Which Audience Matters Most?

Next week I'm traveling to China to adopt a daughter.

I'll be gone for three weeks.

During that time, I may not disappear entirely from LinkedIn, but I'm also making no commitments to be active on the platform and I'm considering experimenting with zero involvement.

My time is a zero-sum game–whatever time I spend on LinkedIn is time away from my family.

Sure, in the long run I could say that time on LinkedIn is an investment that will pay off, and by spending more time now I can spend less time later on professional pursuits, but the thing is...I want to spend more time with my family right now.

Including our daughter we're adopting from China we have three children, ages 14, 11, and 9.

If I can assume my kids will leave for college when they're 17 or 18 (I'm an advocate for kicking kids out of the house and cutting them off from all financial and medical insurance support as soon as possible) then I only have a few years left to influence them.

In the framework I developed, The 7 Systems of Influence, to help people make their influence more impactful, System #3 is the part where I talk about one's "ideal audience."

Your ideal audience values what you have.

They need what you have.

They may not be able to get what you have to give anywhere else, and not having it might spell disaster.

A few years ago I met with a potential client of my marketing agency in Shenzhen, China.

They told me "We need to hire a digital marketing agency that has offices here in Shenzhen, but also in the US. But we can't afford the huge agencies like Ogilvy, so we need more of a mid-size agency that isn't one or two guys working from home, but also isn't so large that they need a $1M per month budget."

I thought for a moment, then asked "Do you know of a single agency, other than ours, that matches your criteria?"

They thought for a moment, said "No," and we signed a contract two days later.

Nobody else could deliver what they needed, and they knew it.

When it comes to our children, we're fed the idea others, like teachers, can do a better job at parenting than we can.

In some unfortunate cases that's true, but consider that earning a PhD takes, on average, around 12,000 hours.

If you consider a mother who parents her son full-time and estimate that the boy is awake 12 hours a day during his first few years of life, that mother will spend over 12,000 hours with her son before he's three years old.

Nobody else has a PhD in "Taking Care of Your Child."

Then let's be generous and say that the average classroom has 20 students (most have many more).

If your child is in the classroom six hours a day with a teacher, and the teacher dedicates half of his time to one-on-one instruction and half to group instruction, and he's exactly impartial with his time, then your child will get 9 minutes of one-on-one instruction each day from his teacher.

Even in a flipped classroom setting, where the kids watch or listen to group instruction at home, and do "homework" in the classroom with the assistance of the teacher, at best your child will get 18 minutes of one-on-one attention per day, if the teacher is fair.

This is why talk about women "leaning in" and working harder, or smarter, or more, drives me a bit batty.

We don't need more women in the workplace.

We don't need women to work more.

We need everyone, men and women, to work less and parent more.

When it comes to your children and The 7 Systems of Influence, there is no greater vision, no greater success in life than raising healthy children who can raise their own healthy families.

Your family is your genius zone–nobody else can do it as well as you can.

Your children are your ideal audience–they need you, and if they don't get what you have to offer the results will be disastrous.

Everything else fades away and loses meaning–your family is the only thing you can create that will last forever.

So who is your most important audience in life?

Is it your clients?

Your potential clients?

Your coworkers, boss, or employees?

Is it everyone else on LinkedIn?

Don't get me wrong, most of us have to worry about these audiences or there will be negative consequences, but what are we working for?

The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only - and that is to support the ultimate career. – C.S. Lewis

I work from home.

My wife and I homeschool.

My wife was conscious about her choice.

My working at home was more by default, but I'm so glad it worked out the way it did for as long as it has.

I love eating three meals a day with my kids, hearing them run around and yell at each other, get into fights, play together, and learn together.

I love that I can take a break during the day and help my son with his math, or tell my daughter how to spell the "duct" in duct tape (both happened while I was writing this).

I get that most people don't the luxury to do what my wife and I do.

I also know a lot of people are kept from doing what we do for no other reason than that they've never considered the possibility, or they've considered it but don't think it could work.

Chances are if you're reading this then you can make it work.

It may require giving up other things that are important to you, but if push comes to shove, what's most important?

 No success in public life can compensate for failure in the home. – Benjamin Disraeli

The daughter we're adding to our family will be 14 years old when we bring her home.

We will only have a few years of her at home before she goes out into the world.

That's why I'll be taking time off during the next month and who knows, I may never come back.