Jonathan Stiebel is the Co-Founder & Director of The Hairy Pill, an online telehealth business specialising in personalised hair loss treatment for men and women in Australia.

Let’s start with your background! Can you share with us your career journey and what you’re currently up to?

I started my career in digital marketing for a small agency working with SMEs. I moved on to larger agencies and larger clients as a Business Director. Lastly (before I started my own business) I was working on the publisher side at Nova Entertainment in digital commercial strategy. I’m now the Co-Founder and Director of The Hairy Pill® which is an online telehealth business specialising in personalised hair loss treatment for men and women in Australia.

We’d love to know what a typical day is like for you. Could you describe a recent workday?

The regular workday is a bit hectic as it starts with trying to get 3 young kids ready for school. Once I’ve survived that, my day consists of keeping meetings to a minimum (if possible) and running the operational and business development sides of The Hairy Pill®. This involves checking in with our Patient Services, Operations, and Marketing teams, and external agency partners. I also focus my time quite heavily on the digital side of the business tracking performance marketing, web, and ecommerce.

Can you define work-life balance for yourself and share with us your approach in maintaining it?

I struggle maintaining a good balance. I’d define it as equal parts family, friends, work, and time for myself. My approach now isn’t very effective as I try to be the everywhere man. I still overdo the work side, just manage the family side, barely manage the friend side, and the me side tends to take a back seat. It’s a big challenge and something I continue to work on. I’m a work in progress.

Change is constant, and it’s essential for growth. Have you made any lifestyle changes in the past year to improve your work-life balance?

I have. The first few years in business were demanding, and I’d work in some capacity 7 days a week. I needed to create a better work-life balance, and importantly a change was needed to grow the business. The biggest positive change I could make was delegating and letting go and giving my team the space (and responsibility) to achieve and take over what I simply couldn’t manage anymore.

To kick off this change, my wife and sister organised a surprise trip away to a health retreat for a long weekend. No phone, internet, alcohol, or coffee. It was great and terrible at the same time.

A lot of business owners are likely perfectionists, and letting go is hard. Many people probably won’t do things as perfectly or as detailed as you might do them, but this just comes with the territory. Detailed and ongoing training is important to help ease the stress of this change. It’s the best first step I made.

I also recently started playing tennis weekly with one of my mates and hopefully this is another step to a more balanced and healthier me.

We’re always on the lookout for new resources! Can you recommend any books, podcasts, or newsletters that have helped you in your journey towards balance?

Unfortunately, I can’t provide any good nuggets. The books I read these days are for the kids.

Before we wrap up, do you have any final words of wisdom or insights on work, life, or balance that you’d like to share with our readers?

Balance is individual. What works for one person won’t necessarily work for you. Find out what you want and have a crack. If you don’t act, and make mistakes, you won’t get there.