Becoming brilliantly balanced with Cherylanne Skolnicki

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:00:00]:

I had to find some way to integrate all of the calendars and a running to do list across my life at work and at home. What were all of the things that needed to be done because they were living in my head and I needed them to live someplace that I could see them so I could stop thinking about them. I'm looking at my digital calendar on a screen and I am getting these things in because as I do that, as it flows through my hand, I am dress rehearsing that week and what I see are the pinch points. So this is all me alleviating future stress by having more visibility. So I'm just engineering the to do list right into the plan.

Tiffany Sauder [00:00:40]:

I'm a small town kid born with a big city spirit. I choose to play a lot of awesome roles in life, mom, wife, entrepreneur, CEO, board member, investor, and mentor. 17 years ago, I founded a marketing consultancy and ever since, my husband, junior, and I have been building our careers and our family on the exact same timeline. Yep, that means four kids, three businesses, two careers, all building towards one life we love. When I discovered I could purposefully embrace all of these ands in my life, it unlocked my world. And I want that for you too. Im Tiffany Souder and this is scared confident. I'm so excited to welcome to the podcast today, Cherylanne Skolnicki and Insider.

Tiffany Sauder [00:01:27]:

I've had to say her last name three times. Here we are. But she absolutely embodies the essence of living a life of and she is navigating the intersection between her career, her family life. She's armed with these degrees from Cornell and Emory. Very fancy, but she started her career also in marketing, which I love. I feel like we've got some very similar backgrounds. She spent 15 years as a marketing executive at Procter and Gamble before venturing into entrepreneurship. She's a wife, a mom to three teenagers, an entrepreneur, and a founder of brilliant balance, and is a top 1% podcast host, which is very hard to do.

Tiffany Sauder [00:02:02]:

So congratulations on that.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:02:03]:

Thank you.

Tiffany Sauder [00:02:04]:

And she helps advise and mentor high achieving female leaders. Through her transformative, brilliant, balanced blueprint, Cherylanne teaches women how to make room for themselves in the middle of their very full and busy lives. Her work has been featured on every major network and in publications like Forbes, working mother, and Huffington Post. Cherylanne, welcome to the show.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:02:26]:

Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me.

Tiffany Sauder [00:02:29]:

When I read your bio, what stands out to you as I can't believe that's true.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:02:37]:

That is such a good question. You know, whenever I listen to my bio I think two thoughts simultaneously. I think, one, I should do that every day because what a great way to reflect on some of your accomplishments. And two, like, oh, my God, no one needs to listen to this stuff. It's this very. I'm sure you go through the same experience. Mom of three teenagers is probably the part that I'm like, I cannot believe that is true. Just because I cannot believe how quickly it feels like I ended up in this place.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:03:02]:

Like, it feels like yesterday that I was trying to have children. And to say now, like, there are three teenagers who live in this house seems crazy. The other part is just how many years of professional life have gone by. I mean, 15 years at Procter and gamble in some ways was a blink, and in other ways, it felt like a lifetime. And the fact that I've now had an entrepreneurial life almost that long, it went fast. That's what I have to say about that.

Tiffany Sauder [00:03:28]:

When your little girl self was laying in bed, picturing her future. Very different worlds between this Procter and gamble executive. Lots of infrastructure, lots of clear, not always clear boundaries. But, you know, you've got say and you don't have say, and then you have this entrepreneurial world. Not only entrepreneurial, but in the emerging media space where everybody's figuring it out. What did your little girl self sort of picture? Because those are two very different worlds.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:03:55]:

I think by the time I had to be old enough to start thinking about career and get past, I'm going to be a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader or a teacher, I wanted to be a Fortune 500 CEO. I mean, I think that was the big aspiration when I was. Once I really started to think about what life looked like. So I had big company dreams. I think structure has always appealed to me. That made sense. I could see the ladder. I understood the rules, or at least I felt like I did.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:04:21]:

So I definitely would never have imagined running a business that looks like this one, for sure. Who could have? It didn't exist. And I really was not harboring entrepreneurial dreams. As a little kid, I was much more interested in working for a big company. I don't know why necessarily. I mean, my dad worked for at and t, which was obviously a big company, and that was probably the model. The people that I knew that were professionally successful were working for big companies. I didn't know a lot of entrepreneurs personally, so it wasn't high on my radar.

Tiffany Sauder [00:04:55]:

I think it's so environmental today. We have, like, shark take and all those things. But for our generation, I think it was so environmental.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:05:02]:

Yes. You may have known someone who ran a business, but, yeah. And the businesses people were running, I don't know. Like, we knew the guy who ran, like, the cable company. That was not appealing, made a lot of money, but that did not appeal to me. So, yeah, this business, to me, I, first of all, now I love being a business owner. Like, love it. Boy, it would take a lot to get me to give that up today.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:05:23]:

But what I also like about it is that the work I do within it is so purpose driven for me. So that's a big piece of it. I don't think I would have just started any business. Like, I wouldn't start some company that manufactures kayaks or something. Like, I would really need to be in this kind of space to do this much work, to put the effort in and be persistent and push through all the challenges. I have to really love what I'm doing.

Tiffany Sauder [00:05:46]:

So we're going to move here in a couple of minutes to teaching and learning what it is that you're sharing with these strong female leaders and executives that you work with. But when you look at what brilliant balance is doing, if you were like, to walk by a group of women at a restaurant and they were somebody who'd been through your program, been underneath your mentorship, and they didn't know you were walking by, what do you hope that you would overhear them saying about you? The work that your impact is having in their lives, what would connect with, like, yes, this is my purpose. This is what I want this work to do.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:06:23]:

I think the spirit that I would love to see is unapologetically embracing and celebrating the successes. We start every call with them sharing, like, small and big wins that are happening, where they're really applying the things that they're learning. And it's not something that I think we're conditioned to do broadly. Right. Broadly, if you were, it would come off as bragging. It would sound like, well, who am I to share this thing? So I really love hearing that insider client community. I would love it to see them continuing to do that outside in the real world and the conversation being navigated seamlessly between, I think, two pairs of dualities. One is what's going on with them at work and what's going on with them in their life outside of work.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:07:08]:

That the fluidity of being able to talk about both and also the highs and the lows, something that we do not have a performative community inside of brilliant balance. And that's very much on purpose. Like, it is equally important to say, this is what I'm struggling with. This is what's not working. This is this big mess I'm trying to untangle. And I don't think we do enough of that in a way, that's solutions focused in our lives broadly. So if I. You know, if I heard a conversation where people are sharing honestly and leaning into offering up solutions and ideas in an ear with no judgment, I think that's the dynamic we're looking for.

Tiffany Sauder [00:07:47]:

Say it again. You said unapologetic ownership. I think of, like.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:07:51]:

Yeah. Of everything that they're up to. Right. That it's not holding back or hiding or diminishing an accomplishment, because that's so much of what I think we do when we're around a group of people that we either think we're going to. We're going to shine too brightly, and then they're going to feel diminished. I think that's something that I see happen a lot in the world, and I love it, again, when they get to stand in their brilliance and talk about the cool things that they're doing. Like, I think we should all get to celebrate those things.

Tiffany Sauder [00:08:20]:

Was that learned for you personally? Is that why you see it so acutely?

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:08:24]:

Yeah, I think the conditioning is not to do that. I mean, at least my conditioning was not to do that. You know, don't raise your hand too often. Don't always be the one with the answer. Don't talk about your grades, don't talk about all of that. Just really hold it back because it could upset other people and you want them to like you. Liking you is much more important than sharing those things broadly.

Tiffany Sauder [00:08:45]:

How do you do it in your own life? Or, like, even with your teenage kids? Like, how do you bring that into your household? Because standing out to some teenagers is attractive. But I'm finding in my house, we have 15 and almost 13 year old, and they feel very differently about standing out, for sure.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:09:05]:

Yeah, mine also do. So mine are 1916 and 13.

Tiffany Sauder [00:09:09]:

Okay. Yeah.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:09:10]:

And they have very different personal philosophies about that, about the desire to fit in versus the desire to stand out. So I don't even know that. I think that sharing our accomplishments diminishes fitting in. Like, it's really, who do you want to fit in with? Right. If you're with a group of people back to this kind of imaginary scenario where I run into them at lunch, I would hope that people at their table that they've sort of sorted to a peer group who they can be authentically themselves with and where those kinds of accomplishments are not. They don't make anybody feel bad. They're just what they are. And I think it's the same in school.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:09:45]:

If you're running around with a group of people who can talk openly about how well they're doing academically or athletically or artistically, then it's a safe place to do that versus it being competitive and scarcity minded. But it takes time and practice. And by the way, it doesn't always work. Sometimes people don't love it.

Tiffany Sauder [00:10:03]:

Yeah, it's so true. I'm in a peer group through my CEO title with YPO, and one of the things that we talk about is sharing your top 5%. And it was startling to me to see, when you're in a leadership role, financial environment is different. The risk you're taking is different. The way that you're paid sometimes is different. I was startled to see that it was true. The top 5% of my life was pretty unpublished, actually. And to see that those people were secure enough in their own journeys that they sought, like you say, had an abundant mindset that believed those things were available to them, too, and had the love for me to be able to celebrate when that happened for me, but not them yet.

Tiffany Sauder [00:10:48]:

It was like a level of security, actually, that I hadn't seen. It was interesting. So my body is feeling what you're talking about.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:10:57]:

I think the farther up we move in our careers and in life, it's rarefied air is the phrase I'm always using. There just aren't as many people who are having that experience. And so finding them becomes a little more challenging. And then reading the room, right. Knowing which rooms is it safe to share those kinds of accomplishments or even desires in without being laughed at, without being dismissed, without being sort of excluded from the group? Because ultimately, we do still care so much about belonging. So I think that's why it's so important to be careful about with whom we share what cause. Again, I don't think broadly. All of these messages land as well.

Tiffany Sauder [00:11:37]:

I'm seeing a parallel, too, in this just pursuit of your own brilliance and confidence in your talents. And like, when you're in middle school, it's hard to break from the pack for social reasons. But actually, when you're, like, 32, it's also hard to break from the pack for social reasons. It looks a little different because you're not all in the same building, on the same bus, sitting in the same seats, but you kind of are the friends that you have, the places you're used to going together, the clubhouse or church or the gym, and that courage of breaking from the pack and feeling alone and a sense of separation and fear and all those things. It actually is a muscle that carries you through life. I'm just like, seeing this parallel, actually, right now as we're talking. So I don't know any thoughts on that, and then we can jump into the things.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:12:27]:

But yeah, and I think really, we're probably going to get into social media at some point today because it's unavoidable. And I think that's another place where this plays out like we do become, to some extent, we start buying the same things we see other people buying. We're doing things in our homes because we now have visibility to what everyone else is doing. So we've expanded the middle school construct into adulthood because we have a level of visibility we may not have had. And again, I'm not sure that need for belonging ever goes away. It doesn't. It just becomes more important to say, this is maybe my insight on it. If you're in a circle where you can't bring the full expression of what you called your top 5%, you might not be in the right circle.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:13:07]:

It might be important to say, can I expand this circle in a way where that part of me is also safe and not just the part of me that's going to run in the middle, but then I can bring that full expression of myself in. And I do think there's a collective of women who are sadly, really still tamping that down and holding that back.

Tiffany Sauder [00:13:27]:

Well, let's start actually with. End with this social media. I was, like, doing some research on Cherylanne, and I was like, I love these words. Let's talk about this. So let's just step into this learn segment, and you use the words a content diet. And maybe I live in a hole and other people are like, oh, yeah, I've totally heard these words before, but I had not heard that language together. And so I would love to learn what you mean by that, and then I can talk about why it spoke to me so clearly. But let's talk about this idea of a content diet.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:13:57]:

Yes. So the origin of this was that a woman who I was coaching said that she had a planner or something that asked her to track what are you consuming? And that sparked this discussion about the content that we are consuming, which I referred to as the content diet in that podcast episode. And I had everyone start thinking about what are you consuming and what is the impact of it? And this was deeply resonant to me, because early in my coaching career, I was really focused on wellness. And we talked so much about how you are, what you eat, the quality of the food, and the nutrient value of the food that you're consuming really does affect who you are, right. It affects your skin and your hair and energetically, how you feel. And that turns over a lot more rapidly than we think. So we're actually, like, reconstructing our bodies from the inside out regularly. And it started occurring to me that, but so, too, with content, because if you think about how unintentional, generally speaking, we have become about the content that we consume, it's out of control.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:15:03]:

We are just these receptors to whatever is being fed to us, and it's not working. We're losing the ability to say, what do I want to read? What do I want to listen to? What do I want to learn more about? And instead, we're just kind of in this receptacle status, where whatever comes across our feed is what we're reading. Also, we're reading very short form content, right. And watching very short form content. So as the algorithms have moved to 15 2nd reels and the TikTok world that we're living in, our attention spans are going down, so we don't even have depth to the perspectives that we're getting. So I started personally paying attention to how much of it was an echo chamber. I don't remember if I said this in that episode, Tiffany, but I gathered all my family's phones one day, the five of us, and just scrolled through our individual Instagram feeds. Well, you may as well be in five different worlds, universes.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:15:57]:

What my 16 year old son is being fed versus my 13 year old daughter versus my husband myself, we are not seeing the same stuff. We are not getting the same perspective, which means we are potentially moving in very different directions, because what we think about is what we think about, and it can continue to move us further apart. Being mindful of both the duration of the content. Are we balancing what I was calling snackable content, like little short form snippets with full meals, like things that we can really sink our teeth into? Are we even aware of the sources of the content that we have? What is it influencing us to do? Are we clear on how our perspective is being shaped by what we're. So that was the whole kind of essence of the episode. And I think if we look at it over time and we're like, if I'm not feeling very good, if I'm in a big self criticism cycle or an envy cycle or if I'm feeling really pessimistic or fearful, what is the impact that the content may be having? I'm not sure. We're always linking up the cause and effect.

Tiffany Sauder [00:16:56]:

I think this is amazing. I love how you connected it to the physical. What we see us eating, it's like we actually have to physically chew that, but we are doing that same frickin thing. And I think about, yeah, the algorithm on Instagram is what's feeding us what we're gonna learn about next. Even Spotify playlist. You don't even have to know artists anymore. You just say, like, the Daily jam or whatever the words are. Yeah, I don't know what it's going to be.

Tiffany Sauder [00:17:22]:

And it's like, unbelievable how little selection you have to make in what your mind is becoming. I shared with Cherylanne before we talked about this. I was like, I think this came up into the universe for me because I'm paying so much attention to my own life. I have worked really hard to physically clear space for time and move things off, delegate it, outsource all the things that you do. And I'm so disappointed in my behavior in that time that I've created for myself my high achieving, high quick start, desired for short term tasks and stuff to get done. I'm just picking up my phone and scrolling through Instagram, scrolling through LinkedIn, see who commented what's happening? And I'm filling it with this reactive vocabulary of behavior, which is like the antithesis of everything I want to become. And so I was just getting pissed at my inability to stop my impulses. I was like, I got to get the Doritos out of the house.

Tiffany Sauder [00:18:20]:

And so I took social media off my phone. If I want to stop eating junk food, I don't have that much of it in my house. And so I was like, this is mental junk food for me right now. I do not have control for some reason, in a way that is not again. And I think it's because I'm not busy with things I've chosen, with meetings I've been invited to. Does that make sense?

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:18:41]:

Like, well, yes, but to dig for some self compassion here, I think it is also absolutely engineered. I'm going to give you a hug. I mean, I think it is absolutely engineered to be impossible to put down.

Tiffany Sauder [00:18:54]:

Right.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:18:54]:

The reason no one can put down the Doritos is because they're engineered to literally tantalize your taste buds for the next one. Right. Social media is the most engineered algorithm we possibly could be put. I mean, we are little lab rats doing very predictable things that we are being trained to do. So I think it's absolutely right to say, like, I'm going to take a stand and I'm going to control what I can control, but with the compassion that this is not a failing of willpower, this is absolutely an engineered mechanism to keep us scrolling and to keep us going back. I mean, you look at the data I've seen as it's really, they studied the gambling industry and looked at slot machine design and said, we are going to make this function like a slot machine. And that data is scary when you really dig a little deeper into how are we subject to our own human behavioral tendencies. I don't think we're going to overcome that.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:19:48]:

But the kind of stand you're taking by saying, can I put a barrier between me and even picking it up, can I break the habit of that being the first thing I do when I'm the slightest bit bored or understimulated? And when we're addicted to that level of stimulation and we do need a break from something we're doing that's heavy, right? You're doing a big strategy project or you're working on something creative. We do need a break, but that may not be the break we necessarily want to take.

Tiffany Sauder [00:20:13]:

Totally. And I'm going to go back to those word diet because again, when you're like, in a season of wanting to get your body to a new place, a new level of fitness, you oftentimes go into a place of restriction to kind of like, retrain your taste buds, retrain your behaviors, retrain your habits, retrain the pathways. So that feels normal to live in a slightly looser environment. And I think that's what I'm doing right now with social media is like, I generally don't hate it. I just don't have tools in this environment where I'm at right now. So I have to get into this restrictive mode. But like a diet, I could decide that it gets 3% of my time, 5% of my time. Like, I get to pick that.

Tiffany Sauder [00:20:56]:

And I just love that analogy. Word picture works very well for my brain, so.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:21:01]:

And the fun, I mean, I think the key that people who have done this with me, the success model seems to be having something that you do want to, with intention, consume as content. So, like, long form content is for me very enriching. I want to sit down and read a full article that somebody who is a great writer wrote about a topic I care about. So I keep the New York Times app on my phone because I don't consider it's not scrolling content. It's something I'm going have to really sit with. So whatever your jam is, you know, books that are downloaded on my Kindle that I want to read and if that's close by, I'm more likely to maybe read a piece of a chapter versus again, scrolling.

Tiffany Sauder [00:21:42]:

Yeah. Love it, love it, love it. Okay, so let's move into. You have lots of ands in your life and so I know you have a very high functioning environment and so would love to have you share and you're like calendaring to do getting. You've got one and a half drivers. Can your 16 year old drive yet?

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:22:01]:

Yes.

Tiffany Sauder [00:22:02]:

Okay. I don't know what the laws are in Ohio. It takes a hot minute. Here in Indiana, I'm like, we could drive the family to Florida when we turn 16 in a day. You know what I mean? It's a little different now.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:22:15]:

Yes, I do have two drivers now and that is a game changer.

Tiffany Sauder [00:22:18]:

Yes. So I'm getting close to that track on the train, but we're not quite there yet. So how does your family function? How do you operate this kind of piece? As the chief operating officer of your household, how does your calendar to do system work? I would love to learn from you and share with my listeners what it is that you do.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:22:35]:

Yeah, it's so interesting. We were talking before we were recording about how I'm an Enneagram three. So are you. And as Enneagram threes, I think we see patterns and look for efficiency really naturally. So I would start this by saying I am naturally, like at baseline, organically, a very organized human. I was born that way. I think I organized things when I was five years old and probably had a daily planner. So this is very natural for me.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:23:04]:

My real inflection point was when I started to manage not one person's calendar in life, but five. My husband would, if he were sitting here today, say he is not particularly organized or a planner. My three children were children right when this all started. And so I think the complexity of managing a work life, my husband's work life, our two individual lives, our life together, the three kids schedule, you just hit a breaking point of complexity. And so I had to amp up the type of system I was running at that inflection point. And I think when we miss that, a lot of us are just breaking under the weight of how am I supposed to keep up with this brief sidebar we are also living in an unprecedented era of the activities of children. Period, full stop. The distances we are driving them to participate in their activities, the frequency, number of times per week or duration, distance from home that they're in, even a practice, how far away their schools are, the expectations on them of how busy it's just exploding.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:24:07]:

And as women who want to be good mothers as much as we want to be good business owners or employees, we feel responsible to keep them up with that level of scheduling. So there's a bit of unreasonableness at play here, and I think that's a separate discussion for a separate time, but really important that one of the things making this so challenging is just the sheer quantity of things we're trying to keep up with. What I basically learned was that I had to find some way to integrate all of the calendars and a running to do list across my life, at work and at home, what were all of the things that needed to be done, because they were living in my head, and I needed them to live someplace that I could see them so I could stop thinking about them. I don't know what your memory is like. I do not trust mine with that level of complexity. So I trust the system way more than I trust my memory. And it started early days. This was a very simple, like, spreadsheet with a bunch of tasks in it.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:25:08]:

And I was just like, I had to brain dump this stuff and be able to get it into some kind of an order and figure out who's doing what. It's grown now, you know, I use a task management system, other people do, but I think it still works in a spreadsheet at a base level. And what's often not happening is we hit our calendar appointments right, we know where we need to be or where a kid needs to be. And so if it's on the calendar, we're pretty good at getting people where they need to go. Sometimes it's a little, depending on how organized someone is, a little crazy. But what doesn't always get done are especially the non urgent to do list items right, the tasks. And so finding a way to integrate those tasks back into the calendar so we know when they're going to get done really is kind of the epicenter for me. So I run my life with a three part system, a digital calendar, an integrated to do list, and a at a glance paper version of my week.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:26:02]:

And that's rare today. I think a lot of people are fully digital. I really like having mission control in front of me. This is I can jot still. I'm old, right? I can jot faster with a pencil. Then I can get it into a calendar. So the calendars for long range planning and repetitive appointments and kids sports schedules, but in front of me for the week incorporates this intersection of my to do list and my calendar into what am I actually going to do?

Tiffany Sauder [00:26:28]:

So do you, like, print off the digital calendar and that? I just, like silly, practical, but, like, I don't.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:26:35]:

I hand write it.

Tiffany Sauder [00:26:36]:

You write it twice. So, like, yes.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:26:38]:

On purpose. Okay, tell me now, that sounds inefficient, right?

Tiffany Sauder [00:26:41]:

I know. I'm listening to you because you're a three and you're ruled by efficiency, inefficiency.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:26:46]:

So here's why. It's dress rehearsal for the week, okay? So on Fridays, typically Fridays, I get out the next ten days, like Saturday, to the following Sunday, a full. I guess it's nine days. I look at that chunk of time, and I am translating by hand with my pencil. I live with these pencils everywhere. I'm looking at my digital calendar on a screen, and I am getting these things in because as I do that, as it flows through my hand, I am dress rehearsing that week, and what I see are the pinch points. I go, that's not going to work. And if I'm looking at it, it's just sort of blurs.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:27:20]:

It all fits. There's no overlapping boxes on my calendar. So once I start really trying to translate it in. And also, things will pop into my mind, like pre work and prep. Oh, that. I don't have that done for. I need to get this document together. We need a gift for that.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:27:34]:

Those things will pop up if I am mentally rehearsing that week. So it actually is purposeful, and then at the end of that week, you can just throw that thing away and start over again. It's not like I don't need a big binder.

Tiffany Sauder [00:27:45]:

Do you have, like, a big pad of paper? I remember being, like, very literal printable.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:27:49]:

We have a printable inside of brilliant bounds. But when I first started this, I did it with, literally a spiral bound notebook. I would just write the week out, and it did not need to be fancy. But now we have a little printable. Very simple, just the essentials. But that mission control in front of me is. That is my personal system that works the best because it's just a constant visual reminder.

Tiffany Sauder [00:28:10]:

Yeah, I like the mental. And the two weekends is actually pretty smart, too, because, darn it, if you can't see around the corner, you could get screwed. You could need to make lasagna for 60 and not know about it.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:28:22]:

That's why. And that's what it started with. It was like the birthday party craziness with young kids was like, oh, my God, that's next weekend. But if I don't do it this week, I'm going to be in a pinch. I don't like to be under that kind of stress. So this is all me alleviating future stress by having more visibility. And people ask this all the time. Of course things change.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:28:42]:

Of course they do. So when a new thing pops on that calendar, of course I'm aware of it. Of course I have the digital calendar open. But it is. I've made a plan that includes who's driving who, where, who's picking who up. Am I in a carpool? Is that straightened out with the other people involved? If I have to bring things to your point, the lasagna, like that's on there. So I'm just engineering the to do list right into the plan. I put all this together.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:29:08]:

If your listeners want to take a look at it, it's at my website. So brilliant dash balance.com calendar we have. It's a real simple system. They're welcome to take a look if they want to get the tools in their hands.

Tiffany Sauder [00:29:19]:

Okay. So do you also put, like, your workouts on there? Like, this is what time I need to get up this day. This is that kind of stuff.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:29:25]:

So that's a great nuanced question. This is what I tell people. If you already know that you are going to get up and work out, and I've worked out almost every day for my whole adult life. Right. It is just in what I do. So I don't need a reminder that I'm going to do that. Okay. So my written calendar actually starts at 08:00 a.m.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:29:45]:

unless there's something crazy going on in the morning because I kind of know what's going to happen between the time I get up and eight. And that includes my workout. The only time it would go on my personal plan is if I was meeting someone to do something out of the ordinary. You know, if I'm going to meet a friend to walk or whatever. If you are a new exerciser and you are trying to build that habit, yes, it goes on the plan because otherwise you're going to forget about it. But if it's anything I don't put brush my teeth on my plan because I know I'm going to do that. Right. So anything that's really already going to happen because it's habitualized, does not have to go on there.

Tiffany Sauder [00:30:19]:

So in my world, I know I'm going to work out most mornings I would say I'm not an every morning person, but I have a swimmer. So some days I go to the gym and her schedule is not the same every week. Some mornings I drive her to school. She's going to be there about 550 in the morning. And then I'll, like, run in town because there's streetlights and there's not, like, where I live. That is how I have to surgically solve for that. Like, where am I going to find that 45 minutes?

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:30:45]:

And I think that's huge. If you. I call it a floating workout. People who do floating workouts, meaning it's going to fit where it fits, then getting it on there. So, you know, because it's different every day can be very powerful. I know I'm going to walk while she's on the soccer field. I know I'm going to swim while, you know, I think that's great. Any errands that you're going to run because you're already going to be in that part of town and you know, you need to get there.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:31:08]:

I think that's great. To get on the plan, special things that have to happen in an evening. I mean, I have clients who are putting down, like, I wash my hair twice a week and it's on the calendar. I know which nights I have to make time because I will literally forget.

Tiffany Sauder [00:31:21]:

Yeah.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:31:22]:

So whatever we need the reminders for, that's what goes on the mission control paper plan.

Tiffany Sauder [00:31:27]:

I love that. I think I might try this Friday. I was sort of like, really? You're writing down things you already know, but I can see it'd be really helpful. I do it every night for the next day. Like, really look at every minute. But I would say there's some 918 pm text messages that go screaming out, sure.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:31:45]:

And it needs a Zhuzh looking at it every evening to just say, like, did anything shift? Did I not finish something that now crap? I gotta get up and get this handled. For sure. But the once a week master plan, little daily review. So you touch it up based on what's happening. It calms our nervous system that there are not surprises lurking. That didn't have to be surprises. Right. We get enough surprises so the ones that don't have to be, we can keep out of there.

Tiffany Sauder [00:32:11]:

Yeah. What do you do for food? Are you food planner, prepper? Do you, like, say, for yourself. These are going to be the nights I've got some time to, I say, make a fresh meal versus some version of leftovers and rerolling a rotisserie chicken and tortillas and calling it enchiladas.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:32:26]:

Yes, I. Look, there is no right way to do this. One thing I've learned from 15 years of working with women at this life stage is if you love to cook, you're going to find a time to do it. If you don't love to cook, you're never going to find a time to do it. So we don't want to fight our nature. I do love to cook. I make a plan because I don't want to go to the grocery store more than once or order groceries more than once a week. So I do sketch out what is the dinner plan.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:32:53]:

And the benefit of doing that on Fridays is I am then taking into account the fact that, oh, we're going to be sitting at a track meet from 04:00 p.m. till 09:00 p.m. so guess who's not home to make a dinner. So because I have visibility to that, I can fill in what are people going to eat and how is it going to get to them under these different circumstances we might be facing? And then I can make one grocery list and get one round of groceries and I'm set for everything that's going to happen that week.

Tiffany Sauder [00:33:20]:

Yeah, I love that. One of the things I talk about is a weekly family meeting. It's a big part of our structure, and I find food when the, if the kids get home from practice, dropped off from carpool, I'm not there, haven't made something. They're like, texting me what to eat. And so one of the pressure we relieved is, like, me telling them on Tuesday, you're going to get dropped off. I'm going to be a track meet or whatever the thing is, and I won't get home till eight. This is what will be in the fridge for you to heat up or whatever. It was adorable how they felt loved and seen and cared for.

Tiffany Sauder [00:33:49]:

And it was like I was home because they weren't, like, opening the freezer drawer to a bunch of scary burritos.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:33:57]:

Yeah. And it sounds so simple. But what's underpinning everything you and I have just talked about is intentionality. Having an intention to say, we're going to get together once a week and I'm going to communicate this with you. Them knowing, like, I can count on mom that she's going to tell me that she's thought about the fact that I need to eat and that there's food there, so. And again, there's not a. Right. I mean, I think if you want to put a frozen pizza, and that's what it is.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:34:19]:

That's what it is. But whatever we're going to have for them, just not feeling stressed of. I don't have a way to feed these kids, or I feel like I dropped the ball on that. You know, the intentionality is that that's the game changer.

Tiffany Sauder [00:34:31]:

Yeah, I love that. And it is true. Even if I tell them it's a frozen pizza, they don't care. I think I also forget they've made decisions all day at school and they are our kids and they're kind of ready to be taken care of. Yes. It's simple. It's like, can't you see there's ham and make a sandwich? Like, I don't know. Do I have to tell you about that? I think we do that, but I think it's just their home and they just want to be a kid.

Tiffany Sauder [00:34:54]:

They just want me to tell them what they should eat. So it's really sweet. Even the big ones, huh?

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:35:01]:

Yes. Yes. For sure.

Tiffany Sauder [00:35:04]:

Yes. I love it. Well, thanks for sharing. That's awesome. I'm going to test this Friday thing for six weeks. I always say it takes me six weeks to figure out if I like something or not, but I like it. I like it a lot. Okay, so let's part with this.

Tiffany Sauder [00:35:15]:

Cherylanne, if we can. You joke that you've been married basically forever, which is actually an amazing, amazing accomplishment. So is there a tip between you and your husband or something that you guys are intentional about that you can share with my busy two career families?

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:35:32]:

So I said this earlier. My husband and I are arguably polar opposites. Like wired so differently in terms of how we see the world. He is super spontaneous. I am very planned. I would love to stick to my plan. He would love to throw it out the window. That's where we're very aware of that level of difference and of the conflict that it can cause.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:35:53]:

Also, I am much more perfectionistic. Like, my standard of care, the level of, like, attention to detail is higher. He is much more like, this will be fine. I can roll with it. And that's a good grounding for me day in and day out. So one of the things that we do that I think I have seen be helpful with other women I've shared this with is sort of a riff on the 80 20 principle, where we, you know, for a long time, I was upset of, you didn't make the bed this way or you didn't clean the sink this way or you didn't, whatever. Like, there was a standard I wanted something done to, and he was never going to hit it. And the flip for me was if I could be grateful that he did the first 80% of that task, which basically was 100% of his standard.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:36:35]:

It just wasn't the last 20 of mine. It was a time savings to just come in and do the final little adjustment or take the spots off the sink handle or whatever it was. So that has been a real shifting that to gratitude of like, oh, you did the heavy lift on, you made an effort here, you did part of it, and. And he's never going to even see the adjustment when I can make the final adjustment. So I think it's important in both ways. He doesn't get his feelings hurt if I'm adjusting it by being like, oh, you're saying I'm doing it wrong. And I don't get upset that he didn't do it my way because there's a. I'm happy to come in and finish the pillows on the bed or whatever it is.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:37:12]:

So the 80 20 approach there has been very helpful in other things we share as well. If we're going to make a meal to take somewhere, he is never going to make that meal, but he will happily go to the store to get the things we need. And so, again, splitting, dividing a vertical, instead of him trying to do the whole thing or me being mad that he's not, has been very helpful.

Tiffany Sauder [00:37:30]:

Ah, that is a very generous way of seeing your partner in who they are. I think as you get older, you're like, there are things he has to accept about me that I just. I, like, physically can't change about the way God made me. And I need you to love that part, too. And so I love that perspective. I think that's awesome. Yeah, it's not generous to them when we're, like, just nagging on the 20%. Yeah, it's no good, so.

Tiffany Sauder [00:37:52]:

Well, Cherylanne, thank you for the work that you do with women and so graciously sharing some tools and life tips with the Scared Confident audience. I appreciate it so much. Thanks for coming on.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:38:02]:

Thanks for having me.

Tiffany Sauder [00:38:03]:

And we'll have links to everything. If you want to listen to Cherylanne’s show and get access to her calendar tool, we will be sure to put all that in show notes as well. So thanks, Cherylanne.

Cherylanne Skolnicki [00:38:12]:

Thank you.

Tiffany Sauder [00:38:14]:

Thank you for joining me on another episode of Scared Confident. Until next time, keep telling fear. You will not decide what happens in my life. I will.

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