My third year into running my online business, I was having so much success that I had time to do little else. I was still very new to managing a business. I came from a large family, 4 brothers and 2 sisters, and I grew up learning that anything I wanted to do had to be done cheap! I made the mistake of applying this to my business.
Instead of hiring out my customer service, my fulfillment and shipping needs, my product management and other time consuming tasks so I could just focus on growing, I tried to do it all myself. I did this because I thought I was saving money. The reality is, I was actually stunting the growth of my startup. Instead of doing the one thing well that I was really good at, I was doing everything sub-par. I was strung too thin. I was no longer even doing a good job at what brought my success in the first place.
During one of my busiest winter seasons, I was literally working 21 hrs a day trying to keep up with all of my orders. I was making money I never thought possible. I was putting huge lump sums towards my house so I could pay it off quickly and save on all the interest costs. I was able to buy my kids awesome Christmas gifts. I was able to provide so much more for my family than my parents ever thought of giving me as a kid. All of this motivated me to keep going full bore.
Those 21 hour days started taking its toll. I was so tired that I began messing up orders. Not just my customer’s orders, but my product stock orders. I was running out of product to fulfill some orders because I didn’t order the right amount. I was getting so many phone calls and emails that I couldn’t keep track of them. Customers were mad that I wasn’t following up. Things were turning into a mess. But that wasn’t the worst of it!
I Realized I Needed to Change Something
The collateral damage of my one-man-band approach to business was that I didn’t have any time to spend with my kids. When I did have time, I was exhausted and grumpy. Unfortunately, I wasn’t wise enough to pivot and change the way I ran my business. I did however recognize that my family needed me more than my business did.
My kids really love sports. My oldest son learned to throw a football when he was in diapers. I knew I had to find a way to spend more time with them. Once my busy season ended, I started getting up an hour earlier and taking my oldest son and daughter to the gym where we would practice a sport.
We started with soccer since that’s what I played through high school. After a while we rotated to basketball and then football. My kids absolutely loved the time we spent each morning playing sports together. I was their coach! I taught them the fundamentals of each sport. They wanted to just play a game of whatever sport we were doing that day. I explained to them that “practice makes permanent” and that if they wanted to get better, they had to learn and practice the fundamentals.
Once they had the fundamentals down, they would be able to use those new skills in the game. Part of these fundamentals was learning how to dribble, kick, and do layups with their non-dominant hand or foot. They HATED it! But, I stuck to my guns and we continued to practice these fundamentals. My persistence paid off! As we started playing games and as my kids started playing on teams in organized sports, they were always way ahead of their peers in terms of their skill level. My son, who had a natural love for all sports, really excelled. He went on to play varsity soccer, basketball, and football in High School. He now has an opportunity to play college football for a D1 College as a kicker if he chooses to go that route.
The reason I’m boring you with all of these details is because that one hour I dedicated each day with my kids really multiplied as they grew up. We became the best of friends. I gained a respect from them that I couldn’t have achieved any other way. Even now that they are older, when I give them advice, they listen because they learned to trust me when I was teaching them how to be good athletes. They saw how it paid off in the long run.
We have always loved doing things together as a family. I believe that love developed when they were so young. They’ve always had a great relationship with their mom. She’s always been a stay at home mom, so she gets all of the time with them when I’m working. They also learned how important they are to their dad. It meant so much to them that I would take time out of my busy schedule to dedicate entirely to them.
A recent study in the Washington Post found that the quantity of time you spend with your child isn’t as important as the quality of time you spend with them. As I’ve mentioned in some of my other articles about having a growth mindset, it’s so important to be able to step back and assess how you’re doing in different aspects of life. Your relationship with your child is no different. If you can see that something is lacking, change it. Some parents think they’re giving a child meaningful time, when it’s actually just time spent merely in the child’s presence while the parent is on their smartphone completely unengaged with their kid.