In this solo‑host podcast episode, Kelly Alhooie argues that the single most important "hack" for handling the demands of entrepreneurship is maintaining high personal energy. She explains that without energy, decision‑making, stamina, and overall performance suffer. Kelly rejects the notion of a static work‑life balance and instead promotes a dynamic integration of work with one’s environment, family, and relationships. She illustrates this with a personal example of needing the beach’s ambience to stay energized, and she advises listeners to align their physical surroundings with what fuels them. The episode then outlines concrete integration strategies: bringing children into work settings, ensuring a partner’s support and alignment with business goals, and structuring schedules around family routines rather than forcing family to fit around the business. Kelly warns against trying to do everything alone, urging listeners to hire staff, replace themselves, and build systems that allow the business to run without their constant presence. She emphasizes that by 2026, successful entrepreneurs will need AI‑driven bots and automated workflows to handle repetitive tasks, marketing, and client communications, or they risk burnout and obsolescence. Throughout, she offers personal anecdotes about illness and overwhelm, provides a personal phone number (703‑783‑2388) for consulting, and promotes a sponsor, Jane, offering a free‑month promo code (Healthy Biz1mo) for scheduling and billing solutions. The overall message is that aligning environment, family, and automation creates sustainable energy, enabling entrepreneurs to grow their businesses without sacrificing health or relationships.
Chapters
I get asked pretty much every single day, how do you do it all? And I can tell you this, the number one hack, it's not tactile, it is not probably what you think it is. The number one hack is energy. And when you can have energy, you can do anything. You can tolerate anything, you can. You are unstoppable when you have energy. But if you do not have energy, you get tired, you get overwhelmed, you give more to other people, you make bad decisions with food. You don't want to move because you're just like, I just want to sleep. All those things build up. And what I have realized, it all comes down to energy. And that's how you win the game. And so when people are talking about Kelly, well, how do you have like that work life balance? I never believe in work life balance. I never think that that is anyone should have a work life balance. I believe there always has to be an integration. And when there's an integration, then that is when everything aligns. Let me give you an example of an integration and let me give you an example of non integration. So an example of an integration is. For me personally, I love to be at the beach. I am currently in a place in California where I'm right next to the beach. So that is an alignment. Comparatively, if I was in a mountain town, I would not be in alignment. So I could not operate at the capacity that I know I was capable of because a piece of the puzzle is missing, which is the beach, which the beach provides peace, energy. It gives me energy. The ocean gives me energy. Just the noise of it gives me energy. Being in the water gives me energy. And if I was in the mountains, I would not build off the earth energy. I would be inside with a, you know, heating blanket on and I wouldn't move. And so would that give me energy? No. So when I talk about aligning your life with the alignment, this is massively important. It's not some woo woo thing. I really believe that. So that's the first thing is make sure your environment is set up to where you can thrive. And it's something that like you absolutely love. The second thing is, whether or not you have kids or not, how can you integrate your kids into your work environment? Meaning if I have to go do workshops on the weekend, I'm going to bring my child with me to show A, I'm a mom and B, I want her to see that mommy has to work and you're going to come and it's okay if you distract the class because it's probably going to be cute, and you could help mommy out. Okay? Like, who doesn't love a kid? You know, that's cute, playing around, like. So I'm bringing her, my child, with. With me. Okay? That's an integration. Rather than being like, oh, I gotta find a babysitter, gotta keep her at home. And I'm saying her because my child is my dog, which is a girl. So, you know, I would just bring her. That's just it. You know, she starts to go crazy. Well, then, guess what? Welcome to mom life. Can anyone relate? Yeah, all the moms there can relate. Okay? So it makes you more relatable. So that's the second thing. The third thing to integrate is, how's your relationship with your partner? How is it? Or, now, I'm not saying your partner has to be involved in your businesses. My partner is not involved in my businesses, but, you know, he is supportive from afar. So they can be highly involved, which may be a good or bad thing, or they can be completely hands off. But are they in alignment with what you do? Are they okay with what you do? Are they sitting there being like, can you stop working? Can you just, like, get off that thing? Can you, like, pay me attention? Can you not work so hard? If they're doing all that? That is where it's going to hold you down. And you're not going to go and dream big and go after those goals. You're not. You're going to take the small things or take the small shortcuts because you're like, I don't want to make my husband mad. I'm not going to go after that big goal. And you're going to stay small. That will hold you back. That literally will hold you back. Just that one thing. So think about that. Is your relationship in alignment with everything you do? And are they okay with everything that you do? Are they okay if you're crazy? Do they? Are they okay if you, you know, you have entrepreneurship hours? Like, are they okay with that? And if not, where's the compromise where they can be okay with it? Or there's a line or a boundary that we put up. Quick interruption. For those that have questions on today's episode, please text my personal number. It's 703-783-2388. I'd be happy to answer any questions that you have to get you unstuck. Let's get back to the episode. And again, the fourth thing I would say. Yeah, if you have kids, like, how to integrate them as well into Your life to make sure, which is part number two, but like to make sure that you're not missing, you know, the pickup and the drop off and going to school and all that stuff. Right. Everything has to be integrated. So you're building your schedule around the kids schedule or around what you want to do with the family, not the business building around what's happening in the kid's life. Build the business around what, what activities you have with the kids and, or the husband or spouse or whatever. Okay. And then create the business all around that. Then you don't become resentful and then everything again goes into alignment. It's all about alignment. Because what I see and what even happened to me is I built something that wasn't in alignment and not purposely. I wasn't like, oh yeah, I'm building something that's not align with me. Just over time it became more and more apparent that it wasn't in alignment with my overall goals, which is why I had to make a change. And that might be, you know, where you're at right now, where it doesn't feel like it's in alignment. But then you have to ask yourself, well, is my company at a level that it can give me some sort of asset? Could you sell it? Can you bring on a partner? Could you, you know, could you say, you know, I am going to keep it, but I'm just gonna do it this way instead, where it's more in alignment with you. Whether or not that's you raising prices and seeing less patience. What is it? And I think so many of us focus on trying to find the balance. I'm just gonna, like, I hear so many moms, I talk to so many of you guys. So many moms tell me, kelly, I just want to work 15 hours a week. And they're just like, okay, so they see 15 patient hours, but they're not computing that. Then there's marketing because I just want to work when my kids are in school. Okay, so you're working from like 9 to like 2 o'. Clock. Cool. Nothing wrong with that, by the way. Okay, that basically means you can have like 15 patient slots a week. Okay, but then what about the marketing? What about the follow ups? What about the emails that need to be sent? What about the connections in the community, like all that other stuff? Where are we getting those hours from? And the reality is it might be okay for a year, it might be okay for two years, but over time it will wear at you because you are doing everything. And that's not actually A business. It's not. It's not. Not a business you've created yourself. I called a prison where if your kid is sick and you have five people on your schedule, more than likely you're going to have to see those five people. Unless your kid is like, you know, deathly sick. Like, clearly your kid comes first over patients, but, like, more than likely you're going to have to be in treatment room with those people. And so I'm trying to coach you guys on a different way to do this so that you're not stuck in a treatment room and that every single one of you guys listening to this, I truly believe should be thinking, how do I hire? How do I replace myself? And if you're not thinking that because you're just at the beginning stages or you just are like, that just sounds so overwhelming. I was there, too, okay? It sounds so overwhelming. I can't do that. I need you to let your mind go, and I need you to say, yes, I can. Why can't I? Because ultimately, every single one of you guys all have the same goal. It's to get time with your family and to make money. Correct. So if that's everyone's goal, then why does only 1%, 1% act on it? Meaning only 1% is hiring. Only 1% is working to get them out of patient care. And everyone else is saying, what's the next Con Ed class I can take and how do I stay in the clinic and just keep treating the rest of my life? And I really believe our profession has done us such a disservice if that is truly where your head's at. I really do. Because that is not building a business. It is not. It's. You're going to create a business that you really become resentful of because either your parents are going to get sick if you don't have kids and something's going to happen and you can't leave to go take care of them, maybe they're in another state again, something happens to your kid, something happens to yourself. Like, you get massively sick, by the way, all these things have happened, except for the kids, because I don't have kids, but all these things have happened to me, guys. And I. I really even said to myself, no, that's never going to happen to me. And like, the next week, it happened. Like, I got massively sick and couldn't run both companies. It's true. It's true story. I don't know. I just thought I was untouchable. I don't Know, some of you guys may be thinking that too. And so you're really, when you talk about having stability and all that, you're not giving yourself stability at all. When you're just running your company, you're really taking a massive gamble because everything relies on you. And so where I kind of believe. Not even kind of, I know, and I believe things are going, I believe, you know, we're going to the AI era where everything has to be automated and everything has to be systematized. And if you guys do not have systems or do not have automations, you literally will be dead in the water because you will not be able to compete or keep up with what is going to be mass produced. And right now, like, I just created social media bots where they take your videos or your face or make you your own videos and they make your social media without you having to think and it will post for you. And I did that because I know the game. I'm gonna have to focus my attention somewhere else, not on social media. I'm, I'll have to, you know, press the button. But there is going to be more demand out of us. And the only way that we're going to be able to keep up this with the demand and not stress our bodies out is to truly have agents, bots and everything working for us. That's key. And so I'm telling you guys, this is a warning. This is a big, big warning. Some of you guys are not going to believe me, but you must have that in 2026. You must have systems that do most of the work because you will be burnt out, stressed out and all the different things. And I'm not teaching my clients that. I am teaching them how to elevate without feeling so overwhelmed and stuck because they have agents and systems and everything behind the scenes that it's working for them and not where they have to manually do everything. And that's going to be key for 2026. So hopefully you guys are ready for it. And that's going to calm your nervous system because your agent is going to be working 247 and you're going to say, oh, okay, great. You still have to do the, the reasoning, but they're going to do all the tasks that are, that are just like repetitive and then it will decrease your payroll and it will make you more comfortable with having, you know, someone else control things instead of just everything on you because you cannot take on that stress, especially as a mother or even not. Not a mother, just a woman. Okay, we can't take on that stress. We got to give to ourselves. And that's key for 2026. So if you guys need help with that, please text me, 703-783-2388. Text me. Just text me systems and I'd be happy to help, you know, tell you how we can help implement audit your business and implement systems into it to make it so much easier for you. All right, guys. Bye. Bye guys. So much for listening to the podcast. This podcast is sponsored by Jane. There are the people that are going to have an amazing scheduling system for your patients. They're going to provide you with a super bill. They're going to make templates for you. They're going to provide you with the best customer service. And because of that, they allowed us to have a code for one free month for those that are wanting to try, try Jane for their scheduling, checking out super bills, telehealth, all the different options. That code is Healthy Biz1mo. We'll put in the show notes. But Healthy Biz1mo. That is the code for Jane. And thank you so much, Jane, for sponsoring this podcast. If you guys want more information and want to learn how that you can keep bettering yourselves, go ahead, click the link down below and make sure that you book a call. And we love to provide any clarity questions on any follow ups. Bye, guys.
