Work-Life Harmony: Productivity Secrets for Busy Moms with Robyn Pineault

Kathi: Hi everyone, I'm back with Robyn Pineault. Robyn is the founder of Autoimmune Thriving and is an MS thriver. Her mission in life is to empower those living with autoimmune disease to thrive and not just survive. Thriving includes an online program on healing, lifestyle audits and a treatment fund for those in need of holistic healing assistance. I'm excited to hear about the fund. So thank you for being on the show, Robyn, and I can't wait to jump into this conversation.

Robyn: Awesome. Thanks so much for having me.

Kathi: Absolutely. So I understand that this is a side hustle. So tell me what you do and tell me how you jumped into this. I know a lot of women out there are thinking about doing exactly what you're doing. So how does it work, and how do you come up with that magic formula?

Robyn: So I work full-time in marketing. I've been a marketing director for several years now. Technically, I think it's over 16 years of my career now in marketing. And over the years I get passion projects, and I'm like, oh, let me do this, ooh, let me do this. So in 2014 I was diagnosed with MS, otherwise known as multiple sclerosis, and that became my new health sidekick, as I like to call it. And so I spent a lot of time, and I still do, constantly researching and learning how to take care of myself. I like to say differently, not better than before, because that's discrediting how I was before, but I like to take care of myself differently. And so I shared my entire journey. From the day I was diagnosed in the hospital, I was sharing. I was talking about what I was researching, I was asking for opinions, I was asking for resources from different people. And so as I was sharing, I started getting a ton of questions, and every single time somebody in my circle knew someone that was diagnosed, they were saying, can I introduce you? And so I was constantly taking all of my resources and packaging it up for other people. And I said, okay, I'm really good at organizing, let me organize some information. So I've put together little guides, and that's how it all started. It was simply being asked over and over again if I could help other people who were diagnosed with MS or autoimmune diseases.

Kathi: Wow, that's a fantastic story. And I think that people can do the same exact thing. You don't have to have an illness to start a side hustle, but you do have to have a curiosity. And I think that your curiosity runs deep because you really needed the solutions, and you needed the other way to look at yourself, and a new way to get on the journey of taking good care of yourself. But everything that I find, don't you think that no matter what you're really interested in, there's 10 other people that are interested in the same thing that have more that they can provide to you?

Robyn: Yeah, for sure. And I think when you're getting started in a side hustle, you're going to see what else is out there, and you're like, oh, I can't do it like this person. And there is always someone that's going to need your message from you, because it will land differently than from someone else. So even though I do not have any healthcare degrees, I know how to organize information and then provide it to somebody so that they can become the best healthcare advocate for themselves. They can do the research themselves, find the best healthcare team that they need, and go from there.

There is always someone that's going to need your message from you, because it will land differently than from someone else.

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Kathi: Absolutely. And there's no one way to do anything, and I totally agree. Being the marketing expert that you are, I know that we all have our own voice, and some people will be appealing to one person in the same exact situation, the same scenario, but you're going to be attracted to the words and the nuance and the voice of a certain person. And that's why I think too that there's more than enough business for everybody, no matter what you want to get into. Whatever side hustle, don't worry about competition, because there's so much out there of people searching for you. They're searching for you and your voice, and that's obviously true with you and what you've done. So talk to me a little bit more about your organizational strategy. So how do you do this work-life… I called it balance. What did you call it?

Robyn: Work-life harmony. So I actually hosted a podcast called the Alpha Female Podcast from 2016 to around 2020. I had twins in 2020, so I put the podcast on hold. But I was interviewing highly ambitious women, and my one caveat is that they had to know how to take care of themselves. And we talked a lot about work-life balance in the beginning, and then I had a guest come on my show and she said work-life harmony. I was like, oh, that makes so much sense, because it's how you integrate work in life. There's no equal amounts. You can't actually balance it out. So you get to pick your work hours, you get to pick your life hours, and then as long as you stay true to what lights you up, then you'll have achieved this work-life harmony. So that's how I coined it. And it's been so important in my life. Even before children, I was very adamant about how I wanted to spend my time outside of work hours, and setting boundaries in terms of when I would look at email, when I would answer the phone, when I was going to be in the gym training, when I was going to be outside spending time with loved ones. So I've always had that sense of organization around my life, and then it just became twice as important as I had twins. Literally, figuratively.

There's no equal amounts. You can't actually balance it out.

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Kathi: Four times, probably.

Robyn: Yeah. It just became that much more important in terms of how I structure my life, especially when I returned back into the working world. In Canada we have a year off, but I went back to work around 10 months.

Kathi: Wow.

Robyn: So yeah, it became really important in terms of how I structure my day and how I take care of myself, because the stress of having twins on my body with MS was definitely something new that I had to learn. I had to relearn how to take care of myself, and set boundaries in terms of what side hustles am I going to keep. The podcast I no longer do. I had to say goodbye to that side hustle, because other things are now more important in this season of my life.

Kathi: Absolutely. So how do you handle your schedule? Do you use a digital calendar? Do you use a paper calendar? Do you write down everything that you want to do? How's that work? Oh, she's going to show us something.

Robyn: For those that are watching the video, I do paper calendar and I do digital. So what I'll do on Sunday, I usually do it Sunday nights, is I open my schedule on my phone and pull up my calendar, and then I'll actually physically write down everything, because the act of writing it down again really helps me solidify what's happening for the week. And then I'm a big proponent of monthly and weekly goals, and then daily tasks. So I don't let myself do more than three things a day outside of the work environment. So for example, if it's schedule a doctor's appointment for the twins, schedule a play date, I try to keep it to threes. They seem to work really well for me. So the combination of the digital planner and the paper planner really helps. And my paper planner is always open on my desk, which is my side hustle zone as well as where I work full time remotely, and so I can always reference that throughout the day.

I don't let myself do more than three things a day outside of the work environment.

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Kathi: Oh, okay. So you work full-time remotely too. That's awesome. That helps you as well. I guess that's how you could come back after 10 months instead of a year with twinsies.

Robyn: Yeah. And we hired a nanny, because it was really important that someone be taking care of the babies full-time. And it's very interesting in terms of the shifts that I have to make throughout the day. They just woke up from their nap, so I literally hear them crying upstairs, and usually I run upstairs to help the nanny as they're getting up. So I shift in and out of mom and work mode quite a lot during the day. And I think that's the biggest lesson I'm learning right now, is how to manage that, how to allow my nervous system to manage that as well.

Kathi: Yeah. And that's what many people are facing as remote workers: how do you strike that non-reaction when things outside your work zone are happening? It's like, I hear people walking up above me and I'm like, stop walking. And how do we all live together within the same house? And many people are dual remote workers. Does your husband work from home as well, or is he out and about?

Robyn: He does. He's an entrepreneur, so sometimes he's in and out, sometimes he's home. We've started reviewing our schedules at the beginning of the week, and we also review the day first thing in the morning before we get the twins up, just to make sure everything is covered. One of the things that I asked for, because I was having meetings always leading up until dinner, was I was asking him if he could prep dinner. That was one of the things where I was trying to do everything. I was trying to rush upstairs, make dinner for everyone. I was like, I just need you to make dinner for the family. He's like, I got it. And so he's been making dinner for the past nine months. I just needed to ask.

Kathi: Yeah, because people are willing if they know what you need, and they don't know what you need until you know what you need. So I applaud you standing back and just saying, okay, this is what it's going to take for me to feel well, to feel whole and to give my best back to my family and my job and my side hustle and all that stuff. You have a lot going on with that, for sure. You're a gal after my own heart as far as looking at your schedule and planning your week before the week begins, and also having a certain amount of tasks throughout the day. We're all different on how many tasks we can handle, because you're working full time and you're doing your thing and you're a mom and a wife. You know your limits, and I think that's so very important for us all to know: how many tasks can I do a day? I can't do 15 tasks a day. It's not going to happen. But how many can I do? Maybe I can do five. Maybe I'm at three. Maybe I can do one big thing: this is the big thing I'm going to get accomplished on Monday. So I think you're right on task. You're an organized girl.

Robyn: And I'm also, according to Human Design, a generator, and so if I'm working in my passion, I will generate endless energy to get that thing done, which is also technically detrimental to my health. So this is a little bit of a segue into Autoimmune Thriving. I'm a big proponent of what I call the six pillars of health, and one of them is stress management. Even if you figure out the other ones, so there's nutrition and supplementation and sleep and reducing your toxic load, I think stress management is something that you're always going to be working on. And it's so important, because if you're not getting your tasks done, or you've given yourself way too many tasks, or if you're a generator and you're working, working, working, you've got that workaholic mode on, you're not taking care of yourself, and that stress management is just not a pillar of health. So that's the area that will always suffer for me, because I can get into workaholic mode and I can just continue, and then I'm like, oh, it's five o'clock, I've got to run upstairs. I didn't have time for a quick five-minute meditation before switching into mom mode. So those are the things that I think are just so important. And I will be the first to raise my hand and say I still don't have it figured out. Still working on it.

Kathi: Still working on it. We're always still working on it. So what else can you talk to me about as far as thriving with autoimmune? What other tips would you like to give listeners here?

Robyn: So one thing that I did, as I was researching all of these, because I have this workaholic generator energy, I will do all the things all at once. And when someone was approaching me after a diagnosis, they're like, I have to change my nutrition, I need to find a naturopath to work with to find the right supplements based on my blood work, I need to get enough sleep, I need to reduce my stress, I need to reduce my toxic load. It's a lot, and it really overwhelms people. So something that I constantly find myself saying over and over again is you have to start small. You have to start with baby steps, because the person that tries to do everything is usually the one that will get overwhelmed. And that was me. I had a list of all the things that I needed to do, and I would beat myself up if I didn't do it. And so it's so key in terms of figuring out what's the low-hanging fruit. What's the area of your life that you know you'll have the greatest chance of making changes in? And then that will make you feel really successful. You'll be like, okay, I've got this. I'm now sleeping eight hours a night, this is great, now let me tackle nutrition. But I've started to learn that not everyone has my generator energy. So it's start small. Start with one area and then tackle the next, and then tackle the next, and then tackle the next.

You have to start with baby steps, because the person that tries to do everything is usually the one that will get overwhelmed.

Kathi: That's really good advice.

Robyn: Unfortunately, I don't think it's as easy as just figuring out one thing. I truly believe that we have to take care of ourselves holistically.

Kathi: Absolutely. So throughout your life, what do you feel is the most valuable piece of advice that anyone's ever given you? It could be about life or it could be about business. What's the one aha moment that you've had that you're like, I'm going to keep that one forever?

Robyn: So much of taking care of ourselves is mindset based. And when we approach things from a positive perspective, and that doesn't discount grief, I truly believe that we need to grieve, especially when going through a health challenge, but then it's what do you do with those feelings after? There's no negative feelings. Anger, sadness, those aren't negative feelings. It's what we do with those feelings. It's how we process them that can be negative.

Kathi: So talk to me about this: there's a fund for those in need of holistic healing. So talk to me about this fund. It sounds like a passion project for you.

Robyn: Yeah. So I started Autoimmune Thriving, I would say, in 2019. And so in 2019 I held a few yoga retreats. I had just gotten my yoga teacher's certification, another side hustle, and I thought this was a perfect way to bring a community of people together in my local area. I live in Ottawa. And so I taught a really slow, nourishing yoga class, we had a curated lunch following the autoimmune paleo protocol, and I had a guest speaker as well. So I held a couple of these retreats, and then I took 10% of the proceeds and I put it towards this fund. And this was actually very interesting for me, because I was like, I'm going to put together this fund and then offer it to people that don't have benefits. Because here in Canada we technically have free health care, but if you are self-employed, for example, and you don't have a benefit plan, then you have to pay out of pocket for acupuncture, naturopath, stuff like that. So I wanted to be able to offer that to somebody who didn't have those means. And I put out posts and I said, who wants these funds? I started small. I was like, let me pay for somebody's massage. And nobody raised their hand. Literally, I couldn't get anybody to say, I would like that money. And so what I ended up doing is, at this time I was getting my eyelashes done, and my eyelash tech was talking to me about how she is dealing with a new autoimmune diagnosis. And I started asking her a couple of questions, like, have you been able to go to a massage therapist just to de-stress? And she was just like, no, I can't afford it. I was like, can I pay for a massage? And she was like, really? And I didn't even tell her it was from the fund. I just said, can I pay for your massage? She said yes, and then afterwards I told her that it was paid for by the yoga retreat that I hosted, and she was just like, thank you, that is so kind. So that's the hope. It hasn't grown since then, because COVID then happened and all yoga retreats have been paused. But now that I've launched these lifestyle audits, every single time I sell a lifestyle audit, I'll be taking some proceeds and putting it away in the fund, and when I have enough for an acupuncture treatment or a massage therapy, then I'll be putting the offer back out. So that's how it's starting, very, very small.

Kathi: Oh, that's fantastic. What a good give back. And talk to me about a valuable free resource. What would you like to give the listeners? Because we're going to put links below so that you can connect.

Robyn: So I put together an Autoimmune Thriving healing guide, and it's basically a roadmap. It covers the six pillars of health and it gives you questions. So I'll ask you a question so you can think about, oh, this might be something I might want to do. Oh, I haven't really found a naturopath, I haven't looked at my blood work. Okay, this is something. So it gives a little bit of a roadmap. So if you go to autoimmunethriving.com, yes, I bought the dot-com, it's right on the top page, so you can download that guide for free there.

Kathi: Oh, that's fantastic. Is there anything that I should have asked you about your work and about your mission and your passion that we haven't discussed yet?

Robyn: I think it's just a little bit more around becoming your best healthcare advocate, and this is something that I learned in my journey. I truly believe in holistic healthcare. I believe in the allopathic system and I also believe in alternative healthcare. And not one person is going to manage that for you. You have to manage it for yourself. And I don't think people really understand that until they start dealing with a healthcare issue. You have to know who you go and see for what. I go and see my family doctor to get blood work done. I go and see my naturopath to get supplements based on my blood work. I go to see a registered massage therapist to reduce my stress and take care of my body. I go to see an osteopath. So you have to know who you're going to go to, how you build your healthcare team, and then you have to keep track of it. So I have a massive binder of every single blood work that I've had since my diagnosis, because when I go to see a new practitioner and they ask a question, I can be like, oh, here's the history over the past three years of this, so that you can then help me with this issue. So it's just knowing that it is overwhelming, it can be exhausting, but it also can be very empowering. So when you take it from an empowering standpoint, that's when the magic happens.

Kathi: I totally agree with that. And keeping a running notebook going is a great suggestion, because it's so complicated, and there is going to be no one who's going to look at your overall life of medical care, and any kind of care really, besides yourself. You're the one that's there every single day. And keeping track of it in a notebook is brilliant, especially if you have a lot of different people helping you from a lot of different modalities. Because what I don't understand, I don't know about Canada, but in the US doctors do not talk to other doctors. It's really kind of crazy. I went to the dentist and I went to a specialist, and the dentist hadn't even told the specialist what I was there for, and only because I had a note of what tooth they were talking about was I even able to get care. It was like, didn't they tell you? They just referred me out. So who's going to be in charge of your care besides yourself, right?

Robyn: What was the show? It was like a spin-off of Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice. And it was this place where all of the doctors talked to each other, and I remember watching it and being like, oh, this is amazing, why can't this exist everywhere? And I believe that there are other private clinics that exist, not only in the US but also in Canada. Obviously you have to pay for them, which Canadians are not used to. But I remember watching it on TV and being like, that doctor talked to that doctor and they figured it out together, why can't that exist here?

Kathi: That's crazy. I know. So that would be really great in the future. So healthcare industry, get on the Hollywood bandwagon. Seriously, or at least have some kind of network. But because of HIPAA, I think that's been a thing. You're not supposed to disclose anything. But within the community, they really need to get themselves organized and streamlined, if you ask me.

Robyn: I totally agree with that.

Kathi: And that's really good to know. So take that away, you guys: be your own advocate, keep your own journals, and know who you're using for what modality. That is really, really good. Okay, cool. I don't know if there's anything else that we need to cover. Do you feel like we've missed anything? I know that you're a huge resource, and I love the fund that you're putting together. That's brilliant. And would that reach out to anybody in the United States, or is that a Canadian fund?

Robyn: No, because what I can do is I can PayPal the amount, or I can pay a practitioner directly if they want to invoice me. So I think it can be much larger, and I'm educating myself on crypto right now, so technically this should be something that could be much wider than just North America. But the one thing that I will say is, in terms of the lifestyle audits that I'm offering, this would be for somebody that is a little overwhelmed with their journey. So they're doing X, Y and Z, and they don't know how to incorporate A, B and C. So what I'm really good at is organizing, and I'm really good at mapping out days. So what I do is I sit down for an hour. I send them a questionnaire ahead of time, and then I literally send them back a report where it literally says, tackle nutrition first, tackle supplementation second. So I map it out for somebody that wants a little bit… I'm kind of like a healthcare tour guide. I love to explain it.

Kathi: I love it. I love it. Love it, love it, love it. Okay, so absolutely reach out and click the links below to learn more. And I so appreciate you being on the show. Thanks so much. I am so impressed by you and all that you do. So good luck.

Robyn: Thank you for having me.

Kathi: Oh, you're very welcome. And good luck with your journey.

Robyn: Thank you.