9 Unexpected Tips to Achieve Work/Life Balance as a Female Entrepreneur
Hi, I’m Francie.
If you’re here, you’re aiming to start and build a strong business. That means, you’re my kind of people. Welcome! I hope you take away perspective shifts that make you wildly successful.
Female entrepreneurs tell me often how one of their biggest struggles in running a business is figuring out how to achieve work/life balance. If this is you, you’re not alone.
Managing so many responsibilities can feel like an impossible balancing act. The pressure we feel as women to show up with excellence in countless roles can drain our cups.
Not-so-typical work/life balance tips
We all love a good calendar system and we know to put our phones on DND while managing *all the things,* but I believe work/life balance starts well before we set out to create a schedule.
Achieving work/life balance for women has more to do with the mental inputs and less to do with having a life that fits together like a puzzle piece.
Balancing work and family for female entrepreneurs
Work/life balance is achieved in our mindset toward challenges that arise between personal life and work responsibilities. Work/life balance (or as we’ll find, “work/life harmony”) is achieved not in fitting the pieces together perfectly, but in allowing the ebb and flow of the important pillars of our lives to exist cohesively. This article will show you exactly how to do that.
Managing stress as a female entrepreneur
In personal life alone, women typically have prominent responsibilities for
parenting,
family household management,
being the primary liaison between our kids’ schooling and sports activities,
gift giving,
party planning,
community relationship fostering, and
budget managing, to name a few.
We also have over 80% of spending power (Why She Buys by Bridget Brennen) so we’re making decisions like in our family about things like who needs new clothes, if we can afford an additional sports activity, and what organizations to be generous toward.
Women’s Contribution to Household Income
Add to those many responsibilities the obligation (or very valid choice) to contribute financially to our family’s household income as female small business owners.
In our current American society, men are often handed a 40-hour work week and then fit other obligations around it. Women, on the other hand, are handed numerous community roles (primary parent, community contributor, caretaker, household manager) and then must fit the vast responsibilities of a career in between the cracks.
No wonder we’re exhausted and stressed. No wonder one of the biggest challenges female entrepreneurs face is figuring out how to achieve work/life balance.
Clarity Around Why Achieving Work/Life Balance Feels So Hard
The purpose of this article isn’t to bash men or give the middle finger to the patriarchy. The purpose is to clearly define why achieving work/life balance feels so hard and to provide practical tips for achieving work/life balance so we can use our time most effectively to run a business and run a household.
I’m not complaining about our roles. After all, you couldn’t pay me to give up my role as master snuggler, boo boo kisser, or nervous system regulator. Laughing together with my kids adds a richness to my life that a career never could. Rather, I believe it’s far healthier to recognize the weight and pressure we take on so that we can be realistic about creating work/life balance processes that uplift, rather than work against, our unique needs.
Work/Life Balance Benefits
Finding a healthy blend between work life and business life has many benefits to help manage stress as a female entrepreneur, including time-saving strategies, avoiding burnout, developing more holistic wellness, and, perhaps most importantly, finding peace and joy in fulfilling the God-given purposes we were created to make. When the important parts of our lives feel like sandpaper rubbing against each other, we know a change in approach is due.
What is work life balance?
I struggled to find a definition of work/life balance that felt even remotely life-giving. Forbes describes work/life balance as “equal time or priority to personal and professional activities.” I found another definition of work/life balance from Coursera as “the amount of time you spend doing your job versus the amount of time you spend with loved ones or pursuing personal interests and hobbies.”
The truth is, we’re all looking for a fulfilling, rich blend between aspects of our lives that play such important roles. The flatness of words through a simple definition falls short to accurately describe something so meaningful and important.
Work/life balance is part of the problem
As we search for a meaningful definition, I believe calling it work/life “balance” is part of the problem. The idea that we could ever find a balance is tricky and elusive. It’s tricky because there’s great margin for error in finding balance. One misstep can throw off all our efforts, leading to the feeling of disappointment and defeat.
However, shifting the mindset to work/life “harmony” over work/life balance is far more satisfying and achievable.
Definition of work life harmony
I found an article from LinkedIn which explains work/life harmony as a more holistic approach that integrates work and personal life. It acknowledges that work and personal life can’t always be kept separate and that there will be times when they overlap.
Three reasons “work/life harmony” is a more successful strategy than “work/life balance”:
Harmony suggests cooperation. There’s rarely a clear line between work and personal life. For example, I know lots of moms who schedule playdates with business connections who are also moms. Moms are my favorites clients to have because they deeply understand the commingling between work and personal life and fully trust I can do both well. As another example, I put my son down for a nap hoping to squeeze out two hours of business and sometimes it doesn’t work out like that. That’s okay.
I often say, “I’m a better mom because I own a business and I’m a better business owner because I’m a mom.” On the flipside, being a business owners gives me a sense of purpose I can’t find in parenting.
These two very important aspects - personal life and work life - don’t have to be in competition for our limited resources. These two very important aspects of our lives can and should compliment one another. They can coexist to blend our passions and purposes in this world.
Blending two very important pillars is so often part of our “why.” I’m unapologetic about bringing my kids with me to work functions when I need to. I’ve noticed the people most important to my business usually greet me with outstretched arms to hold my baby or crouch down to greet my daughter before they say a word to me. That’s how it should be. We’re in this together…all of it.
Harmony suggests a natural ebb and flow. One of our pillars at Founding Females® is to “build a business around your life and not a life around your business.” Different seasons call for different “ratios” of business and personal.
The needs ebb and flow daily and even hourly. After all, the motivation for many of us to start a business in the first place is so we can build a business that works around our families’ needs because corporate life rarely does.
Work/life harmony can look like heavier work weeks during the school year and lighter work weeks during summer and winter breaks. I was inspired by my friend Katie who owns the design company, KJ Creative Co, when she told me she was going to take the summer off while her young kids were home.
As business owners we get to choose that our family comes first. As business owners, we get to decide our schedules. We get to create boundaries around our time. Business can ebb and flow with the needs of other aspects of our lives. It’s this ebb and flow that balance tends not to allow.
Harmony puts you in control. With work/life balance, you either achieve it or you don’t, but with work/life harmony, achieving life-giving allotment of time divided between business and personal activities is a process you continually evolve. You’re in the driver’s seat and you get to decide what works for you and what doesn’t day-to-day. Harmony invites trial and error and flexibility to change.
Now that we’ve reframed our intention to create work/life harmony rather than work/life balance, let’s get tactical with 8 tips to achieve work/life harmony.
Tip #1: Manage your energy the way you manage your time and money
Shift your perspective to see that your energy is a limited resource. Think of it the same way you think of your limited resources of time or money.
The availability of time is not endless. We only get 24 hours each day.
The availability of money is not endless either. That’s why we manage a budget. When the last dollar is spent, it’s gone.
Your energy is limited also. You feel burned out because you’re over-committing. You have a certain threshold before you max out. It’s up to you to recognize the obligations that drain you and the ones that fill you up. The first step: Become aware.
There’s a right amount of projects, home responsibilities, and community commitments you can take on before you begin to feel overloaded. The problem is that we don’t talk about our energy supply as if it’s limited.
We continue saying ‘yes’ when we should say ‘no’ long after our energy reserves are depleted (more on this in tip #7: Boundaries).
When you’re making decisions about what activities and obligations to say ‘yes’ to, run it through the lens of how draining the commitment will be on your energy. You’ll begin to make decisions more when you recognize that you have a limited resource of energy, rather than an unlimited supply.
Finally, let’s normalize for each other that our “energy tanks” have limited supply. One example of how I personally do this is here:
When I send an invite to friends, I create space for a “no.” I realize many of my friends are moms, business owners, amazing wives, and community contributors. Their “no” doesn’t mean anything about me, so the conversation sounds like this: I extend compassion to others is by adding to the invitation “No is also an appropriate answer.” or by saying, “Does this feel life-giving?”
I’m confident in our friendships enough to understand my friends can’t say ‘yes’ to every invitation that comes along and that’s always okay.
Tip #2: Know when perfection is creating drag.
If you’re a perfectionist and the thought of delivering anything less than an “A”-level work makes you cringe, that’s a sign perfectionism wastes your energy. Many entrepreneurs are perfectionists because we can’t unsee opportunities to deliver a better result.
Truth bomb: Perfectionism is draining the energy you’re so desperate to find. Perfectionism drains our energy reserves, keeping us gasping for breath at every turn.
Cultivating discernment between tasks that require excellence and tasks that don’t require excellence is essential to using your time and energy wisely. Trying to quit perfectionism altogether isn’t helpful. I know, because I am a recovering perfectionist.
Go the extra mile on the vital 20% of tasks that are your secret sauce. This will help you find the sweet spot because it allows you to leverage the extra effort in meaningful ways. Your vital 20% are asks that you do better than anyone else and your clients are willing to pay a premium for.
Tip #3: Compassion is the anecdote.
Giving yourself the same grace you extend to others is non-negotiable. Compassionate phrases like “It makes sense that I feel frustrated right now.” rather than, “You shouldn’t be getting upset about this right now.” or “Just try harder.” when you face disappointing challenges paints a much more realistic story in your mind about just how challenging it is to manage so many demanding responsibilities.
Developing a rhythm of breathing in compassion and breathing out shame throughout the day will help your body release stress and tension and will help you cope with stress as a female entrepreneur.
Compassion is the self-care for businesswomen. Our bodies and minds know intimately how stressful our lives are, so managing that stress as it comes with a big helping of compassion will set realistic expectations as you navigate developing work/life harmony that works for you.
Tip #4: Celebrate wins
As high achievers, we often find ourselves in an intense season of striving toward a goal. In these striving seasons, we make sacrifices, push ourselves outside the limits, and endure immense stress to reach that goal.
Then we reach the big goal and it’s not long before we set our sights on the next goal without giving the first accomplishment a rightful celebration.
I encourage you to pause in the celebration. Revisit it again and again. Go buy that latte and browse your favorite local gift shop to commemorate a big “heck yea!” Talk about it with others who understand the entrepreneur lifestyle. Share the meaning behind your win.
Acknowledging the good things you’re accomplishing in your business adds a sense of purpose and satisfaction that helps dissolve the stress that comes with juggling business and family responsibilities
Don’t buy into society's pressure that you don’t get to celebrate your wins, especially as a female. Don’t let perceived judgment from “them” to allow you to believe you must wait for someone else to notice. Giving our wins proper perspective helps the immense amount of effort we dedicate to making a difference in the world with our businesses.
I know what you’re thinking…Rather, I know you have someone specific in your mind who you’ve felt judged by for running your business. You hesitate to celebrate your wins because that person has made you feel less than for stepping outside the norm of a 9-5 or perhaps choosing to work with “you don’t have to.” We all have that person, and in some cases, a few of them.
I’m telling you, that person who comes to mind for you is not your entrepreneur people and you don’t need permission from anyone but yourself to aim high. Celebrate your wins.
Tip #5: Do this season of life with your entrepreneur people
Only like-minded people can give you genuine wisdom and encouragement that are necessary components of longevity as a business owner. Find people with a common understanding who are quick to meet you with grace and compassion rather than judgment and let down. Finding the right group of female small business owners like in the Founding Females Mastermind is the difference between the sentiment of “I feel sorry for you and hope you resolve your stress.” and “Girl, I’ve been there a thousand times and here’s how I solved that problem…”. The right people just get it.
Having the shared context of business ownership is a powerful glue that helps female entrepreneurs persevere through the challenging journey of entrepreneurship. Find out where your people are already spending time and join them.
A female mastermind is an incredible resource for connection. Inside a group of high achieving women, we realize our relentless ambition isn’t weird, it’s powerful. We see examples of how others are navigating challenges, which gives us fresh ideas for managing our own.
Shared understanding creates safe space to develop into the person your successful business needs you to be. Click to join the female business mastermind.
Tip #6: Keep your priorities in focus
Disharmony happens when we mix up priorities. Family, health, self-care…whatever your non-negotiables are, schedule those first. If a task doesn’t align with your top priorities, give it a “heck no.” You have too much purpose to fulfill to say “yes” to mediocre obligations. Burnout happens more often when we’ve said yes to things that don’t light our soul on fire. Nail down your why (Dream, Build, Grow: A Female’s Step-by-Step Guide for How to Start a Business helps you do exactly that in the first phase: Clarify).
Tip #7: Set firm boundaries with yourself and others
The ability to set boundaries delivers a quality of life like nothing else can. The simple phrase, “That doesn’t work for me.” has done wonders for my mental health. Whether it’s a client who keeps widening the scope of a project or people close to you who don’t understand the importance of your working hours, only you can speak up about what you need.
If you don’t, you can’t expect people to respect your needs. Boundaries are the standard that help others learn where they end and you begin. Learning to set boundaries is hard…I mean, really hard…but the benefits of setting boundaries are incredibly underrated. The book Boundaries by Henry Cloud is the powerful resource that set me on a trajectory to begin setting boundaries in my life.
For example, I recently turned down a coffee invitation to someone who seemed a little peeved at first and here was my response:
“In this season of life, the open ended “let’s grab coffee and chat” is a time luxury I’m unable to afford. That’s why I focus my intentional connection in the group setting like Meet Ups and other entrepreneur focused groups. Would love to be able to do that again in the next season of life where I’m not managing full time work on twenty hours of childcare. It’s been a really hard journey to develop intentional discernment of time. I know I’m missing out on great opportunities like this one, but the alternative is giving my family the short end of the stick and I’m not willing to do that.”
Setting boundaries can also mean saying ‘no’ to opportunities that actually sound enjoyable rather than obligatory. FOMO is the enemy of work/life harmony. Overbooking our schedules is a natural consequence of this bad habit that results in exhaustion. Creating work life harmony means limiting what we say ‘yes’ to, even if it seems alluring.
Knowing and communicating boundaries thoughtfully helps others learn what to expect from you. It’s true that we’re always training others for how to treat us.
Tip #8: Create flow with processes
Predictable processes create flow in your business. You’ll expend less mental energy creating the same outcomes if you can develop systems to “automate, delegate, or eliminate.”
Create an SOPs (standard operating procedures) doc and bookmark it to your browser. Challenge yourself to see how many tasks you can turn into repeatable processes. It’s as simple as describing the task and a numbered list with detailed steps.
How to create an SOP
If I were going to write an SOP for making coffee. It would look like this:
Making Coffee
Purpose: Coffee gives us life in the morning. Having fresh coffee ready each morning is a warm welcome into a new day.
Steps:
Make coffee the night before so it’s ready before we wake up.
Open the lid and throw away the old filter and grounds.
Fill the water container to 12 cups.
Pull out a new filter and place it in the basket.
Add one scoop of ground coffee for every 2 cups of water.
Shut the lid
Set the coffee to start automatically at 5am.
Give everything an SOP
Even my blog process has an SOP of its own. Becoming more efficient through repeatable processes will help you create margin to do the tasks you know are important but somehow never get around to.
Here are ideas for tasks you can automate in your small business:
Scheduling out your tasks for the week
Marketing tasks
Batching written content creation
Payroll
Invoicing
Appointment reminders
In addition to the benefit of having more time, you’ll also set yourself up to build your business into an “asset and not a paycheck” because with SOPs, you could eventually hand the processes over to someone and your business won’t require you to move every piece to make it work.
Tip #9: Double down on time management
Time is your most precious resource. You can make more money but you can’t generate more than the 24 hours you’re given each day. Time management is a skill worth honing because it will allow you to efficiently create better results without committing an additional equal portion of time.
Two tactical ways to get better at time management:
#1 Stop saying yes when you’re 80% full. Too many times, we use exhaustion, irritability, and resentment as red flags to stop saying yes, but by that time it’s too late. If you wait to stop adding commitments to your plate until you’re strung out and over-extended, you’ll continue pouring out of the cup you’re trying to fill by making sacrifices on things that are important to you to complete the things that aren’t.
Develop self-awareness for how committed you really are and start putting the breaks on when you’re about 80% full. In your personal life, staying only 80% committed will allow you the margin for self-care, random obligations that pop up out of nowhere, and the safe space to naturally build rest into your schedule.
In your small business, it can be alluring to over extend yourself thinking 100% is max capacity for building a book of business.
However, if you spend 100% of your time on client work, you have no margin to attend to the administrative side of your business. Reframe your expectations so 80% of your working hours is full time.
Decide how much you want to make in a year and work backward to figure out how you’ll do that with 80% of your working hours instead of 100% of your working hours. That might mean raising your prices, adjusting your packages, and creating a waiting list. It takes work to manage others’ expectations of you, but no one can do it for you.
#2 Learn to ask, “What does it involve?” My friend Katie taught me a powerful lesson about how to avoid people pleasing. Once, I asked if she’d help me with an event I was hosting. Her response was this, “I’d definitely consider it. What does it involve?”
See what she did there? She created a pause. That pause is powerful for getting more information to inform your decision making rather than blindly committing even to requests that don’t feel life-giving to you.
Them: “Can I interview you on my podcast?”
You: “I would definitely consider it. What does it involve?”
Them: “Can we grab coffee so I can pick your brain?”
You: “I would definitely consider it. What does it involve?”
Them: “Could you present to our group?”
You: “I would definitely consider it. What does it involve?”
There is power in the pause. The pause helps you gain more insight before you commit so you can truly find out if it’s a good fit for you.
Imagine finding out you had to travel an hour round trip to the recording studio to be interviewed for the podcast and that doesn’t work for you.
Perhaps you find out someone wants to “pick your brain” over coffee instead of pay you the consulting fee you actually deserve.
Perhaps you learn that presenting to that group will require 40 hours of preparation for a presentation that’s actually unpaid.
You may learn these things and still want to take the opportunity, but at least when you build in a pause, you’ll get to choose intentionally rather than giving an automatic “yes” and feeling angry about the commitment later.
Stop saying yes without finding out what’s involved.
Conclusion
There’s no secret key to building work/life harmony. It’s a process that will only work when you create an approach customized to your needs and priorities. Owning a business can be an incredible blessing when we use intention to create something that works around our lives instead of the other way around.
Keep at it! Creating work/life harmony is one of the challenges that has helped me discern what really matters to me and prioritize those pillars to create a business that uplifts my life goals.
I’d love to know how you create work/life harmony. Email me to share your tips.
Work/Life Harmony Quotes
And because errybody loves a good quote, here are some work/life balance and work/life harmony quotes:
“The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule but to schedule your priorities.” - Stephen Covey
“You can’t truly be considered successful in your business life if your home life is in shambles.” - Zig Ziglar
“Forget work-life balance… Do the thing you want and create systems that support that. Perfectly imbalanced in the direction you want to go is perfectly acceptable.”
RELATED
Female business resources
Dream, Build, Grow: A Female’s Step-by-Step Guide for How to Start a Business (with free access to the resource suite)
Meet the author, Francie Hinrichsen
Francie Hinrichsen the founder of Founding Females®. She is a business sage empowering female entrepreneurs to breathe life into the business dreams God called them to.
After feeling like a misfit in the corporate world, Francie discovered a life she loved waking up to through business ownership.
Francie is the author of Dream, Build, Grow: A Female’s Step-by-Step Guide for How to Start a Business, a guided journal helping hundreds of women start and grow their businesses.
She’s a passionate entrepreneurship hype girl, female leader, public speaker, and community enthusiast.
Her MBA and 10 years in a corporate career and in business ownership positioned her to teach women forward-thinking strategies for starting and growing successful businesses.
As a community leader, Francie realized other women could thrive with the right guidance and support. She created the Founding Females® Mastermind Community that provides a safe space for women to build better businesses.
She believes that anyone with a dream on their heart can pull up a seat to change the world through entrepreneurship.
About Founding Females®
The mission of Founding Females® is to help build a better future for female entrepreneurs through education, encouragement, and shared wisdom. We create safe spaces for women to share business challenges and receive peer support.
In addition, Founding Females offers an online female business mastermind, a how-to guidebook for female entrepreneurs called Dream, Build, Grow: A Female’s Step-by-Step Guide for How to Start a Business, and in-person events, like an annual women’s business conference and local Founding Females Meet Ups.
The latest Founding Females® news on Mastermind Membership Week, local female entrepreneur Meet Ups, free tickets to the orchestra, and more! Click to view…