Customer Spotlight | Balance the Grind
Is it truly possible to find that perfect balance of work and life? The team behind Balance the Grind certainly thinks so! Through honest and intriguing interviews with startup founders, artists, CEOs, marketing managers, and more, Balance the Grind explores the concept of finding that healthy equilibrium between career and everything else.
Featured Blog: Balance the Grind
Solo Pine Theme: Sitka
Interview with Hao of
Balance the Grind
What brought about the creation of Balance The Grind?
For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been fascinated with reading content about day in a life, work-life balance, what different professions do in a typical day. I actually started Balance the Grind back in 2016 with a more of a fitness focus, but after my wife and I welcomed our (first) son in 2018, work-life balance became a priority and passion for me. This led to a content pivot on the blog; in May 2019, I started interviewing people from a wide range of professions about how they manage to juggle work-life balance. Almost a year later, we’ve conducted 450+ interviews with CEOs, startup founders, freelance writers, performance coaches and plenty more!
What WordPress theme features have you found to be the most helpful in terms of functionality or the most visually impactful to your blog?
Balance the Grind’s functionality has always been pretty basic – we generally stick to written content so haven’t played around too much with different theme features/functionality. I find that the theme is already super visually appealing and intuitive, without doing much, which is one of the biggest reasons I chose it for Balance the Grind.
Are there any must-have WordPress plugins or other blogging tools you consider to be essential to any blogger?
I’m not a big plugin guy, but I’m hoping to learn more about them as Balance the Grind continues to grow and expand into something bigger than a blog. In terms of blogging tool, having a content calendar has been the best way for me to keep track of content publishing, distribution and promotion — I just use Google Calendar but I’m sure there are plenty of other tools out there more tailored for blogging.
What convinced you to use a Solo Pine theme for your blog?
I actually created Balance the Grind on another Solo Pine theme called Hemlock. I was attracted to it right away by its simplicity, clean design and focus on visually impactful imagery. We recently made the change to the Sitka [theme] after I saw a promotion for it on Facebook. I feel like Solo Pine themes have a simplicity and warmness feel to them that matches up perfectly with Balance the Grind’s vibe.
On your journey with Balance The Grind, what is one thing that’s surprised you?
The response from our readers has been amazing. In a world that’s seemingly dominated by hyper connectivity, hustle culture and that Go Go Go mentality, I didn’t think that there would be many people interested in reading about slowing down, but I’ve had so many emails and messages from readers saying how inspiring these interviews have been in helping them try to manage their own work-life balance.
Where do you envision Balance the Grind in 5 years? What do you hope to accomplish in that time?
Continue to have these conversations with amazing people from all over the world about work, life and balance. I’d also like to expand the content to include more on wellness in the workplace, remote work, mental health, and different views of work-life balance, such as work-life integration. In 5 years time, I see Balance the Grind as one of the top online destinations for people wanting to learn more about work-life balance and to read about how others are achieving it.
Do you have any advice for other bloggers that are just getting started on their blog journey?
Consistency and frequency beats everything. I look at blogging for Balance the Grind the same way I look at training at the gym: you show up and put in the work, day in and day out. Build it up brick by brick every single day and in 12-18 months time, you can look back and see the amazing progress you’ve made.
Be sure to check out Balance the Grind!
