When you look at your calendar, does it reflect your priorities in life? How about the priorities you want to have? This week’s guest is entrepreneur, author, and speaker Jon Vroman. When he looked at his own calendar several years ago, he found that although he talked about his family as the center of his world, work was taking precedence when it came to his time.

That realization inspired him to start Front Row Dads, which works to help men reframe how they think and talk about fatherhood.

There’s an unfortunate stereotype of dads who take a back row seat in their kids’ lives. They don’t know how to change a diaper and point to mom as the person with the answers.

Vroman says men shouldn’t bow out of these situations; they need to step up and take responsibility and pride in having a front row seat. His organization aims to help build and support family men who have businesses, rather than businessmen who have families.

What You’ll Learn:

• Center family in your life, not work
• Reframe how you think and talk about being a dad
• Find value in experiences, rather than things
• Adopt a front row philosophy
• Allow yourself to be vulnerable

Quotes:

“I remember telling people when my wife would leave before, hey, I’m not getting as much work done, but boy, it’s really great to be with my kids. Now what I say is, I’m getting all my primary work done with my kids and my secondary job is taking a little bit of a hit, but it’s cool with me. My primary work — my mission in life — is to be a great dad, so if I’m nailing that, everything else will take care of itself.” – Jon Vroman

“Why is my family getting the rest of me, not thebest of me? If my family really is first, why wouldn’t I wake up and give mybest hours to my kids?” -Jon Vroman

“All the things that work for business, work forfamily too. Some guys think we have to study and work on our businesses andwe’re somehow born epic dads, and we’re not. You have to work at it.” -JonVroman

“Identity is such a powerful concept to explorefor all of us and we need to be regularly checking in on how do we seeourselves, how do we want to see ourselves, who are we, what do we stand for.All those things are so very important.” -Jon Vroman

“If we have a level of awareness, if we areconscious beings, if we can sense and feel what’s going on in our own hearts,what our kids need at this stage of life, what our spouses need at that stageof life, we can be making pivots along the way.” -Jon Vroman

Contact:

You can find out more about Front Row Dads at frontrowdads.com or by listening to the podcast Front Row Dads (iTunes).

(The partner website frontrowmoms.com is currently live and working to catch interest. You can sign up there if you’d like more information when Front Row Moms officially launches.)

More about Vroman’s work can be found at frontrowfoundation.org or at his hub website, frontrowfactor.com. You can also check out his book, The Front Row Factor: Transform Your Life with the Art of Moment Making.