Today I had an interesting experience while driving out to Deer Valley, Utah to go to a Limited Partner meeting for a venture capital fund I\u2019m an investor in with my 25 year old son:\u00a0 \u00a0As we were making the one hour drive out to our meeting he began asking me questions about the companies I had started and my early years of being an entrepreneur. As I started sharing some of the details of my early entrepreneurial journey and the things I\u2019d been through in business my son suddenly stopped me and said, \u201cWhy haven\u2019t you told me any of these stories before??!!\u201d \u00a0\u00a0I replied, \u201cYou\u2019ve never asked me about it before.\u201d<\/p>\n
He seemed totally fascinated to hear some of the more challenging things his mother had been through in business, so much so that when his cell phone rang he didn\u2019t want to take it because he said he didn\u2019t want anything to interrupt my telling the story. As I continued he remarked that he couldn\u2019t believe there was so much about my life experiences that he didn\u2019t know about.\u00a0 He said he never really stopped and thought to ask about any of it before because he\u2019d just assumed that where he\u2019d lived with me his entire life he just already knew everything I\u2019d been through.\u00a0 I explained that as a parent we typically shelter our kids from knowing the hard things we go through in business because we want them to be able to enjoy being a kid and we don\u2019t want them to worry about the adult business stresses we faced.\u00a0 But truth be told by the time our kids do grow up to become adults themselves we\u2019ve lived so much more life at that point that we often just don\u2019t remember to bring up those stories of what we\u2019d been through in our business lives.<\/p>\n
As we got near to our destination my son said, \u201cYou need to tell me and Ashley (his sister) more of this stuff!!!\u201d \u00a0He\u2019s right\u2026I do\u2026.and I guess I just hadn\u2019t thought to because they hadn\u2019t asked. So two lessons came from that car ride \u2013 1. When we ourselves reach adulthood we need to remember to ask our parents to tell us the stories of what they went through in their career lives because we would probably be shocked to know how much they\u2019d gone through and experienced in their lives. And 2. As parents we need to remember to share our life stories and career experiences with our children when they reach adulthood so they can know who we are and appreciate what we\u2019ve gone through and hopefully learn from our life experiences.<\/p>\n
And I have to say that the more I shared with my son, the more I myself started to recognize just how much I\u2019ve been through and just how many challenging things I\u2019ve faced and overcome over the years.\u00a0 Frankly, it was a much needed reminder that I\u2019m actually a lot stronger person than I think I am.<\/p>\n
As we now head into this Memorial Day weekend where we honor the memory of those who gave their life in service to their country perhaps we ought to also take a moment to talk with those who are still living, whether it be our parents or relatives or loved ones, and ask them to share a few of their stories with us. THINK TO ASK!<\/p>\n
Have a great holiday weekend and I’ll be back with you after Memorial Day \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
~Amy Rees Anderson<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today I had an interesting experience while driving out to Deer Valley, Utah to go to a Limited Partner meeting for a venture capital fund I\u2019m an investor in with my 25 year old son:\u00a0 \u00a0As we were making the one hour drive out to our meeting he began asking me questions about the companies […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6643,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4503,395,501,500,1101,1327,17727,753,4078,41,14364,67,17731,17719,17718,237,9881,17721,867,17723,17246,1090,17716,17724,1770,17720,17726,17717,777,17728,17722,17733,4128,4472,17729,17732,17725,17730],"class_list":["post-9305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-adulthood","tag-amy-rees-anderson","tag-appreciate","tag-appreciation","tag-armed-forces","tag-ashley-lewis","tag-ask-your-parents-what-theyve-been-through","tag-childhood","tag-dalton-rollin-anderson","tag-entrepreneur","tag-entrepreneurial-journey","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-gain-an-appreciation","tag-have-we-shared-our-lives-with-our-children","tag-have-we-told-our-life-story","tag-holiday","tag-holiday-weekend","tag-life-experiences","tag-life-lessons","tag-limited-partner-meeting","tag-lp-meeting","tag-memorial-day","tag-memorial-day-weekend","tag-never-thought-to-ask","tag-parenthood","tag-pass-on-your-legacy","tag-share-your-career-stories","tag-sheltering-our-children","tag-strength","tag-tell-your-children-your-story","tag-the-usa","tag-think-to-ask","tag-venture-capital","tag-veterans","tag-we-are-stronger-than-we-think","tag-what-our-parents-went-through","tag-why-havent-you-told-them","tag-you-are-stronger-than-you-think-you-are"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9305"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9309,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9305\/revisions\/9309"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}