44. The Happy 4-Day Work Week Stay at Home Parent

You ever talk to an entrepreneur who is supported by a spouse who stays at home and helped raise the kids, you'll often hear the entrepreneur say, That person, that stay at home mom, that stay at home dad, they work harder than I do. And this is something, whether you're a parent and you're the stay at home mom or the stay at home dad, or maybe you're the working mom or working dad, or maybe you're the primary breadwinner, or maybe you share the duties. Something a lot of people seem to miss out on is how hard and difficult that work can be, mainly because it's not treated in the same way as a job can be. And what I mean by that is, if you had a job where you were working 120 hours a week or 100 hours a week, and they paid you a really low amount, you'd say something. You'd say, No, I don't work at these times or that times. I have coffee breaks, I have lunch breaks. There's certain times that I just take off. Now, anybody who's had children from the day they were born knows that when a child is first born, that can be very difficult.

And if you're in a part of the world where you don't have a helper or a nanny, you might certainly say, Wait, you know what? There's simply times today I can't get rest. The child was just born. I'm just trying to keep up and sleep when they sleep and all that stuff. But eventually, there comes a time where the kids can do more and more things, and it becomes helpful to say, Okay, hey, mommy doesn't work past this hour. Daddy doesn't work past this hour in the home. At six o'clock or seven o'clock, kitchen's closed, or whatever it might be, or at six in the morning, Nope, I don't get up yet. I get up at seven. Whatever that might look like to create boundaries in a healthy way so that you can be a better parent. You can be a better and more supportive spouse. You can be a better, more supportive help to your person who's the entrepreneur. As an entrepreneur, sometimes we get really crazy stupid ideas and we're about to embark on them. And sometimes we need our spouse to say, No, that's not a very good idea. But if the criticism comes as it can be very difficult to hear and the entrepreneur, you just say, That's another person who says I can't do it.

I'm going to show them. I'm going to lose a bunch of money just to prove I'm right. Versus being as the supportive spouse, and supportive, by the way, sometimes means saying, Hell, no. To be able to be in a centered enough place to say, Oh, okay, I like that idea. You're excited about this. You're not excited about that. So let's talk about this. People say, Wait, that's just unrealistic. Well, it's unrealistic if you're not getting enough sleep. It's unrealistic if you think your job is to provide everything your kids never had by you and yourself and just give them every single thing. So in all of this, this is about understanding that whether it's the stay at home parent, whether it's the co working parent, where both are working parents, the more you can create a situation where you in that role can have times where you don't work, where you're not just saying, Wait, why the heck would I want a four day work week? Because I'm just going to have three days of taking care of the kids and being their chauff and their taxi driver and their servant. Well, it all depends how you define the relationship.

I encourage you, whether this is you as the entrepreneur listening to this, whether maybe your spouse needs to hear this, or maybe you need to hear it on how you can support them, consider what boundaries can you experiment with and just slowly do it. Maybe you say, Wait, the kids are so used to my support all the time. I don't want to pull out the carpet out from under them. I don't want to think they did something wrong. But you know what? Okay, maybe we're going to hold bed times and make sure that the kids are in bed by a certain time. And if they're not, whatever you like to do, I happen to say, Hey, no device and TV the next day. If you can't get to bed by a certain time because I like hanging out with your mom and your mom's actually a cool person and we need time together, and you guys need to go to sleep. And being able to say something like that where you set your boundary and slowly start creating time windows where you have time to be yourself, to not just be a parent, but to be an individual, and to be able to create a situation where you can still have the energy and the time to be an awesome parent to your kids, but also have the time and energy to be awesome to you as an individual and have the time and energy to devote to your relationship, if you're in a relationship as a couple with your spouse or partner.

I hope you find this helpful. If you have any questions or comments on this, let me know. As always, look forward to helping you make more money in less time. Do what you do best so you can better enjoy life with your friends, with your family and everything else you do. Thank you.