11 years of parenting as an entrepreneur, how to be good at both

Summary

parenting and entrepreneurship are both hard alone and exponentially harder together. I’ve only ever done them at the same time. my oldest turned 11 and I started End of Three Fitness just before he was born. eleven years of figuring both out simultaneously. one word makes it work, precision.

1. a lot of entrepreneurs I know used their twenties and most of their thirties to build the business and then had kids in their late thirties. that’s probably the easier path. it’s not mine. Emily and I had kids two years after we got married and I started a business at the same time.

2. I refuse to sacrifice either side. business doesn’t get to be worse because I’m a dad. dad doesn’t get to be worse because I’m building a business. that’s the standard. and the only way to actually hold it is precision.

3. precision means a calendar with everything in it. if you’re not a planner, you have to become one. otherwise the things that quietly fall off are the workouts, time with your wife, the deep work blocks in the business. my kids laugh at my calendar because it’ll literally say “eat” with a 30 minute block, or “sleep” because I’m calculating tomorrow’s energy. it’s the journal. would your calendar convict you of being the father, husband, or operator you say you are.

4. precision means knowing what to focus on, not just when. I reverse engineer goals obsessively. what do I want in 10 years, 5, 3, 1, this quarter, this month, this week, today. work the chain down until the next action is obvious. the calendar holds the time. the reverse engineering decides what to put in it.

5. the practical test. if you suddenly had only one hour to work today instead of eight, you’d intuitively pick the one or two highest impact tasks. that’s your answer. that’s also what you should be doing on the days you have eight hours. you already know.

6. could I be a better dad. better operator. yes to both, every year. the gap closes when I plan the time and pick the most impactful work. you can be both, fully, without sacrificing either. you just have to try a little harder.

Transcript

doing both from day one

The most impactful business is the business that genuinely improves another human, a better human business. And to grow a business like this, you have to continually improve yourself. This podcast is a documentation of that thesis, scaling businesses and also personal growth. My goal is for you to shortcut this journey.

So if you’re ready to try hard, subscribe. If you like what you’re hearing, please share and enjoy. Hey, Jerred Moon here and welcome to the Better Human Business Podcast. Today I’m talking about parenting and entrepreneurship because they’re both really freaking hard. They’re hard on their own and they are even harder when you try and do them together.

And that’s all I’ve ever done. If you didn’t know, I have three kids. My oldest is 11. He just recently turned 11 and that’s about how long I’ve been in business. Just a few months before he was born, I started End of Three Fitness and have been doing both ever since. I’ve been an entrepreneur and a father of the whole time.

And I think that’s what makes me different than a lot of other colleagues I have, entrepreneurs that I know, people in the fitness industry and space, they, I feel like a lot of them and maybe they were smarter in doing so, but a lot of them use their twenties and most of their thirties to establish the business, get very established, make the money, be in a good spot, then have kids.

And so now they might have one or two young kids and they’re just now learning all the parenting lessons, but that’s not what I did. We had kids two years after we got married and then I started a business at the same time. So it’s just been full throttle this whole time. So I’ve been figuring out entrepreneurship and parenting at the same time and it has been difficult.

I do think running a business probably would have been easier if I wasn’t also trying to figure out how to be a parent because I don’t really accept sacrificing in either side. Like I don’t, I don’t accept the fact that, okay, my business is going to be a little bit worse because your dad, no, not happening.

refusing to sacrifice either side

And then I’m also not going to accept the fact, Hey, because you want to be a really good dad, your business isn’t going to grow as much. They’re both going to work. They’re both going to, I’m going to have a very successful business and I’m going to be amazing father. You can’t tell me I can’t have both.

And I feel like a lot of people act that way sometimes. And so here’s what I’ve learned in all the years of doing this. It comes down to one word and I thought about this a lot today because I’m not trying to give all the lessons I’ve learned in parenting. I could write a book on that. I’m not saying it’d be a good book, but it would just be a book, a book, book’s worth of information.

But what I have learned in being a parent and an entrepreneur is precision. It takes precision to be able to do both. You have to be very good and I’ve gotten a lot better and I get better every single year. You have to be really good at planning ahead of time. You have to look at tomorrow, next week, what’s coming up, and then you have to look at your calendar and you have to put everything in there, right?

Like you have to get so good at, this is just step one overview. You have to be a really good planner. If you’re not a planner, you’re just going to have to start because what will start to slip and fall out will be your workouts, it’ll be time with your wife, it’ll be business. Everything will just start to fall off the table if you are, you know what, I’m just going to fire from the hip and we’ll see what happens.

I used to be that time management person because I could feel like I could get everything done. When you don’t have kids, you almost have an unlimited amount of time to do whatever the hell you want. As you have kids and you’re a business owner, you realize, wow, I have to plan everything. You have to look at what your goals are and reverse plan a lot of those things to be able to be successful as a parent and an entrepreneur.

Know when you’re working, know when you’re not working, know what it’s going to take to be able to move the business forward and work on the right projects. That’s the second part of precision that I think is even more important than the first one because I think every parent and entrepreneur probably going to get slapped in the face and realize, hey, I need to use a calendar and to get better at time management.

precision in the calendar

So on and so forth. But I think the harder skill to pick up and the one that I’ve gotten really good at is knowing what to focus on. If you listen to this podcast or you’ve worked with me, I am really big on reverse engineering. What our goals are, what do we want in 10 years? What do you want in five years?

What do you want this year? What do you want in three years? And then, okay, what do we have to do this year? What do we have to do this quarter? What do we have to do this month? What do I have to do this week? What do I have to do today? Like I am maniacal about reverse engineering what I want down to what I have to do.

And I never really realized why I was that way because I haven’t always been that way. And then the more I thought about it and the big reason I wanted to record this episode was because this is what did it. It was entrepreneurship and parenting. I had to, I knew that my time was finite. Like I stopped working around four, four 30 every single day to be a dad.

And I’ve been doing that almost my entire entrepreneurship career. There have been times where I’ve had to work late, take a late call, record a late podcast, something like that. But those are the exceptions. They are not the rule. That is not how this business was built. The things that I struggled with were just being like mentally present.

Those have been my bigger challenges, but I’ve always actually given the time. And I became more mentally present as I’ve learned how to become an entrepreneur and a father and focus on those things. But you have to really know what you want and you have to reverse engineer, okay, what are the most impactful tasks I need to be working on right now to move this needle forward?

What do I need to do? And this will be my biggest piece of advice for anyone who’s a parent and an entrepreneur and you’re trying to figure this stuff out is, yeah, well, number one, get good with time management. Use a calendar, reverse engineer every single thing that has to happen. Kids practices, put them on there.

reverse engineer the goals

Where’s the workout? Where are you eating lunch? When are you working? Everything goes on there. My kids actually make fun of me when they see my calendar because it’ll say eat and it’ll have 30 minutes, 30 minute in my calendar when whenever they see my calendar and they like laugh. They’re like, why are you putting in eat?

Like just eat whenever you want to eat. Or I’ll even have like sleep on the calendar sometimes like, yep, this is when you’re going to bed because I’m trying to plan out to make sure I get enough sleep for the next day. And I put everything on my calendar because I want my calendar to be able to convict me of what I’ve spent my time on.

It’s like a journal. And I heard that from my mentor many years ago and she said, would your calendar convict you of, and it wasn’t necessarily parenting, but it was like of X, Y, or Z. Like whenever you’re looking at, am I focusing on the right activities? If you’re complaining that you don’t have a good relationship with your wife or you’re complaining that you don’t have the business that you want, or you’re complaining that you aren’t as good of a father or parent, okay, let’s look at your calendar.

Would your calendar convict you of being these things at all? Is it even, is it even on the calendar? If I looked at your calendar, what would it actually say? And I would love for somebody to be able to look at my calendar and realize, okay, wow, you actually spent all the time that you said that you did in the right areas of the things that you said are important to you, which is family, fitness, faith.

These are the things that I find important. Okay. And so that is where I want to focus my time. And so when you get really good at that, the next step is, as I said, what are the most impactful tasks? Because if I had five hours to work today and that’s it, or let’s just say it’s two hours or three hours, what am I going to work on?

I always know what the most important task is, what a task, what task will actually move me forward. And it’s taken a long time to realize what those are. But if you start with the end in mind, you go out 10 years, maybe that’s too far for you. Maybe start out five years or three years or even a year and you do reverse engineer that down to a quarter and then down to the month and down to the week, you’re going to know exactly what you should be focusing on and why.

the one hour exercise

And it gives you a lot of clarity and it also gives you a sense of peace that you don’t have to struggle with getting everything done that you could ever think about because entrepreneurs think about a lot. But just focus on the most impactful tasks and if you don’t get everything else done, that’s okay.

But let’s focus on the most impactful task. And if you’re really bad at this, doing some sort of exercise like I was just mentioning is very helpful. So say you have an eight hour workday today and you’re just going to work on a bunch of different crap. What if I said, Hey, you only have one hour today.

You don’t have eight anymore, but you have one hour, but you need to get shit done. You still have to get stuff done and able to be successful. Let’s look at your list. What are you doing? You’re probably going to automatically and intuitively pick one to two tasks and be like, these are the things.

If I had an hour, this is what I would work on. And that’s your answer. Once you realize, oh, okay, I already know how to do this. Even if I don’t do this big master 10 year plan, like I already know what I need to be working on. That’s all you need to do. And to me, that’s the biggest thing I’ve learned in actually growing a successful, multiple successful businesses.

And also in my opinion, being a really good dad to my three kids is I just know exactly what to work on and how long to work on it. Could I be better? Absolutely. I could be better. I could be a better entrepreneur and I could be a better father and I’m going to continue to work on those things. But something that’s really helped me is knowing what to work on, being really crazy with managing my time.

And when you do that, you will have the ability to be the best parent and entrepreneur possible without having to sacrifice one or the other. You just have to try a little bit harder.