This was a rare personal moment for me, talking about my family, my upbringing, and the number one key to achieving a good work/life balance: Communication.
I know you talk about always pushing and doing as much as you can. What about now that you are a dad how do you turn it off when you get home? Tell us about your time management as a CEO and entrepreneur.
Easily my family is everything to me. By the way the reason why I always talk about pushing and this whole work life balance situation is because you are listening to me for 2 minutes and 37 seconds on youtube; the rest of the time. Time management is really difficult especially if you’re an entrepreneur.
This moment has been really tough for me, because I know this is the 4th child between my sister and I. I know that I don’t have to be there right that second, but if this was our first I would have not been here. I would have cancelled, you are always going to have the battle of making decisions and time management and decision making.
For example if I didn’t show up today I would need to ask myself, do I let WeWork down or all the people who wanted to be here tonight? Is that the right value of exchange for being an hour or two earlier? You are going through this everyday, I am struggling through this everyday, but I am also not struggling with it meaning we are all doing the best we can with time management.
Everyone can say, I spend more time with my family and someone else can point out that a another person spend more time with their family than you. who won did he win, we are all different. My wife Lizzie is amazingly independent, she is very similar to me and she is doing her stuff and getting her stuff done. She doesn’t need me there every second, she probably doesn’t want me there every second, but it is a balance.
I will tell you this there is one real answer communication, heavy, over the top communication. I check in with her we talk about stuff, I check in with the rest of my family and friends you just need to talk a lot. You aren’t the only one that is feeling things and you also need to know what your loved ones are feeling. For a spouse you need heavy communication and for your children when they are younger it is very hard and you can’t have that talk necessarily, but I’m aware of the lack of time I spent with my dad growing up. I didn’t really get to know him till I was 14. My father never attendant my little league games, because he was always hustling. Even though I was young I understood that my father had to work and to me my mother was enough. I know how it feels to be the only kid in his little league games to not have his dad present.
I just think you need to have communication, I know that it is a very touchy subject. Luckily people have a great sense around what I have to say around family and it evolves. I’m taking time off from work to spend it with my family up in Connecticut. The amount of time that I’m taking off this year is more than I have taken in the past 11 years combined. Even though I might be on vacation, I know that I will be emailing everyone of you individually asking you to buy my book. I will be hustling as well, but I will be hustling with my family around, so you need to evolve.

---

Find more at http://garyvaynerchuk.com
Wanna do something with me? Check out http://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/jjjrh/ I am bartering and doing bonuses around my new book!