Why You Should Tailor Your Business to Your Lifestyle

Many successful entrepreneurs pride themselves on pouring all their energies into their businesses, but according to Greg Weatherdon it’s important to take it easy sometimes.

Weatherdon, author of Get More Life Out of Your Business, has had an eclectic career, including as a rock-and-roll truck driver for KISS, and has owned and operated multiple businesses, often simultaneously. “As [entrepreneurs] we’re brave and we’re confident, and we feel invincible at times,” he laughs. “So we go try a bunch of different things, which typically fail. ”

At the Marketing Resource Group, which he ran at the same time as a TV commercial production company, Weatherdon says he was the last one into the office in the morning and the first one out in the evening. “It was a lifestyle company—it was designed that way, for my lifestyle,” he says. “I realized early on that I didn’t want to take the briefcase home at night anymore.”

Putting in the effort to help your business thrive is vital, of course. But Weatherdon says it’s equally important to know when you’re hurting and to stay focused on what you want to achieve as an entrepreneur in the first place. “Most of us have five or six key priorities [for] why we’re going into business,” he notes. “Eighteen months in, they’re out the window, [and] we’re miserable and working too hard.”

After all, you can’t enjoy your success if you’re always exhausted and glum. Weatherdon hopes his book will give entrepreneurs actionable advice to improve their lives. Here are the author’s three top tips:

1. Focus: “If you can stay focused, you become the expert,” explains Weatherdon. “As an example: who makes more money, the brain surgeon or the family practitioner? People pay for expertise.”

2. Delegate: “People say they can’t find good help…[but] usually the problem is with the owner or the manager,” Weatherdon suggests. “They don’t give people the opportunity to succeed.”

3. Don’t let your pride and ego get in the way of making the right decision: “If you realize early on you’re not going to be successful, pull the plug,” he suggests. “Live to fight another day.”