18 Years CountED, Cheers!

“If this doesn’t work out I can always pick pop bottles out of the trash” 

This is what I used to tell myself in the very early stages of entrepreneurship. 

A quiet anniversary just passed – my company ED Marketing & Communications turned 18 at the end of August. It feels surreal that I’ve been an entrepreneur of a mighty micro business for most of my adult life. If ED was a child we could have a drink to celebrate them reaching the age of majority. That got me thinking, since I am now a parent as well as an entrepreneur, about the similarities between entrepreneurship and parenting. There are quite a few similarities I realized as I wrote this post. Here are a few that resonate with me so far. 

Long Sleepless Nights With High Anxiety – Solo parenting a newborn was hard. Harder than I ever could’ve imagined. My son had awful reflux, cluster fed, and woke up at 4:30 am for a full year. This stage of parenting changed me at my core. It was a punctuation mark in my growth as a human. I often still wake up at 4:30 in the morning. The early years of starting a business felt similar. Long nights working on projects because I couldn’t afford to pay anyone else to do it. Waking up in a panic over cashflow or having wild, realistic event-mares where an event takes over your dreams but not in a good way. The weight of the worry and pressure of entrepreneurship is similar to parenting still in the questions I’ve asked myself – will this turn out alright? Have I done all I could do? What else could I have done? How could I do this differently? What about _____________!?

Illusion of Control – Being an entrepreneur and being a parent both carry an illusion of control. Before becoming a parent, I had so many ideas of how I would parent my child and how my child would behave. Before my child was ever born, I knew he would never throw himself on the floor screaming in a public place. MY child would certainly never spit at me or hit me or scream in my face. I imagined scenes filled with so much calm, quiet, controlled love… and I was wrong, so wrong it’s hard not to laugh at my pre-parent self. In some ways business is similar, especially a business based on planning.  Even with the most well thought out plans, there are more things OUT of our control than IN our control as entrepreneurs. The market, the client, the venue, our team are all out of our control. Curveballs are the name of the game as parents and entrepreneurs. In my mind, how well we plan helps us handle most of the more rowdy curve balls. As long as I have a paper clip, a piece of gum, a few snacks, a match, some wet wipes, a bandaid and some duct tape I can MacGyver my way out of a lot of sticky situations, but sometimes all the planning in the world won’t help (cue a global pandemic…) then it’s an exercise in surrender and adaptability. 

The Rewards can be Plentiful… if not always in the obvious, expected ways. I always knew I wanted to run my own business. I also always knew I wanted to be a mother. I tried to guess at the rewards of both. As a parent I imagined the rush of holding my baby for the first time and experiencing so many beautiful ‘firsts’ that a child has – first steps, first words, first laugh and more recently the first day of grade 1. I used to look into my rearview mirror and imagine children in the backseat of my car. Of course, I also imagined making a full-time living as a business owner. I imagined the rewards of having loyal grateful clients and a spectacular team. In both cases I never imagined the rewards that would come from the support and encouragement of my ‘village’ or the excitement when a unique idea resonates with a client or the feeling of pride in seeing the development of my child into their unique self. 

It Takes a Village – Parenting takes a village, as does surviving and thriving in entrepreneurship. As a solo parent by choice, this was a question that was asked of me many times – who’s your village? What support do you have in place? Before becoming a mom, I thought I knew who my ‘parenting’ village would be. I was right about a few brave souls. But I have been surprised by the people who supported me in the early days when I was a blubbery shadow of my former self and those who continue to support me in my journey as a parent. Even when I have no capacity to return their support, even when our relationships have changed because I am no longer the same person I was before becoming a parent. My village stands by me.  When I think about my first clients, I am astounded that those people – established amazing successful individuals in some of the top roles in high profile organizations – took a chance on me and my tiny fledgling business. They not only hired me, some of them coached and nudged me along for YEARS. They told me when my pricing was too low. They gave me compassion as I learned the ropes. They referred ED to their friends. Through the years they stand by me in tough times and cheer raucously from the stands for my wins. I’m always wary of people who proudly say they did it alone (in parenting or business) – in my experience, success and failure are two of the things in life that are best when shared. 

You won’t find the answers in a book. I remember when I was pregnant people asked me questions like ‘will you bottle or breastfeed?’ ‘Are you going to sleep train?’ ‘Have you thought about delivery?’. Or they would tell horrific stories about their laboring (or laboring partner’s experience). I remember wondering how I was supposed to know what I would do, having never done any of this before, having no idea what my child would need. When it comes to parenting I am still occasionally surprised by what lessons are mine to learn (or unlearn!). To complicate it further, there are people and resources everywhere, freely and frequently sharing advice whether the source is credited or the advice is solicited. I find the same can be said for entrepreneurship. Early on in my business journey, even though I had more experience and education in business than parenting, when it came time to put my knowledge into practice for myself I didn’t know what would be hard for me. Like many business owners, I have learned some hard lessons in the last 18 years. Some of the lessons my business ownership journey taught me were obvious (think cash flow!) some were less obvious (think firing clients, setting boundaries, letting clients make mistakes). There are so SO many books, podcasts, tiktoks, consultants, coaches and peer groups to teach you anything you want to learn about entrepreneurship, leadership and parenting. You can observe the learnings of others, but no one can teach you what your lessons are and no one can do the real-life boots on the ground growing for you. Before a baby is born you can have a sleep training consultant and a breast feeding doula on speed dial and while the resources help, I believe no one knows what THEIR lessons in parenting or entrepreneurship will be until they’re mired in the muck, crying at two am, figuring out which parts are the hard parts for them. No one could have truly prepared me for the hardest times. No book I read. No wise counsel from a fellow entrepreneur or fellow parent. Surviving them myself and taking the time for reflection was the only way I could truly understand the glorious life altering impact those long nights and foggy days would have on me. 

Thinking back, there have been some very hard days, weeks and years when it felt like I was truly stuck in the muck of breakdown and total ruin. On the flip side there have been so many times when celebration of team and accomplishment has been front and center for ED – like pivoting our service during the pandemic and experiencing growth through an extremely hard time for many event professionals. With this anniversary zooming by and as the ED team heads wraps up our first in person events in Ontario and moves into a very busy holiday event season, I am so grateful for ED’s awe-inspiring team, our incredible loyal clients and this wild, wild entrepreneurial roller coaster.  Here’s hoping for more opportunities to grow and live this lively business and family journey.  Cheers to 18 years!