EP # 175 - Balancing the Demands of Running a Service Business and Personal Life: Practical Advice for Busy CEO's

In this episode, Maggie dives into the essential strategies for balancing a successful business and personal life. Designed for high-achieving business owners, often sandwiched between busy businesses, kids, and caring for elderly parents, this episode offers a step-by-step approach to incorporating self-care, prioritizing tasks, and strategically creating a balanced life.

Inspired by real-life examples from Maggie’s clients, who often juggle business growth with demanding personal responsibilities, this episode provides actionable insights to help you maintain both energy and mental clarity while achieving your goals.

Episode Highlights:

1. The Wheel of Life Exercise—Maggie introduces the "Wheel of Life," a tool for assessing different areas of life, such as physical health, financial health, social connections, and self-care. This exercise helps you identify which areas need more focus to create a balanced life.
   
   
2. The Importance of Self-Care for High Performance – Self-care is the foundation of balanced living. Maggie shares how daily, weekly, and long-term self-care practices can help CEOs and business owners avoid burnout, improve decision-making, and enhance personal satisfaction.
   
   
3. Prioritizing Tasks with Intention – To effectively balance business and life, it’s important to identify and focus on high-impact tasks while eliminating non-essential activities. Maggie explains how to identify the “low-hanging fruit” that delivers big results with minimal effort, such as delegating tasks or pausing activities that don’t directly impact growth.
   
   
4. Setting Up Systems for Continuous Progress – Maggie emphasizes the value of systems and routines, with examples of clients who have streamlined operations, increased business growth, and even regained personal time. She shares how regular coaching can provide ongoing support, accountability, and adjustments, ensuring sustainable growth.
   
   
5. Client Success Story – Maggie shares a review from a client whose business growth and work-life balance significantly improved through their coaching work together. By intentionally prioritizing his goals, he not only expanded his business, but also reclaimed personal time, took his first vacation in years, and established a sustainable balance.

Achieving a balanced, fulfilling life as a business owner requires intentionality and planning. This episode provides the tools to help you get there, whether through simple habit changes or strategic shifts in your approach to business.

Ready to build a fulfilling personal life and a thriving business?
Book a FREE consultation with Maggie to discuss practical steps that can help you create an intentional and impactful work-life balance.

Book your consultation here: https://stairwaytoleadership.com/

Transcript

1:00

Hello, everybody. Welcome to Diamond Effect podcast 175. Today I want to talk about how to balance running a busy, demanding business and also the demands on your personal life. So as a business coach, my clients range in age vastly. I have clients who are in their late 20s, early 30s, and clients who are middle, early It's like my age. Clients were baby boomers and even older. And this week I was actually talking to one of my baby boomer clients who is in that sandwich generation type of situation where her kids are still teenagers and young enough to be staying with her and her partner and her parents are older and aging and now demand a lot of attention and caregiving. And while she's doing all that, she has a multi million dollar business that is also demanding and of course she wants to grow it but even keep going because she still has a while to go and she's very passionate about what she's doing. So I wanted to This podcast to help those of you who are in this situation where you have a business that's successful and it's also busy and demanding and you have a personal life that demands of your attention more and more or that has high demands of your energy and so on. Now, before we get into the topic, I wanted to refer you To podcast episode 155, where I interviewed another client of mine, a CEO of a seven figure business, Gabrielle Pizzale from Pizzale Design. And Gabrielle is actually super good about balancing the same situation. Doesn't mean it's easy, but she figured it out. And in that episode, we do talk about it. If you want to hear it also for free. from somebody else who is running a business. And it's in that situation, not only from me, go to episode 155. So the first thing that I want to talk about, it's a mindset shift that I want to invite you to adopt. A lot of people tell themselves that it's impossible to create balance and it's impossible to, somehow successfully manage it all. And at the same time, they're telling themselves that they don't have time for self care, they don't have time to take time for themselves. And what I want to say is that there is definitely no balance without self care. Self care is a key ingredient, a key component to creating some sort of balance in your life and being able to juggle. Multiple priorities without burning out, without losing it completely mentally or exhausting yourself. So once again, there is no balance without self care. And we will talk a lot today about self care. Self care and why I'm sure you've heard it so many times. You can't pour from an empty cup, right? You can't run an engine without a fuel You can't make high quality decisions in your business and in your personal life When you are tired Drained and in survival mode, because when we're in that survival mode, our brain kind of shuts down the executive function of our brain, where we can logically think through things, way pros and cons, because that requires energy. So the brain wants to conserve that energy because it's in a survival mode. survival mode and it creates, it's like we just react, right? The decisions we make are very reactive. There are shortcut decisions and usually they're not the best decisions for us. Not even short term, but definitely long term and making a bunch of decisions like that, especially in your business can be very detrimental. Also, think about it when we're rested, we're also more effective and more productive. The more tired you are, the more drained you are, the longer it takes to even complete any tasks. You lose motivation, you lose their, like your mental balance is affected. Even if, maybe, right now you're okay and you're juggling it, you're getting tired but you're juggling it, it will slow you down the road and that's the thing you want to avoid. The first thing I want to give you, it's what I gave my clients when we were coaching this week, is do a little bit of an exercise that's called Wheel of Life. It's a life coaching exercise where you want to assess On a scale of 1 to 10 or even 0 to 10, 0 meaning very bad or up to the 5, like it's not great. It needs attention to between 5 and 10. It's okay, it's okay. It can be like that for now, or it's great. I don't need to improve anything. So on that scale, you want to access a few areas of your life. So the first one is your financial situation and also your business, right? So your career, your professional life. The next one is your mental health or how do you feel in your mind, but also self development, education, do you feel motivated, do or looking for growth, self development, and so on. The third one is your family. physical health. So how is your body feeling, right? Are you exhausted all the time? Are you not feeling great because you find yourself either not eating enough or eating in between, running to different things or grabbing junk or fast food, right? Most of the time. How the next area is your sleep. social circle and kind of your friends and the cultural, right? So are you going out to movies? The theater is like, are you taking care of that part of your humanity of us being me? The second last one is spiritual. So whether you believe in God or whether or just spiritual, how your soul is feeling, how do you feel? you and your soul. And then the last one is family and home, right? So extended family, but also your nuclear family, whomever you, you live in your home, whether you have kids, a partner, it doesn't matter. So then, When you assess it, an ideal way is to do it in a circle so each of those areas, it's a piece of a pie. When you assess it, you realize that some areas are maybe a 6 and some areas could be a 2. And that's where you figure out where the imbalance is. which areas need more attention than others. So for example, in the client that I talk about case, her mental, physical, and Spiritual health right now needs most attention. Other areas are okay. Hey, her business, of course it can always get better. It can always grow, but we're working on it. We're improving things. So maintaining status quo and keep going where she is, we'll get her to the goals that she has. Or even in her personal life and personal relationships and friends, she has You know, habits established, certain routines, certain things. And for now, that's okay, even though it's not 10. Now, If you do it for yourself, your results could be different. Maybe you're great in self care and taking care of yourself because you have those different demands, but maybe your financial situation or maybe your business requires more attention or maybe it's the relationships with like more of a social life. That's what you're missing, right? So once you determine that, You want to start putting a little bit of more intention in shifting the areas that are urgently require attention so then they grow on that scale, right? So they go from two to three to four to five so you establish more or less, more balance in your entire life. So I want to talk about self care just because. It's part of my coaching, what I do with my clients. It's part of top CEO formula. And that part is called high performance enhancer. And as I said, there's no balance without self care. And I know that a lot of you actually neglect that area very often because we just go. We're passionate. We're high achievers. We want to help everybody. We love our clients. Self care takes a backseat or it's not even on the list. So when I coach my clients on self care or enhancing their performance as CEO, I group the activities or habits and routines that we step by step implement in three areas. First one is things you do daily. To allow yourself to function at the highest level, to allow your brain to be in the executive function part to make better decisions, to allow yourself to fill your cup so then you feel motivated and therefore you're more effective in completing your daily tasks. So into daily. Routines, what comes into that is a couple of things. First having something, whether it's a morning routine or whether it's one habit or something that grounds you in the morning that prepares you for the day where you can be present, ground yourself. De stress before the day started and be prepared for whatever the day comes, brings you. The second thing is having breaks throughout the day. Mental breaks and kind of physical breaks, right? So if you are a business owner who has a lot of meetings, don't schedule the meetings back to back. Have 10 minutes in between meetings when you can step back. From the computer move around, put If you think about your brain having different drawers for different parts of your business to be able to close one drawer If you had a meeting, let's say about sales and then you're moving into meeting for operations You can open that drawer right and also allow yourself to move so you're not stiff Your muscles are not tense and so on so having that In your day to day routine, where you intentionally set up those breaks and then, of course, proper breaks for eating and maybe a bit of movement, even if it's a 10 minute walk around the block, and then. Another thing is having a daily reflection, whether it's gratitude or how the day went and so on. And I always recommend it to do it in the evening where you can wind down from the day, put whatever thoughts you have left on paper and then prepare yourself for a better quality sleep. The second group of activities, routines or habits are weekly. So weekly, You want to schedule some time off for yourself, whether it's just for you or whether it's spending quality time, let's say with your family, friends, or loved ones, right? So filling in those other parts of your life. So in terms of my client, for example, where she found herself was that she was working, she's working hard in her business Monday to Friday, and then On the weekends, she's going to her parents, helping them, cleaning the house, doing all the things for them, while the other day of the weekend, doing all the same things in her own home with no minute to rest, with no time to wind down, to physically rest, mentally rest, right? And then food is part of that. Establishing some time off. And for example, for me, getting help in cleaning your house, it's not a luxury. It's something that is way worth the investment. That is an investment in your life. performance in your self care that will then pay off multiple times in your business when you, for example, make better decisions or in your relationships when you're not getting snappy and so on, right? So I remember for us, we got help in cleaning our house after my second son was born, which was like a fourth child. I have two step boys. And because we found ourselves with our husbands spending most of the weekend just tending to responsibilities. Cleaning, laundry, shopping, driving kids to different places. And like we were exhausted going into the week of work. So I'd rather even not go out to dinner so often. Or, reflect if I need another meal. piece of clothing and be able to get the help of a client. So that's, for example, one example. Outside of having time off creating that time for yourself, you want to, within that time, do some self care activities, and they can be as simple as walking nature, taking a bath, or going to a spa, whatever it is, whatever you like, whatever is within your means. And also, once a week, have a CEO power hour where you also reflect on the week where you can jot down some ideas or maybe things that come up for you that need to be Still addressed and things like that. So you're not caught forgetting something. You don't catch yourself, Missing and important details because you're running and you don't have time to put the pieces of puzzle together To consider different scenarios and so on You And then the third group of activities, it's more long term activities, where something that doesn't happen weekly or daily, but maybe monthly, quarterly, or a couple of times a year. And those things have to be scheduled, right? Those things are not habits that you can establish and you will be consistent in them because they happen so rarely. They're more an ad hoc thing, but it has to be intentionally scheduled back in CPU. ever wait for things to happen or just have time for it. That's never gonna happen. We never just have time for something we don't intentionally schedule and think about. So in terms of self care it's some breaks, like going away on vacation. Whether it's once a year, whether it's twice a year, whether it's quarterly, whatever you can do within your means. But! I find that taking vacation away from home, even if it's camping, even if it's very simple things, allows you to restore Even more allows you to really relax, forget about, the day to day and refill yourself. You'll find that if I ever take vacation at home, which I avoid doing, it's not really vacation because even if you're not working in your business, there's always things to do at home and it's just, it just doesn't work as well. Okay, doing reviews of your business in life. For example, quarterly, I always go to my clients looking back at your business monthly or quarterly or at worst twice a year to see what has been working, what needs to be adjusted, what hasn't worked. And you can do it for your personal life as well. The reflections and information that you will take out of it will be invaluable. So spending some time to sit down, look back, reflect, and evaluate, and then annually doing strategic planning for your business. You could do strategic planning or more like goal setting or vision setting for your personal life as well. Now, I do want to talk about. To those of you, if you did the Wheel of Life and the area that needs improvement is not necessarily your physical or mental health, but your business, your financial situation is doing that review of your business, right? Understanding what's going on and why, what are the root causes of whatever problems are showing up. And then creating a plan to address that. Now, what I want to invite you to do is schedule a free consultation with me because as an expert and objective eye onto your business, I will quickly see after asking you some detailed questions. It's what are the root causes of whatever is happening? And I always share during free consults with my clients. It's what can you do to address that? And then of course, Clients want my help. We talk about that, but if they don't, at least you're taking that information and that's invaluable. And it's going to happen within 45 minutes. Sometimes when we try to do things on our own, we procrastinate, we never do it. Or even if we set time aside, we're in our heads thinking like, I don't know, I don't know why things are not working. I've tried all the things and so on. So getting that free console is invaluable. I will share the link with you. Reach out, book a book an appointment in my calendar. You definitely will take a lot of value out of it. Okay. So now final thoughts about how to implement it because you're probably thinking, okay, maybe that's great, but that's a lot of things you're talking about. And I might not have any of it, or I have some, but a lot is missing. What do I do now? The first thing I want to say is that You need to be intentional about it. It's not going to happen on its own. Nothing ever happens on its own. You need to set certain things in motion. And in order to be intentional about it, you need to prioritize it. And that's your decision, right? We put priority on something that's important to us, and it's usually important because we have a reason why it's important, and you're the only one to create that reason. You're the only one to create maybe certain Urgency around changing or improving parts of your life or business, right? You're the one who can prioritize. Nobody else can do it for you. Now, once you do that, then you can assess and think, okay, what is the most important thing that I need to address? What are the solutions to address that? And what are the most simple? And easy solutions that I can start with that will give me the most results. So you always want to start with low hanging fruit, right? In my client's case, for example, hiring help to clean the house. It's probably the easiest and fastest because that will create time for her to then Maybe do some self care, right? Or spend time with her family and kind of rest and relax. So she's not as drained and Exhausted after the weekend, right? For another person it could be okay. Let me just start with breaks during the day I will make sure that I take two breaks. Let's say you're not taking any right now Every day, that's doable, I can do 5, 10 minutes, a couple times, three times a day, right? So whatever is the simplest and the easiest, start with that. You will see the results, and once you see the results, your brain will wanna, you will wanna do more, okay? So have that clarity on what's important, put a priority on it, and start easy and simple. Now, another thing that we often forget is that Within your week right now, they will be things that are not as important, but you're doing it because either you're in the habit of doing them, you've always done them, or maybe because they feel comfortable. I was coaching another client this week, and we were talking about And we were talking about marketing and selling and creating time for that. And when we looked at her week and what she was doing, it turns out that she was also developing certain solutions to the service that the business that she runs with her partner as well provides. But the main developer. is her partner and the development that she was doing wasn't really necessary at this stage of their business. So that's what I said. You can just stop doing that for now until it's really needed and focus the time on marketing and sales, right? So eliminating what's really not the most important will also give you time to do what is. And as I mentioned before, I can help you Not only decide in what needs to be addressed, why does it need to be addressed and what is the best solution for it, but I can help you implement. That's what coaching is all about. Not only giving you a bunch of tasks, but really making it easy and simple to implement. And through our weekly meetings, you'll You create a lot of progress and then we tweak things we improve things and through that There is a compounding effect and benefits in your business and personal life And I want to just say Thank one of my clients who gave me this great review that I want to read because I'm so proud not only of what he created, but it also shows the process of it. Here's what one of my clients says. So often in small business, we're so busy working in the business that we overlook or put off working on the business. Maggie's assistant and support is invaluable in helping to establish priorities. Develop strategic plans while gently holding you accountable. So you carve out time to work on and elevating your business. Our weekly meetings are always enjoyable. So even though, Maggie's going to follow up to ensure that you have completed tasks that you committed to an agreed work, I always look forward to those meetings. It's hard to believe how far we have come and that. The status quo is unacceptable. How much better prepare I feel to continue grow and develop my business. And one thing, what I want to also mention is that this particular client, when we started working or before we started working together, Their work life balance was really non existent. He was working very late at night, doing paperwork and so on. And by the time we finished, not only his business grows considerably, and also he's no longer working crazy nights and took his first vacation in I don't remember seven or eight years. So it's possible to balance things. It's possible to grow your business and, have a life that you enjoy while also supporting those who need your support and loved ones. But it starts with being intentional about creating it. I can definitely help you reach out to me. Let's have a free consult. I'll share the links. Have a fantastic week. Bye. Recording stopped.