Overlapping Family and Business

01

A window of fifteen years

What I learned is that there is only a window of about 15 to 16 years in which you can build a relationship with your kids. There is no other way. After that you can improve it and play with it, but I think those first years are where you need to build the relationship.

I learned that partly from my own childhood. We never know how our children will develop over time, but we do know when the window is open.

If your kids are still small, you are inside that window right now. Count how many of those years you still have.

02

Two windows at the same time

The hard part is that another window opens at almost the same time. Between 30 and 50, roughly, you have your biggest career opportunity: you have the experience and some skills, you probably already have a niche, and people respect you more when you want to do business. I don't mean the exceptions who are billionaires at 22. For regular people like us, that respect grows somewhere between 35 and 50, and it makes business and money a lot easier.

It also pushes you. You are in the business game, you get the dopamine and the push, and maybe some power. If you have your kids in your 30s, like I did, the career path and the family path overlap the entire time, and that is one of the biggest challenges of the whole family thing.

You can always decide that you don't really care, that you just give your kids money and they do their own thing. In the end, that is your decision.

03

What survives

What I realized is that if you die at some point, the only thing that really survives you is your kids. There is nothing bad about deciding not to have them. But that is why I need something that keeps me out of the endless loop of chasing money and points in the business game.

04

Letting the two overlap

The good news is that you can make the two windows overlap. Some people do a job that inspires their kids so much that the kids become part of it. You can see it sometimes in a restaurant, where the kids work alongside their parents and watch how it's done. That is still a relationship.

My wife leads a gym, and our kids are interested in sport. That is another way to build a family relationship and a business at the same time.

In my own work it doesn't happen. To be perfectly honest, watching me in front of a computer is not super interesting for the kids, and they are not into technology the way I was. So the only way I found is to shrink my working time to the hours when they are at school anyway, and to stop when they come home.

Buying time fits in exactly there. If an hour of cleaning costs me 50 euros and one of my own hours earns 70 or 150, the difference is margin. The bought hour is time you can put into other things, and where yours goes is your decision. Even better would be if the money came in anyway and I could do whatever I want with that hour.

05

Time freedom, not a helicopter dad

If I could tell my younger self one thing for the years when the kids are very young, it would be this: ideally you need freelance jobs where you can work whenever you want, and maybe you already have a digital asset, which of course is perfect. It doesn't mean giving up your own goals. It means having freedom over your time, which is exactly what a standard 9-to-5 job will never give you.

It also doesn't mean being a helicopter dad. It means you can decide to spend time with your kids, and actually do it. Nobody's boss puts a meeting into that hour or wants the weekend, so you are not sacrificing time with your kids for work you don't want to do anyway.

06

This week

Write down when your kids leave for school and when they come home, for every day of this week. Then check how many of your working hours fall inside that block, and how many fall outside it. I want all of mine inside it.

07

The open question

The family gets a season of its own, because one episode can't hold it. For this season it is the step before the finale: you need something that keeps you out of the endless game, and for me that something has a window of fifteen years. Whether it keeps me at 250K, or whether it is a reason for more, is what the last two episodes have to weigh.

08

Still open

Three facts are still missing here, and you will find them on this page once I have written them down: roughly when my father-in-law died, how old the boys are now, rounded, and one real week by school hours, with when I start, when I stop and what happens in between.

Next in this season: “Finite or Infinite Game”. Why a clear number is the only way out of a game that never ends.