My Time Machine

I’ve been given the gift of a Time Machine. Or is it a Purpose Portal?

With a 17 year-old and a seven-year-old at home, both girls, and my boy already off to college, I get to see how the movie plays out without having to wait for the credits. Gone for a few nights and there’s no chance I won’t find some thing or place to visit together to stow away for the kids. When they’re younger, we are needed more than many of us have the energy for. That doesn’t mean we don’t want to do everything, but more that we have everything to do. We have to make choices between family, career, health and community. Not an easy balance.

But we don’t really have to balance if we don’t want to. For instance, we could choose to focus fully on career in midlife and have an extraordinary one. All the trappings are likely, or at least a bank account to secure them later. And those that don’t think it’s satisfying haven’t felt it, because it certainly can feel like a whole life for a time.

But with that choice we will miss a lot of the growing up. That was me for the first years of my eldest. I was gone for a week his second week out. More product of having kids too young in my own maturity than a bad age to have kids. Don’t really think it should’ve been different, because of how things have turned out. But I can’t imagine making that choice today.

We see it a lot with our founders and family run businesses. Even when they are home, they’re working. When they are on vacation, they’re connected. Not because they’re trying to meet a sales goal, but because they’re trying to take care of the community they have assembled. A community of employees, clients, charities that they support, and in pursuit of legacy for their family.

There was no one to guide me on how to balance work and family as a successful entrepreneur until later in life. The books are written by people who never did it themselves. I’ve read them all. You can have it all, you just need trustworthy and capable partners to run interference and deliver strategy informed by doing it themselves first.

Thats V&R. VlasicRoth.com