I have a meeting for PTA. At three know, at 05:00 it's dinner with the family. When can I fit this time? These are my times, these are my two time slots I have available for you today. It was really nice to be that solid, not just wishy washy. So it makes me feel more confident in know, I'm taking care of the children because they're early release today. So it's like picking up kids, getting kids, playing with kids, doing games with kids, but also hitting the other parts. I've got a PTA meeting, I've got clients, I still have other responsibilities in my day, but everything's going to be touched because of my calendar.

So how did you get to that solid place and not the wishy washy place?

Really what it was, it was kids saying, mom, did you call the doctor for me? And granted, yes, people will say, couldn't they call the doctor? I don't know about you, but when I was 13, I was not calling a nurse to be like, doing that prescription. So it was just the kids, mom, don't forget we have to pick up my glasses, you know, and I would forget it wasn't on my calendar. Those things were not put into my calendar because I would think, well, I would, I'll remember, but I wouldn't remember. And then at the end of the week, when I would look back over my week, oh, I didn't get to do that. I didn't get to have lunch with a friend. I didn't get to do, oh, I forgot to do that hour of work. Not that I forgot, but that I ran out of time. I should have done some more prospecting. Yeah, I should have done this, I should have done that, or I'm scrambling at the last minute to finish things up.

Yeah.

And so it really was just kind of not meeting what I wanted and feeling scrambled all the time inside my head. Am I missing a meeting? Did I forget a meeting? Did I not do something? No. They go on my calendar, and it just makes life so much smoother. I just know where I need to be when I need to be there. I look at my calendar and I say, okay, it's balanced. Get time with the kids. Here I'm meeting this expectation, which is.

Interesting because you are in two professions, motherhood and real estate. Two very demanding professions.

Yes.

And so how do you structure and schedule demanding professions? Not just one, but two? There's a question, right? How do you get to a point where you can do that?

For me, this has always been my theme in life, and I kind of trained my husband up to this thought. And so we kind of say this to each other all the time. Where do I want them as adults? We're doing all this training up. Where do we want them as adults? It was, Where do I want to be? Where do I want to be next year? Right? Because if I don't structure myself now, I'm never going to make it. Especially with the way my mind is, because my mind I'm social. I could easily be with friends every day. And as much as I love that, as much as I love connecting with people, I also have a real estate job. Like, I also have clients. And if I'm going to be where I want to be in a year, it's going to take discipline. And that's how I feel like I structure. And that's how I came about, knowing I needed to structure myself, because I'm not going to be as happy in a year without the structure to my day. Like this week, when I looked at my schedule, I am everywhere. I have a board meeting with the mental health clinic. I'm with I'm on the board there. I have PTA. I have 6th grade graduation coming up for my kids. I did a pizza party in one of my kids classrooms, which meant I went to Classical, picked up all the pizza, and had a pizza party with them. Five kids. They've got all activities. My son went back to high school for the first time this year. This week I teach cycling. There's just a lot, and the only way I can feel good and confident and calm is to have everything laid out in my calendar. When my daughter says sometimes I pick up my junior high daughter from school. So sometimes she'll be driving. We'll be driving to school. She's like, are you going to pick me up or is it going to be dad? Because my husband and I pick her up in different spots. Oh, yeah, we have preferences. I have preferences. Right.

We had an incident of that last week and it caused some turmoil. I hear you on this one.

I have preferences. I like to pick up here. My husband likes to pick up there. My husband will hit a Uturn to take her out a different way. And I don't like to do Uturns after school. I'll do them before, but not after. It just gets chaos. So she needs to know, what point are we picking up at? And so she'll say this to me every now and then, hey, mom, on the way to school. Hey, mom, who's picking me up today? Or are you picking me up today? I don't know. Look in my calendar. So she knows pulls up my calendar and she sees that she is on my calendar. Okay, then I'll be picking you up. So my kids have even learned how to work my calendar. If they need me to do something, they have learned they can go in there. I'm trying to teach my older kids who have phones how to do calendar invites.

Yeah.

Because they do schedule their own appointments. Like my daughter goes to Chiropractor. The oldest one does not like to go by herself, though. Yeah, which is fine. Who does? What teenager likes to go to doctor's appointments by themselves? So I go with her, but that needs to get in my calendar or it's not happening. It's just that kind of stuff. Which then I look back and I say, okay, this is how we do things and this makes me comfortable with my day.

So in my previous sales world, we used to say, what you're doing today, you are going to thank yourself in the future for how you're setting things up now. So do something today that your future self would say thank you for. Oftentimes in that sales world that was pushing a little bit harder to contact a lead or to make a few more phone calls, that sort of thing. Because those little things at the beginning can have a domino effect to get you to your goal down the road, which is really what you're doing here, is you're setting up your dominoes so that you know where you want to be in a year. You know where you want your kids to be, you know what life skills that you want them to have. Even we say, like, okay, junior high, that sort of thing. Do we want them scheduling appointments? Do we want them going by themselves to appointments? I don't know. Right? High school. All right, is this where we start to everyone's going to be different on this, right? But is this where we start to kind of step back and say, hey, why don't you schedule that appointment okay, hey, I'm going to call them ahead, and I'll drop you off at this appointment, and you can go in. I'll give them all permissions beforehand so they can do what they need to do. I mean, we're doing this with the dentist right now, right? I'll just let them know that it's just going to be you, and they have permission to do this treatment, this X rays, whatever, right? And so you gradually work through where you want them to be in the future. So you start today by doing little things that your future self would say thank you for, which I see you doing in all of the calendaring. I had to do that as well. I was like, honestly, that's something my mom does. She puts her little piece of paper on the cupboard every week, and she is so scheduled, and I am not going to be like that. I am flexible. I can remember things. No, let me tell you, in the last several months, we've had to do a whiteboard Sunday through Saturday because too many kids were asking me too many times, can I do this? Can I do this? Can I do this? And I don't know. I don't know what I've already said yes to, but if I put that all on whiteboard where everyone can see it, everyone already knows. And guess what? Mom's mental energy doesn't have to go to answering a question for the 400th time. So just kind of drawing your boundaries, right? Like of, hey, I know that I can't answer a question 400 times. How am I going to protect that? Oh, I'm going to put it on the whiteboard.

Yes, very much so. And I didn't want to calendar myself. Kind of like, I guess what you were saying, I'm flexible, and that's me. I'm flexible. That's just my energy. And I'm social. And it felt very restrictive to me to put calendars. And when you're really calendaring yourself out, it's like, I literally am down to the ten minute increments. I know exactly what I'm going to be doing in different segments of my day. That just seemed crazy. The thought to me seemed crazy. It seemed kind of mean to me, like, how could you treat yourself that way to be so restrictive? But what it's given me is so much more freedom and confidence and peace.

Amen. Okay, so a question for you, because you mentioned scheduling down to the ten minute increment or that works for you. What happens when you have a client, a child, a friend who starts to seep over into the next segment, segment that's scheduled for something else? How do you honor those boundaries? Are there times where you have to kind of ebb and flow or how do you honor those boundaries?

Just a couple of things, okay? Sometimes people do want to take your time, right?

Because they don't understand. I think if people knew that, hey, I've got this scheduled out here's what we've got. We've got the 2 hours or we've got the 1 hour at the end of it if you haven't set up the expectation beforehand.

Yes. I think sometimes people do want to take up your time and it's not selfish on their part. Time to me is a gift. I think of nothing greater you could give me than your time. You want to go for a walk? That is the greatest thing. Rather than struggling, trying to get like a bouquet of flowers. I love people's time. So when you have clients and I feel like some of my clients, we become friends.

Oh, you totally.

It's hard not to. You're helping them buy a house and it's Heather.

Right. Heather is like everyone's friend. That is your gift in life, to be friends with people. Yes.

I just love people and I really work hard for I really, really want to understand what they want and to help them get what they want. Right. And so with that being said, my very first meeting with clients, very first meeting, when we are talking and we're discussing how do I go about finding the home, how do we go about having meetings? Because we are going to have meetings like, you've met both me now and we're going to go look at homes, but we're going to have to do some meetings throughout the week. Maybe you were going to have to make a phone call, texting, whatever. Right. And in showing homes as well, I have a limited amount of time, so we need to find the homes that you want to look at. And so I just explained to them, like, I have five kids. I'm also on the board of a mental health facility. I teach classes at the Y. I also volunteer teach at the elementary schools. Very active. I want nothing more than for you to find the home that just feels like home to you. And I'm going to do everything possible for you at the same time. When we have meetings, if we need to make a phone call, I'm always here. Call me, text me, I will get back to you as soon as possible. There might be times in the evening you reach out and I don't get back to you until 09:00. I will let you know that day I'm in soccer all night with kids. I'll get back to you at nine. So for me, it's really just setting expectations with my clients know I have this scheduled and this scheduled. If they reach out to me and it's a phone call, phone calls can drag on. Yeah, right when I answer. Hi. This is Heather. How's it going? Great. And they'll say, do you have a minute? And I'll be honest, I have ten minutes before I need to be out the door for my next event. So what do you got for me? Let's get this to the bottom. If it needs more time, then I'll just reschedule. I'll just say, I'll need to call you back. And I think I honestly don't know if everyone can do that, because when I've spoken with my clients about this, I'm pretty direct. I'm just a direct person in general. When I've spoken to my clients and I've come back to them in the end after the transaction is closed, I'll ask them how they felt. And I asked them, how did that make you feel? And they were like, because you made us feel so good. And because we knew you cared so much, it didn't feel harsh to us. We still knew we were very important to you.

Yeah.

So when I say I don't know if everyone can do it, because I don't know if everyone exudes the kind of like, you are so important to me. I really want what you want, and I'm going to do everything I can, that means I'm staying up all night to try and find that one home in a sea of homes in March of 2022, when homes are going like crazy, I will do that for you because I want, in the end, what you want. That's how I set the boundaries with my clients, with my children. It's pretty much the same thing. I'm on a meeting at 02:00 with my clients, and I'm sorry your dad can take care of you. Do you need a sibling to sit with you first? Obviously, what is going on? And then how can we remedy this before 02:00? And if we can't remedy this before 02:00, what are my options and what are your options? My kids are older. They're ten. My youngest is ten.

Yeah, right.

So what are your options? What could make you feel better? Because I don't think my parents did that enough to me as growing up. It's like you're hurt, you're emotional, whatever, but what do you have inside of you that can get you through this and stuff? One of my little my littlest ones, she'll sit in the office with me when I'm on the phone. It's fine. She's quiet. She'll just do her thing. But that kind of connection will help her.

I did that with my youngest, and now we just laugh because I was talking for 40 hours a week. And now guess who this child is? He goes to school, and he can't stop talking. Right. So we give him certain skills along the way that we didn't give him. But all of this of what you're saying I'm eating up, I love it because it takes time and effort. You've got to go through the struggle to figure out, oh, not working. We've got to structure this. This isn't just like, okay, we get married, we have kids, and from day one, we can do this. This is almost like the end of the journey. Right? We've gone through the struggle. We've gone through the mud and the muck to figure out, oh, okay. I need to have boundaries. And also realizing I don't have to solve everyone's problems. I don't have to solve all of my clients problems. I don't have to solve all of my children's problems. There are more resources for my child to access than just me. Obviously, I want to be there. I want to do that. But in the end, if I'm the only person meeting their needs for them, is that serving them?

Exactly.

Because by having them reach out to other people or digging, like you said, dig deep. How can you help yourself in this situation and having them think about it and test it out while you're standing next to them, rather than in 40 years when they're trying to still figure things out. Right. And they still need their mom or whatever.

Exactly.

You're there while they're figuring things out. And I imagine that you do have this ability to flex a little bit on your boundaries and say, all right, kids having a major meltdown. One of my favorite reps, she gave me this analogy that she had found online, and it was, you're juggling all these balls. Some of them are going to be made of, like, rubber. Some are going to be made of glass.

Yes.

You know which ones at which time you have to keep in the air. Other ones, they can kind of bounce. Now, that doesn't mean work is always glass and kids are always rubber, or kids are always glass and work is always rubber. At times it's going to change.

Right.

But you have learned which ones can bounce a little bit more and which ones are going to shatter if we let them bounce. And sometimes we make mistakes. Sometimes things shatter that probably shouldn't, and we've got to work through that. But by doing that again, helping your future self to build towards the goals that you want to hit yes. For kids and work. I'm digging this, heather. This is bringing so many different worlds together, and you then end up managing your time, and your time does not manage you. But in order to do that, you have to manage your thought process and your mindset.

Yeah, it's a lot, but it's freedom in the end, and it's looking back on your calendar and saying, you hit it. Right. You hit the points you needed to hit for the week.

Yeah. And, okay, guess what if we didn't what if we don't hit those points, then what needs to happen? Right? Like, let's review and say, okay, I didn't get this. I think you and I were talking earlier these last couple of months, I haven't been feeling well, right. And so I've had to scratch things off the calendar. I've had to hit bare minimum points. But through this process now, I've learned, oh, hey, here's the moments where I saw myself not feeling the best. Here's what I needed to do. So I can prep myself for the future.

Right.

And I can kind of have a contingency plan if something comes up in the future.

It's time to look at my schedule again. But today, when I was looking at it, and I'm like, I'm having lunch with some friends, some friends I've known for like, 30 years having lunch with them tomorrow. That meant on Tuesday, when I wanted to do a lunch with some friends, I was like, no, you need to work. That is your time to work.

That's huge.

Yeah. So I think when you're starting out calendaring, it doesn't have to be this huge, like, down to the hour. Just decide just decide what you want your week to look like. Do you want to spend time at the schools with your kids, volunteering? Do you want to have time with your girlfriends? Do you want to fit in exercise? Do you want to fit in reading time? What do you want to fit in in your week and just start with two or three items that you just are not willing to compromise on?

Yes. And then test it out?

Yes.

Test it out and see if this is actually feasible doable for where you are in your life at that very moment, where your kids are, where your career is, all these big goals that you want.

Right.

We can put it on paper all we want, but test it out and then maybe reflect back. Right. Okay. Did this week go as planned? Did this month go as planned? How about this quarter?

Right?

Because something you said earlier when you were like, okay, I need to do this, this, and this, and, like, picking up the pizza, right. You're picking up pizza for Caroline's class. And in my mind, I am like, okay, is that something that you need to do? Maybe it is something at this time in your life that you do need to do, but when you reflect back on the quarter and we need to fine tune little pieces. Okay. This is where I think, because I have a new driver, and I love having a driver, now that we're kind of over the hurdles of, like, oh, crap, he's a new fresh driver. Oh. This is a great opportunity for him to go to the store to have to figure out how to pick up pizza. Like a little task. Right?

Right.

I know it seems like I'm nitpicking on picking up pizza, but you find that little example of evaluating these things that I'm doing. Do I need to be the one to do them in order to get me to my goal? Is there any way that I could rethink the task? Can I combine two tasks? Can I have someone else do it? Would it be a benefit to them if they were to do it like my kids? Right. So dinner time around here? I don't make dinner a whole lot around here. Yeah, I have dinner items, I have dinner plans. Occasionally I'll throw something together, but when the kids ask, I say, well, we've got this, this, and this. Oh, great, I'll make this. Or sometimes for the love mom. It goes either way. But we are learning. And through it all, my thought through it is, okay, I'm creating these self sufficient kids.

Yes.

In the long run, this is something that will actually be to their benefit rather than their detriment.

Yes.

And who knows, maybe when they grow up, they'll decide to make dinner for their kids every night because their mom didn't make it for them and they wish they would have. She would have. Right. But all that to say, we make our plans, but it's also beneficial to step back and review them and reflect on is it working?

Yes.

What needs to change here or what needs to stay the same?

Very much so.

Thank you again to Heather for joining us today and sharing what does and doesn't work for her. And I wanted to point you to a resource that we put together earlier this year as we dove into creating goals and getting after them and your protocol and what to do if you fall off protocol. There's a link in my show notes to that goal work portal, and if you click on that, that will take you to the four weeks of work within there. It's a beautiful resource. If you you have questions, please reach out. You are not alone in any of this work. You know this. But please reach out. Schedule your free session through the website. Laceyjonescoaching.com and I'd love to help. I hope you have a good week and we'll see you next time.