How to Run a Business (And Be Home in Time For Dinner)

Just the other day I was thinking about a business owner that I had coached several years ago.  Since he may read this column, I will call him Terrance (not his real name).

Terrance owned a seasonal hospitality business in southern Utah and worked eighty plus hours a week, every year from May through October.

The rest of the year, he “only” had to put in a light fifty-to sixty-hours a week but come May this jumped to twelve to fourteen hours a day, seven days a week.

Now this schedule was hard enough on Terrance physically, but emotionally it was killing him.  Can you imagine – every day he got up and left the house before his kids were awake and didn’t get home until his kids were in bed asleep.

Every day… for six months out of the year… year after year after year…

When I first met Terrance and he told me his story, it broke my heart.

I’m a dad with three young sons myself. I’ve experienced how fast their childhood seems to disappear. There are personal milestones in your kids’ lives that you never rewind. I remember how it used to feel when my older two sons would reach for and hold my hand anywhere, we walked together–into a store, on a trail, or even down the stairs to breakfast.

It was one of the sweetest parts of being a dad for me, the feeling of their tiny hands in mine. Then the day arrived when they were about eight years old, and they stopped reaching for my hand. Just thinking about this makes me want to cry.