The Fully Managed Family

Miller isn't just a baby-sitter. She's treated as a member of the family who must not only manage the Deterses' household but impart their values as well. "Ann likes all of the boys to be hard workers and not to complain," says Miller of her charges. "And she wants them to know how to take care of themselves." So there are no little princes in the Deters household. "When I'd had the boys, I said to myself that I was not going to raise them so they could go from their mother to their wives," Deters says. From the time they began kindergarten, her children have been dressing themselves and helping around the house. Yes, there's a cleaning lady who comes once a week, and Miller keeps things tidy, but the three older boys pull their own weight. Deters tells Miller what she expects of them, and Miller draws up a household schedule accordingly. It looks like this:

Periodically, if Miller doesn't need to remind the children about chores, she rewards them with, say, a trip to the ice-cream stand. But if they complain or shirk their duties, they're presented with the dreaded "chore bucket," from which they blindly choose a more odious task. "Once I had to pull all the weeds around the house," recalls Jeff. "It was boring and hot."

Things don't always go smoothly, of course. "Not putting meetings in the system causes total havoc," says Deters, who admits that she and Dennis have sometimes, well after 10 p.m., realized that both have early meetings and are leaving home the next morning at 6. "That requires a late-night phone call to Chelsea to see if she'll come in earlier, or one of us agrees to delay the meeting," says Deters. Cell batteries die just when a sick child needs to be picked up; sporting events are forgotten; the Vantage network server goes down and delays E-mail transmission. But the snafus are temporary.

It starts when everyone gets up, between 6 and 6:30 in the morning, and although the family tries to sit down at the kitchen table together once a week, breakfast is usually harried. The three older boys fend for themselves.Then it's time for piano practice, a much reviled responsibility but one that Deters insists on. "I just want to open my children up to as many opportunities as possible in music and the arts," she says. Miller arrives at 7:30, when Ann and Dennis leave the house to drop the older boys at school and then head to the office. If work permits, one or both parents might sneak home for lunch, since the office is so close. In the summer, both parents leave work by 5:30; during the school year, Ann works through lunch and leaves the office at 3:30 to help the boys with homework. She tackles unfinished office work after the boys are in bed. Miller prepares dinner before she leaves, and the family eats together almost every evening -- a huge priority for Deters, since that's the one the time she can count on her entire brood's being together.

If there's one cardinal rule that the Deterses hold themselves to, it's this: leave work at the office. "It took us a long time to not bring the business home with us," says Deters. "But you need a break from it, and the kids provide the discipline for us to just be a family."

"We're constantly tweaking everything," she explains. Once in a while, the boys ask why she can't be a stay-at-home mom -- usually a sign that she's working too hard or traveling too much. There probably isn't a working mother anywhere who isn't periodically hit with the same question, and Deters's answer is typical: It's her business that allows the family to take nice vacations and the children to go to private school and eventually to college.

Deters is the first to admit that she's not hardwired to be at home 24-7. She's easily bored with routines and, even as a kid, avoided domestic duties as often as she could to play sports. "If you were to talk to my mother," she says, "she'd probably tell you, 'God must have been a bit short on patience the day he created Ann." And so she delegates the day-to-day details, much as she does at work.

Dennis, a self-proclaimed "type B," gives his type A wife his full support. "I couldn't have accomplished this arrangement without him," says Deters. "I feel good about where we are in life, how our children are growing up, how the business is doing. Life is good. I couldn't be happier."

Donna Fenn is a contributing editor at Inc.

Survivor

CEO Ann Deters's five most critical practices at home:

1. Outsource daily chores, including meals, to house manager Chelsea Miller so that "we can focus on playing and interacting with the children when we come home from work."

2. Maintain multiple communication lines, including E-mail, phone, and cell phones. Also, Miller keeps a written diary in which she posts daily events.

3. Use technology to stay organized. "I'm a to-do-list person to a fault," says Deters. "PalmPilot has been my lifesaver." She syncs her laptop ("my portable office") with her PDA at least once a day. Other critical tools: Microsoft Outlook and a home DSL line.

4. Keep flexible schedules for everyone. You need a routine, but deviating from it shouldn't make you crazy. "You've got to be able to drop or pick up something at the drop of a hat," says Deters. "Juggling is a daily event, and multitasking is what I thrive on."

5. Remember that "a daily dose of humor is a must both at home and at work," says Deters.

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