I won’t shy away from excuses. I put a rapidly growing brand and influencer platform on the back burner. The choice was pretty simple. We were traveling the country as a family and touring the brand. In the process as the Instagram platform became more and more popular, I found myself missing more and more with my family. I was staying behind more often while they visited museums, explored new cities, and found adventure and fun. I was looking at my phone too much, responding to comments, messages, and emails. To be fair this was my new job, right? Sure I retired but 100% Dad was the thing I was building. We went from 0 to over 45,000 on Instagram and were doing well.
In my business career I worked a lot but it wasn’t quite as 24/7 as 100% Dad was. In the business world most of our customers needed help during business hours. We had a trained team that knew how to respond to issues. So while I had a lot to do and there was a need to respond fast and take care of problems it wasn’t quite the same.
Messages and comments on our platform would come in at all times during the day. Mornings, afternoons, night, 3 am it was all the time and really all consuming. And with 100% Dad being really just me I didn’t feel comfortable handing responses and content creation off to others. They could post and design but the actual content I felt had to be from me on a platform about fatherhood. After all there are so many variables creating a manual was a bit more difficult. IN the business world if a machine broke, we fixed it. If a customer was out of product, we got them stocked up as fast as possible. If billing had an issue, we dig into the billing and got it figured out.
When a dad asks what he should do about his kid getting involved with the wrong crowd and making bad decisions it’s a little harder. Theres a lot of details that need to be figured out. Does dad live with the kid? Custody? What’s the relationship like? What is home life like? What are the kids influences? How old is this kid? Are there addiction issues, mental issues, health issues, past traumas, etc? Theres so many variables and so many possible answers it didn’t seem right to hire that out. Not right to an unprepared employee or to the dad looking for help.
This wasn’t a simple we need to create processes and delegate situation.
As a dad I really had to step back and ask myself what was more important. Building 100% Dad, gaining fame, and being successful in my pursuits. Or recognizing the fact that we are traveling the country as a family, experiencing all these great things and doing them with my family?
What would 100% Dad advise to a stranger asking about a similar situation?
Well, that easy dude. This isn’t life or death. This is ego. This is priorities. DO you want to feed your ego and be successful as a businessman or do you want to be successful as a dad and a husband. I mean really how many people get to spend months or in your case years traveling with their family? Will this scenario be replicated? How many opportunities like this actually come along in someone’s life?
The advice would be obvious. Choose the family. You can still do the 100% Dad thing a little bit just don’t let it consume you. Not at the expense of spending time with your family in very memorable ways. And let’s be honest you can pick up where you left off when you are done traveling.
So that’s exactly what we did. I stopped doing podcasts. I stopped being as responsive to comments and messages. Our content production decreased. And I spent a lot less time looking at metrics and figuring on when, what, and how to post. Because of that our engagement dropped a lot.
Do I regret it? Honestly, yes. A little bit. It hurts to let something like that go. It’s unfulfilling. But I would make the same choice again. I would rather be disappointed in my business pursuits than be disappointed in my fatherhood. Truth is I was going to be disappointed. It was just a matter of which direction.
Now there were other issues at hand too. As in life it’s never quite as simple as one thing. Our investments on wall street were no longer doing amazing so that was also occupying my thoughts. Our income from investments was drying up, and since we were retired that’s less fun. We did hard money loans for investors as well and that started to dwindle as well and needed my attention. Then there was the book I had always wanted to write that takes a considerable amount of time.
Once we stopped touring, I turned my attention to our next big investment which was to buy or build an RV Park. After a lot of searching, I found a property I felt was a hit. It had hurdles like zoning and land use to overcome. We are currently working on engineering issues. Since we were doing our first ground up build, I thought it would be wise to head down to the keys and help a private equity group open up a ground up build down there. That story is going to be a post in itself. That place was both incredibly smart and incredibly dumb at the same time.
So, we spent 6 months in the keys and that was a ton of fun. We were working so that took up a bunch of time, but we also ate a ton of great food and explored a ton of amazing places. I think we spent twice what we made just eating and playing but it sure was fun!
When we finished up that stint we headed back home to St. Augustine. Since we needed on hand cash to build the RV park doing the hard money loans was not too viable. The stock market still is not fantastic so I realized I should probably get back into the workforce before we start eating into our investment funds too much. So I studied and got my Real Estate license. Joined a small brokerage in St. Augustine and am now in the selling and buying real estate business. My favorite is still commercial and land since I like those deals. But residential is how the bills get paid. Just an FYI if you are selling or buying and would like me to find you a goo agent near you I’m happy to help. Those agents will usually pay a referral to me if you buy or sell with them so it’s a win, win, win for everyone!
If you are keeping track that’s building an RV Resort from scratch, Real Estate, and now to tie this rambling back to the original point of this writing….we can get back to 100% Dad content. I didn’t even mention that I wrote that book during this time too! More on that some other time. Now the 100% Dad platform is not performing near close to what it was but hey that’s okay. It’s not my first time starting from scratch!
If you are a fan of mine or the platform, check out the 100% Dad Store. Pick up a hat or any merch. Share and comment on the posts! I appreciate the support. And of course, if you have any real estate needs reach out and Ill be happy to help fans!