Is there such a thing as balance – seriously?!

I recently spoke at a conference to an audience of young, talented entrepreneurs about inexpensive marketing tricks.  One of the examples I gave was about one of my first companies.   We were launching our first product and had almost no staff or money to make a big splash. We decided to do a personalized mailing to several thousand executives.  In order to make this work, we had to hand print and seal each envelope.  I told my audience how we rounded up our families to help stuff mailers.

My story was followed up by a question,  “So you are a mom, how do you balance growing your company, kids and husband, and venture capitalists?”  It made me smile.

Life is hard and running a company isn’t easy (as you can imagine).  It’s more than a full time job—it becomes your life..  To be good, you have to be ahead of the market needs, available to your customers and staff, keep your board informed of what’s going on and network.  Then if you are like me, you have to worry about the kids’ homework, food for family and all the home obligations – oh yeah then time for you.  If juggling all of this successfully were easy then everyone would do it, right?

Here’s the deal – Balance is what you make of it. Those who can’t multi tasks struggle with the concept of balancing your life.

Our family solution to balance is we always talk about the balls in the air.  It makes no difference to my family if we are juggling my son and daughter’s preparation for their fall music performance or my presentation for an upcoming board meeting—we have to make it all work.  Since our children were small, we have had a group calendar where “all things happen”.   Each of us posts our individual obligations, to inform the rest of the family about what’s going on. And, now that we have MAC computers, we use the shared calendar function that Mac offers.  I have two calendars—one for work and one for pleasure.  The company can only view my work calendar.

The most important thing about balance for me is that I include my family in my “work” activities.  For example on nights when I am working late on a customer proposal or deliverable, my family comes to the office and we have a picnic dinner.  Or, when I hosted a lunch for Governor-elect Bob McDonnell during his campaign, I brought my daughter along.  We were able to spend time and she was able to complete an assignment her Civics class

For me, there is no such thing as balance—only group juggling.  Don’t worry balancing your life; just keep what’s important to you in your focus and incorporate your family into your job.  You’re family will love to be a part of making the success happen.

What about you?  How do you balance work and family?

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