Engineer Your Sundays – Ben Baldwin, Founder and Co-CEO ClearFit

Ben Baldwin is a man who wears a lot of hats. He’s Founder and Co-CEO of ClearFit, he’s a patent holder, writer, speaker, and has founded two successful software companies. With such a busy schedule, Ben is careful to make the most of his free time.
In his Paper Napkin Wisdom, he shares a bit of a revelation about free time. He says, “Engineer your Sundays…Make sure you’re doing something you love on Monday, because if you stress about your Mondays- It takes away your Sundays…or 50% of your family time. Love your job to love your family.”
If you don’t love your job, says Ben, how much of you is present for your family? Throughout the week we’re so often focused on work, so the weekend becomes the only time we can really dedicate to spending and investing with our families. If you’re dreading your Monday, it detracts from how present you can be in half of your free time and that leaves your energy unfulfilled for the week ahead. Ben says that when you love what you do, not only do you get your Sundays back, you change the way you look at your time. Suddenly it becomes not about how much time you have off, it’s about playtime all the time. When you love what you do, it’s never really work.
Loving your job is what Ben’s about. His company, ClearFit, is all about helping small business put the right people in the right jobs for them. Ben says that the success rate of hiring is about 50/50 and he believes that only 30% of people are happy in their jobs. He wants to drastically change those numbers and he believes the way to do it is to create a dynamic where people are a great fit.
As entrepreneurs, we want to make sure that we’re doing what we love because that’s often why we became entrepreneurs in the first place. As leaders, we have a responsibility to make sure that we create that environment for our teams too. No one wants to feel stuck in a career they don’t enjoy.
Previous Paper Napkin guests like Jenn Lim and Jeffrey Feldberg have talked about the importance of having happy, aligned employees for the prosperity of our businesses and Ben’s napkin expands on that. If we put the right people in the right positions and have the faith to trust them with our company, we give ourselves the opportunity to let go of the things we feel obligated to do and spend our free time actually focused on enjoying our free time.
It is a gift we have the ability to give ourselves and one we ought to share with our teams.
Listen to my conversation with Ben here:

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