Jonathan shares what is important in his life and explains why the sacrifice for your business does not have to be your entire personal life.
This past weekend I got to spend an awesome weekend with a bunch of great, great people that are part of Academy. These are guys and gals that are just doing awesome stuff in their businesses and they’re excited about making their businesses better. I’m just incredibly grateful for getting to hang out with some really awesome people.
There’s a point to this video. We spent a weekend in Vegas. There was no agenda. It was a surprise trip for everybody in Academy. About a third of Academy attended. We have about 100 people in Academy. Actually just a little less than a third attended. Many brought their spouses.
We basically had no agenda. There was no business agenda. We just hung out. We had some great food. I think I got back to my room at 3:30 one night and 5:30 the other night. We were just hanging out talking. Talking about personal stuff, and business stuff, and growing the company, and problems, and everything that you could possibly imagine that goes on inside a business and in personally building a business. It was awesome. Guys played golf and we went on an awesome ATV adventure.
The point of this is, it just reminded me how incredibly important this stuff is. I’m really grateful that I got to hang out with some great people, and I’m really grateful that Academy is filled with awesome people. Hopefully it’s encouraging to you possibly to hear this, and that is that it’s not all about business. The purpose of business is to facilitate a personal life. It’s so easy to get caught up in doing nothing but work. I’ve been completely guilty of that. I’ve done a couple of things right, and probably should give a lot of the credit to my wife in pushing me in the right direction. But, let me tell you what I did right and then let me tell you what I did wrong. Hopefully it’ll give you a couple of ideas and maybe a little bit of encouragement. Again, this was all sparked because of an awesome weekend in Vegas.
What I think I’ve done right, and you have to know that I’ve built more than just Service Autopilot and more than CitiTurf. I’ve been a part of several other companies and I’ve worked ridiculously hard. I’ve been through some pretty serious ups and downs and I’ve been through some really tight money situations. But in all of it, from the day I left the software company I worked for way back, I’ve always, unless I’m traveling, almost always had dinner with my family at around 6:30 every night.
I’ve got two boys and a wife. Now obviously, even before the boys were around, I still had dinner with my wife. But now, and as the boys get older, we have dinner every night as a family. I never, almost never work on a Friday night or a Saturday night. Generally my wife and I go out or we go out as a family. But there were many, many times when we couldn’t afford to go do a lot but we could still do something as a family. I didn’t work on Friday or Saturday nights. Generally I never work on Sundays. Now, I have worked a ton of Sundays after the family goes to bed. That’s been super common. I’ve been trying to eliminate that recently, I’d say in the last year where I don’t even go back to work. When I say go back to work I mean at the house on a Sunday.
If I could encourage you to do anything, I’ve been what I believe to be fairly successful, and I’ve done it without sacrificing time with my family, and that basically means from dinner time until the time my boys go to bed. I’ve not sacrificed that. I’ve not sacrificed Fridays or Saturday nights. And, I’ve not really sacrificed Sundays and I’ve been able to get here.
Now, what have I sacrificed? I’ve missed quite a few kids games. I’ve definitely missed a lot of kids practices. I have taken fewer vacations or long weekends. I’ve worked probably too many Saturdays. I do believe that I needed to do a lot of that because you just simply have to work really hard to get somewhere and get somewhere big. But at the same time, I’ll bet if I had given up more Saturdays and I’ll bet if I’d taken a few extra long weekends that my wife would’ve liked to have taken, I’ll bet if I’d done a few more things like that my businesses would be just as good as they are. There would be zero noticeable difference. I believe that.
If I could encourage you to do anything, don’t sacrifice too much. You have to sacrifice, but don’t give up some of that stuff that’s really important. I have to tell you, I’m thankful that I didn’t, and I’m trying to get better at what I have given up. The reason why I don’t think it’s going to mess with your life in any way is that you’ve got to have time to recharge. So Vegas, and that’s what made me think to record this video, is an opportunity for many to recharge and get re-excited about their business leadership.
The elite trip that we’ve got coming in July for Academy, exactly the same thing. It’s going to be all fun and adventure. The mastermind groups that I’m in, the business adventure stuff that I do, the vacations I do with my family and my wife, all of that stuff, the activities that I do outside of work, they all re-energize me, recharge me, get me excited about work. Again, the purpose of business, and there’s only one purpose of business, and that is to create an awesome, awesome personal life. Business is there to facilitate an adventure, a personal life, a strong family, all of that. The purpose of business is not just to have a bigger business.
I hope some of that will give you some ideas and encouragement. If I could leave you with anything, don’t sacrifice everything to build your business. If you have to, build your business a little bit slower, but don’t give up all that other stuff. I’m so thankful that I haven’t. But again, I’ve already given up quite a bit, and much of it was probably completely unnecessary. Don’t forget to go have adventures and have a lot of fun.
