Tips to achieve the perfect work-life balance from a business consultant

Business consultant Phil Jackson from Build Your Salon offers his top tips for achieving a work/life balance. With 20 years of experience in the industry, Phil Jackson is an international business coach offering a unique perspective on the challenges of salons ownership. Phil works with salons, barbershops and spas around the world to build their business. Here are his top three tips on accomplishing that perfect business balance!

Know What’s Needed

You will never achieve work/life balance unless you are crystal clear about what it is that you’re trying to achieve in all areas of your life. Have a really honest conversation with yourself – imagine your life as a pie chart. Where are you willing to spend your time, your effort and your energy? Then when you look at those slices, does your goal setting seem realistic? If you’re trying to achieve 45 projects that are going to take an awful lot of time, effort and energy yet you’re only allocating ten per-cent of your time to those projects, something has got to give. So, either you need to be willing to allocate more effort in that direction or some of those goals have to go.

Have a Plan

Block out time on a weekly basis, get disciplined with your planning so that you can start moving towards your life goals. But it also means that you are going to get really good at saying NO! I do all my planning on a Sunday evening. It takes me about an hour to revisit my goals, allocate my time and make sure that everything is as it should be for the coming week. Then if anybody asks me for anything during the week, I’m afraid the answer is NO. People are greedy for your time, they are continually pecking for your attention – you have to be able to protect your goals!

Play The Long Game

Just because you’ve set those percentages for your time does not mean that they have to be the same every week or every month. If one month you don’t work at all and spend time completely with family, the next month might be all about the business. When I get to the end of the year as long as you’re achieving that balance over time, it’s ok for one area of your life to dominate in the short term.