12 Months a Father, 6 Months a Founder

On What It Takes to Make

The first thought I had when my daughter was born was, “Grieve later.” My wife, sweating and feverish, was surrounded by no less than 12 doctors, physicians assistants, and nurses in the hospital room, all of them edgy and nervous. When our kid finally entered the world, four of the physicians grabbed her and ran, furiously muttering, to a nearby table to move her around. The only other sound in the room was my wife’s gasping breaths. There was no cry from my daughter, no yell of protest at being brought into the world, none of the sounds that Hollywood had taught me meant that all was well. In the brief glimpse I had of her, she was the pale blue-grey color of slate, unmoving and still.

I thought she was dead.

My mind pounded the mantra of “grieve later” because, for the next few hours, my wife would need me to hold it together for both of us. She had handled the birth, and I could help with whatever came after. So we held hands, my gut filled with bile, and I mentally prepared to show none of it. Then, unexpectedly, a tiny little yell screeched out. Our daughter had made it. My precious girl was alive. My soul’s recently constructed enamel casing, hardened just enough to bottle up my crushing sorrow, cracked—golden rays of hope shone through. Alive, alive, alive. I didn’t think I could possibly be happier.

That assumption was wrong. Now I feel ever happier, perhaps every 24 hours. On Sunday, I took my daughter to a practice session of my local professional hockey team. She had this big pair of pink earmuffs on and would stand on my lap to yell out “nananana” to the players skating past. We were front row, right next to the glass. At one point, she turned around and blew kisses to the 20 or so people behind us. I glanced behind me and saw smiles everywhere, with multiple adults blowing kisses back. That soft glow from the delivery miracle now shines out, pours from my body.

Parenting is the best part of my life. What I have re-learned from it is that real joy is in the small moments. The first time she said “mama” was a spectacular moment, but it is in delighting in her coy smile as I change her diaper that I find beauty. You have to love the process of your labor, not the outcome of it. That has been true in making this newsletter company happen too.

Unfortunately, when I founded The Leverage six months ago though, I ignored this lesson. The launch was momentous. We added over 30,000 subscribers, and there was lots of public praise on social media. My vision for a new type of tech publication—one that was beautiful, rigorous, and written by a practitioner rather than yet another journalist—resonated with lots of people. By being ferociously independent, I could avoid some of the advertiser or audience capture that bothered me about existing options.

You’ll note that these are some lofty ideals. The practical reality of these fancy words is me typing, pantsless and over-caffeinated, in the corner of my bedroom for six hours a day. While I believe in the mission of The Leverage, so much so that I have staked my financial future on doing so, I ignored the lessons that fatherhood was teaching me.

If you spend as much time in spreadsheets and code as I do, it is tempting to think of the world as a simple, deterministic relationship. If you simply do input X, you’ll get output Y. So I did all the right things. I tweeted! I published articles that clearly solved problems for readers. Eventually, though, that simply didn’t work.

July and August were where this truth became most obvious. Revenue growth completely flattened for the newsletter despite me doing all of the X inputs you are “supposed” to do.

What I was forced to learn was that all truly great things in life are grown, not processesized into existence. Companies are not sterile laboratories of capitalist science. They are a teeming masses of humanity all striving to make something happen. When you are trying to bring something new in the world, following “best practices” is a trap not just for the company but for your soul.

I didn’t have the energy to do anything besides the bare minimum and I was exhausted by every word I typed. Still, I was a father and my baby has cost me $41,323 this year in daycare and health bills, so I didn’t want to stop. My family needed me to provide, so damn how I felt, I was going to provide. My goal shifted from delighting in the process of creating a company to building a large enough financial outcome to pay the bills. I went through the motions, but the process brought me little joy. My family was the only light in it all. I was in this strange conundrum of experiencing overwhelming joy before and after daycare dropoff, and turning into a crushing ball of anxiety from 9-5.

Eventually though, I had to acknowledge that truth. If I wanted The Leverage to be all that I think it can, I can’t run it based on what anyone else says. Last month, growth reignited as I gave myself permission to be myself—writing about what interested me, not what I thought should interest my audience. MRR started ticking back up, but more importantly, I stopped dreading my work.

A neat and tidy essay would now say, “I then implemented this five-step plan and am now rolling in the buckeroos.” However, that essay would be a lie. Worse, it would give you, the reader, the entirely wrong takeaway. Following someone else’s process to achieve the same outcome is the exact opposite of my point! Reigniting growth over the last month but it was mostly a process of inner work. There wasn’t some grand strategy fix, it was mostly I learned to fall in love with the process again.

Recently, I heard Spotify founder Daniel Ek describe his own journey—how he tried mimicking every other great founder until he realized it never worked. “The game I’m playing now is just being the best version of myself,” he said. That resonated. I’m a father first and a founder second, but my job for the two is the same: to grow something new and enjoy the process.

I still don’t have it all figured out. There are days when the anxiety creeps back in, when I’m tempted to copy someone else’s playbook. But then my daughter does something that stops me cold—yesterday she was just so excited to play with blocks, a toy she has everyday—and I remember. The process is the point. The messy, frustrating, occasionally magical process is always the point.