Business
Protecting Your Biggest Asset
Lesson time 11:06 min
Nothing will work unless you do. Alexis explains the importance of creating a healthy work-life balance and saving some of yourself…for you.
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Topics include: Grow in Parenthood • Strive to be Better • Audit Your TIme
Teaches Building Your Startup
Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian teaches you how to turn an idea into a startup. Get the advice he’s shared through his VC fund, Seven Seven Six.
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[MUSIC PLAYING] - I really hope we end this work-life balance myth because it has become very clear that there really is no boundary. The reality is these things are one in the same and it's more about finding a balance between taking care of oneself and then taking care of the everything else. Your biggest asset is you. If you want to be a great entrepreneur, you have to take care of yourself every bit as much as you take care of your business. That's the balance that I'm most interested in trying to create. It's the balance that we're interested in supporting for our founders. I've certainly spoken out on things like hustle porn, which was a term I coined mostly to lampoon this content-- you'll find it on social media-- that really it lionizes, it exaggerates, it celebrates absurd work. And what I mean by that is, you know, posting about how successful you are by celebrating how hard you are grinding is not something I have ever seen a really successful entrepreneur actually do. And in fact, the most successful entrepreneurs I've ever known are the ones who work the hardest at trying to find that balance. Again, not between work and life, but between self and the needs of others, however broadly defined. And that is, I think, the challenge for you because you will not be your best self for others unless you are taking care of yourself and vise versa. [MUSIC PLAYING] I'm convinced that there is going to be a smarter generation of entrepreneurs-- hopefully you watching this-- who understand that those boundaries need to exist and who need to do the work to create systems, to create process, to create good habits that allow for both to flourish. But you're going to spend your entire career trying to find that and it's going to ebb and flow. It does for me. And the most effective tools I've found are probably some of the most basic. Even being able to do an inventory of my calendar week to week, month to month, quarter to quarter helps me understand literally how much time I'm spending with my family, for myself, versus with my team. Just even doing an audit of your calendar. Now, granted, we've built our own software into Seven Seven Six to make this very easy, but before that I was still just using my own calendar just to look Sunday mornings to get a sense of, like, what the hell did I do this last week. Have I been spending enough time with my daughter? Have I been spending enough time for myself? Have I been spending enough time on the things that mattered most during the work week? I challenge every entrepreneur as early in the process as possible to start to do this kind of inventory. Because even at its most basic level, knowing where you're spending time in your workday is going to make you better as an entrepreneur, it's going to make you better as a person. Because that's the only way you find out that you've been spending most of your time this past week on the wrong things or st...
About the Instructor
In 2005, UVA undergrad Alexis Ohanian envisioned a place online where users connect over subcultures—enter Reddit. That was only the start: From growing billion-dollar companies to championing female founders, Ohanian shaped culture. Now he wants to lead tomorrow’s innovators. Learn how to turn an idea into a startup with advice Alexis has shared with other entrepreneurs through his VC fund, Seven Seven Six.
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Alexis Ohanian
Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian teaches you how to turn an idea into a startup. Get the advice he’s shared through his VC fund, Seven Seven Six.
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