#MakingTime: A Day in the Life of a Media Company President And Mom of 4 in L.A.
Women can do anything — but not everything. As the largest online career community for women, we at Fairygodboss realize that balance is a myth, and that picking what to prioritize when everything feels important on a day-to-day basis isn't always easy. In the #MakingTime series, women share with us how, for one day, they chose to spend their most precious resource: time.
--
Who: Sharon Rechter
What: President and Co-Founder of First Media, mom of four
Where: Los Angeles, CA
--
6:45 a.m.
My husband, Guy, wakes me up with a kiss and then we go to wake up our four kids. I quickly scan the news and my emails to see if anything urgent came up that needs to be handled before breakfast. If it didn’t, I’m happy to deal with everything after I drop off my kids.
7 a.m.
I start every morning by taking a shower with my two daughters, which gives us not only the ability to wake up together, but also a chance to talk. We discuss plans for the day, what things they’re fearful of, and what challenges they might be facing. It’s very good quality time to start the day and give each other little pep talks.
7:30 a.m.
Once everyone is dressed and ready to go, we all have breakfast together and we aim for it to be healthy. We try for everyone to join together; sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t!
8 a.m.
I drive the girls to school and Guy separately drops the boys at 9 a.m. We alternate days, so sometimes I am the 9 a.m. and with the boys.
8:30 a.m.
I start taking calls in the car. Today it was with a partner who wants to license the SoYummy brand into the food category and we are negotiating as a super exciting deal that makes me very happy and excited about all the opportunities. Once I’m done with that call, I’ll take another as I get closer to the office. This one is about growing our distribution even further on the cable side and negotiating a deal with one of the cable providers, getting our channel to north of 60 million homes.
9 a.m.
I arrive at the office and say hello to all the people I come by. I'm always excited to see that almost every day there's a new face in the office. Then... that’s when I get my real first cup of coffee.
9:30 a.m.
I take about 30 minutes to go over emails and look at my to do list, improving it for the day. I know I will never get through the entire list, but if I get five out of 10, I'm happy.
10 a.m.
We have an interesting and inspiring internal strategy meeting.
11 a.m.
We have our regular management meeting.
12 p.m.
Time for lunch with our team. We serve lunch to everybody in our cafeteria so everyone has lunch together. So what's nice about this is you go and have lunch with whomever is there, so you can have lunch with an intern or the CEO or a lead creative. And that's exciting because it always sparks new ideas from very different directions.
12:30 p.m.
Now I have a call regarding empowering women at YPO, which I’m fairly involved in. One of our big goals this year is to have more women apply and be a part of this. We're working with the chapter leaders to recognize what needs to happen in order to attract more quality women. All of this is super important and exciting, furthering our First Media mission to support and empower women.
1:30 p.m.
We have a Marketing and PR touchbase to discuss our strategy and how to get all of the amazing things we’re doing out into the world.
2 p.m.
Time for a snack, which I try to make healthy. I’ll also take about 15 minutes here to schedule a weekend playdate for my kids or plan our summer vacation.
3 p.m.
I go over contracts and reply to some emails. I try my best to reply to emails twice a day in order to not be a slave to the email!
4 p.m.
I have a call with The Giving Spirit, our pro bono campaign to drive awareness to the homeless problem in LA and the fact that many homeless people today are people exactly like us, though they didn’t have a couch to fall on.
4:30 p.m.
Now I go home to spend time with kids. The girls are busy with basketball and chess, so I get to hang with the boys and we are playing ninjas!
6 p.m.
Time for family dinner and also a time to put phones away. As a family we try to have no screen time between 6 and 8pm, which is not always achieved, but we aspire to make it a habit. So during dinner we use a very interesting box of cards; someone picks a card and they are prompted to answer questions such as, “How is your personality different at work vs. school vs. home?” It's really amazing how honest the kids are and it inspires interesting conversation. We try to do two cards every night. We’ve been doing this for about six months and it’s truly shocking what is shared.
7 p.m.
Guy and I will help with homework if needed and we start winding down for the night.
Don’t miss out on articles like these. Sign up!
Why women love us:
- Daily articles on career topics
- Jobs at companies dedicated to hiring more women
- Advice and support from an authentic community
- Events that help you level up in your career
- Free membership, always