How to Market Your Entrepreneurial Dream to Your Family
It’s not about how you say it, instead, it is about when you say it
Family is hard. Relatives are difficult. Even if you are not an entrepreneur, staying in good terms with some can be as heavy as lifting a car with your bare hands.
The problem is that you can’t push them away. In friendship, you can decide to cut people out. But relatives and family are in your life whether you like it or not.
Selling your dream to family members can be daunting. This is especially when your dream doesn’t quite line up with the general expectation. For example, deciding to be a doctor in a family of lawyers. Or vice versa like a friend of mine, who is an only child, now deep in the legal profession when her parents are both medical professors.
The case is worse for entrepreneurs especially when they come from a family where everybody is an employee. It gets worse when there is a certain “uncle” in the family who ventured into entrepreneurship and lost a fortune. Just as bad is the “uncle” that became out-of-touch with the family because he is a successful entrepreneur.
You announce you want to be the same, and they start seeing you like an alien. That can be good, but oftentimes, it is not. Several entrepreneurs have…
