In this video, Jonathan shares a testimonial from a business owner that has shown it is possible to balance business and family.
Hey, good evening! It’s 1:00 in the morning for me and I’m getting ready to go on vacation for about 10 days and I haven’t recorded videos in quite a long time. I’ve been at trade shows and hosting the Service Autopilot Conference and have had a lot going on.
I wanted to share with you though a big idea, a challenging one. It comes from our Service Autopilot Conference a couple weeks ago. We had hundreds of people there, attendees. We awarded the Biggest Bad-Ass winner to a guy by the name of Jordan Webb. I want to tell you a little bit about this because it’s a challenge for me and I think it will be a challenge for you.
I spoke a couple times at the conference and I shared once or twice that if it hadn’t been for my wife, and you should know that I got married late 21, early 22. We’ve been married a while. Obviously I’m not in my twenties anymore. We’ve been married a while and have a couple kids, a couple boys. I shared the fact that if it hadn’t been for her, I was so focused on work, that I probably would’ve just literally worked all the time. I have worked a ridiculous amount of time; sometimes 80 and 90 hours a week. But she really enforced a routine of, which I was totally on board with and wanted in my life, but she helped make sure it happened, and that was that we had dinner as a family every night … all these years.
There’s been exceptions, of course. On Friday nights and Saturday nights, that’s time for us to go do something. On Sundays, as much as absolutely possible, I don’t work. It’s not uncommon that over a ten year period, I would go back to work at the house on Sunday night after everybody went to bed and start getting ready for the week. Those little-bitty things had a huge impact on our relationship and our family in a way that I’m extremely thankful for. Clearly, there’s many, many things I wish I had done. There’s a lot of things that I’ve made mistakes on. There’s time that I’ve sacrificed with my family and things I’ve sacrificed that I fully realize now that were probably unnecessary, but I just didn’t get it.
The point is that, the winner of the Biggest Bad-Ass competition this year, Jordan Webb, I’d like you to watch his video. I’ve posted it down below in the comments. The reason I’m posting the video is that I think that Jordan will encourage you. He is a first class guy. He’s in his twenties. He’s got several kids. He’s married. He’s building his business. He’s figuring it out as he goes. The point here is that he’s real. From what I know of him, he is totally a guy that lives what he talks. He’s legit. He has struggles like every one of us and he has struggles building his business and trying to have a family and take care of his children and be a good husband.
Regardless of where you’re at, maybe you’re married, maybe you’re not, maybe you’re dating and some day you’ll be married. Maybe you have kids, maybe some day you’ll want kids. The dilemma for all of us is we’re the individuals that can create things. We can make things happen. We will put our heads down. We will fight it out, we will grind it out, we will not give up, we will ignore the criticism, we’ll ignore the “you can’t do this”, we’ll ignore the “why are you still doing this?” We’ll ignore all that crap. We’ll fight it out. We’ll set a goal and we’re going to go get that goal.
That’s what makes us who we are and that’s how we build companies and how we hopefully get to where we want to be long-term. The dilemma is, the flip side of that massively positive trait, is that in the single focus of achieving our goal, we put our heads down, and we go after that one thing to the detriment of so many other things. Many of us set our goals and we say, “You know what, if in ten years, I can have this and this, and this could be paid for, we could be financially set, blah, blah, blah, everything will be great.” So for that ten year period with our head down, we harm our families, we harm our children, we harm our wife or our husband in some way. Maybe nothing massively significant, but in some way we do them somewhat of an injustice.
My basic argument with Academy, Service Autopilot Academy, which is a business coaching group, which is the group that we awarded Jordan Webb the $10,000 trip to Italy through, our basic argument is look, it’s not all about just building this massive company and generating lots of profit. Yeah, we go for that. At the same time, why not try to have it all? Why not try to build that thing and have a decent life? That means a family, a marriage, if that’s for you, and some adventure.
Why is it you can’t do some of your hobbies? Why is it you can’t do some of the fun things you want to do? Why can’t you go on some vacations? Maybe you don’t have the money to go on fancy vacations right now, but why can’t you just go on a weekend with your spouse? Why can’t you just go somewhere with the kids? Super inexpensive, need be, but just do that for the family.
I’ve been guilty of putting all of those types of things on hold. My hope is that Jordan’s video will do a really good job of communicating that it’s possible. That when you actually work on those things, you can still work on the business and build a better business at the exact same time.
I want you to see his video to be encouraged, motivated, and challenged. I got to say, I was even challenged watching his video. I’m the one kind of spouting off this stuff and saying, “Hey, here’s what I’ve learned, here’s where I’ve screwed it up. Here’s where I want to be better moving forward. Here’s some ideas for you,” and I’m talking to the members of the Academy. “Here’s some ideas for you. Maybe you could do it different than I did it. Maybe you could go bigger than I went early on. Maybe you could have it all instead of just focusing on the business.” That’s the thing that I’ve been kind of preaching. The awarding of the competition was half about how much did you improve your business and half about how much did you improve your personal world and life.
You watch this video and I watch this video and he even challenges me, because, okay yeah, I go home at 6:30 at night. I have dinner with my family, but am I completely, mentally there? Am I truly, mentally present all the time? No, I’m not all the time. My wife isn’t mentally present all the time either and she’s not working in the business, but she’s running the family. She’s running the house. She’s running all these other things that are happening in our world to make our marriage and our partnership work together. So I can go build these companies, she makes everything else run, and then are the two of us really fully present all the time? No, we’re not.
Jordan’s video even challenged me on that. I’m sure he still struggles with that. Like he hasn’t fully dialed it in, but he’s made huge progress. So kudos to him. He is a first class guy. I hope that what he communicates in his video will help you and slightly, maybe change the course, your direction, what you’re thinking about, what you’re focusing on, so that you’re singular focus and my singular focus just isn’t on the business.
That’s the message that I wanted to pass on to you. That there’s something more important than just growing these giant businesses or really profitable businesses. Yeah, we got to take care of the team. Yeah, we got to do them justice, but we can’t do it to the detriment of our families. Let’s not just go for one thing at a time, let’s try to go for all of it.
Why just the business? Why can’t we have the business, the relationships, the relationships with our spouse, our kids, and some other things? Why can’t we do it all? Very difficult and we can’t do it all all the time. Why can’t we have some level of balance? Perfect balance isn’t impossible. That’s a myth. There’s seasons of craziness in everybody’s life. Then as soon as you get through that craziness, you re-balance and you get refocused on the things that are important. That’s just part of life. But, why can’t we go for more than just the business and more than just creating wealth, more than just making the business work?
Watch Jordan’s video and see if it challenges you. If it does, try to apply some of his ideas to your world. Good luck.
