Lesson Two: Always put your family first

The second lesson when starting your own business is to keep your priorities straight. Write down on a piece of paper or have it tatooed to your inner eyelids - always keep your family first, keep your business second.

We all know that already (don't we?) but I can tell you that you need to remind yourself of that every minute of every day. Similar to the previous post you only have a set amount of time. Your time is your time there is no more. No matter how successfull your business is you cannot use that success to buy you more time.

It's easy to get diverted away from what's real, what's good in life. You find the business is going well and so you spend more time working on it to make it go even better.

You find the business is going badly so you spend more time working on it to make it go better.

You find that you have average success, the business is going OK so you spend more time working on it to make it go better

Can you see a similarity.

Where do we find this extra time we need to make our businesses go better. Well I found that I tended to look at the easiest place to find that extra time...family time. But the knock on effects of using family time in your business can be catastrophic. Ultimately they lead to huge homelife stresses which will reflect on your business and its success.

Nobody lying on their hospital bed breathing their last ever said "I wish I'd spent more time in the office" but plenty say (or thought) "I wish I'd spent more time at home".

So keep those priorities straight and repeat after me Family First, Business Second.