Have you ever been curious about how to start a family business or even wanted to somehow incorporate your family into your current business? Whether that looks like adding your spouse into your business OR you’re a mom or dad who wants to be a fully present parent while also being a successful entrepreneur. Well, you’re in the right place. Today we’re talking ALL about building a family business or incorporating your family into your business and redefining what family even looks like with the amazing Jeremy Pryor.
Jeremy’s Story
Jeremy and his wife April have spent the last 20 years building Team Pryor together. They have five kids and have founded and led several businesses and non-profits including Epipheo (a video production agency) Just Sew (a quilt shop), FamilyTeams.com (training content for families), and 1000 Houses (a network of Cincinnati disciple-making households).
Navigating the balance of business and family life at the beginning
Part of it was figuring out what was the design. What was God’s heart? The way that our world works we got used to the idea that our work is an individual pursuit. We are used to itemizing the family into its individual components and then sending them off to work, school, etc. Jeremy began to believe that that was abnormal, that that way of living was asking for something really hard on his family.
We do have to make a living to live, and we do want to be productive with our work, so it was figuring out how to do that. We started to try things. Over time we discovered that there are creative ways to bridge that gap.
Incorporating family into your businesses
A lot of it will be a trial and error. You first need to shift your perspective that families are supposed to work together as a team. If you want to live a highly integrated life with your family you would start three different businesses. Usually, this starts with a ‘freedom’ business and this is a business that you can often pivot out of an employment situation. It is often a service-based business. You pick one and within 3-6 months you can begin to make a good income. A great thing about a service business is you can pull 100% of the cash you make out of the business after you pay a few expenses and live off that.
After a year or two of that, you learn a lot about business. You start to find efficiencies and then you see if there is a way to provide that is not tied to your time. That is usually a second business you launch, a ‘scale’ business. All of that money is between the first two businesses to service the third business which is a ‘legacy’ business.
Where you buy capital-intensive assets. Buy real estate, Airbnbs, long-term rentals, multi-family units, etc. It’s a way to double, triple, or quadruple your time with your family.
Setting boundaries
There are two different paradigms. One is that work and family are super separate and you create strong firewalls between them. When you’re living the lifestyle of work taking away from your family time there is a balance to it.
A totally different paradigm is integrating them. When Jeremy goes to work and his daughter is helping him work, he’s not interested in introducing those boundaries. The deeper you go into work the deeper your relationship will be with your daughter.
Best piece of advice for someone wanting to start a family business OR want to incorporate their family into their current business
The most powerful tool is to have a weekly family meeting. If you own your own business you want to start with an experimental integration. Look at your week and start small, what is the block of time that would be most susceptible to integration? You have to be willing to go through these experiments and try things. Then be honest about the outcomes. Then you have to have the time in the meeting to say can we fix that? If you do that repeatedly you will find that there are lots of places you can integrate your kids.
What is the biggest lesson you have learned in business?
Businesses need to have an operating system. There are about 20 questions that every business needs to solve in order for them to track what’s going on and to properly balance those things. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel, find the operating system and follow it.
What is your favorite book you’ve read recently?
The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl Trueman
Show notes
Boost Productivity Freebie: www.theheartuniversity.com/productivity
Athletic Greens: www.athleticgreens.com/HEART
Wedding Photography Summit: www.weddingphotographysummit.com
The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl Trueman
Connect with Jeremy:
www.familyteams.com
www.instagram.com/jeremympryor
Famliy Revision Book
Take Back Your Family
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