My name is Mark Huntley and I am the father of three great children who listen ½ the time and follow directions when it suits them.

I have been a Dadpreneur for the past 15 years. For a long time, I was the managing partner and equity stake owner of a law firm, Latham, Huntley & Associates. I changed careers in 2012 and am presently the Director of Marketing of a commercial maintenance company.

January of 2018, my brother and I, realized our dream of starting a marketing agency focused on SEO content and lead generation at If You Build It. At present I am full time employed as the Director of Marketing while working for our marketing agency full time. Believe me when I say this, I could not do it without my kids help. Here’s a few tips that have worked well for me and hopefully would work for your readers.

Manage your kids expectations:

Being a Dad and an Entrepreneur is a lot of work. Just being one of the two is more than enough work. Like many parents, I regret the time I am away from my kids working and missing out on their first. I know my kids sometimes regret I am not always able to participate in every extracurricular activity they are involved in. Here’s the thing, I learned very early, as a Dad, that kids can be reasonable if you explain why. I find it is fairly easy to explain to my kids why I won’t be able to do such and such. Generally, it is that I am out of town, have a deadline, an important meeting or just way too much to get done. To younger kids, they may think that you are choosing work over them and prioritizing someone else. I’ve always taken the time to explain why Daddy has to do such and such and how if I don’t, it would affect them. Generally, it involves them losing the ‘good life’, their stuff (and future stuff) and the roof over their head. Young kids understand that sleeping in the car might be fun for a night but they don’t want to be stuck sleeping on the backseat hump for an extended period of time. Being completely honest and sometimes painting worse case scenarios if I chose their 19th soccer game over completing a project tends to work well.

Layout your kids responsibilities in the house and hold them to it:

Here’s a common situation we all can relate with. You work late and come home to a hoard of hungry kids who have done nothing but played on their phones all day. Super frustrating, especially, if you are like me and have teenagers who are more than capable of feeding the hoard. This scenario does not happen at my house because every kid has his/her daily responsibilities including who is in charge of preparing dinner. I know some children’s parents feed them, do their laundry, pick up after them and generally make their life as easy as possible. Not me. To provide a better life for my kids, I spend a lot of time working and when I get home, I want to spend time with my kids. I could probably provide my kids the ‘easy life’ but I see two problems with this: #1 – If kids don’t learn responsibility at a young age, when do they learn it? I don’t think learning responsibility should be done after they move out of my house. #2 – If I spent all my home time cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry, I’d never have any time to spend with my children. I literally work all the time and what precious other time I have is spent enjoying my kids.

Last, and this may be seen as Draconian but any kid that fails to complete their assigned responsibilities (which includes doing well in school) results in the loss of their phone and use of wifi. To this day, I am unsure if my kids are really responsible or really just love their phones and wifi. Most importantly, I am consistent, rarely do I have mercy on them when locking their phone in my safe, I have deadlines every day that I meet, excuses are just that, excuses.

Ask the kids to set difficult to obtain goals and then lead by example:

I think one of the greatest things a Dad can teach his kids is to strive to accomplish things you never thought you were capable of. I want to be the best I can be at any endeavor I take on. I ask my kids to do the same. Whether it is school, athletics or volunteering, we sit down and make attainable goals and stretch goals. I tell my kids my stretch goals and we all keep each other accountable. Together we celebrate our successes and reevaluate our failures. My kids are huge part of my motivation in life and I hope one day the say the same thing about their Dad.

Mark Benjamin Huntley

Co-Founder

If You Build It