What is an E-Family?
It’s my approach to raising a family as an entrepreneur. The lessons I’ve learned after 16 years of marriage and raising three daughters.
Entrepreneurs need to spend time educating their family on why they are the why they are, why they spend the time they do on their business, what makes them happy, what makes them mad and to teach their kids about the advantages and disadvantages of being an entrepreneur.
Unfortunately the schools aren’t going to teach kids why they should consider working for themselves. Schools only teach what kids should learn in order to go work for someone else while holding down a “secure” job. The sad thing is that the only secure job they’ll ever have is as an entrepreneur –but they don’t teach that.
It’s also important to help your family understand what it’s like to be an entrepreneur so your relationship at home is good with the entire family. I’ve learned from personal experience and from watching others that when family life isn’t good, soon business isn’t either. By keeping your family life positive and keeping communication open with your spouse/significant other and your children the better your life will be overall.
In this section of my blog I’ll take the time to share experiences as a Husband and Father. It’s also my way to share with my wife and kids what it’s like to be an entrepreneur. So here’s your first lesson and take away. Why not write out what you are feeling when you are in the moment. When you find yourself in a situation that frustrates you or that makes you incredibly happy. Either way, write it down. After you wait on the topic for about a week, come back to it, edit it and then post it on a blog for everyone to see. You’re family will start to learn an awful lot about you.
I have been extremely fortunate over the years. The best thing to happen to me was to marry the right woman. I don’t know how much I can emphasize this, but it’s SO TRUE – pick the right person to be with the rest of your life and you’ll be the luckiest person alive. (At least it will feel that way “most of the time”). It’s not always easy, but when you pick the right person initially the rest works it self out.
I met my wife while working at the same place in Las Vegas. I worked in a gourmet room as a waiter in one of the big strip hotels while going to school at UNLV and my wife had recently graduated from UNLV and was working as a manager of all the restaurants in the hotel. So we saw each other from time to time throughout the week.
Late one night in December ’94 she was in the kitchen talking with a few of us waiters. Her and I got into a conversation about work and what we wanted to do beyond our current jobs. I told her I was going to own my own business and be very successful with it. I had owned small businesses while in high school and college but hadn’t found anything yet to let me stop working. However, I would find it one day and that was my passion to get out and be an entrepreneur.
My wife mentioned that her dad was an entrepreneur all his life and how they were able to travel all over the world because he had the time to do so. It wasn’t that her family was incredibly wealthy they were just comfortable. There were good years when they traveled and bad years when they stayed at home and ate in every night.
It didn’t click for me right then, but later I realized how much her experiences growing up really helped our marriage and brought us closer together over the years and how they opened the door for me to start my own business when the time came.
It was in June of 2000 that I went to my wife and told her I need to quit my job and start a new business. In most homes that would be a tough conversation, leaving a job making six figures a few years out of college, most spouses would say “are you crazy”. On top of that we had just moved into a new home a week earlier with a mortgage double the previous one. AND we were going to have our first child in two weeks. Yeah – I wasn’t the best at timing things back then. Telling a pregnant women in her ninth month you’re going to quit your job and during all this wasn’t the smartest idea.
However, she took it all in stride. Her response after some initial “Are you sure this is what you want to do? Are you sure this is the right time?” I assured her I couldn’t wait any longer and I had to do this. It was a good thing for me that it wasn’t a surprise that I wanted to start my own business – she might not have thought it would be right then, but she knew that’s what I always wanted to do.
So lesson #1 for all you newbies – make sure you communicate to your future spouse your passion for being an entrepreneur. If you don’t you could find yourself in the middle of an epic battle later on.
The next step was to sit down together and figure out how it was going to work. The discussions and way we pulled it all together is worth another post all in itself, so I’ll share that with you in the next post.
If you have any stories you’d like to share about when you first became an entrepreneur or when you had horrible timing for something such as I did, share it in the comments section below.
Crowd Funding Book by David Gass
One comment
My current boyfriend knows my passion for my business. I do a few small things on the side, but my main job is web design and blogging. I quit my day job in 2008 and even though that job was 30K a year, I was making enough then that I did not need that job. It was actually detracting from my time with clients as it was during the hours I needed to communicate with them.
However, communication IS important. My ex-husband was not as understanding as my boyfriend today is and it hurt our marriage. During those years, I was still a startup…so, I agree with you communication is key!