It’s a Living

Ringmaster — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 20:19:46 +0000

There’s nothing that makes me more uncomfortable than the question, “What does your husband do?

It’s not that I’m ashamed by what he does. It’s just that I don’t really know. I mean, I know. I sit right next to him everyday as he works away on his computer. It’s really that I have a hard time articulating to other people what he does.

I suppose this is nothing new for me. When I was in first grade, my homework assignment was to find out what my father did for a living. When I asked him, he replied, “I’m an engineer.” End of conversation. I went to school the next day and when it was my turn to share with the class what my dad did, I said, “He drives a train.”

Now, in fairness to my dad, I probably didn’t explain why I was asking the question, nor did I ask him to clarify what exactly an engineer was. I knew the answer already.

An engineer is someone who drives a train. I could picture my dad, driving the train, smiling and blowing the horn as he passed by kids waving to him.

It was some time before I learned that he didn’t actually drive a train. And truthfully, I was a little disappointed.

So to answer the question, what does my husband do? Well, he’s an entrepreneur. He starts businesses. Many of them. And of course, he runs a circus.

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(Mind Your) Family Business

Ringmaster — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 18:11:47 +0000

As the year comes to a close, many of my work clients are preparing for a new fiscal year. There are planning meetings, strategy meetings, and budget meetings. The outcomes of these meetings largely depend on the current state of affairs, the basic ‘Where are we now?” and “Where do we want to be?” questions. From there, goals, objectives, tactics, resources and budgets are set for the year.

It got me thinking, that as a parent, I should be doing the same planning, the same ‘taking stock’. But the reality is, life gets so busy that we rarely take time to assess what we are doing, what we should be doing and where we want to grow as a family.

As parents, we want to teach our kids responsibility, accountability and a strong work ethic, but we rarely allow them responsibilities.

So, at TodsCircus, we are officially taking-stock of our family’s performance, and frankly, there is much work to be done! We are looking at a complete ‘Turn Around’ situation.

Our first order of business is to define our family philosophy and develop our family mission statement.

Let the planning begin.

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It’s a Living

(Mind Your) Family Business