15 years in business didn’t prepare me for 2 years as a dad

There is one question I keep asking myself these days, and if you run a business, you are probably asking it too: what keeps a business owner valuable when AI can copy almost everything?

I've been an entrepreneur for over 20 years, and I believe the answer is the know-how nobody can prompt. At least I hope so. These are my notes on that question, spoken while I'm running and only tidied up by AI, so every word is mine.

For years I was telling everyone that your company is your baby. Then I had my own baby 🙏 and after two years I have to be honest with you, it's not the same thing at all. In the last few weeks I was travelling in Lisbon and London together with my family, and it's really nice to travel all together, where you can do both things - try to work and try to rest. I never thought that two trips within a couple of months, both with our baby, would be something where on the second day I say "oh, we have to book a ticket home, because to travel with a baby under two years old can get crazy and almost impossible" :D And then the next day everything's fine, you are so glad that you did this, and you're already checking for the next flight together. And on the fourth day you're again in the same mood, blaming the world about what's happening.

And only then you can catch yourself - I was trained to do business, but never trained to have my own baby, my own family. From one perspective it's very similar, there are ups and downs every single day. With the company you want to do one thing, you want to kill it, you want to continue, you want to change something. But no matter how many years you spend running a business, you are still on the path where you've run your business for 15 years and had a baby for 2 years, and you're losing yourself, you don't know what to do. So to say that this is exactly the same wouldn't be true. I ran this half marathon after several sleepless nights, and it was a gift from my wife and my daughter Holly. I have to be honest, I was barely running and barely alive. But it reminds you that life is so full of everything when we are creating it and making it happen.

Anyway :D Sometimes it might sound like you are on a beach with a laptop dreaming about getting back into the office, and while you are in the office, you are dreaming to stay on a beach. Maybe 15 years ago I was thinking that that's the trap I'm in. But at the moment I think that it's not a trap. It's my reward.

And here is what I take from it. AI can write a perfect article about balancing business and family, but it can't live the second day of that trip or the fourth. What I learn the hard way, at home and at work, is exactly the part nobody can prompt. So next time you catch yourself on the beach dreaming about the office, or in the office dreaming about the beach, ask yourself one question - is this a trap, or is this the reward I worked for? And one more thing - for the next 8 weeks I'm in the Built to Scale accelerator, with the guys who were my mentors and supporters and accelerated my software when I needed them most. I'll share what I learn there in my next pieces. If you run a business with small kids at home, tell me in the comments how you hold both. And if you're building a business and want to follow this road with me, press follow here.