How to Build a Business that Aligns with Your Life

Summary

In this episode, Branden Sewell discusses the importance of understanding personal definitions of success in entrepreneurship, emphasizing that each individual's circumstances shape their business decisions. He encourages listeners to build businesses that serve their personal and family needs, rather than becoming slaves to their work. The conversation also touches on the significance of time over money, the impact of life stages on entrepreneurial risks, and the value of team feedback in business operations.

Takeaways

Success looks different for everyone based on personal circumstances.
Your business should serve you, not the other way around.
Life circumstances significantly impact business decisions.
It's important to prioritize time over money in business.
Don't compare your success to others; focus on your journey.
Take care of personal debts before making big business moves.
Feedback from your team can lead to better business practices.
Building a business that aligns with your life goals is crucial.
Adjust your business strategies as your life circumstances change.
Invest in personal development to grow as an entrepreneur.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to the Podcast and Its Purpose
01:57 Understanding Personal Definitions of Success
06:12 The Impact of Life Circumstances on Business Decisions
11:58 Navigating Different Entrepreneurial Scenarios
18:05 The Importance of Time Over Money
23:51 Building a Business That Serves You
30:07 Implementing Team Meetings and Feedback

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Transcript

Branden Sewell (00:00.942)
Hi everybody, I'm Brandon Sewell. I am the owner of Seal Pro Painting and I am also the host of the Off the Ladder podcast. And we exist to help home service business owners learn so that they can lead well and ultimately live life off of the ladder. Today's episode is going to be a solo episode. So just with me, your host, Brandon Sewell. this particular episode is just inspired by

conversations that I have found myself in over the last couple weeks with different entrepreneurs and business owners. And, you know, first off, I want to say I started this podcast because I want to help home service business owners who are maybe just getting started or maybe home service business owners who have

you know, been in business for themselves for a while, but they're doing all the work. Maybe they started this business as a necessity to provide and to just survive. Maybe you started it and left a corporate career for the purpose of having freedom and doing more of what you want, whether that's spending time with family or hobbies.

and the business has taken over your life. And so I started it to really just share my experience as an entrepreneur, how I've been able to achieve some level of success. And I think that looks different for everybody, right? So one thing that I want to be clear about, and this has kind of come up through conversation with other business owners over the last

know, a couple weeks, like I said, is my success is not going to look like success for somebody else. Because not everybody has the same goals, priorities, the same personal life. Not everybody's life looks exactly the way mine does. And so while

Branden Sewell (02:25.814)
my business serves my needs well and it works well for me now. It's not going to work the same for somebody else unless they were to make changes to make their life look more like mine. And I've even had to, you know, there's been seasons in my business where I've listened to other people and their advice.

without realizing maybe until later on that their life and their success was what it is because their life looks different than mine. You know, a great example of this in my own business and my own life is I listened to a home service business owners podcast for years.

and listen to a lot of this person's advice. And something that I realize in hindsight, and even this person said it themselves is is that the way they were able to build their success is they were single with no kids into their 40s, early 40s, maybe late 30s, early, early 40s.

lived in a small apartment, you know, basically took all the money that was coming in and reinvested it back in their business. And this person built a huge successful business. Well, that was success for him. That was how he chose to live life. But the way that his personal life

was afforded him the ability to make some of the decisions that he did in business. You know, like not being married and not having kids. So for someone like me, I can't, I couldn't make the same decisions that he made because I have a wife and I have kids. So I have to be able to realize like, okay, his success, though it's admirable and

Branden Sewell (04:47.982)
you know, maybe I would love to achieve something like that, that he's achieved, I have to put it into my reality and then ask myself, is that really what I want? And, you know, the the answer is, no, I don't want that as much as I want some other things in my life. And so I think just as we listen to podcasts, as we

invest in our personal development as we network and talk with other entrepreneurs and business owners and we look at their success and we talk about what got them there. have to realize that our lives look very different. You know, I can I'm a I'm 32. I'm married, two kids have a home. Well,

What I'm going to be able to achieve and do in business is going to look very different than a 20, 21, 22, 23 year old kid who is single, maybe is not on his own, maybe lives at home and has the ability to just focus on growing a business. Both myself and my spouse work.

You know, so we have, we're a two income household. You know, that may not be the same as a entrepreneur who is the sole provider for their family and they have a spouse who stays at home and they have multiple kids. That's going to look very different. It's going to, all of those scenarios change the dynamics of what your business needs to do.

to serve you. And I think that's really even maybe a better point is that your business should serve you, not the other way around. Like you don't want to become a slave of your business to where it consumes you. You want to build the business that is going to support the life that you are building and ultimately your bigger priorities.

Branden Sewell (07:08.022)
So for me, as I've as I started my business and as I've grown my business, my decisions that I make are based around the greater priorities that I have. For example, you know, being able to spend time with my spouse, being able to spend time with my kids, being able to spend time doing and enjoying things that I like to do. And

So that looks different for everybody. You know, let's just kind of talk about the, you know, we'll kind of go through stages here. Let's talk about the young kid. If you're like a young entrepreneur in your 20s, early 20s, you don't have any responsibilities, any dependence, meaning you don't have any kids, you don't have a spouse. Maybe, I mean, the reality is maybe you're living at home.

and you don't have a mortgage and you don't have a big rent payment. The reality is, is you can go all in on your business and take really big risks. And that's great for you. Now, maybe you don't plan on, what I would say is maybe you're in that position, but you're planning on, you you wanna get married soon. Maybe you have a girlfriend, fiance, or something like that.

Well, then you have to take that into consideration in building your business because you don't want to build something that causes that relationship to start off sour because you're never there. You're never home. You're always busy. You're taking big risks. You're losing money. And so either I would say you need somebody who's very supportive of that or you need to see if that's really a priority and if maybe success moving forward looks different for you.

You know, maybe you're that young entrepreneur who does have a family, but you're the sole provider. Well, the reality is, is you're not going to be able to make necessarily the same risk because you have to think like, okay, well, how do those risks, how do those decisions affect not just me, but how do they affect my spouse, my kids, and being able to provide

Branden Sewell (09:33.742)
for them. And so that looks much different. And you know, if you're that sole provider, obviously, the sole weight of income relies on you. So you don't have the ability, maybe like, like I have had, I've been off the ladder since I started my business. But maybe for you getting off the ladder is going to take a little bit more time where your approach is going to have to be different. But that's all.

That's all things that you have to take into consideration when you make decisions. It's not just making the decision that, I'm gonna get off the ladder and I want to do what Brandon has done. Well, you have to realize that my life looks a lot different than yours, But, you know, I can tell you that when, you know, I just had this conversation with a buddy of mine recently, he

You know, I don't want to downplay this, but you know, because I am appreciative, but he called me up and, you know, we were talking and he was just saying how much he appreciated me. He, you know, appreciated how hard I work and building this amazing business and and all of these things. And, you know, I I flipped it back on him and I said, you know,

To this person. I said you're you're crushing it. You're you're killing it when I look at you I see somebody that's working extremely hard You you know you're doing in in reality you're working a lot more than I do and Meaning like just physically he does physical labor and but he's he's making really good money And I said, you know

I told him I said our lives look different. I said, so you're crushing it. And like just because you are on the truck still doesn't mean you're not crushing it and doing well. Yes, my life looks different. Yes, I have a team around me. Yes, I don't, you know, I'm not on the truck. But my, but even my stresses and the things that weigh on me.

Branden Sewell (11:58.318)
are different than what weighs and stresses him. you know, I think that's actually how the conversation came up. He said, you know, how do you do it? How do you handle the stress? Like when your business is that has grown to that size? And I said, honestly, I said, we both experienced stress. It's just in different ways. Mine is very mental. It's it's my stress is dealing with the people.

And his stress is like, he's got a ton of work. He's away from home a lot. He's doing the work himself. And, you know, that that's his his battle, right? And then trying to figure out, okay, in the midst of having to keep things rolling and bring in the money to support the lifestyle he's built, how does he keep that going while also trying to figure out how do I get off the ladder? And and so

Really what I'm just trying to like drive home with this episode is that everybody's life is different. And we can't compare ourselves to, you know, the person that we listen to on a podcast, we can't compare ourselves to that person who we think is really successful, and we've read maybe their best selling book. Because our lives are so much different. Now, can we can we take advice

from those people. Can we take things little nuggets of wisdom and strategy and things like that and can we apply them into our business? Yes, but we have to realize that we are going to accomplish different things. We're going to accomplish them at a different rate. We are going to have to go about them in some different ways and

So my encouragement to anyone who's listening to this, who is trying to grow their business, and maybe you're listening to this because you want to get off the ladder, my challenge to you is to figure out where do you fit in those different scenarios that I talked about? Are you that young 20-something entrepreneur? Maybe you're in your 30s, but you don't have a wife and kids.

Branden Sewell (14:23.704)
But let's just say you're that single entrepreneur, no major responsibilities or anything like that. You should go all in on your business and you should be able to get off the ladder really quick. Now you have to tame your lifestyle to accomplish that, but there's no reason that you shouldn't be able to. Now you go to that scenario of someone like me. you're a...

a dual income family, you're both working. There's some factors that you have to take into consideration. Like when I got started, we had minimum debt, we had minimum responsibilities, we didn't have kids yet, we had money saved, and I could take some risk and go all in on my business. But maybe you're in a different situation. Maybe you are a young married couple.

Maybe you don't have kids yet, but maybe you have debt that's holding you back. My suggestion there is like, take care of the debt, take care of the thing that's holding you back, save up some money. Maybe that means that you have to delay getting off the ladder so that you can take care of those things and then go back and, you know,

you once you pay off that debt and save up some money, you can go back and kind of revisit your approach. But you have to take that into consideration. You have to think about how those other things are going to affect your ability to move forward and get off the ladder, because it's not just straightforward. Now, maybe you're that sole provider.

for your family. Well, you have to realize like, okay, well, I have to bring in maybe the amount of money that two people would bring in if two people were working. And so you have to think to yourself, okay, well, that means I have to scale my business to a point that can sustain me getting off the ladder and still maintaining that income.

Branden Sewell (16:39.976)
lifestyle. Now the other option, you have two options there. You can reduce your lifestyle and get off the ladder faster or you can become a dual income family. You could get off the ladder faster but if you're gonna go the route of being a one income family and you're gonna be the sole provider, you just have to realize it might take you longer. But

You know, there's also things that you can do to be wise and speed up that process. Like if you lower your overhead costs, reduce your debt, you know, try to save money, try to be really thrifty in how you run your business. Well, that's going to give you the ability to maybe take some of that saved overhead, take some of that saved, you know, income from paying off debt.

and be able to reallocate that to hiring somebody to help you or hiring more people or saving up money to invest in equipment that you need to grow. all of that to say is those are all things that you have to take into consideration. It's like one of the things that I was telling my buddy when we were having the conversation, I said, you know, the reality is you make more money than I do in personal income.

Like you pay yourself from your business way more than I do. And that's fine. But we have two very different lives. He is a sole provider in his family. I'm not. My wife and I both work. So it's just different. Now what I will say is like if my wife ever decided to stay home and that would change

maybe how I have to do my business. Maybe I have to go out and do some jobs or maybe I'm forced to take some more risks to grow the business so that I can sustain a larger income. But either way, it's just, you you have to consider those things. And so I wouldn't even, like when you're looking at other entrepreneurs who are

Branden Sewell (19:01.582)
maybe what you view as successful, you really have to give yourself some grace and think, okay, well, what is, how are our lives different? And what, what reasons or underlying reasons have they been able to build their business to the point that they have? Because that can look very different for all of us. And like I said, my

For me, my success as a business owner, at least right now in this season of my life, is not to make a ton of money or to make more money. My view of success is time, right? So the more time that I have, and I'm willing to sacrifice income and money for this, is...

That's what's most important to me is time, right? So, you my wife and I, and you know, you have to be on the same page with your spouse. My wife and I had a talk a couple years ago when our son was younger. And, you know, I said to her, hey, if you want to stay home, and you want to be a stay at home mom, then let's do that. I said, but what I want you to realize is that that is going to require

for me to not really be as present, right? And we both talked through it and we were like, okay, well, what we would rather do is have a healthy two person income household. And for both of us to be present in our kids lives. So it's like, you know, I have some really strict boundaries, like I don't pay myself a ton of money, but I also

I don't work past a certain time every day. I'm present with my kids. I play with my kids in the evening. We have dinner together as a family. My weekends are off limits. I don't work on Saturdays. Saturdays are our family day. That's our day for us to have fun, to relax, and to focus on family. And Sundays, that's church.

Branden Sewell (21:26.7)
That's just how I've decided to structure our lives. So my wife and I both get home at reasonable times every day. We both are able to spend time with our kids on Saturdays and we both are able to go to church as a family on Sundays. so, you know, like I said, the reality is, if my wife was a stay at home mom to replace that income,

then I might have to work, you know, 12 hour days or, you know, whatever, whatever it takes. I might have to work six days a week instead of five days. And my time demand would maybe be a lot different. But again, we made this decision together that this was how we were going to build our lives. And that looks different for everybody. Some people have different opinions on

You know, I have a lot of friends who, you know, believe that, okay, it's the husband's role to be the provider and the wife stays at home. And look, if that's, if that's how you want to live, if that's how you want to build your life, then that is 100 % okay. That is fine. But it, you know, your business is just going to look different for you.

than it does for me. So you can't base your success on what I've done because it's just different. So anyway, that's a little bit of what I wanted to talk about. And just not comparing, realizing like everybody's priorities are different. Everybody's lives are different. There's a lot of circumstances that are different for each one of us.

that cause us to make the decisions that we make, give us the freedom or flexibility to do what we do in our businesses. So build the business that serves you and serves your family. And if it's not accomplishing what you want it to, then maybe you need to go back to the drawing board and say, hey, look, I started this business because I wanted, you know, this. It's not giving me what I wanted. So how do I change that?

Branden Sewell (23:51.688)
And that might mean that not just your business needs to change, it might mean that your personal life has to change. Maybe there's strategic decisions that you have to make. I mean, my wife and I are just having the conversation recently that like right now we have two kids. If we had more kids, the reality is there would be the potential that my wife would become a stay at home mom.

And there's no guarantee to that decision, but it's just something that we talk about. It's like life changes, circumstances of life changes. And sometimes that means that you have to do things differently. But you know, what that would do for me is it would change what day to day life looks like for me. It would change what business looks like for me. It's going to

change the things that motivate me and what, you know, is driving me to make the decisions that I make. anyway, I hope that if you're listening to this, you're, you know, just taking away that as you look at your business, you know, absolutely look to different sources for wisdom.

for inspiration and to help you grow your business. But don't beat yourself up. Don't discount the success that you're having because somebody's life and somebody's success looks different than yours. You could be a $500,000 business offering amazing service, a product, whatever it is, and

making a healthy amount of money for yourself and taking care of your team and your community. And that's great. You could also be a million dollar multimillion dollar business. And, you know, you could have a really big team, and you might make less money, or maybe more, I don't know.

Branden Sewell (26:16.29)
but it might not be what success looks like for that $500,000 company. And so if your business is serving you, if it's accomplishing and giving you what you want, then that's successful. And if you want to scale it and you want to do more, that's great, but don't discount where you are and what you've been able to accomplish based on other people.

So that's my message for you guys today. You know, and then on a on a quick other note that I wanted to jump into. So recently, I've I made the decision this is like a just sharing some of my journey as a as a business owner and hopes that it helps you guys who are listening. Something that I've wrestled with for years.

is, you know, this this thought of like, you know, extra meetings, or team gatherings being unnecessary or unfruitful, in the sense that, you know, nobody likes a meeting necessarily that could be accomplished via an email or a text message, right?

So like unnecessary meetings just for the sake of having a meeting is it can be frustrating for everybody. And so I've I've avoided having meetings for years. I've also just had this like underlying feeling that my team could care less whether they meet with me on a regular basis. But I did have an individual meeting with a

an employee recently and I just shared I said, Hey, you know, I've really thought about and I've wanted to having, you know, this meeting with the production team at the shop and meeting there early before job starts and like getting a shop early. But I was like, I just want to hear what your thoughts are. I and I shared mine. I said that personally, I was like, I don't know if you guys would look at it as like

Branden Sewell (28:40.942)
unnecessary or burdensome or just like, you know, something that would make you guys frustrated or annoyed, rather than feeling like seen served and and just really helped in what you do day to day and his response to me is like, I think that would be great. I was like, really, like, so you think we should do this? And so

Anyway, we started this early morning production meeting and it's been great getting all the guys together at the shop. You know, we've been doing it just on Mondays now to start. So we do. We'll just come in and look at the week, look at what we have going on, you know, kind of talk strategically about what we're going to try to accomplish that week, maybe challenges that we're facing, things that we need to get done.

and really just come together and attack it together. And so that's been good. the reason why I bring that up is, you know, just because it's something that I had to overcome as a business owner. It's almost like this feeling of it's weird, like almost feeling like my employees like don't want to do anything with me or be involved with me like.

they like almost like they would view me as like the guy who's just like showing up to like be like the I don't want to say like cop but like, you know, overlooking everything that they do and like micromanaging them and stuff like that. I was like, I don't want them to view me that way. I want them to feel like they have freedom and autonomy to make decisions and

to do what they feel is best without me micromanaging or feeling like I have to be overly involved in everything. anyway, I just wanted to share that it's going well and maybe you're having that same struggle. Maybe you're wanting to implement some things with your team, you're not sure how they're going to take it.

Branden Sewell (31:04.622)
One thing that I would say is just like ask and get feedback and like if you get good feedback then go for it and see how it goes. So anyway with that said I'm going to wrap up this episode of this podcast and I just want to thank everybody for tuning in today. If you're listening on you know whether it's YouTube please like this video comment share your feedback.

Share it with somebody else if you found something helpful and subscribe to the channel if you're listening on Apple or Spotify or any other major podcast platform Please rate and review the show and then also just as always down below in the show notes. I have some Support for you guys some resources and if you're needing a CRM a payroll platform a way to automate your reviews

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on the next episode of the Off the Ladder podcast.