How the Way I Work Has Changed Since I Became a Parent

There’s no denying that having a child is going to change your life. After my wife and I found out that our first child was due in September 2018, I knew my business and my personal life were in for some major changes.

But what has surprised me the most so far is that although I have much less time for the core tasks of my business – no more 13.3-hour days and 6-day weeks for me – I actually have more time to think about the bigger-picture questions I’m facing as an entrepreneur.

That didn’t happen by accident. Being able to free up time for higher-level priorities while also becoming a parent might sound counterintuitive, but it’s actually the result of some major changes I made before my son arrived.

Analyzing My Schedule

My wife and I found out we were expecting in January 2018. So on February 1st, I started taking a much closer look at how I was spending my time and what changes I needed to make ahead of time.

Pretty much my whole career, I’ve done a twice-a-year analysis where I look at everything I’m doing and ask myself, what’s been impactful? What’s working, and what isn’t? I’m constantly optimizing my life around the 80/20 Rule – trying to figure out the 20% of everything I’m doing that accounts for 80% of my results, and then scrubbing out the rest.

I knew that, following the birth of my son, I wanted to be able to take at least a month off – and that I’d be busier than I was used to being when I returned to work. So I started planning ahead and mapping everything out using the same purge process I’ve followed for years.

I began by looking for things I could get off my plate. Sometimes, as an entrepreneur, you forget that you can hire people – that you’re not the only one who can do something. I looked at everything I was doing within my organization and started thinking through not only who could do a better job than me, but what the benefit would be of having someone else in that role entirely.

Building Out My Team

As a result, I wound up hiring a virtual assistant through Priority VA to free up some of the time I was spending on administrative responsibilities. I was also spending a lot of time being the marketing lead for each of my companies, so I brought on a marketing lead and a content marketer for each of them. I’m still involved on the strategy side, but because I’m no longer the person running the content calendars, I was able to go from 35-40 hours of work per week down to just 6-7 hours per week total.

As a combined resource, we also hired a product manager to support all of Ramp Ventures‘ companies. In doing so, we basically leveled up a skill set that had been taking up both my partner’s and my brain power, and we replaced that effort with someone who has 10 years of experience doing that work.

Bringing on a product person didn’t actually free up that much time, because I’m still very involved in reviewing product and making decisions. But what it did do was free up my brain power – and that’s a very different thing for me than saving time.

The SEO and the marketing lead work I was doing for my companies didn’t take up that much of my brain power because, frankly, I’ve done those things a hundred times before. But the product work I was doing would wind up eating half of my day’s energy. Even if I was only spending thirty minutes or an hour on it, it was still draining my energy for the rest of the day. Saving that energy made it possible for me to reallocate it and get more done in other areas of my businesses, in less time.

Establishing a Routine

One of the best things I did for myself before my son was born was to establish a better routine. When most high-level professionals think about maximizing their time, they’re thinking about what they need to do for the next quarter or the next year to create the best long-term results.

I do things a little differently. Rather than thinking that far ahead, I’m looking at what I need to do to maximize each 24-hour period of my life. And I think that’s so important for entrepreneurs. Your work never really stops, which makes maximizing your rest and your sleep so important on a day-to-day basis. You can’t work four hours a night, every night. It doesn’t matter who you are – after a few weeks of that, you’re going to burn out.

I’ve been burned out before, so I know how important good-quality sleep is. But since I still had a few bad habits that often resulted in me waking up in the middle of the night and struggling to get back to sleep, I hired a sleep therapist to help me make a few changes. Now, even though my son wakes up in the middle of the night, I still get a solid 6-7 hours of sleep because I’m able to get back to sleep faster.

I also talked to a lot of parents and created a plan with my wife to optimize my baby’s sleep. That meant that, before he was born, we were already on the same page about our plan of attack for managing his sleep (which, so far, has worked for us).

Changing Our Division of Labor

I used to wake up between 6:00-7:00am, go to the gym, knock out some emails and then get to work sometime between 9:00-10:00am. But as any parent knows, one of the many things babies change is routines.

Now, first thing in the morning, I feed my son and spend an hour with him. It’s a lot of fun, and I get a lot of joy out of it before I take him to daycare. I still go to the gym, just for less time. My day starts later, and I have less time to answer emails and take care of all the other immediate needs. It’s a drastic change to my schedule, but a good one.

My wife and I have also worked out a new schedule for our evenings. Because I’m taking time out of my mornings, my wife takes a hit on her work schedule and interrupts the second half of her day so that I can work a little later. It’s not going to be the right schedule for everyone, but it’s a plan that works for us.

Finding Some Support

The last thing I did was to create a support group of other fathers, called Founding Fathers. To be a part of the group, you have to be the founder of a company that’s doing over $1 million in revenue, and you have to be an active father – someone who’s feeding their kids, changing diapers and really in the ring with it.

The five of us meet once a month just to talk about what’s going on in our lives and how our days have changed. Having this bond with other fathers and being able to get advice and work through different struggles has been really important to me. It’s a bit of camaraderie, and a bit of a semi-support group, but in a more proactive way that’s made a huge difference in my life.

Asking Harder Questions

I was asked recently if becoming a parent has changed the way I think about my businesses – as in, if I’m concerned at all about leaving a legacy for my son.

It’s not that I’m necessarily thinking about a legacy, but I am asking myself harder questions about what I want from life than I used to. It’s been strange to find out that there are certain things I thought I wanted that just don’t matter anymore in the grand scheme of things.

Right now, my son’s survival as a baby is at the top of my list. It used to be that building my business and growing my brand were the most important things to me, but now – all of a sudden – there’s another human being relying on me. Not only did that force me to realign my priorities, but it’s also forced me to get diligent about saying no when I need to or when I don’t have the time for something.

Ultimately, I’m constantly evolving. I’ve always been about growth and change, so having to adapt and accommodate a baby hasn’t felt that foreign. I don’t know what’s next or how things will change as he gets older, but I’m confident that these and any other changes I’ll make in the future will help me find the right balance between parenthood and work.

Are you a new parent? An old pro? How has your business or outlook changed as a result of parenthood? Share in the comments below:
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