INTRODUCTION: SOMEDAY NEVER COMES
My head began to spin as I made the connection. How could this be? I loved being an entrepreneur, and I didn't want this to happen in my family. Were my kids at risk? Were my entrepreneurial friends at risk? Were their kids?
Just as quickly, though, I realized that business wasn't the root of the problem. After all, I’d seen many incredibly successful entrepreneurs who were deeply connected to their children.
So what was the common thread?
Memories came flooding back. My friend's parents were good, hardworking people who had raised three children. Yet, the older kids hadn’t faced the same challenges—only my friend, the youngest of the three. Why? Unfortunately, their business was struggling at the time when my friend needed them most. As they put in extra hours at the office to save their business, my friend was the only sibling left without the one thing that makes the difference in every child’s life: quality time.
During our discussions, it became increasingly clear that it was the lack of this vital element that was to blame, not entrepreneurship. None of these hardworking parents had spent quality time with their children during the formative years. They had invested heavily in their businesses, but not in their kids. The result was predictable. There was a lack of connection, which led to confused teens, who in turn made bad choices. Those bad choices then followed the teens into adulthood. Now, those con- fused teens were confused—and addicted—adults.
As I struggled to understand how this could happen, it became apparent that many of the parents there that day had once believed the great lie of success-seekers everywhere: that they were “doing it for their kids” and that their kids would, someday, understand.
Someday never came.
Instead, those busy parents experienced the pain of watching their children morph into something unrecognizable as alcohol and drugs tightened their grip.
That day, I watched “successful” grown men and women sobbing at the clear knowledge they hadn't been there for their children when it was most important. It was enough to change me forever. That day, I learned there was something more important than money, more important than fancy private schools, and more important than empty gifts. That something is called quality time.
I sat in that room, listening to the devastating stories and the heart-wrenching regret of each parent, as a hundred different threads wound themselves together in my mind. The disconnected entrepreneurs and corporate warriors I'd met over the years. The disconnected parents in the support group. The memory of my friend's dis- connected upbringing. It was like a slap in the face—an abrupt shock that left me wondering, what happened to these families?
When I look back, I know that it was in that moment that this book was born. The moment when I realized that I was seeing more than troubled kids or busy lives; I was witnessing the fallout of a disconnection epidemic.
I walked away that day knowing I had to help find a solution.