Which group would you like to belong to on Valentine’s Day?
Entrepreneur – You make an extra $5,000 from your customers. You feel wealthy.
Parent – You tuck your children into bed despite another day of chaos and chores. You feel wonderful.
Lover – You have an exquisite dinner followed by a satisfying night. You feel wanted.
Chances are, you already belong to one of these. But how do you like to be in two of the groups simultaneously? Better yet, why not feel wealthy, wonderful and wanted all at once!
We had our first date on Valentine’s Day in 1996. Over the years, we had to juggle the roles of an entrepreneur, parent and lovers at the same time. While many middle-aged couples with children strive to stay in stable jobs, we left ours to start a business.
Balancing Relationships
As we celebrate our 23rd Valentine’s Day together, we reflect on this question…
How to balance being an entrepreneur, parent and lover at the same time?
“It’s too difficult!”, most would exclaim.
Spending crazy number of hours at work, many parents today neglect their family and lament about the lack of work-life balance. A few quit working for good and attend to their children full time. But too many have little to no time left for their spouse.
We too struggled at this. Being full-time employees in the past meant our children spent more time with their grandparents than us. And what little time we had with them after work was reserved for homework.
And after we started our journey as entrepreneurs, we were wrong to assume we had more time with the children. The consolation is that we manage to spend more time together as a couple.
How then is it possible to prioritise between work and life, let along balancing all three roles at once?
It is not about Prioritising. It is about Proportioning… with the 3Ps
To prioritise, we are subconsciously convincing ourselves to sacrifice one role over the others. Yet there is not enough hours in a day to apportion being an entrepreneur, parent and lover.
The trick is thus to proportion the three roles, so that each is regulated to have a relationship with the others.
In other words, it is all about integrating a life of entrepreneurship, parenthood and marriage.
And this could be achieved with the 3Ps – Purpose, Profit and Passion.
What is your life Purpose?
While many people live their lives aimlessly, spending one day at a time, a few have a goal, a dream, or a life Purpose.
It could be as simple as making enough to retire at 62, or wanting to leave behind a business for the children. Some might look towards religion.
For us, our life Purpose is to provide free education and childcare to 100 families with less-than-ideal financial means, by building a learning centre and a childcare centre.
How much Profit must you make to achieve that?
The next step is to figure out how much money to make to achieve that Purpose… and double it! Because you will also need to constantly reward yourself while funding your goal.
And if you now know that your current business or employment will not achieve you that, you have got to think about doing something different.
We are working towards making $100,000 monthly to fund the operating costs of our two centres.
What is your Passion that drives you to make that income?
Making that much Profit to achieve your Purpose requires a lot of determination. If you are not doing something you are passionate in, your drive will soon fizzle out.
This is also the stage where you proportion and keep integrating your entrepreneur, parent and lover roles, further fuelling your Passion to make that Profits to achieve the Purpose.
For us, we infuse our Passion of children’s education and digital marketing into our business…
…involving our children and parenthood experiences in our blogs and posts…
…while branding ourselves and running the business as a husband and wife team.
The more we keep doing these, the closer we are to attaining our Profits target. And this means we will achieve our Purpose sooner.
But for many of us, the balance among being an entrepreneur, parent and lover remains a struggle.
All you have to do this Valentine’s Day to ultimately feeling wealthy, wonderful and wanted all at once, is to take the first step to find your 3Ps.
Also READ: 5 Common mistakes couples make that jeopardize their marriage