Business Opportunities Weblog

Entrepreneurship Is A Family Affair

By on April 5, 2011 in Ideas

You may believe starting your own business will have no effect on the people closest to you, but it will. That is a lesson Laura Drewry learned quickly when she decided to buy an existing business reports The Globe and Mail.

After the store reopened, Ms. Drewry’s husband, Ron, let her “just get on with it,” putting his focus on his own full-time work in construction. Her sons, now aged 10, 12 and 15, suddenly found their former stay-at-home mom much less available to them. “There was a real adjustment needed by them,” she says.

Ms. Drewry’s experience is far too typical for many entrepreneurs, says Judi Cunningham, executive director of the Sauder School of Business’s Business Families Centre at the University of British Columbia.

The time, financial, energy and emotional commitments required to build a business will easily move beyond its walls and into the family home – yet many entrepreneurs don’t take into account how much the people they live with will be affected by their decision to start a new business.

“There is a romance around being an entrepreneur,” Ms. Cunningham says. “Sometimes people aren’t prepared for what it is really like.

Photo by Steven Depolo

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Angela Shupe has added 5,783 posts to Business Opportunities Weblog.

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  • http://www.dailyslackr.com Luis Sandoval

    Great article and one that resonates with me far too deeply. I experienced the same issue when I worked for myself for two years. The idea is that working for yourself creates the ability to time-shift your work, as long as you make your deadlines, and spend time with your family when you want to. Unfortunately the reality was that without structure and start/end times, there was no longer the boundary of when to stop working to spend time with the family.

    I found myself working harder and not smarter and soon started to book evening meetings to “get more in” for the day. It really started to make an impact on my family until I had to have a real harsh face to face with myself one day when I realized what was slipping away. I really do feel that when you start to work for yourself, it’s an investment that is made by the entire family in order to make the adjustment as easy as possible. At the same time it also calls for structure and discipline from the one working for themselves to never lose sight.

    It’s funny that I came across this topic after just finishing my podcast broadcast on the topic of family entrepreneurs. Thanks for the post!

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