While starting a company is hard, starting a company when you’re married with children is even more difficult.  After having started and run five startup companies, I can tell you first hand that if you’re planning on running a company and a family at the same time, you had better know what you’re signing up for!

A Startup Requires an Emotional Investment
 
When little Sally falls down and gets a cut, you somehow feel just as much pain as she. Why do you think that is?  It’s because you are emotionally invested. That emotional investment is what makes a parent special and uniquely qualified to raise their children.
Successful startups have the founder emotionally invested in much the same way as a parent to their child. This is why they are often the only one in the business going the extra mile to see it succeed.

So why is this challenging?

Emotionally investing yourself in more than one thing can be draining. In retrospect, I’ve found myself emotionally withdrawn at times from the business (and coworkers) or my family because it can be so overwhelming.
 
When you find yourself in this situation, step back and focus on the little things.  Read your kids a book before bed or grab lunch with a coworker to discuss things that always seem to get pushed aside for more important issues and outright fires.

A Startup Runs your Life and your Schedule

Your son’s grades are slipping so you need to spend more time than usual with him in the evenings and weekends. At the same time sales for your startup are slumping and you need to spend more time than usual working on new products and a business development strategy.
 
With both demands competing for the same hour of time, which one do you give in to?  This is the million dollar question.  Far too often I’ve seen the family be the sacrificial lamb.

Being part of family and running a startup are both arguably 24/7 jobs meaning sacrifices will need to be made if both are undertaken. Make the wrong sacrifice at the wrong time and there may not be a way to repair the damage down the road.  That goes for your business and your family!

How do you mitigate the risk?

You have to be creative in your family life. Try simple things like grabbing lunch with your family or surprising the kids by being the one who picks them up from school. One thing that has worked well for me is the arrangement that work comes first Monday – Friday, but family comes first on the weekends.  No matter what you do, the one thing you can’t ignore is the fact that you have to make sure you schedule time with your family!

You Can’t Lose it all Because it isn’t yours to Lose

Property in a family is communal.  It isn’t yours to gamble away on a new business idea like you may have done back in your single days.  In addition, recovery from loss is much more difficult when you have a family because your options become more limited.   You can’t easily pick up and move to another city, you can’t easily move in with your parents or a friend, and you may not be able to take the job with the crazy hours just to pay the bills.

If you have to risk the physical assets in your life, make sure that you at least protect the intangible ones.  You can’t afford to lose (under any circumstances) your credit, your business relationships, and the respect of your staff.  You’ll need these during recovery and on the off chance you want to roll the dice again down the road.

Can you be a Successful Entrepreneur and have a Family?

Yes, I’ve lived it and it can be done. The point I’m trying to drive home is that if you don’t have a family yet, think hard about starting one while you are also starting a business. If you’re ultimate decision is to tackle both at the same time, hopefully you’ll at least know some of the challenges going into it so that you can better prepare.