9 Lessons I Learned About Raising Kids While Building Businesses From Home

Heads up. This post is written for entrepreneurs who are parents or who are thinking about having kids, apologies if that’s not you, feel free to skip — we’ll catch you next week in our newsletter here.

Before diving in, I should share my situation with you: I have three kids — ages 4, 2, and 1 — a beautiful wife of 11 years — I work from home — I helped start Hopin almost five years ago, where I still work full-time — I also operate a media publication and a mobile app on the side; I wrote a novel and I published two courses. My wife is a nurse but is on hiatus while taking care of the kids at home. She is a champion.

If you’re an entrepreneur, founder, or a person with lots of ambitions and if you’re wondering what effect kids will have on your life, this is for you. 

Before diving in, I have to call out that if you’re a female founder, add multipliers to each of the following points because your job comes with far greater challenges than male founders will ever understand. 

The following calculation helps capture the reality of this, but in a non-exact way: What took you X amount of time before, now takes X * N number of kids you have. For example: if it usually takes you a day to build a landing page and you have 3 kids, it will now take you 3 days. 

You learn to focus ruthlessly and prioritize relentlessly. Often, you’re forced to either cut your list down to move faster or move your full list along but more slowly. This results in many EODs feeling like you got nothing done.

Because you know your time is more scarce. So when you do get time, you make sure you use it very efficiently.

If you struggle with “being present,” this is why. When you’re changing diapers, driving kids around, cleaning the kitchen, you can’t be at your computer, but you can be thinking about a problem. So when you do sit down at your computer, it just pours out of you. 

You end up making lots of notes, calendar blocks, voice memos, short calls, and reminders on the go. Any way you can capture thoughts and save ideas for when you get time to work. Personally, I have 2,901 notes on my phone right now…

You start to think: They are so much more productive. If only they knew how lucky they are. Don’t let yourself think this way. It will embitter you, not so much against other people, but against your kids. Instead, remember that your family is the best longterm investment you can make. Time will tell. Read The Second Mountain by David Brooks. It helped me with this.

Because, when you do get time to work, but you are tired or, for all the reasons of parenting, malaised, your time becomes less productive, and your backlog barely moves. For this reason, many ambitious parents benefit from cutting alcohol, late night TV, and junk food. Personally, I’ve noticed my drive is connected to my health, so I’ve been tracking my food intake and taking breaks from alcohol.

Your “Sacrifice Stack” is all the parts of life that get put on the altar of ambition vs. parenting. Your social life, your fitness, your travel, your house care, your reading, a vibrant marriage, your sleep — you cannot keep all of these and raise your kids and build your businesses at full potential. You must find the reduced versions of these, the trade-offs, a mix that works best for you. For me, reading has almost completely disappeared, fitness is sparse, and I don’t let my wife get too mad at me 😅.

I'm only 33 but I can sense I will not achieve what my 20-something self once thought I would achieve. Obsession comes at a cost. When you have kids, that cost increases greatly.

Nothing really prepares you for parenting while building a business. And you can’t be convinced it’s worth it until you have a family of your own.

This bible verse helps me think about parenting:

My wife often challenges me on my definition of greatness. At this stage, I don’t have one. But I know it’s changing. Like many of you, I have a certain vision of what success means for me personally. But if I don’t reach that goal, I’m okay with that. Because a family is worth it.

If you’re a parent and building businesses, I’d love to hear from you. Do you agree or disagree with any of the above? What thinking or systems work well for you? Leave a response below.

All the best,

Dave

PS. I wrote a Medium story about my 6 brutally honest fears about becoming a first-time dad just before my first child was born in 2018.

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