I've been involved with startups for almost 20 years and became a single father after my wife passed from cancer 5 years ago. I believe that being an entrepreneur and dedicated father requires management of priorities and opportunities rather than time. We all have the same amount of time in a day (24 hours!), it's what we do with the time that matters and that requires putting your priorities in line. For me, my top priority is my son, so my business decisions revolve around him.
These decisions include: when I'm available for calls, what activities I perform versus being outsourced, what times during the day/week do I work versus being with my son.
Here are some of my tips:
1. Work from home as much as possible but make sure you completely shut off work for family time.
2. Use cloud-based tools as much as possible - what you need will depend on your business. I do almost all my work in the cloud including website management, accounting, doc sharing, project management, video conferencing, etc. Examples of these include Zoho, Dropbox, Skydrive, SugarSync, Google Apps.
3. If working from home, get a separate work phone number such as with Google Voice.
4. Manage your opportunities - as an entrepreneur and someone who wants to grow his business, you may be tempted to go after every opportunity. Focus on those opportunities that fit your business and your interests the most. This may mean saying 'no' to some opportunities that come your way.
5. Enlist advisors and helpers for your business - if you don't already have advisors or employees/contractors that can help in growing your business, now is the time to look into such help. Just make sure these people can truly contribute, are trustworthy, and, ideally, be rather independent and not require too much of your time.
Good luck and congratulations on becoming a father. It's the best job you'll ever have.
Feel free to get in touch if you need more details on how I run my businesses and still be a dedicated father.
Gareth.
