I had the please of intervieing Kelly Schuknecht, a marketer and book coach who has been working from home for 18 years. Kelly empowers professional women and entrepreneurs to share their stories and grow their brands through her blog, which serves as a resource hub for nonfiction authors and business professionals.
Key Takeaways
- Kelly’s journey to working from home was driven by her desire to be present for her children
- Remote work flexibility requires intentional planning and boundary-setting
- Finding workarounds like using gym childcare for focused work time can be essential for parents
- Delegation is crucial for maintaining work-life balance when working remotely
- Having dedicated workspace and systems like calendar blocking help maintain productivity
Notable Quotes
“I am answering your question about my family. So my second question or my second child is two and a half, two and a half years later, I had him. So he is now 17. And it was when I was pregnant with him that I was desperate to find an option to stay home.” – Kelly Schuknecht
“Internet is better. Like people are used to meeting on Zoom. Like I don’t even think about where people are hardly unless they’re outside the United States.” – Kelly Schuknecht on how remote work has evolved
“I learned that it’s really, really important to make sure that you have not just that your calendar is open, like if people are booking time with you or you’re scheduling work that you need to get done. You also have to factor in those times like I need a break between back-to-back meetings or I need time to get to this thing or that thing.” – Kelly Schuknecht
Family and Business Background
Michelle: “The first thing is tell me a little bit about your family and your business.”
Kelly: Kelly explains she has three children – a 20-year-old daughter in college, a 17-year-old son, and a third child. Before working remotely, she had a 45-minute commute and was miserable being away from her first baby. When pregnant with her second child, she found a part-time remote job that eventually became full-time, allowing her to work from home with her children.
Kelly: “I had three kids within four years, which I don’t know how moms do it when they have to like go to an office every day. I was really fortunate to be able to be home with them and juggle all the things back then.”
Regarding her business, Kelly worked for small companies until the end of 2024, when after a job loss during an acquisition, she started her own business. She had previously built a TikTok presence about book marketing and maintained a 15-year blog as a “side hobby.”
Kelly: “When it came time to decide what to do after I lost my job, I decided to start a company kind of merging the worlds that I had been a part of…working with Nonfiction authors with professional books who wanted to develop a thought leadership platform.”
Transitioning to Remote Work
Michelle: “What would you say is your biggest surprise for doing remote work or from now having your own company at home? Like, did anything surprise you about that process or is it just an easy transition?”
Kelly: “I don’t even remember going to work in an office. Like I did it for a few years…it has been such a long process for me of working remotely.”
Kelly shares that when her family moved to a remote location 30 miles from town 12 years ago, she didn’t worry about finding remote work. She notes how drastically remote work culture has changed, making it much easier now:
Kelly: “The industry has changed or not the industry, just the state of the world, right, has changed so much… Internet is better. Like people are used to meeting on Zoom.”
Kelly: “I sometimes sit and I look at like women who are…at a kid’s game…and I just think like, how do moms do it when they have to go to a physical place and work set hours?”
Setting Boundaries Between Work and Personal Life
Michelle: “How did you establish those boundaries between your work and your personal life? Do you use a planner? Do you use like block scheduling? Like how do you make that work for you, having all that flexibility?”
Kelly: “All of the above. I think for me, just my own work style, it has always worked really well for me where like in my brain, when I’m working, I’m working, when I’m not, I’m not.”
Kelly explains her detailed calendar system:
Kelly: “If you look at my calendar right now, it looks insane, but it’s partly because, everything’s color coded…I have every hour of the day blocked off. So I know exactly when I’m going to fit in the work that I need to do.”
She emphasizes the importance of building in buffer time:
Kelly: “I learned that it’s really, really important to make sure that you have…not just that your calendar is open…You also have to factor in those times like I need a break between back-to-back meetings or I need time to get to this thing.”
Kelly: “It took me a few years when my kids were in school to get to remind myself…when they don’t have school, I need to block it on my calendar so that I remember there is no school that day and don’t plan meetings.”
Challenges and Solutions
Michelle: “Can you share a challenge with your home life and your career growth and how you overcame it when you either, when you first started or when you first started your business?”
Kelly: “I do tend to be a bit of a workaholic. So in my first job, I was in publishing for 10 years…I had a lot of responsibility…I would find that I could work, you know, if there was 26 hours in a day, I could have worked every one of them. Not the healthiest mentally for moms, you know, like when you’re like basically working from the time you wake up to the time you go to bed. [It definitely can lead to the level of stress that can set up the bad decisions that lead to rehab] But like in these like weird chunks throughout the day. But it worked really well for me to be able to do that.”
Kelly admits she didn’t handle this well initially, but improved in her next job:
Kelly: “I learned how to delegate really well. And that was really important was not seeing everything as something I needed to tackle, but delegating where I could or prioritizing the work so that I could be more realistic about what I could actually handle in the day.”
Kelly: “I built my team over the last seven years in my previous job where I really entrusted people to get work done and to be able to handle, to oversee different areas. And I think a lot of people struggle with that delegation piece.”
Daily Routine
Michelle: “Walk me through what a daily routine would look like for you. Like are you a nine to five person? Are you a I get work done better at 1 a.m. person?”
Kelly: “I am definitely a nine to five person. I think that that happened for a couple of reasons.”
Kelly explains how this schedule developed naturally when her children were in school and continued through her corporate jobs. Though she now runs her own business, she maintains regular hours but sometimes handles administrative tasks in evenings or weekends:
Kelly: “There’s just those kind of admin type tasks that are easier to handle outside of business hours.”
Kelly: “I wish I had more of a free spirit where I could be like, you know what, I’m gonna go and I’m gonna go for a hike on a Wednesday and then work later in the evening or whatever. But I just, my mind doesn’t work that way.”
Support Systems for Remote Work
Michelle: “What systems would you say…support systems have you put in place for your business?…One of the biggest fears that people have about moms have about working at home is kind of to have that support system.”
Kelly: “One of the things I’ve seen from working from home and hiring people who want to work from home is that they tend to think, like I’m just going to work from home and I can do that with…basically, I want to be home with my kids and work from home. And then I think they’re shocked when they find out that, it’s really hard to have a toddler running around the house and also try to be productive.”
Kelly describes her approach when her children were young:
Kelly: “I would get up in the morning. I could do a little bit of like light work when kids were eating breakfast…but then I would go to the gym and I would have, as a lot of moms know, there’s times where you can drop your kids off at the gym daycare and you get like a two hour window…and then we’d go home and it would be nap time and I could put them down for nap and then I would work.”
Kelly: “Working from home isn’t just the ability to be home with your kids and like not really work. Like you have to find ways to make it work for you. So whether that’s, you get a sitter certain days of the week or you use that gym child care to the max every day or you work seven days a week.”
Productivity Hacks
Michelle: “What is your favorite work from home productivity hack?”
Kelly: “I would say probably my favorite is the tool Todoist which…I did a few blog posts actually on using Todoist with the Getting Things Done methodology…by David Allen. And it’s about systemizing all of your to-dos.”
Kelly: “All those things that are constantly in your head that you’re thinking about, getting them out of your head and then he creates, he has like a system for how to control all of that…so that you can breathe easy, relax because you know everything is within that system and working.”
Kelly explains that she configured Todoist to follow this methodology, organizing tasks by importance and timing:
Kelly: “I know what’s super important, what needs to happen today, what is like my someday maybe list…whenever anything comes up with my husband’s like, we need to buy this or whatever, I’m like, okay, I just stick it right in the app. And then I know that it’ll come to my attention at the right time and I don’t have to think about it again.”
Workspace Setup
Michelle: “I see you have a home office. Is this like just dedicated to your workspace?”
Kelly: “This is actually my daughter’s bedroom that when she…moved out last year for school, I was like, I’m just gonna put a desk in there and make it my office.”
Kelly explains that her space is now primarily her office but doubles as her daughter’s bedroom when she visits. She also maintains an office in town (30 miles away) for days when she has appointments.
Kelly: “I like having that option, something outside of the house so that if we do have guests staying here or something, I can get away, but I like having the dedicated space in the house as well.”
Must-Have Office Items
Michelle: “Do you have like a must have home office item that you love?”
Kelly: “Every morning I have my little Yankee candle on my desk and I light it every morning when I start working and then I turn it off or blow it out…at the end of the day when I’m done and that’s my little like…it just makes my space feel cozy.”
Kelly: “Another thing that I love is and this is more like actual could not live without is my reMarkable tablet…every notebook that I use all day long, like is in here. So if I’m talking to a client, I can take notes in there…I have my meal plan calendar in that. Like everything is in that.”
Converting Spaces for Home Offices
The conversation shifts to creative solutions for home workspaces. Michelle shares that she’s considering converting her son’s bedroom:
Michelle: “My son who’s six only sleeps in his bedroom. He doesn’t do anything else…my husband was like, Michelle, why don’t we just like put his bed in a corner of the bedroom and then we’ll put like a divider up and put like a home office.”
Kelly suggests another option:
Kelly: “I have seen those like almost like pods that you can put like in your yard…like almost like a tiny home, but like it’s an office kind of thing that you can put in your yard, in your backyard or something.”
Michelle reveals they have a prefab shed they’re considering converting:
Michelle: “The house we bought as a prefab shed in the back…a couple of months ago, I was like, we need to get that insulated and get an air unit in there. And like, why is this not our office?”
When converting spaces like sheds or outbuildings into functional home offices, don’t forget to consider essential utilities. Reliable internet service is particularly critical for remote workers who depend on video calls and cloud-based tools. Ensuring your detached workspace has proper connectivity might require professional installation to extend your network effectively.
Advice for Women Starting Remote Work
Michelle: “What would you say is your parting advice for women who are looking to get started on this work from home journey?”
Kelly: “I’m very passionate about women in the workplace. I felt very pressured…when I had kids, I felt a lot of pressure that I had to stay home. And I think working from home for many women is the way that they’re able to do both, to work and to have a family.”
Kelly: “If you’re going to work from home, I encourage you to still just lean into your career and don’t don’t let that go by without really intentionally focusing on it…I see too many women drop out of the workplace or put their work way on the back burner and focus like solely on their family and their kids. And I think that a lot of women come later in life to realize that like that was a big mistake.”
Kelly mentions her “Beyond the Bestseller” podcast featuring women who have written professional books to support and inspire other working women.
Finding Kelly Online
Michelle: “Where can our guests find and follow you?”
Kelly: “My podcast. So if you’re interested in books that are related to personal development or professional development, that’s a lot of what I have on is women who have written books like that…Beyond the Bestseller, check that out. And then also LinkedIn, connect with me there.”
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