Notes from this episode:

Business Mission = Family Mission

We needed to create our family mission which served as our identity. Who is your family?

              We wanted a faith-filled, virtue driven home where our children learned to be friends with each other.

• Continuing education in our faith formation
• Goals articulated
• Spirit of respect – Teach our children that excellence in everything was the goal – always doing your best whatever your best was.
• Our professional formation  – Michael in his career as an attorney, mine as the COO of our home, and then as the educator of our children as we homeschooled for 14 years.

Like in a business, all our decisions were made with our family mission in mind:

So everything from being consistent with discipline to their schoolwork and family daily squabbles to whether or not they went to certain social events in high school –

All decisions were based on our family mission.

Show Up as the CEO/COO

• Like I would show up for any job
• On time
• Well-dressed
• Hair done, make-up on
• Ready to work

Efficient Systems

• For ourselves – Take time to consider whether your home management system is working and if not, make some changes
• Routines/habits for each part of your day to make the work more efficient and keeping stress to a minimum
• Setting expectations for employees
• Train your employees well – train your children well
• Teach them the systems and good work ethics (ie living skills, virtues, and home responsibilities) and then hold them accountable.

Be Productive

• Scheduled work times with stated goals– with flexibility
• Committee
• If we took out our phone or whatever we Sox that wastes time – if we did it at a job where we’re paid to be there we’d be fired.  Nothing comes before our jobs unless we have a very good reason for it.
• Yearly / quarterly planning board meetings with your husband – look ahead – sit down with your husband and plan for the future – be future focused. – home, children’s behavior, education
• Step out those goals in order to achieve them
• Avoid the stress of the immediate
• Yes, things will come up, but they’ll be far less stressful if we already have our homes humming

Pay

• How are you compensated?
• It’s not a material payout
• It’s the formation of souls – of men and women going out into the world to be good men and women – productive, faith-filled, virtuous and ready to have families that repeat the cycle
• Our world will not be fixed for the better with the next invention or business idea

     Yes, that will create more convenience and certainly our lives depend on good businesses running well.

       But our business is producing good humans – and the more good humans we can produce, the better the world will be as a whole.

       As a society, we will only become better when more people are better and contributing good values and morals to uplift all of society.

Time Off

• Take time off without guilt – mom’s work is 24/7
• Make some time away every week a priority to recharge and refresh
• Don’t say, “I can’t”.  When you say that you take away the opportunity to find ways you can.
• Yearly retreat
• Time away with your spouse dinner or a walk
• Occasional vacation – even 24-48 hrs just the two of you