As an entrepreneur much of your life revolves around your business. And when romantic relationships develop, it’s essential to effectively balance your personal and professional life.
Many entrepreneurs soon realize that it is a delicate balancing act: developing romantic relationships and balancing entrepreneurship. So we asked twelve entrepreneurs to share their strategies on how to balance romance and entrepreneurship and here’s what they had to say:
1. Involve your spouse from the very beginning.
“My husband and I meet up every Sunday night to brainstorm our respective startups. We are invested emotionally in each other’s businesses and so when times are tough, the other person understands when personal sacrifices have to be made that would impact the other person.”
– Michelle Dett Gannon, Founder of The Language Playground: @LanguagePlay
2. Lean on those you love during hard times.
“I chose the entrepreneurial path for 3 reasons: love, family, and financial freedom. As [is the case with] every business owner, my entrepreneurial path was not easy, especially when the real estate bubble in September 2008 knocked around 75% off my heavily leveraged real estate portfolio and essentially wiped out my pre-construction projects. But I am a resourceful person, and even if I was back to square one I managed to pull myself together and recovered from the financial crisis with the help of my loved ones.”
– Alan Chan, Owner of Private Precious Metal Exchange: @TheCriticalFlaw
3. Prioritize those you love on your schedule.
“What you put on your calendar gets done. For busy entrepreneurs it is crucial to pencil time for your love life just like you do [for] your career. Putting date night on your calendar reminds your brain [that] this is a priority and decreases your chances of flaking, even if it’s just watching Scandal together while eating Chinese [food]. The added perk is loving relationships spark creativity and those feel-good endorphins for when you return to building your business.”
– Charreah K. Jackson, Dating Coach of Studio Social: @Charreah
4. Appreciate people that genuinely care about you.
“It’s easy to budget all your time towards growing your business. That’s when you’ll start getting angry at people trying to do nice things for you; they’re taking away from your growth time. It’s important to appreciate the people that genuinely care about you, and to budget time specifically for them just like you would a client.”
– Will Mitchell, Founder of StartupBros: @StartupBros
5. Play games.
“Consider playing a GPS game. One partner enters a destination that only he or she knows into the GPS and the other drives there. It’s fun, exciting, and romantic.”
– Don Purdum, Co-Owner and CEO of DNP, LLC: @donpurdum
6. Know when to stop working and focus on your partner.
“It’s so easy to work 24-7 when you’re building a business, but the whole point (for me) of working for myself is having the freedom to choose which hours of the day belong to my clients and which [hours] belong to me. I try to stop early enough that I can make dinner for the man I love and focus on enjoying it with him.”
– Leona Laurie, Social Media Strategist of LeonaLaurie.com: @leonalaurie
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