Adam (00:21):
Welcome to Masters of Home Service, the best podcast for home service pros like us. I’m your host, Adam Sylvester, and I want you to crush it in business. Sadly, the most common sacrifice that home service business owners make in their quest to build and scale a company and build their business is their health and their family. The very things that we go into business for, we say we care about our wife, our husband, our kids, our health, fall the wayside because the demands of the business are just so great and we care less and less about them, or at least it looks like it. And then we end up working, working more, more and more. We don’t have any boundaries. And we end up just like spinning on wheels. It doesn’t have to be that way. Our guest today, Kelly and Cory are family people.

(01:08)
And we are going to talk about how can you balance work, the demands of work, which are great, while actually having time with your spouse and raising your children. So we’re going to get into all that today. So Cory, Kelly, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here.

Cory (01:21):
Thank you for having us.

Kelly (01:22):
Thank you.

Adam (01:22):
Kelly, tell us who you are and what you do.

Kelly (01:24):
I am Kelly Guerrero. I am the owner of HomePro Coaching, and I help service business owners grow and scale their businesses. My husband and I used to own a landscaping business that we grew and scaled to six figures, and then we sold it last year.

Adam (01:37):
Bingo. Awesome. Well, welcome back. Glad you’re here.

Kelly (01:39):
Thank you. Thank you.

Adam (01:40):
Very glad you’re here. Cory, what about you?

Cory (01:42):
Thanks for having me. I’m Cory from Vancity Electric. I have an electrical company and wife and two kids at home.

Adam (01:47):
Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. So yeah, let’s talk about that. So you have a couple kids at home. That’s awesome.

Cory (01:52):
Young kids.

Adam (01:52):
Young kids. Okay. How old are they?

Cory (01:54):
Eight and four.

Adam (01:55):
Eight and four. You’re in the thick of it, just like I am? Yes. Okay. Kelly?

Kelly (01:59):
Mine are 11 and 14.

Adam (02:01):
Okay. Awesome. We’re all married. I have five kids. And so here’s the normal life of a lot of our listeners. I think you guys will relate to this. Wake up super early.

Kelly (02:12):
Yes.

Adam (02:12):
Maybe do a little bit of work. Eat breakfast, wave goodbye to the kids and the wife as they’re rushing out the door. Work a long full day. They come home, maybe play a little bit with the kids, maybe not, rush through dinner, put the kids to bed, and then work till midnight, doing estimates, quoting, scheduling on stay, all the things that business owners have to do. And unfortunately, spousal intimacy goes down. The time that you have with your kids becomes more about just discipline and not enjoyment of the kids. And you just be like, What am I doing? I’m just working so much. This wasn’t what I intended. It doesn’t have to be that way, does it?

Kelly (02:49):
No.

Cory (02:50):
Absolutely not.

Kelly (02:51):
The best thing is to set boundaries within yourself. It’s really, really easy to just burn the midnight oil and work ’til midnight. But we had a really strict rule in our relationship where after seven o’clock, everything goes away. And I’m only working until that point in time. And then after that, no conversations, no nothing. We are there in family time doing family. Also, one weekend day a month is just outside doing something with the family. And that’s something that we implemented in our life.

Adam (03:21):
Yeah, that’s good.

Cory (03:22):
And I’m similar. It’s like when I get home from work, I want to try to leave that phone in the office. And so I’ve put in a really hard day of Vancity stuff, and now it’s time to fully get into hanging out with the kids, like actually hanging out with them.

Adam (03:36):
Yeah. It is so hard though. It’s so hard to work all day. And you get home and the kids want to play. Your wife wants you to help with dinner, and you want to be a family man now, but you’re still thinking about work. What are some boundaries that our listeners really need to implement if they want to have this balance of taking care of your own health, your family, your spouse, your kids, and also running this business? What are some boundaries that are important?

Kelly (04:00):
Well, you need to make time for the things that are really important. You mentioned health. So if you’re going to work out, decide what time of the day you’re going to be working out and then commit to that the same way you commit to your business, the same way you commit to all of those things. Time with your wife, a date night. Date nights didn’t work for us because our kids were little when we were building our business. We did date lunches where we would go once or twice a week sometimes. No work conversation, no business because we were in business together as well. We would just go and have lunch together and it was our little date and we would take a couple hours in the afternoon and make up the time a little bit later in the evening or the next day.

Adam (04:34):
Yeah, that’s great.

Kelly (04:35):
And it saved our marriage because otherwise you never talk unless it’s about business. And I’ve seen a lot of marriages just go down the toilet when they have.

Adam (04:46):
Yeah. Cory, how do you nurture your marriage with business?

Cory (04:49):
Well, when I think about boundaries, I think about systems in my business. If I don’t have a system for invoicing and scheduling and all of this stuff, I am going to just by default be bringing this home with me. So if I can get myself out of those day-to-day activities, those are done by someone else during nine to five. Then when I come home, my mind is free to fully focus on the family.

Adam (05:15):
Yeah. Because the truth is, if you find yourself having to just work basically all the time, that’s a failure of systems. That is an unstable, unsustainable business because I want our listeners, this matters to me so much. I think that our marriages are so important and we put so much effort and so much fanfare and so much celebration into the first day, the marriage, which is great. The wedding day is a big deal. It’s awesome.

Kelly (05:39):
Of course.

Adam (05:39):
But the last day matters. So much more. How are you going to end the marriage? What’s the last day going to be like? Are you going to be soulmates or roommates? Kids move out. Well, and that happens. We’re seeing that happen all the time. And so the business can be a drag on that or it can be an uplifting thing. The business, if it’s ran well with systems, we’re going to talk about that and some boundaries and other things, the business can be a huge blessing, but it can be a curse too.

Cory (06:05):
Huge.

Kelly (06:05):
I think it’s important to keep in mind that you’re not just building a bigger business, you’re building a better life. And who is that life for? That’s for your family. So it’s super important to do that.

Adam (06:16):
Yeah. Let’s touch on boundaries one more time, and then we’ll get into some systems. I’m a big fan of putting the phone away and I fail at that a lot of times if I need to do better. Turn the computer off at night if you work at home. What are some other boundaries, maybe weekends, nights? What are some boundaries that are practical ones our listeners can do like tonight, tomorrow?

Kelly (06:34):
Well, I had two phones, one for personal use, one for business use. And then I put the business phone away. Start a conversation with your spouse or significant other about something that’s completely unrelated to your business. Just something completely different, and have a conversation. If you have to get little cards to maybe give you some ideas of conversation starters, that’s a good idea too, just to keep that kind of communication open with your spouse.

Cory (07:00):
So my favorite hack from the last year has been 24 hours a day, seven days a week. My phone is now forwarded to the Vancity office line. So it literally never rings. No one can call me. I don’t have to be a middleman for anything because I’m just not that person anymore. I don’t need to do call intake or hear about someone’s light bulb that’s out. That’s a huge boundary that I’ve put in place. I’ll never go back.

Adam (07:26):
Yeah. Yeah. I also think that work will expand to whatever you allow it to expand to, just like a gas in a room. A gas will fill a room, a big room, a small room, but we’ll just fill it up. And so if we allow ourselves to get in the habit of working at night, working weekends. The thing is, it might be okay to work weekends. It’s when you end up working when you never intended to work.

Cory (07:48):
And this is, if you have a service fan or a pickup truck, if you keep your tools, you are going to want to go help the guys. And so at one point, I pulled my truck up to a service fan. I said, Take it. Take everything you want. I’ve kept my hand tools just in case, but that’s it. And then you’re not drawn into going to site.

Adam (08:11):
Yeah. So if you’re working a lot, then let’s use the word working too much based on your own standard for your own family and your own life and stuff because I think it varies, young people, older people, different stages of life, but you’re working too much and you realize that it’s probably because you aren’t running a business based on systems, you’re running it based on everything goes through you. You feel like you have to answer the phone at all the time to get that lead closed, which isn’t necessarily true. We know that. So what are some things that you can do in your business to make it so it’s more manageable?

Kelly (08:44):
Set systems and automation and delegate and let somebody else do the work. I think that’s one of the hardest things as a business owner where we don’t want to let go of that control and because to us that’s that we’re busy, that shows that we’re busy, that shows that we’re running a good business.

Adam (09:00):
Let’s go deeper into delegation. Let’s give some pointers on how to delegate, what to delegate.

Kelly (09:05):
Whatever you can, whatever you can. And they will not do it as good as you, and that’s okay. They don’t have to do it as well as you do as the business owner. Be prepared that someone that you delegate work to is going to do it 80% of the way that you would do it. And then you just, in your working hours, pick up that additional 20%. I’m thinking of like marketing or content creation or even management and things like that day-to-day. Maybe your team isn’t going to do it the same way that you will, but they’ll do it in their own way. And as long as the job is getting done, it’s not exactly line by line how you might want to get it done, that’s okay.

Adam (09:46):
Yeah. Yeah. How do you delegate, Cory?

Cory (09:48):
I would say first of all, we have to realize that it’s okay if they fail a little bit. We want to give them really good training, really good standard operating procedures, and then let them go and do it their way. On the back end of that though, we want to measure their output. If I am turning estimates over to a new estimator, I’m watching, how’s the gross margin on all these estimates going? Is it high? Is it low? What’s the win-loss ratio? Is it high? Is it low? Now I can do some training based on that. Same with people in the field. They’re running jobs now. What’s their gross margin like? Are they doing a good job or bad going? And then we can step in anytime we need to, but you got to let them go.

Adam (10:27):
Yeah. I think we need to look at our schedule and decide what are the things that I hate doing the most. That might be a good one to start with. I think it is what takes the most of my time. And let’s be real, what can only I do in this business? And then start delegating everything else. Maybe not overnight. Let’s be real. This is the real world, but over the next several weeks, several months, start delegating all the things that you don’t have to do yourself. Because there are some things in your business as a leader that you have to do yourself.

Kelly (10:57):
Of course.

Adam (10:57):
And you should spend all your time doing that because otherwise you’re doing it at night on the weekends, and you’re family suffering and you’re getting unhealthy and you’re not really taking care of yourself. And it’s kind of like it’s either this or this. And which one are you going to choose?

Kelly (11:09):
And if you’re occupied with all the day-to-day tasks like invoicing and things that really you should be automating, then you don’t have time to look at the higher-level things like strategic planning and what do I want my culture and my company to be? And those types of things that as a leader, that’s where your energy needs to be directed to. Yeah.

Cory (11:27):
Invoicing, big one, right? It’s a low-skilled job, takes up a lot of your time. Perfect for delegation.

Adam (11:34):
That’s well said. Yeah. And I think if someone, something I hear a lot is like, I just do all my estimates at night. After kids are in bed, my wife’s watching TV, I’m just doing my estimates tonight. You shouldn’t be doing your estimates tonight. You should be doing your estimates in front of the client at their house. Your whole quoting system is broken.

Kelly (11:50):
Or better yet, you should have someone going and doing estimates for you.

Adam (11:53):
You could hire a salesperson.

Kelly (11:53):
That was a game-changer in our business. When that was off of my plate, I had so much more time to dedicate to other things that grew the business to the point where we were able then to sell it.

Adam (12:05):
Yeah. And if getting a salesperson isn’t quite in the cards yet, you could change how you go. You might say, Hey, look, you’re outside of our service radius. I’m just not going to drive that far to you. That’s too much time. You might say, Hey, this job, you might do some pre-qualifying and say, This job’s going to be about 20 grand. Is that okay with you? Oh, 20 grand? No way. That’s too much. Nevermind. And suddenly you’re getting some of your time back. Those are just some practical ways that you can, especially if you’re just doing estimating. But I think what you said earlier, Cory, about invoicing is an easy task, but it takes a while. That’s so true.

Cory (12:37):
I’m a big block scheduler and I love having a person in the right role that they are really great at. And so I’ve done that for myself. So my week is very simplified. Two full days basically are business development. I’m working on the business. Two days I do video estimates, and Fridays I kind of do some coaching stuff. So it’s like very simple block-scheduled week.

Adam (12:59):
In terms of block scheduling and just scheduling as a whole, I think a lot of this, I’m just going to step on some toes here for a minute. You guys are okay with that? I think that a lot of our listeners are like, Oh, I just got so much to do. Only because you let it, only because you’re just being inefficient with your time. Now, I’m not taking away from the overwhelm that they feel. I’m not saying anything bad about that, but you might need to manage your time better. You might need a block schedule. You might need to put the phone away for an hour while you work to do four hours worth of work in one hour. There’s things like that. They’re just realities.

Cory (13:29):
They’re going from fire to fire, from shiny object to shiny object. That’s what they’re doing.

Kelly (13:33):
And setting aside time to really work on some higher-level tasks is critical if you want to be successful in business. Otherwise, you’re just busy.

Adam (13:41):
Yeah.

Kelly (13:41):
I had a conversation with a client the other day where they are so busy and he just doesn’t know what to do. And I said, Well, just block out four hours of your time to get all of these estimates done and all of the ordering done that you need to get done and do that. And it has made a big difference. I touched base with them.

Adam (13:58):
And if you and your spouse have a conversation and say, Hey, no matter what, I’m not going to do any work on Wednesday and Thursday night. What are you going to do? What’s your mindset going to be all day Wednesday and all day Thursday during the work hours? I can’t get this done tonight. I don’t have time for that little thing I usually do. I don’t have time for that. And you’re going to start working smarter just because you’re forcing yourself because you don’t have the fallback at night. So there’s some things you just have to force yourself to do differently.

Cory (14:24):
This is a big one when you have kids, right? Before you didn’t have kids, you could really grind out a night. No big deal. Your spouse is busy too, but as soon as you have kids and they got to go to sports and tutoring and all this stuff, you’re locked in. There’s no getting away from it.

Adam (14:38):
And you need to be present with your kids. Absolutely. They’re only little once.

Cory (14:40):
Yeah.

Kelly (14:41):
Yeah.

Adam (14:41):
You said you have two phones?

Kelly (14:43):
I do.

Adam (14:44):
It’s funny, you mentioned phones, Kelly, and Cory mentioned a phone. I have two iPhones. How much of a problem can the phone be when it comes to work-life balance?

Kelly (14:55):
It can be a huge problem because when you first start out, typically we tend to give our clients our personal phone number. We want to be.

Adam (15:01):
A personal touch.

Kelly (15:03):
Yes, that personal touch. And then later on it comes back to bite you. Yes. Because now you’re trying to separate work and home and now you’re getting text messages from such and so client that’s been a client for the last 10 years saying, Oh, this happened with my lawn or this is happening with my irrigation. And then you feel obligated at seven or eight o’clock at night to respond to them because it’s on your phone, in your hand where you’re scrolling or doing other things. Whereas with two phones, that’s no longer an issue because that phone’s put away in a drawer charging the next morning at nine o’clock when I went to go grab that phone, then I’ll respond to that. And so part of it is retraining bad habits that we have with our clients. I think to get that boundary set really with our family and then spend the more time with our family, you have to go back and undo the damage that you did to yourself.

Cory (15:56):
I think realizing we’re not the person for everything. I’m not the person that’s going to talk about your billing issue or the scheduling issue or that thing didn’t go like you thought it would. I have delegated those things to other people and to be strong and say, forward that email to someone else and say, You deal with this.

Kelly (16:16):
I think you kind of have to retrain your client base though too at that point too, where that’s no longer something that is under my purview. This is now something that this person in my office does.

Cory (16:26):
And also we systemize that a bit. When someone approves a job in Job or a quote in Jobber, they get an email that says, Hey, Jeff’s going to be reaching out to get you scheduled in. He’s going to take this job start to finish. Here’s his phone number. He’s your guy now. And that frees me down.

Kelly (16:41):
That’s another system that you’ve put in place that really helps set the boundaries and make your business and personal life be separated.

Cory (16:47):
I have clients who will reach out to me. They’ll go, Oh, sorry. So sorry. I know Jeff. Jeff’s the guy I should call to. I’ll go, great, good.

Adam (16:54):
That’s good. That’s an indication.

Cory (16:55):
Yeah, we laugh in progress.

Adam (16:57):
I’m going to pause our conversation for just a minute to talk about Jobber, why we love Jobber so much. And I want to ask you guys, how has Jobber helped you in this whole managing your business so it doesn’t take over your life concept? How has it helped you?

Cory (17:11):
For me, I use that calendar. And if I’m looking at someone else’s Jobber, it’s the first place I go. I want to see how are they using the Jobber Calendar. Personally, I live in it. My whole week’s block scheduled in there.

Kelly (17:22):
For me, it’s the automations that Jobber brings to the table, right? The invoicing, the reminders, things like that, that Jobber just does really, really, really well.

Adam (17:32):
Yeah. I like how just fundamentally it allows me to delegate things. It’s all in the cloud. Anyone can access it. You can assign jobs to different people. And it really is the backbone of our business. And if I didn’t have it, I’d be working all the time.

Kelly (17:49):
True.

Adam (17:49):
If you’re not using Jobber, you need to, especially if you feel like your life is a little out of control and your business just takes too much of your time, you need Jobber. Go to jobber.com/podcastdeal, get the exclusive discount and start managing your business with Jobber now.

(18:04)
Something that I’ve learned about myself over the years is I have a subconscious obligation that I feel. If my team is working, I should be working. And so if my team is out late on a job, I feel obligated to take their call when they’re driving back to tell me how it went. Even though I’m off, I’ve been off for two hours. They just gotten lucky and it just is what it is. Or if they decided they want to work on Saturday, sometimes Sundays, then I feel just this sense of like I need to be available to them on Saturdays. Now, I’ve gotten over that mostly, thankfully, but that was a long time that I felt like, my wife would say, Well, why’d you take that phone call? And I didn’t really know why. Honestly, I was like, Oh, I just took it. They’re working. But I felt obligated as the owner. And that’s not true. Your team has their job and you have your job. Your jobs are different, and it’s okay to embrace the differences in your roles as the owner, operator, and they have their job, you have your job.

Kelly (19:05):
That is something that’s incredibly hard to be able to separate that, especially like you said, when your team is coming back late from a job and they want to tell you how it went, that’s tough. That’s tough. And it’s just a matter of self-discipline, I believe. I don’t know that I could do that. I would probably take that call too. If I’m being honest.

Adam (19:23):
It’s hard.

Kelly (19:24):
It is hard. Absolutely.

Adam (19:26):
But at some point you just have to say, No, I’m off. I’m off. My kids are right here, my family. We’re eating dinner. We’re doing, or maybe I’m working at the gym. Whatever you’re doing, you’re off. There has to be boundaries. We come back to boundaries, but there’s just some things that are just going to be uncomfortable. You have to embrace the uncomfortable part of that, the growth, right? Yeah.

Cory (19:45):
I’ve never had that guilt really. Okay, good. But my guys will sort of say like, Oh, I don’t want your job. They sort of see a bit of the stress and stuff that goes along with it, which is good for them to see, I think.

Adam (19:57):
It is. Yeah.

Kelly (19:58):
Well, it’s hard too, I think, because once you start a business and you start making more money, it’s really hard then to deal with the friends or to be around and discuss your problems with the friends that you currently have. And this was something I was actually thinking about this morning. It’s tempting maybe to talk to your guys because they’re there in the business with you, but I don’t think that’s the right answer either. You kind of have to look outside of that and find a new circle of friends, if you will, a new group of people that you’re connecting with to talk about the challenges of business and being a business owner and what that looks like for you.

Adam (20:33):
Yeah. Let’s go that way because we’ve talked about family, our spouse, marriages matter, but also just personal health, friendships, community around us. What do you guys do in terms of making sure that you maintain friendships, that you have a healthy personal life, whatever that means for you?

Kelly (20:53):
It was really hard for us because you go from working at a job where you’re making 50, 60, $70,000 a year to now your business is making 30,000 a month, 40,000 a month, 50,000. And the problems that you face of meeting payroll and things like that, your friends and even other family members, like your parents maybe or your sister or whoever, they’re not in that space. So they don’t see the same things. And so it’s really hard to find someone to get advice from or to kind of just do what we do as human beings.

Adam (21:28):
Just understand.

Kelly (21:29):
Understand each other.

Adam (21:30):
Sometimes they don’t understand.

Kelly (21:32):
They just hear that big number of like, Wow, you’re making that much. And their eyes just get really big. And it’s, Yeah, I’m making that much, but I have this much in payroll and these are my expenses and my, it’s tough.

Adam (21:45):
Yeah.

Kelly (21:46):
It’s tough.

Adam (21:46):
Do you have a good circle of friends around you, Cory?

Cory (21:49):
I’m a huge networker. I love to have a big circle of people that I would consider friends. I do have to say though, most of my friends seem to be business owners, so we all kind of live the same life in a way. With my other friends, I am just very block-scheduled. So if it’s like, Hey, Cory, do you want to play poker on this Friday? I’ll be kind of looking and I’m away this day for business. That’s a little bit of too much time away from my family. So I’m going to say no to that poker, and maybe I’ll get you guys on the next one. But sometimes that sucks. You got to just set some boundaries.

Adam (22:24):
And you’re a big golfer.

Cory (22:25):
Yep.

Adam (22:26):
You pay golf.

Cory (22:26):
Yep.

Adam (22:27):
Tell me more about how you’ve, because we’ve talked about this a little bit. I actually admire you for this because you’re aware that golf is a lot of time, but you’ve got to figure it out. It’s not really taking away from your priorities.

Cory (22:39):
No. So I’m not a weekend golfer. It’d be very rare, maybe once, twice a year, you’ll catch me on a golf course on a Saturday for four to five hours because I know Saturday and Sunday is family time. I just know I’m locked in. I’m ready to go. What are we doing this weekend? So if I golf, it’s typically with other business owners, and it’s like Wednesday at 6:00 AM and I’m back to the office by 10:00. So that’s just when I golf, and that’s just how it is. And I have other business owners that do it with me.

Adam (23:10):
No, that’s great.

Kelly (23:11):
That is great.

Adam (23:11):
Yeah, you’re kind of killing two birds with one stone because you’re getting support and friendship all from the same group. And Kelly, I feel like friendships are just so important. And friendships just can fall away so easily when you’re running a business and you’re letting the business take over your life. But friendships matter because not everyone listening to this podcast is married, have kids. I want to be aware of that. There’s a lot of young folks, maybe single, that they might just want to work, work, work. And I think that’s good, but they still have to have some degree of separation from work and a weekend or time off. There needs to be some sort of friendships that are growing. It’s not just all about work.

Kelly (23:51):
No matter who we are. No matter who we are, we have to have balance. We need friendships. We need that human connection. And I don’t think that it matters if you’re young and, hey, I admire the ones that can work 21 hours a day. I’m not that person, but they still need friendships too. They still need to have that time to connect with even parents or siblings or cousins, whatever that looks like for you.

Adam (24:17):
Someone out there is listening right now and thinking, Yeah, they’re kind of having a wake-up call. They’re like, I’ve been working too much. My priorities are out of whack. I need to make some changes here big time. But they still feel all the overwhelm is still there. They’re still feeling stressed out. Cash flow is still a problem, all these things. So you can’t just flip a switch. We can’t just tell them, Oh, just delegate it all. It’s not that easy. We all know it. So what are some things that you would just encourage our listeners to do initially? What are some easy baby steps that our listeners can take to shave off a couple hours a week on their schedule?

Kelly (24:48):
Pick one thing a week to either automate or delegate. That would be my first bit of advice. Take one thing a week that you’re either going to put on somebody else in your organization or if your organization is not that big yet and it’s something that you have to do personally, you’re the only one, find out how to automate, how to automate that, how you can use tools like Zapier or Jobber’s tools that are built within the program so that you’re not spending as much time on that task.

Cory (25:16):
Yeah, absolutely. Same thing for me. I think systems right away take something that is broken, the most broken thing, the thing that’s causing you the most pain. Let’s build a system. Boom, we’re done with that. Now let’s get onto the next system and keep going.

Kelly (25:31):
Yeah. And I’ll go off of what he was saying before with block scheduling. Block schedule it out that if you’ve got this overwhelm of work, you’re going to dedicate three hours to this particular type of a task today. Whatever you don’t get done, it has to wait until the next block.

Adam (25:47):
You got to force yourself.

Kelly (25:48):
You do.

Cory (25:49):
Block scheduling should almost be the first system you implement.

Kelly (25:52):
I agree.

Cory (25:53):
You have a goal or a system you want to build, that’s great. And then you go to your schedule and you block schedule the time to build that.

Adam (26:00):
That’s great. I think that a little hack that I would say is ask your spouse or ask your kids or ask your friends what their perception is. Hey, if you were to make one change in my life, what would it be? Well, you always freaking answer the phone at noon or they might have a totally different perception. Well, you’re always doing quoting, you’re always charging clients credit cards on Wednesday nights. You’re always doing this. You’re always doing X, Y, and Z. You’re like, Oh yeah, I guess so. I never really thought about that. They’re going to have a very unique perspective of how you spend your time. Well, you’re always on your phone. You’re always texting your buddies. Why don’t you text me instead? They’re going to have, and assuming you have a supportive spouse and all this kind of stuff, but even friends would have a good insight. If you’re hanging out with your friends on the weekends and you’re always doing X, Y, and Z, you don’t even realize it. Well, it seems like when we talk, you don’t really seem present. It just kind of seems like you’re always thinking about work. Or every time I ask you like, So how’s it going? You go straight into work. Is that all you think about?

Kelly (26:58):
It’s hard because a lot of times as a business owner and I’m going to step on some toes here, yeah, that’s all we think about. We’re looking to build something huge that’s going to change our life and our family’s life forever. I love the ambition, but balance is important too. Yeah.

Cory (27:15):
My buddies know that I’m not coming over to watch a game and sit and drink a beer. I’m just never going to spend my time doing that. If you want to go out and do something, I’m in, but I’m just not a let’s catch up guy. And they just know that, that’s just Cory.

Adam (27:32):
Yeah, yeah. This was a great conversation. Thank you so much for all that you guys said. I think this was really helpful to our listeners. I got a lot out of it too. I got three takeaways here. Number one is set boundaries. The best fences make the best neighbors and the best boundaries make the best relationships. And so it might mean like leaving your phone in a desk drawer. It might mean just refusing to respond to that text until the next morning. Whether you’re young and single, married with kids, retired, you just have to have boundaries no matter what.

Cory (28:01):
And Adam, I think if you have a business that has a lack of systems and it’s very chaotic, I always think of Disneyland. When there’s a new ride or it’s Mickey Mouse’s birthday, and there’s a hundred thousand more people in the park, do you think things are going off the rails there, and fights are happening, and it’s chaos? No, it’s just another day for them, and they’re just running more people through their systems, and everything’s probably calm.

Adam (28:26):
Number two is delegate. You have to think what’s the quickest, easiest thing I can delegate today. It might be quoting. It might be scheduling. It might be just returning client phone calls. It might be accounting questions, all those kinds of things. Figure out what you can delegate so that you don’t have to do that kind of stuff at night and on the weekends. And number three is block schedule. You might just have to stop wasting so much time. The default is distractions, putting out fires, doing this and then that and then this and then that. Block schedule. Decide to do this activity now, this activity here, and make sure that you’re using your time wisely. Guys, that was great. Thanks for being here. I have one more question for you guys. And this kind of undergirds the whole episode. What drives you? What is your why?

(29:10)
Why do you want to do this business thing? Why do you want to spend more time with your family and be strategic about that? What is your why? What is your why?

Kelly (29:20):
For me, my why is I want a better life for my family. I want to give to my kids what I didn’t have. And I want to be able to do that with some money in the bank.

Cory (29:33):
Adam, I think there’s a lot of people out there like me that maybe you don’t have a fancy why. My why is like life’s short, we only get to do it once. What am I capable of? I don’t think I’m done yet. I’m still going. But I guarantee your why wasn’t I’m going to work till midnight at the expense of my family. That was never your why. So why are you doing it now?

Adam (29:54):
Yeah. Family time is different for every single person, but I think what it really comes down to is people, we end up doing things that we never intended to do. And as soon as we start doing things we never intended to do, no matter what level it is, we have to stop and say, Whoa, whoa, this wasn’t part of the plan. This wasn’t my dream. This wasn’t what my family wanted from the start. And so I need to start making changes now.

Cory (30:16):
For sure.

Kelly (30:18):
If we’re not making life better for our family and that’s my why, then why am I doing it? If I’m spending all of my time on these busy tasks, then it doesn’t make much sense because no one’s life is better. We have more stress, we have more chaos and that’s not it.

Adam (30:32):
Kelly, how do people find out more about you?

Kelly (30:34):
I am homeprocoaching.com. All social media handles is @homeprocoaching and my website, of course.

Cory (30:41):
Awesome. Hey guys, I’m Cory for Vancity Electric. You’ll find me on LinkedIn and @vancityelectric on Instagram.

Adam (30:47):
Well, you guys are crushing it. Thanks for being here. I really appreciate your insights on family balance, work balance, and just being a healthy business owner. I think it is what it really comes down to. So thanks for being here.

Cory (30:56):
Thanks for having us.

Adam (30:57):
Yeah. On the next episode, we’re talking about what it really takes to build a million-dollar cleaning business and how your path changes depending on whether you go residential or commercial. We’ll dig into the pros, the challenges and how to find the lane that fits your goals. Follow or subscribe today so you don’t miss out. And thank you for listening. I hope that you heard something today that will inspire you to put more boundaries in place, delegate more, and build the life that you actually want, not one that you just kind of ended up in with your business. I’m your host, Adam Sylvester. Go to adamselvester.com. You can find me there and interact, ask me questions, tell me what you like about the podcast. I really want to hear from you. Your family and your team and your clients deserve your very best, so go give it to them.