Juggling the five balls of life

The following is based on one of The Covenant Group’s clients. All of the names and telling details have been changed. 

By Norm Trainor

After years of grinding away, Marc Pratt finally achieved the level of success he’d hoped for in his business, only to find that he didn’t feel he could keep going.

At a conference dinner sponsored by a client of ours, I sat next to Marc, the head of the client’s advisor council, a group of elite advisors whose annual revenue topped 300K.

During the dinner, Marc said, “One of the reasons I became an advisor is because I wanted to run my own business, but now, fifteen years later, I feel like this business is running me.”

Marc went on to explain how burnt out he’d become in the past couple of years. Early in his career, he didn’t mind putting in the long hours, but he’d thought that after a while, he’d be able to cut down and coast a bit, let others, staff and sub-producers, take the load off his back, while he did the fun stuff. But that never happened. He was working as hard as ever, if not harder.

I told Marc that his complaint was certainly a common one among top producers, but that it didn’t have to be that way.

“Marc,” I said, “from the work we do with advisors, we find that they generally want four things: First, they want to make more money. Second, they want more quality time. Third, more fun. And fourth, long-term security.

“In your case, more time and more fun are what will make the difference for you.”

Marc nodded, adding that he regretted the long hours he had to spend in his business because it was taking away from the time he was able to spend with his wife and kids. When he got home most nights, the kids were already in bed.

“Marc,” I said, “there are five balls we are trying to keep in the air in terms of our life — work, family, self, community and spirituality. And those five are all interrelated. They’re all integrated. We can’t create walls between them — the barriers are permeable. So if we’re not happy in our work, that has a contaminating effect on family, self, community and spirituality. The reality is that the work ball is the only one of those five that is rubber. We can drop it and it will bounce back. The other four are crystal. And yet we often treat the work ball as if it’s the only one that’s crystal and that the other four will bounce back. And so we sacrifice ourselves in other areas of our lives for our work and ultimately lose our edge and our zest, not only in those other areas, but also in our work. The paradox is — if you find balance in the five areas of your life, your business will grow and thrive. But so many of us are afraid that if we pull back from the business it will fall apart.”

Marc agreed he needed to find balance in his life but seemed unconvinced that pulling back was the answer. “Who’s going to do what I do?”

Marc and the rest of his advisor group had sat through a launch of our practice development program earlier in the day, in which I’d outlined the four cornerstones of a successful business: strategy, structure, systems and process, and financial management. I reminded him now of the importance of resource management to his success. “Marc,” I said, “you’ve done a great job of hiring capable people below you who can help support your strategy and grow the business. But staffing up is only one aspect of resource management; the other aspect is how you harness those resources. Most of us tend to get attached to doing things on our own, believing we’re the only ones capable of doing a certain task. But we have to learn to let go and let the people we’ve hired perform their roles.”

Marc agreed that he was probably underutilizing his staff. He said he was looking forward to learning more about resource management and asked me what the secret was to getting more from the people who worked for him.

We talked for a few minutes about various resource management strategies. Marc had great ideas and seemed to have an intuitive understanding of the mechanics of resource management. In fact, on the surface, his own business was in many ways an example of sound resource management — below himself he had various service specialists and a marketing person and below them, a team of support people.

“Marc,” I said, “I’m glad to see that you are eager to learn more about managing your practice, and while I think you’re the type of person who will find tremendous value in the mechanics of practice development, I want you to know that I think your primary issue isn’t one of lack of knowledge.”

Marc gave me a curious look.

“My concern is why you haven’t utilized the resources you currently have. Even though you’re feeling burnt out and out of control, you haven’t successfully handed over control of certain aspect of your business to others. My feeling is that with you, as for many top advisors, this issue isn’t a matter of simply knowing what you should be doing, it’s also an emotional or psychological one. And, as you work through the practice development program to develop and recreate your various plans, including your resource plan, I want you to focus on the coaching element of the program.”

Marc told me he was pretty much a self-study, and wasn’t sure how much the coaching would help him.

“Marc,” I said, “unfortunately, making changes in our lives is challenging to do on our own; which is why most of us need another person to act as a guide when we want to make dramatic improvements. When we want to work on our personality, our psychology, we seek out counselors; to work on improving our bodies and fitness, we turn to personal trainers. In business, we use coaches.

“But the role of all these guides or coaches goes beyond simply teaching us the ‘how’. They support us through the emotional and psychological transformation that is necessary for any change to take effect. Whenever we make changes, we experience anxiety or fear — that’s an unavoidable aspect of change. If we try to make the change on our own, we’re left to deal with the anxiety ourselves, and for most people that means we eventually stop doing what we know we should be doing to grow or we simply revert to our old habits. Both are dysfunctional responses to change management.”

Marc acknowledged that he had trouble sticking to what he knew was best for his business and for finding balance in his life, and agreed he would focus on the coaching he would receive in the program.

When I ran into Marc recently at another dinner, he looked like a new man — no longer harried or weighed down by regret. He pulled me aside and thanked me for the conversation we’d had a year ago. I was right, he said — coaching was what he’d needed to make the right changes in his life. Over the last year, he managed to cut his working hours down by 30% and still grow revenue by 15% — and, according to him, without the support of his coach he never would have stuck to his plan. 

Lessons Learned

Marc learned four important lessons about creating balance in his life:

• Work is only one of the five ‘balls’ in our life. The others are family, self, community and spirituality.
• Work is the only ‘ball’ that is rubber — if we drop it, it will bounce back; the others are crystal.When we’re overworked, pulling back from work and finding balance in our lives will strengthen our business, not make it fall apart. 
• A key success factor to finding balance in our lives is working with someone (a coach) who can help guide us through the emotional aspect, the anxiety, of making a change.

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The Covenant Group is referred to by many as the place entrepreneurs go to become Business Builders. They are considered to be thought leaders and have authored the best-selling books, The 8 Best Practices of High- Performing Salespeople, The Entrepreneurial Journey, and The Business Builder.