Douglas James is a successful entrepreneur, marketing expert, and business coach that has trained over 1500 small business owners. But he’s also a loving husband and father to his wife Sonia and daughter Camila. While his Instagram page is filled with insightful information about his business, it’s balanced with touching images of his wife and daughter. So how does someone manage to balance a successful career with a successful family life? According to James, the two go hand-in-hand and are actually symbiotic to another. “If you’re an entrepreneur and you have a family or want to have a family one day, it’s very important to understand that you need to have balance,” he says. “The moon rotates around the earth. The earth rotates around the sun. Everything has a balance. Everything is set up a certain way so we can operate from day-to-day. You’ve got to have those same concepts in your business and within your family.” Below James shares his top 3 insights into balance work and family life.
Communication is key
“Just like I schedule a meeting on my calendar for a client or a business opportunity, I’ll schedule my wife on my calendar. We have conversations about our family and our goals for the future, whether it be for that day, month, year or for the next 20 years. We meet every single Monday at the same time,” explains James. “We’ve been doing it now for over a year and it’s really transformed how our life is set up. We are always in the know. We’re always on the same page. It’s allowed us to achieve more goals a lot faster because we’re organizing. We’re communicating. I’ll do the same thing for my daughter. I need to be able to spend time with her and see her grow and be a part of her change.”
Make the most of opportunities
“Every time I have an entrepreneurial conference or an event, I take my family with me. I’m taking my daughter and I’m taking my wife with me so that we can continue to spend time together and have new experiences together. They get to actually be a part of that experience and see me in business, impacting and speaking. It’s just a really cool opportunity for us to share that experience together,” he says. “Wherever we go, whether it’s LA or Florida, we’ll extend the trip by a few days and go sightseeing or try out new restaurants or new things in the area. So we kind of turn those events into vacations for us, and that’s really helped us connect and grow as a family and create new experiences.”
A happy family = a successful business, and vice versa
“I believe it’s very important for any successful entrepreneur or business owner to share their story and their personal life with their audience because it humanizes them. The more vulnerable you are and the more willing you are to show personal aspects about yourself, the more prospects and clients will connect with you, because having a successful family life shows stability. If things aren’t good at home it will show up in business, and vice versa. So the more you can incorporate your family personal life into your business, the more balance and well-roundedness you will present, and this will attract a lot more people and create a lot more opportunities for yourself.”
