Donny Kemick

Family Struggles For Small Business Owners

By Donny Kemick Friday October 15, 2010

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Family Struggles For Small Business Owners

I have always been a hard worker and Type A personality. I am not ashamed to say that, nor do I feel as though I’m being egotistical when I say it. The fact of the matter is, I work much more than the average person for many reasons:

- It helps me provide a good life for my family
- It allows my wife to stay home with my beautiful girls and raise them, rather than having them sent to daycare
- I am the majority owner of a small business marketing firm with a very lean staff, so I have to wear several hats at once
- Although I manage the business, I am still one of the primary technicians in the business as well
- My future livelihood is dependent on the continued growth and success of my business
- I truly enjoy what I do… most of the time

When I say that I wear many hats in my business, I really mean it…

I head up business development, marketing, strategic planning, sales, application development, mobile marketing/development, print marketing and customer service. I solely run HR, AP, AR, Accounting, Operations, Graphic Design, and a whole slew of other areas of the business. Overall, I run our business. That takes more time than I can actually commit to it every day. It’s not that I am a micromanager and just can’t let go of some of the responsibilities. In fact, I would love to hand off some of the roles I play to someone else. The problem is, there just isn’t anyone else to hand them to. We raw a very lean business and need to stay that way.

Bottom line, I love my job.

Being the Working Parent Can Really Suck

My girls are still very young at 2 and 4. To them, there is no difference between a Wednesday and a Saturday. They struggle with the notion that I have to work most of the week, and get 2 days a week to be with the family all day. Add to that the occasional weeknight that I have to attend a meeting or event and it really makes things more difficult.

The biggest challenge with this situation to me is that I just can’t change it. I have to work at least 5 days a week. I am the majority owner, so I need to attend most of the meetings and events. Frankly I work 7 days a week, just not all day, all 7 days.

A Home Office Helps & Hurts

You would think that it would make the weekday/weekend confusion easier since my business is run out of my basement and the girls get to see me much more than if I had a standard 9-5 job, but I have found that it actually makes things worse.

To them, it’s like I’m choosing to be downstairs working over spending time with them. Even worse, their mommy chooses to be with them all day instead of working. Now, I have tried to explain over and over to them that I would much rather spend all day with them like their mommy does, but I don’t think it fully sinks in.

What’s ironic about this whole situation is that I actually get to see the girls much more throughout the week than if I worked a normal 9-5 job…

Bumps/Bruises, Bedtime, Etc… – They Want Mommy

When you spend 10+ hours a day with your kids while the other parent is working, you have the great fortune of becoming their best friend. It does come at a price though, because it’s rare that they want their daddy to do many of the common parental tasks… which can really be painful as the working parent.

This part is easily the hardest aspect of being the working parent for me. My wife gets to have a very strong and special relationship with my girls that I jut cannot achieve, unless I quit my job and we all live in a cardboard box together…

Mommy Needs A Break

I have a huge appreciation for the amount of time my wife spends with our girls on a daily basis. At their ages, they are a full-time job ++ for sure. They always need entertained, fed, etc… It’s a lot of work.

At the end of my work day when I could use a half hour to clear my thoughts and regroup, I really need to be occupying my girls. I will admit to not always doing the best job of it, but I do try.

To make matters worse, if the girls are having a bad day, they tend to not want to start playing with me. They want their mommy. This frustrates my wife, and hurts me, no matter how much I understand why they do this.

I Don’t Have the Solution

Although I really wish I had a solution to this challenge, I just don’t. I would love to hear any advice you have in the comments below.

5 Resources for Busy Small Business Owners

By Donny Kemick Wednesday October 13, 2010

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5 Resources for Busy Small Business Owners

If you know me, you know that I am the majority partner for protocol 80, Inc., a small business marketing firm. With a very small team, we do very big things for our clients. I love working with small businesses because I work for and run one myself. I can relate to our clients and love setting them up for success online.

One common theme I hear over and over again is that there are just not enough hours in the day. I not only hear it, I experience it myself. There are 100s of things that I would like to do on a given day, but it just won’t happen. Things come up, deadlines arive, employees need managed, fires need extinguished… you get the point.

So, I decided to put together my top 5 tools for getting just a little more done every day.

1. Android Phone Smartphone
You need a phone anyways so why not make it count? I istarted out many moons ago using a Windows Mobile phone, switched to a Blackberry and finally switched to the Android platform. I’ve had the Motorola Droid and now have the Motorola Droid X.

Having a powerful smartphone gives me access to a slew of applications that make me effective no matter where I’m at. In fact, I’m writing this post entirely from my phone.

Aside from the obvious apps like text messaging and email,my phone allows me to blog, check and manage my calendar, stay active in social media for my business, get navigation and directions through the built in GPS, and even listen to audiobooks.

Invest in a smartphone and training if need be. Knowing how to use the tools is half the battle. Once you do, you’ll wonder how you survived without one.

2. Audible
I will admit to never having enjoyed spending tine with a book. Maybe I have A.D.D. or something, but I can almost always think of something I’d rather be doing. On the flipside of that, I do come across a lot of business books that sound terrific. If left to buying the book and reading it, the books would collect dust. Instead, I go to Audible.com, buy the audiobook, and enjoy listening to the book rather than reading it. I can then multi-task while listening to the book. It gives me something of value to do on long drives to see clients, or mowing my lawn. I only buy audio books now.

3. Twitter
In my industry, things change daily. Keeping ahead of the changes and knowing the data for the industry is key when trying to help our clients. While I initially saw zero value in Twitter, I can’t imagine living without it now. I check twitter more than I do my email! There are so many great links shared through twitter that I could literally spend all day just reading the blog posts that get sent around.

4. Instapaper
With the overload of great articles I see linked to on twitter, and in google reader, I could literally spend all day reading great resources. In my business, knowledge is really power.

I obviously can’t spend all day reading (hence #2 above), but I can do what everyone else does and read my paper over coffee. That’s what Instapaper does for you. As you read tweets, get emails and see new articles in your res reader, you can mark them to be read later. Then instapaper keeps a list and downloads the articles for later reading. This is super valuable for me because my industry is very data driven, and new reports and articles are released daily on trends and effectiveness of our service offerings.

5. Salesforce.com
With the huge focus in my business on generating leads, it’s vital to have a crm in place to track leads and customers at various points in the sales process. We’ve tried free crms and less expensive ones but at the end of the day, salesforce seems to be more of what we need in my business.

Once you are familiar with the jargon and setup of their crm it is a great tool to monitor your pipeline and remind you of who you should be talking to next.

So that’s it. My 5 reccomended resources for busy small business owners.

I’d love to hear about any resources you rely on in the comments below!

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