Sometimes my husband and I end up taping our television show with our kids at our sides. Since we have a limited amount of time in the studio for each show, having a 2- and 4-year old on the set can be unnerving, but in the end, we look back and smile about it.

Seeing my children sitting just feet away from me as my husband and I tape a television show reminds me that a huge part of why we are in business for ourselves is to instill in our children a sense of self reliance and self determination that they will not learn in school. The whole experience reminds me that you can either make things in your life the way you want them to be, or you can allow the world to dictate how your life should be.

In other words, you can make it so the way things are is however you want them to be. I'm not suggesting that you live as if nothing matters but your own reality. But I am suggesting that you can choose to create for yourself the kind of reality you want to live in on a daily basis. When I was growing up, the way things were was that mom and dad worked all day outside the home and then after dinner, my brother and I did our homework and went to bed. In some of my friends' households, dad worked all day outside the home, mom did lots of different things depending on the family's income level and other variables, and then after dinner my friends did their homework and went to bed. All of us were told to finish high school, go to college -- and then maybe graduate school -- prepare a resume and get a job so we could support ourselves.

But my parents were not raised that way. My father's father was one of the first African Americans to be licensed as a master plumber in Washington, DC. He endured discrimination of all kinds as he tried to provide for his family. But if someone's pipes broke, he was the most important person in the universe so he made a good living going on plumbing calls as they arose and spending the rest of his time at home with his family and doing other things he liked to do. My father learned simple plumbing tasks and one of his jobs as a youngster was to help his father in the family business.

My mother's parents were farmers in rural North Carolina. They owned thousands of acres and they made a good living selling cotton, tobacco, corn, tomatoes, green beans and cucumbers. They also generated income by renting farmland to other farmers. My mother and her siblings rose early in the morning to work the farm, eat breakfast and go to school. (Guess what I did during my summer vacations!) When they came home, there was more farm work followed by dinner and then off to bed. After getting up before the sun rose to pick cotton, everyone was exhausted after dinner. My grandfather designed and built the family home himself, along with the 3 barns that surrounded it, a chicken coop, a tobacco barn and an outhouse.

Somewhere between them and me, there was a thing called the Industrial Revolution and it tore a path of destruction right through the family unit. Suddenly, people could leave home and go to a "job" and work for someone else. You left home early to punch someone else's clock (in) instead of your own. Several hours later, you punched the same clock (out), ate dinner, watched the news, kicked it around with the kids for a few minutes and went to bed. Then you got up and did it all over again the next day. You saw your kids when you were exhausted, and then your spouse after that. No one in your family ever saw you work. No one in your family worked with you. There was a total separation between life and work. (Can you spell "d-i-v-o-r-c-e?")

As I started my career, I didn't think much about that. After all, it was the way things were. But as my life progressed and I started contemplating marriage and family, having such a huge schism between who I was personally and who I was professionally began to seem increasingly unnatural. I have spent the last decade of my life fusing my separate people back together again, and not a moment too soon. This is living!

While my husband and I are sometimes nervous about having our toddlers on the set, we always enjoy knowing that we are teaching them so many skills just by having them there. My daughter puts on her makeup with me and primps for the camera. My son gets to operate a television camera on his father's shoulder. They both learn the importance of sitting still and quietly for stretches of time so they can enjoy the end result of their patience. Whether we are on the set together, stuffing magazines into envelopes or processing credit card sales, we are teaching them that they can build their own corporate ladders and work on their own terms, should they so choose. We were a team, supporting ourselves with a family business and having tons of fun.

Can you beat that?