No one will tell you that caring for and raising a family is easy. Being a spouse and a parent at the same time is enough to take your focus away from your own health and well-being. Others even have to work a nine-to-five job on top of their responsibilities at home. If you think this is hard enough, wait until you start your own business and manage your brand while being a parent.
Challenges Many Parentpreneurs Face
Parents who are also entrepreneurs are often called parentpreneurs. They face unique challenges that many single entrepreneurs are lucky enough to dodge. The following are just a couple of examples of challenges they often face when juggling responsibilities at home and while managing their business.
The Need to Give Enough Attention
Your family requires your love and attention. The same goes for your business. Failure to give your people and certain responsibilities the focus they require from you will have consequences.
There is a need to take good care of your spouse while ensuring your kids’ health, safety, and engagement. At the same time, your business will require you to meet with suppliers, customers, and partners. The constant pull between your two worlds can be enough to burn you out.
Lack of Support
Some parentpreneurs have to raise their kids on their own. They are also managing a startup that requires their full-time attention. But with not enough support to help you raise your kids, keep the household safe, and run a brand, it only gets harder as time passes by.
Your kids grow up so fast while you try hard to establish and grow your business. This means you might be missing important life events while you take some time to put your attention on your business. And when you make time for serious family bonding, you could be missing out on once-in-a-lifetime business opportunities.
Financial Strain
Many people have this odd perception that entrepreneurs never have cash issues. In reality, many entrepreneurs exhaust their savings just to sustain their brand and provide for their families. Most have loans and credits here and there, had their assets used as collateral, and haven’t even started building their own emergency funds and retirement savings.
Ways Parentpreneurs Can Achieve a Healthy Work-Life Balance
Parenting and running a business at the same time is challenging but never impossible. Many successful entrepreneurs manage to raise a family without compromising their responsibilities at their companies. If you are also planning on taking the role of a parent and entrepreneur, these tips can help.
Accept Help
Many entrepreneurs find themselves wanting to do everything on their own in an attempt to save money and get the job done. But since you are also juggling family life, there is a need to find a healthy support system in both worlds. Avoid trying to do it all when there are ways you can find and accept help.
For instance, you can enroll your little one in a pre-kindergarten program to ensure they enjoy an immersive experience while you work. You can hire housekeeping services to ensure the house stays clean when you barely have enough time to vacuum or do the laundry. As for your business, step up your hiring and training process and outsource wisely so that you can take some crucial tasks off of your plate.
Treat Your Family as You Would Your Clients
Sometimes, entrepreneurs value their time with clients more than they would with their families. This results in a lack of bonding time with the family, parents missing out on crucial milestones of their kids, and the kids feeling alone and unloved at times. The key is to also treat your personal life as your job.
This means there is a need to treat your family as if they are among your most important clients. This will motivate you to make time for them and to also prioritize meeting their needs. Proper time management will help you divide your time accordingly to manage your business and family life effectively.
Get Your Family Involved
If your kids are old enough to understand some adult stuff, then it is worth accepting their involvement in your daily struggles. It is true that hiring family members leads to tax savings. But then, you don’t necessarily need to hire your adult kids just to show them how busy you are and to strike a balance between work and family life.
Taking them to your business and letting them observe can be enough to make them understand that your job is nowhere easy. Kids are brilliant, and their natural curiosity will help them understand your passion. This might even open their eyes to the world of entrepreneurship and make them want to build their own brand someday.
A one-size-fits-all approach in being a parentpreneur does not exist. But there are ways you can handle both being a parent and entrepreneur. The key is to find balance in everything you do.
