If you’re an entrepreneur in a personal relationship, you know how fleeting work-life balance can be. It can take extended, concentrated effort to get your business from conceptualization to profitable. That’s time that could have been spent with your significant other. Read on to find out How to Balance Running a Business and Your Personal Relationship.
While the sacrifice of your personal time may prove worthwhile in the long run, it can strain your relationship. Ultimately, you want someone to share all that success with. You want the one you love to be there by your side when the dust settles. It’s a dilemma many entrepreneurs face, both male and female, dating and married. You and yours aren’t alone.
But, what to do? Putting any less time into the business might not make sense. It could delay your entry into the market, or your growth, or undermine operations at the expense of your hard-won reputation and customers. Two of the most important things in your life are being put against each other: your love and your love of your business. You’re caught in the middle. All sides need victory.
Put Yourself in Your Partner’s Shoes
Some may assume the compassion required of them demands they take a step back from pursuing their goals. Some entrepreneurs get a little resentful and defensive when their love interest demands more of their time. They feel their significant other should respect the importance of the business and how it may contribute to future happiness.
Consider this: taking care of the relationship is a responsibility you both have. By approaching you with their concerns, your mate is trying to do their part. Quality time is important. They may have their own career goals to be busy with, whether it’s work, school, or even running their own business. There could be times when you’re free and they’re not.
Learn to see the situation as it is, taking neither a defensive or offensive stance. Use the compassion and understanding you expect. Encourage them in their career goals when and how you can. Become a team that’s bent on success. Let the drive for success be part of the bond holding you together, not the force ripping you part.
Make Time by Organizing What You Can
Have you ever heard of the 4-Hour Workweek? The book is a New York Times bestseller. It’s all about maximizing efficiency. The result is less time you have to spend on your business for it to succeed. If your work hours have gotten so out-of-hand that your significant other is left begging for attention, then maybe it’s time to take a look at your processes. It could be that you have more time than you think and can go higher faster than you envisioned.
Organizing a business can be a major project. It can be time-consuming in itself, but it can save you a lot of time in the long run. Even if you’re already a very organized entrepreneur, you may be surprised at what you find when you look for ways to optimize your efficiency. If your plate is so full that it’s hard to squeeze in time for love, that can indicate a need for an efficiency reassessment period.
There may always be variables and unknowns when growing a business. The first step to boosting the efficiency of your work schedule is taking the bare essentials and organizing them. If you know you have to cold call for three hours a day to hit your sales goals, for example, then that’s set in stone. Outsource whatever tasks you can afford to pass off to another, and learn how to create time-saving procedures, automate, and make use of technologies that lighten your workload.
Learn Smart Ways to Compromise
Sometimes the pressure in the relationship isn’t about the time you spend together, but the time you have to do things for your significant other. Suppose, for example, you’re a wife and your husband wants you to iron his dress shirts. You don’t have the time to do it because you have urgent business tasks to complete. One compromise would be you arranging for the dry cleaners to do a pickup and dropoff. His shirts get pressed and your time gets saved.
Look for ways you can both win. It can take creativity, but so can being an entrepreneur. Innovation is a major business growth engine. It shouldn’t be a stranger to you. Apply it to your relationship and reap a harvest of balance.
Why Be Too Busy for Love? How to Balance Running a Business and Your Personal Relationship
For many entrepreneurs, the ultimate dream is freedom. They aim for future freedom wherein they live life to the fullest with the one they love. The oversight is not seeing how the future can be now. The dream isn’t realized by pushing love aside.
Join the discussion!