Entrepreneurship is a juggling act. For every benefit of being your own boss, there are a handful of challenges that come with such free-floating territory. Not having a 9-5 often means suddenly working 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. The freedom to work while you travel somehow morphs into becoming glued to your smartphone and email inbox while you’re on the beach. And the glory of being your own boss often comes at a cost, most especially to your relationships and the impact it has on those closest to you.
In short: entrepreneurship looks glamorous on the outside, but many entrepreneurs have opened up (especially in the past 5-10 years) about the toll it has taken on their relationships, their personal health, and most importantly, their families.
A recent Inc Magazine article on this very topic won an award in the Magazine Personal Service category in the 2014 Annual Awards Contest of the Deadline Club. The article tells stories of various entrepreneurs who, at one point or another, thought the end was upon them–with maxed out credit cards, aggressive interest rates on their loans, and worried significant others. To say they experienced sleepless nights would be an understatement.
Top executives and business leaders, especially, are beginning to use their stature to facilitate discussions around health work-life balance. Randi Zuckerberg has publicly explained that while the cliché of “Friends, Family, Fitness, Sleep & Work–pick 3” may hold some validity, she likes to think of seeing those things as interchangeable based on the day. As she stated in a recent interview, she balances the extreme demands of her busy life by saying, “These are the three I choose for today.”
What makes an effective entrepreneur, then, is their ability to not only build a successful business, but manage their time in a way that allows their personal life to remain healthy throughout the process. While some entrepreneurs operate from the mentality of, “Whatever it takes, whatever the cost, make it happen,” I am a firm believer that whatever you sacrifice in the short-term with your interpersonal relationships and personal health, you will end up paying for in the long run.
However, this is all easier said than done. Achieving a healthy and sustainable work life balance is no easy task. Ask any serial founder and they’ll tell you that peace of mind, health, and happiness are vital components of building a successful business.
How then, are you supposed to structure your lifestyle such that you are properly allocating resources to both your personal and work lives? Does your business or your family come first?
The blunt reality is that the more your business succeeds, often times the more attention it demands. Do the math. That means less family time, which can quickly turn detrimental toward building relationships with your children and loved ones.
“But it does not have to be that way,” Jim Sheils, co-founder of Family Board Meetings, explains to me. “Healthy family relationships and being a successful entrepreneur are not mutually exclusive events. You can do both.”
Jim and his co-founder, Brian Scrone, built Family Board Meetings to prove that you can be a busy entrepreneur and still have plenty of time to continue nurturing the relationships closest to you–your family. It’s focused on the simple idea that “time together is not the same as quality time together.”
Quality time is a lot to ask for when you’re building a business. The constant buzz of our cell phones easily distracts us from focusing on what really matters. As a result, we spend time with our children without really forming any deep, memorable relationships. Before we know it, 18 summers go by and they are off to college.
To do that, they’ve created purposeful, all-inclusive family retreats that put entrepreneurial parents in the position to not only have a deeper and more meaningful relationships with their children, but also to support them more effectively. Their next retreat is this summer in Utah, and the intention is for every participant to walk away from the retreat with the proper tools to continue building more open relationships with family members.
Angela Lauria, an alumni of the program, was super excited about what she learned by attending her first retreat. “Now we are ambassadors for these tools, bringing them back into our personal lives and integrating them with our family…we’re going to bring these tools back in to further deepen all of our relationships.”
So what exactly does an entrepreneur experience at these retreats?
Scrone says, “Through our quantitative and qualitative research over the last five years, we have identified that the most successful parents either A, have some kind of involvement in their child’s education, or B, are keeping consistent rhythms to keep the lines of communication open, in turn deepening the connection with the child.” Those two identifiers are the cornerstones of the Family Board Room experience, as they provide opportunities for families to share ideas, experiences, learn and grow together over a weekend in a contained and safe environment. “We turn to experiential learning, and put families in a position to acquire new skills, while still having a fun time.”
Steve Sims, another attendee of the retreat, was amazed, “I saw him [my son] in positions I’ve never seen him in before. I have a newfound respect, admiration, and I couldn’t love him more than I already do.”
There truly is no substitute for quality time. And for some entrepreneurs, these are skills that require practice and learning. In the same way you don’t stroll up into your first business doing everything perfectly, being a parent or effective spouse is no easier of a job.
These skills take time to learn. What’s important is that ambitious entrepreneurs always remember the value of investing in their interpersonal relationships.
What is success, after all, if it is enjoyed alone?
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.