The truth about work-life balance

My wife worked for Amazon (AWS) for 6 years. I was incredibly proud of the work she did there with legitimately world class people (she sat next to the guy who created Java, for example) but towards the end it was REALLY getting to her.

I could tell she was on the verge of a breakdown.

So I told her to quit, and since then I’ve supported both of us (and now our son) from my income alone.

I need to provide, but I also want to be present as a husband and a father, so the topic of work-life balance is always on my mind— and I have a lot to say about Liam Parsons’ question:

1. You gotta pay the cost to be the boss

Being an entrepreneur isn’t easy, full stop. You’re gonna have to make some sacrifices to get where you want to go, and there’s just no way around that.

With that said, don’t ever sacrifice your health or your family for your business… that’s just not worth it.

But I WOULD suggest giving up your hobbies, at least for the time being.

For example I love football but I haven’t watched a game in about 10 years because I just can’t justify spending 3-4 hours on a Sunday watching football instead of doing something to grow my business.

I know this isn’t what a lot of people want to hear, but it’s my honest opinion.

If your hobbies are so important to you that you won’t put them on hold to build your business, you probably just don’t want it bad enough.

And that’s totally OK!

Just understand that’s the choice you’re making.

2. Those sacrifices will all be worth it

I don’t know who said it, but “do what other people won’t for a few years so you can spend the rest of your life doing what other people can’t” is the truth.

All the years I spent getting up super early and building my business before the sun comes up when other people were sleeping in, or putting in the work on the weekends when they were playing video games?

It was all worth it, because now I get to spend all day with my wife and son while I work. And she can be a stay at home mom who gives him her undivided attention.

If I want to go on a walk with them at 3pm on a Tuesday, I can usually do that— I just catch up on my work at night after he goes to sleep. If my calendar is clear tomorrow and we feel like going to the zoo or the beach with our son, we just do it.

Was it easy to get here? Fk no.

It was brutal at times.

But it was worth all the grinding, no question.

3. It gets a LOT easier!

With all of that being said, the beginning is tough. But after that it gets WAY easier.

For the first couple years of my channel I had to edit everything myself because I couldn’t afford to hire someone.

So I put in the work for a while, and probably edited 200 videos myself.

(and I’ll be fine if I never edit another video in my life 😅)

But once I got traction and started bringing in some decent revenue, I hired someone.

And now, I haven’t edited one of my videos in years— I just record the raw video, upload it to him and he sends me back a perfect video a few days later.

(shoutout to Tim, he’s amazing!)

I eventually also got help with writing my videos— so there are quite a few videos where I did nothing other than read the script my writer sent, record it and upload the video to my editor.

For example I spent a total of about 1 hour on the above video, and it’s currently sitting at 318,000 views (and I made around $3500 so far from Adsense and the sponsor).

In the last year I’ve probably only spent 8 hours a week on my YouTube channel (maybe less?) and I made more from it than I did at my last 9-5 where I made 6 figures.

THE BOTTOM LINE:

It’s gonna be some short term sacrifice, and I think there’s just no way around that. You're gonna have to grind.

But I promise you that if you put in the work now, it WILL get easier and you WILL be glad you did it.

Because what’s waiting on the other side is worth it: freedom to spend your time how YOU want to spend it.

And best of all?

When you put in all that work and build your business, you’re paying YOURSELF instead of working to make someone else rich 😜

PS - Here’s the part where I try to sell you something. If you want to talk about how you can use LinkedIn or YouTube to grow your business, reply to this email or just set up a call here!