Hacking it as a Dad - One for those who fear having kids.

When my son was an hour away from being born, I pulled out my journal and wrote him a letter.

"I am so afraid of you," I began.

...

I'm an entrepreneur. I'm a new dad. If you're an Indie Hacker considering kids (whatever your station in life is) and uncertain about how distracting they'll be to your mission, I thought i'd share some thoughts. Read on.

I've always been a hustler. It's inherently selfish.

Like most of us here, I've dabbled in all sort of things. Throughout my twenties (aside from wasting a ton of time on distractions) I started a content marketing agency before they were popular, a dance-pole e-commerce store with a 'yoga aesthetic' angle, a successful digital marketing agency in Austin, a personal diet and shopping list app, and much more. Most failures, great lessons, a few successes, never millions.

At some point I decided to go back to the 9-5 world for the sake of some stability and pay increase while I worked on new skills. Eventually I got married (in my early 30s, a few years back) and began looking into starting something of my own again. Some things are just built into people. This time I wanted to code.

I say all of this to say, I know the Entrepreneur drive well. I've read all the books, dabbled in all sorts of models, and I will never not feel like an amateur as I hear those podcasted success stories of others. Maybe you're similar. I have a drive to build something for my self and I'm good about protecting my time.

Kids have always scared me deeply because they seem like a distraction to success. I guess that's TBD, but I no-longer feel this way.

What I've learned this year-ish

When Tom was born, I was pretty stressed out. Sure sure, "what a blessing", "mind-blowing experience", but I needed advice and fast. Terrified. Fortunately, I had dad friends that were there for me, as well as the internet.

I think the most important thing I read early on (and I read whole books on the 'dad' subject) was Paul Graham's "Having Kids" post. Frankly, you can skip reading the rest of this and just read that if you'd like. Paul does a great job at countering many of the narratives around having children and being a builder. His thoughts in that article mattered a lot to me those early few months.

There are many great points here, but I'll call out my favorite quote:

"Before I had kids, I had moments of this kind of peace, but they were rarer. With kids it can happen several times a day." - Paul Graham

This proved the most true. Despite the terror, having a son has been a revelation for me personally. In general, Paul's story here is that Kids don't ruin you, they just change you -- that's my experience too.

The big realizations I've had this year come down to these below.

1. Yes, I would give it all up for my kid. And I'm okay with that
   I used to really fear kids because I knew that some instinct within would take over and in some way put my own drive in the "back seat." That felt so unfair, and I didn't want to abandon the drive that sort of defined me many years.

Now, I love that feeling. Having Tom created a new potential in the world -- a beautiful and important one -- that I want to be a part of shaping. Tom's my favorite thing, and that underpins the great entrepreneurial benefits below.

2. Having kids made me more productive -- and it's lasted
   This is an area I differ with Paul Graham on. To be fair, he does acknowledge why that might be. To Paul, if you were super productive before kids you will be less productive after kids, but you'll find a way through time management.

That "if you were" caveat got me. I definitely would have told you I was a super productive worker -- always grinding -- before kids, but it's not true. I was tinkering. Dallying. Kicking cans. Day dreaming. Over-reading and under-shipping. My time was imprecious (we'll call that a word) before Tom and I never really swallowed that pill. I worked, but whenever I felt like it.

Now, I work diligently during structured times -- mostly while Tom is sleeping. Fortunately, Tom sleeps a long night and takes at least one nap a day. I'm blessed, too, to have a wife who supports my entrepreneurial pursuits but that's not to say we don't balance parenting duty together. I've reshaped my own sleeping schedule, become better at structure, and serious in my work.

3. Having kids has shifted the types of businesses I'm interested in
   And speaking of reshaping work structure and becoming more serious after having Tom, the types of businesses I'm pursuing has changed too.

During the first month of Tom being home, I remember telling my wife this. I told her that I was starting to think more seriously about "boring" company structures that were less 'moon shot' and more 'just do it better than the locals'. A local entrepreneurial friend of mine and I here in Austin have begun building something that fits that mold, and it's quite exciting.

I still have my moonshot (see the end of this piece) but it's just a portion of the focus today. I've diversified.

Beyond this, and since I still do have a salaried job, I've become more serious in my work-life and focused on career progress. If I'm going to spend time working for somebody else, I might as well maximize the results and grow up.

4. Having kids has connected me with fellow founders
   The other thing about kids remind me of something a senior executive told me when I was getting married: "Congrats, and by the way, people are going to start taking you more seriously now... it's just one of those things that happens"

Having kids kind of puts you in a new category of maker/builder/entrepreneur when interacting with folks at events, meetups, online, etc. -- you get to talking about kids and relate on that level. It builds a natural bond with other parents and that can lead to more conversation and help.

Big "GRANTED", this last one may be due, too, to age. I'm in my mid-30s now and so are the people I interact with a lot of the time. Having kids may just be the normal status at this point, so point #4 is just describing that it's common.

5. Having kids made me more conscious of the balance in my life. And that has been transformative for me on a performance & focus level
   This is probably obvious after all of the above. Having kids forces you to think about the general shape of your life.

Fortunately, I was already thinking a lot about this kind of thing before Tom was born. As I got married, I was becoming more and more aware of my low self esteem and poorly balanced lifestyle and wanting a solution.

In the 9 months leading up to Tom's birth, I worked a lot to formulate a solution and that came out as an app idea -- but I didn't know how to code.

I'd put two apps in the app store in my past, but those were done on minimal code and drag and drop tooling. This new idea had to be built from scratch, custom, to do it right.

So over the past year+, I've been learning to code, learning to design, and building an app that is now called Self Sport outside of parenting and outside of my salary job, and outside of trying to keep balance in my life.

That's a long time to work on an MVP (12X too long) but it was the pace that made sense for me and allowed me to learn + live at the same time. I could've rushed more, yes. Self Sport comes out tomorrow in the App Store (iPhone only) and I hope you'll give it a shot.

Quick pitch:

• Track lifestyle
• Expand your focus areas
• Get inspo from a community of performance focused peers

It's basically journaling made much simpler, and with friends.

In Conclusion, ... I only have the one.

Somebody with three kids once joked "Congratulations on hobby parenting" to the announcement of baby #1 coming into the world. This makes good sense to me.

Having one kid has been a huge learning experience and we're made to adjust well to it I believe. It takes patience with the kid, your partner and your self, but it works.

I have no business talking about how entrepreneurship works with more than one. We'll see soon I guess.

But that said, the points above about motivation, focus, productivity, etc. all do relate to the potential for another baby in our family. I've known this year that getting an app done before Tom was talking was a critical, personal goal to me. This and the other pursuits, I hope, will set me up for a stronger business foundation as the family grows.