Russ Lowry argues work-life balance is a myth, especially early on. He built his insurance agency working 12-16 hour days, seven days a week, and says accepting seasons of intense effort creates future flexibility. The payoff: you earn the right to work less later.
August 18, 2025
Three classes in one eight-week period.
12, 14, 16 hours a day (examples given).
Seven days a week (to some extent).
Today, let's talk about work life balance. You hear this a lot thrown around these days. News articles, people talking online about how you need to balance your work along with your life. Personally, I think that's bullshit. I used to work for a big company. I realized these guys could fire me at any moment and we still had to bust our ass a lot. They randomly would make things up and have us go resign contracts or do some new big push. So when I started my insurance agency, I was already used to working full time during the day, at night, in grad school for a couple of years. So it was no big deal and I wanted to do something for myself. So working 12, 14, 16 hours a day was just what I did because I wanted to build up my agency as quickly as I could and so I would have that for the future. So you need to look at that when you're starting a career, when you're starting your own business, there'll be times where you got to put in long, long days and hours. And it is just what it is. You want to get better, that's what you're going to do. And in the future, as you grow, as you build your business, there'll be those times where you can take vacation, you can step back. I did that as an example for many years while you guys were all in sports, I had a couple of really good staff members that ran the agency. And we grew slow, but we grew a little bit, but we held the ground. The agency supported our lifestyle so we could travel with baseball, basketball. I was able to coach sports and hang out with you guys. It was a good way to spend time with you guys. Plus, I'm competitive and like to win, so that was good. So you have to think about who's talking about work, life balance and what it is. In addition, I really love my business and I love growing and I love helping other people. So if you really like what you do, it's not really considered work either. So that's just something to think about. I still work pretty much seven days a week to some extent, not 10, 12, 14 hours a day. But I don't have a problem on Saturday mornings working on my business or maybe a Sunday afternoon doing some marketing or responding to emails or helping my clients. So again, take work life balance with a grain of salt. When you hear from people, some people don't want to work at all and that's why they're stuck where they're at. As we've talked about in other videos, make bad decisions, but there will be times when you'll need to bust your ass, work, it'll be just seem insurmountable. But there's always that light at the end of the tunnel. Riley just finished up his master's degree, claiming three classes in one eight week period. Starting a new career as a coach, as a high school teacher. And you know, I'm sure it seemed very insurmountable. He'd come over and talk to us about it a lot, but he just finished it. And it gives you a great sense of development, accomplishment as well. Very proud of him for doing that. But at that point in his life, the last few months he has done nothing to do but focus on school and education in his career. Now he can get a little bit of a break, catch his breath and get back at it. Getting his teacher certification, doing whatever else, you know, growing as a coach and growing professionally. So again, there'll be times where it's going to, when you're building a business or getting started, you're going to work a lot, that's okay, you need to do that. You need to be the best person you can. If you're getting paid from a company or you're paying yourself, be the best you can, suck it up, get, you know, head down, get it done and you'll come out of that season into another season where you can maybe take it a little easier. And it's always worth it in the future when you look back and see how hard you worked and built something or created something and think that was, that was worth it. It's worth Hindsight's always 2020 seeing that. It's just hard sometimes. So buckle down, get it done and you won't regret it.
