From Entrepreneur to Parentrepreneur 3: Taking time and making time

It’s been a while since I did one of these because I’ve been a busy parentrepreneur!

So, what’s been happening?

Well, for the first two months of our children’s lives, I didn’t work at all. The super team at OnlyExcel meant I was able to step back from the business and make the most of those early months when most needed. For the following four months, I worked 8-12 hours a week.

If you’ve ever worked in an agency, you’ll know you can reliably see about three months ahead. As you can imagine, if your main sales guy takes six months out of the business, things start to slow down a bit, and for us, new business certainly did.

Thankfully, we have been around for a while and plenty of existing clients asked us for work, which kept us going.

Then, diving back into the team on a four-day week (and working with excellent sales, advertising and marketing freelancers) we got the business pipeline filled up once again, and we took on some fab new clients.

So, what have I learned?

First and foremost, my wife and kids are awesome. This I already knew, but it has been deeply reinforced! You can actually see the family in this rather cool BBC film in which I have a small cameo.

The cliché is true: Your priorities do shift when you become a parent. And it’s true for a reason. When things that might have seemed unthinkable before (like stepping away for six months) become essential, you start getting resourceful and you find ways to make it work.

The business had its best year ever despite my absence and a year on, it continues to grow from strength to strength.

Sometimes, we have self-limiting beliefs and little rules that get in the way of real change and progress.

For example, I didn’t think I could take more time off work, but I needed some. So we increased daycare days, and I switched to a nine-day working fortnight, creating some much-needed “me-time” for both me and my wife. Or, I guess, “us-time”. (No, not that.)

I also didn’t feel like I had enough personal time in the morning. And realised I don’t need to start work at 9 AM. So now start at 9:30. The extra half hour off more than makes up for it in wellbeing and productivity.

Simple is better when it comes to a schedule

It’s easier to remember where things should get done, and much easier to arrange things with people. My day is split into morning and afternoon. Morning is sales, client calls and business admin. Afternoons (and every second Friday) are project work. Finally, I have some slots each morning and afternoon to do the inevitable ‘unplanned’ work. 

Turning the advice we give clients inwards has been invaluable. To “eliminate, automate and delegate” tasks.

  • We’ve rebuilt our internal CRM and project management system to better fit our processes
  • We’ve improved the way clients can book calls with us
  • We’re working on new service offerings to make it easier to do business with us
  • We’ve been working on the way we communicate, with more outside help

And what’s next?

I now feel like I have more time and headspace to deliver regular blog articles with handy tips, thoughts and strategies to help you thrive in business and in life. Watch this space

Previous Parentrepreneur blogs:

01: Balancing parenthood with business
02: Twins, things and wins

From Entrepreneur to Parentrepreneur 2: Twins, things and wins

So, it’s been a little hectic since the last post, and lessons have been learned – many of them! 

My number one lesson? As soon as you think you know something, it changes. 

No kidding! Not only is every baby different—trust me, we have twins, and what works for one doesn’t for the other—but also what worked yesterday doesn’t work today. They also have no regard for your plans, schedules, or client calls. So inconsiderate! 

Anyway, it’s been an interesting few months, and I’m squeezing in some part-time work around the twins. It’s been quite transformative in terms of: 

  • Prioritisation: Dropping from 7.5 hours to 2 a day, the focus has to be on impact 
  • Delegation: You have to utilise your team. You can’t hold on to what you did before 
  • Procrastination: There’s no time to waste time here – efficiency is key

The net result has been both the good and bad end of the stick for our newest team member, who joined to help take work off my plate and allow us to keep growing. There’s definitely some good freedom and autonomy in this role, both through necessity and high trust levels. And he has demonstrated he’s more than up to task!  

Case in point: The day the twins arrived, I had to tell him, “That project we were going to do a handover on is all yours now – good luck!” 

 

Things that help as a parent and business owner

🗓️ In the main, working to a (semi-flexible) feeding and sleeping schedule has been a game changer. As parents, we have at least some predictability and, for the business, can plan in a few calls. 

👥 Trusting the team! All of them have stepped up and taken things off my plate at various points. We have great people, and it’s made life much more manageable. 

🍼 Nanny! We have some help a few times a week, and similar to the schedule benefit, it’s glorious to know when you might have some uninterrupted time to plan in calls or high-impact delivery work. 

 

Things that have been challenging as a new parent and business owner 

📈 Keeping up with clients and the sales pipeline proved a little tricky for a couple of months there. Now, my top priority is checking in with our clients on a regular basis and managing the inflow of new business. 

😄 Fun! It’s easy to get bogged down in babies, household chores and work. With the addition of day support and a little more predictability with the babies’ schedule, planning in some fun times has helped boost the general mood. 

 

Business strategy as a new parent: What’s next?

Good people are key!

In addition to our excellent development team, we’ve added to our talent with:

  • We’ve engaged a new CFO, Alfie Wenegieme, via Cactus and look forward to some structure and focus around our financials. Early discussions have already been both thought-provoking and energising. 
  • We’ve been obtaining independent feedback from our clients with the help of Remeny Armitage Royle at Brilliant and Human, which is helping instruct our operations strategy, service and marketing focus. It’s been a seamless process and generating hugely valuable insight.
  • You’ll be hearing more from us with the support of Ben Horsley-Summer, aka Null, who is himself a brilliant human and one I’d love to keep all to ourselves! 
  • Last but not least, we’re extending our outreach with PPC campaign support from Mark Proctor of Dropkick Marketing and it’s been great to see some early results and welcome new clients to the fray.

Pipeline

  • We’re working on five new major projects to automate business processes for our clients. Which makes five businesses that are about to get seriously scaled up.

Operations

  • We’re working on our own internal systems to automate more of our processes. The old ‘cobbler’s shoes’ phrase is suddenly very apt here!

Overall, it’s been an exciting (if slightly exhausting) period of living, loving and learning. But I wouldn’t change a thing. Keep your eyes peeled for Parentrepreneur instalment number three, coming soon-ish. 

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If you want chat about parenting and ‘businessing’ then hit me up – I’d love to share our parentrepreneur ups, middlings and downs over a virtual coffee.

Or, if you’re a business owner looking to free up your time for parenting, general life stuff, or you’d simply like to scale up and make more money, then contact us.

Previous Parentrepreneur blogs:

From Entrepreneur to Parentrepreneur 1: Balancing parenthood with business

From Entrepreneur to Parentrepreneur 1: Balancing parenthood with business

Shock and excitement. That’s what I felt a few months ago (and still am!) upon hearing that my partner and I were expecting twins. Over the last few weeks, amongst the many thoughts swirling around my head, I’ve been thinking about how the inevitable change in my life will also change how I approach business.

I am curious – how does this entrepreneur graduate to ‘parent-repreneur’?

Off the bat, there’s the obvious stuff like building furniture (and bolting it to the wall, apparently!) and learning how to feed these bambinos. This is all new and exciting, but in a bid to be able to keep up the momentum in work and life, I’ve been looking at ways I can change my business to help me be the best parent I can be.

But how?

 

🔄 Replacing myself

Sounds a little dramatic. But what I mean is, especially as a business that specialises in unlocking time and building automation, it’s only natural that I find ways to offload as many of my deliverables as possible, replacing them with tasks, apps, automation, or simply third-party help.

📊 Filling the pipeline

Oh, if only it were that easy. It does seem a sensible course of action, though, particularly with the view that I’ll be taking paternity leave and would love to go away knowing there’s plenty of work to keep everyone busy.

☕ Meeting other parents 

Chatting to fellow parents, parents-to-be, or experienced parent-folk is a very sensible thing to do. I want to hear about the experience of others and how they’ve balanced children (figuratively, not literally). And that’s warts and all – I want the good and bad experiences because, let’s face it, nothing is ever plane sailing.

Ultimately, I am hugely excited about this new adventure, and I remain optimistic that my existing approach to work—one that is flexible and agile—should fit well with what’s about to happen.

If you’re a parent, I’d love you to join me on this journey, whether that’s through calls, comments or even coffee. I can’t promise I won’t be knee-deep in diapers, but I will endeavour to continue this #parentrepreneuer series.

Apparently, they’ll choose to come along whenever they feel like it – and I trust they’ll do it with some grace and aplomb! Their papa’s a nerd, goodness help them, so they will need some kind of running start.

Update!

They did choose their own arrival time – the twins arrived a few weeks ahead of schedule. My wife, Sarah, is doing well, and continues to amaze me every day. I’m a very happy man. Here we are reading them Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. It’s been a hit so far and we’re saving to put them to Hogwarts.

 

Keep up with the parentrepreneur journey

If you’re an expecting parent, a “thinking about it” entrepreneur, or a seasoned parentrepreneur, I’d love you to follow along. I’ll be posting regular updates here and on my LinkedIn (sleep permitting).

Or, if you’re a business owner looking to free up your time for parenting, general life stuff, or you’d simply like to scale up and make more money, then contact us.

Read blog number two here.