Mastering Work-Life Balance in the Entrepreneurial Journey

Identify the most important tasks each day and focus on completing them first. Avoid getting overwhelmed by prioritizing tasks based on their urgency and importance. When you know some of those tasks have administrative nature in them and you don't need to be responsible for them. As the CEO or as the entrepreneur or as a senior leader in the business, you need to look at delegating responsibilities. Stay organized, Maintain a well organized workspace and digital systems to streamline workflows and reduce stress. Good day and welcome to the Wealthy Entrepreneur Podcast. I am your host, Bob Gilvrow. It is great to have you with me today. Excited to talk about something that I know has challenged all of us and that's around the idea of work life integration. Now before I hop into that, I just want to formally welcome you to the podcast and, and remind you that this is the place where we dissect the elements that contribute to entrepreneurial success, from mindset and leadership to profits and revenue. And again, this episode is going to be focused around the work life balance or the integration of balance into our work life. Now I want to share with you guys that the work life balance situation has probably been one of the larger struggles that I've had over the last 16 years and counting back to, you know, 2008, 2009, 10, maybe up to 2015, knowing that there were many weeks in the year where I would have worked 100 plus hour weeks and not that that was a consistent thing, I feel like, and even still I'm consistently between a 50 and 60 hour work week, which I think is manageable and is, is something that I'm interested in doing. I don't necessarily want to work 20 hour weeks. I do like to work. I do love what I do and I'm passionate about it and I'm excited about the, the more time that I spend there, the more I'm able to contribute and help people and that's something that's exciting to me. But for sure, during times of busyness and high demand, maybe short staff spent hours and hours and I know there's been a lot of overnighters over my career where thank goodness for Red Bull, who is not a sponsor of this podcast, but thank goodness for Red Bull to, to get my mind through the next day, to keep my mind calm but aware and active and, and that's not sustainable for anybody. And I feel like the integration of your work life and your home life or your outside of work life is going to be a constant evolution and a reinvention on a, on an ongoing basis. I Know, it certainly has been for me and, and definitely one of those challenges where we have to set boundaries because if we don't set boundaries, we are a little bit of addictive personalities. As much as, you know, I don't feel like I've got any addictions in my personal life outside of work. It is a circumstance where we do share addictive personalities to being addicted to work and maybe being addicted to results and outcomes. And maybe it's healthy, but maybe we have to make sure that we're consciously monitoring the boundaries because I know just like me for sure. I've worked multiple weeks in most years where it's got over a hundred hours. Now I haven't in the last couple, thank goodness for that because my team has really stepped in and, and truthfully now that I have a team of a hundred, my ability to go in and push things across the line isn't what it used to be. I used to if when we had 10 or 15 people, I could do the work of 10 or 15 people if I just worked a hundred hour weeks and pushed it over the line. Now if I'm doing the work of 10 or 15 people, that's really only 10 or 15% output change versus maybe getting all a hundred people to do 5% more is maybe more important, which might be an episode at a later date. But I do want to focus on what I would argue are the top 10 tips for managing the balance between our work life and our outside of work life. So the very first one that I want to share is that we need to set boundaries and this is establishing clear boundaries between work and personal life, defining specific work hours, designated time for relaxation, family and for hobbies. And for sure I've done parts of this really well. And one area that I have always shown up for is my family, specifically my kids and any of the activities that they have that are outside of office hours or even during office hours. And I've made a commitment as a parent and, and to myself that I would always be there for my kids events. Now that's not to say I haven't missed a handful of events over the years when maybe I've been off at a different event here or there. I know when I used to work with Tony Robbins and would be away, I would miss the odd baseball game or soccer game. But for the majority of time, you know, I'm there for, if they've got 30 or 40 games of the year, I'm there for 39 or 38 of the 40. And so I'm constantly there for my kids and that's something that I want to make sure that as long as they'll have me that I'll continue to be there for hobbies. You know, again, setting boundaries. I do have to, you know, I'm 41, I'm still young, but I'm not in my 20s anymore. I need to make sure that I, I set time aside for physical exercise. I know five or six years ago I was still doing those 100 hour plus weeks and it was one tax season. I remember that I started to feel like, oh man, I don't know that I'm going to get through this tax season. I'm starting to feel unhealthy. I started to have some more tightness in my chest and I had to go and start the practice of a massage therapy and have kept that in my life ever since because that helps really with stress management. So understanding your body too, I think is really important. But setting boundaries to say, you know what, these are my priorities. Work is definitely one of my priorities, but my kids, my wife and my health are definitely other priorities as well. So that's number one, set boundaries. Number two, prioritize tasks. So identify the most important tasks each day and focus on completing them first. Avoid getting overwhelmed by prioritizing tasks based on their urgency and importance. As much as I like the idea of prioritizing tasks in this way, I do feel like sometimes we do have deadlines, we do have urgency, sometimes they do need to be prioritized. And I will certainly prioritize something if I have a due date of the end of April, for example, for personal tax season in Canada, I will make sure that that gets filed before I deal with something on May 1st and if it's not due April 30th and I can deal with it on May 1st. So looking at prioritizing those tasks, here's another element of prioritizing tasks that I think is important. And one of the coaches that I've worked with, Alex Charfen, he's also been on the podcast as well. He talks a lot about doing tracking of your schedule and a monitoring of your schedule and actually writing it out and seeing what tasks that you are doing that maybe you shouldn't be or tasks that maybe aren't revenue driving. When you're in a heavily revenue driving role, how do we maybe look at those and get them off to somebody else? But really prioritizing tasks, in this case, making sure that we have a book and we're tracking, these are the things that I need to get done today. That certainly helps us accomplish some of those things. And it's. And certainly when we start prioritizing tasks that have deadlines or that have more urgency and get them completed, man, it feels good to complete things, doesn't it? So number three. So set boundaries, prioritize tasks. Number three is to actually delegate those responsibilities. So when you know some of those tasks have administrative nature in them and you don't need to be responsible for them as the CEO or as the entrepreneur or as a senior leader in the business, you need to look at delegating responsibilities. You know, one thing that we did recently is we hired a handful of executive assistants for some of our senior leaders. It started with me and I hired Roxanna, who is incredible on my team and she's definitely helped bring clarity and enhanced communication, all correspondence that comes in. She also schedules everything for me so when people are looking to talk with me, she essentially sets up my day so that it's as effective as possible and certainly changed a lot so I don't have to deal with the administrative part. She also, it also takes all of the emotion or the avoidance of setting certain things up or getting certain tasks completed when she's managing it and saying, these are the things that need to be prioritized for you. So delegating some of that administrative responsibility frees up high priority activities and also frees up personal time. Dan Martel wrote a book, Buy Back your Time. Dan was actually also on the podcast as well. But Buy Back youk Time was a Wall Street Journal bestseller. If you haven't read it, check it out. It talks a lot about, you know, the replacement ladder that he calls it, which talks about you can't really replace or hire a chief operating officer if you haven't hired an executive assistant or a personal assistant yet to eliminate those smaller value tasks in your day. I'm not saying that an executive assistant isn't maybe the most valuable thing that you could possibly do, but they can help delegate off those tasks so that you can focus on higher priority items. And that's really the essence of delegating responsibilities. So check out Buy Back youk Time. It's a fantastic book by my bud, Dan Martell. Number four, schedule breaks. Now, I do this. My executive assistant, Roxanna does this for me. She makes sure that I am scheduled in for lunch every day. Now, I can't say, hopefully, Roxanna, you're not listening to this. I can't say that I actually take them all, but what it does is it does put a break in my calendar where people know that I'm not available. That at least gives me opportunity to catch up on some of my other prioritized tasks. Or it does give me an opportunity to go grab some nutrition, get hydrated and, and move on to the next task that's in there. So scheduling breaks incorporates regular breaks throughout your workday to rest and recharge. Short breaks can improve focus, productivity and overall well being. All right. Number five, Practice time management. Use time management techniques or blocking in your schedule to efficiently allocate time to work on priorities and other personal activities. Set realistic deadlines and avoid procrastination. My wife would tell you time management is not my best skill. And why am I not good at time management? It's my, my underestimation of how much time it takes to complete a certain task. So typically what I will do is I will say, oh yeah, that should only take me 10 minutes and it might take me half an hour, might take me half an hour. Because it takes me a while to get into the right zone of genius to respond or to answer or to research. So I am, you know, that would probably be one of my larger weak points is on the practice time management element and actually knowing how much time it takes to get tasks completed. I definitely understand that and I understand I need to give myself more time when it comes to completing tasks. But for sure we need to all focus on practice time management if we want to continue to have and manage our work life balance or our work life integration in the best way. Number six, Stay organized. Maintain a well organized workspace and digital systems to streamline workflows and reduce stress. Keep track of deadlines, appointments and tasks. Using calendars to do lists or productivity apps. Again, if you're looking at a lot of these elements, if you have the financial means and if you're at a time in your business or career to bring in some extra support and executive assistant that can support you with these things. Staying organized is something that Roxanna really helps me do. In fact, we've got a folder in my inbox that just says Bob. And she essentially my goal is to stay in the BOB folder and her goal is to manage the correspondence outside of the BOB folder. So when something requires me to jump in, she will put it in the BOB folder and I will address it on a daily basis. So super important that we stay organized. But if you have the ability to bring in some additional executive support to help you with that, that would be great. Staying organized. Practice time Management and scheduling breaks. Delegating responsibilities like a lot of these could really be eliminated and supported by having an assistant of some sort. Number seven, Limit distractions. Minimize distractions during work hours by turning off notifications, which I always do, setting aside dedicated focus time, which I always do, and creating a conductive work environment or sorry, a conducive work environment. This helps improve concentration and productivity. So a few things that I do that have worked really well for limiting distractions. I put breaks in my day. Not breaks like go for a walk or have lunch, although I do have those like I mentioned earlier. But having scheduled time off to address any of the areas that are in the Bob folder to help support my team, those schedules need to be in there. So limiting distractions and closing my door or eliminating any of my notifications is something that we definitely need to do because it's so easy to get distracted by notifications that are going on. In fact, I've got one channel which is with my sales team that continues to go off all the time. They're constantly chatting and collaborating which is an amazing culture and amazing vibe and I love to catch up on everything that's going on through there and all the wonderful people that they're meeting and connecting with. However, if that distraction is going off and that dinging is happening every five seconds, it really distracts me from being able to get all of my tasks completed. So limiting distractions. Limiting is very, very important as well. Number eight, Practice self care. Prioritize self care activities such as exercise, proper nutrition, adequate sleep and mindfulness practices. Taking care of your physical and mental health is essential for long term success and resilience. I couldn't agree more. And you know, I, I mentioned that I had worked, you know, 100 hour plus weeks in the past and I did. Not sustainable, wouldn't recommend it. In fact, don't build a business where you're going to be required to do that. Now I was overly passionate about it and certainly had a lot of resilience in making sure that I wasn't going to be overcome by any sort of failure when it came to shortcomings of deliverables. But what I will say is my practice of self care as I've continued to get a little bit older has become very important. So I mentioned massage therapy for me getting back into chiropractic, so likely going to have that on a three week cycle. I go to a personal trainer, I go to the gym probably four days a week. Right now I go and meet with him twice a week which is really incredible. And I have this see oura ring as well. Just got back on the oura ring schedule to monitor my sleep and my readiness for the day. Also to look and make sure that I'm getting enough rest and so that I can perform at a top level and and like Aura told me today, said today is going to be a good day. Your restfulness, although I only got about 7 hours sleep last night, usually want to try and get, you know, seven and a half plus seven and a half to eight and a half is kind of my sweet spot. Seven and a half hours sleep. It said you are ready for the day. I got a little crown today but that's all part of practicing self care. And I would say, you know, this is focusing solely on work life balance or work life integration. And practicing self care I believe improves your mood. It improves my mood, it improves my energy. So when I show up for work I'm ready and full of energy and when I go home I'm full of energy, I'm healthy. And so I always show up to my family and to my work feeling strong, healthy and with lots of energy so that I do show up and I'm present when I am there in both circumstances. Number nine, I mentioned this earlier as well and and this is one that I certainly struggle with and this is setting realistic expectations. Avoid overcoming or over committing yourself and setting unrealistic expectations. Be honest about what you can accomplish within a given time frame and communicate boundaries with clients, partners and stakeholders. Listen, this is my weakest point without question, setting realistic expectations. Part of the reason is I want to be helping as many people as I possibly can. So I collapse my boundaries. I let people in, they take over my calendar. And unfortunately what that does is it creates sometimes elements of overwhelm or times where I need to work longer or into the weekend or whatever that looks like. I'm not great at setting realistic expectations. As I mentioned, my wife would say I come home late for dinner because typically I'm having a conversation that I think is going to take 15 minutes, it takes 45. Next thing you know I'm late for dinner. And not a great way to show up for your family and have a good work life integration. So for sure, setting realistic expectations is super important. And last but not least, which I think is important here as well, is number 10, seek support. Don't hesitate to seek support from friends, family members, mentors, fellow entrepreneurs. Surround yourself with a supportive network that understands the challenges of entrepreneurship, can offer guidance, encouragement and perspective by implementing all of these top 10 strategies entrepreneurs can achieve a healthier work life balance or work life integration leading to greater fulfillment, productivity and success in both their personal and professional lives. Now we talk about seek support and I think a lot of these areas, you know, setting boundaries, priority prioritizing tasks, delegating responsibilities, scheduling breaks, practice management, staying organized, limiting distractions. Self care is different. Setting realistic expectations. Those, the majority of those could all be really outsourced with additional support and somebody helping manage your calendar, your day and your boundaries. Setting realistic expectations and then you've got to go and maybe even set aside time, scheduled time for self care to make sure that you're taking care of yourself. But the seeking support part is definitely an area that I feel like our team could support if you're looking for this. So again we created a million dollar year coaching program and it's, it's really a mastermind group of about 100 entrepreneurs in there currently that are all in business trying to create a company, trying to build a team, trying to grow their, their business or revenue and their profitability to maybe reinvest in building their own wealth and starting to make a larger impact in the world. And entrepreneurs and small business owners, you guys know, you know, you've, you've heard your friends say well it must be nice that you can take Friday afternoon off whenever you want or it must be nice that you were able to buy the new car or be at your kids sporting event. And isn't it nice? Is one of those my least favorite comments from anybody because you know what they should be saying is well, isn't it nice or wouldn't it be nice to work a hundred hour weeks? Wouldn't it be nice to have enhanced financial stress because somebody didn't pay their bills? Wouldn't it be nice that you didn't have to manage people and expectations of your employees or departures or hiring or challenges in the workflow or replacing a roof in a business or the temperature H vac being off in the business and having 100 people having to go home. You know, these are stresses that business owners, we all go through and people who don't run a business don't understand the frustration, the stress and the emotional toll that these things can take. And that's why we created our million dollar a year program to pull together a group of people that not only can share challenges and look to seek support with business coaches, with experts, but with each other, but also a place that you can share wins. Because you know, we all know as a small business owner that it's really hard to say to your friends, oh, you know what, I just sold this $50,000 contract today. And they'll be like, oh wow, you just put $50,000 in your pocket. People don't understand that. Wouldn't it be, isn't it great we just hired our, our 10th employee this year. Oh yeah, wouldn't it? I wish I had people to do everything for me. You know, people don't understand that where inside a mastermind group like the Million Dollar Year, we're able to celebrate those achievements and milestones with each other because man, it's nice to be cheering for everybody inside a group to be successful and, and helping them and guiding them along the way. Not just for me, but everybody who's in there and have a group cheering for you too. So that's why we created Million Dollar Year. A lot of what we do is to focus on the financial outcomes of a business, how to grow, how to build a team, how to scale the business, how to create operating systems, how to create an accountability schedule, but also how to build wealth, maybe get ready for retirement, and also focus on ways that we can continue to integrate our work work life balance, helping us be successful not only in our business, but in our family. So this is what we do inside Million Dollar Year. Hopefully that's been some insight for you. If you want to check out Million Dollar Year, it's Million Dollar Year ca. We're welcoming in new members right now. And again, get in there, grab some advice, some key trainings. We've got hundreds of hours of trainings in there that are easily searchable for topics that are relevant for you. But even more important, the support of an ongoing community that's cheering you on and that can support each other while also sharing some of the hardships that come with being a small business owner. So check that out. And guys, if this work life integration has been helpful, if any of those top 10 lists have been insightful for you, give me a like share a comment. If you feel like somebody you know really needs to focus on their work life integration or the balance of their work and personal life schedule, feel free to share this out. Again, the reason we do this is to have the greatest impact on the largest number of people. So let's get our work life balance fully integrated so that we can live a really great personal and professional life. My name is Bob Goverow. It's been a pleasure. Make sure you're following this podcast. We will release another episode again next week. Can't wait to see you there. Have a great day and wishing you great success in your work life, integration.