Quotes For Small Business Owners On Having A Healthly Work Life Balance

The life of a small business owner is a far cry from those who manage or run a huge corporation. Despite being the boss, a small business owner usually has fewer resources and manpower to work with, and as such must stretch and do work that corporate executives usually delegate to subordinates. This means there is a tendency for small business owners to take hours that normal people would normally spend on socializing and family time, and then put it as additional hours just to run their small business.

This is why work-life balance is important for a small business owner because there is a bigger risk to cannibalize one’s personal life just to keep the business running in tip-top shape. If you ever find yourself in this category, here are 6 quotes that will help you find the right amount of work-life balance:

1. “Wherever you are, you have to work for your living.” – Lailah Gifty Akita, Beautiful Quotes

Author and humanitarian Lailah Gifty may seem like a weird source for business quotes because she’s known more for volunteer work than running a for-profit business, but her quote says something that all small business owners need to learn firsthand: you still have to work for your living.

You should always remember that you’re working to make a living, you’re not running a company just for the sake of running a company. More importantly, you are working for your living even if you’re the boss. You have to put in the hours to make the company prosper, because, in a small business, you might not have anyone else who will do so.

2. “Don’t work harder, work happier.” – Alexander Kjerulf, Happy Hour is 9 to 5

This ties in with the old adage “quantity over quality.” Many new small business owners think that they can accelerate business growth by grinding themselves down to dust doing all the work they can get their hands on, but all it does is stress you out and affect your personal life and health, resulting in depression. And a depressed worker will make wrong decisions and make mistakes. So if you’re a small business owner, you need to focus on being happy with your work and your life instead of just working as hard as you can.

3. “You don’t have to make yourself miserable to be successful.” – Andrew Wilkinson, founder of MetaLab.

In this day and age where workers who sacrifice their personal time for their work are lauded and held up as shining examples of workmanship, it is important to remember that success does not necessarily require you to sacrifice everything. Most of the time it simply comes with doing the work that is required of you.

4. “You will never feel truly satisfied by work until you are satisfied by life.” – Heather Schuck, The Working Mom Manifesto

This all goes back to the point about your motivation behind starting a business. You didn’t start a company just because you want to do so. You started a company because it is a way of supporting everything else in your life. It should never be your entire life. If you fall for this trap, you could end up being depressed and lost, because you fail to see that work will never be a replacement for everything in your life. So be satisfied with your life first before trying to find satisfaction at work.

5. “I also think that employees these days expect less of a separation of work and personal life. That doesn’t mean that work tasks should encroach upon our personal time, but it does mean that employees today expect more from the companies for whom they work.” – Marc Benioff, Chairman, and CEO of Salesforce

The quote shows that employees these days are more than willing to go beyond the call of duty and put in hours at work even when those hours should be personal. However, it is up to you as the small business owner not to abuse the employees’ drive. It is your job to ensure that they are not working too hard that it eats away at their personal lives.

6. “Thinking about work as a day job has made a big difference in the way I approach what I do. It also helped me not to confuse who I am with what I do.” – Bob Goff, Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life In An Ordinary World.

This quote basically says that your identity should be separate from your business. It will help you make objective decisions and prevent personal biases and emotions from getting in the way of running a company. Emancipating your identity from your business will also make it easier to prevent work problems from finding their way into your home.