Work Life Balance. Does It Exist for Entrepreneurs?

How to achieve work life balance, and is it even possible? This is a great question, and I think a lot of entrepreneurs get caught up on work life balance. And the question is, you know, is it possible? The answer is, it is in spurts, okay? Because life happens, okay? Sometimes our life is busy and sometimes it's not busy. So the end of last year, I had just bought a house and we were moving. I had a lot of stuff going on, okay? So my work life balance was off for probably like two or three months while we were going through this transition. And then I kind of got things back on path. But I think the biggest question you have to ask yourself is, what does work life balance look like for you? You know, in this world of Instagram, you know, in social media, we're always comparing ourselves to. To others and what seems to be working for others. And the thing is, we never know really what's going the camera behind the lens, okay? And for me, work life balance is the ability to have options. Now, there are certain times in my work journey where I'm very busy and I am working long hours, okay? So for example, in August, I have my live event coming up, and I'm probably going to be very busy in July and August preparing for that. So what am I doing right now? I'm spending a lot of time creating, creating and filming content here for YouTube so that when that busy time rolls around, I don't have to worry about my YouTube content running around in the back of my mind. I'm putting in the time and the effort now to get it done so that down the road that doesn't suffocate me because that's what happens to a lot of people. And when they start thinking about work life balances is they start getting overwhelmed by all the things they have to do. Especially if you're an entrepreneur and you don't have a team and you're working by yourself. I've been there, okay? As a YouTuber, I was filming the content, I was editing the content, was doing the thumbnails. I was doing everything under the sun. The email marketing, the website. I was doing everything, okay? So that can be a lot and it can be very overwhelming. And if you get enough overwhelm, it can be paralyzing. So the biggest thing that you should do is you should take out a piece of paper and a pen and really ask yourself, what does work life balance look like to you? So for me, it was I wanted to get up in the morning and be able to just relax for, like, My first hour of the day, okay? So when I wake up and I don't like to get up early, okay. I am not a 4am get up before the sun kind of person. Okay? It doesn't work with me health wise. I've tried doing getting up early and it always makes me get sick. So I've decided for me, I try not to get out of bed before 7am If I don't have to. Okay? If I wake up, awesome, I'll get out of bed. But my alarm is set for 7am and on the weekends it's set for 8am I let myself sleep in. Now the great thing about this and this for me is work life balance. If I'm tired or I'm not feeling well, I can always wake up later. Okay, that's a great work life balance. If I am tired, if I need extra sleep, I will allow myself to do that. Okay? So for me, that's part of my work life balance being like, I have this time when I get up, but I'm able to alter that depending on how I feel. Okay? So that's, that's an example right there. So I get up and then I'll either I'll read a book or I'll, you know, I'll, I'll hop on social media and I usually do coffee, you know, with my wife. We'll sit in our, we have like this really nice parlor room that I love and we'll just sit and have coffee, you know, for an hour. The other day I went outside on my porch and I was watching, you know, the hummingbirds. So I take an hour, first start of my day to do nothing but kind of relax and kind of ease myself into the day. And then I usually go upstairs to my office and I'll start working. Okay. And then I'll write down, I have journals that I write in. I write in my goals that I'm working on and, and then I kind of write out my top, you know, two or three things that I need to get done today, and that's where I start. Then I'll work for maybe, you know, two or three hours until like lunchtime. And then at lunch I have lunch and I go for a walk. Okay. So my lunchtime is, can be anywhere from an hour to two hours. It depends. I'm flexible. You know, maybe my wife wants to run into the garden store and go and get something. I might go to the garden store with her. Okay, so I'll take a break in the middle of the day or, you know, My wife sometimes gets tired in the middle day and she likes to take a nap. So again, the flexibility of like, I don't feel great, I'm going to take a nap or I'm going to take some time off, and then after that time I'll go back to work. All right? And that is the typical day. And I try now to have a hard stop time of like, you know, 4pm, 5pm Although I do do coaching sometimes in the evening with my clients. But for the most part, I'm trying to end my day by 5pm okay, and what does that mean? So it means on average, I'm working, you know, six to eight hours a day on, on my business. Okay. On average, sometimes I'm working more. Depends on what I have going on. I try not to work on the weekends. Now I'm here, you know, I'm here filming today, and that's, that's my choice. But I don't have to work on the weekends if I don't want to. And that, my friend, is, is work life balance. It's choosing. It's the ability to choose what you want to do, when you want to do it. Okay? Now we have to get work done. Okay? So if you keep choosing to not do work and you keep procrastinating, there's going to be a week where you're going to be like, crap, I'm overwhelmed because you've been pushing off all this work that needed to be done. So that's what I'm saying. There are peaks and plateaus. I have. I'm in one of those spells right now where I feel like my work life balance is going really, really well. Okay. I feel like I'm. I have a good balance of relaxation and a good balance of getting work done. Okay. And I've been doing really well at not working so much on the weekends, which I used to work seven days a week, you know, 10 to 12 hours a day. As an entrepreneur, trust me, you could work all day every day, and you will still have tons of work to do the next day because new stuff keeps coming up. So the importance of work life balance is one. What do you want that to look like? Okay, what is your ideal day look like? What time do you wake up? What time do you start work? You know, when do you eat? Do you go for a walk? Do you have time for exercise? What time? When do you end work? Okay, what days do you not work at all? And I think that is super important for work life balance is being like, what days are Non negotiable. I'm not going to work. I absolutely 100% now do not work on Sundays. Absolutely not. Okay. Fridays, I tend to work a half day. Okay. Because I like to kind of get started with the weekend. It's a great day for us to go and run some errands. If I work on Saturdays, I'll usually do filming in the morning like I'm doing now. So I'll film for a couple hours and then I'll film from like 10 to 12, and that's it. I'm done for the day. Okay. So if I do work on a Saturday, it's by choice because I actually like filming on on Saturday mornings. And then I just film for a couple hours and then I'm done. All right, so for you, that might not work. Okay? For me, it works great. But for you, maybe you have kids. I don't have kids. So maybe you have to carve out time in your schedule to have that work life balance. You need to carve out time for your family. You need to carve out time to spend with your kids. Okay? And that's what I do on the weekends. More now is I'm trying to be more intentional about the time I spend with my family. My niece plays soccer, so on Saturdays, I tend to go. And in the morning after I film, I tend to go watch my niece play soccer. And if she has an early game, guess what? I'm not filming. I'm going to watch my niece play soccer. Because in my work life balance, you know, now that I'm in my 40s, it's more important for me to spend that time with family versus working constantly. Okay? In my 20s, I definitely 20s and 30s, I definitely did the grind, okay? I absolutely did. And now I'm pulling back because I've put in a lot of time and effort, which allows me to do that. But in terms of work life balance, it's going to be different from anyone. So don't look to me for creating the perfect work life balance, because what I value, which is my time, okay, What I value might be very different from what you value. Okay? Maybe you only want to work three days a week. Maybe you're like, you know what? I'm going to work 12 hours, but it's going to be Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, every day. I'm going to work 12 hours straight, and then I'm going to have four days off. Okay? If that's your work life balance, like, some people would think that'd be crazy. You're going to work 12 hours. Yeah, but if I work, you know, 36 hours in three days and then I have four days off, like that's the perfect work life balance for me. And it could be okay. I don't like that personally, but for you, that's my what might work. And that's the importance about understanding work life balance. And people are like, you know, you know, if you have a job you love, you don't need a break from it. You do, you do. Trust me, I love what I do. But sometimes when I have a lot of stuff going on, you feel that exhaustion of burning the candle at both ends, you absolutely can get burnt out. It is a real thing. Don't let anyone tell you or judge you. If you are feeling burnt out, they're like, well, you're just not working hard enough. It's like, no, you're burnt out because you are working too hard. But chances are you're burnt out because one, you're not practicing work life balance. You're not giving yourself a day off to recharge. Okay? Everyone does need recharge time. All right? I'm an extrovert, I'm a high energy person. I don't need as much recharge time as my wife, who's more introverted. But I do get overwhelmed. I do get burnt out in times. And when that happens, I listen to my body and I take the breaks. I might take a day off. A good exercise that I do. My wife actually taught me this is I'll get a piece of paper if I'm feeling burnt out. I will write a list of everything that's making me feel like I'm burnt out. Why do I feel overwhelmed? Why do I feel so exhausted? And I'll write all these things and a lot of them are like, you know, I have to help my mom or I have to do this. You know, I'm working on this project and this project and it might be a list of like a dozen things, like a dozen to do's. And I look at that list and I say, what's most important right now? What can I throw away? Because a lot of times when we don't have work life balance and we're feeling overwhelmed, it's because we're not saying no to enough things, you know, And I'm a people pleaser myself. So I'm someone who's like, yes, I can help. Yes, I can do it. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And it gets to a point where I've said yes too much, that I'm like crap. I need to. I need to start saying no. I need to start cutting some of this stuff out. Hey, you want to go out to dinner? No, I can't. I have this project I really, really have to finish. And again, that's maybe not the perfect work life balance, but in that moment, I need to focus on the work to get my life back in balance. All right, so again, it's this ebbing and flowing thing, but you have to figure out what works best for you, not what works for me. Now, if you're someone who feels like you're doing everything yourself, all right, you're doing. You're wearing all the hats in your business. You're feeling exhausted. You wish. You wish that you could offload some of this stuff onto someone else. Well, go watch this video over there. We're going to tell you what to do and how you can stop doing everything on your own.