The everyday life of a dadpreneur

Organization as a recipe for success in self-employment

To do justice to your role as both a father and an entrepreneur, structured time management and good organization are essential. We'll give you some tips on how to get a grip on your work-life balance.

• Time management
• Set yourself realistic goals
• Separate the two roles
• Be self-confident
  

Create a weekly plan

If you run your own business and at the same time want to fulfill your fatherly duties, you are a very busy man. To meet all expectations (including your own), it is important that you manage your time well.

We recommend that you create a weekly schedule in which you enter all important appointments. This will help you keep track of what's coming up and what you can't forget. This way, you won't miss your son's birthday party or a meeting with your most important supplier. When designing your weekly plan, however, make sure that you don't fill it with unnecessary details so that you can maintain an overview.

The format of your weekly plan – digital or on paper – is entirely up to you and your preferences.

Set yourself realistic goals

While challenging goals are good and help you to surpass yourself, they must be realistic. This way, you can also celebrate small successes and not put yourself under enormous pressure. Not every newly founded company experiences rapid growth from the outset, which is why you should also be happy about small steps forward.

By setting realistic goals, you ensure that your business continues to develop. After achieving your goals, you can set new challenging goals that you think you can achieve.

The goals can be both quantitative and qualitative. For example, they can include the number of products and services sold or the development of a new product.

Separate your everyday life as a father from that as an entrepreneur

You should decide for yourself whether you want to clearly separate the two roles of father and entrepreneur or not. This depends largely on your preferences and the activities of your company. Some entrepreneurs draw their creativity from conversations with family and friends and can thus be innovative. Others want to keep their professional and private lives clearly separate.

Nevertheless, regardless of what business you run, we recommend that you consciously separate your work hours from family or dad time. This way, you can focus on what is most important and avoid the risk of mixing up the roles.

Even if there are times when your business or family takes up more of your time than usual, a clear separation and schedule will help you consciously set aside moments for yourself.

Find your own identity and be self-confident

Before you started your business, you got to know yourself and your strengths and weaknesses better through self-analysis. Now think about who you are: What are your values? What drives you? What do you want?

In entrepreneurship, it's good to think outside the box. So don't let your fears drive you, but be self-confident about yourself and your abilities. All entrepreneurs are different and are characterized by their uniqueness.

In reference to Grichnik's “Entrepreneurial Living - Unternimm dein Leben”

In principle, child benefits for self-employed persons are regulated in the same way as for employees. For children up to 16 years of age (if incapable of work up to 20 years of age), you will receive child benefits of at least CHF 200 per month. Thereafter (16-25 years), you will receive training allowances of at least CHF 250 per month for your child in training. The allowances are not paid to both parents, but only to the first person entitled to claim.

As a self-employed father, you must therefore register with a family compensation fund and pay contributions. This applies if you have an income of at least CHF 592 per month and are not a part-time entrepreneur.

If you are simultaneously an employee and self-employed, you can claim child and education allowances from your employer. However, this only applies if you are employed on a permanent basis or if your employment contract is for a period of more than six months and your salary is more than CHF 7,020 per year.

Under the current regulations, which are valid until December 31, 2020, fathers are not entitled to paternity leave. However, you can claim paternity leave as part of your normal days off in accordance with Art. 329 para. 3 of the Swiss Code of Obligations. In this case, the employer usually grants one or two days off. As a self-employed person, you can claim this leave whether you run a sole proprietorship, a limited liability company (GmbH) or a joint-stock company (AG).

However, the referendum on the amendment of the law on compensation for loss of earnings, adopted on September 27, 2020, allows new fathers to take two weeks of paternity leave as of January 1, 2021. For a 100% workload, this corresponds to 10 days, which can be taken within the first 6 months after the child's birth. After this period, the unused days will be forfeited.

Like maternity leave, paternity leave is financed by the income compensation system. The compensation amounts to 80% of the average income subject to AHV contributions, up to a maximum of CHF 196 per day.