For many, entrepreneurship is portrayed as glamorous and achievable with just a simple formula. Advertisements promote the idea that anyone can successfully start a business with little work or risk.
However, for those with family responsibilities, entrepreneurship requires additional considerations that are often left out of the marketing hype. While following your dreams and pursuing opportunities is important, individuals with spouses and children also have responsibilities to provide stability and security for their loved ones.
In a recent episode of Raising the Standard, Danny Vega, a well-known influencer in the Keto and Carnivore community, explained from his own experience that our number one job is security for the home.
Not just keeping our family safe, but making them feel safe financially.
Listen to the entire episode below.
When you have dependents counting on you, prudence and careful risk management become essential parts of any entrepreneurial venture in order to avoid unnecessary risks that could jeopardize meeting their needs.
Risk Management for Families
For an entrepreneur with a family, risk management involves more than simply weighing risks and rewards for oneself. As Danny realized from his own entrepreneurial journey, our number one job is security for the home.
As an entrepreneur with dependents, you must manage risk for more than just yourself - you have to consider the stability and security of your entire family. This means carefully weighing the potential risks and rewards of any business opportunity or decision in order to avoid unnecessary financial risks that could cause stress, instability and insecurity for your loved ones.
For families, risk management must account for the potential impacts on the stability, peace of mind and provision for your loved ones.
Manage Responsibilities
When you have dependents, it is crucial to avoid taking unnecessary risks that could jeopardize their needs being met. Any business venture requires thinking through possible worst case scenarios and how you would still provide for and take care of your family in those situations.
As Danny explained in our discussion, you have to weigh the risks and the rewards to ensure stability and security for your family. As an entrepreneur with responsibilities to a spouse and children, you need to avoid seeking opportunities that could leave your family insecure or lacking if things do not go as planned.
Focus first on building a sustainable venture that aligns with your skills and experience while still allowing you to sufficiently meet the needs of your dependents.
Prudence, wisdom and responsibility should take precedence over risk taking alone when you have children and a spouse relying on you.
Seek the Right Opportunities
For an entrepreneur with family responsibilities, seeking opportunities that minimize risk while still allowing you to meet your obligations to dependents is key. There are low risk opportunities out there that allow you to balance entrepreneurship with meeting your family's needs.
Consider part-time entrepreneurship alongside a stable income at first in order to limit risk exposure for your family. This can allow you to test business ideas on a smaller scale before fully committing.
Look for opportunities that most align with your existing skills, knowledge and experience. Depend on your strengths, not untested abilities, when entrepreneurship involves the stability of your loved ones.
Carefully evaluate opportunities through the lens of providing for your family's needs and stability before fully pursuing them.
Learn Through Failure
For many entrepreneurs, failure is an inevitable part of the learning process before eventually succeeding. However, when you have children, failure takes on additional weight and urgency. It's crucial to learn from mistakes quickly in order to minimize the financial impact on your loved ones.
When entrepreneurship involves the livelihoods of your children and spouse, failure must spur immediate change and course correction to limit fallout for your dependents.
Strive to learn lessons quickly from minor missteps and revenue declines before they become sizable losses that threaten your family's stability and needs being met! While making mistakes as you learn will be inevitable, find ways to mitigate risks and minimize losses in real time for the sake of providing for your loved ones.
Danny recognized this, telling us he should have transitioned back to his previous career a year earlier. It would've saved him and his family an extra year of grief.
Conclusion
While following your dreams and pursuing opportunities through entrepreneurship is important, having children and a spouse who depend on you for stability requires a more measured and careful approach.
When families are involved, promote values like financial stability, wise decision making and responsibility over risk taking alone.
With proper risk management, consideration of obligations, and a plan to provide for your loved ones - whether entrepreneurship succeeds fully or not - entrepreneurial ventures can coexist with the needs of your family.
The key is balancing risks and rewards with the security and stability of your dependents in mind.
