I was invited to attend a superb event today to see the launch of intensive enterprise support for the students of Barnsley College. It was strikingly obvious that our next generation entrepreneurs are conscious to strike work life balance.

The College, a brand new £50m stunning campus, was buzzing with people, activity and live music when I turned up this afternoon at the fresher’s fair to see the launch of the Enterprise Zone headed up by Usman Manzoor. The transparent pod that is the enterprise zone gives a space and resources for the young people to meet with their mentors, but today the prize of an ipad 2 was at stake, and their special guest in the pod, Leon Doyle from the latest series of The Apprentice was to judge the winner, by selecting the best ‘mash-up’ idea from at least 70 entrants.

The event that proceeded into the lecture theatre which I must comment was impressively set up to televise a live feed through the college and the ‘we are Barnsley’ websites, at the hands of the media and performing arts students. Leon Doyle gave a very honest and animated Q&A interview and took questions from the floor; this is where it all gets very interesting for me.

I was keen to taste the flavour of the questions, because obviously those questions are key to the nature of support and direction needed by this target client group, I was surprised to find that very few questions were posed around raising finance for the business idea, they were indeed focused on the personal impact, and I sensed mindfulness around ‘can I do it’, is self-employment for me, and do I have the enthusiasm and passion to grow a business?

Leon handled at least a dozen questions, two thirds of which were of a personal ilk. His responses were pretty much what you’d come to expect listening to entrepreneurs, however to my dismay, and yet delivered with a beautiful glowing smile was the alarming response to a double barrel of ‘how do you manage to keep balance in your work?’ and ‘so what do you actual do in your personal time?’He replied “I don’t see what I do as work, it is my life” and whilst I’d totally agree that a high level of attention and focus is needed to get it going and growing, imbalance comes at a cost, and that cost is often in personal relationships, those important relationships that give us so many essential things like, energy, comfort, love, well the list can go on, and on, and on. What sprung to my mind at this exact point was the film starring George Clooney; ‘Up in the air’.

So this leaves me seeking answers to questions around these young people’s experience of their own parent’s entrepreneurial efforts and the impact this can have if the balance is not well managed, perhaps they’ve seen their parents with ‘burn-out’ or working late into the night and at weekends when they’ve already been work focused all day or all week.

Can we have it all?

With mindfulness, self awareness and realistic balance, I have hope that we can.