Social Nation: How to Harness the Power of Social Media to Attract Customers, Motivate Employees, and Grow Your Business

Epilogue: Business And Social Become One

	Life is a journey which starts at home.
	--Charles Handy

I don't remember exactly when it first happened, but one day my kids turned to me and said, "You're not the boss of me." My wife and I were downright startled when our two boys, about five and eight years old at the time, announced this. Clearly, they wanted us, their parents, to listen to their needs, include them in decisions that were impacting their lives, and stop dictating to them what we wanted them to do and how we wanted them to do it.

We knew that just giving them a voice in their lives without providing them some clear guidelines would not ultimately help them succeed. We had watched our friends who had given their kids decision-making power without offering strong, clear, guiding principles to go along with that privilege. This ended up turning their kids against them. Forget fans, let alone friends and followers of their parents, those kids became rebels at every turn. We wanted to steer clear of instilling the attitude that "kids should be seen and not heard" yet prevent our kids from running wild.

ACHIEVE GREATNESS BY SETTING GOALS

To create our family nation, we began by establishing an overriding goal or principle for our kids: Be great. We explained to them that this applied to the three S's of their lives: school, sports, and social. Within these three overarching areas there were many decisions they could make on their own. For scholarly pursuits, for example, they ...