In this episode of The Tactical Empire, Jeff Smith and Shawn Rider discuss the struggles of balancing business growth with family life. Entrepreneurs often find themselves working long hours to grow their businesses, but how do you balance that with family time? The conversation dives into the importance of setting boundaries, focusing on high-value activities, and learning how to manage your time effectively. Discover practical strategies for achieving both personal and business success while maintaining a fulfilling family life. Don't miss this episode packed with real-world advice for entrepreneurs!
In this episode of The Tactical Empire, Jeff Smith and Shawn Rider discuss the struggles of balancing business growth with family life. Entrepreneurs often find themselves working long hours to grow their businesses, but how do you balance that with family time? The conversation dives into the importance of setting boundaries, focusing on high-value activities, and learning how to manage your time effectively. Discover practical strategies for achieving both personal and business success while maintaining a fulfilling family life. Don't miss this episode packed with real-world advice for entrepreneurs!
[00:00] Introduction to the topic: Balancing business growth and family life
[01:00] The challenges of being an entrepreneur and maintaining family connections
[02:30] How to prioritize high-value activities for business success
[04:00] Setting boundaries in both work and home life
[06:00] The importance of effective time management
[07:30] Practical tips on managing work-life balance as a business owner
[09:00] Recap and final thoughts on optimizing family and business growth
@realjeffsmith (00:00)
Welcome to another episode of the tactical empire. joined by Sean rider. How's it going, man?
@shawn_rider_ (00:06)
Not bad. Not bad. I am. I'm representing on my shirt today. Wind City rucks and the, ⁓ the back of the shirt says go rock yourself. Yes. Yes. First time wearing out on the podcast, a little local free group to get some rucks in kids like to show up and rock around. Luckily the, luckily the book bag covers the back of the shirt. So the kids aren't learning the phrase, the phrase go, go rock yourself. Yes.
@realjeffsmith (00:16)
I like it. I like it.
Yeah.
I like that. I like that.
I've got a 90 minute ruck scheduled for today. So that's part of my programming.
@shawn_rider_ (00:37)
⁓ my
traps, my traps would be lit after 90 minutes, think 45 to 45 minutes to an hour is a good time domain for me. But you're out you're out working out with the mosquitoes according to social media yesterday.
@realjeffsmith (00:50)
⁓ Yeah,
Wisconsin's got some gnarly mosquitoes. ⁓ Everyone said they were bad in Michigan, but they weren't bad as... I liked them in Michigan because they were so big that you had zero doubt on them. They're small in Wisconsin and way more devious. So like I was hitting them with a fly swatter in Michigan. That was easy.
@shawn_rider_ (01:07)
Not in that.
Now you're pissing the mosquitoes off in Wisconsin, talking about how little they're packing. These small mosquitoes, you guys, there's nothing compared to Michigan. They get all pissed off. ⁓ When we were in vacation in Myrtle Beach, not Myrtle Beach, Charleston, South Carolina, we got a real nice house like on a river or swamp or whatever the fuck it was. ⁓ But I tried to work out outside one day and it included like a little jog to the end of the driveway.
@realjeffsmith (01:16)
Yes.
@shawn_rider_ (01:39)
Dude, the mosquitoes just like they fucking follow you. It was like, I think I lasted five minutes and I was like, I can't, I can't do this. And I went inside, I finished the workout inside, but I was like, who the fuck, how can you be outside if the mosquitoes are just gonna attach to you? So kudos to you, good job doing it. You mentioned prior to the show, we had a listener, someone reach out to you directly with a question.
So if you wanna go ahead and read that off, I think it's in line with what we talk about often, but we just wanna send a direct podcast response to this gentleman and see if we can help someone else along the way.
@realjeffsmith (02:13)
Yeah,
Yeah, and word to the wise guys, send us DMs if you have questions like this, because this makes for good content, because you're not the only one that have questions. So like this is just something I thought of over the weekend. I was like, let's just do a podcast on this because it's going to be easy. And it's something that's pertinent to everybody. He said, I'm going to summarize what he said. It basically, how do you balance family and grinding to build businesses, particularly in early years?
He said he understands that he needs to get his finances up and right, but there's also this side of him that understands he's going to have to sacrifice ⁓ something else on the family side of things ⁓ to get that done. And so how do you deal with that? How do you attack that? Any advice would be appreciated, right? He's got real young kids, like under four, maybe three of them under four. And so it's a special time for sure. ⁓
@shawn_rider_ (03:03)
I hear.
@realjeffsmith (03:12)
I think this is a great question. It's something that I think all men really struggle with, I would say, because you always want more, build bigger stuff. ⁓ like, is there balance? And ⁓ ultimately, I mean, I think we should be striving for it. I don't think there is balance because when you do something, when you make one choice, there's something else that gets overshadowed, right?
@shawn_rider_ (03:18)
Mhm.
@realjeffsmith (03:41)
So if you're trying to build a business and get your finances up, ⁓ there may be some time with family that's sacrificed, right? I think the best way to approach this is by setting boundaries and boundaries for yourself and realistic expectations on what you need to be doing. Obviously, there's workarounds for this. I talk all the time about like project work, critical tasks, all that. If you live in a house, you've got the luxury of being able to wake up as early as you want most days and
get your stuff done. ⁓ A lot of times this question comes from the fact that maybe you're not spending your time on high value work either. And you need to recognize that. So while he was very honest and transparent with this financial situation, the next step in my questioning was you need to be very honest and transparent about how you spend your time, right? Are you wasting?
it like these time leaks that we all have throughout our day, are you actually spending it on money making tasks and money making opportunities? ⁓ Because if you're not you you are spinning your wheels and you're probably ⁓ working at the detriment to your family time. Like I used to do this, I was guilty of this very badly in my gym business when we first opened the gym, I used to spend
countless amounts of time there that was unnecessary. And part of that was because of overwhelm, like things weren't growing as quickly as I wanted them to. And part of it was because I was, I didn't know what I didn't know at that point in time. I had no coaches, I had no mentors, and I was kind of just like trudging along saying like, I'm gonna work 16 hour days because longer certainly equals better, right? And it doesn't. That's just not a fact. I mean,
As I've leveled up through the years and done different things and ran different businesses, I understand more that the people that are actually the most successful are the people that are the most efficient with their time. the superpower of an entrepreneur is how quickly you have the ability to focus, complete a task, shift focus, and get focused again. Because most of us spend our day
going from task to task and we lose all of this efficiency on shifting hats, right? We go from project work to answering phone calls to social media to interruptions with the kids to trying to get focused again to do that high value work. the most effective entrepreneurs I've ever been around are the ones who can get focused again quickly after a distraction. And so,
@shawn_rider_ (06:25)
it. ⁓
@realjeffsmith (06:29)
You really just need to figure out how your time is being spent. And then are there opportunities for you to optimize that time? Like some people cannot do work at three o'clock in the morning. Now you can do prep work at three o'clock in the morning, but some people's customers are not available until three o'clock in the afternoon. And like, if that's your reality, then you need to.
@shawn_rider_ (06:35)
I'm
@realjeffsmith (06:53)
When I talk about boundaries and things like that, you need to adjust your schedule accordingly. Maybe that means you spend time with your kids from 10 to noon in the morning. So you work from three, four, five, six, whatever you want until 10 in the morning. And then you shut it down, take a mental break, eat lunch with them, eat brunch with them, whatever it is, and spend focused time on them knowing that when your customers come back out and they're available at three o'clock.
You may have to work until seven during this season that you're in. And so I think there's ways to touch all those points. And like that's where the four F's comes into play, right? Cause we, want to make sure that we're building a foundational structure to touch all these areas of our lives so that we are well rounded and that we are fulfilled in all these areas. Cause the last thing you want to do is be like, Hey, honey,
I'll see you and the kids in five years after I build this shit. Cause like, nobody's going to be there is the reality, unfortunately. Like, and we've talked about that in the past and like, if you, if you burn it all down and ignore everything else to be very myopic or singularly focused, you have to understand the ramifications that that's going to have. And ultimately, you know what we're all about, which is like, you only get this opportunity with your kids, with your family right now. And so.
Like your wife has a little bit more leeway for you. You need to, you need to make sure that relationships managed, but she doesn't like need you to like spend every day with her, but your kids have a much more shortened lifespan with you. And that goes by very quickly. And so you need to make sure you figure out how you can best balance what you're trying to achieve while understanding that there's probably going to be a lack of balance. That's my answer. Go van.
@shawn_rider_ (08:45)
I think that was a great response. I respect and appreciate that. Anyone that's listened to our podcast long enough knows that we don't like to use the word balance. So I think it's nice that you threw it in there, but it really, it goes from the word balance to the word flow. ⁓ We have to get better at flowing from one thing to another. I love how you described ⁓ the interruptions, the task switching, going from work to kids, to social media, to...
financials to alone time, to wife time, back to kid time, to work time, to sleep time, all that shit. And so it does come back to the four F's and the main pillar, which is like, you are the asset. You have to get better at managing how you go from one thing to another, because as men, we do put a high priority on ourselves to provide for our family. And so I'm sure that even if they could keep their workday to eight hours or less, when they come home, they're not turning it off.
@realjeffsmith (09:29)
Okay.
@shawn_rider_ (09:42)
And it's not as easy as just say, flip the switch. Like it does take time. It does take your ability to understand that most businesses don't go out of business overnight just because someone didn't respond to a customer's email right away. It does take practice. It takes awareness that you want to have better time when you're at home. That doesn't mean you need to be Jeff and be around your kids at all times and then only have a two hour window. It also means that you don't need to be me where like,
I can work more when my kids are at school and my wife's away, but I choose to condense that because I do understand Pareto's principle and compression of time. And so what I've seen working with business owners for over five years is they don't put those guardrails in. It's kind of just like an open freeway. And just whenever they can get it in, they get it in or they get on the highway and they don't get off of it. So then they're going a thousand miles an hour for five years, like you said. So I think ⁓ macro to micro is
Let's just macrarily talk about what you want. You wanna grow a business while simultaneously having time with your family. Okay, awareness, cool, let's acknowledge that. Now let's look at what happens on a day to day, okay? Do you have to work seven days a week? Let's start there. Answer is probably no. Okay, so even though it's our business or we're building something big, let's go ahead and put a parameter in. I'm not saying this is how you have to do it, but why don't we just start with Monday to Friday is work days, Saturday, Sunday, not work days.
That may work for you, it may not. This is all about trial and error over a 30 to 90 day period. This is why we're constantly assessing and time auditing our goals and ourselves. So pick something and stick with it for a month or more and see how it goes. It might be, okay, I'm gonna work Monday through Friday, weekends, family time, but I'm also gonna stop working at noon on Wednesday. And let's see how that works, right? And you start like putting in these guardrails.
And then when you continue to yield results with less time, what are you doing there? You're creating proof that you actually do not need a 16 hour day. So then again, all this, if you're a steward of money and you're managing the money and the bank account starts ticking up a little bit, a little bit, and you're in control of that, then you become the type of person who dictates the pace at which this business is gonna move.
And there are certainly days where a very important email comes in and you're going to have to stop everything and respond to that. But you're going to learn that 90 % of shit isn't that. And so you just start allocating the proper amount of time. This goes back to a book, which is actually just a collection of essays by Patrick Rohn called enough. used to recommend this book a lot. It's been a while since I've recommended it. And he just very early on in one of his, his, it's not a poem. It's just little essays that he's written.
about the thought of enough. And he said, he said, everyone has to define what enough is. And in order to know what enough is of something, you have to have too little of it, and you have to have too much of it. And then you kind of find where you're at. So right now it sounds like this gentleman has too much work time, too many responsibilities within that job, too many tasks, and quite honestly, probably too much emphasis on his own particular role within his family to provide at that extreme level.
@realjeffsmith (12:58)
Thank
@shawn_rider_ (13:04)
and he has too little family time or he's got too little, ⁓ for lack of a better phrase, he's got too little personal development around the right people that have shown him and have done this in his whole life, which is probably why he reached out to you, okay? Because he's seen you be able to ⁓ create what looks like balance within your life. So those are hopefully some tactical things that come to mind in my mind.
@realjeffsmith (13:18)
Thank
@shawn_rider_ (13:31)
And for me, it was like it was literally brute force. I fought against that for a very long time. And it wasn't until I had kids, I fully know that before kids came along, I did not give my wife enough time. was, you know, we were at the business together because she was a client of that first brick and mortar gym business. But that wasn't that wasn't me being the proper husband. But when kids came along, it still took two two and a half years. And and when my kids got big enough to actually start doing things, I literally just had to force this upon myself.
I had to turn my phone off. I had to put it in a basket when I got home on top of the kitchen. I still to this day, unless I'm getting up to take an early morning class, I turn my phone off when I go to bed. I don't know how people sleep with their phone on. And if you're like, well, I have my alarm and then your phone's buzzing and then you get distracted, like, okay, just go buy a normal alarm. You don't need to use the alarm on your phone. So these are little tactics that you can use as well.
to like just brute force, force yourself in a position to work less. ⁓ I do like the thought of Pareto's principle. Trust me, you do not need to work 16 hour days. We are not Elon Musk and we are not Alex Hormozi. Even though they have good quotes, even though they have good business strategy, even though they write, you know, for Alex, writes great books. They're very beneficial. I buy them, I read them, I like them. I do not want his workload. I do not want his life. I am not him.
And so I have to find other people that have structured their lives in the way that I want to, and I want to be around those guys. And I think we have a pretty solid group inside the tactical empires inner circle.
@realjeffsmith (15:04)
Yeah, that's good. While you were talking, I thought of another angle to this too ⁓ that might be helpful is that he may not have talked to his wife about his feelings on this front ⁓ because.
@shawn_rider_ (15:19)
I totally missed that too. That was the first thing I wanted to say. We
were talking about structure and I definitely want to talk about communication and just go ahead and run with it. But that's the first thing that I thought of.
@realjeffsmith (15:28)
Yeah, yeah, because
well, we often have these expectations in our minds of how we should be showing up during this season of life, whether it's in business or family or whatever. And I think just sharing these, this level of stress and anxiety that this particular season is causing him and why allows you to put together a game plan. This is why like doing couples annual planning is so important. It's because like, listen,
These are our targets this year. This is the goals I'm trying to get to. I want to take this business from here to there. And, but what I'm concerned about is my lack of being home in the morning with the kids or my lack of like what that's going to take and what that's going to look like. And if you open up those lines of communication with your spouse, oftentimes, first of all, they haven't set that expectation of you. So you're piling on this added stress and anxiety and then.
So they have a lot of grace for you in that space. But then if you tell them what your intentions are, and that's a shared thing, then they can actively make space for you. ⁓ then also we can come to terms with what that looks like. OK, well, you won't be home in the morning. No big deal. I understand what we're trying to accomplish. And then this is when you can help out.
Because it's actually more efficient to have you home during this period than it is at that period. So like a lot of times as guys, we make all these assumptions of how we need to show up on this regular basis. And then we don't even ever have a conversation with our wife about it. And she's like, realistically, I don't need you here in the morning at all ever. so like, go ahead.
@shawn_rider_ (17:08)
my
My wife has done a really good job at actually acknowledging that for me. I put so much pressure on myself to be home as much as I can. And on a daily basis, weekly basis, monthly basis where like she has to like, tell me to stay somewhere longer. ⁓ Prime example, she literally just texted me two minutes ago, she tried to call me while we were recording. So she texted me saying, Hey, I'm going to go pick up the kids from the country club camp.
She's like, we're gonna stay at the pool. And now she's telling me to go home. Our dog just had a pinky toe amputated yesterday. So she thought to text me to tell me to go home. And I know what that means. It means, hey, I've got this. You don't have to come to the pool to help me and be around the kids. Just go home and be with the dog. And so like, but she does that with work stuff too. She's like, hey, if you need to take a call, if you need to do this, like go do it. If you need to leave and fly out, you know, half a day early.
go do if you need to stay in extra go do it. And so she's learned that. ⁓ I think that's easier now that the kids are not, you know, fucking like six years old and shitting in their diapers all day long. So ⁓ it has gotten better for me. So I do appreciate you. I do appreciate you saying that because that's definitely something that has helped is the acknowledgement to my wife on the pressure I put on myself to be around and she's just like, No, not be around. Don't be around.
And the same thing goes, I don't know this guy's particular situation, but if you own a business and you have employees, like, I think you have to go back to like redefining what leadership is. And I think a lot of business owners think leadership because a lot of business owners are either former military or former athletes, or they've been a part of big groups that have had a leader. And it was a daily occurrence that they are around that leader. I don't think business has to be that way. Like you're not a raw, raw in the office every single day type of guy.
You have to be there, you have to provide the vision, you have to train your people, you have to show that you're willing to work. But that's something that I've had to like change my stuff, my mentality with over the last 10 years is like, your employees don't want you around every single day either. So get the fuck out of their way and just stay home for a day. And that goes back to like, again, pick something that you think might be beneficial for you Monday through Friday. And then a month later, remove half day Wednesday, then a month later, remove half day Friday and see what's too much or too little.
@realjeffsmith (19:19)
Thanks.
Yep. Yep, yep. That's good advice. I like it. I mean, going back to the couples thing, you guys have shared goals. That's why you guys are a team. And all it's going to do is make your relationship better if you start communicating some of this stuff. I mean, there's nothing wrong with being like, listen, I've got a lot of anxiety about trying to juggle all the shit I'm trying to do. And it's going to open up better lines of communication with your spouse. then
you'll get the shit done. I'm telling you, you're doing a bunch of stuff that you probably shouldn't be doing too with regards to like how you're spending your time in your business. And that's the hardest thing when you start in business is understanding what high value activities are and what are not high value activities. And then the realization that like some of that shit just doesn't need to get done if it's not an income producing activity. And a lot of us have trouble
⁓ separating that. So awesome. Hope this was helpful. Guys, like I said, send us your questions. If you have any inquiries, we'd be happy to answer them. ⁓ Join the Facebook community, the Tactical Empire community. It's a free community. We put on courses like we did last month out there frequently. We're there to help and provide you guys with some ⁓ just information to move yourself forward. Build the seven levels of financial freedom.
build the life that you and your family want for you and your family. And ⁓ ultimately, that is your mission in my opinion on what we're doing. So have a week, kick ass, and we'll see you next week.