Episode #352 – How to Build a Business That Lets You Have a Life

Since I am on vacation, as this episode airs, I think this is the perfect time to share an episode that talks about how I’ve built a business that lets me do that. As this episode goes to air, I will be in the middle of a two-week vacation with my family out of the country. I’m so delighted and proud that I’m at a place where I’m able to do that with them. The experiences that we’ll get to have on this trip and the experiences that we’ve had through our other vacations are my most treasured memories. Just my most treasured memories ever.

Right? Getting to see parts of the world and have experiences with my husband and my kids is just so incredibly important to me. And I wouldn’t be able to do it if I hadn’t really thought early on about how I was going to design and build a business that would let me do that. So, and of course, the wonderful thing is when you build a business that allows you to do it for vacation, you’ve also built a business that kind of insulates you against crisis. When there are events that happen in life that you didn’t choose, right, that you need to turn your attention to, the very same principles that allow you to take the vacation allow you to manage through those episodes of crisis without it being like a complete disaster for the business.

So I’m going to share with you some of the design principles, some of the ideas that I think we want to hold in mind when we’re really building the business on the front end. And I’ll give you a spoiler alert here that there’s one of the most important things. If I look across all of it, I think the most important thing is to surround yourself with really capable people, right? I have an exceptional team who I trust, and they really know how to steer the daily operations of the business without me, right, at least on a temporary basis. And so if you’re looking for like, what’s the thing I’m really steering toward this idea of results through others and surrounding yourself with people who can keep things running so that you don’t have to spend every hour of every day involved in operations.

That is the breakthrough that you’re looking for. I think this also applies if you’re a leader within an organization. I know it can be so hard. The data is very clear that most people do not take vacation time. Their time off that they’re allocated throughout the year often goes unused. And it’s really because of the dedication that we have to our work and the fear that something is going to fall apart if we’re not there. So, either way, whether you’re a business owner or a leader within an organization, I think there are at least one or two things that are very important in this episode for you. So, I’m going to leave you to it. I will be back with a new episode next week, and I hope you get something really usable out of this one. And today, I am talking to my entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs out there about building a balanced business.

You know, many working women are being drawn to entrepreneurship these days because they want the flexibility that it provides. And what I’ve learned after more than eight years in this space is if you’re not careful about how you design your business, you can end up even worse off than you were in your corporate job. And so today, we’re going to dig into that, and we’re going to talk about what it really takes to design a balanced business, one that can grow to the size and scale that you want it to grow without breaking your life in the process. And there are honestly few things that I am more passionate about these days than getting this message out because I see so many women who have their heart in the right place. They have a little bit of an idea, you know, they’re really captivated by a dream or an impact that they want to make. And then they completely go off the rails in terms of how they choose to execute against that dream. And it doesn’t have to be that way.

I think the whole flip, really the key to making this work, is to reverse the order of the steps that people maybe naturally take and do things in a somewhat different way that gets a much better outcome. And so that’s what we’re going to talk about today. It’s going to be great. I will tell you, if you are in a corporate job, you know, you work for somebody else and you’re not really thinking this is going to apply to you, you may want to listen anyhow because as I looked back at my notes for this episode, I think there are nuggets in here that could absolutely be applied to a job in which you’re working for somebody else, for a company that you do not own. And then most directly, it’s going to apply to people with their own businesses or who are planning to start them. So, the key really is to begin the whole process by designing the life that you want and then designing the business that fits into that life instead of the other way around, right? What most people do is they pick a business because they’re passionate about the subject matter or the skills required to deliver the service or they really love the product or they find a franchise, they go after designing the business and then they try to squeeze their life around the edges. And if you flip that the other direction, it just works a whole lot better and kind of gives you the best chance of success from day one.

So in order to do that, there are a few things that you really have to kind of get your head around. I’m gonna talk about five of them today. And so this might even be something you take a few notes on as you go through, we’ll drop these five in the show notes so you have an easy reference as well. So the first thing I would say is you have to really know what you want. And by this I mean, what do you want in your life? A lot of people will come to me and say, well, I want a seven figure business, or I want to make $100,000 a year for my business. And going to say, okay, awesome. What else do you want? You know, do you want to have dinner with your family every night? Do you want creative freedom? Do you want to have a structure to operate within so that you’re very clear about what you need to do every day? Do you want to have time for a hobby or a practice that you care about? Like maybe you want to do yoga every day or you want to train for triathlons? Do you want to be able to take the summers off? Right? So, knowing what you want is an expansive question. It goes beyond just, you know, “I want to have a business that is about pet care.” And it expands it into like really what are the elements that you want to have in your life overall so that you can start to design and choose and think through what type of business might serve that life. So when you’re at that stage, I would encourage you to be as broad and specific as possible. You know, have a list of things that you truly want. You can go back and prioritize that list so that you know what trade-offs you might be willing to make, but really get your head around a complete picture of what you want life to look like.

Alright, once you have that and you know what you want, the second thing is to know your time limits and your energy limits in this chapter of your life. So you really need to know yourself pretty well and if I would say what is the pattern or the temptation that I see a lot of people falling prey to, it’s that we overestimate how much time we can invest in the business. And we overestimate the amount of energy that we will have from day to day to devote to it. What that can do is it can put you in a situation where you have designed a business that’s going to require, I’ll make it up, 60 hours a week of your time, but you really only have 30. And so what is that? That is a recipe for chronic frustration because you are trying to deliver 60 hours of work in 30 hours. Additionally, your energy limits. I mean, some of us are like, “No, I actually do have the time. I can work 60 hours a week.” Okay, but do you have the energy to work 60 hours a week in a quality way? Maybe you don’t have family needs or personal needs that would take you away that you couldn’t do the 60 hours, but can you sustain the required quality of energy for 60 hours a week against it? Most of the time what I see is people skip the step altogether. So they just end up where there’s an endless array of work and not enough time to do it. So that’s the most common pattern. Second most common pattern would be they grossly overestimate how much time they really have available to do work because they forget about things like transition time and they forget about some of the things that kind of eat into what looks like it could be a really long work week.

The thing is, when you know your time and your energy limits, the reason we fight it is because we feel like it’s going to be a limiter. We feel like if we know we really only have 30 hours a week that we’re not going to be able to have the size or the scale of business that we want. And I will just tell you, that’s not necessarily true. But if it does throttle your growth a little bit to honor your limits, so be it. Much better that you know what you can do well. And it gets you into a cycle of long-term planning, sequencing chapters of your business rather than thinking you can do everything on day one. I’ve been at this for about eight years. As I look back year by year at how things have progressed, I couldn’t be running the business I am today eight years ago for various reasons. The stage of my family was a little bit different then. My knowledge as an entrepreneur was different then. My budget for what I could invest in the business was different then.

So you’ve got to honor the stage that you’re in and get a really honest read on what you can devote time and energy-wise so that you’re setting yourself up for success. So we talked about knowing what you want. We talked about knowing your time and your energy limits. The third thing to consider when you’re designing your business is to consider your earning potential and be really honest about it. So we can want the business to generate any amount of money, but we have to be realistic about what the earning potential is in this chapter of our lives.

And I want to be super clear about something. This doesn’t mean it’s a fixed number. It doesn’t mean that it never changes. It just means that as you’re doing your planning, we have to take into account the time it’s going to take you to build, to grow, to develop expertise. So, in this chapter of life, what is realistic earning potential? The challenge here is a lot of people think, “Well, there’s people on the internet who are telling me I’m going to be a six-figure business overnight,” or there are people who say they’re making millions of dollars doing X or Y or Z. And that’s great for them.

But we have to be honest about what our own earning potential is in this chapter. And to be clear, there is probably a lot more earning potential than you might think in the life that you have designed for yourself. I know it was for me. I had really thought that because I wasn’t going to have, I don’t know, 60 hours a week to dedicate to the business, that it might be a hobby business. But then what I learned was once I really zeroed in on my zone of genius and I focused on doing work that I was best suited for, my earning potential per hour skyrocketed. And the same can be true for you, but we have to just be really honest about that in this chapter of life. You might be making one level of income now, and then in the next chapter, as the business grows and matures, you might be able to double or triple it. So we’ve got to think about those stages and be honest with ourselves. That really becomes a foundation of knowing what the business can support and how we can design it.

Okay, the fourth thing to consider when designing your business is to think about your delegation strategy. And I cannot emphasize this enough. If you try to do everything yourself in your business, you will quickly run out of time and energy, and you will hit a ceiling on your earning potential. So what we want to think about is how we can delegate effectively from the start. And this doesn’t necessarily mean hiring a full-time team right away. It can be starting small with a virtual assistant, or outsourcing certain tasks like bookkeeping or social media management. The goal is to free up your time so you can focus on the high-value activities that only you can do. And as your business grows, you can continue to expand your delegation strategy, bringing on more help as needed. This is going to be crucial for your long-term success and sustainability.

Finally, the fifth thing to consider is to have a solid support system in place. This includes not only your team but also your family, friends, and mentors. Building a business can be a lonely and challenging journey, and having a support system can make a huge difference. Make sure you have people who believe in you and your vision, who can offer advice and encouragement, and who can help you stay grounded and focused. This support system will be invaluable as you navigate the ups and downs of entrepreneurship.

So, to recap, the five key principles for designing a balanced business are:

1. Know what you want in your life.
2. Know your time and energy limits.
3. Be honest about your earning potential.
4. Develop a delegation strategy.
5. Build a strong support system.

By keeping these principles in mind, you can build a business that not only achieves your professional goals but also supports the life you want to live. Thank you so much for tuning in today. I hope you found this episode helpful, and I can’t wait to share more with you next week. Until then, take care and keep striving for balance in all you do.