Carey Powers on achieving a healthy work-life balance as a young entrepreneur

Editor's note: This is an automatically generated transcript of Season 2, episode 10 of the Healio/WIO Our View Video Blog series, which has been slightly edited for clarity. Please notify editor@healio.com if there are concerns regarding accuracy of the transcription.

Thank you for joining us today. Welcome to our Healio: Women in Ophthalmology vlog, and today we have Carey Powers from Powers & Company joining us. Thank you for being here, Carey. Can you share a little bit about your journey with us today?

Sure, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. I'm Carey Powers. I have worked in and around the ophthalmology field for about 20 years now. I actually got my start inside an ophthalmology practice as a director of marketing, and that set me off on my journey in ophthalmology, which evolved into about a 10-year career at Allergan in the Eye Care Division. And then recently, one year ago, I actually started my own marketing and communications consultancy, Powers & Company. And so now I'm an entrepreneur working primarily in the ophthalmology space. So, thank you so much for having me.

That's awesome. Can you share any lessons learned from your journey?

Absolutely. And you know, the topic that you all chose for this season of wellness and work life balance is just so near and dear to my heart as I look back on my career and reflect on the seasons of life, and maybe times that I have been better than others at the work life balance. And I think, you know, one of the things I've been thinking about, it's just sort of the stories that we tell ourselves during those seasons where we're not doing so great at balance and maybe we're kind of, like, 99% all in at work and 1% we're devoting to these other roles that we play in our lives. And so, one of the stories I know that I told myself, especially when I was younger was “I'm just paying my dues, this is just what you do,” and “This is how I'm going to get ahead.” And I think I felt like I was almost in a race, right? Like, I need to run as fast as I can in this work lane, this career lane, this achievement lane. And then when I get kind of to the next step, that's when I'm going to bring myself back and balance and pay attention to my health and exercise and eat well and do all the things we're supposed to be doing. And so, you know, I think, if I were to give advice to the younger me or any younger women in their career, I'm not sure that my career would've been any different if I would have left at 5:30 P.M. and went to the gym and, you know, cooked a home-cooked meal, instead of trying to work myself to death to sort of get ahead. And so, I think that's really one of my pearls that I would pass along to maybe up-and-coming female colleagues in our industry, is really make sure that you're prioritizing yourself, especially when you are working maybe in a big corporate environment, it's just really easy to get caught up in that achievement, the next promotion, the next development opportunity. And so, so I think that that's something that maybe a story I would un-tell myself if I had the opportunity.

 I love that pearl. Thank you for that reminder. I think it's so along the lines of what we don't realize is when we're so burned out, and so just pushing it to the limits, it actually means that we take longer to do some of the things that maybe if we were well-rested and like healthy, we could actually be more — we could achieve more because we're at our full battery, instead of trying to push it at half battery or a quarter battery or when we get even lower. So yeah, I think that's really wonderful. Thank you for that reminder. And kind of along those lines, you know, we wear so many hats throughout the seasons of our lives: Doctor, entrepreneur, daughter, mother, sister, all of those roles that we play in our lives. And it can be hard to kind of figure out how to balance that. Is there a tip or a trick that you use to help you figure that all out?

Well, it's certainly an evolving journey and I feel like it's something that we never quite master, but you get to know yourself and how you react in different situations and what your tendencies are in your habits. And so, I think that for me, I'm a really visual person. And even though I'm not really into sports, for whatever reason in my mind, I'm always thinking of all of these different roles that I play as lanes like on a football field, right? It's a really long football field, and work is in one, and even work is multiple lanes, right? Because running my business, I think of different aspects of the business and they each have their own lane. And then my family is in a lane and my husband, and, you know, my mom and my sisters and my volunteer work and my dogs, everybody's got a lane. And you're not going to be able to run that entire football field with all those lanes at the exact same point in time. And it's okay that for one week, because you've got a big deadline or just a big commitment in maybe your work lane, it's okay that for that week you got a little further ahead in your work lane, right? And maybe you're a little, you have some catching up to do in your other lanes. And I think that's okay, kind of recognizing that it's never going to be perfectly in balance. For me, the scheduling is what helps me a lot. So, I think in the past, I used to say no a lot to non-work fun activities. I used to say “no” a lot because I feel like I was trying to conserve my energy and not overcommit myself, right? And I think one of the things that I've started doing I think in recent years is saying “yes” more to my non-work commitments. And for some reason just the flipping of that script to the positive, like, I'm saying yes over here, which means that it's sort of going to balance itself out automatically because you only have so much time in the day. And I don't know, I'm enjoying life so much more when I started saying “yes” to my non-work commitments. And I guess also maybe just this time in my career, I don't feel like I'm in a rush anymore. I don't feel this need to achieve, to race. I just am not there anymore. And so, so again, it's the season that I'm in right now, I'm saying yes to fun things and yes to, you know, activities with my family and my friends and going on walks with the dogs and my husband and going on vacations. Saying “yes” to these things has forced me to have some balance with my work commitments. And so, so I'm feeling pretty in balance right now.

Wow. I love those analogies. Those were wonderful. I could visualize the football field with all these lanes. Thank you for sharing that, Carey. So now that you feel more in balance, Carey, and that you are able to have fun yet work very productively, can you share a few real-world pearls that you can impart to our listeners of how you do that, what does that really mean? We hear the term work-life balance, wellness, but what is it? What do you recommend somebody do?

So, for me, I think a lot about exercise. I think for me, that is top of mind because historically that's maybe been the thing that gets out of balance the easiest because it's difficult to make time for that when we're spending so many hours at work. And, you know, it's just one of the things that tends to slip. And so, for me, some of the really practical things that I do to ensure that exercise, which I know is a really important part of longevity and being healthy, a couple things: So number one, every weekend, I schedule my workouts for the whole week, and I overschedule. I'm aggressive with my scheduling of the workouts for the whole week. Optimistically, right? Knowing that something's going to come up and one or two of them may slip, but guess what? I've still got three. That's pretty good, right? And so, every weekend, and it's something it's so easy now to do with the apps and my phone, etc. So I, every weekend, make sure that my workouts are planned. I then schedule time on the front end and the back end because let's be realistic, we need to take a shower after. And so, we can't run out the door at the time the workout starts. So that's a good chunk of a day to carve out for working out. And maybe that means I come back to the office and I'm here a little bit later, but it all kind of fits in, right? So, I think pre-scheduling my workouts has helped me tremendously. I know myself and I know that if it was just a time that I planned to go to the gym, that it might not happen. And so there's actually something waiting for me there, and whether it's a class or something I signed up for, there's someone waiting for me and I'm going to lose money if I cancel. So, I commit, and that's part of how I make sure I'm actually going to show up. I've been through this before. I know that I'm not going to just go on my own and run around the gym, right? So I go to a class, I go to pre-scheduled things. So those are two things that have helped me a ton. I also schedule in advance because my friends are just as busy as I am. And so we actually pre-schedule in advance, you know, things to do together. It might be six weeks in advance, and that's on my calendar, maybe we have to shift it sometimes, but it's on there and it's something that we commit to. And it helps me make sure that I am maintaining and nurturing my friendships in addition to my family relationships as well. So that's another thing. I think to me, it's all about the scheduling because if it's on there, I'm going to do it, and it's a commitment and it's something that you can kind of move around a little bit, but it's there. And so, for me, it's all about the scheduling and carving out time on your calendar. I would say one of the last sort of pearls that I have, and this one might be a little bit controversial, everybody has their own opinions about working on vacation. So, for me personally, I bring my laptop on vacation. My husband and I have very clear communication about what is going to happen on vacation. We try so hard to plan. These things get planned so far in advance, right? So, you do your best to schedule them at good times, but invariably, it comes up and wasn't the best time to take a vacation. Do we stay home, or do we go? So we still go and I'm able to maybe work for two or three hours in the morning and then put it away and enjoy vacation with my husband the rest of the day. He's very patient and treats work-life balance similarly. And so, you know, I always am clear with him before the vacation. Like, here's what's going to happen. Here's the schedule. And he is, you know... So, I think that that helps a lot, too, that we define work-life balance the same way. We can go on more vacations if I'm able to just only work a few hours in the morning. And so, that's what works for me. Others, people I know just feel very strongly about not working on vacation, but for me, that works. So...

Love the tips!

A long answer, Dr. Matossian!

This is great. I love it. Thank you, Carey, for sharing real-world tips, and we want to thank you for your time and for your energy that you brought to this session. So, thank you so much.

Thank you so much for having me. It was a joy to have this conversation with you and I appreciate that you're bringing this topic to the forefront and hope it brings some value to maybe our colleagues out there who are struggling with this. So, thank you.

Absolutely. We're all going to pre-schedule our workouts for the week. Thank you so much.