Are You Building a Business… or Sacrificing Your Family for It? Every entrepreneur dad wants to believe they’re building a legacy—creating financial freedom, security, and success for their family. But the hard truth? Many of us are actually sabotaging the very thing we claim to be doing this for. You tell yourself, “I’m doing this for my wife and kids.” You justify late nights and missed moments by saying, “I have to provide.” You convince yourself that someday you’ll have more time for your family. But someday never comes. In this raw and brutally honest episode, I expose the 5 biggest ways that dad entrepreneurs unknowingly destroy their families while chasing business success—and how you can stop it before it’s too late. What You’ll Learn in This Video: ✔️ The Silent Killer of Fatherhood & Marriage: How "business emergencies" make you an absent dad ✔️ Why Making Money Isn’t Enough: The painful truth about using “being a provider” as an excuse ✔️ How Your Business Stress Is Destroying Your Home Life: Why bringing work home kills relationships ✔️ The Guilt Trap: How dads overcompensate with gifts and freedom instead of real presence ✔️ Breaking the Cycle: The ONE commitment every dad entrepreneur must make to win at both business and fatherhood This episode will challenge you. It will call you out. But most importantly, it will show you a new way forward. If you’re tired of saying “next time” to your kids and missing out on the moments that matter, this video is for you.
Key Timestamps:
[00:16] The dangerous habit that makes dads absent (even when they’re home)
[3:43] The biggest lie dad entrepreneurs tell themselves about being a provider
[8:40] Why your wife and kids feel disconnected from you (even when you're around)
[13:55] The toxic guilt cycle that creates entitled kids
[18:25] The ONE change that will fix your business AND your family life
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Most dad entrepreneurs think that they're building a legacy, something to be proud of inside of their business, but what they're actually doing is destroying the thing that matters most, their family.
So I'm going to be talking about five brutal truths of how we sabotage our families while trying to grow our businesses.
First thing you got to remember is sometimes we can prioritize business emergencies for family time.
And that means that your mind is constantly on a call for the team, for your clients, for things happening inside of the business. So when it's time to, you know, play with the kids, yeah, you might be there physically, but your mind is Always expecting when that next slack message is going to come through when the next text or client issue is going to come up.
If you do that, you're not really present. And so what you're doing there from a mental and emotional standpoint to that family is you're prioritizing the needs of the business versus the needs of the family. And this is where you can start to actually sabotage yourself for saying, man, I'm taking as much time as I possibly can for my kids and for my family.
But the needs of the business do need to come first because that's what put food on the table. You haven't yet learned how to compartmentalize that when it's work, it's work. When it's family time, it's family time.
And then the worst thing that can happen is when you start to put the family moments of family time aside because you just got to take care of business, you got to handle business and at some point you're going to start lying to yourself that my wife's going to understand my family's going to understand it's all for them at the end of the day and if I don't take care of this now it's actually going to get worse.
The truth is you probably aren't building your business because you're so busy inside of the business to create systems that can handle a lot of those urgent matters for you. And so it's not a matter of you have to handle it. It's how can I create a systematic approach to my business and how I operate so I can spend more time with the things that matter most to me.
Because if you don't learn that lesson and you don't make those systematic changes to the business, what are you going to be teaching your kids? Your kids are going to learn that business comes first. Money comes first. Everything aside from the family and the kids will always come first. And if that's true, then really ask yourself, are you building a legacy?
Are you building something to be proud of? If growing up your kids start to make decisions that I don't need to spend time with family because I got a business. I got, I got, I got a hustle. I got a grind. And there are going to be seasons where they have to do that, but if that's their mentality, that it always is that way, just understand they're going to get that from somebody and it's more likely going to be coming from you.
And I get it. When I first started business, I mean, like a business that actually took off because I've had multiple failed business attempts, even before I became a dad. But when that first business took off and I had Ariella, my firstborn, she's four now. I had to prioritize so much of the stressors of the business because I personally didn't know what the hell I was doing.
Number two, things were taking off so fast. I had to just be so reactive, but I wasn't thinking in systems because I wasn't plugged in with anybody that could teach me how to think about growing and establishing a business while having a family. A lot of the people that I did learn business from were single guys that weren't even married or they just got married, but they didn't understand the dynamics of how do you build a business?
Be present as a man, as a father, as a husband for the family as well. And because I didn't know that I only knew what I knew. So all I did was react and react and react to business. And for the first year of Ariel's life, I wasn't as present as I wish I was. There was a lot of times that I went to drinking.
I smoked weed. I did everything that I could to try to decompress or like stop stressing out. But the reality was I wasn't facing my demons head on. And because of that, it took me quite a long time to really figure out what the missing pieces are. And that's why I share with you how to actually think about business and life that I wish I had when business first started taking up.
The next truth I want you to understand is to using the provider, being the provider as an excuse. You can fall back on it, you can hide behind that, you know, I'm just trying to provide. I'm just trying to make money, I'm just trying to put food on the table, I'm just trying to have a roof over their head.
I'm trying to build this massive life where they never have to worry about money again, just like I did when I was growing up. My family didn't have a lot of money coming up, I don't want my family now to deal with that. But the reality is, just because you make money, just you make decent money or making any type of money, doesn't mean that's good parenting.
That's like the bare minimum, and we have to understand that's what it is, but I also want you to understand that it comes from our upbringing. We may have had financial issues. You know, for me, a child of divorce, we lost everything. We lost the house. We lost the boat. We lost the motorcycles. We lost the dream life that I thought that Americans had.
And for me, I thought, well, if I provide financially for my family and for my daughters, that's good enough. But it's not good enough. That's not good parenting. You're simply trying to heal within yourself something that you didn't have, and you're projecting that onto your family, but that doesn't mean that the money that you make, or the things that you buy your family, are what makes you a good parent.
That's not what establishes a good relationship with your kids either. And you have to start to know that. That all they want is a present dad. All they want is the man in their life, not the, the, the man that's so busy because he's trying to provide for us that I, I never get to know him. My dad was a provider, just the provider.
He would do what he can to bring money home. I, you know, I saw my wife the other day. I don't really know my dad too much, aside from knowing his favorite color, which I'm pretty sure is blue. And he was an artist and that he liked sports and he fished sometimes. I don't really know my dad like that. So do you want to be what you were given?
Do you want to have that relationship with your kids or do you want like a real relationship with those kids? Those kids aren't going to be making a relationship with your money or your business or all these things, all the status that you're creating inside of business. They want a relationship with dad and you got to know that.
That can't happen if emotionally you're not there, you're absent. Just like I talked about earlier, if you're supposed to be playing with the kids, but your mind is elsewhere, you're mentally and emotionally absent. If you are running and gunning and you don't really get to see them, you are gone by the time they wake up.
They're asleep before you get home, and you're trying to justify that, well, I can't possibly do this thing because I'm working, I'm hustling, I'm putting all these hours into my work for them. It's not really for them. It's for you. And you gotta be aware of that because if you keep saying it's for you, it's for you, it's for you, and your kids are screaming, Dad, I don't want all of that shit that you're projecting out to me, I just want you.
If you were just more present, that would be for me. That's what they would say if they could articulate it. So what you gotta understand is, Everything that you want inside of business is for you to feel like the provider, to feel like you're doing a good job. But what I'm trying to get across to you is you providing doesn't equate to you doing a good job as a dad, you providing and being present means you're being a good dad.
You can't be a shit bag. And then try to be present and call it a day, because now you're not really providing, so it's a balance, it's an art form, but if you go too heavy into the providing part, and you're missing being present, then it's kind of like, meaningless. All of it's for nothing. You just have to remember, your kids don't want the money, they don't want the things, they don't want the new shoes, they don't want all the different experiences, they don't want the dinners, they don't want the, the, the, how awesome their life looks compared to anybody else, they don't want your money, bro.
They want you. And you gotta remember that.
Now that I got a second daughter, Alessia, here, I'm spending a lot more time with my family, spending time getting to know her at this age. Because I kind of missed that with Ariella. And that's why I'm telling you it's so important to realize that when you're there, when you're present with your kids, it's a very different life.
Business will continue to grow without you. And you have to understand this is why you build systems inside of your personal life and in your business so you can spend more time doing what you love. Because at some point, bro, you gotta understand, they're not gonna be this age. You're not gonna have the ability to see those first steps.
First time, she smacks her freaking face on the ground because she's just a different beast. And you being able to be there. You know, Alessia fell off the chair the other day because she was going a little bit crazy and I got to, because I was there, pick her up, hold her until she settled down. I want to be there for those moments.
And I tried to be there as best I could the first time around, but I probably wasn't there as much as I could have been. That's what I want you to know. I don't want you to be a, I could have been. I don't want it to be a regret like I have. And I mean, it's a good experience for me to be better this time, but.
It's not a good experience because that's not something I can rewind and relive. And it's definitely not something that my, my, my, my kid is going to be able to have. And obviously at one year old, she's not going to really remember that. I'll remember it though. And that's why I'm even more intentional about how I do life and how I do business.
The third brutal truth is you can't be bringing business home. Right. Whether you're working remotely, like here, I have a media room. Um, I have everything that I need at home. That's how I built our life. Um, but at the same time, you can't be bringing stress of the business home. My wife will tell you, for years now.
And I retired her many years ago, but for years, she never got to see any of the real stress inside of my businesses, the growth issues, the business issues, the highs, the lows, the ugly, because I kept that away from the family. I knew that my shit as a business owner had nothing to do with my family, so I can't be outwardly projecting all that stuff.
Now, at the same time, I probably could have done different things to self soothe versus getting drunk or smoking weed. But, I only knew what I knew. And I got better, and obviously I dropped all that shit, um, and it's been years now, since I've had to do any of that, but at the same time, I didn't know until I knew.
Best thing I can say, whatever you're doing inside of your business is for you. Whatever you want to accomplish, the money that you want to make, the things that you want to have, the life you want to give to your family, that's you wanting to give it to your family. Your family's not asking for that, I guarantee you that.
Every time I asked my wife, you know, at what point, like, are we going to be good? She told me, and she continues to tell me that if I just stopped a couple of years ago and we had like a two to three bedroom apartment and we had kids, that was it. That was the American dream because where do we come from?
We come from the Philippines. We come from poverty. We come from a place where like, that's winning. That would have been winning. I didn't have to do as much as I've until this point. And for a little bit of time, I really thought I'm doing this because this is the life that you deserve, and I think that you're telling me, without telling me, that this is the life that you deserve, so I'm going to get it for you.
But there were some times where I started to feel a little bit of resentment. I'm working my ass off to get you and this family this life. And I realized at some point, she never asked for any of that. Because I never asked at what point are we successful. I was so focused on the hustle and the grind of the business that I even forgot to ask my own family.
So I'd invite you to actually ask the family, what do they want? Because that's going to help you not take out your frustration and your day to day and your business on them. Because you already know that you've already hit, checked off that, that, that marker for them. And it's probably far less than what you're envisioning for the family.
So anything past that it's on you got to keep that in mind.
And part of bringing stress home, again, all of these things will interlock. It's being physically at home, but mentally, somewhere else. Mentally, you are thinking about business. Mentally, you're thinking about how shitty the other day was. Mentally, you're thinking about that client that just pissed you off.
Mentally, you're somewhere else. You're stressed off about the business. You have to learn how to compartmentalize emotions. Right, because as a business owner, nobody really tells you what to do. When to clock in, when to clock out. So mentally you don't have that shift, right? As a business owner, you're kind of on 24 seven.
So you have to learn the disciplines of telling yourself, I haven't punched in yet, or I just punched out. So I can't be thinking about work. As I told you guys, I retired my wife back in 2020 recently. Now that the kids are at an older age, both of them. Um, where they're a little bit more autonomous. My wife finally decided to give me my dream and work with me and it's been awesome, but because it's her first time working again and in a new environment business with her husband type of deal, I've had to remind her you're off the clock, no working, no talking about work, none of that because I know what it did to me and my mental health.
Not being able to turn that switch off because again, running an operating business is different, especially if it's your first one or it's your first successful one. And when you learn how to do that, what it does is it actually teaches your family and your kids when you're in work mode, when you're not in work mode, because what you want to stop is them walking on eggshells around you because you're going to fire off on them and pop off on them.
You're going to get angry. You're going to yell at them. You're going to discipline them. You're going to do something because your head's in work, but you're at home and they don't know that they don't know what's happening in your mind. Okay. And then they have to take the beating of, and you better not be fucking doing real beating, but the beating of the emotional and mental battle that you're in, you bring the kids in, and now they don't know how to react around you.
And again, you don't want your kids feeling that way around you. And a lot of men do that. They think that, like, that's the alpha way to do life. It's like, man, if your kids aren't comfortable talking to you whenever, because they have to guess on which, which, which version of you they're gonna expect or not expect, Man, that is not a way to live.
And if you came up that way, you already know that's not a good feeling. And if you do that with your kids, you definitely do that with your wife. Now imagine your wife, like, I mean, like, I don't understand. Why are you always so stressed out? And number two, why are you always stressed out at me? Because last time I checked, I didn't ask for you to be a business owner.
I didn't ask for you to do all of these things. I didn't ask for you to like, try to be the best in the world at something you asked for that. And I'm trying to support you the best that I can, but if you're not talking to me, which, man, you, you guys don't talk to your wife about shit. You're, you're too afraid to look beta that you forget that alpha is actually one that is in line with their emotions.
Your wife will start to pull away. She's gonna stop talking to you. She's gonna stop asking you about your day. She's gonna stop being emotionally open to you. You guys sex lives are gonna get fucked up because she's not gonna emotionally be open. You're gonna be emotionally closed off. You guys won't be able to be intimate, both physically, mentally, and emotionally.
And guess what leads to divorce guys? That shit. Okay. So that shit promise you, because what you're doing is you're, you're, you're projecting all of the shit in business that you say it's for the family and you're projected onto the family. You say it's for, it's not a good look.
The next thing is inconsistent parenting due to guilt. So you're guilty. Like, man, I want to be there for my kids. I want to be present, but I feel guilty that I'm not focused on my business. And sometimes when I'm focused on business, then I feel inconsistent and guilty that I'm not there for my kids. And because I don't even know how to emotionally deal with that, then I just feel guilty all the time.
So you know what? Here's what I'm gonna do. I am going to overhire over here and stress myself out to see if I can get more help, even though I haven't really strategically thought about this. And you know what? I'm going to give my kids something. I'm watching this Korean drama right now and there's this guy that basically buys a doll.
First kid, every time he has to go away on a trip and it fast forwarded to the future when she was 13, she stacked up all of these dolls that she just stuffed into a little closet because these are all the times that reminded her that my dad wasn't there. Are you gifting your kids all of these things to replace you or to feel less guilty?
So instead of you learning how to operate in a much higher level, So you can be there and be present. Now you're just like, hey, I'll just buy you all the toys that you want. Hey, you can do whatever you want. I'll be super lenient with you, you know. Just have freedom. Love me. Because I'm so free with you.
And I get you anything that you want, right? Because I'm providing. Look, I'm doing the thing. I'm doing the dad thing. But they never actually get to spend quality time with you. Bro, that's guilt. You feel guilty that you're not being the man that you said you wanted to be. And now you're overcompensating by buying gifts over here or overhiring or making weird business decisions over here so you, at the root of it, are always constantly guilty.
So how you operate in your personal life does affect how you operate in business. How you operate in your business affects your personal life because how you do anything is how you do everything. If you have no boundaries, if you have no discipline, then you're never going to be able to truly have a structured and free life, and you will always be a slave to your business, and you'll always be a slave to the guilt in your family.
And it's not a win win situation at that point. It's a lose lose. It's losing all the way around. And then what happens on the business side of things is you now have to babysit all of these people that you've hired to try to get more time back, but you just did it the wrong way. You You got to be strategic about your business decisions and at the same time on the kid's side because you're buying everything and letting them do whatever the hell they want so that way you don't feel guilty that you're not there.
Then you have spoon fed babies, you got entitled kids, you got kids that think that anything can be handed to them, that they can have whatever they want in this world and now you've built entitled rich kids. Don't do that. Especially if you're like me, the first person on the come up in the family, you got to understand that it is your responsibility to educate your children.
That yes, they may have access to more things now, but don't take that shit for granted. Like my daughter, whenever she wants a toy now, she literally says, daddy, can I earn this toy? I have taught her that you have to earn what you want. You can't just say, I want this, I want this, I want this because daddy's not going to have that type of daughter.
So I want you to understand you, you cannot just give, give, give to replace love, be present and teach your kids how to operate in this life. Because what this does is it affects their long term development. There was a time where, you know, I was buying my daughter, like, all of these video games. Uh, they're like gems or currency or whatever.
So she can always get, you know, what she wanted inside of the game. Then I started asking myself, man, what am I teaching her? I'm teaching her instant gratification. That she can just say, daddy, I want this thing, or I want, I want a hundred dollars worth of gems. So I can, I can play my game and she doesn't know that it's a hundred bucks, but it was a hundred bucks.
Like every single time, probably spent a thousand dollars on gems and I'm teaching her how to be entitled. I'm teaching her how to be the spoon fed baby. And that's when I started to change everything. That's when I started saying, hey, you got to earn everything. If you want points, which is our monetary system, it's points.
You got to clean up around the house by yourself. You got to clean your toys. You got to do these things. You got to eat your foods. Eat your proteins. Don't just be eating all the good, yummy, sugary stuff. Eat your proteins. Eat your vegetables. Eat your fruits. Help mommy around the house. Started teaching her discipline, so now every time she sees a new toy, she'll say, Daddy, can I have this toy?
And then she'll look at me for a second and she'll be like, can I earn it? And now we have a point system. She, she has her own money. You know, like we literally take her to the store so she can use the money that she's earned to buy her own toys. And the thing I'll tell you is, when she earns that money, she enjoys those toys so much more than just the toys we used to just buy her, just because she wanted them.
I want you to understand what you're doing and how that's developing your children. Who you are is who they become. How you speak to them becomes their inner voice. So you gotta ask yourself, are you doing them a service or are you doing them a disservice by not being the man and the father that they actually need to be that voice of reason.
And finally boys, making empty promises. You hear me talk about it all the time. If your word means nothing, then you are not a man. If, if you can't follow through on what you say, you're not a man. If you can't follow through on your promises to your family, you are not a man. I want you to always remember that.
If you're always saying next time or soon, but you never do next time and you never do soon and that shit never comes, your children will automatically leave. Not trust your word anymore. They'll stop asking you to play. They'll stop asking you to hang out. Every time they hear next time or soon, they're gonna roll their eyes and be like, Oh, of course.
Well, I guess that's never. Then what happens when they start growing up? Adolescents, teenagers, adults. They won't trust what you say anymore. When, when they say, Hey, are you gonna come for the holidays? And you say yes, and then you don't show up. They're gonna be like, Well, it's just like when I was a kid.
I wasn't expecting him to be there anyway. Is that the type of emotional disconnect you want to have with your children? It's pretty shitty parenting to me. Okay, so you can't be breaking those commitments all the time. If you repeat the cycle, you're creating a generational curse that when our fathers say they're going to do something, they're not going to do it.
Like, it's in our family. My father does it. His brother does it. The father's father does it. Ba You don't want to have that. You want to have that track record. You want to make your word mean something. But you can't be leaving your family and your kids with empty promises. Over time, they're just going to lose trust.
Because again, a man is nothing without his word. Make your word mean something. Especially if you've got daughters. Listen up. If you're a man and you've got daughters, what you do and how you act is what they start to look for inside of relationships. The reason why my children see the type of man I am, I wake up early, I'm very disciplined.
I have a high work ethic. I treat them right. I hold the doors open. I buy them flowers. I take the time to speak with them about emotions. It's because I know I'm changing their perception of what they're going to look for in a man when they're old. When they're 80 years old, they can date. But seriously, when they're older, I know how I am is what they're going to look for.
So especially men with daughters, how you operate and how you act is who your daughter will attract in the future. Men with sons, if you've been blessed with a son, how you operate is how your son will operate in this life. Don't build a man whose word means nothing because you've shown him that you don't follow through on your own words.
Everything that you didn't get from your old man, give that to your son. Do better, try harder because all of the sins of our fathers is a real thing until it takes the one black sheep to break the curses. Do right by your kids because everything that's happening, everything they're analyzing in you is shaping them, whether you realize it or not.
And if any of these hit home for you, I've created something special. Okay. Something that if you put your heart into in just 30 days, it's going to change your life and your business. I've put together a 30 part series and it's free for the dad entrepreneurs family blueprint. You need access to it today where I break down exactly how to build your business without sacrificing your family.
30 days is all I'm asking and you got to stay connected. You got to be plugged in. You got to do the short exercise. It takes five minutes to do the exercises. Five minutes every day for the next 30 days. If you can give me that, I promise you, you're going to be able to give your business and your family everything that that's been missing.
You can click the link inside of the description. And as always, if you have value or got value from this video, give it a thumbs up, give it a like, and subscribe. Much love. I'll see you next week. Peace.