Father And Founder: 5 Ways They Are Similar

When I'm up at midnight "dream feeding" my kids to make sure they sleep through the night, I can't help but countdown the minutes until I get to put myself to sleep. It's been about four months since I became a father to twins - I couldn't help but notice how similar raising kids and building a company is.

Entrepreneurship

Mar 01, 2021

Ara Ehamparam

Business Owner

Toronto, Canada

My 5 observations around things that are common in running a company and being a father:

Navigating partnerships can be tricky. When you have to make decisions with a business partner(s) or spouse, it takes more cooperation and the probability of friction increases. However, having partner(s) does generally divide up the work, typically based on the strengths/weaknesses of the individuals involved. You might formalize what a relationship looks like with a shareholders agreement for a business. For a marriage, this division of labour is typically not formally documented (but it’s not a bad idea). When you have partners, you also have to prepare yourself for the worst case scenario when these types of partnerships don’t end well - whether parents separate or in the case of founders going their separate ways because they don’t work well together.

Everyone has an opinion. From the moment your kid(s) are born at the hospital, you are getting countless opinions from different people on how you should raise them. Now mind you, it’s not like I’ve received bad advice, it’s the exact opposite, I’ve received some great advice. However, at the end of the day, there will be a lot of “noise” that you have to filter through in order to choose the advice that you want to implement with your kids. You can’t please everyone and/or you just need to make sure that you believe you are making the best decision for your kid(s). Similarly, with starting and running a business, I’ve heard even more feedback. It varies from going “all-in” on one business, raising money vs bootstrapping, and not to have multiple interests as you won’t be successful, etc. Again, a lot of good general feedback/advice, but at the end of the day it’s up to me to heed which advice is relevant/best for me and the businesses I’m part of. In both scenarios, you and your partner(s) are ultimately responsible for the decisions made and the results of those decisions. Being able to siphon between good and bad advice becomes an important skill as a parent and entrepreneur.

It’s boring at the beginning. After the initial high wears off from welcoming a new child to the family or launching a new business, only then does the real work begin. The beginning is often glamorized and I see a lot of people, especially with business endeavours, start with a bang and end with a fizzle. The reason is that with both babies and businesses, there is often a long period where there isn’t much exciting happening and you’re performing boring, often repetitive work without seeing much reward. For example, when trying to find clients, I have to do a ton of reach-outs via email or phone calls with often very little success. However, as I continue this habit, I get better at the sales process (usually) and the results follow. But persistence is definitely required. In the case of raising kids, the early months, especially when they usually spend most of their day sleeping (which is great), there isn’t much of a feedback loop to reward you (ie. they acknowledge you with a smile, etc.). However, the more and more I did these tasks (i.e., feeding them), I discovered little tricks and tips to become more efficient while making the task more enjoyable for myself. For example, my son peed on me a few times when I would change his diaper and even though it was expected, it was a little annoying. However, a friend of ours taught us a little trick in terms of how to put on the diaper to avoid this, and it worked.

Structure is your best friend. As parents of twins, we knew that we needed structure in a big way if we were to have any chance of getting sleep and managing our tasks/work outside of raising them. Right from the beginning, we tried to create a general structure around feeding/sleeping for the twins. It helped us with creating predictability so that we could do other things we needed to do (i.e., self-care like exercise and sleep) while also meeting their needs because they weren’t able to communicate those needs to us. With babies, I’ve learned they typically complain about three things: hunger, gas or sleep. Although our routine typically ensures that we address these 3 things, the babies do still complain. Since we know that 99% of the issues are a result of these 3 things, we can isolate and investigate each (like you would in a science experiment) to narrow down the specific issue. With a business, especially when I first started, it was a real challenge to get things done because I hadn’t yet developed the muscle of self-discipline to figure out how to structure my time in order to be productive but not burn out. However, once I was able to decipher what this entailed (through trial-and-error) and implemented a process (which made me rely less on willpower and more so on just following the system), I really learned how to work smart. For example, I used to just start doing work on a Monday with no pre-planning to prepare for the week so I was often caught off-guard because I never set aside time to work on a specific task or didn’t incorporate my personal obligations. The solution to this problem was to actually do a few hours of planning to look ahead at my schedule for the week, so that I could figure out what I may need to move around, etc.

Preparing yourself for independence. Our goal as parents from day one (even though they are just 4 months old) is that one day, they will be able to independently navigate the world we live in with minimal supervision from us. We want to evolve from being dictators to coaches to eventually becoming a friend for our kids as they become older and more responsible. When they’re older and have their own lives, we will definitely see them less often but hope they still want to spend time with us and come to us for advice from time to time because of the great foundation we are putting in place now to build that relationship. Similarly, when building a company, my mindset is that at some point, the company should be able to function without me or at the very least, with very little involvement from me. As I’m building the company, I put in processes and people in place to slowly offload day-to-day work until I’m only focused on the key activities that really drive a business forward. Or if I decide to sell, the infrastructure is there so that the business can thrive with another owner.

I would add the caveat that this list is based on me being a parent for 4 months versus 10+ years as a business builder. The perspective of building businesses (and often failing) is that I’ve learned a lot, especially at limiting repeatedly making the same mistakes. I feel like the age of my businesses (they are essentially in their “teenage” years) has given me valuable insight into how to prepare as a parent. I would add that being a lifelong learner is hugely beneficial as both an entrepreneur and parent. I have learned that the more you learn, the more you understand how much you don’t know. This doesn’t mean that you continuously look for information and not take tangible steps to put that information into action. This is what we call paralysis by analysis (ie. over-thinking). But on the flip side, be open to hearing people out as you may miss learning opportunities by being dismissive of people or ideas. I look forward to many more years of learning and growing with both my businesses and babies.

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