Is It Your Business or Your Life? Big Island Business Owners Find the Critical Balance
By Grif Frost, Life Quality Business Consultant
Owning a business should give you freedom. Freedom to set your work hours…to decide what you do (and more importantly don’t have to do). Freedom to earn as much money as you want. Freedom to congratulate yourself for success in the business. And freedom to know that if the business is not successful there is only one person to blame.
Yet many business owners let their businesses take over their lives. The business starts dictating what hours you MUST work, what tasks you MUST do, what days you can take off (or can’t) and suddenly being a business owner is not about freedom. It‘s about the lack of freedom.
I remember waking up one morning as the owner of a business in Japan with 100 employees and wondering who is working for whom? The answer was that I was working for the business/employees, and yet, the business/employees should be working for me.
This epiphany motivated me to begin an ongoing quest to identify what factors in a business can help enhance the life quality of the owner and what factors detract from the life quality of the owner.
One of the key factors in enhancing this life quality is to live in the kind of environment that supports it.
Here are two stories of Hawai‘i Island business owners: a couple who both have 100-ton captain’s licenses in West Hawai‘i and a couple in East Hawai‘i who started their industry-leading business in their garage in Hilo.
Prioritize Health & Family
Ray and Cynthia LeMay, owners and captains of Blue Sea Cruises Inc., a leading “glass-bottom lunch/dinner cruise excursion” business in Kailua-Kona, understand what enhances their business life, but have found it challenging to maintain.
Cynthia told me, “It has been increasingly challenging since the economic downturn. Our business has required a 24/7, attentive effort to stay on top as leaders in our industry here in Kona. Family life has sometimes unintentionally taken a back seat when so much time is devoted to work. In our case, our teenage son is preparing for college. Assistance and support from both Ray and me are essential during this time to ensure his future success. Long hours at work and juggling family life demands can also create an unusual amount of stress that can cause health problems for certain individuals. Ray and I are fortunate that we do not have any health issues at this time—knock on wood.”
Fortunately, Cynthia and Ray have found a solution, as Ray shared with me, “The biggest challenge we experienced was finding more time away from work to spend with family. We have found that you just have to convince yourself that your business can run smoothly without your everyday presence. Take the time off. It is hard at first; but with the expertise of hard-working, dedicated employees like ours, it is possible.”
When I asked Ray and Cynthia what advice they would give to other local business owners to help improve their work-life-balance they both quickly agreed, “Our advice is easy: prioritize family no matter what! That’s good for your family and good for your health and really, in the end, it’s good for your business.”
In stepping back and reviewing Ray and Cynthia’s success in these tough economic times, we can see two keys:
- Prioritize health and family before business.
- Budget your physical time working in the business. Realize you don’t need to do what you have hired employees to do. Trust them to do the job they were hired for. Delegate, give them the authority to handle their responsibilities, then get out of the way and let them do the job they were hired to do!
The LeMays are true examples of knowing that to own a life-quality business, it certainly helps to live in a life-quality environment like Hawai’i Island.
Empower Your Employees
In East Hawai’i Mark and Jonaliza Allen own a seven-acre flower farm in Kurtistown.
Mark describes their approach to balancing their life with their business:
“My wife and I, mostly my wife, have taken a business we started in our garage to the largest retail tropical flower shipper in Hawai‘i according to FedEx. Jona was managing a new family but found time to get shipping certifications, maintain customer satisfaction and begin to grow a business. I had some experience with computers, Internet and such and applied that to creating an online business for her while I maintained my salaried position. The business took on a life of its own and soon we had no more room in our house and I had no more time to remain salaried.”
This method of starting a business is often times called “chicken entrepreneurship,” where you maintain your “day job” while starting a side business. It’s a smart, low-risk approach to becoming a successful business owner.
I asked Mark to share with me their number-one challenge.
“Doing everything ourselves, starting out, has been the largest challenge. As we grew, we found employees to be the largest challenge. We still face those challenges today as we learn to step back. I think many business owners can trap themselves into believing they are needed in the day-to-day, when in fact they may be hindering progress and being a bottleneck to accomplishing real growth in their business.
“I do seem to involve myself too much in the details of my business. It is fun, in a way, to manage everything and it does give a wonderfully false sense of being in control. But, my time has been spent on situations that did not need me there. Letting employees at all levels learn and show their potential is equally rewarding and actually gives me a confidence in my business I could not have achieved otherwise.”
Mark had this specific advice for local business owners:
“As a business owner, step back, cross your fingers, and let it happen. Sure, there will be issues that will need your attention but, more often than not, the people you have entrusted with your business will step up and get the job done. Let them do what you’ve hired them to do. This employee empowerment philosophy also helps morale.” In stepping back and reviewing Mark and Jona’s success in growing a business from a garage start-up to the leader in its industry in Hawai‘i, we can learn:
- Keep your “day job” and experiment with starting a business as a “side job.”
- Hire good employees, empower them, and then let them do the job you hired them to do. ❖
See more about Ray and Cynthia LeMay’s business at www.BlueSeasCruisesInc.com.
The Allen’s garage start-up, which has become the industry leader in Hawai‘i, is www.Hawaiian-Tropical-Flowers.com.
Grif Frost helps Big Island business owners find work-life-balance. (www.LifeQualityBusiness.com).
