Mom Hacks for a Stress-Free Home with Hannah Morgan

In this episode of the Mom Owned and Operated podcast, Rita Suzanne and Hannah Morgan discuss raising a family, running a business and remembering yourself.

Hannah Morgan is a working mom of two kids and she knows what it means to feel busy. On those days she finishes work, picks up her kids, and finally makes it home, the last thing she wants to do is more tasks. That’s why she is so passionate about helping other working moms set up systems to manage their stress, work with their partner to establish equitable divisions of labor, and identify what mental load can be outsourced.

She founded Heron House Management to help solve this problem for you and other busy parents who want to be able to enjoy life's beautiful, wild moments without having your To Do list always in the back of your mind. Hannah lives in St. Petersburg, FL with her amazing family - husband, two kids and their dog Macy. She is a project manager at heart and loves creating systems that help others be successful.

About Heron House Management: Heron House Management takes the stress out of your busy life by taking on your mental load and managing your to do list. We provide fractional virtual house management for busy families at 5, 10 and 15+ hours/month. Meal planning, signing up for kids activities, scheduling doctor's appointments, finding a house cleaner, planning your kid's birthday party, getting quotes for that home renovation project, or scheduling a monthly date night with your significant other and so much more. We do it all!
 
 You can connect with Hannah on her website, Instagram and Facebook. 

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Transcript

Rita Suzanne: 0:27

Hi, this is Rita Suzanne, and today I have my guest Hannah with me. Hannah, I'm so excited to have you on today. Can you tell us all about you, your family and your business?

Hannah Morgan: 0:39

So we work with primarily working parents to relieve their mental load by doing project management for your life. So, as opposed to a personal assistant, we do all of the planning, coordinating, managing, anticipating and making sure that projects for your life, your family and your home are completed successfully. So I live in St Petersburg, florida. I've got two kids, I'm having my third on Monday and we've lived here about two years and really love it.

Rita Suzanne: 1:13

Wow, I can't even believe that you're talking to me now and you're getting ready to have a baby. That's crazy. Right before I had my kids, I was laying in bed, probably eating Cheetos or something.

Hannah Morgan: 1:26

Well, I have a lot of things going on right now, and so I wish that was a luxury, but I'm looking forward to leave. But yeah, I just launched this business in September 2023, and the growth has just skyrocketed. It's like really taken off and it's really hit at a core for a lot of our clients, and so I'm happy to be as busy as we have been. It's been really wonderful.

Rita Suzanne: 1:46

I love that. So tell us exactly, how does your business work?

Hannah Morgan: 1:50

I love that. So tell us exactly how does your business work? Yeah, so we work with, like I said, working parents. So I would say a majority of our clients are female, but what we find is it's also couples. And we do have a number of male clients who come to us and say I feel overwhelmed, I feel stressed, I feel like I have too many things going on, balls are getting dropped. I would rather spend time with my family than be organizing all of these menial projects and tasks. My partner travels. I, you know, have a new project coming on at work that is making you know for more attention being dedicated to that. Can you help? And the answer is always yes.

Hannah Morgan: 2:25

And what I love is that our clients come to us thinking that there's no solution to this problem of constantly feeling stressed out and feeling like you're being pulled in a million directions. And we have solutions for that, and so we work with you to extract your to-do list from your brain, or as I like to call it. For many of us, it's like that dark green cloud that's following you around. You know, the cartoon green cloud. It's the things that not just are on your to-do list, but the things that haven't made it to your to-do list yet because you're kind of too scared to write them down or it just feels like opening a can of worms. So, like a great example is a lot of people procrastinate signing up for summer camps because it's so much work to research and coordinate and sign up and pay, and then you've got one week of this and one kid in that, and who's going to take the kids and calendar management. So we say, great, let's talk about your kids' ages, their interests, how far you're willing to drive, what your budget is, and we'll put together a proposal for a summer of summer camps for you. You let us know how you feel and you know we'll make tweaks and then we'll sign you up and send you on your merry way.

Hannah Morgan: 3:20

So the idea is that we want our clients to be as involved as they want in the process of managing these projects. So some clients are like, just deal with it, let me know when it's done. And other clients they want to be involved every step of the way. They have a very specific vision, they want to improve everything and that's great too. So we work to meet our clients where they're at and really help them feel like their needs are being met, and so it's not extra work for them to work with us, it's relieving their work.

Hannah Morgan: 3:44

So that was one of the reasons I started the business is because, as a busy working parent, I found that the time it would take to delegate tasks felt so burdensome that I was reluctant to employ a service that felt like it was going to take so much upfront investment to be able to engage with, and so instead, what I really wanted somebody to do was crawl in my brain, duplicate it and then do it better than I ever could have. So it's not just about replacing yourself. It's about finding somebody who's better at these things than you are, and that's great. You can let them do it and you can focus on what you're better at doing, which is being a parent, excelling at work, having free time, investing in your hobbies, pursuing your passions. Those are hard for things, hard things to do when you're a working parent.

Rita Suzanne: 4:24

Yeah, I think that anytime, especially like as an entrepreneur, whenever it comes to someone hiring someone to help them, right, I find a lot of my clients. They're hesitant, right, because they know that for them the hard part is going to be the upfront work part. It's going to be such a labor intensive, you know, journey for them because they're going to have to train that person, they're going to have to take the time out to teach them how they want the things done. And then what if they don't do it right? And then they end up they don't even want to hire somebody because of all of that work that they have to put in in order to hire someone out. So I think that that's great and I think that's example of what someone wants. When they actually hire someone to help them, they just want you to come in and, you know, do the thing and just be really good at it. And oftentimes when you hire someone like assistants and people you know to do those tasks, they're sometimes they're not that great at it.

Hannah Morgan: 5:27

Right, yeah, so we have an amazing team. All of our house managers are trained. But one of the things that we look for so we have an amazing team, all of our house managers are trained. But one of the things that we look for when we're growing our team is we.

Hannah Morgan: 5:35

I always ask my house managers what's your specialty?

Hannah Morgan: 5:37

Like, what's the thing that I would come to you for expertise on? And so when we have a client who has a need that's maybe a little bit out of the box, we can actually, you know, you get assigned your own house manager so that you have that real concierge service and you have that relationship, that trust, that connection. They know how you like to communicate, they remember how old your kids are, like, they know all the things about you. And when sometimes you have a special need like an example would be like consolidating your retirement accounts, setting up your will and trust, like things like that we have people on our team who are experts in those specific items, so like meal planning, travel planning so we might involve another house manager for whom that is their specialty and we'll say, hey, you're still going to work with your primary house manager, but we're going to bring in an expert to help you plan your vacation to Europe this summer, and that way you know you're going to be in the best hands at all times.

Rita Suzanne: 6:24

Yeah, but then you have that main person who's familiar with you and your family the most, and I think that's that's brilliant. I love this concept. What made you decide to do something like this?

Hannah Morgan: 6:49

since 2021. And so we work with small and medium sized businesses that are in growth phases, that don't have the funds or the need for a full time project manager, and so what I found was there's a huge need for fractional support, where you have a really high quality project manager popping in, you know, 10, 20, 40 hours a month that's able to help you accelerate your business, manage your clients and allow you to focus on growing your business instead of the day-day of running it. That expanded, and so we also offer virtual assistance and operations management, and what I found was there was this huge demand for it on the business side, and I realized, when you apply the same principle to the personal side, the demand is even greater. And so I'm a project manager.

Hannah Morgan: 7:23

My husband is an operations manager. We're really good at systems. We're really good at building, building strong foundations. So when we had kids, we had a system for everything, and we, you know, ran everything through Asana or project management software and have good communication. And then we just realized that's not how we want to spend our time. Our children are young and the last thing you want to do after you pick them up from school or you finish work or put them to bed, is tackle these huge projects that you know, frankly, are not always that rewarding. I'd rather have somebody else do it for me, and somebody who enjoys it more than I do.

Rita Suzanne: 7:53

Yeah, and so then you thought, well, this is a great way to monetize something that other people probably feel the same way about. Well, yeah.

Hannah Morgan: 8:01

So I mean, I felt like it was really a service. It was a service that I wanted and it was a service that I wanted to share with others, and so I started having conversations with people outside of just my immediate group of moms and you know, I went to the Internet and I talked to about 100 people and I said what do you think? This is my idea born out of my own experience, and I got tons of feedback that was so helpful. So on our website we have a list of like suggested ideas of tasks, and there's probably 50 things listed there. But we accept all kinds of out of the back projects and tasks all the time. But that list came from talking with those hundred people and asking them how you would utilize a service like this.

Hannah Morgan: 8:37

And what I found was there was a lot of negative feedback about some of the more mainstream personal assistant services that were out there, because they weren't really hitting at this need of relieving mental load.

Hannah Morgan: 8:48

And then the other thing that I think makes us different and sets us apart is that we don't explicitly serve working moms, because that implies that the mental load is inherently the responsibility of a female partner in a heterosexual relationship, which is a totally outdated and just totally unrealistic expectation, right?

Hannah Morgan: 9:05

So if we're going to rise above that and we're going to use a feminist narrative to do that, then we need to make these conversations more gender neutral. The reality is many of our clients, like I said at the beginning, are female and that's the experience that they're having, that they're taking on more mental load. But we often engage their partners, we often work with the non-female partner in a relationship and we also provide business support. So sometimes we'll have a couple that will come to us and say you know, we need support at home with X, y and Z, but we also need help running our business or our side business or whatever. So we're very flexible and that's with a very specific intent of not locking ourselves into this narrative that running the home, carrying the mental load, doing the cognitive labor, managing the tasks, making sure the kids get picked up from soccer is a woman's duty, because it's 2024 and it's just not.

Rita Suzanne: 9:51

Right, right, but you have to know who your target audience is, and that's who you speak to primarily. But knowing that that's not who's doing all of the work, or who should? Be doing it right yeah.

Hannah Morgan: 10:03

And I love it when we have male clients. It's so rewarding, like my husband went out for drinks last night with two friends and it was like a friend and a friend of a friend and the friend of a friend was so excited about this service, not because he wanted it for his wife, but because he wanted it for his family and I was like, yes, this is exactly it. It's all partners being equally involved in the wellbeing of their family, and sometimes that means that one partner is like the primary parent or the primary you know logistics coordinator. They're the primary project manager of their home, like whatever you want to call it. But ultimately it's your house too. They're your kids too.

Rita Suzanne: 10:36

Everybody's responsible for the success of your family, yes, and I think that that you know more partners need to be celebrated as well, and you know, not everybody has a partner that's involved, but a lot, of, a lot of people do, and so you know, and who want to be involved, and sometimes they're they're not allowed to be involved. So let's, let's move on a little bit.

Hannah Morgan: 11:02

So how old are? Your, your children that are already here, yeah, so my oldest just turned four and my current youngest is two and a half.

Rita Suzanne: 11:12

Oh my goodness, so you have. You definitely have your hands full. Yeah, we're full toddler era, so you work at home and you have this business and you have your children at the same time. So how are you able to juggle all of these things at one time? I, you know, I don't necessarily subscribe to a balance or anything like that, but what are you doing?

Hannah Morgan: 11:35

Yeah, well, I prioritize having high quality daycare and childcare for my children, and so that was actually a huge lift when we moved to Florida. Like I said two years ago, you know, one of the reasons we moved here is because we got a spot at a well-respected Montessori program and we really wanted to put our kids in Montessori from a young age and we wanted to send them to a fantastic school. The process of getting your kids on the wait list and then off the wait list at a school that's at all competitive which is basically every daycare in America these days because of the child care shortage it's functionally impossible. I mean it's like a part-time job. It's functionally impossible. I mean it's like a part-time job. So when we were coordinating our move down here it was before I had started the business I had a Gantt chart, which, if you're a project manager, is a familiar tool, but if you're not, it's where you basically lay out all of the projects, tasks, milestones over the course of. For me, it was the five months leading up to our move, and so it was like I need to purge, I need to get my kids on the waitlist, and then what I found was I was getting my kids on these waitlists and I had to call every day, every week, email them every month, like I had to have consistent communication to get them off the waitlist. So we got down here, we got them into a great school. That's been a huge part of our success is being able to have, you know, full faith in our childcare. But now what we're headed into is the next era, you know that elementary school era, and that's where we're starting the process all over again. So I have a spreadsheet. I have about 30 schools I'm looking at. My house manager has been instrumental in helping me identify schools that meet my requests. You know my requirements helping schedule the tours, figuring out tuition, like what we can afford, what makes sense, how far it is from my house, like all those things. It's a ton of work.

Hannah Morgan: 13:04

And if you're familiar with Emily Oster, the author, she wrote this book called the Family Firm. She's known for her first book, which is about pregnancy. It's called Crib Sheets oh, no, it's called Expecting Better. And then the one when the kids are born is called Crib Sheets. She came out with a book called the Family Firm and it's basically run your family like a business.

Hannah Morgan: 13:22

Make decisions that are based on the mission statement of your family and ascribe to that mission statement and ask yourself is signing my kid up for elite hockey going to meet my goal of us having a cohesive family as facilitated by family dinners? Well, okay, maybe we can have family dinners a few nights, fewer a week, or whatever. So that's her whole concept and I really applied that to coordinating, like all the aspects in my life in balance with being present for my children. So the end result is, you know, when I'm at home, I'm home, I'm working, I'm fully focused, and then when I stand up from my desk and I go pick up my kids, I'm fully present with them, and so I have really strong boundaries.

Hannah Morgan: 13:58

But we're parents and things get messy, kids get school, school gets canceled. So one of the things I do at the beginning of the school year is I have my house manager take all the school dates and put them on my calendar for me and my husband. So I know every day we don't have school. I know every day there's an early pickup. I know every day there's a holiday that I have to, like you know, whatever, get my kids dressed up for, bring something in for the teachers or like whatever it may be and that has been so huge, because when I do my weekly planning I know where I have gaps in childcare and where I need to reprioritize things.

Rita Suzanne: 14:26

I love that. I love that. So that's just part of having the house manager. They come in and they do these type of things for you. So what are some other examples of things that they do? Because for someone like me who has a house full of teenagers, what tasks that they would do.

Hannah Morgan: 14:45

Well, let me ask you this. So when we start a relationship with our client, usually they come to us with a vision of what they need help with or a very specific task, and we have an onboarding call with them and what comes out of that is more of kind of the bigger picture, and that's facilitated by questions we ask. So I would ask you what are the places of stress in your life right now that we can help alleviate? What do your weekends look like and how do you want to change that? Are you doing laundry all weekend? Are you spending time with your kids, no, my kids.

Rita Suzanne: 15:13

They do their own laundry.

Hannah Morgan: 15:15

I love this, I love this, so. So that would be a question that you don't have to answer right now, but those would be things that I would ask my clients is you know what are the things that are coming down the pike that we need to be thinking about, that are causing you stress? Teenagers, we're going to be thinking about college. We're going to be thinking about summer jobs. We're going to be thinking about FAFSA applications for financial aid. We're going to be thinking about, you know, buying a used car for them to drive and you know, getting their car insurance, getting a competitive rate on car insurance, because you know that goes through the roof when you have teenage drivers. All those kinds of things we're going to be thinking about.

Rita Suzanne: 15:47

It's really about thinking more ahead and being more proactive about things instead of being reactive, because those are things that are relevant, but not things that I'm actively doing.

Hannah Morgan: 15:58

Exactly, but I'm sure for you. How old are your children now, 13 through?

Rita Suzanne: 16:03

16. So what's on their radar right now? You know, just playing and hanging out with their friends, do they?

Hannah Morgan: 16:11

do afterschool sports. They have activities extracurriculars.

Rita Suzanne: 16:14

I have one in track, and then I have one who has a job.

Hannah Morgan: 16:17

So, yes, I have, I have one in track, and then I have one who has a job, so yeah, so, yeah, so coordinating logistics with that and you know, other people that are involved in their life, making sure that they can be where they need to be and when and the support that they have. And yeah, I mean, I don't want to air your personal needs on this, but those would be questions that I would ask and that we would try to pull from your brain.

Rita Suzanne: 16:39

No, I love that because then you, like I said, you're just being more proactive about the needs. So my 16-year-old she does have a job, but she doesn't have a driver's license and she hasn't even taken driver's ed yet, because she's made some choices that I don't feel like she's ready for driver's ed yet, choices that I don't feel like she's ready for drivers yet. However, would I be okay with, like looking at some of the things and kind of getting her excited and motivated? Yes, I probably would. So you know what I mean. So those are some things that I would probably if I had somebody else doing the research for me.

Rita Suzanne: 17:16

I would be like, yeah, so we did this and this is what we found, and maybe that would maybe motivate some better decision-making. There you go.

Hannah Morgan: 17:24

Absolutely For sure, for sure. Yeah, I mean. A couple of things that come to mind is, like, you know, getting on the, getting on the list for the driver's ed when she is ready, researching what the safest cars are within your budget. You know, thinking about what those incentives might be for her once she can drive, like, what kind of activities you might allow her to participate in because she can drive independently. You know, what is she doing with the money that she's making from her job? Is she's? Are you setting her up to be saving X amount?

Hannah Morgan: 17:51

Maybe something like a match where she puts half in an account, a high yield savings account, to save for a car and you match that Like. Those are all the kinds of things we'd be. You know, looking at, thinking about, and then you know, if you have a kid who's making decisions that you don't totally agree with, maybe you'd want to change your will and so you'd want to make sure that you have somebody in place who's your executor, who's going to be the guardian of your children or executor of your estate, that's aware of the dynamic that you trust inherit at the age of 16, but put parameters in place. So those are all kinds of things that we would be thinking about.

Rita Suzanne: 18:23

Yeah, I love. I love all of that Because it is, you know, especially as a single parent you get so caught up in the day to day stuff and as a business owner, in in running a business, that those are things that I guess often slip through the cracks, right, because you're just trying to survive and run everything else and just do all of the things that you need to do in addition to taking care of yourself. So having someone else just kind of do that extra thinking for you, I love the idea and the concept of it, because it's just having someone support you where you didn't really realize that you needed that support.

Hannah Morgan: 19:04

Exactly, exactly, yeah, exactly. My girlfriends like to say I do not say this, but my girlfriends like to say every, uh, every wife needs a wife, every mom needs a wife, and I love that. Um, and we don't advertise that because obviously it plays into the concept of women carrying the mental load. But I think it's really funny that like there is this concept of like somebody needs to do this and especially if you're a single parent, like there's not a lot of places you can point the finger other than back at yourself. So someone's got to do it.

Rita Suzanne: 19:31

Yes, I know, and you know, of course, as women, it's like we're. We are just constantly. I think it's because we're worrying so much about everything and what's going on, and it's just our nature to be overly prepared often not always, and so I don't want to, you know, stereotype or anything like that but we're just overly worried and concerned about all of the things, and so we're just trying to over prepare. So one of the things that I love to talk about and some is what stemmed this podcast is self care and you getting ready to, you know, have your third baby and all of the things Getting ready to, you know, have your third baby and all of the things being super busy and having all of the children and things at one time. I just don't understand how you're able to do it all, and so I have to ask you what are you doing to, like, take care of yourself?

Hannah Morgan: 20:32

What are you doing for you? I mean, self-care doesn't always look like bubble baths.

Rita Suzanne: 20:38

You know what I mean? No, 100%, don't listen. I have prescribed self-care as sometimes just going to the bathroom by yourself, yeah, so that's not an option.

Hannah Morgan: 20:48

Yeah, yeah, I mean I think like in historically speaking I would say like carving out time for myself, doing things like working out, like my husband and I are vegan, eating well, but the reality of right now, in this late stage pregnancy, is that like we're more in survival mode. So I would say, from a professional perspective, running my business is a form of self-care, because it gives me the sense of fulfillment that I really wanted out of my professional life and it gives me that sense of drive. I don't have a lot of space and time that I've dedicated to hobbies, because any free time that I have goes into my business, but what it's done is it's given me this outlet that I could have never experienced in a more traditional job, like, for instance, I get to make all the mistakes by trial and error and that's been really fun. I built all my own accounting systems before bringing in a bookkeeper. I manage all my own social media, so I had to learn, like graphic design and how to use all the different social media platforms those things I really find rewarding. I had to figure out how to build my websites and then somebody came to me and said we love your website, will you build mine? And someone else said will you build mine? And now all of a sudden, I'm building websites. So I like those things and I like those challenges and I think that really feeds me, it feeds my brain and are on my radar.

Hannah Morgan: 21:58

I read 26 nonfiction, self-improvement or business books last year. You know, I made the goal of walking 10,000 steps, which was more reasonable when I was less pregnant. You know, carving out time, like my dog walk in the morning, is my reading and walking time. I really appreciate that and enjoy it. Then also, like I've learned a lot from other people, like connecting with other people, so through professional networks and personal networks and social media, I found that to be really rewarding, just by kind of understanding other people's lived experience and how it helps them be a better parent, a better partner, you know, a better business owner, whatever it may be. So I think those are all forms of self-care. It's not bubble baths oh, I agree, agree.

Rita Suzanne: 22:38

And you're similar to me with the thinking process Everybody always would tell me, because I am a self described workaholic, right? But I get so much fulfillment out of what I do. I love what I do and I think it's because I feel like I'm helping other people and I feel like I'm empowering other women especially, that it makes me feel good in order to do the things that I do, and so you know, for me, it is my hobby. Quote unquote, right.

Rita Suzanne: 23:09

Yeah, I do with all of my spare time, and so I don't apologize for working in my spare time, like that. That's what I do. I work out, I do all these other things. Like you said, I love to read, I love to walk, I love to go to the gym, I love to do all of these things. But if I have a moment at home, I'm working. You know that I won't really watch a lot of TV. I'm working it's just because that's what feeds me and I enjoy it. And you know, and I think that there's nothing wrong with that, and I think a lot of times people do like to villainize it and say that there is something wrong with, like, why are you working so much? Because I like it.

Hannah Morgan: 23:53

You're right. Yeah, I mean, I can definitely identify with some of that like feeling like a workaholic but also like, especially when my kids are so young, I have to have a really, really strict boundaries, you know. So it's rare I work more than 36 hours a week. You know, I have pretty strict boundaries. It's rare I work after bedtime Sometimes. I do, you know, I have pretty strict boundaries. It's rare I work after bedtime Sometimes, I do, you know.

Hannah Morgan: 24:14

But I try to spend that time. For me, that's my reading time, that's my podcast time, that's my hangout time with my husband, like that's my anything. That's just me time and I'm okay with that. I have ideas of hobbies. I think they would be really fun to invest in, but I've also recognized that, like my children are at a place where, like, they demand and deserve my full attention. When they're home, and because they're in school and I work, you know, almost full time I can appreciate the time that I have with them so much more. And so I go and pick up my kids and we do whatever we want, you know, until bedtime, and like, I love that. That's great.

Rita Suzanne: 24:42

Well, I think, and I think, like just to clarify, I will say, like the benefit of what we do is that we have so much freedom and so, while I can get up and start working immediately if I wanted to, I don't, I'm a very like. I wake up at like six o'clock in the morning, but I probably don't turn on my computer until 11. Right, I'm a slow riser, I will, I, I ease into the morning, you know, and you know, and, and that's okay, and I think that that's fine. And, um, and I, and I don't think, even though I'm a self described workaholic, that doesn't mean that I'm getting up from crack of dawn and working until until midnight. It just means that when I have the space and I have the mental space and energy, I like to dedicate that to working and I think that that's fine.

Rita Suzanne: 25:33

You know what I mean? I'm not. I'm not saying anything else about it. Yeah, yeah, no good for you. That's awesome, okay. So where can everyone find you online? Because I am absolutely positive that there are other women, moms, who definitely want and need this service as well.

Hannah Morgan: 25:52

Yeah, so we're on social media and our website is Heron House Management, so it's Heron, like the bird H-E-R-O-N. Housemanagementcom. That's our handle on Facebook and on Instagram and so you can connect with us there. We have a contact us form on our website or you can email me directly, Hannah at Heron house managementcom, and I would love any feedback or if anybody has any questions, check out our website, see what we're about and be happy to chat more.

Rita Suzanne: 26:16

Thank you so much for being guests. It's been so amazing chatting with you. Thanks for having me. This is a treat. I appreciate it.