Dad for a Minute

Starting a company is brave and takes a lot of work. You've done something amazing.

But you're a finite resource. You can't make your company succeed if you yourself start to fall apart. Part of keeping your company going is keeping YOU going. Make time for your family away from the work. Make time for your mental health. Take time to relax. These are tasks that are necessary to keep your company afloat.

The work will be there when you return, and you'll be better and faster at it if you're rested.

Good luck!

This was me 25 years ago, and it took a good long while after I was in the black before I could get to a point where I could stop thinking about work when I wasn’t working. I think this is the key: you MUST make time to not think about work (and from the sound of it, to think about your wife). I found it easiest to literally put it in my calendar. I set aside time for when I wanted to work out, play with the baby, hang out with the wife, etc. It was very granular in the beginning because otherwise I’d just blow it off, but when I penciled in 45 min for lunch with wife or 15 minutes to read a book, I’d actually do it. Eventually being able to unplug became easier and I could stop, but scheduling was a crutch I leaned on for years. It’s fantastic that you can see a path to success already, but remember that work and the grind aren’t the only important things.

I started my company before my daughter was born, but because of covid and Ukraine (I'm in Europe) it went bad and it's only been OK for a year and a half now.

When our daughter was born, my wife forced me to cut 1h of work per day. She told me I could work more after our daughter was in bed if needed, to check the mails for instance. She does that a lot herself as a teacher, but I almost never find strength to work the evening because I'm too tired. So I cut one hour and... Nothing got worse.

I thought It was going to be bad but it wasn't.

The thing is : the first year was awfull because I didn't make enough money, so I used what I had saved. Because of that I became a lot tougher when I have to negotiate a contract, because I do feel that people asking for a low price are disrespecting me and putting my family in danger, which they are.

I still don't make as much as I would If I worked for somebody, but I make enough, I work less, and there are many other perks.

TLDR : my wife was right. Yours might also be.

Also : I'm not my own man, I had associates all along. I don't know if I could have done it alone.

Good luck to find your way

try to draw boundaries, times/places when yould not work and times/places you woould, so that you form habits. Also, see if you need to hire someone to split some work, there is a possibility that some parts of your work that you spend a lot of time doing, you may even be doing them suboptimaly, so get some one who can do that, but better. This will reduce profitability, but you gain back something more important - time - try not to waste that, spend some more time with your loved ones, and when you are doing better emotionally and physically, you would also be able to think better on how to gain back those profits.

Also a general business advice - try to always be profitable - this may mean many things, you have to figure that out - consider the total amount of assets, time, and money of your team, and only make bets which are sustainable. Try to grow slow, but never aim for so high, that you keep stabbing your pinky on corners - that would be attrition and losses. Avoiding them would give you a better overall time.

Get acquainted with the GTD philosophy. First watch Merlin Mann explain the part of it called Inbox Zero (YouTube) to get an idea of what this attention management system is like. Then read Getting Things Done by David Allen. Keep in mind, the point of the philosophy isn’t to get more done. The point is to keep all the things you need to do in a trusted system that surfaces them when you’re ready. This allows you to focus on one thing at a time. More importantly, you’ll be able to put work out of your mind when you’re not working. Just make sure you have an inbox (I used to carry index cards) to capture work thoughts when you’re not at work, and then wait for when are next processing your inbox to think about those items.

Also consider using the Balance app. There’s a way to get a free trial for a year. Meditate for 5 minutes a day until it helps, then expand that if you have time, and explore other parts of the app. It’s specifically designed to address stress (among other things).

Mimicking what others said here, but there is one very important thing: you and your wife need to be on the same page on this.

Owning a business involves your whole family, you can get better at it, but there's no way around it. Whatever your reasons are for taking this path, make sure they understand. When there's friction and you need to prioritize the business it will help a lot. The key that helping is to have it be a "we" decision though. You may reach a point where one of you wants to continue and the other doesn't. You will fight about it. But fighting about if this is getting you where you want to be better than an alternative path is a lot more productive than just fighting about stress.

Re: time: I always say that it's usually not the hours (although sometimes it certainly is), it's that you're never really off. You'll start to fall into rythem and realize what is critical and what can wait. It gets easier but it never gets easy.

For construction in general, without knowing the type: be very careful to set yourself up for success. Do not get saddled with loans for equipment that you don't need. Do not be afraid to rent on a per job basis for a while. If it helps you avoid oversizing/buying the wrong piece of equipment it's well worth it.

Grow your client base intentionally. You're going to have shitty customers. My best friend does a mix of residential, muni, and private. The shit developers have pulled on him is astounding ("I need to sell a house before I can pay you"). They will grind you on bills because they know their ongoing expenses are less than yours; you'll cave if they wait. Make liberal use of late fees (usually capped by state) and property leins. The art of "playing the game" and not getting rolled over is hard learned. When you get good clients that pay their bills on time and don't grind, do whatever you need to keep them. especially now, make sure there are material cost escalation and availability clauses in your contracts.

Last: avoid "the lifestyle". Do not judge your companys success on the fanciness of the equipment or what it's name is on. Judge it on the balance sheet. You have no idea what other firms books look like. Be intentional about your networking time. That vendor that hosted a golf outing, did you really get good connections out of it or did you go because you needed a break and could call it "work"? If it's the latter, would you have been more recharged taking a break with your wife around the house? Networking is intangible, you're going to be the only one who can make that call.

You will fuck all of this up, thats how you learn. But you CAN do this.

This is why you need loyal and dependable managers/assistants working for you. You’ll be sacrificing a bit of money but you will be helping keep you sane and potentially live longer due to less stress.

My dad went through this and I watched him suffer for it. He should have hired middlemen to help run the business and when he went ill, he relied on me and my mom to help with the business instead.

You need to decide what jobs this person or these people will need to do to help you run this business. These need to be trustworthy people because you want them to rely on you as little as possible. Otherwise you will have them calling you and bothering you, not to the same extent, but it will continue and you won’t get free time away from the business.

You also need to set times when you want to be away. Times when you are to only be contacted when it is an absolute emergency. Again, these need to be trustworthy people because you will be putting the business fully in their hands. Think of this as a daycare and you are leaving your baby in their hands while you and your wife go travel the world for a week. You need to know your baby is in good hands and won’t be neglected or taken advantage of and that happens by hiring only the person/people you trust. Preferably people as a group so they hold each other accountable, in theory.

These will likely be manager or assistant roles who report directly to you. I’d suggest determining what duties need to be done and then you can have a better idea of how many duties can be assigned to a role, whether one person can realistically take it on in your absence or if you need multiple positions to separate these duties. In doing so, you may also be indirectly growing the business and be able to expand your clientele, expand the services/products you offer, and/or raise prices to keep up with the new roles that will be added to help improve performance and overall employee morale.