Finding Balance as an Entrepreneur

Listen to Angelo Esposito discuss the struggle in balancing work life and personal life as an entrepreneur. As an entrepreneur, it is easy to get consumed with work and neglect time for personal relationships. In order to effectively balance time, it is helpful to work in an efficient matter as opposed to working on an hourly basis, as well as surrounding yourself with others in a similar position to you.

It’s always on your mind. When you’re an entrepreneur it’s not a 9-5, you don’t punch out and go home, and it’s we’ll worry about the rest the next day, it’s really on your mind 24/7. So I’ve seen it cause problems in my life where I can’t stop thinking about it, whether I’m at dinner with my family or dinner with the girlfriend, it’s always on my mind, so it does have, sometimes, a negative impact. But I think what’s important to realize is in the start-up life and the entrepreneurial life to help people separate the two is, set yourself a timeline, it’s not, you know, you don’t need to do 9-5 to be efficient. Some days if could be 3 hours of work but you’re more efficient than you ever were. So what I would say is be efficient but don’t necessarily, know when to stop, so set yourself a cut off, there’s always going to be exceptions to the rules depending on how busy things are, but set yourself a cut-off and when things are cut off, turn off the phone, but the phone away and forget about business. Cause if not, it’s a vicious cycle and you get consumed in it and you can’t stop thinking about business and it will have a negative impact on your relationships with family or friends. My advice would be to anyone who wants to be an entrepreneur would just be surround yourself with similar minded people, cause there’s a lot of highs and lows. We hear it all the time, people say it’s a roller coaster, but it really is, the highs are so high and you feel on top of the world, but the lows are really low, so surrounding yourself with [people] that are in a similar position and just being authentic really makes a difference because I think that sometimes when you meet up with friends who are in similar positions and just being honest and saying how things are not going well is really different that always putting up this front that everything is going so well. Because anybody that has their own business knows that there are a lot of ups and downs and it’s important to be surrounded by similar minded people.