Balancing Act: Why and How I Made Major Shifts for Success

“Have you ever taken a vacation and not done any work?”

The question came from a dear friend shortly after our two families spent a week in a Cancun resort. That week, I’d delayed more than one trip to the pool to take calls or send emails. Silence stretched as I searched my memories.

“There was one time I went somewhere without my laptop. But that was only three days,” I told her.

The question prompted deeper reflection. The past six months have brought major, positive change after I promised myself to focus on better work/life balance after coming out of the pandemic lockdown.

The anniversary of my father’s death is my annual reminder not only of how much I love and miss him, but also that I don’t want to work 60 to 80 hours a week until I die like my Dad did. Both of my sons are now in high school, which in many ways requires more focused, present parenting than when they were little.

On top of all that, I have an increasingly painful and problematic spine and other health issues that have required two surgeries in 12 months.

Courtney DeMatteo, certified transformational life coach and certified business coaching consultant, said your body is your biggest clue to whether your life is in balance.

“In my world, I believe in a very strong connection between the mind and the body,” she said. “If they’re coming out with a lot of stress-related illnesses, that’s a big warning sign, a house-on-fire kind of warning sign. I think the best thing we can do is learn how to listen to our body.”

My body was screaming at me. I finally chose to listen to it instead of the 51 years of conditioning that it was all up to me. For 30 years, I’d devoted the majority of my time to developing my businesses, serving clients, and staying on top of a dynamic, demanding industry. I sought support from DeMatteo, other professionals, and loved ones as I worked to shift my focus to a more balanced lifestyle, something I knew I wanted but had no direct experience with.

“We think ‘balance’ means everything is even all the time. That’s not what balance means,” DeMatteo said. “In order to be balanced, sometimes you do have to put more effort or energy into your business; sometimes you have to put more energy and effort into your family. I think a big key question is, can I do what I need to when I need to? If my kid is sick, do I have the ability to go to school and pick up my kid and take care of my kid, versus having to ask someone’s permission and there’s either a consequence for that or a flat-out ‘no’ to that.”

But as a business owner, wife, and mother, I struggle to get it all done. And I really, really want to succeed.

DeMatteo suggests we reconsider how we define “success.”

“There’s a toxic ideology when it comes to the 60- to 80-hour work week and the expectations that are out there, which I think COVID has done a lot to bring to the surface,” she said. “I’m honestly seeing people not tolerating those expectations from their supervisors anymore and leaving industries because of it.”

In what’s been dubbed The Great Resignation, almost 47 million people voluntarily left their jobs in 2021. The pandemic proved working from home is not only possible but in many ways more productive. It also likely prompted most of us to consider what really matters to us and how we want to spend our limited time, DeMatteo said.

“It really was a wakeup call,” she said. “We perceive something as being negative, but when you look back on it, you see all the good that came out of it.”

A big part of the good that has come out of my painful reflections was the realization that I needed to hire the right person to take over the day-to-day operations of my business so I could step back.

Coincidentally, Kevin Knebel came on as our new chief operating officer in January as part of a major rebalancing of his own life. He’d held global leadership roles in large Fortune 500 companies and is no stranger to the corporate environment. He once took a work call while on a Minnesota fishing boat because the customer was upset and wanted leadership commitment on a project timeline. He also remembers taking a flight to Amsterdam to spend half a day in person with a customer to salvage that relationship.

So, he came to work for our 40-person family of companies because—like me—he wanted to focus more on his family and have greater freedom to enjoy his life.

“Sometimes in a career you have to reflect and reprioritize and rebalance. That’s what I did,” Knebel said. “From a career standpoint, it’s perceived I may have taken a step back. But for my work/life balance standpoint, I’m going in the right direction.”

Having Knebel on board enabled me to focus my time on what I do best, step back from tasks that don’t require my level of expertise, and devote more attention to my family. It’s also showing my team I know they’ll succeed in their respective roles with less input from me. It’s about maintaining a culture of trust and accountability.

“It goes back to trust in your team,” Knebel said. “I think it’s really making sure you’ve got empowered people who can make sound business decisions. Nobody should be the make-it-or-break-it person for the business. It’s building the team and the culture so you’ve got longevity in the business.“

It’s also about fostering a culture where people feel valued, heard, and respected. Often, that’s easier in a small business like ours. But on the heels of the Great Resignation, it appears at least some business leaders are learning the same lessons Knebel and I are embracing. More than 3,000 Brits became part of the largest four-day work week pilot on June 6, 2022. Without cutting pay, over 70 different businesses allowed employees in the program to work 80% of their previous time commitment with the promise that they’d maintain 100% productivity.

“I think it comes down to recognizing from a boss perspective that they are employing human beings, not robots,” DeMatteo said. “The more they expect them to act like robots, the sooner they’re going to burn them out and drive them away.”

I deeply appreciate the people who have been a part of my business. Because of the talent that shows up to work here every day, Empirical was sold this year to become part of the Applied Technical Services family of companies. I’m still president of Empirical and committed to its success, but this was yet another opportunity for me to refine my role and rebalance my life. Having Knebel in his role has helped that transition. Like me, he continues to walk the line between ensuring both clients and our own families are fully cared for.

Unlike me, he recently took a family trip where he did absolutely zero work.

“This year was the first time I’ve actually really taken a vacation,” he said. “I knew the Empirical team had me covered. I wasn’t stressed about what was happening day to day. It was a great feeling.”

If you’d like to learn more about finding your own balance, check out DeMatteo’s free Uplevel World Summit online Sept. 23-25. 

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Dawn Lissy is a biomedical engineer, entrepreneur, and innovator. Since 1998, Empirical Technologies Corp. has operated under Lissy’s direction. Empirical offers the full range of regulatory and quality systems consulting, testing, small batch and prototype manufacturing, and validations services to bring a medical device to market. Empirical is very active within standards development organization ASTM International and has one of the widest scopes of test methods of any accredited independent lab in the United States. Because Lissy was a member of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Entrepreneur-in-Residence program, she has first-hand, in-depth knowledge of the regulatory landscape. Lissy holds an inventor patent for the Stackable Cage System for corpectomy and vertebrectomy. Her M.S. in biomedical engineering is from The University of Akron, Ohio.