If that sums up your life right now – congratulations! You’re the proud parent of a bouncing baby… business…?
There was a time when I thought that having a family and setting up and running a business were complete opposites. I’ve since realised how wrong I was. They have more in common than I would ever have thought. Here are fifteen examples – to be going on with…
1 – Conception – be it the beginning of a business concept or of a new human life, it might be something you’ve been trying for for ages, or it can happen out of the blue; it can be a wonderful moment, or a non-event; but even if it’s the last thing on your mind and indistinguishable at the time from plenty of similar moments, one thing is sure – you’ll realise the significance of this one before too long!
2 – Pregnancy – the period between ‘conception’ and ‘birth’, when the seed of the original idea is blossoming into a fully fledged concept, you can find yourself on a rollercoaster ride. Sometimes you’re excited and can’t wait for the ‘birth’ – and sometimes you wonder ‘who’s damn fool idea was this?!‘
3 – The birth – bearing a baby business is considerably less physically painful than delivering a baby human (for us girls anyway!) – but it can hurt like hell in other ways, including financially – and the bad news for you boys is, if it’s your business, you can’t get your partner to go through the agony for you! The most they can do is hold your hand and mop your fevered brow. For a woman, the big advantage of making a business with your partner, as against making a little person, is that you both really do go through the birth together – on equal terms.
Once it’s here, your brand new business is likely to take over your life. Before it was born, you might have made bold statements about how it was going to have to fit in with you, not the other way around – but, trust me, as young as it is, it has other ideas…
For it to thrive, it needs:
4 – Investment – even before it’s born, there are expenses. You can keep them to a minimum – but if cash is really tight, you’d better start calling in favours and blagging freebies!
5 – Food – and guess what? It’s a fussy little bugger – it will only eat money. Obviously, you can’t pick that up in the Sainsburys baby aisle – even Waitrose don’t sell it! No, the only source of this particular baby food is sales and marketing.
6 – To be kept clean – you have to stay on top of the admin – and the more the baby eats, the more it, er, generates. Neglect it and you end up with one hell of a nappy to change! The good news is that there are options which allow you to outsource the whole nappy thing – from changing to disposal. You can do the same thing with human babies, of course. It’s called ‘employing a nanny’ – and it’s expensive! The commercial equivalent is a lot more affordable.
7 – Clothes – if this child is going to be seen in public, it must be properly dressed. The branding has to be right – but be warned: just like a human baby, a business grows out of its clothes. It doesn’t happen as fast – which is just as well, because a new logo generally costs several times more than a new pair of kids’ shoes. – but just bear in mind that what fits your newborn probably won’t work for your toddler – and may well look ridiculous on your adolescent.
8 – Discipline – like any child, it needs boundaries – so firm, consistent management is a must.
9 – Nurturing – at the beginning, a young business needs a lot of input to develop it. Physical growth – increased turnover, comfortable profits and healthy cash flow – are all fantastic signs – like the steady weight gain of a new baby; but there’s more to growth than getting bigger. There’s also getting stronger, bolder, wiser and sharper – and all that takes good strategic development. That doesn’t stop as the business grows up – it just changes – like the transition from teaching your baby shapes and colours, to helping your pre-teen son or daughter with their unintelligible maths homework!
10 – Other people – it’s possible to be a single parent of a business, but it’s hard work going it alone. It’s much easier to have someone to share the highs and lows and help make the big decisions. If you do decide to fly solo, you will need a strong support network. Friends and family are great, but best of all are other people in a similar position – especially if their ’kids’ are a bit older than yours and they’ve already met and overcome some of the challenges you’re likely to have to deal with. Also, if you try to bring up your business in splendid isolation, it’ll end up detached from the real world and unable to function in it. Yes, really – social interaction is as important for a commercial child as it is for the human equivalent!
11 – Guidance – especially as your infant gets bigger and more adventurous, you need to be several steps ahead – with eyes in some unusual parts of your anatomy! – to stop it getting into trouble, and to help it discover what it‘s capable of – so some planning is essential. That said, try not to fall into the pushy or over-protective parent trap, of wanting to plan out your child’s life down to the last detail. Be prepared for the fact that, whatever expectations you may have when it arrives, it might well confound them and grow up to be something completely different. Like any new parent, you’ll probably want to maintain absolute control, to protect it from the big, bad world for as long as possible; but we all have to go out into that world at some point – and just as relatives, friends, the neighbourhood you live in, schools and so on help to shape a growing child, , , outside influences like changing consumer behaviour, new technology, and changes in the economic climate will have an impact on what your growing business becomes. As long as it grows up to fullfill its potential – whatever that potential may be – that’s all that really matters.
12 – Tolerance – mistakes will happen. To begin with, the buck starts and stops with you. Later, as your business takes on more of a life of its own, there are likely to be other people in the equation, such as staff. Although the ultimate responsibility is still yours I’m afraid! What matters is that everyone knows that mistakes have consequences – and that they’re turned into a learning experience for all concerned.
13 – Realism – when your baby wakes you up in the middle of the night demanding to be fed (if you don’t get those nights when you’re wrestling with where to find more customers, how to pay a bill etc, I’d love to know your secret!), you might think: ‘Never mind. In a few years, all this will be different’. Don’t kid yourself! When a baby grows into a toddler, the toddler grows into a schoolchild, the schoolchild becomes a teenager – and even when that teenager becomes a young adult – it doesn’t challenge its parents less – the challenges just change. It’s no different when you’re bringing up a business.
14 – Time – if you can’t be there in person, you need to make sure that someone else is and that they’re capable of putting the time in – because without that, nothing else can happen. The downside of having someone else look after your child for long periods is, of course, that whilst your name is on the birth certificate and your offspring shares your DNA, because it was born of your original idea and you worked to establish it, the closest longterm bond will be with the primary carer. They will become the face of the business – and the one who will really be due the lion’s share of the credit for its success.
15 – Love – if you don’t love what you do, or what you’re thinking of doing, with a passion, don’t do it – because you won’t give it all the other things I’ve talked about, with the consistency and in the quantities it needs to survive and thrive. It needs you to be there when it needs you, and not just when you want to. It will demand sacrifices from you – in my own experience, nothing prepared me for how much it would ask of me!
So why do it? Because next to bringing another human being into the world and raising them to make a real contribution, raising your own business is one of the most rewarding things you can do.
Also, unlike a flesh and blood child, it‘ll never ask to borrow the car – and if you play your cards right and put the work in, it will eventually keep you in the style to which you‘d like to become accustomed!
Like human children, you can of course have more than one – but if you’re tempted to ’bring them up together’, be careful. It’s a great idea in theory – and extremely tough going in practice.
Speaking of which – sorry! Got to run now – my pre-schooler is asking questions and the baby is screaming to be fed!