Tips for Work Life Balance as a Wedding Professional
Blog post brought to you by Weddings For Real podcast
As a self-proclaimed over-achiever, people-pleaser, and general over-analyzer, I have spent the last 10 years as a business owner making intentional decisions that affect my day-to-day happiness and my ability to show up as a good business owner, mom, and wife. I want to share a few tips with fellow business owners. I do not always have everything completely figured out and perfectly balanced, but I have learned a few things and made some mistakes along the way that will hopefully help you on your entrepreneurship journey. Take what works for you and leave the rest!
For a fun analogy, I’ll make a plate reference. Picture a plate with all your commitments. Everyone has different commitments, and no one has more important ones than someone else – they are all just different. These commitments could be things like another full-time job, kids, a spouse, multiple businesses, a team, health issues, financial commitments, elderly parents, and more. On my personal plate, for reference, I have three kids aged eight and under. I have two businesses with team members on each, this podcast, a membership of wedding planners expecting me to show up and help them grow, and a quarantine puppy. I’ll dive into my top tips for work-life balance for entrepreneurs.
Tip 1: Do a weekly huddle with your significant other (or yourself if you are single)
Sit down with your partner and discuss your week ahead. Include discussing and planning things like meals, meetings, workouts, and drop-offs and pickups if you have kids. These weekly huddles set the tone for the week and ensure you no longer have nights where you wonder what is for dinner or days where you question, “Who’s picking up the kids?” You and your partner can constantly know what each other has going on.
This is something that my husband Jason and I adopted in the last two years and it’s truly been a game-changer for our lives and our marriage. Before this, it was me doing all these things and planning it all out. It led to silent resentment and discontent that we knew we did not want to be detrimental to our relationship. We use an app that is free and called Cozi to share our meetings, workouts, meals, and more with each other. We also use it to plan one night a week to spend time with each other not working. As two work-a-holics, this one is really important!
If you’d like to learn more about our Sunday huddles or Cozi, be sure to listen to Weddings For Real episode 82 and episode 83, in which we discuss these things and more with our therapist.
Tip 2: Do one thing each day that is just for you
There are so many activities that this one could be. It could be a walk in your neighborhood, a call with a friend, journaling, meditating, reading a book, or watching a mindless TV show. Be sure to put it on your calendar if you need to, and also give yourself at least ten minutes of you time per day.
For me, I find my personal time through waking up in the mornings before my girls. I head out on a 30-minute walk, and I listen to an audiobook to help grow and invest in myself.
Tip 3: Do a nightly brain dump
Get all of the ideas that are bouncing around your head and keeping you from peaceful sleep out and on paper or a digital note. This helps you calm your head before bed and stop running through the day ahead.
I like to identify three things that I know I can check off my to-do list the following day. It helps me have a win each day and keep track of the work I am completing.
Tip 4: Own the sludge feeling
The sludge feeling comes from the days where you lack motivation. You’re taking forever to get the littlest things done, and it feels like emails and all the small things are ten times harder to do than normal. In these situations, you have two choices:
Option 1: Push through and take 3 hours to write the email.
Option 2: Take time to stop and reset. In this option, I recommend going back to tip #2 and finding something that fuels you. Find a task that gets you through your day but that also directs you away from the sludge that’s holding you back.
The bottom line is that it’s okay to have these days and it’s ok to walk away. It definitely doesn’t mean that you’ve lost your drive forever and are going to have a crappy week, or crappy month, or crappy year. Ultimately, it is just a day and we all have them. Own it and move on!
Tip 5: Think of 3 things that you dread doing most in your business and outsource them
I often hear wedding planners say that they dread doing things like posting to social media, writing emails, asking for reviews and feedback, writing thank you notes, following up with vendors, getting quotes from vendors, bookkeeping, setting up client workflow, and more nitty-gritty tasks. The good news is that if any of these are on your dreaded task list, you can and should consider outsourcing.
When you hear the word outsourcing, your mind may immediately jump to the financial aspect of bringing on a new team member. Twice in ten years I’ve looked to make a hiring decision but wasn’t sure I was financially ready. This happened to me before in 2011 when I hired my first paid part-time employee with A Southern Soiree. It also happened again this year with hiring for the Planner’s Vault. Even though I had some initial hesitations, outsourcing allowed me to make more money, do more things that I love, enjoy more day-to-day tasks, and have more space and breathing room to imagine what comes next with my business. Ultimately, it helped my business grow more than had I tried to do it all by myself. With that said, I urge you to consider it. Test the waters by hiring a virtual assistant. If you are not sure what all a virtual assistant can do, check out Weddings For Real episode 105 to learn all of the things you could hire a VA for. rying to wear all the hats and do all the things is what you have to do when you first start your business, but if you keep doing that down the line, you’re going to hold yourself back and inhibit your growth.
Tip 6: Set limits on your phone/social media time
If you find yourself aimlessly scrolling on Instagram or getting caught up for hours in a rabbit hole on Facebook, use your phone’s settings to notify you when you’ve spent a certain amount of time on those apps or to cut you off those apps at a certain time. You can change the settings on an iPhone by clicking Settings, then Options, then Screen Time.
Personally, my social media apps cut me off at 9:30 pm. This is good for me because I need boundaries. Since there’s no boss telling me to stop at a certain time or after a certain number of hours logged in the day, I must create space for those boundaries in other ways. Let’s be honest, can I just look over those notifications and get on social media apps still? Yes. Have I done that? Most definitely. Remember – I am not nailing everything perfectly and living in 100% balanced bliss. I’m constantly trying new things to get better results than the day before, the week before, and the year before. You can too! I urge you to give it a try!
Tip 7: Set a goal for each month
Set a goal that you can hold yourself to for one whole month. Some ideas for your goal could be no drinking for a month, walking or running one mile every day in the month, stopping working at a certain time every night of the month, carving out 10 minutes of lighthearted and supportive conversations with your significant other for one month, meditating every morning for one month, reading one business growth book a month, reaching out to thank one vendor every single day for a month, and so many more. It’s important as an entrepreneur to always be working to be a better person in one way or another. New goals each month help you do just that!
Tip 8 (Part A): Ask for help
Asking for help is one of those things that is much easier said than done. Help could come from a spouse, a parent, or a friend. Or, perhaps, help could be from a team member or a boss. Before you go asking for help, you need to understand what you want and need before you ask. Do you need more time? More direction? Just someone to listen? If you don’t ask for help when you need it, it’ll bring frustration, anger, resentment, and despair. These are things that you don’t want and I don’t want them for you.
Tip 8 (Part B): Seek out therapy
I believed for many years that therapy meant you were broken or something was really wrong. I felt that there was a stigma around it, so I decided that it wasn’t for me. I now think that therapy is for everyone and that everyone can benefit from therapy. Even if you had a great and happy childhood or if you have a wonderful happy marriage or if you love your career and feel fulfilled, you can still benefit. With everything going on in the world around us today, anxiety and worry are common, and sometimes our busy, overcommitted schedules get the best of us. Therapy is a great way to check-in with someone outside your immediate circle of trust and discuss your emotions, goals, and plans. It’s a way to pour back into you, which in turn affects how you show up for those around you. For me, it’s a tune-up to focus on what’s working and what needs tweaking to show up healthy and happy as a mom, wife, friend, business owner, and more.
Final tip: Ditch the guilt and comparison
I’m sure you’ve heard how detrimental guilt and comparison are for entrepreneurs but let me tell you why it’s important that you completely ditch those feelings. All the tips for work-life balance as an entrepreneur that you’ve read in this post may not work for you. However, there may be things in this post that you can implement that will help you feel more balanced and refocused. Also, there may be things that don’t resonate with you and that’s okay too. Your journey is your own. Your view of my day or someone else’s day-to-day is not always accurate and things aren’t always how they seem. I fully encourage you to tackle your “plate” of commitments in a way that works well for you and I encourage you to stop wasting time comparing what you’re doing to what others are doing.
There you have it, ten tips for creating a healthy work-life balance as an entrepreneur. It’s not always easy but striving for balance and joy is key. Which tip resonates the most with you? Do you plan on incorporating any of these tips into your daily life? Let me know in the comments below! Don’t forget to listen to Weddings For Real episode 114 on work/life balance in the wedding industry, and follow along with Weddings For Real podcast to hear more tips like these for wedding industry entrepreneurs. Needing a little more support? Check out The Planner’s Vault, an online membership and community just for wedding planners! It’s filled with templates, expert webinars, and resources to flourish as a wedding planner. Learn more here!
