After years of holding down steady jobs many Fathers take the leap these days to go into business for themselves. The reasons for this are many, set your own hours, control your destiny, get paid what you’re really worth however it would be fair to say that these days’ fathers also see spending more time with their children as a major factor in making this decision.
Self employment, on the face of it, offers fathers flexibility and time to spend with families and children. Fathers also see self employment as a way of giving them those choices about Housing, Schooling and Lifestyle aspirations.
The reality for many business people is different to this. Long hours, being at the disposal of clients, cash flow problems and the other stresses of running businesses often compete for time and ends up compromising families and relationships.
It takes a strong man to take on board all these issues and then be with their children 100% fully engaged at the end of a 12 hour day with 4 hours of book work once the children have gone to bed. But this is what we as fathers must do. Fully engage our children – that doesn’t mean going over board – but more an attitude of letting your children know that when you are with them you are fully attentive. This includes engaging with them rather than trying to make phone calls or staring at your laptop, answering questions (over and over again) and doing your fair share around home to give mum a hand.
Fathers and Business
To fulfill the important job of fatherhood there are 3 things you should be doing on a continual basis in you business
1. Automate the business as much as possible – What tasks can be dome automatically without you. Outsource where possible
2. Systemizing roles, jobs, marketing, and operations – as much as you can. Make the business run without you as much as possible. Its never to early (or late) to start doing this now
3. Take a day off every week. Business problems and issues will wait for you
The real Business is fatherhood. Dads your business whilst important is just a means to an end. Make it enjoyable and as stress free as possible, especially while they are young and think you are pretty cool.
