Work Life Balance and other lies Small Business Owners tell themselves

I have recently had a really good wake-up call.

In the last 6 weeks, my business has grown and grown – great right? But the truth of the matter is that I was nowhere near ready for the kind of growth I have had – not so great.

I am certainly not whinging about being busy and getting a whole lot of new clients and new business but the end result of all of this new work has been a dramatic decline in the quality of my (and my family’s) life.

I have gotten sick. I have been continually tired and have had to take the last week or so completely off work because my body is literally exhausted. Worse than that, the quality of my work has also suffered and I haven’t been in a position to get back to  people and provide the kind of service that I pride myself on.

Today is my first full day back at work and it’s after 11am and I am still just getting through emails from the last week. It all seems really difficult at the moment and it’s not a feeling I ever had when I was working for someone else.

This all coincides with my wife and I preparing to welcome our second child into the world in about 3 weeks time…

Where is this balance I keep hearing about?

I talk to small business owners all the time about work/life balance. In fact, it is one of the reasons that I cite for going into business for myself. But in the last few weeks, there has been anything but balance in my life.

And I’m sure that’s something that a lot of small business owners can relate to.

The problem, of course, is that we all want to be successful. And for many of us (me included) the more clients you have, the more money you are making to support your family and the more your business grows, the more we equate that with success.

But I remember when I started this business, I had two parameters for success: not having to commute four hours a day anymore and being able to spend more time with my young family.

The only one of those that I have achieved lately is not commuting anymore and although I am fortunate enough to work from home, I am still not seeing that much of my family.

So today it’s all going to change.

From this week, I am going to change the way that I run my business. I already outsource a lot to my Virtual Assistants and from this week, I am going to be outsourcing even more.

The service that I provide for my retained clients is a good one – and it’s good value for money. I am not going to raise the monthly fee for them but I am going to limit myself to how many clients I have retained at any one time. That means I have another two spots until I close my books to any new retained clients. This will ensure that I am able to service these clients properly and continue to provide the attention they have become used to from me.

And I am going to work four days each week. My family is the most important thing to me and I am no use to them if I am exhausted, sick or worse – which is the direction I have been going in the last few weeks.

It is going to take some discipline from me because the truth is that I love doing this work and seeing this business grow. But the last few weeks have been the virtual uppercut I needed to get some perspective.

Do you have balance?

So what about you? Do you already have this balance? Or are you like me and caught between the growth of your business and the decline of what is really important in your life?

Have you perfected the four day week? I would love to hear from you.

Please let us know in the comments below. When you leave a comment on this site, it appears straight away – no signing up, no waiting for the comment to be moderated – it will appear below straight after you have posted it.

Tagged as: small business, work life balance