What if the secret to “doing it all” is actually doing less?
High-achieving working moms have been conditioned to juggle a career, home life, and parenting with near perfection. But the truth? No one is doing it all, especially not alone. In this episode of the Toolkit Series from The New Modern Mom Podcast, I unpack the unspoken truth of how executive moms truly thrive: through strategic delegation and outsourcing.
This isn’t just about hiring help. It’s about rewiring how we think about time, control, and worthiness. I dive deep into the real barriers holding us back from asking for (or paying for) help and why overcoming them is the key to unlocking more presence, peace, and productivity in your daily life. From creating systems at home to building your “bench” of support, this episode will help you build a smarter, more sustainable rhythm for career and motherhood.
Whether you're stuck in a cycle of burnout or just want your Sunday mornings back, this conversation is filled with low-risk, high-impact tips to help you take the first step toward real, lasting relief.
🔍 Why even the most successful working moms don’t “do it all”
One of the most refreshing truths that comes up time and again in this episode—and throughout season one—is that every successful mom, no matter how polished her life looks from the outside, is relying on some level of help. Delegation isn’t a luxury—it’s a necessity.
“Today we're going to be covering a topic I get asked about all the time. And honestly, it's one of the biggest reasons I even started this podcast to begin with. I wanted to answer how the F do these working moms and executives do it all. And the answer for me, and spoiler alert for every guest I've had on this show is I don't, and they don't.” – Barbara Mighdoll
🧠 How to overcome the mental blocks keeping you from outsourcing
I get honest about the deeply ingrained feelings many moms wrestle with: guilt for not doing it all, fear of being judged, and the misconception that paying for help is indulgent. Instead, I reframe outsourcing as a career investment and a form of self-preservation.
“You may think it comes off that you don't care about certain things or it makes you less than of a parent, a boss, an employee. You name it. You may think it's too expensive… But if you are working and earning an income, your time quite literally is money. Being a working mom means your life is a series of trade-offs.” -Barbara Mighdoll
🧺 What to outsource at home—and how to get creative with support
From laundry and grocery shopping to school pickup and birthday party logistics, I offer concrete examples of how to outsource the everyday tasks that drain your energy and time. This section is filled with smart ideas and creative workarounds that any mom can test right away.
“So is that laundry, cooking, grocery shopping, making medical appointments, booking a dinner reservation, or planning an upcoming trip, filing a claim, or getting a refund from a service provider, wrapping birthday presents… The list goes on and on of those tiny little things that stack up to really overload you mentally.” -Barbara Mighdoll
📋 How to build and onboard your dream support team
Having help is one thing—setting them up for success is another. I share how to find the right people or tools to help, and why onboarding them with clear systems (like a ChatGPT-generated checklist!) can make the difference between chaos and calm.
“With any of these options, it's super important to create onboarding docs and templates. And quick plug for my ChatGPT episode—if you are not using ChatGPT, this is a great place to start thinking through those checklists, those step-by-step guides of how to do things the way you want things to be done.” -Barbara Mighdoll
👩👧👦 Kim Chappell’s game-changing “stack your bench” strategy
One of the most powerful moments in this episode comes from a clip featuring Kim Gebbia Chappell, Chief Brand Officer at Bobbie, who shares her personal journey of learning how to build a deep bench of trusted help—and why that’s what truly gave her the freedom to show up fully in work and life.
“This is where my secret is… Who is on your roster that you can call? And it can't just be two or three people because they're never going to be able to help you on a dime. You need a list and a forum and a chat and a place to go where you can get that help whenever you need it… It's helped me carve out windows of time for myself, for my marriage, for my family.” -Kim Gebbia Chappell
This episode is your go-to guide to releasing the pressure of doing it all and instead focusing on what matters most. Whether it’s hiring a meal prep service or testing a VA for your to-do list, I’ll show you that outsourcing isn’t a weakness. It’s a working mom’s greatest strength.
Download my Free Onboarding Guides
Ready to streamline support at home? These two free resources will help you clearly communicate expectations and set your nanny (or house manager!) up for success so you can finally stop micromanaging and start reclaiming your time.
- Nanny Onboarding Template: A plug-and-play doc to align on routines, responsibilities, and communication styles from day one.
- House Manager Checklist: Transitioning your nanny or adding extra help? This guide outlines everything from meal prep to calendar management so your home runs like a well-oiled machine.
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[00:00:00] Hi everyone. Welcome to the toolkit series from the new Modern Mom podcast. I'm thrilled to bring you this bonus series in between seasons. Each episode will be a quick, actionable deep dive into some of the most important themes from season one. Plus we'll explore a few niche conversations that didn't quite make the final cut, but are just. [00:00:18] Too good not to share. My goal is to help you build the tools you need so they're ready and waiting in your toolkit, the ones you're going to reach for to calm the chaos of career and motherhood. [00:00:29] Today we're going to be covering a topic I get asked about all the time. And honestly, it's one of the biggest reasons I even started this podcast to begin with. I wanted to answer how the F do these working moms and executives do it all. And the answer for me, and spoiler alert for every guest I've had on this show is I don't, and they don't. [00:00:53] The secret here is delegation and outsourcing. So today we're going to be covering four major [00:01:00] aspects to get better at doing this for yourself. At home, we're going to talk about how to delegate better, why you should be outsourcing, how to determine what to outsource, and how to find the right people to work for you and how to onboard them. [00:01:14] So to back up the role of delegation is likely something you have mastered or are in the process of mastering at work. It's such a core skillset of growing into a leadership role, but it often gets thrown out the door the moment you become a mom trying to figure out how to translate this very core skillset to managing your own home. [00:01:37] Personally, I know I struggled with this and I know so many other women struggle to really think about how to manage your home like you manage your organization at work, [00:01:46] but why is this so important? It's important because it's an investment in your career, your relationship, your overall wellbeing. It frees up mental space. It allows you to focus on the things that [00:02:00] actually matter to you and are important to you that will create that fulfilling life you dream of. There are so many misconceptions about outsourcing. [00:02:07] You may think it comes off that you don't care about certain things or it makes you less than of a parent, a boss, an employee, you name it. You may think it's too expensive and I do wanna pause here. Yes, there is a level of privilege I. To be able to pay others to do work for you. But if you are working and earning an income, your time quite literally is money. [00:02:29] Being a working mom means your life is a series of trade-offs, so you need to evaluate how you can best treat your time as your most valuable resource, and that will often mean finding help to do tests that don't need to be done by you. This will help your home and your life function at its fullest. [00:02:47] And depending on what level you need to outsource, maybe there are things you're already outsourcing that could be extended. For example, do you have a part-time nanny who does school pickup and watches your kids [00:03:00] after school? Maybe you can extend her hours to have her come an hour earlier to make school lunches or help you prep for dinner. [00:03:07] Or you may be a family that intends to cook a lot, but often you get home, you're too exhausted. You didn't have time to go get the groceries, so you end up ordering takeout. But what if instead you had a system where you had a meal prep service in advance? Maybe you're spending 20% more on those groceries that are now coming fully prepped. [00:03:31] Sized out, ready to be cooked in the form of a home cooked meal, you can then justify that 20% increase because I promise you it's still cheaper than ordering takeout on the regular. [00:03:41] Not to mention the amount of time you're going to save the energy, the presents you're reclaiming are totally worth it. Lastly control. This is probably one of the biggest obstacles to overcome that mentality of I'm the only one who can do it, or by the time I explain it, I could just do it [00:04:00] myself. If you struggle with this at work, which I certainly know I constantly do, you likely are struggling with this at home, and I do want you to remember that it's okay to feel. [00:04:12] Like you want the sense of control somewhere in your life because things often do feel out of control, but getting somebody to help you get to 80% is better than having to do that 80% and you still having to do that additional 20%. So I really do think approaching outsourcing delegation with that 80 20 rule is the way to do more with the time that you do have in a day. [00:04:38] So let's talk about what to outsource. You have to identify the tasks only you can do versus what others can take off your plate. So is that laundry cooking, grocery shopping, making medical appointments, booking a dinner reservation, or planning an upcoming trip, filing a claim, or getting a refund from a service provider, wrapping birthday presents. [00:04:58] The list goes on and [00:05:00] on of those tiny little things that stack up to really overload you mentally. So there are endless possibilities here. You just have to sit down and think about it. Then comes the task of finding people or services to use for outsourcing. There are a couple different categories here. [00:05:16] Of course, there are actual people and within that, that could be kind of your homegrown village, which could be comprised of grandparents, aunts, and uncles, friends. Those are people that are unpaid that you can maybe swap doing carpool with or ask somebody to do you a favor. And then there, of course, the hired people around you that may have started from, you know, day one of having a baby in the form of a nanny to maybe having a cleaner or a house manager. [00:05:46] There are services like meal prep delivery, there are drop off in fold laundry services, and then there are tools like Duck, bill, Fay, that allow you to have virtual [00:06:00] assistants that can help you. [00:06:01] With any of these options, it's super important to create onboarding docs and templates. And quick plug for my chat, GPT episode. If you are not using chat GPT, this is a great place to start thinking through those checklists, those step-by-step guides of how to do things the way you want things to be done. [00:06:24] So I wanna take a moment to reshare a clip from Kim Gea Chapel, who is the Chief Brand Officer at Bobby, who was my very first guest on season one of this podcast. And I wanna talk about her framework of what she calls stacking your bench and how that lightens her mental load and allows her to actually get the time she needs to perform her best at work and at home. [00:06:47] So let's listen in. [00:06:49] On the second baby, I kind of leaned into my parents. We used Uh, some of the people that worked at daycare as babysitters and I trust them and I was so careful with who I would let into my [00:07:00] house and who I would let look after my kids. [00:07:02] Okay. By the time baby three comes around, I am desperate at this point because I have a newborn and if I need a babysitter, it was almost like I needed someone to look after the newborn and I needed someone to look after the two and four year old at that point. And I didn't have a stacked bench of help. [00:07:19] And this is where my secret is. If you live in a town with a university or a college, there are sorority girls up in town they have Facebook groups and they are more than ready to jump in and help look after your kids [00:07:34] There are medical grad students who are. Just looking for that extra money who you can trust and so I would say with the third That's when I learned that like this is not I can't ask my parents. They're getting too old to deal with this Who is on your roster that you can call and it can't just be two or three people because they're never gonna be able to help you on a dime like You need a list and a forum and a chat and a place to go where you can get that [00:08:00] help Whenever you need it, just a group text of people that you trust to be like, I have a group text of ATX girls, ATX babysitters club. [00:08:07] And I'm like, is anybody available on Friday night And I'll get a reply. it has helped me carve out windows of time for myself, for my marriage, for my family. When you get invited to that last minute thing, and if, even if you have a nanny, I think this is the other like misconception is like when you have a nanny and you're paying them for 40 hours a week, guess what? They don't want to help you on the weekend. they're tired and they need to refill their own cup from watching your baby. [00:08:33] And so who are the people that you're going to call? I'm a really firm believer in like stacking your bench with trustworthy people. And it's not one or two. I'm talking like six or seven. [00:08:43] I have this great babysitter that I found that. I try to bring in every other Sunday or whatever it is from eight to 12. And from eight to 12, the kids love her. They have the time of their life. And my husband and I get four hours, four hours, okay. A week to ourselves.[00:09:00] [00:09:00] And that could mean anything from sleeping until noon. If I'm absolutely dog tired, which sometimes happens, it can mean going to brunch with my husband and enjoying our time together. Sometimes I go to a workout and sometimes I just like literally walk around anthropology in a total daze, but it's my time. [00:09:18] And it's the only time of the week that is my time, you know? And so I, I, I've found a way to protect that. It's like my new thing that I'm on my mountain of hire a babysitter for Sunday morning, even if it's just three hours. Yeah. for you to know, even if you have nothing planned Saturday night, like, if you know that that's going to happen for you on Sunday morning, you, you know that a break is coming, the mental, like, relief that you feel from knowing that on Sunday morning you're going to have a break to yourself, it like, gets you through. [00:09:47] a marathon Saturday and three birthday parties and all the things, you know what I mean? [00:09:51] I love the idea of a Sunday morning babysitter. It's something I really urge you to consider [00:10:00] doing if you feel like you never have a moment to catch a breath or really reset for the week. I think a Sunday reset is so critical as working moms to really get diligent and intentional about how we spend every hour of our day in the upcoming week. [00:10:17] And funny enough, one of the reasons we were super interested in the au pair program, which I have an entire episode on, was that flexibility to be able to have an au pair at work a few hours on a Sunday morning, because that Sunday reset has been so. [00:10:33] Important to me and critical in my life, even before I had kids. So I had the forethought to know way before I ever had my first baby, that I wanted my au pair to work on Sunday mornings because I needed that time to set up for the week. So what is a tangible tool that you can put safely away in your toolkit on this topic? [00:10:53] To begin, you need to be able to articulate your needs clearly. So I'm going to help you do [00:11:00] that in this exercise. So take out your phone, take out your computer, get out the old fashioned notebook and pen, and I want you to identify five tasks that are on your to-do list over the next month. Now, ask yourself, does this need to be done by you? [00:11:21] Look at these five tasks now, think about what takes you the most time out of these five tasks. Think through what on this list do you least enjoy doing? What is the most annoying thing on this list? Or what is the thing that takes up the most mental space? Think through what are the things you are doing every single day or every week that you absolutely dread? [00:11:44] Is it school pickup? Is it packing lunches? Is it keeping up with the birthday party schedule that is flooding your parents'? WhatsApp chats? Is it figuring out weekend plans as a family? Is it putting away [00:12:00] laundry? These are of course, just some ideas, but if you sit down, you likely are going to come up with more than five things on this list. [00:12:07] Now I want you to release, control and test a low risk, low commitment tool or service that will address those five tasks. I'm going to give you a couple examples. I use a VA service. The one I have used is called Duck Bill, and the way it works is you describe the task you need, then a chat bot. Ask you a couple questions to inform what the requirements are for them to be able to complete that task. [00:12:36] It then shares transparently what's happening behind the scenes. For example, your agent is calling this restaurant to get a reservation. Then it completes the task based on your feedback. There's also another tool called Faye, which I think I'm going to test next month, and it is a bit of a different. [00:12:55] Package when it comes to this type of service. So with Duck Bill, you don't really [00:13:00] know who your agent is Behind the scenes, they have a team of people that kind of field these incoming tasks, and they use AI to help them complete these tasks more quickly. With Faye, you get assigned one person and you have a certain number of hours per month versus Duck Bull, you have a certain number of tasks per month. [00:13:20] I've heard great things about Faye. I am excited to give it a try. There's also one called Astor that I wanna put on everyone's radar. It is in beta right now. It is on a wait list too, so I haven't had access to it, but it does look very promising, at least from the marketing materials. [00:13:37] So another low risk, low commitment option is engaging a service to help you with certain things. Maybe you go grocery shopping every week because you feel like you need to pick out that banana. I will say I completely flipped my attitude towards this from COVID. I was that person that was like, I could never use Instacart. [00:13:58] I could never do [00:14:00] grocery delivery. I care too much about the produce I pick out, et cetera. outsourcing and using grocery delivery has saved me hours in a week, and I urge you relinquish those rains on groceries. Just use a service, test it out, see how bad the produce really is. You can use Instacart for this. [00:14:22] Your local grocery store probably has a grocery delivery service as well. Or Pro tip. If you are a Costco member, go onto Costco's app. Go to the tab that says Same day, and that is Costco's grocery delivery. It is through their partnership with Instacart, but the prices are significantly cheaper going through their app versus going through the Instacart app. [00:14:45] There are also other services that are more complete kind of meal kits like. Thistle or Sakara, or there is a service called Chef, which is super popular. That's SHEF. Several of my guests from season [00:15:00] one listed that as a service that they use and it's meals that are delivered to you fresh on a weekly basis from local cooks. [00:15:08] There's also laundry services Where they come and pick up your laundry from your house in a bag, and then they bring it back to you, delivered and folded. And then last, if you have a nanny, I want you to think about if there's a better way to manage her time. [00:15:19] Can you reorchestrate the way that she operates in a day to have her do some more things for the home? Can you reset those expectations of what the role and the responsibilities of her job are? I actually have a complete onboarding doc you can use. I have a template that I will link in the show notes. [00:15:39] For how to properly onboard your nanny or reset expectations with her, [00:15:45] or something that's quite popular with people who have kids that are kind of graduating from the full-time nanny stage is to transition your nanny into a house manager, and I have an entire house manager checklist [00:16:00] as well that I will put in the show notes. [00:16:01] You guys, now is the perfect time to start integrating this into your routine. [00:16:06] Do this now before the back to School Madness begins, but if you are listening to this after our release date and back to school has already happened, don't let that stop you from beginning today. I promise you there are only benefits to testing, and once you start, you will not turn back, All right. [00:16:25] Thanks for tuning into this toolkit series on the new Modern Mom podcast. I hope today's tips help simplify the chaos of career and motherhood one tool at a time. If you found this episode helpful, don't forget to subscribe. Give a five star rating and leave a review. My dms are open. I'd love to know what tasks you plan to begin outsourcing and what method you plan on testing. [00:16:47] You can always connect with me on LinkedIn, follow new Modern Mom on Instagram and subscribe to my newsletter. Your support means so much as I continue my mission to help more moms find work life fulfillment. Until next time. [00:17:00]Author
