When I decided to go back to work full-time, I faced a major dilemma.  I really wanted to focus my energy on work but I also wanted to spend time with my children.  They were reaching a point in their lives where they participated in many activities both in and out of school.  When I was that age, my parents were not able to take time off work to spend time with me and attend events.  I was determined that I would not miss all the events in my child’s life.  As a real estate investor who owns rental homes, I knew when I first had children that I could no longer manage my homes myself.  I hired a Seattle property management company to help me out.  They did all the hard work involved with renting and managing residential properties.  In fact, they even had a division in their company that could take care of two of my commercial investments.

My experience with this company convinced me to hire an assistant part time to help me out.  This assistant turned out to be great.  I no longer had to focus on things like paying the business’s bills, answering calls or setting up appointments to see houses.  These seem like small things but they took up a lot of time.  I also decided to bring in a partner into the business.  While this seems like cutting my company in half, all the new business we were able to handle actually doubled my income.  On top of that, I began using an automated scheduler to organize my day.  And in each day, I scheduled time with my children.  Once I made these adjustments, going back to work was not that bad.  I got twice as much done and spent much more time with my children.