By: O.L./Sway Buckley
We don't hear it talked about much, but building a business isn't all glitter and gold.
In fact, it requires grit and resilience.
It requires seasons of intense focus and intentional breaks for refueling and maintenance.
When we add marriage to the equation, it's even more important to be intentional about our refueling breaks.
Note: This is not a suggestion.
If you don't have built-in refueling breaks, your body, life, and/or marriage will disruptively require you to. (Ask us how we know).
One of the pillars we have built Marriedpreneur Life consulting on is the foundation of wholeness. That includes: mental, spiritual, relationally, financial, and personal.
This juggling isn't a copy and paste across all marriedprenuer homes. It looks different for each season, and you can't expect to have the same outcome in each season when other areas may be taking precedence: i.e., children graduating, becoming a caregiver to your parent(s), conceiving children, physical illness, mental fatigue, etc.
Significant shifts require consideration. And every season requires a refueling system to maximize growth.
Here are a few practical steps we take to keep refueling an integral part of our building process:
✅ Plan It Daily: We ask each other what time we plan to end the day in our daily meetings. Accountability is essential.
✅ Plan It Weekly: We pick a day of the week that we consider the NO WORK ZONE. We are challenged to talk about other things, read non-work-triggering books, visit new places, and simply relax.
✅ Institute it Quarterly: For our Quarterly meeting each year, we plan a short get-a-way to review, restart, and refuel our marriage and business. The first day is getting caught up on sleep, the next ½ day is our Quarterly legacy meeting, and the last day is back to refueling.
✅ Annual Breaks: We plan solo getaways once-twice a year. It's a great time to be alone with our thoughts, reflect, pray, and recenter our focus.
✅ Fill The Time: Initially, we were not clear on how to relax because we were conditioned to work. But since starting this practice, we've been able to better prepare ourselves with activities that we find enjoyable. This creates great anticipation and excitement for our refuel breaks.
These are the steps that have helped us stay accountable to be whole on this journey. The foundation of it is our marriedpreneur legacy meetings. They have been the glue when we are unmotivated. We've created a checklist to help other marriedpreneur couples implement these same steps.
If you'd like to use the free checklist, you can grab it here.
Here's to living purposefully, powerfully, and profitably in sync,
O.L. & Sway
O.L. is a former banker turned real estate consultant and entrepreneur. Sway is a former CEO of a staffing firm she started on her dorm room floor to pay for college. Together they co-own Marriedpreneur Life Consultancy, equipping married entrepreneur couples with high-level systems to scale without strain. They're the co-hosts of The Marriedprenuer Life Podcast, which was praised as one of Wedding Wire's top relationship podcasts. Learn more at MarriedpreneurLife.com.