Pregnant and hospitalized, Micah Larsen spent hours considering life before her: businesswoman plus mother. She wondered and worried about the pull between two lives and how she would make it all work.
Many mothers, especially in a time of pandemic, are no stranger to Micah’s hospital bed meditations on work-life balance—a concept often spoken of but rarely achieved. Transitioning office jobs to work-from-home careers, coupled with remote learning for kids, brought the idea of having and managing it all to front and center stage in 2020.
“I don’t want women to have to choose between motherhood and having a meaningful career,” Micah explained. As a social scientist and business owner herself, Micah describes her work not with a title but with an action: teaching others how to market their business sustainably and efficiently.
In 2020, many of Micah’s clients searched for ways to grow and build their businesses from home, while managing an extra workload of responsibilities with family time. While the hustle of business development came with special challenges in 2020, Micah sees the positives as well.
“I make a commitment to myself to look for silver linings,” she explained. “Since COVID, so many people have come up with flexible and creative ways to make revenue. We’re seeing the American spirit of ingenuity because it is a necessity.”
She’s seen hair stylists offer instructional haircare videos to clients when salons were closed and seen designers who’ve taught online classes on creating professional at-home backgrounds for Zoom meetings.
Life during pandemic’s social distancing requires integration on all fronts, Micah explained.
“There’s no ‘work-life balance’; it’s really mashing them together,” Micah said. “I hate for people to choose either-or. I want people to be able to have both-and.”
Many Americans worked from home in 2020, requiring a juggle between work time, family time, and distance learning time for kids—a concept not unfamiliar to Micah, who brought her infant son along when she taught marketing classes at the University of Montana.
“I would get emails from women in my classes who’d never seen that before,” Micah explained. “We used to hide our kids when we tried to work. I really love the warmth we’re feeling now. There really is a permeable boundary between working and parenting.”
Micah said that oftentimes working mothers feel anxious about their children infiltrating their professional world, leading to emotional burden and guilt. Another one of her silver linings in 2020? More acceptance and fewer apologies.
“Hopefully, this time paves the way for future generations,” Micah said.
Through her online How to Hustle program, Micah teaches businesswomen to develop and perfect marketing strategies to book their calendars with ideal clients and sell their products to their target market.
“I really believe in the power of teaching live, in a group,” Micah explained. “It’s like having lunch with a group of friends every week.”
Micah’s clients tend to be makers and creatives, a group of people dear to her heart. Growing up with an artist father, Micah was surrounded by creative people.
“It’s deeply meaningful to work with people who create in that way—making things from their soul,” Micah explained.
As a former social science researcher, Micah offers a different approach to marketing, one based on not only getting people to say ‘yes,’ but also in creating relationships with the people who will really love the products or services a business offers.
2020 made for the ultimate collision of working, creating, parenting, and homemaking. And while that mash-up can make for plenty of challenging and frustrating moments, it also leads to opportunities.
“The flexibility we’re seeing is really more of a culture,” Micah said. “There’s more acceptance, more understanding. It will be really interesting to see how these trends continue.”
Micah's Top Four Hustle Tips
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Ask for help
“When you feel stuck, overwhelmed, and isolated after homeschooling-while-working-while-housekeeping, ask a trusted loved one to give you a minute to collect your thoughts and rest your body.” -
Be a good listener
“It’s an especially important time to really listen to our colleagues, clients, and customers. We have a lot of assumptions about what other people are going through during this pandemic. When we truly know about people’s problems, then we can connect and create value when it really counts.” -
Count your blessings
“A friend of mine shares a trick he uses to fall asleep: come up with one thing you’re grateful for, for each letter of the alphabet. You can use this tip for when the pandemic starts to get to you: ‘A is for Amazon Prime. B is for best friends. C is for caffeine…’” -
Give people the benefit of the doubt
“Assume that everyone around you is doing their best. Are they really? We’ll never know. But this perspective helps us be more patient and more kind. And never has our world needed kindness more than right now.”