Dr Mark Le Fevre, a senior research lecturer in management at AUT University.
This week small business owners talk about the particular work life balance challenges they've faced and some of the practical things they do to mitigate those, and create the balance they're after.
Mark Le Fevre asks a key question when he's working with people who want to create a better work life balance: 'who's the most important person in your life?'
"They'll say 'it's my wife' or 'it's my husband" or 'it's my children'," says the senior research lecturer in management at AUT University, "but actually it's you."
"The reality is if you don't take care of yourself you can not take care of anything else ... If you're not taking care of your mental and physical health, you won't be taking care of your business for too much longer."
Le Fevre - who has a particular focus on the relationship between stress, stress management and performance - says the biggest work life balance challenge for owners of smaller businesses is the bandwidth of tasks they have to deal with.
"You're the chief executive, bottle washer, accounts person, IRD form filler and so on. You can say a lot of those jobs only take five minutes, but there are still only so many minutes in the day," he says. "So there are all these tasks that can distract you from actually running your business, but for many owners that can also make them feel their business is their life."
This week I've interviewed small business owners about the particular work life balance challenges they've faced and some of the practical things they do to mitigate those, and create the balance they're after.
Being able to create a greater work life balance is actually a motivator for a number of people who start their own businesses, including Kate Belcher, who set up Glenorchy-based cycle tour company Revolution Tours with her husband Matt in 2011.
As a first time business owner, Belcher says in the early days she expected "a whole lot of 'life' and not much 'work'".
"I saw self-employed people working on laptops in cafes and thought that looked like me!," she says. "It was a bit of a rude awakening when I realised I was going to work harder than I'd ever worked before. Matt had owned his own business before so knew what to expect and was very patient with my romantic ideas, before I came crashing down to earth."
Until six months ago, the couple's business was run from home, and Belcher says being constantly surrounded by work gear made it difficult to relax.
The couple were also aware from the outset that running the operation together could potentially have a negative impact on their marriage, so they instituted a set of five rules to help keep work and life in balance. There's no business talk after 6pm or in the bedroom, for example, and despite the difficulty of 'letting go' they delegate certain business tasks to contractors and employees.
"We tend to delegate the 'hard' stuff - for us it's accounting and tax - and the 'easy' stuff - like cleaning bikes and helmets - so we can run the rest of the business and still have time out," she says.
Those who juggle running businesses and raising young children can find themselves under particular work life balance pressure.
Melanie Clark bought online gift business Candybox a year-and-a-half ago, which she balances with looking after her three young boys.
Clark was keen to buy the business because she could see it working well around family life - she can get the day's orders out the door by 2pm, and be home after school and kindy for her children, as well as spend other time with her preschool child and run the household.
The main challenge, though, has been growing the company. Before her youngest child starts school next month, she's had just a couple of mornings a week to focus on administration, marketing, social media, business development, planning and web development - as well as taking care of personal and household matters. Once her youngest is at school, she's planning to up her hours in the business to around 30 a week, but "at the moment it's not a lack of ideas that's challenging," she says, "it's a lack of execution time to get those ideas off the ground".
Sticking to set schedules, rules and habits was a key theme across the interviews as a way to create a greater work life balance. Many of the business owners interviewed had experienced stress or work overload when they'd either deviated off their predetermined plans, or put such measures in place after going through times when their balance got out of whack.
Richard Butler is a founder and director of IT sales and support company BlueBerry IT, which was formed in 2008, and has staff in Nelson and Blenheim.
"In the beginning it has to be said we worked some seriously long hours," says Butler. "But as changes happened in the business - employees came on board and founders left - we decided it was going to be a lot more sustainable if we stuck as close as we could to the standard 40-hour working week."
Butler also has a range of interests outside of work, which he says are a great foil to the stresses of working in IT: he mountain bikes, recently got his black belt in Seido karate and plays bass guitar in a local band, The Immigrants.
"My hobbies are totally different to my work and that helps me develop other skills that can be applied to the work environment," he says, "and that helps forge a better separation between work and life."
Mark Le Fevre, AUT University
Dr Mark Le Fevre is a senior research lecturer in management at AUT University, who has a particular focus on the relationship between stress, stress management and performance.
What are the primary challenges that small and medium-sized business owners face when trying to create a work life balance?
I think the biggest problem for SMEs - and the smaller you get the more apparent this becomes - is the extent to which you're it. You're the chief executive, bottle washer, accounts person, IRD form filler and so on. You can say a lot of those jobs only take five minutes, but there are still only so many minutes in the day. So there are all these tasks that can distract you from actually running your business, but for many owners that can also make them feel their business is their life.
To some extent people can feel that 'my business is my life' attitude is a protection against the stresses of creating a work life balance, but that only works for so long before you run out of energy. Then you get to a point of burnout, where you run out of energy and enthusiasm for your work. The other side of that danger is when you run out of energy and enthusiasm for your family. That's something that people don't talk about so much - the marriages that get lost, the children that get neglected, and the regret that comes from that.
How about the 'always on' phenomenon where people are constantly connected to others by phones or computers? Is that exacerbating issues of work life balance?
I think it's more a perception than reality. Cellphones do have an off switch, and just because a phone is ringing you don't have to answer it - that's what voicemail is for.
Another problem with the constant demands of technology is interruption. When you allow yourself to be interrupted, because you have the perception that everything that comes in over your computer or phone is urgent - and occasionally it is, but mostly not - you don't get the continuity of thought you need to make good decisions. Unless you're running an ambulance, ringing someone back in 15 minutes isn't going to kill them.
But while it's easy to say to someone 'relax', these days it's actually a learned skill. And it takes a while to train someone to relax and not have a feeling of guilt still nagging away at them that they should be doing something else.
So what are some ways a business owner can start to get their work life balance back if it's out of kilter?
The first is a change of mind and attitude. When I'm working with people, I ask them a question: 'who's the most important person in your life?' They'll say 'it's my wife' or 'it's my husband' or 'it's my children' but actually it's you. The reality is if you don't take care of yourself you can not take care of anything else. I think that's the first mind switch that has to happen. If you're not taking care of your mental and physical health, you won't be taking care of your business for too much longer.
And the reality is it doesn't take a huge amount of time to do that - and sometimes you have to fake it till you make it. So when the phone rings tell yourself you'll ignore it until you've finished the job you're doing. The first time you do that you'll break out in a cold sweat and your heart rate will go up. But when you've done that a few times and seen that the sky didn't fall and you didn't bankrupt the company, you'll start to realise that maybe you don't need to drive yourself so hard all the time to succeed.
How about connecting with others - both personal and professional contacts? What role does that play?
Your social network outside of work - your family and friends - tends to get strained when you're too tied up in your business. But there's good research that shows a strong correlation between how well you maintain your social networks and your health, longevity, resistance to disease and all sorts of things.
I see so much conflicting information marketed to people about what you need to eat and what else you need to do to keep balanced, and much of it is quite inaccurate so you get a confused view. So I think talking to professionals in those fields and getting a little help from them, rather than listening to those marketing messages, can be helpful. There are techniques you can learn that teach you to relax at the same time as you're functioning in work, for example, but they're learned skills. Being physically fit makes a huge difference but again you don't have to spend huge money and hours in the gym to do that.
Coming up in Your Business: The sharing economy - where people share access to goods or services without actually owning them - is a growing trend. What are some of the companies springing up in this area, and how are they growing markets for their offerings? If you've got a story to share, drop me a note: nzhsmallbusiness@gmail.com