Analiza: Hi, I'm Analiza Quiroz Wolf, proud Asian American mama of two kiddos. I went from being a Burned Out Mama to being a Boss Mama, being a boss at work, home, and play. I'm on a mission to help more women be Boss Mamas. If you want to thrive at work without sacrificing family or self care, you are in the right place.

For detailed show notes go to analizawolf.com/podcast and be sure to subscribe because I send out the best secrets I learned from my guests to my email subscribers. Now let's get into today's show.

In the midst of the pandemic, how can a Boss Mama use best practices from teaching thousands of kids across the country to her own kids and bring peace and balance at home?

Today we're talking with Chrystie Edwards about her Boss Mama journey. While a student at UCLA, she was diagnosed with ADHD, and that's where she started creating structures. Those structures actually even help her today thrive as a Boss Mama as a teacher, education leader and as a mom.

Chrystie is in her 14th year in education, and she's a self proclaimed teacher nerd. She was a teacher, a school leader. She led academics for 20 charter schools in California, Tennessee and Texas. Now she's a partner at TNTP, a consulting firm to help schools and teachers across the country. Chrystie is also African American, the mama of two boys and lives in Memphis, Tennessee. One of the Boss Mama's strategies is about Simplify to Success. Chrystie shares how she simplifies her success by using her super strength of systems and structure, not just for her work, but her personal life. She'll share specific tactics about how she took best practices for what works with thousands of students across the country, to her own home. Let's learn more from this boss, Mama.

Chrystie, I'm so excited to be talking with you today. And I actually want to kick it off talking about enneagram, you are quite obsessed with them. So I figured we'll share with the audience. What are enneagrams, and why are you so obsessed with them?

Chrystie: How I interact with different people. Enneagram is just another variation of a personality test where you're ascribed a number one through nine based on just your motivations, your strengths, your challenges, through likes or dislikes. It's not as a perfect science. But I did fall into it listening to another blogger, mom, and I just got really immersed. It was very interesting. It helped me understand how and why I move in the world in the way that I do, how I interact with others at work at home, and really just help give a frame for relational context in terms of Oh, this is why I responded the way that I do. It's definitely not an excuse for behaviors. I think when people are like, Oh, well, I'm this way because I'm a three or I'm a four. I think what it does is it increases my self awareness for how I move throughout the world.

Analiza: That's great, so I will include for our audience a link to a free enneagram test. With that though, Chrystie, I'd love for you to share. What is your number for enneagram? And what does that tell us about your career path? Were you always like that from the beginning? What was your dream when you were a young Chrystie?

Chrystie: That's a great question. I am an enneagram three which if you know any of enneagram, I don't think it will surprise anyone that I ended up being a Boss Mom. I feel like enneagrams often your core motivations fall back on childhood, everything I feel like is reduced to what happened in your childhood. And I was a high achiever from the start. I have a very close relationship with my dad who had extremely high expectations for my brother and I at home for academics for sports. And there are just some isms from my dad that I internalized as a kid. It's almost like Ricky Bobby if you're not first you're last type of motivation. In some ways I feel like I was brought up to be the best in every sense of the word. So don't bring home any B's. Don't bring up anything less than perfect, whatever perfect looks like and that had some pros and cons. And I feel like that influenced and made me question once I got older and once I got to college, that aspect of my identity. I internalized Oh, I must be perfect or I must be this high achiever or I must have an aspect and be very aware of how I move throughout the world so that it's impressive to others. When I was young, I wanted to be a pediatrician or an orthopedic surgeon, it was always, you know, high achieving in math and science. And I feel like falling into education, I still kept that expectation of Okay, what are the roles in education I can take on that have a greater impact on my world around me where I'm respected, and my contributions are valued,

Analiza: Great. I love that you move from I'm an achiever, and you achieved your way through life. And through education. I mean, you went from being a teacher to a school leader impacting 20 schools and leading academics, and now you're a partner at TNTP. So I'm curious, Chrystie, on this journey, you said there's like a bright side. And there's also a dark side to having this like achieving personality. I'm curious. Was there a rock bottom moment or moment with like, Whoa, I need to change direction. Tell us about that.

Chrystie: There's a healthy place and an unhealthy place. And the goal is to find your balance in between and what that looks like. And so, in college, I went to UCLA, and I was prepared in some aspects, ,but definitely was not prepared in some aspects. My schooling, I went to public school, I was bused out of the inner city to go to schools based on my test scores, and LS and my neighborhood schools were pretty underachieving. And then I had the opportunity to get bused out to go to higher performing, higher achieving schools, and in some aspects, I had success, and I didn't have to study much. Things came very easily to me. But when I got to college, I think that was the beginning of me questioning my identity and everything up to that moment. The achiever is who I was, it was who I was supposed to be. So when I found myself on academic probation, in danger of being kicked out of college, I questioned a lot, I questioned who I am, was I supposed to be here? Did they make a mistake and admission and I found myself really struggling with depression, I found myself needing to seek some answers and seek some help. And so I ended up going to student services with the hope of just you know, can I talk to someone? What should I do? What is going to happen next? And long story short, I ended up getting counseling and coincidentally being diagnosed with ADHD. And I was very confused. How can I have ADHD, you know, I don't fit the typical ADHD profile. But come to find out, you know, many students and children who were high, gifted, high, achieving moves through the world in a certain way, are often diagnosed with ADHD. And at that point, you know, I thought all my systems, all my structures, were working for me up until I got to college. And that's where I feel like I was exposed in a lot of ways. And I still struggled throughout, I ended up graduating but I still had some challenges that I couldn't quite figure out. Why wasn't I being successful, what was going on with my time management? What was happening is how I spent my time outside of classes, you know, why was I finding it challenging to just sit down and study and focus, I chose not to stay medicated, I had some issues just responding to the medication, the side effects weren't worth I felt like trying to find the right dosage, or medicine for me. And so I focused really hard and intently on just self development. I read every book under the sun, and just sought out different ways to navigate that. And I think through my first years as a teacher, I was very intentional in supporting my students in lots of content areas in California, on what systems and structures to help them be successful so that they feel prepared for whatever they faced outside of that classroom setting. And I feel like as I moved through in my career and became a school leader, the challenges were very apparent that I needed some type of structure, I needed some type of consistency at that time. My husband and I had just brought home our first son into the world. My husband was a school leader, and we're talking about school leaders in high pressure environments. In Inner City, Los Angeles, living the dream in an apartment, traveling on the freeways sitting about 45 minutes to two hours in traffic on a commute. And I feel like we had to create some structures. We had to create some systems to allow me to cope and that has always been my default. To help me navigate with ADHD like, Okay, I need high structure high systems, we came up with something called the grid. This is very embarrassing and crazy being the teachers at heart that we were, we created a physical whiteboard down to like the teacher painters tape the blue tape to divide out the section. And we just wrote out what needs to be done. So it was like, drop off, pick up, who's got back time. What's for dinner? Who's up for dinner? What do we want to do for date night? What are the big meetings where somebody's going to for work and those kind of drove and that we had Monday through Sunday, and just like dividing our time and being very intentional with without eliminating, like the Oh, great, here's a decision I need to make, because that is where I am at my worst when I have my ADHD moments. And in that indecision of like, oh, what's for dinner? Or who's going to pick up the kid? Wait, don't let him be the last one at preschool. And those moments, I think it's when I really figured out how to navigate my challenges. And for me, the answer was togetherness and high structure to find opportunities for success. I love that answer.

Analiza: Thank you, Chrystie, because it really maps back to how you had this moment. And it was like a hard moment, even as an achiever seeing that, wow, I need a different sort of help. And not necessarily taking the medicated route, you found ways that actually worked with your strengths, to move into a system that's not only with yourself, but with your partner. And to figure out how you take both work as a teacher and those systems with your students home with you, with your partner with your two beautiful boys. I love that and, and the last Mama's program, we often talk about Simplify to Success. And that doesn't mean you no longer can you do your life and all the things that matter that are fun, and actually means how do you take the things in your life and get clear, like in general, here's how we move here's in general, as a family, how we make decisions, so that you're not like, what should we have? Should we have green beans? Or the potatoes? Or should I pick up my kid early or late? Who's gonna do that? And rather than have all those in the moment decisions, you're like, we mapped it out. And we can use that mapping for the next time.

Chrystie: Exactly.

Analiza: So I love that so much. And so your examples because you're a teacher, and you obviously moved kids academically and social emotionally, and not just like one school, but like 20 schools. So I'm curious, Chrystie, for those Boss Mamas at home, can you give specific examples, almost like that whiteboard example. But like what else like tangible things that you did like, because it's, it's beautiful. And I'm also a nerd at heart with loving systems. So tell us more?

Chrystie: Well, I think another kind of pivot in the road was COVID-19, and the quarantine impact of everyone at home, not just dad at home working mom at home working but both boys at homeschooling. And in March 2020. You know, initially, both my boys had assignments, instructional things to do. And then the worst thing possible school declared, they were just done. They just call the school year, I want to say that it was mid April or end of April. And there were some asynchronous so your kids can log into this website and do this. Now. For my boys at the time. They were 10 and seven, and I felt like they just needed high structure. And so some of the things that were birthed out of this need for high structure where everyone was going crazy in our home, we were all at each other's throats. It was cute. In the beginning it was oh this is gonna be two weeks. Let's watch some movies. Let's hang out. Let's really be intentional on the weekends and that transition to mommy's recharging her batteries, please don't come in the room. kids would. My boys would see me with a puzzle and a glass of wine and they knew okay Mommy needs a mommy time right now. And a couple of the structures that were born out of that were I call it our little family meal plan for lunch, breakfast and lunch. When we were first quarantined, I was cooking three times a day, working full time keeping an eye on what they were doing for school, trying to keep the house, who shoes are these new socks or these and so I think I just had it I made a decision. I said look, you got one hot meal for mom a day during the week Monday through Friday. My boys are old enough where they can navigate the kitchen to a certain extent. And I created the menu and it helps provide high structure to eliminate the choices like what you were talking about. And what that looked like was breakfast, there was a column four must haves Those were the entrees like you pick one here are your options. These are your may have these are the optional like size and then you have to have your vitamins you have to have a fruit or yogurt or something. And it just made it very easy I said shout out to Pinero,who knew that you take to situation and same thing for lunch it was they had the list of entrees, it was there were sandwich like a noodle bowl they could microwaves things that were very easy and did not require me to observe or facilitate or do for them. And same thing it was okay you have X amount of carrots or bell peppers or whatever the vegetable was an average, you have a fruit and then you can get fruit snacks, a bag of chips, whatever. And that has still lived on. They've since returned to school in person, but our menu when they get home from school, I'm usually on a call or wrapping up with a client and I don't have to answer any questions because they know they just go to the fridge. Okay, what's what's available option for today on the menu?

Analiza: That's awesome. I especially love that you mentioned earlier that you bake in self care time. You mentioned a puzzle and wine, which sounds fabulous. And that everybody knows like it's mama time and she needs to be undisturbed, not just when she works, but also when she takes care of herself. I love those meals and time for you. Chrystie, can you share one of the things that you've mentioned that your husband does is he's also a school leader and he focuses on emotional support for students. Can you talk about how you took some of those structures for schools and kiddos at schools to your home? I think one of the things that we realized by being in such close quarters figuratively during quarantine was we didn't communicate with each other very well. After I'd say like the first four weeks, we found I was getting into little Spats with my husband where just the slightest thing would trigger an emotional response. And then I saw that same style of communication manifested in my kiddos. So that was kind of a red flag of Okay, let's pull back, let's examine what's happening. What's the structure, let's reassess. At that point, I had decided to put everyone in therapy. I had a therapist, we are very pro mental health and our household. And so even through COVID, my boys were able to log in virtually separately with their therapist at the same therapist, she was very just she just knew how to speak their language and empowered them with some tools and structures and communication, to say things below, the youngest would say things to his oldest brother, I am feeling like you violated my boundary, I needed to be in my room alone. And you came in here, I asked you not to come in here, you played with my Legos. And it made me feel very angry. And for the first time we saw our boys naming their emotions, it was something that wasn't a part of my household culture growing up. children had that space to name how they felt my husband and I grew up in. The children should be seen, not heard, in this type of household. And I think we really dug in and leveraged his expertise as a behavior consultant and pulled in some social emotional language where it was easy to understand for kids. So we have sheet protectors all over our house, anybody comes by to visit, they would probably think I'm crazy. But we have a chart where it's our feelings. And there's one chart that says what is your What are your feelings trying to tell you and there is no you should feel one way you feel the way you feel. And that's okay. But there's a chart that says, you know, anger may be telling you that a boundary has been violated, or happiness is telling you something else. And we reference a chart sometimes when we find that the boys are withdrawn and introspective, and maybe they're choosing not to communicate, or they don't know how, and that could have been driven by something that we as their parents have done. Intentionally, unintentionally. We miss it too, or something externally, something happened on zoom when they were in quarantine in virtual school, or maybe something happened with one of their friends. And so we have pictures of different emojis that if you can't name your emotion, but you can identify with a face you see like an angry face. And it's like I may be feeling frustrated. What is being frustrated tell you about. So I think it's small things like that that really have helped us to be better at communicating. I mean, don't get me wrong, they still yell at each other and get out of my room. What are you doing? There are still those moments, but I feel like we're trying to be very intentional in how we integrate that social emotion into our households.

Fabulous. I will ask you for those charts because I feel like that would really help not just my kids but me. I'm feeling angry, having boundaries crossed like checking in with your feelings. Your feelings are telling us stuff. So what is it telling us? That's beautiful. I love just how you integrate just the importance of mental fitness for yourself, your family, and how that's also now in the language of work, how you talk with each other. It's like a life skill. Like, where did we learn that when we were kids? I don't know if we ever learned I did not learn?

Chrystie: It definitely was not a thing in the 80s.

Analiza: So this is beautiful. And one of the things I wonder is as you move through, simplification because it feels like you've simplified right? Like, what are the decisions that we can make now that we can use going forward? And let's cut out the rest. What did you cut out? Because it's not just like the, here's the new charts, but there are things you also cut out. So can you share things that you might have cut out and whether you missed those things?

Chrystie: I think one of the things we cut out was having to make the judgment calls in the moment of permission, right? Like, Oh, can I do this? Can I do that? When both of us are in between calls with clients working from a virtual context, and the kids are home, whether it's last year and they were doing virtual school, or they come home and they want to have permission to do something? Can I play with the neighbors? Can I do this? We are very intentional about choices and resulting consequences and consequences. Not a bad word in our home, you can have a positive consequence or a negative consequence. But you have to have ownership over, what led to those consequences. And we have a chip system in our house right chip blue chip, with the youngest, the oldest is in sixth grade. He's graduated from the chips, but with the youngest, we have a chip system. And what that means is they have a checklist in the morning. And so one of the things I eliminated was the pressure from myself of having to be morning, Mom, let me tell you, morning, mom, she was not cute. She was angry. She was irritated. She was always yelling, where are your shoes, get your stuff, where's your iPad? What is your I mean, the nagging My poor kids. And so by giving them agency and giving them their own checklist, it's same thing every morning, feed the dog, brush your teeth, brush your hair, do your hygiene, and everything else that goes with getting ready, whatever that looks like in the morning, and they have check in meetings with us. So there's really only one, maybe two touch points where I have to engage with them. I know that in the morning, I'm getting ready for work, or I may have already started work. And that transition was just not successful. Like I wasn't my best self with them and how I communicated that stress. Same thing for my husband. And so one of us will have our own kind of a morning meeting check in. And so we got the checklist. Did you make your bed? Did you do this? Everything they did they get a blue chip for everything they did not do? Or if they had to be told more than once, then it's like a red chip. So fast forward to do I have permission to do something. Can I watch TV? well pull for it. And so there's kind of a created motivation system where, oh, I need to do the right thing. Because I know the consequence for that is either being allowed to do something that I want to do or not being allowed to do something. So something is small. I got ambushed last week by the youngest who said, Mom, can I bring $1 to the bookstore? I've really been having good behavior and saving. And I said pull for it. And he just looked at me like, oh, pull for this, too. I thought it was just for screens? And I said, No, I mean, you earned it or you did it. And if you didn't, that's okay. We'll just keep trying to complement that with red chips. And sometimes, my kids have their days where with the youngest, he may have earned like five red chips in the morning because he was just dragging, like, go get yourself Let's go. But it reduces the negative and the super emotional that I felt like was translating to them. And I saw it manifesting and how, just the stress, I don't want to send them off to school super stress where it's like, Did you do this? Okay, well, blue chip, did you not do it? Okay, red chip. And don't get me wrong, I still get emotional sometimes. But the chips help take that ink away. And it just kind of neutralizes so it's not like you're a bad kid, you just chose not to do what you were supposed to do. So here you go. There's the red chip, maybe when we pull a blue chip, maybe not. It's up to you, you have the choice of the ratio of blue to red. And that kind of impacts at the end of the week. We take all the chips out and it determines, do you get like a little extra Commission on allowance if you maintain your ratio of red to blue like we haven't we try to have fun with it. But we can.

Analiza: Oh my gosh, Chrystie, I am taking notes for myself. I love that you noticed in the morning, this is not my best. Remember, break yourself in the morning, and we need to change the way that we're operating. So how can we make this morning ritual, one that is peaceful, where people are incentivized to do the right thing? And we often feel like a nag, right, like, come on. Come on. I'm your partner. Come on kids, who wants to be around that I don't want to be a nag. And they don't want to be nagged. So how do you set up a system?

Chrystie: I feel like an agent. See that's embedded in that, because one of the things we're also aware of is like, Oh my gosh, have we over structured them? What are they going to do when they get out in the world? And they're on their own. And I think what it does is it makes it less. I'm doing it for mom and dad, or I'm doing it because my parents said so too. I'm doing it because I want to and right now, he's young enough where that little external motivation, internal motivation, balance works for him. But hopefully, those habits will become internalized in the future. Hopefully.

Analiza: I definitely think that because consequences are hard to teach when you're five, right? Why do I have to go and get my stuff ready? What's the big deal about being late? Like they don't see it? So now they get a chip to say, hey, actually does matter, because the next time you want to get on your iPad, these chips will determine whether or not you get to, I love it. So let's go with new tips. If you're a mom, I'm overwhelmed. There's so much the pandemic keeps going, what kind of tips would you share with other moms out there to say, Here's things I'd consider because this is a lot, Chrystie, you're doing a lot like PhD level structure. What are the things that you'd have people consider moms at home?

Chrystie: I think it is a lot. And I think that moms have so much on their plate, whether it's just the expectation of everyone in their household, or it's just that internal motivation of just wanting to nurture and take care of everyone. I think if you are struggling, and you're a Boss Mom, I think number one, just step back, I think before you try to figure out, oh, I need to do chips at home because Christy said it or I need to have this like meal plan, I gotta go buy all these sheet protectors, I think you need to step back and assess what works for you, what works for you, what are your strengths, what works for you at work? Or how do you show up for yourself at work and figure out if there's a way to capitalize that and translate that in your home structure? Maybe you're low structure, and your kids need high structure? Where's the balance? Where can you find that opportunity to kind of merge, I know that my husband and I are high structure and one kiddo that's really high structure and one that's, Can we just not you are so extra. But that's okay. And I think just finding that balance. So the number one I would say is do an authentic assessment because we can be so overwhelmed. And the world right now is just overwhelming everything about it. And I think taking time to identify what influences how you show up, when you feel like you're your best version of boss mom, when you're your best version of being a partner to someone in your home if you have a partner or being a great daughter or son or whatever. And take that and go with that because I actually could be alone and could take a shower without some little person coming in bothering me. It was because I gave myself a facial or I had a glass of wine and I could watch my favorite show. Just trying to think through, when are you your best version of yourself? And how do you get there and kind of plan backwards.

Analiza 28:09

That's great. I wanted to highlight that it's about knowing yourself, and not saying Oh shoot, I'm not structured, and therefore I'm bad. But actually saying, oh, here's how I am naturally embracing your authentic self and saying how can I rock that not just probably at work, which is where we often rock our strengths. But how can we do that at all facets of our life? And so I love it. So good. with that. I wanted to do some lightning round questions.

Analiza: Chocolate or vanilla,

Chrystie: Vanilla all day.

Analiza: Cooking or takeout,

Chrystie: Takeout.

Analiza: Climb a mountain or jump from a plane.

Chrystie: So I would say neither but climb a mountain.

Analiza: Have you ever worn socks with sandals?

Chrystie: I'm from LA we do not do that.

Analiza: How would you rate your karaoke skills on a scale of 1 to 10 being Mariah Carey?

Chrystie: Oh, girl, I probably have an excellent shower voice. Just don't put me in front of other people.

Analiza: What's a recent book you read?

Chrystie: A recent book. I think well, I'm in the progress of it's a book by Luvvie Ajayi Jones and professional troublemaker. That's what it is all about embracing just your inner badass. It's all about overcoming your fear and what that looks like and how it manifests in your life.

Analiza: What is your favorite way to practice self care?

Chrystie: Having alone time is important. As an enneagram three, I think I moved through the world just very humming all along. And I think that time to slow down by myself for a minute is a great way for me to reset.

Analiza: What is one really good professional development you've done?

Chrystie: Best professional development hands down in my life has been with Maia Merlin and that was with it Together Leader. Hands down the most transformational PD has nothing to do with content. All about knowing yourself are some possible ways to organize yourself and structure yourself.

Analiza: What is your definition of a Boss Mama?

Chrystie: I feel like this word is so loosely used in the world now I think for me, Boss mom doesn't necessarily indicate your executive status at work. I think it's a mom, who is doing it all, who is balancing home life work life trying to move through the world and make an impact for herself and her family.

Analiza: And what advice would you give your younger self?

Chrystie: So many things I think I would say to slow down and identify those inner feelings that inner voice. Don't try to people please. Know what works for you and yourself.

Analiza: Where can we find you like LinkedIn or anything like that?

Chrystie: I'm on LinkedIn, I'm not on Facebook or what's just Facebook, it's too much. I'm on Instagram at Just_Chrys. I post random things like family dogs, you know all the good stuff, kids.

Analiza: And then our last question, Chrystie is do you have a final ask or a recommendation or any parting thoughts for our audience?

Chrystie: Find your tribe. I think boss moms are often isolated from other mom, other female relationships. And it's not about the stay at home more versus the working mom more. You don't have to do this all on your own and find people who you connect with. I did not value female friendships and relationships when I was younger, but the older I am, I don't have any sisters. And so my friends are truly everything to me. And it's just so important to have somebody that you can cry and laugh with. It's a form of self care and it strengthens you as a mom and a boss.

Analiza: Thank you Chrystie so much for being here. I learned a ton and I know everyone else really appreciated it. Thank you.

Chrystie: Thanks for having me.

Analiza: Thank you so much for carving out time today to hear today's podcast. Three things before you go. First, if you found it helpful, please leave a five star review. Second, please share with someone else you can share the link and posts on Facebook and say check it out. Lastly, I want to thank you for being a listener and you didn't go to get a free self care bonus called Juice your Joy at an analiza.wolf/freebonus. Thank you so much.