Working Mom Burnout: How to Do Less Without Losing Career Momentum.
You Can Want Both, and That's Not a Flaw.
Here’s How.
Cait Scudder shared a reframe every ambitious working mom needs: burnout doesn't come from being undisciplined, it comes from the demands in your life outpacing the resources supporting them. She explained how so many moms default to becoming the resource for everything, quietly draining themselves in the process, when the real work is making the invisible visible. Cait's Needs Matrix maps out every demand at home and at work so you can finally ask an honest question: does this actually need to be me? Often, the answer reveals support you've been refusing to receive.
Cait also offered a powerful new way to think about "mom guilt." She doesn't believe it's really guilt at all, it's usually two legitimate desires colliding at once, wanting to work and wanting to be at bedtime, wanting ambition and wanting rest. She shared a moment with her daughter who asked if she liked her computer more than her, and instead of spiraling into shame, Cait turned it into a lesson about focus, showing her daughter that choosing what to focus on for a moment doesn't mean the other things disappear. That's not neglect. That's what a full, honest life actually looks like.
HERE ARE THE 3 KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS EPISODE:
1️⃣ Burnout often comes from demands exceeding resources, not from lacking discipline.
2️⃣ "Mom guilt" is often two valid desires existing at once, not a personal failure.
3️⃣ Choosing what to focus on doesn't mean the rest disappears or stops mattering.
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“I am a mature adult human with desires, with a life that is so robust and desires that are so multiplicitous that I feel the tension between them.”
Guest Appearing in this Episode
About Cait Scudder
Cait Scudder is the founder of The Millionaire Mother, where she coaches entrepreneurial moms on building businesses that fit their real lives instead of demanding everything they have. She's also the author of Born for Both: A Modern Mother's Guide to Pursuing Big Ambition While Raising Little Humans. Her work challenges the idea that motherhood and ambition are opposing forces, offering practical tools for building a life that holds both. You can learn more about her work at themillionairemother.com.
Born for Both
Cait Scudder
Full Transcript
Tia Graham (00:01.676)
Hi Kate, welcome to the show.
Cait Scudder (00:03.807)
Thank you so much for having me, Tia.
Tia Graham (00:06.688)
I'm really excited to talk with you and learn from you. So gonna just start off with the woman listening to this show is very ambitious, very driven, and extremely time poor when it comes to the time she has available to focus on her career and her goals. Yet she's really, really driven. So
From your experience of having, you know, three young kids, another one on the way, and doing a lot, what strategies, what advice do you have for an ambitious working mom that is really, really time poor? How would you kind of start thinking of ways to help this beautiful person who's listening?
Cait Scudder (00:57.419)
I think it really has to do with
Looking at and weighing the relationship between the demands column of your life and business or career and the resources column of your life and business and career. And one of the things that I think is so important for ambitious moms, especially who have a lot of demands on the home front for any given number of reasons, whether it is a super challenging season, whether you have a kid going through a hard time, whether your family is
Moving or navigating loss or like just all of these different portals. Again, it could be just regular day-to-day stress is just at a baseline of nine out of ten. Or it could be there are these heightened seasons. I think all moms go through those different waves and everybody's dealing with something different on the home front. But what I think causes that feeling of burnout.
panic, unsustainability is when the demands column exceeds the exceeds what's available to resource it. And I think that for a lot of moms, the default mom response is I'm gonna be the resource. I'm gonna be the resource for absolutely everything. So big demanding season at work or my boss needs this thing, I will rise above and do that.
My kid needs all of this extra stuff. I and I alone can do that. I'm the one that can do that. And so we rob from
Cait Scudder (02:29.63)
The we we rob from resourcing ourselves and see ourselves only as the resource. And this is why we see astronomically different rates of autoimmune development in moms and women and working moms in particular versus any other demographic or our male counterparts. It's because as moms, we take that on. So I think that coming back to weighing what are the demands that exist right now, and I love that Tiffany.
Do food, drop the ball. Like, figure out what is your glass ball, what is your plastic ball? What can you let go of if you're extremely time poor and you're listening to this and you're trying to do absolutely everything, it's going to feel overwhelming. You're gonna feel like a failure, and you're not a failure, but what needs to happen is what are we prioritizing in terms of the demands? What are the demands that are the most important?
that truly you are and are alone the resource for. And where can we look at bringing in additional scaffolding, bringing in additional support, having explicit conversation about what we need in order to get done the priority things that we are saying need to happen within the time that we have. So I truly believe that it's a matter of prioritization, making the implicit explicit and having the right support.
Yeah.
Tia Graham (03:58.477)
I love that. And you're the first person that I've talked to in the 12 years that I've been an ambitious working mom about you know that visual of demands column and resources column. do you think and believe that working moms and women
Why am I trying to say it? Like we think and believe that only we can do certain things or we can do them better in terms of with the with the children and with the home. And I would say, like, especially more on the children's side. And in reality, there's a lot more that we can delegate, that we can give that with whether it's to spouse, whether it's to nanny, whether it's friends, family, you know, other resources.
That like we have this belief that actu we hold on to too much and then we hurt ourselves going into burnout, having panic. Then you talked about like the physical health challenges, but at some point sometimes you're like kind of what I'm hearing is maybe we're we're our own worst enemy by not letting go of things.
Cait Scudder (05:18.964)
Totally, or by insisting that we have to be the resource for everything while recognizing that nothing in nature exists as a one-way broadcast channel. We are constantly receiving support. Look at a regenerative farm, look at an ecosystem. It is being poured into so that it can deliver from the bounty of itself, not be extracted, fracked, and hacked for the substance of itself. And many mothers who are ambitious but have a lot of demands on the home front, there's almost
This like guilt, or we're doing it out of love, or there's this little bit of martyr motherdom conditioning that creeps in that says, Well, if I am going to be loving, I am going to just drive myself into the ground to prove that me doing it all is an expression of love. So, absolutely, and one of the tools I can share it with you, Tia, to share in the show notes of this episode that I built for my clients and in my body of work is called the Needs Matrix to literally make the implicit explicit and get a visual.
Map of what are all the demands, what are all the needs that are happening right now on the home front, on the work front, on the family front, so that I can see clearly. Holy smokes, demands are through the roof on the solutionslash resources channel. Isn't it fascinating that my name is in every single one of those boxes? And I'm just assuming that. We get to then look at why am I doing that? And what other resources are available to me? And
Why am I putting my name there?
Without having an explicit conversation with my partner, with my nanny, with my housekeeper. You know, this is the same mentality. It's one thing to have support. It's another thing to actually let yourself receive it. One of the things that I notice is this interesting phenomenon with women, and this is not just with moms, but we do the thing of we hire the housekeeper, but then we spend three hours cleaning the whole house because we don't want to be embarrassed that our house looks like trash when they arrive.
Cait Scudder (07:21.165)
And it's like one of the biggest things for me as a mom, again, my three children are five and under. I have a fourth that is gonna be arriving within a month. one of the things that I really
had to learn to let go of is any kind of posture or performance of perfectionism. So when anybody asks me in an interview like this or in a conversation, Kate, how do you do it all? My very first answer is I absolutely don't. I absolutely don't. Not on the home front, not on the business front. What I do is I pay attention to where am I the resource that is truly invaluable and immovable. And in my home, that is as the central nervous system of my family.
I am that central nervous system of my family. So while somebody else can be physically with my kids right now, while I am having this conversation with you and I'm not tending to them, my nanny can be with them right now.
But I know that that sense of grounding, connection, safety, I'm the architect of the rhythm of their day. So even in this hour that I'm not with them, I am actually, I have informed the container that is holding them. That is something that I and I alone can do.
And this is true, by the way, because so for me, I am the CEO and founder of The Millionaire Mother. I work with entrepreneurial moms, business owners, founders who are also mothers. This exact same quality happens for women in business. We think nobody can do it as well as I do. So I'm just not gonna hire, or I'm just gonna do that. And this is where founders stagnate in their businesses, is they they have the belief of
Cait Scudder (09:00.431)
I'm the only one that can do this this well. And that stalls businesses and the belief in the family of well, no one will be able to do XYZ thing for my child or for my home the way that only I can isn't true. And I think on a very practical level, in today's day and age with AI, get
AI to support you to make an SOP manual for your home so you can literally hand off exactly how you want something done, exactly the way that you would do it, and somebody else can implement it. You don't need to be the one doing everything.
Tia Graham (09:36.471)
Yeah, yes. I agree with you. Something that was really life-changing was my husband and I partnered with an organization called Sage House and that was finding our Yes, yes, she's great. And just the exercise of bringing out everything that was invisible.
Cait Scudder (09:48.404)
yeah, Kelly's a good friend of mine.
Tia Graham (10:00.65)
know she tells the story of like her and her husband with a bottle of wine and like here's everything in my head and and you know the partner doing the same was really really transformational and yes and thinking at you know I in my business I I know I'm very aware of when things will take me a really really long time and when I you know when I'm like my god this is gonna take me you know a huge block of time
I'm gonna pay for some gonna do this way faster because you know there's there's like such a value in in speed and then also in expertise. let's talk about the the guilt, you said martyrdom, that a lot of ambitious moms face when you know maybe they are working and you can hear the kids in the background or
Know you are working, you're like, it's a summer after. We just finished summer, so stop mine. Like, it's a summer day. I could be, and having that the confidence, the clarity, the consistency of knowing, like these are the protected hours, and I am not going to feel guilty. I am not going to feel like I am harming them or I feel shame or.
you know, fill in a million different emotions and thoughts that can flood a mother's mind, about about just, you know, really tuning out. And then I would love to also hear about strategies and tools that you have to really, in addition to hiring, to really help moms be extremely successful and and move fast towards their goals.
Cait Scudder (11:53.164)
For sure. Okay, great. So let me start with the first one. So I actually just recorded a long solo episode on this for my podcast, The Million Our Mother Podcast, dissecting, like really understanding what is going on when we talk about mom guilt. And so I personally find the phrase mom guilt
I don't like it. And I don't like it because I don't I don't think it's an accurate description of the emotion that is actually occurring. I think that when it's a cop-out, mom guilt is a cop-out. It's a it's a blanket term that is that we just toss to say, I feel bad. And what I think is actually more accurate, and what is actually going on for moms when we and by the way, I've experienced that emotion, obviously, of course.
But what is actually going on when I'm tracking what is true for me beyond the sort of easy title of it's mom guilt is I am experiencing a simultaneous and at this moment conflicting set of desires. I desire to be
Working on my business. I desire to be pouring into this creative pursuit. I desire to be getting this massage. I desire to be on this date with my husband. I desire to be going to this concert with my girlfriends. I desire to be taking this solo trip. And I desire to be doing bedtime with my little one. I desire to be outside instead of inside recording. I desire XYZ thing. And when we get
Tia Graham (13:36.386)
You want to be places at once.
Cait Scudder (13:38.175)
We want to be two places at once. And what I think is more helpful about this, and more honest about this, is that we get to turn this feeling of I'm so bad, I'm doing it wrong, almost this like victim-y kind of consciousness to I am a mature adult human with.
Desires with a life that is so robust and desires that are so multiplicitous that I feel the tension between them. And how honest is that? I mean, this is true as a mother, like we can desire exactly everything that we have, and also desire the freedom that we once had before we had kids, or we can desire to be exactly where we are while also feeling like, I'm missing that other thing.
And I'm missing it because I would really love to experience that as well. And one of the things that I think is so important as again, just a sovereign, mature mother, is that we can hold two things to be true at once. I mean, I just think that's a hallmark of being a mature human in general. Is can I hold two truths to be true at once without making one of them bad or wrong? And if I can hold that I desire this, I desire that.
What I actually now get to work with is modeling, not just for myself, but also for my children, the art and the importance of trade-offs. When and one of the ways that I teach this and I think about this here, I've done this with my daughter before. So she's sat with me when I've had to sometimes, you know, if we don't are like the boys are down for a sleep, and my daughter's the eldest, and she's awake with me and I'm finishing something in work.
She'll be sitting next to me if I'm working from bed and she'll be like, Mommy, I really want to do this thing. Mom, I noticed that you're on your computer. I really want to talk to you. Mom, why won't- And then she'll say, like, why won't you read this book to me? She's literally said to me before, Do you like your computer better than me? I mean, talk about a trigger for mom guilt. I'm like, okay. I could go in a spiral and be like, my gosh, I'm fucking her up. She's gonna need a therap, like a brand new therapy fund because she sees me working and blah, blah, blah. I could
Cait Scudder (15:57.457)
Absolutely downward spiral into a tornado of mom guilt, or I could use this as a lesson. And so this this literally happened a couple weeks ago. I put my computer to the side. I said, Hey Ella, I want to I want to show you something. So can you see my two fingers right here? I don't know if you're gonna be sharing this on video, Tia, but can you see can you see my two fingers right here? And I held up both of my index fingers for anybody who's listening to this, not on video.
Tia Graham (16:17.186)
Yeah, it'll be on YouTube, yeah.
Cait Scudder (16:24.778)
And I said, okay, I'm gonna wiggle this one over here. I want you to look at that one with your eye. And she was looking at that one with her eye. And then I said, Okay, now I'm gonna wiggle this one over here. Can you see this one over here? And she moves her hand and or moves her eyes and looked at that one. And I said, Well, can you still see this one over here? And she's like, Yes. The point was whether it is the lens of your own iris or whether it is a camera lens, taking a picture with your iPhone, in order to focus your eye, your your
Physiology, whether again it's your eye or it's a camera lens, needs to pick one thing to foreground and one thing to background. That's why when you take a picture on your phone and you tap it, the things in the back get blurry. The tap tells it what are you focusing on in that moment. It doesn't mean that the other things go away, it doesn't mean that they're not there, it doesn't mean that they're not important. It's that you are selecting, I am focusing on this for this particular moment.
That is it. It is value neutral. It doesn't mean I focus on that only and forever. I deny the existence of the other things. I'm not paying attention to it. And so I said, Ella, this over here is mommy's email that she's finishing right now. I need like five more minutes to finish that. I am so excited to go to this finger over here, but I gotta finish this thing first. Is there something that you wanna work on during that time? Hey, what's that book there? And then she's like, yeah, we can both do our work, mom.
And then we'll come together. And so it was this moment of, my gosh, I'm doing it wrong. I'm not enough for her. I'm gonna mess her up. I'm and just letting myself spiral or recognizing, can I use this as a teaching moment to actually teach about trade-offs? And then, as I said before, do the work that I and I alone can do, which is be the emotional thermostat of the home. I could have snapped at her, I could have
sh like gone into blame mode of she's messing with my time. I could have gone into shame mode of shutting down myself. But instead I just use that as a moment to teach this importance of trade-offs. And I think that that is a skill that every human through all ages and stages of development needs to learn to prioritize. And it's one that if we model that as ambitious moms for our kids, they get to learn that it's safe too to focus on one thing
Cait Scudder (18:46.282)
And still hold other things to be important.
Tia Graham (18:49.834)
I I love that you modeled it. for a long time, especially when I was a director of sales and marketing in for hotels and resorts and had a very demanding corporate job and little kids. I was so, so, so full of of working mom guilt and then traveling to give keynote talks. Like I would always feel the guilt before I'd leave to get on, go to the airport.
but what I realized probably about three years ago was I actually never felt guilt. Like again, this word, and I agree with you that it's kind of thrown out a sort of this this umbrella term and it and it means a lot of different things. I realized that I was actually feeling inadequate. I wasn't feeling guilt. I actually wasn't feeling good enough. And you know, as a mom,
And it and 95%, maybe even more. I would it was wrong. Like I was feeling it because of things from my childhood or because of my kids struggling. and it was like, I'm feeling this. Okay, how come I'm feeling inadequate? Let me work on this and let me change that because that's a choice, and you can work on it. and I actually think that there's a like how you said, feeling bad or
there's confliction or you're feeling tension that I think it's so powerful for someone listening who is feeling working on guilt to go, let me just actually like dive into this and what is really going on, you know?
Cait Scudder (20:32.716)
Absolutely, and 100%. And that's why I think the frame of two coexisting desires, because I do think for some moms who are like, no, I do feel guilty, what what might actually be surfacing is a desire that you haven't yet named to yourself, which is I don't want to be going to this work thing. Like I work with a lot, I want to work less hours, or I don't give a crap about this corporate sales job. And I'm not saying anybody who has a corporate sales job.
Tia Graham (20:54.326)
Like, I want to work less hours.
Cait Scudder (21:02.87)
needs to give up their job. But I think that for a lot of moms there is this profound reassessment of our values, of our alignment, of what ambition even means to us. I work with a lot
Tia Graham (21:03.04)
Yeah, yeah.
Tia Graham (21:10.733)
Yeah.
Cait Scudder (21:14.802)
Who have had mega successful careers that realize, and it's a very unnerving identity unraveling process to be like, hang on a minute. I've been like Leonardo DiCaprio and Wolf of Wall Street slaying deals over here, and it's been feeding my identity and fueling me. And now all of a sudden, I don't.
Tia Graham (21:31.648)
And your ego feeding the ego.
Cait Scudder (21:34.359)
Care about that anymore. I don't want to do that. So who am I now and how do I relate to this? That's not mom guilt. That's a knock at the door that there isn't a change and a new form of ambition that is wanting to come through. That is a desire. Maybe it's a seedling desire that hasn't fully been watered yet. But listening to that, so it's not just about like pushing down or just saying, like, mommy has to go to work. This is important because this mommy loves this. Like, well, maybe mommy doesn't.
Love this anymore. And maybe mommy needs to have that honest conversation with herself. So I think that with that frame of mom guilt is actually about desire, I think we can start to get more honest about what is becoming true for us in this season.
Tia Graham (22:20.066)
Yeah, yeah. I think you're right. And I, you know, from I love the Wolf World Street because I was in sales and marketing. Absolutely, I'm thinking that. and for me it was going from corporate to being entrepreneur to have a lot more flexibility. And a year and a half ago, I made a decision to do less work trips for keynote speaking and and leadership trainings and and to
to build a business that is more online, that doesn't require me to go hop on a plane and go to Miami or whatever. and I think it's also that knowing that there's always possibilities, that you're never stuck, that there are you can create, you can create a career, you can create business, work that fits with the season that you're in now, with the desires that you have now. And our desires are gonna keep changing.
Right. When our kids are our 20s, we're gonna be different humans. When they're in our 30s, we're gonna be different humans. That that there's the yeah, again, there's just like I think we think in a lot of like, it's this or this, and there's actually seven to fifteen options at all times. It's not, yeah, it's not just that. Okay, so let's talk about you have 15 or 20 hours a week, and you want, well, maybe you want more, but let's just say.
Cait Scudder (23:31.848)
A hundred percent.
Tia Graham (23:43.437)
You have 15 or 20 hours a week and you are choosing because of the glass balls and your priorities. to you're spending a lot of time with your children, supporting them, helping them, driving them places, everything. What is your advice for really maximizing and having those, you know, 15 to 20 hours a week move you forward, whether you're work again, working for a company or you have your own business?
Cait Scudder (24:15.221)
I think well s I'll speak to the experience of running your own business. I think that in that time, because again, that you know, if you are working for a company navigating what is your if you're working full time but you only have 15 hours, like that's a conversation with your employer, that that's not as much my zone of genius, but my but being a business mentor for entrepreneurial moms, this
Working backwards by design is exactly the strategy that I teach my clients. So looking first and foremost, what is your capacity in this stage and season? Okay, cool. I've got 15 to 20 hours, great. What are your objectives in the business? This probably isn't the season to start a subsec, a podcast, try to land a bunch of networking events, start a mastermind, a membership, and sign some one-to-one clients. Like pick one.
What is the most important thing in this season of your business? What is it? Is it maintaining a particular revenue level? Great. Then every decision that you make needs to be reverse engineered towards hitting that target. Maybe your goal is 200,000, maybe it's 500,000, maybe it's more. Like it is going to be so dependent on your stage of business and the the particular strategies that you employ. You know, if you have if you're aiming for a hundred thousand dollar a year at fifteen.
hours a week, you can do that with yourself and some CLAUD projects and maybe an agent. You know, you don't need necessarily now in this day and age a a whole team to do that. You can do that by yourself. I'm not saying you should, but you can. If your goal is like I want to have a seven figure year and you know sell out this larger program or something like that, then then then I would be looking at
Who are you hiring and what is the team around you? Because support and scaffolding is always gonna be number one when you are taking on a bigger load, especially if you have a lot of demands at home. So I would look at what does your home front system look like and what does your business backend support system look like? Those are the first two questions that I would address so that I would, and then I would say, with my number one KPI being a particular revenue level, great, what's my pathway to get there? You thinking through that should take up some of that 15 hours.
Tia Graham (26:07.128)
Mm.
Cait Scudder (26:29.419)
The execution steps, that's where that can fall to a team around you. But you doing that thinking work of almost plugging in the GPS to reverse engineer, I often teach that outcome clarity, process design, intelligent execution. That is those are the three steps to build.
what I call like a matriarch and not like a firefighter not being in reactive mode, but truly being in architect mode, that's how you get there. So I think it's really being clear on the outcome and objective. Because again, if you're like 15 hours, I have to do everything, you're spinning like a top with no direction and you're just frazzled. You might be doing busy work, but you're not actually moving the needle. So the first thing to stop and ask is
Tia Graham (26:56.322)
Mm.
Cait Scudder (27:14.795)
What is the objective I'm actually working towards? What are my priorities? And if you need help with that, get some support in that area, thinking through that part of your process. But that is number one, because all of the execution steps, all of the systems around you, all of the strategies that you employ to hit your income target, again, if you're an entrepreneur, those are gonna depend on where you're going.
Tia Graham (27:18.264)
Mm.
Tia Graham (27:39.427)
Mm-hmm. great advice. And it's it's the I want to say staying simple because it's very easy with, especially with all the content and thought leaders coming at you. and it could be as an entrepreneur or if you know you're working organization too, of different ideas of
Keeping the noise out and staying focused on your one and maybe sub-priority, like that, you know, similar to like when you are hanging out with your kids, like being focused on that and not thinking of the other million things, right? Of like that, yeah, that choice. Okay. so you have a book coming out. Tell us about that.
Cait Scudder (28:32.129)
Hundred percent, yes. It's called Born for Both, a Modern Mother's Guide to Pursuing Big Ambition While Raising Little Humans. It comes out February 2nd. Yes, Born for Both. I am so excited about it, Tia. I just truly feel, you know, after years and years, you know, when I found out I was pregnant with my first, I remember peeing on that stick, getting the double line, and being flooded with just so much joy and elation and then
Tia Graham (28:42.198)
One for both. I love the title.
Cait Scudder (29:01.303)
Very quickly, the feeling of dread and the feeling of, my gosh, I have no idea how I, as the breadwinner, as this ambitious woman, how I'm going to maintain my business, let alone grow it as a mom and be the kind of present mom that I know I want to be. And I didn't have a playbook, I didn't have examples, I didn't have.
tools or frameworks and so I really have taken everything that I have lived and learned and supported thousands now of mother entrepreneurs with and put it into this book and I'm so excited for it to hit shelves and support many mothers to in their pursuit of both.
Tia Graham (29:51.042)
I love it. And as a reminder for the beautiful working mom listening, you are born for both and you can have the priority of being a great mom to your kids and having the dreams and and purpose that work and career gives you. and the the desires, right? Like have having both desires. So I love it.
And where can people go to learn more about you and yeah, find out about you?
Cait Scudder (30:26.773)
100%. So you can go to bornforboth.com to read more about the book, to pre-order a copy. There's some amazing pre-order bonuses that are available there. You can learn more about me at themillionairemother.com, at the Millionaire Mother on Instagram, and I also have a podcast called The Millionaire Mother Podcast. So the Millionaire Mother in all of the spaces.
Tia Graham (30:51.614)
Kate, thank you for coming on the Feel Good Club. And I hope that you have a very smooth and easy birth with your fourth. And congratulations again.
Cait Scudder (31:02.029)
Thank you. Thank you so much, Tia. It's such a pleasure to be here.