Dadpreneur Series: Episode 3 – Weathering the Ups and Downs

Building a Family and a Company

With parenting and entrepreneurship, some days are great, some days are good, and some days are just brutal. This past Sunday we decided to get out for lunch and then to a friend’s house for drinks and barbecue. Here’s the timeline of events. All parents out there can relate to this.

12:00 PM — Little man slept the whole way to lunch then calmly drank his bottle while we had a nice lunch together. We were feeling good.

1:30 PM — Little man is screaming his head off in the car seat — we’re still 20 minutes away. My wife gets out at a stop light, hops in the back, and tries to give him a bottle. Still screaming. I’m doing my best to not drive 85 in a 55.

2:00 PM to 4:00 PM — With our ears ringing, we finally get him into our friend’s daughter’s nice and quiet bedroom to nap. But he won’t nap, or even eat. Little dude always wants to eat. So we struggle to figure out why he’s upset.

4:00 PM — Little man finally eats a solid 4 ounces of milk.

4:10 PM — He passes out on me for over 2 hours. Completely zonked. We’re still confused.

I wish we had thought to take a picture. Instead, enjoy a pic of our little man in his favorite activity, drinking milk!

Life and Living at WellNest

These types of things happen daily for my wife, whose home on maternity leave. I like to compare these stories to life as a founder. Every day, every hour really is unpredictable. This past Monday we registered 5 new subscribers to our home cleaning service, received another 5-star review, we’re planning an event with Lululemon Clarendon store, and making plans with several other local businesses who loved our concept. We’re thinking Shark Tank here we come. (The Lululemon event was awesome by the way, check out the picture).

Over the next two days, we registered zero new customers, had hardly any traffic to gowellnest.com, and couldn’t get any a single local business to even talk about a strategic partnership. Frustrating. The good days put you on top of a mountain, the bad days will drive you insane and make you question everything about your customer acquisition model.

Weathering the Storms!

In both parenting and entrepreneurship, it takes a strong support system of family and friends, a sense of humor, and non-stop positivity to weather the storm, stick with the game plan and keep grinding!