To calculate return on investment in your “Life Businesses” draw two pie charts. One represents the total energy you “get” from all of your life’s activities. The second reflects the total energy you “give.”

Now list each “Life Business” you engage in. These might include, parent, spouse, athlete, nutritionist, party animal, sports fan, TV or movie critic, book worm, community leader, spiritual guru, and of course your own Hudson Valley business career.

Divide the first pie chart by assigning a percentage equal to the amount of energy you get from each of the “Life Businesses” just listed. Then do the same to the second chart by showing the percentage of your energy you give to each separate “Life Business.”

Lynette Seawall, President and CEO of Performance Plus of Woodstock, helps business owners work smarter to find time for play thru her management consulting, training and coaching business. “Start by visualizing your ‘ideal life’ and then look carefully at each of your existing Life Businesses,” Lynette suggests.

She continues, “many workaholics want to spend more time in higher payout Life Businesses like parent, athlete or spouse but have great difficulty doing so. They find that blocking out time, just as they would for an important business meeting, has been the only workable method.”

“Exercise creates more energy and clears the head,” says Lynette “and some clients have found themselves solving complex “Life Business” issues while jogging, swimming, on the tread mill or bike.

What are the surprises you find when you look at your Life Business Pie Charts? What is important about these surprises? Which businesses return good value for your investment of time, energy, and money? Which do not? Is your overall enterprise profitable, is more energy coming in than going out?

What do you value most? It could be your creativity, security, integrity, friendship, family, or health. Using a scale of one to five to assign two ratings: How important is the value to you? How present in your life was it last year?

“Life Businesses” may change in the future. You can predict that a 10-year-old car will need replacement, a 9-year old child will take a different view of family vacations soon, and your mother-in-law will go back home eventually.

As we in the Hudson Valley examine our “Life Businesses,” not all the news will be good. If you were an outside investor, what issues would you want addressed before you invested in one or more troubled businesses?

Are you receiving a positive payback from each business in terms of energy, time, and money? Measure the energy, assess the trends, and develop possible responses. With that solid foundation of assessment, you can create the business of “your life.”

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