One of the biggest lessons I learned since jumping full-time into entrepreneurship hit me like a truck. So evident that you can’t ignore it and if you try too, it only comes on stronger until it forces you to listen. Like it did to me.

What was that lesson?

How important it is to build your business around your life and not your life around your business. By doing so, your well-being, your health and actually living life (#worklifebalance)  remains as the foundation as you build the structures of your business from the ground up.

Any highly successful entrepreneur knows this and whether they like it or not, will end up prioritizing it. Because your well-being affects everything from your energy to time management to how you show up for yourself in your workday, for your clients on calls or for projects you are managing. 

Ignore your health and you are ignoring everything. But I have good news for you.

It gets to be simple. 

Here are some super simple secrets of the Everyday Healthy Entrepreneur  👇🏻

1) If you want to be successful in business, get a life. 

OUCH. Unpopular opinion but it’s true. Your business is not your life. Failing to recognize you have a life that needs attention, outside your business, is putting you 3 steps behind, severely hurting your daily grind  and taking a toll on your health.

This is your wake up call. Start by “dating” yourself again to understand who you are outside of work.

Explore: what your interests are, what are hobbies you haven’t done in a while but would love to and answer this question (unfiltered) “if I am living my best life and having an amazing day, what’s making me happy and what’s happening?” This can give insight to what you need to add more into your days, monthly planning or holidays to explore.

2) Build your business around your life. Not the other way around.

Who else has fallen into this trap? 

*raises hand*  Pretty much every entrepreneur I know and every one of my clients, along with myself, have gone through this. It’s far too easy to fall into the glorified hustle & grind mode, but guess what? You can still hustle, while you build that around your life. That’s key to balance.

In a secret course release I have coming up for you, I’ll be breaking down how to do this in a variety of simple ways, but in the meantime I’ll give you one “kickstarter” to begin 😉

Next time you go to plan your week, write down the healthy lifestyle things that you are typically the most inconsistent down FIRST. Examples: your workouts, meal planning, boundaries, water habits, etc. Then plan your week & individual days around those – only after those are planned out first.

3) Make the 6 Ps Sacred: Prior planning prevents piss poor performance

I heard this phrase for the first time while my husband was active duty in the Marine Corps. The 6 Ps highlights exactly where I see entrepreneurs miss the bullseye when it comes to their productivity + performance – every single day. 

You plan everything down to what content goes out when, revenue projections, launches, when your next podcast gets released and seek all the strategies. BUT it’s not the strategy that makes the needle move forward or helps you hit the revenue goal you want…

It’s the execution. And failing to plan for your wellness only leads to piss poor performance including energy that sucks, you running on empty and playing reactive mode. And you can bet, leading entrepreneurs aren’t playing in a reactive mode, but proactively integrating wellness into their plans.

And just like outsourcing to a VA or OBM, outsourcing your wellness plans to an expert like myself is essential so we can customize them to you, your life and your business in the most simple ways so that they are sustainable.

How can you start? Think about your sleep, your routines and rituals and your habits. How can you design these to fuel your workday?

One simple suggestion 👉🏻 Outline what these “rituals” can look like quarterly and implement them immediately. Each quarter, audit it and see if it suits the season you are in and if not, get rid of it and adjust it!

4) Don’t rely on motivation, rely on what drives consistency.

Motivation, the real life roller coaster that comes and goes faster than someone’s attention span on a post as they continue their scroll fest.

But seriously though, relying on motivation is a failing plan from the start. Just like you wouldn’t rely on ‘hope’ for a business strategy, you don’t rely on ‘motivation’ to take ownership of your health and wellness. Instead, focus on building discipline in your everyday life.

Here’s a couple ways of how to build discipline when it comes to your health + wellness:

• Know  what your motivation drivers are and own it: these are things that personally help you stay disciplined in taking action and support momentum such as external support like being held accountable to coach, constructive criticism check points, purpose or knowing your deep why that brings a vision to life. 
• Prime your motivation: this is a routine, small action or primer you put in place that slingshots you into full “on” mode. It should be easy enough that you can do it without thinking. Examples: putting on your fav pair of headphones and turning on music as you hit a new workout, saying “let’s go” and anchoring it as you open up the fridge to create something new, walking on your patio with a cup of coffee first thing without any distractions like phones for quiet time. These are simple behaviors that push you right into the thing you need motivation to do – without thinking.
• Take it one step at a time and focus on only that one thing. Whenever you are feeling overwhelmed, it’s actually you saying you need “clarity” in what to do – first. Same approach here. If you try too many things at once, this leads to inconsistencies, burnout on motivation and lack of discipline to take place. Instead, focus on one habit at a time and only be consistent at that. This builds effortless habits that just become a part of your routine.

Tell me, what’s something you would love discipline on when it comes to your health + wellness?

5) Know your secret ingredient(s) to what keeps your consistent

Any healthy entrepreneur would tell you, they know what makes them consistent when it comes to prioritizing their health, even when life tries to get in the way. Life is already complicated enough and when it comes to consistency, it can be as simple as this.

Complete this exercise:

1. What one habit do you want to be more consistent with?
2. Now think of a time when you were / would you be consistent with (insert your answer here), what was happening, what was in place, what was not there?
3. Now take 1-3 of the answers you listed in step 2 and implement those immediately – either by planning them into your weekly planner or implementing those actions daily.

Example: Habit: drinking water. What helped me in the past: When I have my full hydroflask with me, when it’s flavored with fruits naturally, whenever I create a specific amount I want to drink per day, etc. So now my action would be: fill up my hydroflask each morning, add some fresh fruit like lemon, make a goal of 2 per day by the end of the workday.

Share with me your answers below in the comments.

6) Simple habits lead to great change

The power of a habit is one of the most simple, yet overlooked aspects when it comes to getting healthier. Habits are the very thing that is ingrained in your everyday life, regardless if you like it or not. You do them daily, most of the time without even thinking or realizing it.

Habits are the foundation to build success, wealth, connections, health and deep transformations from the inside out starting with our mindset to the actions we do daily. 

If you are going to embody this next level CEO, looking at your habits is non-negotiable. 

Try this Simply Wellness habits assessment to start: 

• On day 1, try to write a list of as many habits that you notice. What are you doing automatically? What feels good? What feels forced? What’s lacking? Dump your insights in a list.
• On day 2, take this list and create two columns. Column 1: what you like. Column 2: what needs attention which can be anything you don’t like, what feels forced or what’s lacking.

Now that you know what needs to stay vs what goes, you can start honing in on what habit(s) you will focus on moving forward. From there, we can break this down into the most simple steps, where you don’t even have to think about it.

What’s your “Set It and Forget It” Habit you’re going to focus on? 😉

7) Flexible Routine, Guiltless Living.

Building a healthy routine doesn’t have to take 2-3 hours out of your workday or be this extensive “thing” that you need to commit hours to. As an expert in this field as a Wellness Dietitian and someone who has worked with countless entrepreneurs, I have seen routines either: help or hinder you depending on how they are created.

Complicated routines or routines that are created from copying someone else or because you read it somewhere online often lead to:

-Feeling guilty if you weren’t able to do the full routine

-Feeling “behind” when your schedule quickly changes from day-to-day

-Feeling overwhelmed because the routine wasn’t flexible to your unpredictable schedule

So instead 👉🏻strip it back and streamline it with this Routine Audit using the Simply Wellness Method:

1. Write down your routine (AM, PM or workday)
2. Create three columns – Need, Like, Follow. Fill in your current routine in the appropriate column. Need = What do you *need* to happen that sets the tone for your day and without it you feel bananas. Like = what do you like doing but don’t necessarily need. Follow = what you started doing bc you saw it help someone else.
3. Strip it all back and re-do your routine only focusing on the “need” category. The rest can go. 

Tell me: What needs to happen in your routine to keep you sane, on time and not feel like your wheels are falling off?

8) Redesign with negative space in mind

You’re probably thinking, “What? I don’t want negative space.” But the truth is – you do! By negative space, I mean we are creating an environment that is clear, organized and has negative space (aka white space) for you to breathe and not be distracted by (which is a major time killer, energy waster and distractor of focus).

Countless entrepreneur clients of mine have shared with me how much this makes a difference in their life. Example,  when your life feels chaotic and you don’t know why, first take a look around. Even if you hate clearing spaces, cleaning and organizing – it’s not about whether you like it or not. It’s about what works for YOU that can help take away added stress, chaotic negativity and create a space that empowers you not to rely on willpower, saves you money by using what you have and be able to plan, simply. 

One space to start with is your kitchen. One of my favorite Simply Wellness exercises includes doing an environment audit + redesign, which I dive into in The Ultimate Wellness Kickstarter, but in the meantime try this simple exercise to get you started:

1. Take a look at one space (i.e. pantry, fridge, freezer, counters, office space, car, etc).
2. Identify what are the barriers in the space that stop you from living healthier (i.e lots of bags / boxes that are solid and you can’t see into, unorganized gym bag, lack of having enough healthy fresh fruit options, tons of expired items that need to probably get thrown out *frostbite anyone?!)
3. Re-organize that one space in a way that adds “negative” white space, organization, and the things you need to support that healthy action.

Immediately, you’ll notice a mental reset happen while simultaneously designing an environment that supports effortless healthy habits you can do with ease. 

Share with me: What space needs some tender love and care to support your healthy habits?

9) Stick to simple nutrition

How do you currently look at food? As a chore, something daunting, a foreign place you have been procrastinating to explore? Whatever the case might be, I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be this way. It gets to be simple, flexible and work for you. Sounds so much better right?

Shift your mindset when it comes to nutrition and start looking at how it can benefit your day! So many of my clients have found the secret to simplicity through our coaching calls and how much this benefits them immediately when it comes to their energy, productivity, stress, time, money, confidence, business output, sex life…the list goes on! But one the best things is how they begin to feel so much better – immediately. And by immediately, I mean feel good right now type-thing… not them waiting until they hit a “revenue” goal to start focusing on their health. They start and feel it immediately, knowing their business and themselves benefit largely as a byproduct! 

So how can you start to embrace this “simplism” when it comes to your nutrition?

Next time you shop, just look at what you put in your cart! Is it filled with processed crap that you can’t read or are most of your meals taken out full of fast food? Embrace “simplism” by choosing more whole foods that are packed with nutrients. Make 50% of your cart whole foods like fruits, veggies, nuts, seeds, beans, lentils, poultry, fish, etc. 

Easy to read, label-less foods. This is Mother Nature’s Fast food and it’s time to embrace it.

10) Time is what you prioritize

How many times have you told yourself in the past week, “I don’t have time for _____!”

When you read between the lines, this is you saying, “I am not prioritizing ______ at this time.”

And guess what? That’s okay. But own that! 

The Healthy Everyday Entrepreneur will tell you that they intentionally choose to prioritize their health + wellness. And then plan accordingly. They don’t let “time” act as an excuse. #REALTALK 

Instead, they use the techniques I’ve talked about including embracing simplicity, habits, long term behaviors that integrate a work life balance that includes themselves and their health at the core. Everything else comes after.

So next time, you catch yourself saying, “I don’t have time for___” 👉🏻reframe it and say “I am not prioritizing at this time.”

Tell me: what have you been guilty of saying you don’t have time for when really you just haven’t prioritized it…yet.Love this blog? Want to learn more? Check out our Simply Well Society, our wellness membership and community built for the busy person in mind!