44. Jenna Hermans on Balancing Business, Parenting & Life Without the Burnout
Have you ever felt the weight of corporate burnout while juggling family life and dreaming of something different?
In this episode, I'm thrilled to welcome Jenna Hermans, a.k.a. The Queen of Calm and author of Chaos to Calm and Burnout to Balance, who transformed her own experience of corporate toxicity into a mission to help others find peace in the midst of chaos. Jenna's story is fascinating - she became an instant mom to three children through marriage, had a fourth, and managed to create systems that didn't just help her survive, they helped her thrive.
Join us this week as we dive into the micro moments that can make or break your day, why rushing isn't the same as moving quickly when it comes to building a business, and how to build sustainable success without sacrificing your well-being. Whether you're contemplating a career change, feeling overwhelmed by the daily chaos of parenting, or simply looking for ways to find more balance in your life, this conversation offers practical wisdom and actionable strategies you can start implementing today.
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What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
What intentionally creating “proactive calm” looks like for Jenna.
Why taking micro moments for self-care is essential, not just a luxury.
The difference between rushing and moving quickly in entrepreneurship, and why this distinction matters.
How to embrace a more intentional way of working and living as you transition out of corporate.
Practical tips for creating systems that support a calmer, more purposeful life as a busy parent and entrepreneur.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Chaos to Calm: 5 Ways Busy Parents Can Break Free from Overwhelm by Jenna Hermans
Burnout to Balance by Jenna Hermans
Full Episode Transcript:
Hi mom friends, today's episode is for every mom who's ever felt the weight of corporate burnout while juggling family life and dreaming of something different. I'm thrilled to welcome Jenna Hermans, author of Chaos to Calm and Burnout to Balance, who transformed her own experience of corporate toxicity into a mission helping others find peace in the midst of chaos.
Jenna's story is fascinating, okay? She became an instant mom to three children through marriage, had a fourth, and managed to create systems that didn't just help her survive, they helped her thrive. What makes her perspective unique is how she translated her HR and operations background into practical solutions for both family life and business success.
In this conversation, we dive deep into the micro moments that can make or break your day, why rushing isn't the same as moving quickly when it comes to building a business and how to build sustainable success without sacrificing your well-being. Jenna shares vulnerable insights about her own journey including the moment she realized her corporate job was so toxic it could have negatively impacted her pregnancy.
Whether you're contemplating a career change, feeling overwhelmed by the daily chaos of parenting, or simply looking for ways to find more balance in your life, this conversation offers such practical wisdom and actionable strategies that you can start implementing today. Also, I just love Jenna and I know that you will love her too. Okay, let’s dive in with Jenna Hermans.
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. It’s a podcast that helps working moms just like you, optimize your time, manage your mind, and start a business that helps you create more freedom, flexibility, and, yes, fun. I’m business and mindset coach Jenna Rykiel. And I offer practical tips to help you ditch the nine-to-five. I have been exactly where you are and I know what it takes to make the transition without trading one form of burnout for another. So, let’s get started.
Jenna Rykiel: Jenna, thank you so much for being on the show today. You are the queen of calm, and I know we'll talk more about what that means and how you got that title. But I wanna start by talking about the experience of being in a chaotic and stressful corporate environment and for my listeners, you know, also being moms and having probably a chaotic home life, but feeling burnt out and knowing that you want to create change, but change takes time, right? And so in the space between being in corporate and actually leaving and being in this burnt out chaotic mode, how can moms create more calm?
Jenna Hermans: Ooh, that is such a big question. And there's so many ways to answer that, Jenna. And just firstly, I want to say thank you so much for having me here. I'm so excited. We always have fun when we talk together. So I'm so glad we get to share our conversation with your listeners.
So how does a mom create calm when you're coming out of corporate burnout? It's so multifaceted. But the first is recognizing that what your current state is and what you want your future state to be, right? And when you recognize it, that's the first step to moving towards where you want to go, right? But you can't know how to get where you're going to go if you don't have awareness of where you are, right?
So really getting clarity and having some time to self reflect on what's going on for me at this exact moment, why am I feeling this way? And this isn't like a one journal session, right? It could be, sure, but majority of the time, it takes longer than that. It takes time to really sit with the self and understand what's going on and why and sitting with various areas of life, right?
How am I nourishing myself? Am I feeding myself well? Am I taking time for just being with me? Am I playing into my connections with my friends, with friendships, right? With people who make me feel like me outside of my roles and my responsibilities?
Am I sleeping well? Right? It's all of these micro and macro things that contribute to our current state. And when you have that clarity, I'm not sleeping well. I'm not feeding myself well. I'm not hydrated at all. I'm barely drinking any water. I haven't seen or talked to a friend or family member in who knows how long who doesn't live under my roof or doesn't work with me in my workplace or whatever it is, all of these things.
And then when you have that clarity, you can move forward with a lot more intentionality and that brings the calm, right? The intentionality of how do I bring more calm into my life? And it starts with knowing thyself.
Jenna Rykiel: Knowing yourself and what you need for sure. And you talked about these micro things in life. And I'm curious though, like how do you make sure, because I imagine the experience is, and this was my experience too, and maybe you can relate, but it's like it builds, right? Like the tension and the pressure and the heat build and then all of a sudden you are burnt out and you are like fed up and you are resentful and you've just hit your limit and it's almost like you explode.
I'm wondering what you can do or how you can prevent that from happening. And granted, you know, what you just shared, of course, being aware of those things, but are there any like practices that you've found helpful in almost like these like small doses of self-care or even ways to bring more awareness to answering the question of like, what do I need more of right now?
Jenna Hermans: You know, there's two buckets that I like to talk about this in and there's proactive and there's reactive, right? So there's the proactive tools and tactics and elements of infrastructure that you can lay into your day-to-day life that help kind of take that hum, like you're saying that warmth that how hot it's gotten because you've just been go, go, go and the next thing you know, you're sweating. You're like, "Oh my God, it's too much" and brings it down, right? That mellows out that noise to make it so that it's a calmer infrastructure and a lot of that is what I like to call proactive calm.
And that looks like what's a stressful thing that happens every single day. And so for myself, one of the first things when I asked myself that question was making dinner. It's like every day, making dinner was one of the most stressful times of day and reflecting on that and saying, "Okay, how can I make this one thing that happens every single day become less stressful for me?"
And what I implemented when I reflected on that question was the concept of a meal plan. It was because what made that time of day stressful? It was I have to be creative. I have done all of these things all day. I've used up all my mental bandwidth on kids and work and all the things. And then I have to then be like, "What am I feeding everybody?" I have to get creative and see what I have in the fridge and in the pantry and come up with something. Oh my God, it's like the bane of my existence.
So I started meal planning, right? The beginning of the week, what do I need? What are the meals that people like to have, let me see what food I already have in my kitchen, in my pantry, my refrigerator, and make meals from that, write it down, and then what are other things that we'd want to have throughout the week, let me make a grocery list of those things, buy those things, and then come every day, time to make dinner. I know exactly what I'm making and I have everything I need. And my cortisol level went down so much. So that was a proactive tip.
That's a proactive calm of getting ahead of it, building in again that infrastructure, it's kind of the system, so it's an operating system that helps facilitate calm in the everyday. And then the reactive calm is stress comes, right, something comes up, right, a colleague says, "Oh no, I forgot to do a thing and I know that was really important for your part of the project." And you're like, "What the?" Stress or your kid all of a sudden is like, "Oh, I committed to you making cookies for tomorrow's bake sale." You're like, "What?" Right? Stress, stress, cortisol.
What do you do in those moments when the stress hits and you couldn't get ahead of it? And those reactive calm tips and tricks and things, are taking a moment for breathing, right? Taking a moment to breathe, taking a moment and writing down, because sometimes it could be that someone, like this would happen to me a lot when the kids were younger and my big kids bio mom was still in the picture and she sent me a message and I'd go on a tailspin. It was so much stress when she would write to me and say – because she'd always say something kind of ridiculous. I was like, "Oh my God."
And so I would journal. I would just – all the heat that was built up in that moment that came out out of literally nowhere, right? I would just journal. Get that out, let it out, and then I could get clear and centered. Again, going for a walk, listening to a song and dancing, meditating, taking these moments, there are these – like these little micro things that we can do that take anywhere between 30 seconds and five minutes that can calm the nervous system down when a stressful thing comes on. So those two buckets.
Jenna Rykiel: Yeah. And what's interesting because what I see as, I mean, there's a lot of overlaps, right? But the one that I feel like we do not always do a great job at is listening to our bodies. Like, we can reflect on it I think a lot easier of how we were reactive and what we did and understand that we were stressed or anxious but it's almost like in that moment we need to be listening to our bodies.
And not only like listening to it, but also be able to pause because it's so easy to ride that train of stress and anxiety when you get that message and then be in a tailspin, which makes it even harder to listen to your body. But what I'm hearing is we need to be able to pause and then we need to be able to pause and then we need to be able to listen in order to respond in a way that allows us to go for a walk, allows us to journal, allows us to phone a friend, you know, whatever the micro moment is.
Jenna Hermans: That's where the freedom is. That's the freedom, right?
Jenna Rykiel: Yes.
Jenna Hermans: When you create that space for response versus just reacting, the knee-jerk reaction, when you give yourself that moment to pause and think about how you're going to respond, how you're going to show up to the next thing that you're needing to do. That's where you have freedom, freedom of choice and freedom within yourself to determine how do I want to show up in this next moment and what's really true? And to do that self-reflecting, like you're saying, right?
To take that moment to reflect and say, is what just happened really that bad? Or am I triggered about something? Or what's behind my response? What's behind this reaction that's inside of me? And take that moment and then move forward with more intentionality and conscientiousness.
Jenna Rykiel: Yeah, and you're right. Like there's so much empowerment in that choice because let's be honest, when we respond from a place of fear or anxiety or tension, we look back on those moments and we wish we would have done it differently. I don't think I can remember one time where I lashed out because something was triggering, you know, that somebody said or where I, you know, my heart dropped receiving a text and I responded without pausing and really thinking about, you know, who I want to be in that moment.
And I always look back and feel even more, insert the blank, whether it be more embarrassed or more frustrated or what have you because of the way I showed up and it not being aligned with who I know I could be or want to be. And so, yeah, in a lot of it is being able to be the version of ourself that we wanna be. And like you said, that doesn't happen by default. It takes intention. And then hopefully one day it becomes more of a default, but it takes work.
So, okay, I'm glad you gave some of those personal examples to like the journaling and the going for a walk and the creating systems. Cause I think those are underrated in terms of we feel like we don't have time for those things, right? And actually, you know, those things seem like luxuries and they seem like nice-to-haves but they are essential, absolutely essential.
Jenna Hermans: It’s amazing when you create the space for yourself to activate and do it that you realize, oh my gosh, this was available to me the whole time. I don't need to earn going for a walk. I don't need to earn journaling at the end of the day to use these micro moments, these tools in real time. They don't need to be earned and they are very small but so impactful.
When you allow yourself, when I allowed myself to do this in real time as opposed to just powering through and treating myself like a robot, right? Like, you've got stuff to do, you have things that are more important, just go, go, go, every moment counts, every minute counts. You know, you got to get through the next email and proofread another document. And it's like, when I started really taking those moments for myself, when I then would go and read the email, I would have such a clearer mind. I would review the document and have a weight off that I would show up with more just presence, right?
It provides presence when you take these micro moments. Because when you don't, when you don't take the moments and you go just from thing to thing to thing, go, go, go, go, it stacks, right? And like you were saying before, the heat, it stacks, stacks, stacks. And these moments, like you were saying, they are essential. They're not nice-to-haves because what they do is they help you be the person that you want to be. And the role model that you want to be for your kids, for your colleagues, for your employees.
When you model this type of behavior and you show that you're taking care of you on these kind of core fundamental levels and that you can show that you can shift your mind and your state by going for a two-minute walk, by meditating for two minutes, by dancing it out in the middle of the afternoon, or journaling and saying, I just need a few minutes. You don't need to even tell anybody what you're doing. You can just do it. It's like you don't always tell someone, oh, I'm going to go to the bathroom and be offline for two minutes. You can take the time to do these things and you show up with so much more energy and presence after you've done it.
And I promise, I promise when you create this as a part of your foundation, because it's a muscle, it really is, it's a muscle that needs to be flexed. And the more that you flex it, the easier it becomes to do, just like any other exercise. The more you do it, the more strong it gets, the easier it becomes. The longer you can do it, the more reps you can do. It's the same with self-care and these moments of mindfulness or intentionality, that the more you do it, the easier it becomes, and the more integrated it becomes as well. So it just becomes a part of you, as opposed to something that you're forcing yourself to do, and then it just is.
Jenna Rykiel: Yeah. So this is interesting because this makes me think of something that you and I have talked about before not while we've been recorded, but, so right now we're talking about taking care of yourself and we're talking about that it doesn't have to be this grand gesture. It can be built into the fabric of your every day in maybe even just staying in the shower five extra minutes, right? Or two minutes of breathing or going for a quick walk.
But I want to bring this to the concept of circles of influence and also the concept of taking care of yourself in a bigger way which is ultimately how I feel like - what I feel like I am helping moms with when they are changing their careers. Because what they are saying is that I am important enough to do the thing that, or get out of the thing that doesn't fill me up and find something that does fill me up. And it's not a quick two minutes, right? This is sort of a long journey that moms are taking on. But I want your perspective on that level of self-care and thinking of the career change as taking care of yourself.
Jenna Hermans: Yes. I remember all those years ago, it was, we're coming up on probably eight and a half years since I quit my corporate job and moved into entrepreneurship, starting the business that I still run today. There were some months between the quitting and the starting, that transition where it was really necessary to have a transition time of letting go of what was to make the space for what could potentially be.
And if I had just jumped from one to the next, I would have dragged a lot of that mud with me. I still would have been muddy from my corporate career and doing HR and tech company because that's where I was last. And I would have dragged that with me unintentionally, right? It would have just happened because it wouldn't have been conscious. But what I needed to do was to shed all of that that was on me so that I could then show up with freshness, the fresh me into that new chapter so that I didn't carry that residual from where I had been to where I knew I wanted to go.
And the care that came with it, right, the self-care part of it really was focusing on what are the routines and habits that I want to have and bring into this next chapter with me, right? What are those non-negotiables and how can I do this so that I can show up as my best self for this business that I want to grow, I want to create and grow and show up as the mother that I am and that I want to be better at?
I want to be the best mother that I can be. I know the only way I can show up and give my all to both my new business and to my children is to make sure that I'm solid. I needed to be solid. And truly at that time, for being totally honest, I wasn't. I was not solid.
Jenna Rykiel: Yeah. Well, that leads me to, like, why was it important for you to leave your job?
Jenna Hermans: I was pregnant at the time, and I felt in my intuition that it was such a toxic environment that I would have miscarried if I had stayed. I had tolerated a lot while being there and then when I was making a person and I could feel the cortisol rise and fall throughout the day. And I thought this cannot be healthy. This 100% is not healthy for my body and this human that I'm growing.
And talking to my partner about what we wanted to do and what was important. And also him seeing how stressed I was, and it just made sense. It's like, this is not the right thing to do anymore. It's really not. And is this how I wanna show up in our family, in our growing family, in this way? And it just wasn't right.
Jenna Rykiel: And so you talked about taking some time off to shed almost like you needed to shed the corporate culture ultimately like probably the stress and the go-go-go and the productivity and all of that. And then you got to where you are. Well, not where you are now, but you started your business, right? What advice would you give your younger self, maybe the version of you maybe seven years ago or eight years ago as you were going through that transformation?
Jenna Hermans: Oh, such a good question. I would tell myself that there's no rush. There's no rushing. Yes, go fast, right? Do what you've got to do, but you don't need to rush, right?
There's a difference between hurry and rush. It's very nuanced. And with hurrying, you're moving quickly. You've got something that's saying, go, go, go. But with rushing, the difference is that, you know, there's a lot more of being of like making mistakes and breaking things and getting ahead of yourself. You're moving too quickly.
And so I would tell myself, it's okay to go fast, but you don't need to rush. Be present and mindful for it and move at the pace that feels right. Because if you're building a business, if you're deciding to leave a corporate job and start a business, there's something inside of you that's driving you, right? There is an element of intuition that is inside.
So listen to it, because you're bringing your gift to this world. Don't so quickly go and break a whole bunch of stuff and then you have to go and clean it up, you're doubling your efforts versus going at a speed that makes sense for you and is integritous for your business and your clients and your future clients and your family where you know that you're moving forward, but you don't have to do double duty, right? You don't have to do the extra work because you moved too quickly. Slow down. It's all coming.
Jenna Rykiel: I love that. I think why that's so important too is because after being in entrepreneurship for however long, you do start to realize that, oh, there is no moment where you are there, right? It's like the goalpost keeps moving. We always want the next thing. And it can get really stressful if we don't enjoy the process, which is cliche, of course.
It's about the journey, not about the destination. But in entrepreneurship, it's so much more important because it really is these decisions and trying things and seeing what doesn't work and, you know, enjoying the life that you're creating in tandem with creating this business. And it can feel not worth it if you're not having fun and you're not enjoying the process.
Jenna Hermans: Absolutely. Thank you for saying that. Because it is a learning journey. And you don't know what you don't know until you've experienced the things. And so to appreciate and say, oh, like that didn't go as planned. Rock on. What did I just learn from that? Okay, moving right along. And to acknowledge that every time something doesn't go the way that you would hoped or wished or envisioned, that that's all information and data that you can use going forward.
It's not a failure. A lot of people in starting the entrepreneurial journey, right, feel like they have to have it right from the beginning. And that's not true. That's why there's alpha version and beta version and beta 2.0. And you know, there's all of these versions of whatever, as you're figuring it out. And that's the learning.
And that's where when you talk to entrepreneurs who have built amazingly successful businesses, right, and you hear their origin stories, and they talk about, you know, all the crap that they went through and all the things that didn't go well. That is the goods. That's the goods to learn from the mistakes, to make the mistakes and not even to know at the time that it's a mistake, but to learn as you go and see everything that you do as a part of that journey. And it's all good. It's all learning.
Jenna Rykiel: Yeah. Yeah, it goes fast, just like, you know, parenting, right? Where you can get caught up in, we just need to get to the next milestone. We need to get to the part where we're not at bottles or we're not in diapers or we're not in, you know, whatever phase is challenging. And then before you know it, you've missed out on all of the journey of parenting that is fulfilling in its own way. What's your favorite part about being an entrepreneur?
Jenna Hermans: I love making my own schedule. I love that. I love that I'm not on anyone else's timeline but my own. And of course, clients have needs and sometimes I'm up earlier than I would like to be, you know, on a call, because I'm talking to someone in Europe or whatever, and it's like, that's the only time we can make is at 6:30am, my time. It's like, okay.
But what I love about that is that it's in service of something that I've created, and that's in my purpose. It feels so good, even though it's painful. It feels good, because it's like, I'm making this time for something that's important to me.
Jenna Rykiel: Yeah, and you're choosing to, right? Like, you could easily say no to clients in Europe. And so there is this, you get to do it, not you have to do it, since you've made the choice to work with that person. Speaking of, because I want to definitely make sure we talk at least a little bit about your books. So speaking of things that you create, you are now the author of two books, which is amazing.
Can you tell us a little bit about the two and who they serve and how people can read them. I have your second book on my nightstand, so I am excited to dig into that soon, but also very much adored your first book.
Jenna Hermans: Oh, thank you, Jenna. The first book was called Chaos to Calm, 5 Ways Busy Parents Can Break Free from Overwhelm. And it's for the busy parent, right? It's the parent that feels all the pressure. There's so much going on. They're overwhelmed. There's so much to do. And it's building in again that infrastructure for calm within the chaos because the chaos is never going away. You have kids. It's never going away.
And to think that it could, like there's a magic wand that you could read a book and be like, oh, all the chaos is gone. Sorry, no, there is no antidote to chaos. But what it does is again, create that infrastructure, that proactive and the reactive for specifically for parents in their day-to-day lives so that they can show up.
When the chaos hits, it's not like they get swooped up in that hurricane of chaos. Rather, you can see the chaos and say, ah, there's the chaos. I see you coming, or I see that you're here. And instead of nailing your nervous system and you getting swooped into it, you can acknowledge it and look at it and have a relationship with it, right?
And not to say that it's like, okay, it's all gone. Like now you'll never be swept up in chaos ever again. Not true, right? Hence why we have reactive, you know, tools because it happens. We're human beings. We're humans. We have nervous systems and our reptilian brain. It's there to serve us.
And unfortunately, it still activates, even though we're not, you know, still cavemen out there looking, you know, with lions and whatnot, looking at us, and we're like, oh, no, fight, fight or freeze, what am I going to do? Thinking that we have a real life threat. It's like, our kid is tantruming. It's like, that's not a life threat. But our nervous system goes off the same way.
Anyway, so that's that's chaos to calm and it adds humor and realness and it's kind of like your best friend telling you, you've got this. I've been there. My clients have been there. Here's what we've done and how you can do these things to to support you in the ways that serve you best. So that was book number one. And then we met I think a little after that one came in into the world, right?
Jenna Rykiel: Yeah, I think so.
Jenna Hermans: Yeah, that was fun. And then book number two is called Burnout to Balance. So in the same vein of Chaos to Calm, I love my alliterations also.
Jenna Rykiel: Me too. I'm all about it.
Jenna Hermans: It's stress management. They're both stress management books, but from these different lenses and different contexts, right? Chaos to Calm is focused on parents, right? And Burnout to Balance is for anyone in the workplace, right? Whether you're an entrepreneur, you're an employee, a middle manager, a leader, right?
The burnout that comes from the society of pressure that we put on ourselves to be highly productive, to be high performers all the time, right? This book serves with tools and again, connection of why, right? What's led to this society of burnout and wearing burnout like a badge of honor and breaking it down and saying, unnecessary, right?
The real brag, the real brag is to say, I'm a high performer and I know how to take care of me and I have sustainable ways to take care of me and perform at my highest all the time. That's the badge of honor right there.
And so this book helps to put that badge on, right? To be able to be a high performer as you already are, but in a way that's sustainable so that you are not overcome with all of the pressures and all the stresses that work and life put on us.
Jenna Rykiel: Yeah, because I mean, the real winners in the race are the ones who keep going and make it to the end, not the ones who expend all of their energy, don't take care of themselves in the process, and then burn out before they get to the finish line. So I love the books. I love the concepts.
And the other thing I want to highlight too, so you had your career in corporate and something I'm talking about all the time is like that moms, I mean everybody, but I work with moms. So you know, those are my people, but there's so much like genius within these moms who have worked in corporate who have built their career.
They have so much experiential knowledge so much expertise and that there's businesses within that where they can fill a need that people have, right? So you took your experience in HR and created these concepts and pillars that eventually became, you know, these books. But also, it's the way that you work with clients and the results that you're able to help clients create, all of that came from experience in life and in HR, right?
Jenna Hermans: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, what's interesting was that when I became a parent, and my origin story with that is that I became a parent to three young people all at once. I married a man with three young children, and then we made a person together. And I went into this thinking, I'm so far behind, because I've never been a parent before. Now all of a sudden I am. And I didn't have this natural evolution of the becoming of a parent and was thrown in.
And when I was talking to other families, especially after the child that we made started preschool and a lot of new preschool parents want to meet everyone else who's a new preschool parent. Because they're like, oh, you're in the same boat as me and we're going to be traveling probably for the next 16 years together, right? Preschool, elementary school, middle school, high school, let's get to know each other and commiserate and also build community and connection.
And talking to these parents, because I felt for those years before I became a biological parent, I felt like I was playing catch up. I felt like I needed to catch up in all the knowledge and understanding of how to be a parent. And so when I became a biological parent, I'm like, oh, I already know what to do, blah, blah, blah, which I didn't, of course, because how could you?
And I remember talking to these other parents and we're exchanging our stories. And I say, I have four kids, my traveling husband, I have a business and I work full-time for our business and all of this." And they're like, wait a minute, what? You have four kids, traveling husband, you work full-time, you don't have hired help and you're not losing your mind. How is that possible?
And I thought it was so weird, because I said at first, like, well, you should have seen me a year and a half ago, because I was losing my mind. But then working it back, I'm saying like, oh, well, I have these systems in place, right? I have the meal planning, and I have these micro moments, and I have all of these things that I do and these parents turn around and saying like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. And I'm turning them to like, you don't have this already? You didn't already–
Jenna Rykiel: This is new.
Jenna Hermans: I thought that I was playing catch up. This is new for them. I'm like, wait a minute. So I wasn't playing catch up. I was figuring it out and just like any other parent that's trying to figure it out. But what I had done when I was playing catch up was use what I had, right? All the superpowers and the experience that I had from HR and operations and running businesses that I had before and bringing that into home. I'm like, I have skills, I have experience and expertise. How can I translate that into the home to make this run more smoothly for me?
And with that intentionality of bringing that in, I had created a really nice system. And that became the basis for the first book, for Chaos to Calm, which then I shared with these other parents who were doing their own form of catch up, even though there is no catching up because there is no finish line.
But it was just so fascinating that we have all of these experiences to bring it back to what you're saying, Jenna, that everyone who comes from whatever backgrounds that they have, whatever working environment and corporate environment, that there were so many skills that they learned through those years and times that are relevant in the home, more so than we think.
Just because you didn't work with little people in your corporate job doesn't mean that there aren't things that translate to being with kids and to running and managing a home environment and to an entrepreneur environment as well. So there's so many parallels.
I remember there was in one of my experiences in corporate of being a facilitator. And I realized one day that we have different definitions of words, we adults. And this actually stemmed from when I was running my preschool. And I remember I was talking to – he's three or four years old. And we were talking about the concept of trust.
And I said, do you know what trust means? He's like, nah, I don't know what trust means. I was like, oh, right, of course you don't. And then as I'm explaining it, I was thinking, oh, someone else's definition of trust is probably different. If he were to go and ask somebody else, what does trust mean? Right? They'd give a completely different definition.
And so I went into the facilitation environment that I was doing with one of my clients and realized that their definition of trust was probably different than mine and got down to the root of that with them in that moment and saying, I want to talk about trust. What does that mean to you? And what does that mean to you? And what does that mean to you? And realizing we all have these different definitions.
And then, so how does that have to do with the home environment? When we talk about trust or listening or any other concept or word, one, checking in with our partner, do we have the same definition of this word? Do we have the same definition of this concept, right, of partnership, of co-parenting, you know, of roles and responsibilities and what it means to do a chore and to build these systems, right, that we have these different definitions of that.
And then how we then share our own personal definitions with our children because we're formatting for them what they're going to experience as well because they're going to learn it in school or elsewhere or pick up on these things. But we can't assume that by osmosis, they're gonna have the exact same definition that we do.
Jenna Rykiel: That actually reminds me of another similar, like what words mean and how, you know, Adley is my son who's two is, you know, just learning to communicate and, you know, the literal things that he takes in and how just it's such a, an important reminder too, of the way our language works. And, and it's also just a fun and funny experience, you know, when these little people – the other day with Adley, he was drooling and we were like, swallow your spit, right? But he heard spit and just started spitting, right? And it's like, well, no, no, no. So now we have to say like, swallow your saliva.
It's just such a fun, like, language. And these little people learning language is such a funny journey. You know, to wrap us up here, how can people get to know you, get to know your work, work with you? I'm sure there's people out there who are like, heard your story and they're like, there's no way that she's calm. I need some of that in my life with that home environment. So how can people work with you? How can people learn about you?
Jenna Hermans: Thank you so the easiest ways to go on to my website jennahermans.com and if you want to know more about my corporate work then bcrgs.com which is Be Courageous without any vowels. That's with our global transformation agency.
But if you want to know more about parenting work and individual coaching and speaking for, you know, parent education at your school or in your corporate environment with ERGs or with your business, reach out. Jennahermans.com is my website. You can find me there and we can talk about all the things.
Jenna Rykiel: All the things. Well, all of those things will definitely be in the show notes for sure. And as always, I love our conversations. I love having you as part of my network. You've been such a great role model for me and such a good friend. So thank you for being here.
Jenna Hermans: Thank you so much for having me, Jenna. I appreciate you so much.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
Jenna's story is fascinating, okay? She became an instant mom to three children through marriage, had a fourth, and managed to create systems that didn't just help her survive, they helped her thrive. What makes her perspective unique is how she translated her HR and operations background into practical solutions for both family life and business success.
In this conversation, we dive deep into the micro moments that can make or break your day, why rushing isn't the same as moving quickly when it comes to building a business and how to build sustainable success without sacrificing your well-being. Jenna shares vulnerable insights about her own journey including the moment she realized her corporate job was so toxic it could have negatively impacted her pregnancy.
Whether you're contemplating a career change, feeling overwhelmed by the daily chaos of parenting, or simply looking for ways to find more balance in your life, this conversation offers such practical wisdom and actionable strategies that you can start implementing today. Also, I just love Jenna and I know that you will love her too. Okay, let’s dive in with Jenna Hermans.
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. It’s a podcast that helps working moms just like you, optimize your time, manage your mind, and start a business that helps you create more freedom, flexibility, and, yes, fun. I’m business and mindset coach Jenna Rykiel. And I offer practical tips to help you ditch the nine-to-five. I have been exactly where you are and I know what it takes to make the transition without trading one form of burnout for another. So, let’s get started.
Jenna Rykiel: Jenna, thank you so much for being on the show today. You are the queen of calm, and I know we'll talk more about what that means and how you got that title. But I wanna start by talking about the experience of being in a chaotic and stressful corporate environment and for my listeners, you know, also being moms and having probably a chaotic home life, but feeling burnt out and knowing that you want to create change, but change takes time, right? And so in the space between being in corporate and actually leaving and being in this burnt out chaotic mode, how can moms create more calm?
Jenna Hermans: Ooh, that is such a big question. And there's so many ways to answer that, Jenna. And just firstly, I want to say thank you so much for having me here. I'm so excited. We always have fun when we talk together. So I'm so glad we get to share our conversation with your listeners.
So how does a mom create calm when you're coming out of corporate burnout? It's so multifaceted. But the first is recognizing that what your current state is and what you want your future state to be, right? And when you recognize it, that's the first step to moving towards where you want to go, right? But you can't know how to get where you're going to go if you don't have awareness of where you are, right?
So really getting clarity and having some time to self reflect on what's going on for me at this exact moment, why am I feeling this way? And this isn't like a one journal session, right? It could be, sure, but majority of the time, it takes longer than that. It takes time to really sit with the self and understand what's going on and why and sitting with various areas of life, right?
How am I nourishing myself? Am I feeding myself well? Am I taking time for just being with me? Am I playing into my connections with my friends, with friendships, right? With people who make me feel like me outside of my roles and my responsibilities?
Am I sleeping well? Right? It's all of these micro and macro things that contribute to our current state. And when you have that clarity, I'm not sleeping well. I'm not feeding myself well. I'm not hydrated at all. I'm barely drinking any water. I haven't seen or talked to a friend or family member in who knows how long who doesn't live under my roof or doesn't work with me in my workplace or whatever it is, all of these things.
And then when you have that clarity, you can move forward with a lot more intentionality and that brings the calm, right? The intentionality of how do I bring more calm into my life? And it starts with knowing thyself.
Jenna Rykiel: Knowing yourself and what you need for sure. And you talked about these micro things in life. And I'm curious though, like how do you make sure, because I imagine the experience is, and this was my experience too, and maybe you can relate, but it's like it builds, right? Like the tension and the pressure and the heat build and then all of a sudden you are burnt out and you are like fed up and you are resentful and you've just hit your limit and it's almost like you explode.
I'm wondering what you can do or how you can prevent that from happening. And granted, you know, what you just shared, of course, being aware of those things, but are there any like practices that you've found helpful in almost like these like small doses of self-care or even ways to bring more awareness to answering the question of like, what do I need more of right now?
Jenna Hermans: You know, there's two buckets that I like to talk about this in and there's proactive and there's reactive, right? So there's the proactive tools and tactics and elements of infrastructure that you can lay into your day-to-day life that help kind of take that hum, like you're saying that warmth that how hot it's gotten because you've just been go, go, go and the next thing you know, you're sweating. You're like, "Oh my God, it's too much" and brings it down, right? That mellows out that noise to make it so that it's a calmer infrastructure and a lot of that is what I like to call proactive calm.
And that looks like what's a stressful thing that happens every single day. And so for myself, one of the first things when I asked myself that question was making dinner. It's like every day, making dinner was one of the most stressful times of day and reflecting on that and saying, "Okay, how can I make this one thing that happens every single day become less stressful for me?"
And what I implemented when I reflected on that question was the concept of a meal plan. It was because what made that time of day stressful? It was I have to be creative. I have done all of these things all day. I've used up all my mental bandwidth on kids and work and all the things. And then I have to then be like, "What am I feeding everybody?" I have to get creative and see what I have in the fridge and in the pantry and come up with something. Oh my God, it's like the bane of my existence.
So I started meal planning, right? The beginning of the week, what do I need? What are the meals that people like to have, let me see what food I already have in my kitchen, in my pantry, my refrigerator, and make meals from that, write it down, and then what are other things that we'd want to have throughout the week, let me make a grocery list of those things, buy those things, and then come every day, time to make dinner. I know exactly what I'm making and I have everything I need. And my cortisol level went down so much. So that was a proactive tip.
That's a proactive calm of getting ahead of it, building in again that infrastructure, it's kind of the system, so it's an operating system that helps facilitate calm in the everyday. And then the reactive calm is stress comes, right, something comes up, right, a colleague says, "Oh no, I forgot to do a thing and I know that was really important for your part of the project." And you're like, "What the?" Stress or your kid all of a sudden is like, "Oh, I committed to you making cookies for tomorrow's bake sale." You're like, "What?" Right? Stress, stress, cortisol.
What do you do in those moments when the stress hits and you couldn't get ahead of it? And those reactive calm tips and tricks and things, are taking a moment for breathing, right? Taking a moment to breathe, taking a moment and writing down, because sometimes it could be that someone, like this would happen to me a lot when the kids were younger and my big kids bio mom was still in the picture and she sent me a message and I'd go on a tailspin. It was so much stress when she would write to me and say – because she'd always say something kind of ridiculous. I was like, "Oh my God."
And so I would journal. I would just – all the heat that was built up in that moment that came out out of literally nowhere, right? I would just journal. Get that out, let it out, and then I could get clear and centered. Again, going for a walk, listening to a song and dancing, meditating, taking these moments, there are these – like these little micro things that we can do that take anywhere between 30 seconds and five minutes that can calm the nervous system down when a stressful thing comes on. So those two buckets.
Jenna Rykiel: Yeah. And what's interesting because what I see as, I mean, there's a lot of overlaps, right? But the one that I feel like we do not always do a great job at is listening to our bodies. Like, we can reflect on it I think a lot easier of how we were reactive and what we did and understand that we were stressed or anxious but it's almost like in that moment we need to be listening to our bodies.
And not only like listening to it, but also be able to pause because it's so easy to ride that train of stress and anxiety when you get that message and then be in a tailspin, which makes it even harder to listen to your body. But what I'm hearing is we need to be able to pause and then we need to be able to pause and then we need to be able to listen in order to respond in a way that allows us to go for a walk, allows us to journal, allows us to phone a friend, you know, whatever the micro moment is.
Jenna Hermans: That's where the freedom is. That's the freedom, right?
Jenna Rykiel: Yes.
Jenna Hermans: When you create that space for response versus just reacting, the knee-jerk reaction, when you give yourself that moment to pause and think about how you're going to respond, how you're going to show up to the next thing that you're needing to do. That's where you have freedom, freedom of choice and freedom within yourself to determine how do I want to show up in this next moment and what's really true? And to do that self-reflecting, like you're saying, right?
To take that moment to reflect and say, is what just happened really that bad? Or am I triggered about something? Or what's behind my response? What's behind this reaction that's inside of me? And take that moment and then move forward with more intentionality and conscientiousness.
Jenna Rykiel: Yeah, and you're right. Like there's so much empowerment in that choice because let's be honest, when we respond from a place of fear or anxiety or tension, we look back on those moments and we wish we would have done it differently. I don't think I can remember one time where I lashed out because something was triggering, you know, that somebody said or where I, you know, my heart dropped receiving a text and I responded without pausing and really thinking about, you know, who I want to be in that moment.
And I always look back and feel even more, insert the blank, whether it be more embarrassed or more frustrated or what have you because of the way I showed up and it not being aligned with who I know I could be or want to be. And so, yeah, in a lot of it is being able to be the version of ourself that we wanna be. And like you said, that doesn't happen by default. It takes intention. And then hopefully one day it becomes more of a default, but it takes work.
So, okay, I'm glad you gave some of those personal examples to like the journaling and the going for a walk and the creating systems. Cause I think those are underrated in terms of we feel like we don't have time for those things, right? And actually, you know, those things seem like luxuries and they seem like nice-to-haves but they are essential, absolutely essential.
Jenna Hermans: It’s amazing when you create the space for yourself to activate and do it that you realize, oh my gosh, this was available to me the whole time. I don't need to earn going for a walk. I don't need to earn journaling at the end of the day to use these micro moments, these tools in real time. They don't need to be earned and they are very small but so impactful.
When you allow yourself, when I allowed myself to do this in real time as opposed to just powering through and treating myself like a robot, right? Like, you've got stuff to do, you have things that are more important, just go, go, go, every moment counts, every minute counts. You know, you got to get through the next email and proofread another document. And it's like, when I started really taking those moments for myself, when I then would go and read the email, I would have such a clearer mind. I would review the document and have a weight off that I would show up with more just presence, right?
It provides presence when you take these micro moments. Because when you don't, when you don't take the moments and you go just from thing to thing to thing, go, go, go, go, it stacks, right? And like you were saying before, the heat, it stacks, stacks, stacks. And these moments, like you were saying, they are essential. They're not nice-to-haves because what they do is they help you be the person that you want to be. And the role model that you want to be for your kids, for your colleagues, for your employees.
When you model this type of behavior and you show that you're taking care of you on these kind of core fundamental levels and that you can show that you can shift your mind and your state by going for a two-minute walk, by meditating for two minutes, by dancing it out in the middle of the afternoon, or journaling and saying, I just need a few minutes. You don't need to even tell anybody what you're doing. You can just do it. It's like you don't always tell someone, oh, I'm going to go to the bathroom and be offline for two minutes. You can take the time to do these things and you show up with so much more energy and presence after you've done it.
And I promise, I promise when you create this as a part of your foundation, because it's a muscle, it really is, it's a muscle that needs to be flexed. And the more that you flex it, the easier it becomes to do, just like any other exercise. The more you do it, the more strong it gets, the easier it becomes. The longer you can do it, the more reps you can do. It's the same with self-care and these moments of mindfulness or intentionality, that the more you do it, the easier it becomes, and the more integrated it becomes as well. So it just becomes a part of you, as opposed to something that you're forcing yourself to do, and then it just is.
Jenna Rykiel: Yeah. So this is interesting because this makes me think of something that you and I have talked about before not while we've been recorded, but, so right now we're talking about taking care of yourself and we're talking about that it doesn't have to be this grand gesture. It can be built into the fabric of your every day in maybe even just staying in the shower five extra minutes, right? Or two minutes of breathing or going for a quick walk.
But I want to bring this to the concept of circles of influence and also the concept of taking care of yourself in a bigger way which is ultimately how I feel like - what I feel like I am helping moms with when they are changing their careers. Because what they are saying is that I am important enough to do the thing that, or get out of the thing that doesn't fill me up and find something that does fill me up. And it's not a quick two minutes, right? This is sort of a long journey that moms are taking on. But I want your perspective on that level of self-care and thinking of the career change as taking care of yourself.
Jenna Hermans: Yes. I remember all those years ago, it was, we're coming up on probably eight and a half years since I quit my corporate job and moved into entrepreneurship, starting the business that I still run today. There were some months between the quitting and the starting, that transition where it was really necessary to have a transition time of letting go of what was to make the space for what could potentially be.
And if I had just jumped from one to the next, I would have dragged a lot of that mud with me. I still would have been muddy from my corporate career and doing HR and tech company because that's where I was last. And I would have dragged that with me unintentionally, right? It would have just happened because it wouldn't have been conscious. But what I needed to do was to shed all of that that was on me so that I could then show up with freshness, the fresh me into that new chapter so that I didn't carry that residual from where I had been to where I knew I wanted to go.
And the care that came with it, right, the self-care part of it really was focusing on what are the routines and habits that I want to have and bring into this next chapter with me, right? What are those non-negotiables and how can I do this so that I can show up as my best self for this business that I want to grow, I want to create and grow and show up as the mother that I am and that I want to be better at?
I want to be the best mother that I can be. I know the only way I can show up and give my all to both my new business and to my children is to make sure that I'm solid. I needed to be solid. And truly at that time, for being totally honest, I wasn't. I was not solid.
Jenna Rykiel: Yeah. Well, that leads me to, like, why was it important for you to leave your job?
Jenna Hermans: I was pregnant at the time, and I felt in my intuition that it was such a toxic environment that I would have miscarried if I had stayed. I had tolerated a lot while being there and then when I was making a person and I could feel the cortisol rise and fall throughout the day. And I thought this cannot be healthy. This 100% is not healthy for my body and this human that I'm growing.
And talking to my partner about what we wanted to do and what was important. And also him seeing how stressed I was, and it just made sense. It's like, this is not the right thing to do anymore. It's really not. And is this how I wanna show up in our family, in our growing family, in this way? And it just wasn't right.
Jenna Rykiel: And so you talked about taking some time off to shed almost like you needed to shed the corporate culture ultimately like probably the stress and the go-go-go and the productivity and all of that. And then you got to where you are. Well, not where you are now, but you started your business, right? What advice would you give your younger self, maybe the version of you maybe seven years ago or eight years ago as you were going through that transformation?
Jenna Hermans: Oh, such a good question. I would tell myself that there's no rush. There's no rushing. Yes, go fast, right? Do what you've got to do, but you don't need to rush, right?
There's a difference between hurry and rush. It's very nuanced. And with hurrying, you're moving quickly. You've got something that's saying, go, go, go. But with rushing, the difference is that, you know, there's a lot more of being of like making mistakes and breaking things and getting ahead of yourself. You're moving too quickly.
And so I would tell myself, it's okay to go fast, but you don't need to rush. Be present and mindful for it and move at the pace that feels right. Because if you're building a business, if you're deciding to leave a corporate job and start a business, there's something inside of you that's driving you, right? There is an element of intuition that is inside.
So listen to it, because you're bringing your gift to this world. Don't so quickly go and break a whole bunch of stuff and then you have to go and clean it up, you're doubling your efforts versus going at a speed that makes sense for you and is integritous for your business and your clients and your future clients and your family where you know that you're moving forward, but you don't have to do double duty, right? You don't have to do the extra work because you moved too quickly. Slow down. It's all coming.
Jenna Rykiel: I love that. I think why that's so important too is because after being in entrepreneurship for however long, you do start to realize that, oh, there is no moment where you are there, right? It's like the goalpost keeps moving. We always want the next thing. And it can get really stressful if we don't enjoy the process, which is cliche, of course.
It's about the journey, not about the destination. But in entrepreneurship, it's so much more important because it really is these decisions and trying things and seeing what doesn't work and, you know, enjoying the life that you're creating in tandem with creating this business. And it can feel not worth it if you're not having fun and you're not enjoying the process.
Jenna Hermans: Absolutely. Thank you for saying that. Because it is a learning journey. And you don't know what you don't know until you've experienced the things. And so to appreciate and say, oh, like that didn't go as planned. Rock on. What did I just learn from that? Okay, moving right along. And to acknowledge that every time something doesn't go the way that you would hoped or wished or envisioned, that that's all information and data that you can use going forward.
It's not a failure. A lot of people in starting the entrepreneurial journey, right, feel like they have to have it right from the beginning. And that's not true. That's why there's alpha version and beta version and beta 2.0. And you know, there's all of these versions of whatever, as you're figuring it out. And that's the learning.
And that's where when you talk to entrepreneurs who have built amazingly successful businesses, right, and you hear their origin stories, and they talk about, you know, all the crap that they went through and all the things that didn't go well. That is the goods. That's the goods to learn from the mistakes, to make the mistakes and not even to know at the time that it's a mistake, but to learn as you go and see everything that you do as a part of that journey. And it's all good. It's all learning.
Jenna Rykiel: Yeah. Yeah, it goes fast, just like, you know, parenting, right? Where you can get caught up in, we just need to get to the next milestone. We need to get to the part where we're not at bottles or we're not in diapers or we're not in, you know, whatever phase is challenging. And then before you know it, you've missed out on all of the journey of parenting that is fulfilling in its own way. What's your favorite part about being an entrepreneur?
Jenna Hermans: I love making my own schedule. I love that. I love that I'm not on anyone else's timeline but my own. And of course, clients have needs and sometimes I'm up earlier than I would like to be, you know, on a call, because I'm talking to someone in Europe or whatever, and it's like, that's the only time we can make is at 6:30am, my time. It's like, okay.
But what I love about that is that it's in service of something that I've created, and that's in my purpose. It feels so good, even though it's painful. It feels good, because it's like, I'm making this time for something that's important to me.
Jenna Rykiel: Yeah, and you're choosing to, right? Like, you could easily say no to clients in Europe. And so there is this, you get to do it, not you have to do it, since you've made the choice to work with that person. Speaking of, because I want to definitely make sure we talk at least a little bit about your books. So speaking of things that you create, you are now the author of two books, which is amazing.
Can you tell us a little bit about the two and who they serve and how people can read them. I have your second book on my nightstand, so I am excited to dig into that soon, but also very much adored your first book.
Jenna Hermans: Oh, thank you, Jenna. The first book was called Chaos to Calm, 5 Ways Busy Parents Can Break Free from Overwhelm. And it's for the busy parent, right? It's the parent that feels all the pressure. There's so much going on. They're overwhelmed. There's so much to do. And it's building in again that infrastructure for calm within the chaos because the chaos is never going away. You have kids. It's never going away.
And to think that it could, like there's a magic wand that you could read a book and be like, oh, all the chaos is gone. Sorry, no, there is no antidote to chaos. But what it does is again, create that infrastructure, that proactive and the reactive for specifically for parents in their day-to-day lives so that they can show up.
When the chaos hits, it's not like they get swooped up in that hurricane of chaos. Rather, you can see the chaos and say, ah, there's the chaos. I see you coming, or I see that you're here. And instead of nailing your nervous system and you getting swooped into it, you can acknowledge it and look at it and have a relationship with it, right?
And not to say that it's like, okay, it's all gone. Like now you'll never be swept up in chaos ever again. Not true, right? Hence why we have reactive, you know, tools because it happens. We're human beings. We're humans. We have nervous systems and our reptilian brain. It's there to serve us.
And unfortunately, it still activates, even though we're not, you know, still cavemen out there looking, you know, with lions and whatnot, looking at us, and we're like, oh, no, fight, fight or freeze, what am I going to do? Thinking that we have a real life threat. It's like, our kid is tantruming. It's like, that's not a life threat. But our nervous system goes off the same way.
Anyway, so that's that's chaos to calm and it adds humor and realness and it's kind of like your best friend telling you, you've got this. I've been there. My clients have been there. Here's what we've done and how you can do these things to to support you in the ways that serve you best. So that was book number one. And then we met I think a little after that one came in into the world, right?
Jenna Rykiel: Yeah, I think so.
Jenna Hermans: Yeah, that was fun. And then book number two is called Burnout to Balance. So in the same vein of Chaos to Calm, I love my alliterations also.
Jenna Rykiel: Me too. I'm all about it.
Jenna Hermans: It's stress management. They're both stress management books, but from these different lenses and different contexts, right? Chaos to Calm is focused on parents, right? And Burnout to Balance is for anyone in the workplace, right? Whether you're an entrepreneur, you're an employee, a middle manager, a leader, right?
The burnout that comes from the society of pressure that we put on ourselves to be highly productive, to be high performers all the time, right? This book serves with tools and again, connection of why, right? What's led to this society of burnout and wearing burnout like a badge of honor and breaking it down and saying, unnecessary, right?
The real brag, the real brag is to say, I'm a high performer and I know how to take care of me and I have sustainable ways to take care of me and perform at my highest all the time. That's the badge of honor right there.
And so this book helps to put that badge on, right? To be able to be a high performer as you already are, but in a way that's sustainable so that you are not overcome with all of the pressures and all the stresses that work and life put on us.
Jenna Rykiel: Yeah, because I mean, the real winners in the race are the ones who keep going and make it to the end, not the ones who expend all of their energy, don't take care of themselves in the process, and then burn out before they get to the finish line. So I love the books. I love the concepts.
And the other thing I want to highlight too, so you had your career in corporate and something I'm talking about all the time is like that moms, I mean everybody, but I work with moms. So you know, those are my people, but there's so much like genius within these moms who have worked in corporate who have built their career.
They have so much experiential knowledge so much expertise and that there's businesses within that where they can fill a need that people have, right? So you took your experience in HR and created these concepts and pillars that eventually became, you know, these books. But also, it's the way that you work with clients and the results that you're able to help clients create, all of that came from experience in life and in HR, right?
Jenna Hermans: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, what's interesting was that when I became a parent, and my origin story with that is that I became a parent to three young people all at once. I married a man with three young children, and then we made a person together. And I went into this thinking, I'm so far behind, because I've never been a parent before. Now all of a sudden I am. And I didn't have this natural evolution of the becoming of a parent and was thrown in.
And when I was talking to other families, especially after the child that we made started preschool and a lot of new preschool parents want to meet everyone else who's a new preschool parent. Because they're like, oh, you're in the same boat as me and we're going to be traveling probably for the next 16 years together, right? Preschool, elementary school, middle school, high school, let's get to know each other and commiserate and also build community and connection.
And talking to these parents, because I felt for those years before I became a biological parent, I felt like I was playing catch up. I felt like I needed to catch up in all the knowledge and understanding of how to be a parent. And so when I became a biological parent, I'm like, oh, I already know what to do, blah, blah, blah, which I didn't, of course, because how could you?
And I remember talking to these other parents and we're exchanging our stories. And I say, I have four kids, my traveling husband, I have a business and I work full-time for our business and all of this." And they're like, wait a minute, what? You have four kids, traveling husband, you work full-time, you don't have hired help and you're not losing your mind. How is that possible?
And I thought it was so weird, because I said at first, like, well, you should have seen me a year and a half ago, because I was losing my mind. But then working it back, I'm saying like, oh, well, I have these systems in place, right? I have the meal planning, and I have these micro moments, and I have all of these things that I do and these parents turn around and saying like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. And I'm turning them to like, you don't have this already? You didn't already–
Jenna Rykiel: This is new.
Jenna Hermans: I thought that I was playing catch up. This is new for them. I'm like, wait a minute. So I wasn't playing catch up. I was figuring it out and just like any other parent that's trying to figure it out. But what I had done when I was playing catch up was use what I had, right? All the superpowers and the experience that I had from HR and operations and running businesses that I had before and bringing that into home. I'm like, I have skills, I have experience and expertise. How can I translate that into the home to make this run more smoothly for me?
And with that intentionality of bringing that in, I had created a really nice system. And that became the basis for the first book, for Chaos to Calm, which then I shared with these other parents who were doing their own form of catch up, even though there is no catching up because there is no finish line.
But it was just so fascinating that we have all of these experiences to bring it back to what you're saying, Jenna, that everyone who comes from whatever backgrounds that they have, whatever working environment and corporate environment, that there were so many skills that they learned through those years and times that are relevant in the home, more so than we think.
Just because you didn't work with little people in your corporate job doesn't mean that there aren't things that translate to being with kids and to running and managing a home environment and to an entrepreneur environment as well. So there's so many parallels.
I remember there was in one of my experiences in corporate of being a facilitator. And I realized one day that we have different definitions of words, we adults. And this actually stemmed from when I was running my preschool. And I remember I was talking to – he's three or four years old. And we were talking about the concept of trust.
And I said, do you know what trust means? He's like, nah, I don't know what trust means. I was like, oh, right, of course you don't. And then as I'm explaining it, I was thinking, oh, someone else's definition of trust is probably different. If he were to go and ask somebody else, what does trust mean? Right? They'd give a completely different definition.
And so I went into the facilitation environment that I was doing with one of my clients and realized that their definition of trust was probably different than mine and got down to the root of that with them in that moment and saying, I want to talk about trust. What does that mean to you? And what does that mean to you? And what does that mean to you? And realizing we all have these different definitions.
And then, so how does that have to do with the home environment? When we talk about trust or listening or any other concept or word, one, checking in with our partner, do we have the same definition of this word? Do we have the same definition of this concept, right, of partnership, of co-parenting, you know, of roles and responsibilities and what it means to do a chore and to build these systems, right, that we have these different definitions of that.
And then how we then share our own personal definitions with our children because we're formatting for them what they're going to experience as well because they're going to learn it in school or elsewhere or pick up on these things. But we can't assume that by osmosis, they're gonna have the exact same definition that we do.
Jenna Rykiel: That actually reminds me of another similar, like what words mean and how, you know, Adley is my son who's two is, you know, just learning to communicate and, you know, the literal things that he takes in and how just it's such a, an important reminder too, of the way our language works. And, and it's also just a fun and funny experience, you know, when these little people – the other day with Adley, he was drooling and we were like, swallow your spit, right? But he heard spit and just started spitting, right? And it's like, well, no, no, no. So now we have to say like, swallow your saliva.
It's just such a fun, like, language. And these little people learning language is such a funny journey. You know, to wrap us up here, how can people get to know you, get to know your work, work with you? I'm sure there's people out there who are like, heard your story and they're like, there's no way that she's calm. I need some of that in my life with that home environment. So how can people work with you? How can people learn about you?
Jenna Hermans: Thank you so the easiest ways to go on to my website jennahermans.com and if you want to know more about my corporate work then bcrgs.com which is Be Courageous without any vowels. That's with our global transformation agency.
But if you want to know more about parenting work and individual coaching and speaking for, you know, parent education at your school or in your corporate environment with ERGs or with your business, reach out. Jennahermans.com is my website. You can find me there and we can talk about all the things.
Jenna Rykiel: All the things. Well, all of those things will definitely be in the show notes for sure. And as always, I love our conversations. I love having you as part of my network. You've been such a great role model for me and such a good friend. So thank you for being here.
Jenna Hermans: Thank you so much for having me, Jenna. I appreciate you so much.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
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