Everything changed! (a personal and business update)

Aug 4

Something changed in my life, and it has the real potential to affect my business and not necessarily in a good way.

I'm engaged!

This is obviously a happy update, and I'm thrilled for everything to come in my personal life. But I'm also a business owner, which means the last month has come with a familiar kind of tension: the pull between doing right by my business and doing right by everything else going on in my life.

Since we jumped immediately into wedding planning (which I know plenty of people warn against, but it was right for us for a handful of logistical reasons), I've been noticeably less productive in my business than I want to be. Yes, wedding planning takes a doozy of a chunk out of your week, even for a systems and organization nerd like me.

Prefer to watch? Here's the video!

How to balance a personal life transition with running your business

I'm not the only business owner with a lot going on in their business who also has a lot going on in their life, and feels like the two are constantly in conflict. One of the reasons I chose to run my own business in the first place was for the flexibility to let my personal life move more fluidly, for exactly moments like this one, when I need to jump on a call in the middle of the day or spend an unreasonable amount of time refining a save-the-date design (I did not expect that to take the time it did).

If you're feeling this same friction right now, and it isn't a wedding, maybe it's becoming a parent, or a pregnancy, or recommitting to your health, that's normal. We're all navigating some version of this, in our own way, and how you handle it becomes a real part of the life you're building for yourself.

Why it doesn’t always help to "get organized"

The most common reaction I see when someone hits this kind of moment is the instinct to “get organized.” (Imagine me doing aggressive air quotes as I say that.)

Here's the problem: if you don't already feel organized, that usually means you're not already in the habit of maintaining your systems without ongoing effort. So when you try to “get organized” right as you have a new, large drag on your time, the experience of it feels like adding more. It’s like you were tired of the pile of clothes sitting on the chair in your bedroom and you told yourself that you’ll feel better once you “get organized” and your first step was to take everything out of your closet to rearrange. You went from a medium project to a huge project to deal with and it’s likely you’re feeling even more overwhelmed.

When you have a new big project pulling at your time, you might think to set up a task manager or build a new dashboard in Notion. It feels productive but it almost always backfires against your actual goal which is to feel more in control or less overwhelmed.

I'm guilty of this myself. As I got into wedding planning and started missing deadlines I'd set for myself on the business side, my first instinct as a systems person was to try to build a system to hold myself accountable. Two hours later, I looked up and realized I’d spent all that time scoping out a wedding planning dashboard that my fiancé (and maybe my wedding planner) would have access to but hadn’t actually checked anything else off my to do list. I had to catch myself: the goal right now isn't to add more to my to-do list. The goal is to feel less overwhelmed by what's already on it.

I see this exact pattern when I’m talking to potential Exhale clients. They want to feel like they have their business under control so they can sign off and enjoy time with their family. But their first instinct when they come to me is often “I want to build a dashboard that does this” or “I want to have a system that helps me do that.” Their instinct is good, in that they want to have systems in their business, but the problem is that if they haven’t found an equilibrium that feels manageable right now, building a bunch of new things is just going to feel like adding more to their plate.

There are a few reminders that I often give to clients when we start working together and I had to give myself these reminders over the past few weeks as I was back in this situation myself. Let’s walk through them…

Delete before you add‍ ‍

Nine times out of ten, the most important thing you need to do to feel relief right now is to delete things, not add them.‍ ‍

I know that's easier said than done because it feels like everything on your list has to get done eventually. If you’re in this spot, I’d start by asking yourself the following:

Is everything on my list absolutely required? (If something is a “it’d be nice to have,” move it to a secondary list)
Does everything on this list have to happen in the next 1-3 days? (If something has more time flexibility, move it to a secondary list)
Does every element of each item on this list have to happen in the next 1-3 days? (If something can be broken up in to pieces where only part of is it urgent, move the secondary parts on to your secondary list)

There's almost always more room to space things out than you currently feel like is possible. Whether it’s a part of a task or the task entirely, you will likely be able to move things around such that you only give yourself a manageable amount to do today. That doesn't mean those other tasks disappear. They move to a different day or a different hour.

Feeling relieved, feeling like you have things under control, comes from being smart about that decision making on a rolling basis. You get to feel in control of your Friday, and then in control of your Tuesday, instead of trying to hold everything on your list at once, getting distracted, not finishing any of it, and ending up overwhelmed on Friday, Monday, and Tuesday all at the same time.

Keep it simpler than you think you need to ‍

The second reminder is another problem I often see in talking to potential Exhale clients. We think that to feel relief, we need to have a fancy system or tool. But the first month or so of a newfangled system or upgraded tool, regardless of why you start using it, always involves a learning curve where it’s adding more to your plate than taking away. So if you’re in a busy, distracted period of your life, it’s not the time to add more complicated systems.

If you've been running things on a paper notebook, now is not the time to build a fancy online system. If you've had something like Asana working for you, keep using that, or something even simpler, to get through this more hectic stretch. Don't upgrade to fancier software right now.

Again, we're trying to remove things, not add them. Your systems, whether you realize it consciously or note, feel familiar to you which helps you feel in control, even if it feels a little old school. Once you've got your feet back underneath you and you feel like you've regained some control, then you can evaluate whether something more advanced makes sense. Right now, keep it simple.

Do the extra 10 percent

Thus far, we’ve talked about how not to make things worse when you’re being pulled between your business and a major personal priority. But this third reminder is the first, most simple step I can offer in terms of starting to actually dig your way out, which is, when you are complete any task (whether it’s work or personal), try to do the extra 10%.

10% is a subtle addition. It’s not a whole extra task.

Here's an example: I've been working through our save-the-date process, updating and collecting addresses to send to everyone we love. There were constant small corrections to addresses like correcting a street address from Drive, instead Place. Or to send this one to a different address. At this point, I already had addresses on the envelope designs, so I'd make the fix and could have easily stopped there. Technically, the task was done.

But the best way to feel organized is to do the extra 10%. In that moment, updating the address on the envelope, I also took ten extra seconds to go back to the spreadsheet where we'd originally logged everyone's information and fixed it there too. That’s doing the extra 10% that future me would thank me for later when the spreadsheet was up to date when I pulled it back up in a few days.

The key here is that I don’t turn this advice into a whole other set of tasks, like updating the address and then making sure it flowed back into the two other places. That is “adding more.” If you need another way to think about this, think about “closing the loop.” When you complete a task, make sure that you’ve closed any open loops related to the task - files saved, data tracked, etc.

Some examples of doing the extra 10% (or closing the loop):

After answering an email, file it in the correct folder or tag it
Once you finish editing a video, move all the reference images you used into your folders for future use
Once you send a closing email to a client, schedule a reminder to follow up about a testimonial (note: these are the types of systems that we often build for clients at Exhale so these things happen automatically - if you’re curious, book a call!)
After you finish paying your credit card bill, do a quick scan of your transactions to identify any unused subscriptions you could cut

The goal here isn’t to tack together 3 distinct tasks to try to get them done all at once. Just to take the tiny extra step at the end of the task that helps you actually stay organized, which over time compounds into you feeling less overwhelmed with the remaining things to do, whether you’re working on business or personal.

Delegating is a strategic risk, but a necessary one

When you have too much on your plate, there is always one key strategy at your disposal but so many of us resist it: asking for help.

There’s often a lot of resistance that comes up when this is suggested. But honestly, most of the reasons we don't do this have more to do with our own internal beliefs than anything external: “when I delegate, it doesn't get done right.” Or “it would take as much time to explain it as to just do it myself.” “I don't have anyone I can count on for this.” Sound familiar?

These beliefs aren't just a personal life problem. They can get in the way of your business growth too. If you struggle to bring in consultants or contractors to execute certain tasks, you're limiting your own growth, because you only have so many hours in a day. Your ability to build systems you trust, and bring in people you trust to run them, is what gets you more time for the bigger strategic thinking your business and revenue need. It's also what gets you more of your own time back, which is the whole point.

If the concern is that things don’t get done right or you don’t have anyone you can count on, that is fundamentally a trust and trianing issue.

If you're planning a wedding like I am, I hope your partner is trustworthy enough to ask for help, because if you’re committing to a lifetime with someone, I hope you trust them. But even so, I've caught myself thinking I'm the only one who cares about the font choice on our wedding website, so that's something I can't hand off. In a business context, you might trust an employee with writing an email but they haven’t proven to you that they know how to select the topics themselves yet.

It’s a hard reality to face but if you want your business to grow and your personal life to thrive, you have to figure out a way to lean on other people. If you don’t, you will, at some point, hit the limit of what you individually can do and/or you will mentally or physically burn out.

If you don’t feel you can trust people (or tools, because AI is a great resource to delegate to), think of it first as a training problem. Have you shown them how you do it? Have you walked them through how you make the decisions? Have you done an example side-by-side with them to test whether they’re understanding what you’re explaining? These can go for both business and personal contexts - explaining to your partner how you decide which veggie pack at the grocery store may sound silly, but if it means you can fully delegate grocery shopping moving forward, it might be worth it.

I often say the CEO's job is two things: decision making and strategic risk taking.

Everything else is the team's job, even if you're a solo operator running the whole thing yourself.

If you have a team, the more time you spend in execution, the more you’re robbing yourself of the leverage of a CEO. That’s time you could spend thinking high level strategy, deciding between paths moving forward, and investing in the future of the business, whether that’s training the team, hiring new resources or building infrastructure.

If you are a solopreneur, you have to spend time wearing the hats of the other members of the team, like marketing or client delivery. But don’t abandon the role of CEO, and part of that is making sure you have time to be the CEO so you have time to make long term decisions for the health of the business, including deciding which tasks and to whom you’re going to delegate them.

Think about it this way, if delegating something gets you 3x the productivity back (you got your time back, and the output was better than you expected), that's a 3x return on the risk. Not a hard call.

I think about this with Exhale clients constantly. Taking us on is a strategic risk, both in time and in the financial investment of hiring outside help, so my job is to make that risk worth it.

One therapist who hired me saw a 2x increase in her search traffic within 60 days of working together because we reviewed and upgraded her SEO strategy.

Another client wanted to post more consistently but would open her camera and freeze, not sure what to say. We built her a real content system inside the tool she already knew, and within two weeks she was consistently getting out twice as much content in half the time.

I’d like to think those returns were worth the risk they gook to invest. By delegating the systems thinking, they were able to get time back and better results that will last long after our project finished.

You might be taking a similar risk right now asking your partner to research transportation vendors for your wedding, or handle the grocery shopping because you have two doctor's appointments this week, or asking a friend to make the dinner reservation because you need to make it to your workout class and can't hold the mental load of one more thing. The examples are endless, but the underlying skill, taking a strategic risk on delegating and getting better at it with practice, is part of the job of growing your business and your life.

Getting out of your own way ‍

When you're balancing two big things at once, and the personal life commitment starts to feel like a threat to your business succeeding, the reminder I keep coming back to is that sometimes we have to get out of our own way. If systems and operations are what's holding your business back right now, that's exactly what Exhale exists for. You can book a call anytime.

When you feel like you have more on your plate than ever, the goal isn't to add more. It's to take things away and keep it simple. That's the only way through. If you're navigating your own personal transition right now, whatever it is, I'd love to hear about it.

Frequently asked questions

How do I balance running a business with a big personal life change?

Start by resisting the urge to build new systems in the middle of the transition. The instinct to "get organized" the moment life gets busier almost always adds more to your plate instead of less. Instead, look at what you can delete or space out on a rolling basis, use the simplest version of whatever's already working for you, and get comfortable delegating pieces of both your business and personal life to people you trust. That combination, not a new dashboard, is what creates relief.

Is it normal to feel less productive in your business during a major life transition?

Yes. A wedding, a new baby, a health commitment, or any major personal shift takes real time and mental energy, and it's normal for your business output to dip while you're in it. The real mistake is trying to fix that dip by adding new systems or tools on top of an already full plate. Give yourself permission to be smart about prioritization on a day-by-day or week-by-week basis instead of expecting output to stay flat.

Should I build new systems when life gets busier?

Generally, no, not right away. If you don't already have a system running on autopilot, building one from scratch during a hectic period usually adds more work, not less. Use the simplest tool or process you already know how to run, even if it feels a little basic, until you've regained some footing. Once things settle, that's the better time to evaluate whether something more advanced is worth building.

How do I get better at delegating in my business?

Start by naming the specific belief that's stopping you, whether it's "it won't get done right" or "explaining it takes as long as doing it myself." Then treat delegation the way you'd treat any other business decision: as a calculated risk with a potential return. If handing off a task gets you back significant time and the output is even close to what you'd have done yourself, that's a strong return, not a loss of control. This is exactly the kind of shift we work through with Exhale clients, and it's a core part of the Bottleneck Breakthrough. If you want help figuring out what to delegate first, you can book a call here.

What's the biggest mistake business owners make when life gets overwhelming?

Adding instead of subtracting. The instinct to build a new system, buy a new tool, or hire more help without first fixing what's already broken underneath tends to create more overhead, not relief. The better first move is almost always to simplify what you already have and delegate what you can, before you add anything new.