Work-Life Harmony For Entrepreneurs

We trade the myth of work-life balance for work-life harmony and share how to build habits that fit real seasons, not social media scripts. We also get honest about the mental toll of entrepreneurship and how to decompress without guilt.

• replacing balance with harmony as a guiding mindset
• shifting percentages between work and family based on need
• releasing guilt when priorities change across the week
• designing daily habits that match your lifestyle
• movement, water, and journaling as stress relief
• naming the mental load and spotting pressure markers
• building a quick reset plan to prevent burnout
• choosing presence and boundaries as risk management

Chapters

• 0:53 Honest Opening And Tough Week
• 2:11 Ditching Work-Life Balance For Harmony
• 4:58 Applying Harmony Across Busy Seasons
• 6:01 Debunking Daily Habit Myths
• 9:18 The Mental Toll Of Entrepreneurship
• 12:41 Boundaries, Recovery, And Hope

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:27

Hey y'all, welcome to another episode of the Marketing Happy Hour podcast. I'm your host, Shelby McFarland, and I'm so excited to talk to you guys about mindset and lifestyle of being a business owner. So as I am recording this today, I have had an insane week, and my assistant said, listen, we need two podcast episodes. And I was like, man, I'm just not in it, right? Like I was just like, okay, fine, yeah, I don't really have time, but I'm gonna do it because I want to show up for you guys. I want you guys to know that you can count on me to give you all the things about marketing for your business. But I don't want to ever come across as someone who has it all together or somebody that doesn't have moments like I'm having right now. What do I really want to do? I really want to go crawl up on the couch. It's like three o'clock in the afternoon. My kid will be here in like an hour, and I knew I could get like a nap in. But you know what? That's not what needs me right now. The podcast needs me right now. You guys need me right now. So I really want to jump into mindset and lifestyle of a business owner and what that means in different seasons. The myth of the work-life balance is something that I talk about every time I'm every time I'm interviewed. I just did a podcast interview this week with somebody out of Ohio. Um, her podcast is called Marketing Like a Mother. I love it. Um and she was super sweet, and some of the things we talked about was the work-life balance. So I threw in there about how a few years ago, um, when I first hired my business coach, I was frustrated because I this was before I even had my kids, so it would have been at least six or seven years ago. But I was frustrated because I didn't have a balance between my personal and business life. I just felt like I was working all the time. Or if I wasn't working, I was doing too much family time, air quote, too much. And I asked him, how do I actually find the balance? Like, is that a thing? Like, what's the balance? How much time should I spend here? How much time should I spend there? And he told me, we're gonna take the word balance and we're gonna replace that word with harmony. He's like, so let's talk about work-life harmony. What does that mean to you? And I was trying to think, like, okay, well, when I think of harmony, I think of how, you know, back in choir days, we all had different parts and those were called harmony, and so some were high, some were low. He goes, Okay, so then let's dig a little bit deeper. Like we think that a balance is 50-50, right? So if you have a scale and they're both equal, they both equal the same weight. So if you have that mindset of work-life balance, you have to give equal parts to each side. So you have five hours of work, you give five hours to your family. You have 10 hours at work, you give 10 hours to your family. He said, So when we talk about work-life harmony, you know, some days you'll have 80% to your business, 20% to your family. Some days your kid may need you more, so you have 60% kid and 40% business. And he said, you have to get over the guilt that if the other thing doesn't come through or isn't the higher one, you are not letting them down. I tend to be a perfectionist, and I'm not sure if you are, but when I am not giving 100% to something, I feel like I've let the other person down. And yes, thank you, I am in therapy. And yes, thank you, I am working on it. But that comes back to the harmony, the harmony mindset. I love this, and I tell everybody that I have ever talked to about this mindset because it's changed my life. So today I have given so much. Uh I actually we should just talk about this week. This week I have given so much to my business so already, and it's only Wednesday. So I know that when my daughter gets home tonight, I have to mentally check out of work and spend time with her because she hasn't gotten as much time with me as what she really needs. So that's been my harmony this week. But then we come into Thanksgiving, and during Thanksgiving, I'm gonna have more time with family because I'm gonna take off of work. So I can't feel guilty that my clients aren't getting my attention because you know what? They're also focused on their family, at least they should be, or if that's what their life is, they should be. So if you're wondering about how to get that work-life balance, think about okay, let's find a harmony. How much of this is gonna equal that? And how does it add up to a hundred percent? And to know that it's not bad if the other thing is not getting all the attention it deserves. So let's talk about some daily habits of highly successful entrepreneurs. And I literally laugh every time I even say that line. Have you been on Instagram or Facebook or oh gosh, TikTok too? It's like, okay, these millionaires do these five things every single day. Oh, and those five things are done by like 6 a.m. And then at 6 a.m. they just have their whole life together and like ready to tackle the day. There is a part of me that just wishes that I could do these daily habits of all these successful entrepreneurs, supposedly, right? I want to be in a routine, I want to get up and work out every morning, I want to do all the things, but this is my reality. My reality is I'm a single mother, so my daughter, I have to get her ready every morning, I have to take her to school, and then I can start my day. And usually later at night, I'm on the phone because my boyfriend lives two hours away. So we have our time at night phase timing, so we're usually up late. So being up late and then having to get up early, there is no way that my lifestyle is going to allow me to work out before 6 a.m. And you may think, well, you know what? You could just go to bed earlier. Well, what if I don't want to? I want to spend my time how I want to spend my time. So I decided, okay, well, then I guess I'm gonna work out at like in the afternoon because that's the best time for me. It's a great way for me to really kind of decompress from the day. I very rarely work past 3:30, anyways, during the day or week, whenever I'm not as busy as what I am right now. But those habits that we see on social media of these big successful entrepreneurs may not work for us. That's kind of where I'm like trying to get out with this point. Just because we see that those five habits of that man, no offense to the men that are listening, that that those five habits of a man that doesn't have to take care of the kids because he has somebody do that, um, can get up and do five things before 6 a.m. That fits his lifestyle, and that's okay. So I want to ask you, what habits can you get in every day that works for your lifestyle that will help you succeed? If I don't work out every day, I'm not gonna be successful because that is literally the only way I relieve stress. That's the best way for me to relieve stress is to work out on the Peloton, I'll go for a walk, I'll do my strength training, I'll do some TRX training, I'll do something every single day to move my body to release the stress and pressure of being a business owner. And that is what's gonna make me successful. Also, another daily habit of mine is that I'm drinking water all day long. And a lot of these, you know, habits kind of seem more on the healthy side, right? Like moving our body. So maybe a daily habit of yours can be journaling. You want to get up and write in your journal every morning. What are you grateful for? And that will bring you success because then you'll be set in your mind for the rest of the day. That leads me into this next point. The mental toll of entrepreneurship that nobody really talks about. It's so if you're a business owner, you probably just took a huge breath and like sighed because you know what I'm talking about. The mental toll of being an entrepreneur and a business owner is something that a lot of people don't understand. They want to, and let's talk about the people that may want to start a business, right? So maybe you're like, hey, I'm ready to start a business, I'm gonna learn all the things marketing. Okay, so you are thinking, well, I'm gonna have control over my own schedule. I'm gonna be able to do whatever I want, whenever I want, make as much money as I want. And yes, all those things are right. But what you don't know is you're turning your card in to the company you're with now, and you are taking the card of mental stress. You will think about your business every day, you will think about it all the time, you will not sleep very much at night on some weeks, and then on the weeks that you're slow or the months that you're slow, you're gonna be like, Well, crap, how am I supposed to like make this work? And personally, I feel like in this exact moment, and y'all, I'm just being so real with you because well, you already know that's that's literally who I am, but like right now, my mental toll is so stressed and there's so much pressure on me with everything that I have going on that I know I'm about to explode. I'm like one of those champagne bottles that you shake up and then like, you know, release it or whatever. That's me right now. And when I get into this space mentally, I know that I have to find something to get out of it. I that's why I'm gonna take off after doing these podcast episodes. And also I'm going to make sure that I will spend time with my daughter tonight. We will eat something healthy, we will watch probably some trash TV because that's like the best, right? Some kind of reality show. But I know that I have to take the pressure off of myself because I'm in that mental state. And after 10 years of, well, this business and 14 years total in business, I know that if I don't do something, my business is going to um take the toll on for me, which means that I may drop the ball for a client or I may not show up for one of my team members like I should. So it's very important that as a business owner, we know where our ending point is. We know where our stress points are, and we know how to take care of that. And if you're somebody and you're like, oh my God, she sounds so tired. Do I really want to be a business owner? Absolutely. I think the positives outweigh the negatives wholeheartedly, but it is something to show up and be yourself every single day. And it's important for me to show that side to you guys and know that, like, you know what? I also deal with this. Because sometimes we listen to podcasts and you're just like, man, they're always so happy. And I'm not gonna say I'm not happy, but like I'm very tired. And so I just want this whole episode to really wrap up and know that as business owners, we are a different type of breed. There is nothing out there like us. We are freaking badasses, okay? We do deal with a little bit more of that work-life harmony sitch that I told you about earlier. We do have to find some daily habits that work for us, but not necessarily for everybody. And ours don't look like those that are on TikTok. And then the mental stress of everything, we have to know how we are going to um take that and make it better and relieve the pressure off of us to know that you know what, tomorrow's a new day. I'm gonna put everything up right now and I'm gonna move on, and we're gonna be even better tomorrow because all of these problems are gonna be here tomorrow. So take a few hours for yourself. All right, guys. I hope this one didn't like scare you away, but um, it's a really cool episode. I love being able to show up authentically for you guys, and I will talk to you next week.