Mastering the life Balancing act

Introducing Sir Richard Burton

On a trip this year to teach at the University of Edinburgh, I was introduced to Sir Richard Burton. Not the Richard Burton of Hollywood fame, but the perhaps an even more intriguing Richard - Richard Burton who is the CEO of HoodEasy.com, a fast-growing start-up in the online retail space.

Of course, meeting an entrepreneur who is ramping to millions of dollars in profit, and creating a global business is nothing new - but meeting an entrepreneur who is a Sophomore in college and ramping up something this significant is something completely different.

Richard's story is captured nicely in this video snippet...

The dilemma of the college entrepreneur

Perhaps you can feel Richard's pain - he is a very intelligent young man who would likely do well in school, just resting on his cognitive abilities, but Richard has another problem. Every waking moment of his day, he is faced with the reality that at a start-up the work is NEVER done. Quite impossible therefore to every feel complete. Add on top of that a healthy does of homework, classes, paper and reading and you have the recipe for IMBALANCE.

How to balance college life and work life

From my experience in teaching thousands of students and working with hundreds of entrepreneurs in the past year, there are several ways to bring work & life into balance in the college environment:

1) Set reasonable goals: Is it reasonable to graduate magna cum laude AND grow a start-up company to $10 million in revenues at the same time. Probably not. So, take a look at which priorities are more important (money or degree) and accept the fact that doing 2 or more "big ideas" at once may not be workable. In Richard's case, he has several options - he can postpone/defer school for 2 years, he can shift to a more manageable school (community college for example) where less time/energy is needed to pass, or he can hire a CEO to run his company and keep equity in his company as the founder.
2) Learn how to delegate - if you have a business that is doing well, and you happen to be in college at the same time, then use the profits coming in from the business to delegate key workings of the business to a staff. Then use YOUR available time to managing the process. In Richard's case, he can hire a seasoned worker to execute on his plans, or he can hire a CEO (by giving away equity) to run the company.
3) Run the company for school credit - believe it or not, I've run into several students over the years who managed to find a school and specific classes where they got school credit for analyzing, strategizing, and executing on plans that directly benefited their company. Richard, for example, might use his Marketing Course to work on a paper outlining the benefits of SEO, SEM and social media marketing campaigns for e-commerce sites - at the same time directly benefiting his company. A related idea is to enter the company into a university business plan contest. Of course, students in an MBA-like environment would be in the best position to try this advice out.
4) Leverage other students - It is possible to get interns to help with some of the tasks of the company at no/low wages. Where possible, create programs that reward the students, give them valuable work experience and make their college life more "practical". Richard, for example, might train several U Edinburgh MBA/PHd students to relieve his day-to-day tasks by taking on small management roles, analyzing the business, or helping with administrative tasks.

Many would argue that there really is no way to balance entrepreneurship and college at the same time. When a truly great idea comes along, you do as Jerry Yang/Dave Filo of Yahoo, or Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook did - you leave college to focus on the singular thing of your passion. Steve Jobs, perhaps one of the most famous entrepreneurs exemplifies this - Steve has a reputation for building Apple Computer on his obsession for focus, details, and work - for many years at the exclusion of friends, family and hobbies.

You decide - option for balance, or need for focus?

As a professor at U.C. Berkeley's Haas School, I see a variety of students throughout the year - each of them with their own issues of work and life balance. I've come to realize that the College Years present their own unique set of life balance issues.

Why Am I In School in the First Place? The typical student is at college for one of three reasons: (a) to get that degree so they can move on into the working world (checking education off the list), (b) to "find themselves", or (c) develop a specialized skill (typically this is the graduate student, but not always).

The student who is in the "finding themselves" model often dives deeply into a variety of classes, readings, discussions, activities and social settings, often experimenting and testing new ideas or life-styles out. This seems normal and healthy to me, and is one of the wonderful things about the typical "liberal arts" college - the university presents a smorgasbord of activities, courses, and cultures - and it's up to the student to navigate their way through, explore, play, have some fun and eventually choose a life course. Typical focus is class work, social life (think fraternity, sorority), and physical fitness. An emerging focus on many campuses is politics, social causes and community-based projects or programs.

Students in the "finding themselves" mode often seem out of balance. But, is this a good thing or a bad thing? At this stage of life, there is definitely less focus on prioritizing making money, work/career, and could be less focus on family as well. Depending upon the student, there could be more or less focus on God and the spiritual side of life.

This video of a student shows that it's possible to actually have some balance while in the exploration mode at school.



In the video, Elise - a student at Baylor University in Texas - points to six ways to achieve balance while at college:

1. Have an action plan -- do some thinking before arriving on campus, talk with friends and family and come up with an action plan for how you'd like to balance out your life...
2. Friends to hold you accountable -- Idenfity friends and/or family who can help hold you accountable to your plan.
3. God Can Help You Through Any Situation -- Know that your relationship with God or a higher being can help you get through any situation.
4. Keep Things in Perspective - it's ok to work your hardest and achieve good grades if that is part of your plan - but keep in mind that there is more to Life than just school
5. Serve Your Community -- Helping others in need, in the community, through community or church programs can be a great way to contribute to society and keep yourself balanced at the same time.
6. Pray for Guidance -- remember you are not alone and you can always seek Him for guidance on any life balance issue.

In the end, the college years may be purposefully out of balance, but there are always ways to keep a check on the things that are most important to you and use your Faith to center yourself in your college years.

I am writing this latest blog, in our series on what we can learn from the world's great religions, from the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Yesterday, I saw one of the most unique images in my life: Palestinian musicians playing a British tune on Scottish bagpipes in an ancient Roman amphitheater in the center of the Arab world. And then, from overhead, a military transport helicopter flew low over the amphitheater to land nearby to drop off relatives of the royal family.



What an incredible world we live in.

We were touring the ancient Roman ruins of Jerash, which are truly spectacular. We wondered among temples dedicated to Zeus and Dionysus, visited several churches from the 5th and 6th century A.D. and heard regular calls to prayer from various mosques throughout the city - all within a stone's throw of each other. As we journeyed, I was struck by two things.

First, the passing of times, and kingdoms, and civilizations is inevitable. Only the abiding presence of God is constant.

Second, the world has always been, and always will be, a dynamic place. Cultures and religions have always bumped up against each other, and they will continue to do so. Sometimes those bumps have resulted in wars or other acts of violence. Sometimes, they manifest themselves - almost unconsciously - in the music of Palestinian musicians on Scottish bagpipes.

What does this mean to the question of faith and life balance?

God works through us, throughout the ages, in many and mysterious ways. He forces us together, into relationship, so that we make see the full truth of God's grace. If we can be open to these relationships, to see God's grace within them, we may well find a greater understanding of faith within ourselves. And with that understanding, of God's presence in all of us - regardless of our culture differences - may come the balance that we all seek in the world.

My job as an international management consultant allows me to work with people from many cultures around the world. And, by working with these people, I am able to develop relationships that go deeper than the two-dimensional images we typically see of foreign cultures. On occasion, I also get a glimpse of how individuals and societies are able to incorporate their faith into daily life. I am often struck, at these moments, about how much we have to learn about life balance from them.

For example, the Muslim faith calls people to pray five times a day. It is an immensely powerful feeling to hear the call to prayer at dawn every morning from the various mosques and minarets scattered throughout every village and city in the Middle East. Some mornings, I wish the call came a little after dawn, say around 10 am so I could sleep! Nevertheless, the call is an important reminder to begin our day with God. The call, even in a language I do not understand, is the first voice I hear to pull me from sleep.

The call to prayer effectively calls me into the day - to start the search for life balance with God, front and center - and that is not a bad way to start. While on a recent trip to Egypt, I was fortunate to record a video of a colleague, a Muslim woman, who was happy to share her perspective on faith. You can see this video in our Video Library. She spoke of the psychological aspects of prayer. In other words, in addition to the benefits of communicating with God on a regular basis, the calls to prayer force people to take a break from the chaos of life.

Regular, scheduled prayer forces people to schedule God into their daily schedule. This does not mean that everyone goes to Mosque to pray en masse, as we often see on television. Instead, during the work day, for example, people will quietly close the door to their office, or go to a room designated for prayer, or sometimes simply lay a small piece of carpet in a hallway. Then, they will devote themselves to God.

This act, as my colleague pointed out, helps to put our lives in perspective. As she says in one of the videos, "Our lives are a chaos." Prayer helps to ground us in God amid the chaos. And that perspective helps to maintain some level of life balance.