How to Be Present for Your Family When You Run a Business

1 hour ago

6 min read

Many entrepreneurs build a business for freedom, then accept a version of success that keeps them away from the life that freedom was meant to create. We tell ourselves the schedule can't change. The travel is necessary. The hours are part of the deal. Repeat a belief often enough and it starts to feel like a fact. Over the past few weeks my daughter graduated from high school and from dance after 14 years, and competed at a national dance competition. I was there for all of it. More importantly, I was present for all of it. Being there is a scheduling decision. Being present is an internal one. Learning to do both meant changing a story I once told myself about work, and it showed me that much of what feels fixed is a structure we have stopped questioning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z37F26EkPE0

From Edge of the Napkin, Episode 378 of Paper Napkin Wisdom.

Why business owners believe the schedule can't change

Early on, there was a season when I was not as present as I wanted to be. Travel filled much more of my calendar. The hours were long, long hours. I didn't take care of my body, and I was 400 pounds. The story I told myself was that the business was only available to me in a certain form. Planes, hotels, long days, and a schedule that belonged to everyone except me.

It felt true because I repeated it. The business had rules, success had rules, and opportunity arrived in a package. If I wanted the opportunity, I had to accept the package.

A lot of entrepreneurs do this. We sell ourselves a story that it's temporary. The next season will be different. Just get this thing done and there will be more time, more energy, more space. And sometimes real sacrifice is necessary. Building something often does require it.

The risk is that sacrifice becomes an identity. The person who is always needed. Someone always traveling, who can never step away, wearing the superhero cape. Eventually the business is no longer asking us to live that way. We are asking it to confirm a story we already believe.

What changed when the story broke

My youngest son became critically ill, and it took him a few years to recover. The illness, the recovery and the fear all mattered. What I keep returning to is what that time revealed.

My schedule was not as fixed as I had believed. I could move things and reschedule meetings. Changing how I delivered my work was possible, and so was reducing travel until it was almost gone. The whole structure of my days could be redesigned while I kept doing the work I loved and was good at. The work was real. Many of the limits around it were my own story.

The illness didn't create more hours in the day. It forced different decisions with the time that already existed. It made the cost of my old story impossible to ignore. I could no longer say my family was the reason I worked so hard while structuring the work in a way that kept pulling me away from them. My calendar needed to reflect what I said mattered. Someday needed to come right now.

Why delaying gratification can cost you your own life

Entrepreneurs are trained to delay gratification. We build for the next revenue target, the next hire, the next office. That ability is useful. It can also become dangerous, because we can delay the experience of our own lives.

We start to believe presence is something we earn later. Once the company reaches a certain size. After the deal closes. When the current problem settles down. The trouble is that the next chapter arrives with its own demands, and there is always another reason to postpone.

The life I wanted wasn't waiting on the other side of a perfect business. It had to be built into the business I already had. That meant choosing on purpose. Which meetings actually required me, and which needed a better system or better support? Which trips were only automatic? And which moments could never be recreated? Flexibility isn't only free time. It is being able to direct your attention toward what matters, when it matters.

I love my work. The goal was never to remove it. The goal was to stop using the work I loved as a reason to stay absent from the people I loved. Those two things didn't need to compete the way I once imagined.

What being present looks like with different children

I have three kids, and they live in three different worlds. Each one has invited me in differently.

My eldest son has been immersed in hockey for almost 18 years. Hockey comes naturally to me. I played it growing up, and I've coached him for many years. He's 20 now and I still do. I know the early mornings, the cold rinks, the bad coffee and the long drives. In that world I contribute through experience.

My daughter chose dance, a world much more native to my wife. Watching was how I learned. So much repetition sits behind a few minutes on stage, and so much discipline goes into making movement look effortless. I didn't need to understand dance the way she does. I needed to respect how much it meant to her. Over 14 years I watched her become confident on stage, with criticism, and in herself.

My youngest enjoys the buffet. Hockey, basketball, football, fishing. Some interests stay and others pass through. Fishing is far less natural to me. I never did it until I was an adult. With him I enter through curiosity. I follow his attention and learn because he cares about it.

Children notice what receives our attention. They notice when we remember the name of the move, the position they played, the fish they hoped to catch. That kind of attention tells them their interests have value before they produce a trophy or a scholarship. It tells them they don't need to become a smaller copy of us to stay connected to us.

I also know not every parent has equal control over their schedule. My wife works shift work at the hospital, with far less flexibility than I have, and she has always found a way to be there. I've watched other parents with complicated lives trade shifts, use vacation days and accept inconvenience to protect the moments that mattered. Presence usually costs something. What we each get to decide is what is worth the cost.

How to build the life you want into your calendar this week

Success has to be experienced, too. If I create freedom but never feel free, something is missing. Flexibility I build while staying mentally unavailable leaves something missing. And if I say I'm doing this for my family but miss the moments that shape it, something is missing.

A few places to start this week:

Open your calendar for the coming season. Put the moments that arrive only once on it first, before anything else claims the time.
Look at every recurring meeting. Does it need you, or does it need a better system or better support?
Question one trip that has become automatic. Could the work be delivered another way?
Pick one child, partner or friend and enter their world on their terms. Ask about the thing they care about, even if it's foreign to you.
When you are there, be there. Leave the phone and the next problem for later.

The biggest moments are rarely big because of the ceremony. They're big because they show the accumulation of time. Practices, car rides, meals between events, conversations that would never have happened anywhere else. Some moments arrive only once. When they do, I want to recognize the life I worked so hard to build, and be inside it. What would that life look like for you?