Marie Levey-Pabst has been a public school teacher for the past 11 years, which is really more of a 7 to 6 job than a 9 to 5. She began teaching high school English with Teach for America back in 2004. She started working part-time when she had children, and also started a side project of producing tools, resources and providing support for parents who were struggling to create balance between family, work, and personal fulfillment. She recently transitioned to making this side-gig a full-time one, and now she works as a personal consultant for parents who are looking to create a more sustainable life, and also as an educator, speaker, and workshop leader. “There are many reasons I have chosen to embark on a new journey as a life-balance consultant, but the main one is that I have seen the need for busy parents to get support as they try to find balance in their lives”.
Marie currently has three prepared workshops and five personal consulting packages ready for clients, and she is happy to create either a customized workshop or customized consulting package for any parent who is looking for a complete and total personal experience. “No productivity tools or life hacks are one-size-fits-all, and I know too many parents who are drowning as they try to do it all I am excited to use my most powerful strengths, systems and structures development, to helps fellow parents develop systems that create and maintain balance in their lives”. Marie is excited to use the skills she developed as an educator to run workshops, provide online courses, do personal consulting, and write articles and books that help parents on their journey towards life-balance.
Benefits of Being an Escapee
Being an escapee from the 9 to 5 is giving Marie more time to do her work. “As a teacher I loved my work, but there just wasn’t enough time in the day to plan lessons, develop relationships with students, and make long-term plans well”. When Marie started her own business she built in time to do long term planning, long-term and short-term reflection, and to cultivate relationships with her community of moms (even if they weren’t clients!). “Even though this time doesn’t seem immediately “lucrative” it feeds my soul and makes me a much better coach, consultant, and educator for the parents I work with”.
Some of the resources that have given Marie her entrepreneurial start include “Daring Greatly,” “Fire Starter Sessions” and ‘You are a Badass”, as well as books such as Guerilla Marketing, Launch and Re-Work. She has also found a lot of life-guidance from Gretchen Rubins books and she is addicted to the fantastic podcast “Being Boss” with Kathleen Shannon and Emily Thompson.
Managing time has been one of Marie’s surprise challenges. “I was used to having a job where I mostly knew what to do, what came next, and there were bells and schedules that told me where to be”. Now she needs to make her own boundaries and own plans about how to move forward. Gaining mastery over her time has been liberating, and has lead Marie to some incredible creative breakthroughs. “It has required me to think about my time differently and put boundaries in place so that my work doesn’t creep too far into the rest of my life”.
Marie is in the process of making a variety of change in her business. She underestimated the power of connection and community. “I came into this thinking I would have to learn to “sell hard,” which sounded pretty horrible to me. But I’m learning that I really just need to provide a ton of resources and support to people for free so that they can see what I’m about and decide if work with me is the best fit for them, Luckily, I love writing and creating content that actually gets read and used, so that is a good fit!” Marie is launching a new website lots of new offerings, and online courses. Folks can sign up for her newsletter to find out more about the launch and to get tons of practical and actionable tools that can allow them to create real balance between family, work, and personal fulfillment.
Create Balance with Marie Levey-Pabst
https://www.createbalancedlife.com/
