Prioritization: The Key to Becoming a Successful Mompreneur

You’re starting to embark on the wild ride of entrepreneurship as a Mom.

However, you’re feeling a bit stuck and confused. Now what?

The jumble of to-dos when starting a business endeavor can be dizzying.

Prioritization of these tasks is essential for moving you forward.

Knowing what comes first and what comes after and following that chain will let you know when you’re making progress or when you’re taking detours.

As a mom, you’re familiar with the concept of prioritization. You utilize this fundamental skill each and every day. But here’s how to achieve it in your entrepreneurship journey as well:

Why It’s Important To List And Sort Through Your Goals:

1. Clarity:

In some ways, the goals are clear: start a business, make sales, be a boss. See also: Be an awesome mom and spouse. Crush it at life, generally.

But how will you actually go about achieving those things? You can’t do everything at once. What things will you do first?

Setting goals accordingly, from the smallest milestones to the bigger-picture achievements, and prioritizing accordingly will help keep you focused, making sure you stay on track for doing the things you want to do.

2. Efficiency:

Let’s do an example with the goal to start a YouTube career. Tell me which side of the table is more likely to actually get someone to achieving this goal:

Unclear Planning	Prioritization & Planning
Start a YouTube Career	Research what you can about starting and growing a YouTube channel
	Decide your niche
	Study competitors in same niche on YouTube
	Research equipment and services for good Impressions and fast growth
	Make and edit videos
	Publish videos and manage the account

Do you see the clear winner here?

Breaking a goal into tiny steps and prioritizing which steps to take first is more likely to get you someone than a pie-in-the-sky daydream. Prioritization is a recurring skill: Don’t be afraid to slash to-dos that won’t move the needle on your project.

3. Measure Progress

While planning can also help you measure progress, how do you measure the progress of those smaller but also important tasks?

That’s what makes prioritization so important, especially as a Mom boss.

You can celebrate small wins, and while you may not have made progress on the big scale, clearing tasks according to priority will remind you that you’re not as stagnant as you thought. Celebrating small wins will keep you motivated to keep at it.

By measuring your progress, you can delete tasks you’ve done, and make adjustments, effectively managing your time. 

4. Flexibility

As much as I love efficiency and crossing off my to-dos, I definitely acknowledge the need for rest and recuperation. Schedule in your rest if you need to…. (for me, that’s baking something interesting on a Saturday morning!)

I’m not kidding though– you know how things get overwhelming when you have so much to do, and you start feeling burnout?

Well, by deciding which things are more important, which things require immediate attention, and which things can wait, you can give your schedule some predictable amounts of wiggle room, stay on track, and save yourself from feeling overwhelmed. (Call it a self-care tip, because heavens know us mothers need our self-care ;))

How To Prioritize As A Busy Mom

So, I’m done telling you why you should prioritize, the next question is how?

There’s no one-size-fits-all, but I know of a general guide that works for most situations.

1. Prioritize According To Values:

Incorporate values check from time to time. This is where you decide the importance of each aspect of your life in its current season. Is it your family time? Personal growth? Financial growth? Or career growth?

These can shift in degrees of urgency based on your life situation. It’s okay to reevaluate these.

2. Evaluate Timeframes:

Separate your goals according to their timeframes: short term, mid term, and long term. 

Short term tasks require immediate attention, followed by the mid term and then long term. If they all align towards the same end, better for you– you’ll be up and running before you know it!

Here’s how that can work. Say you want to be a Mompreneur. Your priority list could look like this;

• Learn a skill or trade (short term + immediate)
• Launch a new product line (mid-term + stepping stone)
• Own a successful business (long term + end goal)

3. Consider Effort Vs Impact:

I say this from my own learning experiences: Carefully consider how much effort you’d need to put in to realize each goal, whether long-term or short-term. 

It’s so easy to get derailed by the next attractive goal. It not only slows you down, but sometimes you have to start the goal afresh.

Don’t be misled thinking you’d need to put in some effort and the rest will come easy. This is not the case in business or in any other area of life. One thing is for sure: When you’re fully invested, you’ll definitely reap returns.

You can prioritize low-effort goals with high impact (like goals focused on your wellbeing or personal growth), over high-impact goals if it’s simply not in the cards for you and your family right now (like opening a business, owning your own house, etc.,).

4. Resource Availability:

To start a business, you’ll either need substantial time or money to get things up and running.

Consider the resources (time, energy, money) required to achieve each goal and prioritize accordingly. 

Focus on more realistic goals that are easier to complete with your current resources and level of commitment and move on from there.

5. Strategic Planning + Alignment Check:

Once you start the momentum of checking off tasks toward your goal, you can start getting strategic.

When you start completing the tasks that have the greatest return on investment, you create leverage. Continuing to use leverage creates a flywheel that keeps your momentum going.

For the strongest effect, prioritize goals that support your long-term growth. 

6. Flexibility and Balance:

With all of that said, we as moms have to stay flexible, and balance our short-, mid-, and long-term goals so that we’re making good progress on our business goals without neglecting important family goals. 

Bonus – Use A Prioritization Framework:

If all the above still feels a teeny bit overwhelming, lean on these tried-and-true model for prioritization:

Prioritization frameworks:

• The Kano Model if you’re a business. 
• The Eisenhower Matrix or MoSCoW method for categorizing based on urgency and importance.
• The Value Vs Effort Framework to prioritize According to the ROI each task will provide based on effort used.
• The RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Efforts) Framework if you have your own production line-up. 

Let’s Go, Ladies!

That’s the short version of it.

Prioritization is a skill I work on daily. I hope that through this advice, you’re more confident about being juggling the needs of being a stay-at-home mom, a working mom, or a Mompreneur. 

You could also listen in on my podcast, A (Mostly) Stay-at-Home Mom, where I share weekly tips for busy moms earning or looking to earn a side income. Find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more!

Until next time!