Friendship

This past weekend one of my best buddies got married and I was given the honor of being the best man. Now I'll be honest, part of me was looking forward to the weekend away and part of me was wishing I could be home getting some work done. By the end of the weekend I realized that I've been neglecting the amazing friendships that I have.

First off, congratulations go out to Adam and Meagan. May your marriage be blessed with love and happiness for the rest of your lives. Second, I'm pretty proud of myself for not screwing up the toast - I actually got a bunch of compliments about it and that always feels good.

Now what does all of this have to do with being an entrepreneur? Everything in my case. Over the past two years I've slowly grown away from some of my best friends. Before this weekend I thought it was just a natural kind of thing that happened over time as people grow up and that it was one of the sacrifices that I needed to make to succeed. Boy was I wrong. Our wedding party has been friends for the past 10 years. We've gone through thick and thin together, and even though we are scattered all over the country now, their friendship is as important to me as anything else in the world.

In our line of work, I think you'll always feel like you are either neglecting your business or neglecting your friends and family. The problems start to occur when you're always neglecting one of them. I've been spending TOO much time on my businesses and I think it's hurting me all around. It's certainly hurt my friendships and it's probably resulted in me putting too much pressure on myself to perform as an entrepreneur.

I'm just glad that I was able to figure this out this past weekend and not after I burnt myself out and screwed up every relationship in my life. It was the first time that I truly wasn't thinking about business for an extended time in the past two years. From now on, I've really, really got to make sure that I do that more often.