This is my 5th year writing on my birthday (you can read previous articles here).
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This year I was blessed with the birth of my son. Though I anticipated that becoming a father would be life-changing, I could never have predicted all the profound ways in which this tiny human would change me. So this year’s article is a Thank You to him for unknowingly teaching me many valuable lessons that I am grateful for and excited to share with you.
The first two months after my son was born were brutal. Only other parents would understand the shock to the system when you are handed a newborn and told to take care of him or her from now on. Not being able to take time off from work, I barely kept my head above the water with helping manage the household, learning to care for the baby and supporting my wife, all while getting less than a cumulative of four hours of sleep every night. Our decision to have the baby was intentional, we had support, and we still feel like we barely survived. Until this year, I just assumed that everyone wants to be a parent one day. But only having had a baby did I understand why some people don’t want to have a baby.
This realization propagated a similar realization in another area of my life: starting a business. In my 20s, I was, like many young people, very prescriptive with my ideas. When I started regularly writing in 2017, I wanted to convince everyone that starting a business was the best thing since avocado toast. My business was my life, so any time anyone spoke to me about their job or an idea, I inevitably ended up telling them “you should just start your own business!” I couldn’t not start a business myself, and so I thought it simply a matter of time until everyone came around to seeing the value in doing so too. My clear motive for starting a business helped me to subconsciously accept (or turn a willful blind eye to) all the pain and hardship that comes with being an entrepreneur. I only focused on what I thought were the positives, so it was easy for me to rationalize why this path was right for me.
This year I finally realized that not everyone wants to start a business, and that is absolutely fine. Just like parenthood, the entrepreneurship journey is challenging in its own unique way. I would never recommend having a baby to someone, and I stopped recommending other people start businesses. I am happy with my choices, but both decisions, starting a business and having children, are personal and entirely dependent on each individual. It is a choice everyone must make for themselves. So when you read below, do not consider this as me advocating for or against having children or starting a business -- I am merely sharing my experience.
With all that said, here are four things I learned this year:
It is true. Nothing can prepare you for what parenting is (and I am still so new to it!). The only way to learn how to become a parent is to become one. It’s not unlike being an entrepreneur or a business leader -- you can read countless books on the topic, but until you do it yourself, you will never really know what it is like.
It is already becoming apparent that the job of a parent, just like the job of a startup founder, changes over time -- faster than maybe you would like it to. You are constantly forced to learn new skills and adapt to new situations. It is never a boring day! The best thing you can do is just to embrace the chaos, take a deep breath, and smile -- one day your business and your baby will grow up, and you will miss the chaos. It’s baptism by fire, and there is no other way.
At the hospital, when the nurse handed me the diaper and told me that she would watch me change it for my son, I was seized by a minor fit of hysterical nervous laughter. I never even held a baby before that moment, let alone change a diaper! But I put on a brave face, and I did it. Then I did it again. And again. Maybe it sounds crazy, but I love changing diapers! Lesson here is you do get better at things the more you do them. You also tend to like doing things you are good at.
There is no formula to building a successful business, and even ten months into raising my son it is clear that there is also no formula to raising a happy, fulfilled, contributing, and successful child. Perhaps, this is because in both cases, you are not the sole influence on that entity or person. There will be many people that influence, shape, guide, and direct both your business and your child. Additionally, a business is made up of people with their own personalities and motivations, and so is my son. If I am only one of many influences then, what can I do to give both the best chance at success? I think the answer is to be the best influence I can be, and in my mind, the most effective way to influence people is to lead by example. In pushing myself to be better, and to do better, I hope that I can inspire a positive growth trajectory.
Having our son forced my wife and I to ask ourselves some big questions about not only the world he will be growing up in, but the example we were setting for him. I think the world will be a difficult one (for reasons I have already written about in many other articles) and he will have no option but to face many of these challenges. But it is my hope that he will make a conscious decision to tackle other challenges not because they directly affect him but because there are people out there who suffer because of them. Those people may have no option but to face those challenges and helping them is the right thing to do. To help him develop that sense of responsibility and courage, I need to be the role model. Nothing that I can say to him will be more powerful than having him see me live and act in a way consistent with these values. While this does put pressure on me to continue my personal development, I am at the same time excited to discover new ways I can grow as an individual.
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As always, thanks to Anneke Bruinsma-Findlay for reading drafts of this article.