What This Mother’s Day Reminds Me About Time
What This Mother’s Day Reminds Me About Time
Don’t undervalue the irreplaceable hours you spend with the people you love
This past year, I lost my mom. Grief has a way of rearranging your priorities without asking permission, and with Mother’s Day this month, I’m thinking about her very much. One of the things losing her made unmistakably clear is how precious time actually is, not as a concept, but as the specific, irreplaceable hours you spend with the people you love.
So when my dad said yes to joining Mark and me on an upcoming trip, I felt something I can only describe as deep gratitude. He didn’t have to say yes. He could have stayed home, stayed comfortable, stayed safe. But he said yes, and now the three of us are going together, and I already know it will be one of those experiences I carry with me for the rest of my life.
Here’s what makes it possible: I built a business I can actually leave.
That didn’t happen overnight, and it didn’t happen by accident.
The Life I’m Actually Living 
I want to tell you a little about my life outside of HireSmart, because I think it matters to this conversation.
Every morning, I check on my chickens. There is something genuinely grounding about caring for living things that have no interest in your inbox or your quarterly numbers. Back inside, my miniature schnauzers, Coco and Emma, are never far from my feet. I paint watercolors when I have the time and give beauty my best shot. I keep a garden that requires my attention and rewards it. Mark and I have a dream about a home near the river someday, and we return to that vision often, not as a fantasy we defer to some distant future, but as a direction we are actively moving toward.
I also spend time in local schools talking to students about their futures and what the working world actually looks like. I show up for business owners in my community who are doing their best and facing real challenges, because I remember what it felt like to be in their shoes. I love those conversations. I love the people in them.
And for the past couple of years, Mark and I have been taking cruises together. That might sound like a small thing, but for a long time it wasn’t possible. We went many years without a real vacation while we were building HireSmart from the ground up. Those were lean, challenging years, and I don’t regret them. But they were never supposed to be permanent. A life that is only work is not the goal. It was never the goal.
The Trap Nobody Talks About
Here is something I notice in almost every conversation I have with a business owner who is struggling: their life has gotten very small. Not because they wanted it to. It happened gradually, one skipped evening at a time, one cancelled trip, one thing after another that the business needed more than they did.
I understand how it happens. When you are building something, sacrifice feels like the right call. And sometimes it truly is. But somewhere along the way, for a lot of owners, the sacrifice stopped being a season and became the whole story. The business that was supposed to give them freedom became the thing that consumed it.
According to Gallup’s 2024 State of the Global Workplace report, roughly a quarter of leaders feel burned out often or always, and two-thirds report experiencing it at least sometimes. Those aren’t just numbers. That’s a lot of people who built something significant and are now running on empty inside it.
I want to gently push back on the idea that a full life is something you earn after you’ve succeeded. The creativity that comes from painting something on a Saturday morning feeds directly into how I solve problems on Monday. The rest I get on a cruise deck with my husband clears my thinking in ways that another hour at my desk never could. The time I spend in my garden, or with my dogs, or dreaming about that river house, reminds me what I am actually building toward. That clarity makes me a better leader, a better partner, and a better business owner.
Fun is not a reward for hard work. For people wired the way I am, finding order in disorder, untangling a complicated problem, building something where there was nothing before, that is the fun. And it is most available to you when the rest of your life is full enough to fuel it.
What a Tethered Business Actually Costs You
I’ve said this many times to people who are stuck: if you are tethered to your business that much, you own a job, not a business. And a business that relies entirely on you is one that limits your impact, not one that expands it.
Years ago, before we built the right team structure at HireSmart, I went on what should have been my first real vacation in years. My marketing manager quit via text before I’d even unpacked. It was crushing. And I was still mad about it over a decade later when I talked about it in a webinar. That’s how deep the wound goes when you realize you haven’t built something that can hold its own without you.
The turning point came when I stopped asking what was the minimum I could do to support my team and started asking what was the most I could do. When I got the right people into the right seats and gave them the authority to make decisions, I stopped being the single point of failure in my own company. Getting the repetitive, time-consuming work off my plate was part of that. It didn’t happen overnight. But it happened.
That process also gave me a different perspective on what I was carrying before. The daily grind had been quietly stealing something from me that I didn’t have a name for until I got it back. The ability to be fully present, with Mark, with my dad, with the people who matter most.
I wrote about what it took to find order when a health crisis turned everything upside down. What that experience made undeniably clear was this: a business that lives entirely on your shoulders is a liability, not just to you, but to everyone counting on you. That wake-up call is what pushed me to build the team structure I have today. And when the pressure of keeping everything running falls on one person, the whole team pays the price.
What I Want to Ask You
What does your life look like outside of your business right now? Not what you are planning for someday. Right now, this week, this month. Is there space in it for the things that genuinely restore you? For the people who matter most? For the version of yourself that exists beyond your role as a business owner?
If the honest answer is no, I don’t think the problem is that you need to work harder or want it more. I think the problem is a design issue. A business that requires your constant presence to function is a business that will eventually cost you more than it gives back.
The solution I have seen work, the one we have built our entire company around, is giving business owners access to capable, trustworthy people who can carry real responsibility. When you are not the only one holding everything together, you get to step away. You get to take the trip. You get to say yes when your dad asks if you want to go somewhere together, and mean it fully, without the weight of everything you left behind pulling at you the whole time.
That is what I want for you. Not someday. Now.
A business isn’t just something you build. It’s either building you a life, or quietly taking it away.
