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BNB 15 | Successful Mompreneur

Badass Is The New Black (Season 3) Episode #15 Becoming A Successful Mompreneur: Brand, Process, And Automation Tips With Desiree Bonau

automation and time-saving business strategies Mar 12, 2022

Being a mom is a busy job in itself, but being one doesn’t mean you have to give up on your dream to build the business that you love. But how do you become a successful mompreneur without getting overwhelmed by the clashing demands of motherhood and entrepreneurship? In this episode, Krissy Chin dives deep with one of her Build a Blissful Business students, the hotelier and aromatherapist Desiree Bonau. Among other things, Desiree talks about finding clarity in your brand, processes and automation to help you save time. This episode is jam-packed with golden nuggets. Join in and pick some!

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Becoming A Successful Mompreneur: Brand, Process, And Automation Tips With Desiree Bonau

Mompreneur/Metaphysical & Clinical Aromatherapist 

I'm here with one of my Buildup A Blissful Business students. We chat about being a mom while doing this whole entrepreneurial thing, finding clarity in your brand, adding processes and automation to your business to help you save time because if you're anything like us, you are busy. You have a lot going on, but you have dreams and you have goals to have a successful business, and you can have it. This episode is jam-packed with golden nuggets. Let's dive in. 

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Let’s welcome Desiree, a hotelier turned expat wife, turned entrepreneur. She refused to lose her identity after becoming a mom. She was determined to continue celebrating her own success and chasing her own dreams. All while being able to stay home and raise her little boy and moving countries every two years. She found her home in a network marketing company that is close to her heart. However, she always knew she wanted to do more. Desiree, thank you for being here. I'm super excited that we finally connected. 

Thank you so much for having me on. I'm excited too. 

I'm in Atlanta, Georgia. You're in Japan? 

I'm in Kyoto, Japan. That's why it was a bit tough to find a good time for us because we're fourteen hours apart. 

We do what we have to do to make things work because this is the cool part about doing business online is that we get to connect with people all over the world. Desiree is a student of mine. We probably got connected through Gro Work Space, which is my other brand in business. You followed me over to my personal brand. When I launched the Build A Blissful Business course, you were like, “I'm in, I want to do this.” We're going to hear a little bit about your journey through that, your experience through that, how your business has evolved since then, what you're working on. We're going to give some tips and advice to other people who are maybe at the stage that you were when you took that course and where you are now. It's going to be a good conversation. Let's dive with a little bit about your background. We did an intro and so they got a gist of it, but more on how you got to where you are now?

Done is better than perfect.  

First of all, we're a multicultural family. I'm half German, half Indonesian, and married to my Spanish husband. We were both in the hotel industry. I was working in hotel for more than fifteen years. I always had my own career, my own path. Being a hotelier, we do tend to move quite a lot. We both moved every two years. We met when we were both in Shanghai, China and then kept moving in parallel with each other until we came to a point where this is not feasible. It's not working anymore because one person will have to move. I can only follow 3 or 6 months later because I'm in my own work and contract. I said, “If we want to take these relationships seriously, this is how it’s going to work.” We want to start a family so I decided, “That's it. I'm going to quit this industry. I'm going to quit my job,” which was extremely hard for me because I loved what I do. I love the industry. I had a big team and a lot of responsibility. I said, “This is more important for me.” I moved and then I'm like, “What am I doing?” 

I was this expat wife hanging out, watching him doing all these hotel openings and like, “No, that's not me. I need to do something.” I started using essential oils before already. I decided, “I love doing that and sharing that anyway.” That became my business. That was amazing. It’s building something up for me completely accidental, but I do not have much to do on that island we were living at. I always felt I had to validate myself somehow. In between, I set up my own company, which still had to do with hoteliers. I was doing an executive search. I was still doing copywriting for the luxury hotel industry. I was like, “I needed to validate.” Whenever someone asked me, “Des, what do you do?” They all expect me to be like, “I’m an expat wife, I’m traveling with my husband.” 

I was like, “I have my own company. This is what I'm doing.” I felt this heavy need to validate that I'm doing something successful on my own. My passion took over that. I dropped what I was doing with my other company over the years. I followed my heart and followed what I'm truly passionate about. I started growing a community with my essential oil business. It wasn't until recently that I became comfortable in saying that is what I'm doing. That is what I am building. I felt like I had this huge need to go on this journey to find my identity and to validate that for myself. Now, I'm here and I'm proud of it. You play a huge role in that journey. 

It's been fun to connect with you. You're so far away. You're across the world. We connected more with you doing the course, but since then, we're DM-ing each other, ideas and stuff. It's really fun. This is a real-life example of how you can make connections online. This is the first time we've video chatted. I feel I know you even though we've never met in person, which is cool. I love your story. It's super relatable. A lot of women out there don't want to get lost in being the wife or the mom. I say that with a full heart. For those that want to be raising the family and that's all they're doing, I love you guys. I have so much compassion for you. It's not me. I have to be doing more than that to feel completely fulfilled and with purpose. It's not a knock on anyone out there, but everyone reading this, you're on your entrepreneurial journey too. You'll you get it that you need more sometimes. 

That's why we connected so quickly because we're so similar in a lot of ways. I did something before and then found something else. I love being a mom with all my heart. That's exactly the thing though. I knew from the beginning I can't go back into hotels. I can’t go back to operations even though I love it because now I have a little one. I want to raise him myself. We do live overseas so we don't have that family network around to help us out. I wanted to be hands-on. I want to do something that I can do at home while raising him. Also, we move every two years. How am I going to go look for a job or do something? Now I can take my laptop, fold it up and go and work from wherever in the world. That was my main goal. 

There’s so much validation for what you said in terms of we're so similar and that's probably why we connected. When you show up truly like yourself, which I have been able to do with my personal brand showing up at the Krissy Chin with Badass Is The New Black. I've made an effort to show up as myself, to embrace the goofy side of myself and the not-so-perfect side of myself and lay it out there. It has helped tremendously in making connections with people who embrace me for who I am, get me and build that connection. Validation for it is important to show up as yourself and know that you’re not going to be everyone's cup of tea. 

That was so difficult for me, though. What are they going to think of me when I tell them what I do? I had to get over that very fast. 

Judgment is out there. I can't say that I don't judge. I try to not do it as much. Put myself in other people's shoes and embrace people for who they are. That doesn't mean we're going to be best friends. We have different views and different interests. We're not going to be besties. When you show up as yourself, the people will realize who aren’t going to be your best friend that they don't want to hang out with you. You listen to the podcast and have your membership. You'll attract the people that truly want to be around you. The more people you attract, it'll keep validating like, “Yes, this feels good and align.” You'll forget more about the people that you're like, “What is everyone saying and thinking?” The reality is that people care mostly about themselves. You're like, “What are people thinking?” To be honest, they're more concerned about themselves than what people are thinking about them. 

We're both blue personalities as well. I'm completely like that. When you came around with, “I need to have processes in place. I need to automate things.” I'm like, “Wait a second. What is she saying? I need to pay attention now.” 

We'll talk more about automation and stuff, but I was talking to a girlfriend over DMs on Instagram, voice messages back and forth. I am obsessed with automations, systems and processes. Mine aren't all perfect. I have mastered some of them. I've mastered my show system and lots of other things. It's because I am so blue, which we don't know what blue personality is. It's like they want to have fun, to be around people, have a party and whatnot, but it's not the organized personality. 

That's where I struggled. You probably have it in your journey as well. It's like, “If I'm going to do this, I have got to get a little bit of a handle on the things that I'm not that good at.” I became obsessed with systems, processes and automation to clear out space in my head. If it can happen without me, that would be amazing. That's the best. What are some of your natural given strengths, or maybe you've developed them over time, that have played a role in the success of you figuring out what you want to do and pursuing that? 

 

I've always been a people person. Like our personality says already, I love being around people and helping them, which is why I've found myself in the hotel industry. I was always front of the house, meaning guest-facing. I was in charge of welcoming them and guiding the team that prepared their whole stay from the moment they checked in to the moment they checked out, and create this experience for the guests. That was my role and I loved it. Letting go of that was hard. I found myself naturally loving that in my new business now. Where you are surrounded by people, you build community and you're helping them and creating an experience for them. It's more so now on the health and wellness journey, but at the same time helping them. 

One of the big parts in my hotel job was always training and developing people. I had a very big team and I did a lot of hotel openings so it was training and developing them. Now I feel I'm doing the same with my leader's team. That's where I found this is it. This is my passion because I can integrate what I've always done into what I'm doing now. It's a different topic but it doesn't stop. That's where I was like, "That's it. I feel at peace. I found my place. This is what I can see myself doing. That'll just grow from here.” 

It’s taking the thing that you were doing before and repurposing it and doing it for a different type of person with a different type of need. It is so powerful. Everyone that I have on here, I love hearing the things that they're good at, and then magically, it turns into this other business, which is super cool. If you're reading, be thinking about what is it that you love that you're doing. Maybe you haven't even started your business yet, but what is it that you're good at and that you enjoy doing? How could you have that turn into a blissful business?  

Let's dive into talking a little bit about the course. Build A Blissful Business was a course that I created to help people discover their brand. I came from that network marketing industry. Gro Work Space serves network marketers completely. In that industry, many people are not building a brand that's crucial for business. I learned that by developing Gro Work Space. We created this brand and this business and I was like, “This is what people are missing in network marketing.” It takes a while to figure out if you're jumping into entrepreneurship without knowing anything as I did years ago because I was a nurse. You didn't go to business school, did you, Desiree? 

I did. 

That Hotel Management is technically business course. You were learning a lot of the business tricks there, but I wasn't. Tell me then in that process, through your education, did you learn about branding, marketing, sales? Were all those wrapped into it? 

I did because it was always about creating a hotel brand, but it was never my brand. I did a four-hotel opening. It was all about, “We've got this construction site and this brand that's been given to us. It’s usually tied though with a lot of guidelines, but now how do we market it? How do we build awareness?” I did have that background, but I feel it's completely different when it's your own brand. When you start with a blank canvas and you say, “What are my pillars? What is my purpose statement? What's my vision and mission?” Before that's given to you and you have to work with it and around it. What does it take to create that from scratch? I was super interested in that. 

For me, it felt like a lot more pressure. It’s like, “I come up with this stuff,” as opposed to with the hotel, “This is our mission, this is our vision.” You're like, “It’s great.” You feed into that. You're like, “It’s perfect. We're going to get the message out there.” When it’s your brand, especially a personal brand because it's essentially a reflection of yourself, then that's where that fear of judgment comes into play. 

It’s so vulnerable. It's like you're opening up your heart. 

Stay in your creative zone of genius and give the other things away for someone else to do. 

I took my years of experience in building a brand. It took me five years to figure this out. How can I package this up into a course and help someone identify their brand very quickly in a very intentional way so that as they develop it, they're creating assets for their brand to help them scale later on? Things like creating your brand book, where it has all of your fonts and your colors and everything. It takes time to think through that. We have an amazing guest trainer on that in the course, but then you've created this brand book.  

When it's time for you to maybe hire out a graphics person or someone to help with the website and they say, “Can you send over your brand book?” You don't have to be like, “What's that?” Now I have to go find all these fonts and get the hex codes for the colors. You've already created it. It's very strategic in what you're creating and when you're developing your brand. It helps you get it on social media. You attract the right people and helps you start a website a little bit. That's the gist of the course. What was your main reason for jumping in on the course? 

I knew you before from Gro Work Space, and then I heard about your show and I'm like, “Badass Is The New Black, that's awesome.” That name alone, I was like, “Let me listen to this.” I loved it immediately. It was so relatable. It was like a girlfriend giving you tips that are immediately actionable. When you announce you're going to have a course and the keyword for me was, “I'm going to teach you how to automate your processes to work less and enjoy more.” I'm like, “That's it. I'm in.” You gave this webinar. I signed up straight away. I felt I was at a point. I had my website, brand name and colors. I had a lot of that already and I was waiting for this process and automation part. 

You then took us through this whole journey of mindset shifting and everything. That took me back to the confidence, that validation that this is what I truly believe in. That was already amazing. What was key for me is you had worksheets for everything, for every module. It's not like, “You watch the videos. You go through it, but you sat down and wrote things out.” That for me was a game-changer when you said, “What's your purpose?” It's like, “I know what it is.” “Write it down.” I was like, “Okay, let me write it down.” That opened up so much and questioned me as well like, “Is this really what I want and what my purpose is?” You're like, “A mission statement, a vision statement.” 

I was like, “I haven't thought about that,” because I didn't feel I needed it, but I do, and then niching down another thing. I was like, “I know I'm serving moms because I had a little one.” I'm talking to moms and they're little kids, but how do I get even more specific to attract the right customer for me or the right community? What was the biggest thing for me as well was the problem solutions and transformations? Writing that down and identifying what problems am I trying to solve for people? What is my solution and what is going to be their transformation? At the same time, my transformation through all of this and then finding your brand pillars. I had all of these light bulb moments where I'm like, “This is so good.” 

I became so crystal clear as to what I'm doing. In that process, I did a new logo, my colors and my brand book. I hired someone after your advice. That helped me do the website, but just that clarity, “This is what I'm doing with the whole mindset.” It all tied in together. In a crazy year, it was 2020 when everything happened, we were locked down. It’s not so much over here, but still a bit restricted. At the same time, I was doing my clinical aromatherapy certification with NAHA and that was a huge chunk. I did the course at the same time and I had my little one at home. It's like, “I'm so crazy. What the hell am I doing?” It was at that peak where you're so high energy, mission-driven and motivated. I couldn't wait to wake up in the morning because of the time difference, then your video would already be up. I'm like, “That's it next day.” It gave me that new fuel to my business. It did and so much clarity. 

I can tell you enjoy what you're doing and that newfound clarity of the direction that you're taking. I know the projects that you're working on and we'll do those. It does seem like you're enjoying all of the things that you're doing. 

You taught me so many important things. My biggest takeaway was that done is better than perfect. That’s what you always talked about. I am a recovering perfectionist. I have to have things so perfect all the time. When you become a mom, you're like, “I don't have time to be perfect with everything anymore. I need to get it out.” You said, “Done is better than perfect. Just get it out there, publish your website, make that post because if you don't, no one's going to read it. At least you're going to read it and you can always fix it. Nothing is permanent. You can always go back to it later.” I'm like, “That's so right.” Since I've adopted that, I have moved so fast with completing things, projects and my dream wish list. I'm grateful for that. 

It's not a unique saying that done is better than perfect. I've heard thousands of people say it all the time, but I've coined it as my own. I don't claim that I came up with this little catchphrase. It’s not the reality, but it's one that at some point I heard it and I was like, “That is the key to success.” Taking action is the hardest step, but this step that you have to take is taking action. By keep telling myself, "Done is better than perfect,” it's the only way that I've been able to move forward. Hearing from you and many people that, "When I start to get caught up in things, Krissy, I just hear your voice, ‘Listen friend, done is better than perfect.’ I have to stop. I have to make a decision because I'm being indecisive and done is better than perfect. If I keep weighing my two options, trying to pick the perfect logo and colors. I want to change my brand colors. I don't think they're perfect, but I want to change them.”  

That's the joy. We get to do that. This is our business. We get to make the rules. We get to evolve how we want. We get to change the look, the feel and the vibe as we evolve as individuals. We get to hire professionals down the road if we want to. Go back, revamp and make things better. The goal of the course is to help people get clarity on a business and a brand that feels perfectly aligned with them so that they have this blissful business. This business that they're excited to wake up 4:00 in the morning. They're excited to spend energy because it takes hard work. I've never worked so hard in my life on things, but when you're doing something that you love that's giving you purpose, it’s so much exciting. 

It doesn't even feel like work either. It's like, “Let me continue that.” We're finishing dinner and I was like, “I need to finish something.” I go back to my laptop. It's fun. I wouldn't change it for the world. 

Since you mentioned automation that you were like, “Automation, process I need that.” There's nothing super specific in the course in terms of like, “I'm going to teach you all these amazing automations, but it's taking you through my process of discovering your brand and whatnot.” There's that process. I know over time as you've been following and listening along and learning more and having conversations like, "What about this idea?” You’ll learn so much more about the automation process. I want you to share the story about when it was your assistant or someone emailed you. 

One of the biggest things I've done and I did it right after the course, I said, “Krissy said that one key to automation is we got to hire help. You can do everything yourself. You got to stay in your creative zone of genius. You can give something away to someone else to do.” Even though you may be able to do it, but if you have someone else to do it, it frees up that time, which is the key. The whole purpose of this exercise. I did and I found an amazing person that I'm working with. She helped me completely revamped my website to what I established in the course, what I wanted it to be. She has been amazing. She's helping me with much more. 

 

She's now my sounding board on all things marketing strategy, and decision-making. I can run things. I create past terms like, "What do you think?” It's so nice to have someone there to help me from that point of view. One day she was giving me a suggestion that I should be doing something a certain way like how I reach out to people. In that email, she said, “I know, Des, that your next question is going to be, 'How can I automate this?’” I had to laugh and it's true because whatever we discuss and the procedure to be put into place for the business, my first question was like, “How can we make that happen all on its own? How can I avoid me having to press all of the buttons and things happen and it does it for me?” She knows that what I’m about now. 

She was like, “I already checked into it. Unfortunately, I can't do this part.” That's the reality, not everything can be automated through technology, not everything can be hired out because there are some things that we have to still do in our business, but there’s so much. I love that you're vocal about it, enough to where she gets the concept and already trained her to look into the automation before she even comes back to you, which is cool. That's awesome that you have done that, but kudos to you for making sure like, "Team, automation is my jam. We have to figure out how to automate it the best that we can. What we can't we'll work with it.” There are some things where it’s a pain, but you have to deal with it until you get the new solution.  

We just implemented a whole downgrade process for our membership site. If someone goes to downgrade their membership, it triggers a questionnaire. There are five different options that they can choose why they're downgrading. Based on which option they pick, it leads them down a path of a few other questions so that we can get insights as to why they're leaving. That's so important to then be able to focus on retention, “People are leaving because they don't understand how to use it. We need to be better at onboarding.” There's that intention behind it. In the end, it's like, “Do you want to stick around and get 50% off in your next month?”  

You can't automate that anymore with them clicking a button and automatically giving them half off for that month because Stripe changed their policy that you can't make changes. I don’t know all the technical lingo. The web developer was like, "You can't do that anymore because they made changes.” You can't automatically do something or charging someone's account without their permission or whatever. He's like, “You have to manually do that process.” It was like this whole agonizing thing of like, “What do we say? How can they have email support and then support has to do it.” It's a little clunky sometimes when you have to do the manual. If everything else can be automated, how valuable to get such great feedback in terms of why people are canceling to then do a better onboarding process or whatever they need. What are some of your favorite things that you have automated in your business so far? 

Together with my team, we put on quite a lot of events now and workshops and everything. We've gone through that process together as a team several times now. The third month we did it. It was still the same questions of, “Who's going to prepare the graphics and who's going to make the registration form.” I was like, “We need to have a process in place.” I went to write this SOP and I put it on our Trello board that we work with as a community. I said, “Now we each have our own tasks.” As soon as we say we're going to do these workshops, this person does the graphics, this person creates a registration form, t This one does the email drip for the confirmation. We don't have to spend time discussing that in our weekly call anymore. It's already done. If someone announces that we're doing this event, I have the speaker we’re inviting, everyone knows what to do.  

That's perfect. That the fact of writing things down, but in terms of tech automation, we used to do Google forms for our registrations when someone registers for one of our workshops, but I had to then, “This is their email address,” then I create a confirmation email in my email system. I use MadMimi. I had to go in and probably I'm doing that in a super complicated way. I had to input their name and their email address for them to get that confirmation email. Sometimes they would register three times because they didn't get it immediately. I'm like, “That's not going to work, plus it takes up so much time.”  

Now I found another way that you can integrate as soon as someone signs up, it goes directly into market segmentation in my email system. That attaches to a drip that as soon as they hit submit, they get that confirmation email that I build. Now I can sleep. I wake up the next morning. I checked, I have five more registrations. They've automatically all gotten their confirmation email. They are ready to go and I didn't have to do a thing. It takes a few more minutes of preparation at the beginning, but it frees up so much time. It makes it more fun now to do more events because you are saving all of that time in between. 

Scalability is possible at that point. There's no way. It's almost like with how things work, if it's not scalable, you won't attract the numbers that you could potentially. If you're doing things manually and you only have the capacity to set up twenty people a day, that's all you're going to get. If you have the ability to put a link out there and someone can sign themselves up and then automatically receive the email with the information. Three days later, they get some check-in email, and then four days later they get the one day to the event email, all of that happens. That's now scalable. That's what we want for our businesses. We want to remove ourselves from those tasky things that suck up our energy, our time that aren’t our zone of genius to free that up. In the beginning, we all start the awkward, clunky way where we're like, “I'm just using my Gmail and this is all I know because I haven't been exposed and learn these things about a CRM system.” With your website, did that come with a CRM system? Did you do the all-in-one package? 

Unfortunately, not. I'm still at that point where I'm plugging in all these different things. That's on my scalability list to move to an all-in platform especially when we move on to the things we want to create together with the team as well. I know that will save even more time. At the moment, it's still like piecemeal work. It works for the moment. There’s room to grow. 

All in one sometimes isn't the most beneficial because when you're trying to do a lot of things, you're not amazing at one thing. A company that focuses on their CRM management, their customer email. That's your CRM system. I don't even know what CRM stands for. It escaped my brain. 

It’s Customer Relation Management. 

If that’s all a company does and focuses on that, it's probably way more in-depth and so much more customization that you can do. Many extra features same with affiliates. If your company focuses on affiliate marketing, then you probably have so many of these extra features where if it's an all-in-one, it does make it easy. 

A little bit of everything. 

Work-life balance doesn’t exist anymore. It’s all about work-life harmony now. 

It's the basics of everything. It'll get the job done like built a multi-million dollar business on Kajabi. It will get the job done for sure. As we start to evolve and with courses, releasing courses and setting them up evergreen so they can live and run through ads, and the ad sends them to a webinar, and the webinar get them to the course. You want to automatically give them an option of, “If you jump in now, then you get this bonus, but it's only available for the next three hours.” If you want to be able to remove the ability to get it in three hours like you're all in one, it probably doesn’t have that capability. You have to put deadline funnel and zap it all together. You evolve as your business is ready to evolve. 

I enjoy as well learning how to link all of these systems together like my CRM system with this three registration form system. Combining these payable options, but with the free versions. We need to start somewhere and then we can always scale it up also with what we pay for all of these services. That’s also important to keep that at a certain level, make sure you're profitable and everything. Investing in the right tools is also important. One reason why automation was so important for me and having these processes in place is because we're all moms. Mainly the community that I'm working with, we have found each other. We're all moms. We all have little ones at home. The more we can get things organized and the more helpful it would be for us as well to not start yelling at our kids. We are stressed. It's not their fault. We're the ones stress because we have all of these things to do, confirmations to send out. This poor little one just wants to play with Lego. It's important for me too. 

This has been helpful hopefully for the readers to get an idea of what Build A Blissful Business is all about. Maybe it can help them. We've got a promo code. If anyone wants to jump in on Build A Blissful Business, a six-module course. When you did it, it was dripped out and you had to wait for the videos. Now, they all just come so you can do it at your own pace. We'll have that promo code in there, but it's Momergy. You've got a freebie for them, and then I want you to tell them about your podcast because I want them to go listen to your podcast. 

In my whole journey of my business, after doing your course and following also your journey, I realized as well that I'm still happy with leading a team, developing people, working with them, creating things together as a team. As soon as I had my leaders team for the network marketing company in place, we went on to such great things. The most common questions that people ask me, “How do you do it all? How do you manage everything? You're a mom. What do you do with your little one?” I'm like, “It's not always easy. It's a challenge to get everything done and manage a household, be far away from home. Don't have that support network, and have a hotel husband that works a lot.” 

You're on your own and not trying to build a business. I have a fellow mom friend. Her name is Iva and she's amazing. She's doing this same thing. They are a multicultural family living abroad. She has two little ones and she's also starting a business. That's how we found each other through this beautiful entrepreneur world. We started having conversations and, “I'm trying to get this done.” “Me too, how did you manage?” We had this deep conversation about debunking the myths of motherhood, what can and cannot be achieved and what the solutions could be. As a joke, we said, “We should press record on our conversations because maybe they can help other moms who are trying to build their business.” 

Fast forward, that's what we've done. We said, “Let's do a podcast.” We have and we are preparing it. We're recording our episodes. We've launched it already with our trailer. It's all about helping other moms who are trying to build a business with little ones at home to find harmony in their life. Not balance because we know that doesn't exist anymore. It's all about work-life harmony. What does that mean? We're going to talk about parenting hacks, but also time management tips and tricks, and also how to keep your sanity with the help of essential oils, that whole toxic-free lifestyle, infusing everything together. One big thing also is we want to take away that mom's guilt because that circles a lot of moms trying to grow a business and feel they do not have that balance. They're overcome with all this guilt. We want to take that away. That's what we're talking about in our podcast. We're launching that soon. The trailer is already live and then will start it on a weekly basis with episodes. 

What is it called so they can go listen? 

It's the Mompreneur's Guide To Work-Life Harmony. Just type in Mompreneur or Momergy and that's going to come up. Momergy is also the name of the code. It stands for Mom Energy. Tapping into our unique mom energy because moms are a unique breed. We are crazy and special at the same time. We do tend to take energy out of places we didn't know existed to be able to accomplish everything we need to do in one day. That's where Momergy came about. It’s Momergy Essentials. 

You do have a freebie for those. I'd love for you guys to go put your name in to grab this freebie so that you can continue to stay connected with Desiree because I know what she's doing behind the scenes. We have conversations. You're going to want to be tuning in and sticking around to hear that. Your freebie is called Rockstar Mompreneur Morning Checklist. Why don't you tell the readers why they need to get their hands on that? 

Iva and I both started our mornings in a hectic way. I've trying to get things done packing for the day because their offices are mobile. Getting the kids ready for school is a big mess, lunchbox here and there. We said, "We need to find a way to make our mornings a lot more manageable. To start the day like a mom rockstar that you are.” We've got a lot of mindfulness tips in there and a little checklist like a to-do list that has been a game-changer for both of us. We feel we can get into our day with a lot more intention now and more focused, more organized because we're not organized. It's awesome. I have that checklist on my fridge. I follow it every night, every morning to get myself prepared. It's going to be a great tool for all the moms out there that are trying to chase their dreams. 

 

Where is the best place to find you? Where are you hanging out, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn? Where's the party? 

I was still more an Instagram girl. I'm trying to become more friends with Facebook now. I’m not quite there yet, but we are present everywhere. We have an amazing Facebook group and Facebook page as well, but I hang out most on Instagram. It's @Desiree_OilyEssentials. That's where I am. That's where you'll get a glimpse of me with my family in Japan as well. 

Before we head out, do you want to do a little game? 

Okay. 

It's a very quick rapid fire, which one best describes you type of thing. I'm going to say two things and then you tell me what comes to your mind straight away. Which one it is and if it's neither of those, you can tell me something else. 

Beer or wine? 

Wine. 

Books or podcasts? 

Podcasts. I don't have time to read anything. It needs to be a podcast. 

Heels or flats. 

It's always been heels all my life. In Kyoto, it’s become more flats because I go with my bike everywhere but no heels. If I had to make a choice, its heels. 

Movie or TV series? 

TV series. 

Do you have a favorite that you're watching? 

I love Grey's Anatomy and there are so many that we started and watched, the Money Heist. We’re waiting for that new season to come out. 

I never heard of that one. I'm going to have to check it out. Pajamas or real clothes on the daily. 

Real clothes. 

Are you a chocolate girl? Do you like chocolate? 

Yeah. 

Dark chocolate, milk chocolate or white chocolate? 

Dark all the way. 

Bath or shower? 

Shower. I don't think I have time for a bath. Shower is good. 

Big party or small gathering? I think I know the answer to this one. 

Big party. 

That's my blue girl. 

I do love small gatherings too. It depends on what the occasion is, but I love the big parties. 

This has been so much fun getting to know you a little bit more, hearing about your journey. I've had a blast. I'm glad we're finally able to connect. Thank you so much for being here. 

Me too. Thank you so much for having me on here. 

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About Desiree Bonau 

Desiree is a Hotelier - turned ex-pat wife - turned Entrepreneur. She refused to lose her identity after becoming a mom and was determined to continue celebrating her own successes and chasing her own dreams - all while being able to stay home and raise her little boy (and moving countries every 2 years).

She found her home in a network marketing company that is close to her heart, however always knew she wanted to do more.

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