I'll never forget the day my business partner Diana sat me down and said in a dire tone, "We need to talk." These words are never welcomed when they come from a partner, whether personal or business. My first thought was, "Oh no, she's dying." I can be overly dramatic at times. Diana started to tear up and blurted out, "I'm pregnant…I'm sorry." Hearing those words, I felt a mixture of relief (thankful that it wasn't something devastating), happiness (it was news of a baby, after all) and sorrow (I had been trying to get pregnant for a while to no avail).
The reason Diana was sorry had little to do with the fact that she got pregnant before me. It was that she got pregnant at the wrong time for our business. I now know how insane this sounds, but we had a "baby schedule" in place at our company, and this could royally screw it up! Over the next few days I worked through my issues around the unplanned pregnancy. It was meant to be and therefore everything would be ok.
A few weeks later I found out I was pregnant. I was ecstatic about the baby and was no longer worried about the business. After all, we were successful business women and our company was growing, so surely we could have it all! My naive optimism seems almost funny now.
The hard reality of the situation hit some weeks later as Diana and I both struggled to keep up with our business and the 70+ hour work weeks it required while fighting exhaustion, nausea and irritability. We simply weren't able to meet the demands of the business in this state and what would happen when the babies came? I was sure of one thing, I wasn't willing to make the sacrifice of precious time with my baby that would obviously be required.
We realized we had a choice: We could either continue on with the status quo and do whatever it took to continue to grow and make our business more successful, or we could change the business to support our changing lives and values. But surely that decision would have negative effects on our business, perhaps even killing it! After panicking for a couple of days, we hit the drawing board. A complete rework was necessary.
When recreating our business, we developed a business-planning framework that took into account financial success as well as freedom and fulfillment. You won't find those last two elements in any traditional business plan. We figured out how we could build a business that would provide the financial security we required for our families, but also the time flexibility we craved in order to enjoy our children when they were young.
The result? Our business is now more profitable than ever, but it also contributes to us living our dreams, like traveling the world a few months a year. Now we feel truly successful, inside and out. We also just finished writing our first book, Babyproofing your Business, a resource we desperately wished we would have had when we were starting our families.
Courtesy of Forum for Women Entrepreneurs
Shannon Ward is the co-author of Babyproofing Your Business, teaching entrepreneurs how to build wildly successful businesses without sacrificing themselves or their families. This mom, entrepreneur and change maker has figured out that work-life balance is a myth and redefining success is the key to living an amazing life. She and her business partner Diana Stirling have been extensively quoted, listed and ranked since they tore down their seven-figure business and rebuilt it on a new business model called Pretirement that earns them freedom, financial gain and fulfillment.
