May 12, 2026

Protecting Your Kids While You Build the Business — Part 1: The Promise You Made

Show Notes
Transcript

Optimized Entrepreneur Protecting Your Kids While You Build the Business — Part 1: The Promise You Made There is a drawing on a refrigerator somewhere. A stick figure parent. Square shoulders. A head with two dots for eyes. And in the figure's hand, drawn carefully, with more attention than the rest of the picture got — a phone. That is the part the kid spent the most time on. Because in the kid's daily lived experience, that was the part that mattered. If you are an entrepreneur with kids in the house, you have probably been the figure in a drawing like that at some point — even if you have never seen the drawing. This is Part 1 of a two-part series on protecting your kids while you build the business, and Jeremy Hanson goes directly at the question most entrepreneurs avoid asking themselves. He starts with the deal you made when you signed up for this — the picture of being more available, more present, more in control of when the workday ended and family time started — and then names the gap between that vision and the daily reality of the building phase, where the work follows you into the rooms where it does not belong. Then he splits the conversation by household structure, because the math is not the same for everyone. For single parents, he names the trap of telling yourself that providing is enough — and explains why a child whose only experience of you is the experience of an absent provider does not feel provided for. They feel left. He walks through what changes when a single parent commits to two non-negotiable anchor windows, with a concrete example of a single mother running a service business and the difference between zero present hours and ninety. For married parents, he names the comfort of believing the other parent has it covered — and the slower, quieter trap underneath it, where the entrepreneur becomes a guest in their own family while the spouse becomes the kids' primary parent without anyone having decided that out loud. He gives a concrete picture of what that looks like across three years of accumulated absence, where the ten-year-old stops trying to tell dad about her day, the eight-year-old stops asking dad for help, and the wife emotionally adjusts to a version of him that does not show up. From there Jeremy delivers the most important piece of math in the entire conversation — kids are not measuring hours, they are measuring attention — and explains why one fully present dinner deposits more than a week of distracted evenings, and why reliability in a few protected windows beats availability across many distracted ones. He closes with the three foundational protections every entrepreneurial parent needs to install this week. Designate the non-negotiable windows. Fully remove the business during them. Tell the kids what you are building and why. This is the foundation episode. Part 2 is the execution. Visit optimized1.com for the rest of the playbook for entrepreneurs who refuse to trade their kids for their company. ABOUT THE SHOW Optimized Entrepreneur is the podcast about the intersection of life and business — winning in life and optimizing your life so your business complements true happiness instead of consuming it. Hosted by Jeremy Hanson, a 20-plus year entrepreneur who built and runs multiple service businesses while raising a large family, the show goes directly at the relational, personal, and operational questions that decide whether the company you build serves the life you wanted. No motivational filler. No corporate speak. Tactical, direct, and built for operators who want a business that complements true happiness. Where life and business intersect. Optimized Entrepreneur is a sister show to The Jeremy Hanson Podcast — JHP at jeremyhanson.pro covers business, strategy, and mindset; Optimized Entrepreneur at optimized1.com covers life and business integration. Built Different is the joint newsletter for both shows Q: What does Jeremy Hanson say is the gap between the vision of entrepreneurship and the daily reality? Answer: The vision sells more availability and more presence with family. The daily reality of the building phase delivers more hours, more mental occupation, and a version of work that follows you into rooms where it does not belong. Q: Why does the trap of "I am providing, so the hours are themselves the gift" fail single parents? Answer: Because a kid does not experience hours as provision when those hours produce an absent parent. The kid sees a parent who is not there, and if that parent is the only parent, the absence is total. The hours pay for the gift. They are not the gift. The gift is fully present time. Q: What is the comfort of "the other parent has it covered" and why is it dangerous? Answer: It is the belief that a present spouse substitutes for the entrepreneur's own presence. The danger is that the entrepreneur slowly becomes a guest in their own family — the kids reroute around the absent parent, and the spouse emotionally adjusts to a version of the partner who does not show up. The marriage hollows out quietly while the business succeeds. Q: Why does Jeremy say kids are measuring attention rather than hours? Answer: Because physical presence with divided attention does not deliver the same relational input as fully present time. Kids feel the difference with a precision adults consistently underestimate, and they calibrate their sense of importance based on whether they have the parent's full attention or the leftover attention. Q: What is the math that makes this achievable for busy entrepreneurs? Answer: Reliability in a few protected windows beats availability across many distracted ones. Three or four daily windows that are kept consistently produce the security a kid needs — not perfect availability, just dependable presence in the moments that were promised. Q: What are the three foundational protections from Part 1? Answer: First, designate non-negotiable windows on the calendar and protect them like a major client commitment. Second, fully remove the business during those windows — phone in another room, laptop closed. Third, tell your kids what you are building and why, so the business shifts from a rival into a shared project. Q: What is the difference between a kid with context for the sacrifice and a kid without? Answer: For the kid with context, the busy Tuesday night is a parent working hard on something the family is building together. For the kid without context, the busy Tuesday night is a parent choosing the phone over them. Same hours. Different lived experience. Different long-term emotional foundation. Q: How does Part 1 set up Part 2? Answer: Part 1 lays the foundation — the deal, the realities, the math, and the three foundational protections. Part 2 is execution — the transition rituals, the systems for single parents managing solo, the team coordination for married parents, and the hard scenarios including busy seasons, scaling phases, and crisis moments. www.optimized1.com www.jeremyhanson.pro newsletter BUILT DIFFERENT See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A Fuzzy Life Entertainent Production

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Optimized entrepreneur, protecting your kids while you build the business.

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This is part one the promise you made. There's a

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drawing on the refrigerator. A kid drew it. Nah, maybe yours,

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maybe the kid down the street. Maybe. And I want

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you to actually picture this for a second. A kid

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you used to be looking up at the parent that

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you used to have. The drawing is simple, east stick figure, adult,

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square shoulders, a head with two dots for eyes and

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in the figure's hand, drawn very carefully, with more attention

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than the rest of the picture. Got a rectangle, Yeah,

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a phone. That's the part the kids spent the most

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time on, because that's the part that mattered. There's a

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label written in careful printing of a six year old.

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It says mommy or it says daddy. It doesn't really

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matter which one. What matters is that when the kid

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was asked to draw the parent, the most identifying detail

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to include was the phone in the parent's hand. That

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was the part the kid's daily life and their experience.

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And it made you you. Now, I'm not telling you

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this to make you feel guilty. I'm telling you because

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if you're an entrepreneur with kids in the house, You

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have probably been the figure in a drawing like that

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at some point, even if you've never seen the drawing,

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you have. And the question this episode is going to

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ask you directly without the comfortable distance of theory, is

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whether the kids in your house right now would draw

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you the same way. I'm Jeremy Hanah and this is

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Optimized Entrepreneur, where life and business intersect. Today we're starting

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a two part series on protecting your kids while you

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build your empire. While you build your business. Today is

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the foundation, the deal you made with yourself when you started.

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What single parents are facing that nobody else can fully understand,

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and what married parents quietly hand off without realizing that

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they did it, and the math of attention that changes

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how you think about every single hour you have. Part two,

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next episode is going to be execution and the systems

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and the transitions and the hard scenarios. Today is the foundation.

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So if you are listening to this with one ear

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while you handle something else, stop, okay this one, this episode,

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this one needs both ears for duels, for frameworks, and

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the rest of the playbook. For entrepreneurs who refuse to

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trade their kids for their company, visit Optimized one Dot com.

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That's www dot optimized one dot com. Let's get into it. Well,

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tell me if demise af the rind of Bay, they

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gotta sign up for free and optimize one dot com.

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I'll mind yourself, your business and your life. Optimize dot

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com the deal you made with yourself. Okay, let's start

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this with what's true. You didn't start this business to

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take time away from your children or your family. You

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started it more than likely for them, or at least

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they were a big reason for you to start it,

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you know, maybe not exclusively, maybe there were other reasons

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in the mix, you know, wanting to be your own boss,

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wanting to stop trading your hours for somebody else's vision,

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Wanting the financial outcome that you knew the corporate path

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was never going to give you. You see those reasons,

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you know, they're all real. But underneath all of that,

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in the part of the decision that you do not

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always you know, talk about or say out loud, was

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a very specific picture, the picture of time for it

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and being more available, being able to be more present

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in the life that you choose to live, more able

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to show up for the kids afternoon game without asking

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a single soul for permission, more flexible in a random

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Tuesday when the school called and somebody had to come

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and pick your kids up, More in control of the

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work day and when it ended and when the family

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time started. You See, that was the deal you made

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with yourself when you signed up for this, that the

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building phase would be hard, and we all know that,

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but the long term outcome would be a life with

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more room in it for the people that you love. Okay, now,

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nobody tells you this about your deal. The building phase

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does not look anything like to bro sure running through

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your head about what a business is supposed to be. See,

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the building phase looks like more hours, not fewer, more

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mental occupation, not less. More demands on your attention that

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don't clock out, do not take the weekends off, and

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do not politely stay in the office where they belong.

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The building phase looks like you sitting at a dinner

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table with one foot still on a problem from three

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hours ago, and that's the truth. The building phase looks

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like you saying, well, just a second, have you been there?

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Just a second to a kid who's been waiting all

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day for you to acknowledge them. The building phase looks

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like a Saturday afternoon where you're technically there, you're technically available,

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you know, you're kind of present, and somehow your kid

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still tells their grandmother on the phone that, yeah, they're

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at work. You see. That's the gap, that's the chasm,

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I should say, between the version of entrepreneurship that you

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sold yourself on in the version that you're actually living

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right now. And that chasm really does matter. Now. It's

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not because you're failing your kids by working hard. See,

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you're not failing them. You're not failing them by working hard.

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You are failing them. If you are failing them, does

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that make sense by letting the work follow you into

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the rooms where your work doesn't belong you See, that's

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a completely different problem, and it is one of the

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series of problems that we're going to solve. I want

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you to sit with this for a second before we

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go any further. The early years of business are demanding,

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super really demanding. There's no honest version of starting something

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from scratch that doesn't require and intense investment of your

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time and your energy. Okay, and that's got to come

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from somewhere. For most entrepreneurs, it comes from the household. Now,

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the justification is almost always the same. This is temporary.

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We will get past this milestone. Things are going to

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look different, you know, once we hire that first employee,

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once revenue gets to this point, once the systems are

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in place, all the family time that will come back.

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And sometimes rarely it's true, but temporary. That word temporary,

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it has a way of stretching. In a one demanding

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season becomes the next one. The milestone that was supposed

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to mark the transition to more presence somehow gets pushed

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forward because new demands arrive. The kid who is going

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to benefit from the future version of the business grows

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up and you're still building it. Now, I'm not telling

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you to stop building. I'm telling you the kid cannot

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be deferred to the future version of this imaginary calendar.

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The kid needs the current version of you. Now, Okay,

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whatever season it is, you see, this is it's the

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foundation of everything else that we're going to talk about today.

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So we have this single parent reality, and I'm going

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to talk about married parents and single parents both because

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it's so prevalent in society day that both families are

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about equal. So I want to start with the single

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parents because if you are doing this without a partner

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in the house, the math is completely different. And too

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much of the parenting advice out there assumes that somehow

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you have a backup, and if you're a single parent,

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you don't. So let me just acknowledge what is true

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about your situation. There is no second adult in the

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house who book picks up what you put down when

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you're in a sales call. Nobody else is making dinner

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when you are closing the books at ten o'clock at night.

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Nobody else is reading the bedtime story or making sure

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they're brushing their teeth, or hey, did you take a bath?

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When the truck breaks down, the customer is upset, and

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the kid has a fever, those three problems all land

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on you simultaneously, with no copilot to absorb them none. Now,

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that is not a complaint about your situation. That's just

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simply a description of it. And the first thing I

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want you to understand is that the framework for protecting

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your kids while you build looks different for you than

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it does for a married entrepreneur, not because the principle

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is different, but because the architecture you have to build

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it inside is different. The married entrepreneur can sometimes get

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away with you know, weak time protection because the other

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parent is filling the gaps they're standing in. The kids

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get attention. It's just often coming from one parent more

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than the other. And the truth of it is, you

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don't have that. If you fail to protect a window

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for your kid, that window is just gone. There's no

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backup version. There's no other parent making up the difference.

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Which means this, and this is very very hard truth.

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Your protected windows have to be more deliberate and more

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guarded and more disciplined than anybody else's. And it's not

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because you're a worst parent. It's because you are the

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only parent. Now here's the trap I see single parent

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entrepreneurs fall into more than anything. It's the trap of

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telling yourself that providing is enough. Okay. The logic is

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something like this, I'm the only one bringing an income.

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I am the only one holding the household together financially.

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The work I'm doing is the reason this kid has

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roof over their head. Therefore, the hours I spend on it,

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you know, are themselves else. Those hours an act of love.

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And I want to be a little bit careful here

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because that part is honestly true. The provision matters the

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roof matters. The fact that you're not asking anyone else

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to bail you out really does matter. But this part

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doesn't get said enough. A child whose only experience of

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you is the experience of an absent provider, Okay, they

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don't feel like you're that, they feel left. The kid

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does not see the spreadsheet that justifies their miss dinner

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with you. The kid doesn't see the cash flow that

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explains the late night at the shop. The only thing

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the kid sees is a parent who isn't there. And

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if that parent who isn't there is also the only parent,

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meaning there is there's no second adult to fill the

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gap of that presence that's missing, then the absence is total.

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The kid is not getting half presents from a busy parent.

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The kid is getting the experience of being the lowest

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priority item on the only adults calendar. And I'll see

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that experience repeated enough times it starts to shape them.

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So if you're a single parent entrepreneur and you have

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been telling yourself that the hours are themselves the gift,

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I'm asking you to update that story. Please. You see,

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the hours pay for the gift, but they are not

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the gift. The gift truly is the time that you

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spend fully present with the kid that you are working

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this hard to provide for. And you have to architect

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that time as carefully as you architect anything else in

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your business, because no one else is going to do

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it for you. What does that mean? Like in reality?

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Like right now, there's a bunch of people saying, Okay,

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I give up, what are you talking about? That type

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of thing. I'm gonna give you a real example of

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what this looks like, because I think single parents specifically

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need to see this in concrete terms. Okay, picture a

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single mom running a service business. Okay, she's doing a

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job that is genuinely demanding, calls and customer issues and scheduling, billing,

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that the whole stack. She has two kids, one in

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elementary school and one in middle school. In the worst

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version of her week, she's in motion from six in

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the morning until ten at night. Sure the kids see her,

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but they do not really see her because she's on

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a call or she's texting, she's at her laptop. The

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interaction she has as with their kids is mostly transactional.

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Get in the car, did you do your homework? What

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did you do for dinner, What do you want for dinner?

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That type of thing, just super limited transactional things. Now,

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the kids are fed, the kids there, they have clean clothes,

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and the kids are technically being parented, but neither one

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of them has had a real conversation with their mom.

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In three weeks now, in the better version of her week,

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same business, same hours, same demands, she has done one

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specific thing differently. She has identified two protected windows that

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are non negotiable in her calendar, dinner and then maybe

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a half hour before bed. During those windows, the phone

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is somewhere else, the laptop is closed, the work does

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not exist for that period of time, same number of

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hours in the day, same number of demands. The business

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doesn't collapse, but the kids, those two kids now have

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ninety minutes a day of a fully present parent. Ninety

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minutes versus zero minutes is the difference between a kid

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who feels parented and loved and a kid who just

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feels like there's something else that needs to be managed.

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You see, that's the math that you're working with as

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a single parent. The good news is you do not

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need to find more hours. You need to be honest

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about the windows that are yours. And you need to

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defend them like everything else depends on it, because truly,

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in the long view for your children, it does. So

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let's get into the married parent reality. Okay, there's a

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specific trap that married entrepreneurs fall into that single parents

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do not, and it's one of the most damaging blind

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spots that I see in entrepreneurial households in America. It

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is the comfort of believing that the other parent just

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automatically has it covered. Okay, here's how it sounds inside

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your head. My spouse is home with the kids now.

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They got dinner handled, they got bedtime handled, they got

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the soccer drop off. The kids are getting plenty of attention,

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just not for me right now, because I am working.

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My spouse is the present one and I'm the providing one.

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We have a division of labor. The kids aren't really

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missing out. They're getting a version of the family that

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we've structured. Now, I want to say something to the

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entrepreneur who is telling themselves that story. The truth is,

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you're not interchangeable with your spouse. The presence of the

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other parent does not substitute for your presence. Your kid

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does not have a spouse account where attention from one

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parent fills the same bucket as attention from the other.

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The truth is they have a relationship with each of

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you separately and distinctly, and the absence of one of

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those relationships is not compensated by the presence of the

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other one. A kid with one fully present parent and

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one largely absent parent does not feel like they're fully parented,

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like they're fully loved, like they have that attention. They

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feel like they got half of what they're supposed to

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And what they do is they watched the other one

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carry the load, and that experience, over enough years, shapes

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their understanding of what a marriage is supposed to look like,

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what fatherhood and motherhood is supposed to look like, and

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what their own importance is to the parent who chooses

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work over them repeatedly. It can cause behavioral issues, It

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can cause self confidence issues. It can cause everything that

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you're working so hard to stop to happen. So this

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is what I want married entrepreneurs to internalize. Your spouse

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can do many things for the kids that you can do,

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but your spouse cannot be you for the kids. Your

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spouse cannot give the kids your specific attention or your

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specific encouragement, your specific version of whatever the bedtime conversation

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is going to be. You see, that's yours to give.

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And if you don't give it, because you have outsourced

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the entire parenting layer to the other adult in the

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household hold, you're shorting the kid. The kid has not

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received a substitute. They've just experienced the absence of you.

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And here's a second trap, and this one's a little

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bit subtler. When the spouse is doing the heavy lifting

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on the parenting, the entrepreneur often experiences gratitude for that

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and then translates that gratitude into a kind of permanent

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permission to keep working. Oh, I'm so grateful for what

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my spouse does with the kids. They're amazing. I don't

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have to worry because they're handling it now. The gratitude, well,

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that's appropriate. The permanent permission is not because the spouse,

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who is carrying the parenting alone is also having an experience.

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They are watching their partner build something and watching the

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kids grow up, and they're doing both halves of the parenting.

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In that chasm. In that gap, that spouse is not

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having a neutral experience. That spouse is slowly becoming the

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kid's primary parent, and you, the working entrepreneur, are slowly

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becoming a guest inside of your own family. The relationship

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with your kids is being shaped without you, the relationship

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with your spouse is being shaped without you. And by

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the time the business is finally where you wanted it

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to be, the family that you come back to is

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not the same family that you left. Here's a concrete

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idea what this looks like. Picture a married father building

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a contracting business. He is on jobs all day, he

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is doing estimates at night. He's up early, he's home late,

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he is available by text in between. His wife is

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great with kids. She handles the school stuff and the

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doctor's visits and the after school activities, you know, the homework.

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She does dinner most nights, she does bedtime almost every night.

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She is a tremendous parent. He looks at all that

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and he feels grateful, and he feels relieved because if

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she has it that handled well, then he can keep

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pushing on the business. And three years go by. Okay,

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here's what he does not see. In those three years,

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his ten year old gradually stopped trying to tell him

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about her day because he is never quite available enough

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for the conversation to even land, so she tells her

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mom now not him. His eight year old has stopped

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asking him to help with anything specific because the answer

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has become just est your mom. He is re routed

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around the dad. His wife has gradually stopped expecting him

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at dinner because the disappointments just accumulated. She made an

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emotional adjustment so she would stop being hurt. Now she's

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still kind to him and the marriage is not blown up,

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but the version of the marriage where she expected him

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to show up for her, that version is gone, and

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now there is just more of a transactional one that

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has replaced it. He did not see any of this

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happen because he was working the entire time, and the

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wife did not say anything about it because she did

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not want to be the nag because part of her

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was protecting him from feeling guilty. By year four, the

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business is doing well. The numbers are up. You know.

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He looks up and he comes home and he's a

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stranger in his own home. He's the guy who pays

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for things. He's not the guy the kids run to.

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And that's what the trap actually looks like when it

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actually happens. See, it's never this big dramatic thing. It's

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not loud. It's just the slow accumulation of moments where

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he assumed the other parent had it covered, and where

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the other parents slowly stop expecting him to show up. Now,

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if that picture lands in any specific way, if there's

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any part of that that feels familiar, please listen. That

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is the warning, and the window to fix it is now,

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not after the next business milestone. It's not then, it's

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right now. To understand this, you have to understand what

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kids are actually measuring. This is probably the most important

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piece of math in this entire conversation, because it changes

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how you think about the time that you, in reality

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actually have. You see, kids are not measuring hours. They're

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measuring moments. They're measuring attention. And those two things, the

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measuring hours and measuring attention, they're not the same thing.

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A parent who spends six hours in the same house

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as their kids, answering messages and half watching things, processing

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the day's work in the background is not delivering six

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00:25:45.200 --> 00:25:51.759
hours of relational input to that child. They're delivering the

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ambient experience of an adult who is physically present and

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emotionally elsewhere, which kids feel with a precision that adults

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consistently underestimate and they just don't understand. A kid knows

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the difference between you actually listening and you waiting for

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them to finish so you can check the next thing.

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A kid knows whether your eyes are tracking what they're saying,

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or if they're focused somewhere just past them, you're seen

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through them. A kid knows whether the laugh that just

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happened was a real laugh from you or if it

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was a social one. A kid knows whether they have

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your full attention or whether they have the leftover attention

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that you did not need for something more important, and

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what they do with that information, what it produces in

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their interior experience of that particular relationship is a running

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account of how important they are to the person that

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they are trying to desperately to connect with. Every moment

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of genuine attention deposits something into that account. Every moment

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of divided, distracted, half present contact withdraws something. Over the

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years of childhood, the balance of that account becomes the

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emotional foundation that they carry into their own adulthood. The

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00:27:31.000 --> 00:27:35.400
baseline sense of whether they're someone who's experience matters to

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the people who matter most. Please listen, not because I

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think this is our most encouraging thought in this whole thing.

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So you don't need more hours. You need more present hours,

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more present moment. One dinner where the phone is in

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another room and the conversation with them is real. Okay.

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That deposits more than a week of adjacent but distracted

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evenings with them. One Saturday morning that belongs entirely to

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whatever the kid wants to do, without the background processing.

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That communicates something about their importance that no amount of

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distracted proximity can replicate. One bedtime conversation where you ask

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a real question and stay and listen for the real answer.

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That creates a memory of being known that sits in

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a different part of their experience than the general memory

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of you just being around. If you're a single parent

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who has limited windows because of how the calendar is structured,

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that doesn't doom you. It just changes your strategy. You

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make those windows count harder, more meaningful. If you're a

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married parent who has been outsourcing the parenting layer to

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your spouse, you don't have to find more hours either.

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You have to find specific, recurring, fully present windows that

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are yours to own? And then you have to actually

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own them, And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the math.

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It's not about volume, it's about reliability. A kid who

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Protecting Your Kids While You Build the Business — Part 1: The Promise You Made

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