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Friday, January 11, 2019 - 10:30am
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Business Vs. Family: 4 Tips For Finding

A Successful Balance

Almost everybody bemoans the difficulties in trying to maintain a healthy balance between family and work.  But for entrepreneurs, the inability to find that balance is not just unhealthy, it can result in the failure of both the business and the loss of the family.

Most entrepreneurs work at least 50 hours a week, and some people like Elon Musk say that working 100 hours a week is doable and will improve the chances for business success.  

But what about having a life beyond the business?

“Entrepreneurs really do have to walk a tightrope between their families and their businesses,” says Peter J. Strauss (www.peterjstrauss.com), an attorney, entrepreneur and author of the upcoming book The Accidental Life.  “Failure in one of those two aspects usually leads to failure in the other.”

Making matters worse is that when entrepreneurs first launch the business, many are using their homes as an office. This creates family issues when there are no physical barriers between job and family, Strauss says.

He offers tips for entrepreneurs who want to have success in both their business and their home lives.

  • Set boundaries. Especially if you run the business at home, it is important to set boundaries with your spouse or partner to make sure you are not always talking about business. When you are at work, be at work.  And when you are at home, even if your business is in the garage, be at home.  Have a separate phone for your business and don’t take business calls when you are on family time unless it is an emergency.

     

  • Prioritize work tasks. Determine what is the most difficult task and attack it first.  That will help you get out of work on time and go home to your family.  If you have a family event in the evening, it is much easier to leave a small task to the morning instead of a large, difficult task.

 

  • Take vacations (even small ones). A vacation doesn’t have to be two weeks.  Take a day off and take the family on a picnic. It will not only be good for your relationship with your family, it will also be good for your business. You will come back refreshed and better able to tackle the challenges of your business.

     

  • Don’t intrude on your family’s space. If you run your business from your home, have a designated workspace.  Don’t use the family dining room table for your paperwork.  Find someplace where you can focus on your business without family interruptions.  

 

Strauss says entrepreneurs should not underestimate the importance of finding the right balance between business and family. 

“If they don’t get it right,” he says, “they risk losing everything.”

 

 About Peter J. Strauss

Peter J. Strauss (www.peterjstrauss.com) is an attorney, entrepreneur and author of several books, including the soon-to-be-released The Accidental Life. He is the founder and managing member of The Strauss Law Firm, LLC, on Hilton Head Island, S.C, and also the founder and CEO of Hamilton Captive Management, LLC. He is a graduate of the New England School of Law and of Harvard Business School’s Owner/President Management program. Strauss also holds an LL.M. in estate planning from the University of Miami and speaks regularly at public seminars.

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CON ETIQUETTE

PREMIERE NEW SONG

"ANYWHERE"

VIA THE NOISE

LISTEN HERE

 

January 10, 2019 - Con Etiquette are premiering their new song "Anywhere" exclusively today via The Noise. Listen HERE. "If the New Year didn't exactly bring on some sort of positive mindset or newer outlook on life, today we have just the song for you", The Noise writes. "Coming in at three minutes and 51 seconds of vibed out emo rock similar to the likes of Have Mercy or Microwave is Con Etiquette's soothing new single 'Anywhere'." The single, which follows up the band's most recent EP The Company We Keep, comes from a series of songs released by the band this fall/winter. For more information on Con Etiquette, please visit: https://www.facebook.com/pg/conetiquette/.

 

Con Etiquette are a four piece rock band from southern Connecticut. Their sound can be described as a high energy blend of '90s alternative rock and contemporary post-rock, led by frontman/guitarist Antonino Lappostato, who, as a former solo acoustic artist, has a knack for smart songwriting. The band, fleshed out by guitarist Vin Testani, drummer Matt Krugel and bassist Dan Nicolari, make punchy, well-written songs touching on life and death, and everything in between.

 

The band's debut release Resulting In..., was warmly received, with New Noise Magazine giving the album a five-star review, writing, "Con Etiquette is a refresher course on post-rock, a reminder of the progressive genre we've all forgotten could be this good." The band followed this up with the aforementioned, The Company We Keep, and most recently, the two new singles "Trial and Error" and "Anywhere".

 

For more information, please visit:

https://www.facebook.com/pg/conetiquette/

https://twitter.com/conetiquette_ct

 

https://www.instagram.com/con_etiquette/

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Best and Worst

By James A. Haught

605 words

The immortal novel, A Tale of Two Cities, begins:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.”

Actually, I think this yin-and-yang contradiction exists right now, today – and probably existed at every moment since the beginning of recorded history.

These are America’s worst times under a ludicrous president who has uttered 7,600 countable lies and shut down part of the federal government in a temper tantrum.  But life also is good, with full employment, booming prosperity and superb personal freedoms.

Writers like Chris Hedges are correct that right-wing greed is pulling America apart in ever-worse inequality, and that industrial pollution causes global warming that threatens the planet.  But writers like Steven Pinker are correct in claiming that our “better angels” cause life to improve constantly, with fewer wars, fewer murders, fewer rapes, fewer cruelties, fewer ethnic persecutions and relentless retreat of other evils.

It is the best of times, it is the worst of times – and it always was.

The hero of Scaramouche was “born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad.”  But that’s just half the story.  Laughter can be dampened by grief and suffering.  A better assessment of our ongoing carnival is the cliché: Life is a comedy to the person who thinks, and a tragedy to the person who feels.

Columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote that, despite daily horrors in the news, “2018 was the best year in human history.”  He cited:

Each day, about 295,000 people around the world gained access to electricity for the first time.

Each day, about 305,000 got safe drinking water for the first time.

Each day, 620,000 more people acquired access to the Internet.

“Only about four percent of children worldwide now die by the age of five,” he wrote. “That’s still horrifying, but it’s down from 19 percent in 1960.”

Before the 1950s, more than half of humanity lived in extreme poverty, defined as less than $2 daily income.  Now the ratio is below ten percent.

When I was young in the 1950s, gay sex was a felony – and it was a crime for stores to open on the Sabbath – and blacks were banned from white schools, restaurants, hotels, pools, neighborhoods and jobs – and it was a crime to buy a cocktail or look at something like a Playboy magazine – and a desperate girl who ended a pregnancy faced prison, along with her doctor.  Our mayor once sent police to raid bookstores selling “Peyton Place.” Now all those Puritanical strictures have vanished.  Human progress occurred.

A century ago, average life expectancy was 48 years.  Now it’s near 80, thanks mostly to medical science.

It’s true that the bizarre Trump era is the worst of times.  But I have blind faith (perhaps fueled by wishful thinking) that Trump will fade into the muck from whence he came, and intelligent statecraft will return.  I have hope that Democrats eventually will attain universal healthcare as a human right for everyone – and today’s ruinous college debts will cease – and other progressive goals will be achieved, one after another.

As we stumble toward that future, it will always be the best of times and the worst of times.

–end–

James Haught, syndicated by PeaceVoice,is editor emeritus of West Virginia’s largest newspaper, The Charleston Gazette-Mail.