The struggle of leveling up and still being a good dad. Dude, one of the hardest things that pulls on my heartstrings is when my sons, I have three of them by the way, are standing at my desk begging me to go play tennis, soccer, baseball, football, video games, whatever it is, and I have work to do. You see, for 10 years now, I’ve worked from home and I’ve consistently grown my business by 200% for eight of those 10 years. The whole time, six of those 10 years, I’ve had at least one kid in the house. I now have three, ages six through nine months. These guys, they see their dad at home and like most kids, they associate that I’m home and I can spend time with them when really I’m locked away in my office for a reason. Hell, at one point I used to have to lock the doors of my office so where my son wouldn’t burst in when I was making videos for my clients.

But it hurts when your kids want to spend time with you and you work from home and you have stuff to do and you’re trying to stay focused on accomplishing the tasks for your business, which allows you to work from home so that you can spend time with your kids. Then, adding leveling up, which is the art of getting better at whatever it is that you do, on top of that, which always brings more work, which always brings more responsibility, when you add that all up it becomes a tremendous amount of pressure and you feel like you let your kids down. Now, I can’t speak for you, but at least that’s how I feel.

Well, one of the things that I’ve known to do is to make sure that I set aside specific time for my kids each and every day. You see, many of us, we use our calendars for business meetings but we don’t schedule time in our calendars for our wives and our kids. You see, me, that’s what I do. I schedule a time. In every day, when I get home, there’s a specific amount of time, be it 30 minutes or two hours, that I spend dedicated with my sons and my family. Oftentimes, it’s as simple as just sitting on the couch watching reruns of Planet Earth or some other educational thing that’s good for them. Other times, it’s going to the tennis courts in the neighborhood or hitting golf balls at the neighborhood country club or even feeding the fish behind the clubhouse. No matter what it is, I make sure that I set time aside.

Here’s what I also set my kids up, I make sure that they understand to appreciate the time that I’ve set aside, because that’s our time. We don’t stay focused on mobile phones. And if you look at my social media, one of the things that I totally lack is pictures of me and my family because when I’m with my family, I’m not focused on my phone or any outside sources. When I’m spending time with my kids or I’m spending time with my wife, I do my best to stay focused on them. Am I perfect? No, but I know that if I leave the phone behind then there’s a good chance I won’t be able to stare at it.

Now, listen. If you’re a business owner, an entrepreneur, a dad, you work from home, you’ve got to learn how to keep the delicate balance between leveling up and growing your business and spending time with your kids. The best advice that I can give you is to make sure that you set aside a time every day to spend with your family, be it your wife, your kid, individually, as a group, whatever the case is. YOu’ve got to date your entire family. Then, let them, not rub it in their face, but allow them to come to the conclusion and the revelation that that time is spent dedicated with them while the other time that you have is spent dedicated on tasks like working and everything else.

Because kids that see their parents at home, they don’t understand the difference between work time and family time. You see, when kids see their parents leave for the morning to go to an office, it’s pretty black and white, pretty cut and cry, pretty clear for them. But you don’t have to let the lines get convoluted, especially as your kids get to be four, five, six years old. You can explain to them that when Daddy’s in this room, it’s considered work. When Daddy’s outside of the room, it’s considered family time. No matter what it is, there’s always going to be a struggle to balance leveling up and your family. Just make sure that you don’t leave your family behind when you hit the high level.