Seven Kids and a Company Named After My Mother: What Fatherhood Keeps Teaching Me About Leadership
Updated: 11 hours ago
Father's Day is this month, and every year it makes me stop and take stock. Not of how many candles are on a cake or how the business is doing, but of whether I'm actually being the kind of father I set out to be when I started all of this. I have seven kids, including twins, and I've learned more about leading people from raising them than from any course I've taken.
Fatherhood is my anchor, not my side project
I told Dear Fathers a while back that fatherhood is my anchor, that everything I do — school, advocacy, work — is rooted in showing my kids what love, accountability, and legacy look like. I still believe that word choice matters: anchor, not accessory. A lot of founders treat family as the thing that happens around the business. For me it's the other way. The business exists because of what I want my kids to inherit, not instead of time with them.
I'm present, I'm honest, and I'm imperfect, and I said as much in that interview because pretending otherwise helps no one. Some weeks I'm at bedtime every night. Some weeks I'm not. What I've stopped doing is pretending my kids need a flawless father. They need a consistent one.
Consistency beats balance, every time
I don't believe in balance, at least not the way it gets marketed. I calendar everything, from bedtime stories to business travel, because if it's not on the calendar it doesn't happen reliably, and reliability is the whole point. My advice to other dads trying to hold down a business and a family is the same advice I gave myself: build systems, be intentional, and don't chase the illusion of balance. Focus on alignment instead. Some seasons you show up more at home. Some seasons you show up more in the business. What matters is staying honest with yourself about which season you're in, and asking for help when you need it.
Consistency is the whole leadership philosophy. Not perfection, not balance — just showing up the same way, again and again, until your people can count on it.
What running toward my past taught me about running toward my kids
In my Entrepreneur essay about turning pain into purpose, I wrote about a lesson that applies just as much at home as it does at work: your story isn't a disqualification, it's a differentiator. I used to hide where I came from. I've stopped doing that with my kids too. They know the streets I grew up on shaped how I lead, how I negotiate, how I take risks. I want them to see that struggle isn't something to be ashamed of. It's material.
That same essay talks about entrepreneurship being emotional work, and how the most underrated strategy is stillness — scheduling silence instead of filling every hour with noise. I've had to apply that at home too. Sometimes the best thing I can do as a father isn't advice or a lesson. It's putting the phone down and watching a movie with my kids, no agenda.
Legacy is what they say when I'm not in the room
I was asked once to define legacy, and my answer hasn't changed: legacy is what lives when you're gone. For me it's not wealth, it's worth. It's how my kids feel when they say my name. It's the community I built, the lives I touched, the systems I challenged. My mother, Mysti, gave me that definition without ever using those words. She just lived it.
Raising seven kids while running a multi-state company means I fail at this regularly. But the standard doesn't move because the week was hard. I keep coming back to the same question: am I building something my kids will be proud to say they come from? As long as the answer stays yes, I know I'm leading right, at home and at work.
Keep going
Giovanne Schachere Talks Fatherhood, Mysti's Family Services, and More (Dear Fathers)
How I Turned a Life of Pain Into Purpose and Built a Multi-state Business
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