We both have several projects coming due so had mapped out our week on Sunday. As Rich headed to the school, we quickly recalibrated our day. Maddy is a voracious reader so she is currently a fairly easy kid to care for when she isn’t feeling well. Some of our projects could be completed while tending to her. Phew! We created a new plan, then Rich got the girls and I scrambled to adjust my arrangements for the next day.

On the way home, Keena fell asleep. Hard. She’s a light napper so this was very unlike her. You can see what is coming, right? By the time they got home, she was feverish as well. Even though it was the afternoon, we decided to let her sleep and she slept for more than three hours! Keena is younger so she hasn’t yet reached the easy-to-care-for-when-ill stage so we had to create a third plan for the day.

Was creating three separate plans for today a pain? Yes, I would have preferred to stick with the first plan. However, I’m so incredible grateful that we were able to be responsive to the girls’ needs. In conversations with other parents, I know how incredibly disruptive a child’s sick day can be. With no way to plan for them, very few child care options, and plenty of guilt, these days are one of the black holes of parenting. Developing multiple plans was a small price to pay for being able to treat the girls like the priority that they are for us.

Stay well!

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Building a business based upon your strengths is not only easier, it is smarter.  You will get more done in less time by constructing your business around your strongest skills and talents.

In the beginning, you may have to do everything yourself but go ahead and identify the tasks that someone else could take on more effectively.  That way when money becomes available or you meet someone with those skills, you will be prepared to pay or barter for them.  For more on playing to your strengths, listen to this Startup Nation podcast on “Business Planning Smarts: Identifying a ‘Screaming Need’, and Playing to Your Strengths”.

If you need help identifying your strengths, think about:

1. Tasks you enjoy
2. Tasks that make you happy
3. Tasks where time flies for you

Raising a child is also easier when your focus is on strengths.  Here you need to examine both your own strengths and the strengths of your child.  It is easy (I think especially for moms) to fall into the, “What would a ‘good’ parent do?” trap.  Instead keep the focus on what your particular strengths are and how you can use them to parent your child.

For example, Richard is fabulous at making tedious tasks fun.  Cleaning up toys is a ball for our girls when he leads the way.  From a race against the clock (complete with bone-us points for the winner – thanks Ruff Ruffman!) to a never-ending round of “the clean up song,” he has a knack for getting them into the swing of things.  Go Daddy!

Also look at the strengths of your children and give them opportunities to engage their strengths whenever possible.  As another example, our youngest loves to “help” us.  She helps Richard cook pancakes (she mixes the dry ingredients) and helps me water the plants.  She clearly wants to be in on the action.  So we let her whenever possible, even if it takes a little longer.  And we use this trait to our advantage.  If we frame a request in terms of asking for her help, she is excited about the chance to act like a “big girl.”

For more about fostering your child’s strengths, see Raising Resilient Children by Dr. Robert Brooks and Dr. Sam Goldstein.  This is a helpful book, complete with examples.

Have fun discovering and using your strengths in work and in parenting!

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1. Murphy’s Law is alive and well. Both my husband and I have worked in consulting (we actually met at work) so we thought we had experienced Murphy’s Law at its harshest. The notion that “if things can go wrong, they will” shifted to an entirely different level when we became parents who owned a business. If I had a hard deadline to meet and limited hours to complete the work, everyone in our family would become violently ill with the flu. If I had an important meeting at a client’s office, our babysitter would cancel at the last minute. It was stunning to watch this law come into play again and again. Know that it will. Which brings me to my second point….
2. Flexibility is crucial. Murphy’s Law ran rampant when I limited my options. When I leveraged the flexibility I had instead, the impact of Murphy’s Law was limited. If my daughter took an extra long nap, I would use that time to catch up on paperwork. After rescheduling several meetings and taking my baby to others after sitters canceled, I changed my childcare strategy and split the week between two sitters. That way even if one sitter had an emergency, I would (most likely) still get a couple of days to work. I also built much more time into my internal estimates for projects. I was accustomed to working at a sprint so estimated my project timelines from that viewpoint. Now I build in time for my children to be feverish and for me then contract their illnesses once the kids are feeling better – real life estimates, in other words. By assuming things will go wrong, their impact is lessened if they do.
3. Boundaries aren’t just for kids. With my office now in my home, the separation between work life and home life was initially, and for several years, very blurred. If I couldn’t sleep, I would drift into my office to “finish up a few things” and end up staying awake for hours. If the phone rang during dinner, I would “take a quick call” and end up motioning for my family to go ahead without me while a client started point number five on her thirteen point agenda. It took me a while to realize I needed boundaries for myself, not just for my kids. Now I have a designated work space and set hours when clients can reach me. When I shut down my computer, work time is done and family time begins.
4. Flowing cash makes for happy families. The first time that paying bills was problematic because a client hadn’t paid me on time was an eye opener. Cash flow can make or break a business! I had read that many times but living it was something else. Don’t paint yourself into a corner – establish an emergency fund or structure your business so cash flow issues don’t clog your financial life.

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We struggled with caring for our children in the way we wanted while still having some time to spend with each other, on ourselves, and, we desperately hoped, getting some sleep. We wrestled with paying off our credit card debt at the same time we were paying for child care. And, like most new parents, we often did this feeling we were alone in dealing with these issues.

When Richard and I met, back in 1998, we were both deeply in debt. We had student loans for graduate school (both) and law school (me). We had credit card debt from living expenses while we had been in school. Each of us had worked through school but our costs far outpaced the amounts we earned. Our debt was so large that we did not total it until we had been paying it off for several years since we were simply too afraid of what the number might be.

When we finally pulled out a calculator, we had more than $80,000 in credit card debt and more than $100,000 in student loan debt. And that was after years of payments! Writing those figures still makes me nauseous.

We became very frugal by necessity. This made us reconsider much of what people around us were saying. It turned out that we didn’t NEED a new car or stainless steel appliances to be happy. In fact, the used car we bought for $1,000 got us to work and back just fine, without the pain of a car payment. We learned that we were much happier with money in the bank than fancy appliances in our kitchen. (And the milk was just as cold coming out of our bottom of the line frig from Sears.) And we were proud that our lifestyle was becoming more sustainable.

We also started thinking a lot about what we really wanted out of life. We had both pursued career paths that turned out to have many more downsides than were initially apparent. We were both working for nonprofit organizations, not the highest paying of sectors, but were doing work that felt meaningful to each of us. However, expectations for long work hours and heavy travel schedules don’t typically lead to strong relationships or families. We wanted to make a difference in the world but believed we had to get our own home in order first.

We realized that having clear priorities and then working to implement them made most life decisions easier. Since we met, now eleven years ago, we have made many changes to our life. We have paid off mountains of debt. All of our credit card debt is paid off, as is the vast majority of our student loan debt. We have money in the bank, in retirement funds, and in college funds for our girls. And all of this was possible without us ever earning enormous salaries – we just got smarter about managing our finances. We have also expanded our sources of income so neither of us has to rely on the decisions or goodwill of one employer to bring home income.

We have both moved to self-employment and now work at home. In addition to cutting our commute to 30 seconds, we have the freedom to plan our time according to what is best for our family. This has meant some late nights as each of us has pushed to meet client deadlines but it has also meant taking part in preschool Halloween parades and Valentine’s Day teas with our kids without the lingering feeling of dread that often accompanies leaving the office in the middle of the day.

These and other changes have allowed us to focus on creating the strong family that we wanted for our children and ourselves.

Along the way we have searched for tools to help us create the life we wanted. While we found many sources that were useful in addressing individual topics, we had a harder time finding resources that covered more than one issue. However, putting it all together was our biggest challenge. Once we started talking with other parents (and realized we weren’t the only ones struggling), we learned that families were also having a hard time fitting all the pieces together. This site is about making connections, between topics and between people.

It is clear that our age is increasingly one of specialization, with individuals occupying their clearly marked niches. Sometimes, however, a generalist is what is needed most. We are not the foremost expert on personal finance, parenting, or entrepreneurship but we know a lot about managing all these issues at the same time. In addition, we can point you to the most helpful experts we found so you can dig deeper if your situation calls for it.

We also explore the links between these topics. You may not think that your relationship with your partner can impact your career or that your financial health can influence your physical health but research has shown that these connections are real. We’ll help you see where your efforts can have the biggest impact across your whole life and allow you to learn from others who have made the changes you are targeting.

We want your family to profit, in every sense of the word, with more money, more freedom, and stronger families!

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