Entrepreneurs Have a High Divorce Rate — Do This to Defy the Odds | Entrepreneur

I don’t want to be financially successful if it means that my wife and I would lose our love or my kids don’t know me because I’m gone every day and night, chasing money and success.

That stance often seems out of place in circles of high achievers, obsessed with the “rise‑and‑grind” hustle culture. To them, all that matters is how much you make and what you can buy. And that type of person wears a busy work schedule like a badge of honor. But the truth is, chronic hustle and overworking can really hurt your relationships that matter most. A University of California analysis of 3,900 married business owners found nearly one in three entrepreneurs divorced, roughly double the 10–15% rate of non‑founders in the same age bracket.

Don’t believe me? Just ask the former CEO of Astronomer how marriage can play out if you’re not nurturing it the same way you do your business. And while I’m not saying you’ll get caught in a love affair that’s exposed at a Coldplay concert, I am saying that continuing to view 120-hour workweeks as a badge of honor is statistically volunteering your family as collateral damage.

There’s a better playbook — one where the company and the marriage both scale.

Related: Money Problems Are a Leading Cause of Divorce. Here’s How To Avoid Them

Your 63-hour workweek is costing you more than time

The UC study doesn’t blame venture risk or market swings; it blames stress. While it’s true that stress alone doesn’t sign divorce papers, it eats away patience, fuels money fights and steals the emotional bandwidth couples need to stay connected. Layer on the average 63‑hour founder workweek, and you’ll get chronic absence at home, physically or mentally.

Hidden cost #1 is therefore attention debt. When every alert feels mission‑critical, spouses are forced to compete with your business for a sliver of focus. Hidden cost #2 is decision fatigue. After a day of firefighting, the willpower left for a hard conversation about kids, budgets, or intimacy rounds down to zero. Unless we surface those costs early, the dream venture quietly invoices the marriage.

Why “outworking everyone” is an obsolete strategy

Here’s why bragging about how much you work doesn’t work. When someone posts their 3 a.m. cold-plunge routine, our initial thought is that they’re signaling discipline — but also telling the world their business needs every waking minute to survive. Beware because that’s not leadership; it’s operational fragility masquerading as grit. With AI copilots, global talent marketplaces and asynchronous tools, the old “outwork everyone” mantra has become obsolete. As much as it sounds too cliché, “work smarter, not harder” is still the strategy that actually works.

So, I rewrote my definition of winning:

1. Profitability without proximity. If the company breaks when I leave for a week, it’s a job, not a business. My businesses need to be able to operate (and grow) in my absence.
2. Nights and weekends off the grid. Revenue that requires sacrificing family relationships or moments at the dinner table is overpriced.
3. Stress‑adjusted returns. Earning an extra 5% margin isn’t worth a 50‑percent spike in stress and lost sleep.

That reframing forced me to tweak our systems and leadership approach instead of letting my identity be tied to the company. What’s crazy is that growth accelerated once I stopped micromanaging every metric. Clients don’t care if their deliverables are shipped at 2 p.m. or 2 a.m.; they care that they are shipped on spec, on time and consistently. The same goes for loved ones: they measure success in presence.

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Be fully invested in what really matters

My schedule is the most honest mirror I own. Same for you. If team meetings and client appointments crowd every hour on my calendar while “dinner with the family” finds no spot, my calendar is telling on me. So I block the critical events first. My son’s Wednesday‑night football game, for example, is inked in before any kind of client meeting. A standing breakfast date with my wife goes on the calendar before investor updates hit the schedule. Those blocks are non‑negotiable, just like payroll.

The boundaries follow me through the front door. As soon as I walk in, my phone hits the bedside nightstand so I can spend some face-to-face time with the fam. Communication apps shut down after six unless the sky is falling. And every week (on Sunday afternoon), my wife and I huddle up to chat about last week and the upcoming week. At least every quarter, we get away just me and her for a time away from home routines and our five kids. Contrary to what other founders think, guardrails like these don’t box me in; they only make room for the moments that matter.

When family knows exactly when they have you, they stop competing for scraps of your attention and start enjoying you in full.

The compounding power of being present

The market doesn’t grade my marriage, so I keep my own scoreboard. Earnings, followers, exits—they fade. Dinner-table stories, Saturday sports, and Sunday evening walks don’t. When I’m gone, I want Amber and our kids to say I was Fully Invested in them and in the work I was called to do.

Here’s what most people miss: a steady home gives you the headspace to see around corners at work. When the business runs on clear systems — not late-night cramming at the office — you walk through the door with energy left for your people. Trust at home strengthens you for bolder, smarter decisions in business. Trust and leadership in business make it easier to be present at home. That loop compounds into the only two returns that matter: real financial results for your business and the relationships you want to celebrate them with.