I travel a lot lately, and one thing I’m asked quite often is how I recharge or how I maintain my life balance. Let me start by saying that I haven’t really figured out a great balance for my life, but I can say that I am doing lots to keep it all juggled. I wanted to write a quick post about this before I take my family out to breakfast, if only to explain this part of the lifestyle of a hard-working small business owner.

First, a Snapshot of My Life

I’m president of a small business called New Marketing Labs. I am also a professional speaker. Between these two roles, I travel at least once a week most weeks and have been since the beginning of 2009 (before then, I still traveled, but maybe only once a month). The longest stretch I’ve gone away from my family was two solid weeks, which was quite a push.

When I’m on the road, I haven’t had the ability to connect visually with my family because my wife’s laptop died a short while back, killing the possibility of Skype. We’ve fixed that, but for quite a while, I could only talk with everyone on the phone. If you have young kids (mine are 7 and 3), you know that’s sometimes like pulling teeth.

It’s life right now. I do a lot of things, have a ton of business on my plate, and am providing (I hope) for a good future for my family.

When I come home, I am FULLY focused on my family. I give them as much time and love as I can. We go places. We play rough (because that’s a Daddy game in our household). We giggle and joke and read tons and tons of books together. We go to the lake and the ocean (as the weather gets better).

How I Recharge

As a Dad, my goals when I’m off the road are to get myself reset for whatever the next trip is, and then try and connect as much as possible with the family. I give my wife time off to go to the movies, go out with friends, go shopping, or whatever else she’s had to sacrifice while being, essentially, a single mom the whole time I’m gone. During that time, I engage my kids in things that I connect on with them. For example, my daughter and I read and draw together (Mom does the messier art, as I’m a bit twitchy about that). My son and I play with trains and wrestle and roughhouse a lot (Hey, my daughter likes fighting, too, but she’s getting pretty tough at 7).

You might notice that my family’s reconnection comes first before any kind of personal recharge. It’s because I want them repaid for their efforts while I’m away. I want them to know they’re every bit as much part of the team and that I love them and am grateful for them. Thus, I do what I can to reconnect and recharge them before tackling myself.

Some Specifics to Consider

• Often times, I get a cheap airport hotel room the night before I fly or the night I come back. One reason is we have 1 car, and this makes retrieval easier. The other reason is that I can get one attempt more at sleep before reconnecting.
• Now when I travel, I try to sneak off to my room and unplug every now and again. My personal batteries need recharging, and that requires me to go offline for a bit.
• When I can, I try and have smaller meals with fewer folks while on the road. I love big meetups, but I recharge by having smaller conversations later.
• I find my way into bookstores and books when I can. Reading about other people’s lives or learning business strategies recharges me.
• I’m finally getting back into my body a bit. I did some hiking in Seattle that powered that rebirth.
• Now that we repaired the laptop at home, I Skype video with my kids while I’m away so that we can see each other. They like seeing my various hotel rooms.
• I am trying hard to set better boundaries around what is work time and what is not (not succeeding yet).
• When I get home, I make sure to talk lots and lots about what my family has been doing, and give them all the air first. Then, when they feel satisfied that I know what they’ve been doing, I know we’ll talk a little about wherever I’ve been.
• I try hard not to interrupt family time with work. My business partners and clients often respect this.

It’s not perfect, but I’m working on it all the time. It’s one of my most important projects.

What about you? How do you balance it all?

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