Hey,

I am a father of 5 children, the youngest 5 months and the oldest 8 years.

During this time, I started my own company 3 years ago. I have also recently been working on a new product that is just about to be released to market. 2 months ago, my 5 year old was diagnosed with Leukaemia (don't worry, he is doing fine), This involves spending a bunch of time in the hospital with him etc.. I know a bunch about managing a family while running a business. Some of my tricks:
- I choose to work with people who also understand the important of family time
- I work hard, but play hard too, happy to work 18 hours straight. But also expect to be able to turn off completely when needed.
- Manage people expectations. Book meetings and never miss them, not even 1 minute late. But if your workmate/client downs
- I work from home most of the time, so can quickly go inside and read the kids a quick story or drink a glass of wine with my wife.
- I use Asana, a great project management tool to run my business. I turn off notifications and when I have time to focus, I can process all tasks for all the projects I am working on.
- I am passionate about what I do, and somehow have been able to convince my wife in the same. I suppose without this point, you might have an issue. You need to be able to justify that spending some time away from the family is worth it.
- Realize that the first year is going to be pretty hectic, but you are not as important and needed as your would like to think you are. With all my kids, my deeper relationship kicked in from the age of 2 and above when I could take them to all sorts of cool places.
- Some advice for later. Keep sunday free for just family time, and take the kids to cool places!