5 Things That Are the Same When You Are Building a Business & a Family

I have been reflecting on my life in the past 7 years and cannot fathom that it has been already 7 years since my life took a crazy turn (for the better).

8 years ago I married my lovely wife in hopes to start a family here in Vancouver. Just a week prior to my wedding night, my mentor/business partner called me out for a drink to discuss some business. It turns out he was about to leave the firm we were both working at and asked that I make my own decision whether or not to stay.

My loyalty has always been with him so of course I said, "Where else would I go? You need to take me with you." and that was the birth of Novella Wealth. Long story short, things of course has been going well since then and to see the growth of the company is really one of my biggest pride.

Then just 8 months after the inception of Novella Wealth, my wife found out that we were expecting our first child. He recently turned 6 years old and we threw him a great party.

As the party was wrapping up it dawned upon me how similar raising a family and starting a business is.

1) They both require huge amount of patience and time. Everyone knows that it takes a lot of patience to raise a child, but it's just as much patience to run a successful business. There are many days where you say to yourself "Why hasn't this worked yet?" "Why haven't we exploded with success?". There's just not rushing success. The best quote I've ever heard about business and patience is (I apologize, I don't remember the source of this):

"There's no 'elevator' option in success, there's only the 'stairs'."

2) They both have many new lessons to learn. Watching your child take their first bite or their first steps or speak their first words is the greatest "new" feeling you could have. This is the same in business, you never know what new lessons are just around the corner.

3) They both give you the sense of pride. When you hear your son call you "ba ba" (equivalent to "pa pa" in Cantonese) for the first time your heart melts and instantly fill with pride that your child has reached another milestone in their lives.

Novella Wealth was presented with an opportunity to sponsor a charity magic show, Fate 2 the Dance and Illusions of Olsen. The night of the event, their was a slideshow of all the sponsors and seeing the company's logo in front of hundreds of people as the title sponsor was truly a proud moment for me. I had the sense of "We've made it", we're able to give back and be recognize for the success we have so far. I feel like all those long nights, partners meetings and all the struggles were all now worth it.

4) They make us laugh and make us mad. The past few weeks has been a struggle in the mornings. My son loves to go to school but hates to get up and get ready for it. It's a strange concept, they don't have the sense of time yet at this age. They know the routine but they don't understand time, to him, he'll get to school when he gets to school. After all the struggles and fighting to get him dressed and eat his breakfast, when we get to school he hugs you good-bye and say hello to his friends, for whatever reason you forget all the struggles and it just puts a smile on your face. Definitely children bring out the love-hate relationship every other moment in your life.

The first few months of Novella was a struggle, as they say, we were running around like a headless chicken. But we would laugh and joke all day everyday, it was a simple and happy times. We put our heads down got to work but loved the struggles and challenges as we fought through everything. There are many times when the partners don't agree on a matter, we have these long-heated discussions and knew that we just needed to walk away from each other and come back to the matter. No matter how heated it gets we understood one simple thing, we respected each other, for that we were all only wanting the best for the company.

5) You need to learn to let certain things go. My youngest son hates the car, the two brothers are almost bi-polar opposites. One falls asleep and loves the car, while the other screams at the top of his lungs the moment he gets in the car and would continue to cry for the entire ride, it really is a nightmare at times. So recently we had just finish some grocery shopping and we had bought some strawberries, my wife knew the youngest would not want to get in the car, so she ripped the ends of the strawberry and gave him one to hold so he could occupy himself for the ride home. It worked! He loves to eat but now imagine a toddler, without cutting it up, gave him the whole strawberry. It looked like a murder scene by the end of the ride.

My wife said: "Who cares, I can can clean him up, this gives us some peace and quiet for the ride home."

Those who knows me, knows I'm a bit OCD, especially my cars, I hate a messy car, I try to keep my car as clean as I could (but I know I could still keep it clean even more). What do you do? You just let things go. My sons both have found food off the ground and ate it *face palm*.

There are just too many things that is out of your control and you need to accept that. So both in business and in life, I have learned to not be so stubborn on certain things and accept the things as they are. I guess its true what they say, you do loose some fight in you as you get older, but to me I think you just get too busy to let those little things bother you. Focus on the big picture, what are you trying to achieve, a perfect PowerPoint or the message you want to deliver to your crowd? I am guilty of spending endless hours perfecting the best looking slides & transitions in a PowerPoint, I would like to think people notices it but I also think the more important thing is to deliver a message instead.

I hope these experiences of mine has given you some insight, just as much as it has taught me, and my life is richer for them.