Just the other night, Mandy and I were doing a favorite parenting past-time activity – fondly looking back through photos from when the kids were much younger. Now I don’t claim to have the greatest memory, but a few caught my eye because I didn’t recall anything about a succession of photos from a few different places. And I didn’t bother asking Mandy where I was because I knew. 

I had been down that road before. 

I wasn’t there. 

I was away on a work trip, again. 

As entrepreneurs, it’s very easy to get sucked into the maelstrom of work. The thrill of building something is intoxicating. As my career progressed, I got opportunities to travel and do more of the work that I loved all over the world. 

I never had the desire to travel on my own, but the burden on Mandy and our two littles to accompany me was just too much at the time, so off I went. At the time, we thought it was better for Mandy and I to operate separately – so I would travel for work and she would stay versus taking the kids along and nobody having the best of times. There is much more to unpack here at another time, but parents of little kids will understand that the rhythms and routines that make family life enjoyable are to be protected…for sanity purposes, lol. In fact, we had a staff member that at the time often asked ‘How come Mandy and the kids don’t travel with you to these things?’ Now that this person has little kids of her own, she gets it. 

You can substitute ‘travel’ with any sort of work that needs to get done as part of the process of operating a business – marketing, service delivery, staff training, writing SOP’s (yes, there are people out there who love that stuff), sales…the list goes on. 

Here was the problem: every time that I was saying ‘yes’ to traveling, there was plenty I was saying ‘no’ to – and my family took the brunt of that. 

That all changed a few years ago after a conversation with my lovely bride.

We were casually talking about the upcoming travel I had for work when she firmly and politely told me that I wouldn’t be going.  

Here’s what she was getting at – we had come to a point in our family dynamic that was untenable for the long term. She saw the writing on the wall that we were out of alignment between our values and priorities. In fact, we had been for quite some time.

There is a difference between the two. 

Values are the words you use to describe the things that are the most important to you. 

Priorities are the actions you take, or the time you spend, on your daily tasks. 

I was misaligned between what I was saying (ex: I value quality family time) and what I was doing (ex: traveling all over without them).

I know, I know – why didn’t the family just go along with me? As I mentioned earlier, having two little kids changes things. What she meant with her statement was that letting them sit in a hotel room while I was off working was not a practical use of our family time. 

Here’s another part of the challenge that Mandy had when bringing this up to me: she was/is keenly aware that I am the provider for the family, and that these responsibilities were simply a part of the job. There was a tension in understanding that in order for there to be provision, I had to do the work. But she was also aware enough to recognize that we were quickly establishing family patterns that were leading us down a path that we didn’t want our family to go down.

For whatever reason, that very straightforward statement in 2019 was like a veil being lifted from my head. In an instant, I saw it all through her (and our kids’) eyes. In that moment, I made a permanent change. We set clear guidelines for what it meant to live out our specific values of Faith, Family, and Freedom. That allowed us to put up very clear boundaries around what we’d do and how, the things we’d say yes to, and what we poured our resources into. 

But that’s not entirely the full truth of how it happened. That’s simply how I view it looking back now. The reality was fraught with much more heartache and difficulty.

You see, up to that point Mandy and I had had many conversations over the years about all of the travel I was doing. She told me that I was actually away much more than I wanted to admit and that I really wasn’t “home” when I was home, yet I still didn’t see what she was talking about. 

Call it ‘being present’, but in my mind I was still prioritizing what was most important to me – my family. I had been all over the world, but without fail was home every weekend save for less than 5 occurrences. 

At least that’s what I thought, until we took time to scribble out my travel history on a yellow legal pad. Tough to argue with hard evidence. 

When it comes to lasting, transformational change, I’ve learned in my 21 years of coaching that it can come about it two ways: 

1. Small steps that easily integrate into your daily life that become unconscious habits. Adding a glass of water at each meal and walking daily are examples. 
2. A sudden event causes a permanent change virtually overnight. These can be violent and tragic things like natural disasters or medical emergencies. 

Most of the things that make up who I am today are the result of the former – small steps that became habits over a long period of time. 

However, arguably the most impactful change for our family legacy occurred during that conversation with Mandy in early 2019. 

Before I wrap this up, there are a few things I must make mention of. 

To be perfectly clear, I am fully aware that there are plenty of people who travel far more than I could imagine. I also don’t regret one bit of the travel I did. I am not resentful. But I am abundantly aware that I spent countless hours building a community at work while neglecting the one that matters most to me – the one at home. 

I am beyond blessed that I have a wife who loves me enough to know when to step in and help make the invisible, visible. And not give up on us. 

I am grateful that I never crossed a line with my loved ones that I might not get a chance to walk back. 

So I write this in case there is someone reading who is in a similar position, that may be as dangerously close to the edge as I was…and not really know it. 

What do I hope you take away from this? 

The importance of regular family check-ins. Normalize deep conversations – not the surface level, in passing type ones. 

Schedule them in your calendar if need be. After all – we do this for work and wouldn’t break a client appointment, right? Our family deserves this level of commitment at the very least.

Be intentional and really listen to the other person. Simon Sinek describes listening as “when the other person feels heard.” 

When you listen, don’t get defensive. Recognize that while you might not see it, they are telling you there is a need there. Don’t kick the can down the road. Have the uncomfortable conversations.

Sit down, constantly reevaluate, and reprioritize depending on the season your family is in. Things look far different for us today with an 8 and 11 year old than with a new born (who wouldn’t let me hold her for 18 months) and a 3 year old.

Today, I’m thankful for the small daily habits that help reinforce our family values. But I’ll be forever grateful for the transformational change that shifted the course of our family’s trajectory, helping to ensure that I never again sacrifice my family at the altar of my business.