Going on 12 years ago I started my company, ValueList Real Estate Services, Inc..
Shortly thereafter my ex-wife informed me that she was relocating to Huntsville Alabama and taking the kids.
After a legal battle where I attempted to get courts to enforce our divorce decree, I found out that while it might be a man's world everywhere else, it's not so much in a divorce court!
The end result of the legal battle was that the courts pretty much forced me to allow her to take the kids a 7 hour drive away from where I had started my business. Oh and I was about $15,000's lighter for my efforts. Anyway, not to bore you guys with the details, but suffice it to say that if I wanted to be a part of my kid's life's, it was going to be up to me.
Even though my young company was struggling, I made it a priority to see my kids at least once a month. Sometimes it came down to a choice of putting my kids off and working on a weekend showing property. Probably 9 out of 10 times, I chose to go see my kids. There were many times that my kids would have something to do up here in St. Louis, such as a friend's birthday party and I would end up driving to Huntsville to pick up the kids, driving back to St. Louis so that they could attend the function, turning around and driving back to Huntsville to take the kids home and then driving myself back to St. Louis. That meant spending approximately 28 hours out of a two day weekend in the car!
In addition to the time away from my fledgling business, it was expensive! I became the king of the travel book coupon! But even with the coupon, staying in motels and eating most meals out was expensive. During this time period I compared notes with a buddy of mine who earns his living driving an 18 wheeler and I was driving almost as much as he was!
Every summer my kids would come to live with me and this presented special challenges. As most of you know, summer is the bread and butter in our business. I was forced to balance out spending time with them and getting them to their summer time activities verses making hay while the sun was shining. I did the best that I could, but I would be lying if I told you that I served either master as well as I should have. Both of my kids could figure a house payment by the time they were 10 though, if that is any consolation?
What got me thinking about this was a post by Fran Gaspari called, "Setting Priorities". In it he talks about coming to terms with setting your priorities and keeping the various aspects of your life in balance. I truly enjoyed this post and upon thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that while it was difficult and my business no doubt suffered, that I had done the right thing. My kids were only going to be kids once.
My daughter is getting ready to graduate from "The" Ohio State University and my son is going into his senior year at Auburn. Soon they will both be going on to graduate school and as I wrote in a post the other day, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel (it's strange how at 46 that 4 or 5 years from now doesn't seem that far away). When they graduate from grad school, I hope to be able to better focus on building my business, but until then I'm comfortable in the fact that I have my priorities straight. Is my company as successful as it could have been? No, but my kids know who their dad is and that driving 28 hours in a weekend is a walk in the park if it meant being a part of their lives!
Bob Mitchell
ValueList Real Estate Services, Inc.
Comments(9)