How to Run a Small Business While Raising a Family

Welcome to another episode of Bought the Biz. Today, Garth and I are talking about balancing family with small business ownership. We both had really similar paths when starting a family while also being relatively new operators, and we had to learn how to navigate parenthood while keeping our businesses running and not letting anything burn to the ground. This is an episode for anyone who is thinking of buying a business or operating business while also balancing a family and what communication and planning is required so that no one loses their mind.

Bought the Biz is a podcast for ETA entrepreneurs who've gone from searching for a business to actually running one. It tells the real story of what happens after the deal closes. The day-to-day operational, emotional, strategic, and leadership challenges that just don't show up in the highlight reels.

The show is story-driven and practical, sharing real experiences from operators along with clear, actionable takeaways you can use in your own business today. I'm Garth Fossano. I'm Christi Loucks. Welcome to Bought the Biz.

Welcome back to another episode of Bought the Biz. Christi and I are here today to talk to you all about how do you balance life, family, and running and operating a small business for the first time. Uh, we each had some of our own approaches and some of our own challenges in this, and we're excited to tell you a little bit about that. So First of all, for searchers, you can come into this eyes wide open and know what you're getting yourself into. And then for operators like us, you can maybe learn from us, maybe give us some tips. We'll see where this goes. But, um, I think that this is something everybody needs to hear because it is a really big part of stepping into an operator role. So Christi, you said that this was an important topic for us to cover, and I could not agree more. So tell me a little bit about why this is near and dear to your heart.

Near and dear to my heart because Um, two reasons. I think one being a woman, and the whole family, uh, aspect is certainly different when you are a woman running a business and trying to start and raise a family. And then two, we're adding to the family. So, um, so we are, yeah, about 9 weeks pregnant, and I think it's just been so wonderfully heavy, heavy on my mind, um, of how I'm going to do this, meaning run my businesses while also now having 2 kids instead of just 1. And even going from 0 to 1 was a whole thing.

I mean, first of all, this is super exciting for you and your family. That is amazing. I'm pumped for you. Um, But you've already done this before too. Like, you had your first not too long after you became the owner and CEO of your business. And so this has happened once, and, you know, do you feel like that now you can do it again, or is it going to be equally as hard, or is it going to be like twice as hard because there's already another young kid in the family?

Well, I mean, remains to be seen. Find me, find me on July 2nd, the day after my due date, and see how I'm doing. You know, it's just like, I'll answer your question, but just reflecting back on it. So timing is wild. And looking back, I would have probably not orchestrated things the way they turned out, but at the same time, I wouldn't have changed anything. So we, we started, we had to do IVF to get our first, our son Wyatt, and we started medication the week of close on our business. So first of all, I mean, not only do you have the like, oh, I'm a new business owner, what am I doing? I don't know what's happening. But then you also throw like hormones into all of that. And it was a wild ride. Then as fate would have it, we— I had Wyatt a year to the day of closing on the business on August 3rd. So when you look back, you're like, In some ways, you, you think that is— that's the worst possible timing you could have ever designed. Like, we've been trying to have kids for a while, and, you know, we just had some issues with it. And lo and behold, of course, we do this one giant life thing, and then within the exact same time frame, we have this other giant life thing happen. So all that to say, like, That was hard to begin with. Even just being pregnant through all of that, it was difficult because I acquired a business, then a few months later was pregnant, and then I had to manage my own like physical state with running the business. And so it's like, will it be harder?

I don't know.

I think it's just all hard and it's been hard from the beginning. I mean, wonderful. Again, I don't, in, in None of this am I going to complain, but I just think it's like, it's reality.

And there's another layer on this too. I think your husband Alex bought a business in this, somewhere in this timeframe as well.

Yeah. So he started on that business. I was like maybe 20 weeks pregnant. Um, property maintenance. Snow removal, uh, short-term rental cleaning business up in the mountains here in Colorado. And so he's— yeah, he started that. It was around somewhere around like the 20-week mark. I, I don't know, give or take. And so all of a sudden he was driving up to the mountains all the time. He wasn't home. Um, and then after Wyatt was here, I spent a lot of the winter home alone with Wyatt during the weeknights. And because he would be up in the mountains, you know, plowing snow and we didn't know when he was going to come home. So like, yeah, there is a whole nother layer too of having an entrepreneurial husband running his own business on top of all this. We always say we're gluttons for punishment. I don't know. I wouldn't say it's punishment, but it certainly is the hard road.

It sounds hard. I mean, like everything that I did felt hard and was hard, but this also sounds like sort of the next level. So How did, what were, how did you work this out with Alex? How was, was there a discussion? Was it just like, just execute? Like, how does this even tell, tell us a little bit more, what were your coping mechanisms for layering all of this on?

Um, I mean, going from zero to one kid, it was, I guess we just had the mindset of keep growing, keep like going as hard and fast as we can on both businesses and trust to a point that things would be okay. Like even when I was very loose terms in terms of maternity leave, like that was not a huge thing for me. But we were building knowing that we were going to have this gap, this time period where I was going to have to pull back and not be as involved. So we had a team, like there were mechanisms in place, but overall it was very much just kind of full steam ahead, like don't stop. And I gave, and it was mutual, right? Like that was my attitude. He understood that. That was his attitude. He had a new business. Like, I didn't expect him to necessarily, you know, kind of cater to me just because I was pregnant or just because we were going to have a kid. Like, I understand what it means to sign up to be a business owner and entrepreneur. And it, it does mean that things look a little different than your typical 9 to 5.

Yeah.

So we were on the same page there, which helped.

Would you still do— I mean, I think I know the answer to this, but I need everybody else to hear it. And probably they're like, so would you do all that again? In the same way? Or would you have any advice to somebody who's thinking about buying a business, is having a kid or wants to start a family or is a partner in a family with a young kid?

I think it's— I mean, there are parts of it that maybe the timing could have been a little more optimal. However, of course, I would change nothing because now I have Wyatt and he's the best thing ever. So, the short answer is, of course, like, no, I wouldn't change anything. But if you are thinking about owning a business and starting a family or adding to your family, I think you just have to be extremely realistic about what that is going to look like in practicality.

Yeah. I think, I mean, I think you've hit on a really important part. Like, a lot of people love the word work-life balance. And in my experience, that just doesn't really exist once you step into the CEO and owner role of a small business. And I actually think what it's taught me is like, that's actually what it means to be the CEO of any kind of business as well. Like, I'm sure this pressure is only amplified at, like, let's just say a public company or something like that. But, you know, you sort of acutely feel a lot of these things in a small business because unlike a public company, you don't have the systems and processes and scale in place to manage a lot of the stuff that should be on the CEO's plate. So all that does kind of fall on you. You know, Peggy and I had our gal Kit about, I think it was like 2 and a half years into the acquisition, but we also went through IVF. And so we're in the midst of that for the majority of those 2 and a half years, to be honest. But Um, so I know very acutely from Peggy what the toll is that IVF does on a gal. So I can imagine that that is, uh, was tough. I know it's a little different for everything.

Raging hormones. Yeah.

And like all the shots and all that stuff, it's not pleasant. It's not fun just executing the medication protocols and then also going through all the hormones. So yeah, that, that is, that sounds like a lot. Um, My deal with Peggy was that for the first year, which it was really the first, like, it was really like 14 months, I worked a ton. And it's funny because when I would describe it to people that asked me, oh, so like you own the business, like interesting, like how much do you actually work? What's that like? Like your W-2 friends are asking you this. And I think I would very naively say, oh yeah, it's like 40, 50, 60 hours a week or something like that. And, but you know, it's not too bad. I got to go do this or something like that. And Peggy would be like, what are you talking about? You work like every day. You work every weekend. Like you work late, you work early. Like, what are, like, how are, how can you even say that? And I would sort of scratch my head and look back and be like, oh yeah, she's totally right. But it doesn't feel like work. And so I think that that's an important thing for people to realize. Like, the stress is real. The anxiety is real. There is a lot of hours that you're going to put in. But I think that the ownership that you get from doing this is, you know, so much more than just because you're the owner of the business. It's like, it's fun working on it.

Do you, would you say that you have a work life and a personal life?

Well, so for that first 14 months, everything was totally blended basically. Um, and like, I don't, I don't really read my personal email anymore. So like, that was a way that life was sort of segregated. This is terrible. This sort of explains modern living, but like personal email, work email, and basically, I don't check my personal email anymore. So people know they have to email me at my work email if they want me to pay attention. So I think that that sort of says personal life is very different. One of our— the thing we love to do is going out rock climbing or going to places that historically you don't have cell service, you don't have internet. So Starlink has really made that a lot more possible. I think that, like, honestly, if we weren't able to get Starlink, I don't think we would have done a bunch of the trips and things that we used to do prior to ownership. And so that made it more accessible because I would just be too stressed without internet.

Yeah, I think that's one thing that I've, I don't know, done a lot of reflecting on starting a family too, like just thinking about personal life, family life versus work life. And I have at least found that while it's insane and chaotic and overwhelming at times, um, I would just say life feels so much more integrated for me. Like, and maybe it's also because I work from home, like that's probably a dynamic in there too where I don't like go off to an office and drop off Wyatt and pick him up. Like, We're kind of all here all the time. But I just feel like there is really no separation between work and family life. It's just all flows into one another.

Yeah. I agree with that. I mean, one of the things that I'm sort of trying to split in my head and part of the reason I'm stumbling, it feels like I'm stumbling through some of my answers is because When Kit was born was when we raised our seed round, and so that's when the company sort of really transitioned. And so I think my answer is about what this was like was pre-kids for me. And I think that this sort of the business that, you know, Rainmaker now is a growth equity company and a startup is sort of a little bit different. And so It's hard for me to answer the family side of things other than sort of how I was living my life prior to the business with what we did and what we did afterwards. I just think it is a lot more integrated. And part of my deal with Peggy was like, "Hey, anytime, anywhere, any explanation, like I'm going to go pay attention to work and go step and do that." And I certainly took advantage of that. Sometimes, like, we're on a vacation, we had planned this for a while, and I'm just like, hey, I gotta go do this. Like, I actually remember like fully working a complete Thanksgiving Day. Yep.

Because sometimes you have to.

Yep.

And I think you do have to have a spouse or partner, right, if you're in that position, who understands that like, yes, it's work, but it's also because you have such ownership, it's also your livelihood, and it's also your future, and it's also your success and your legacy. Like, there's so much more to it than just, oh, I have to go log in for half a day on a holiday. Which, if you're working for— at least I felt like if you're working for a corporate company, then it was a little bit more annoying than if you're like, oh no, yeah, please go make us some money, and like, please go get another client or fix this problem because it ultimately comes back to my livelihood too.

Yeah. So do you think that's a good thing or a bad thing? Like, you know, and you know, that, that's, it feels in some of the ways I feel like it, it seems a little bit more authentic to the way like human nature probably was a couple hundred years ago versus like the corporate world today where you, you expect holidays and like you do all these things. I'm Not saying holidays are a bad thing, by the way, but like, you know, yeah, it is a W-2. If I had to work a holiday, that would be kind of like, huh? And like, people would definitely, uh, be very careful about asking you to do that kind of thing. Um, and that was not an expectation, whereas like in this, yeah, I've worked a lot of Christmases, Christmas Eves. I remember a full Thanksgiving Day where something went wrong and I was working that whole week and that entire day to try and fix it. That's just—

what was your question? Is it good? Is it bad?

Is it good? Is it bad? Yeah. And I— because when you were saying like, this is your legacy, like, this is, this is who you are at work, this represents a lot of your family, this is how the income comes in. I mean, it just feels a lot more like hunter-gatherer, almost like a little bit more like authentic human nature versus this corporate W-2 structure that is like artificially made by society that I think in many ways gives you this false sense of security. Like, you know, we see all the layoffs that happen out there in the world these days. Like, it's not as secure as it seems. So like, which one is actually better? And like, I reflect a lot back on my career as a W-2, and like, it always felt very transient. And part of that was I started my first job out of college in 2008. I started at a consulting firm with a class of 18 people, and as the financial recession hit, You know, I was one of 3 people who remained after 18 months. And, you know, that was a very formative experience watching like people I went to college with and started at this consulting firm. And, you know, they would— I remember one of my friends, this guy walks to my desk, she's like, yeah, I just got canned. And we'd been there for like 3 months. Wow. Okay. Yeah.

Cool. Great. Yeah. I think, I mean, I, you know, and I had my W-2 jobs and I worked for you know, big companies, small companies. And again, like, I wouldn't trade any of that because I think in many ways it, it shaped who I am today. It gave me the confidence, the skill set to do what I'm doing. So I say what I'm about to say with— I'm trying, I'm going to say it carefully because I don't want to belittle the corporate world, but I think by the time I got to the point where entrepreneurship was even interesting to me, my perspective had shifted, my values had shifted, where that autonomy, that ownership kind of started climbing higher and higher into the top where it's like, okay, yeah, it's a risky thing. It is a little insecure, but it's both of those things in a very different way than a W-2. And the fact that I can own my life and make decisions and like have that autonomy is more important to me with the potential to like build a legacy than, you know, go I don't want to say just be a cog in a wheel because I also found a lot of meaning in my W-2 job, but just to work for someone else as opposed to work for myself. So I think so much of like whether it's good or bad does depend on your view on that, where a W-2 job is a means to an end, right? A means to a livelihood. And I think when you are looking at business ownership, it's that in and of itself is an end.

And I think the other part of that is like, once you have done this, I'm sure one could go back to a W-2, but also you're just going to learn so much about, and you're going to have so many other ideas of businesses you could start, ways that you could create value, create income. And I think, yeah, as an entrepreneur who does get pulled towards zero-to-one ideas, I have to be very careful about that as well. And I think you mentioned the risk is high in ETA and small business. I think one of the things that people do need to accept though is like the risk is also high in— okay, high might be the wrong word, but there is some level of risk in a W-2 career path as well. Like if you are, you know, there are decisions that are going to be made that are going to affect your income that you are not going to be a part of, just like in the same way as running a small business.

Yeah, yeah, it probably depends on the industry and like the role too, but there's definitely risk there.

Yeah, um, maybe not putting your personal money at stake.

Yeah, it's not going to come after your house.

Yeah, different levels, uh, but also like different levels of reward. So that's— yeah, it's, it's very, very tricky balance. Okay, how— like, what were things that you and your husband did to specifically manage this? If you were giving advice to a searcher that like has a deal under LOI, is thinking about starting a family, like what would be the 3 things you would tell them about how to manage this better?

There were parts that, parts of this Alex and I did really well, and then certainly times when we did not do it well, but always being on the same page and having a lot of conversations about what that means and what that looks like. If you're starting a family, going from, you know, 2 people to 3 people is one jump and you think you're going to know how you might respond or what the best plan of action is going to be while you're pregnant or while you're waiting in that kind of interim phase, right? But when it actually hits and like you have a screaming baby and you're both completely sleep deprived and the mom is hormonal postpartum, like who knows what's going on there. Like it is a new reality from what you discussed maybe prior to starting your family. So I would definitely say having ongoing consistent conversations is very, very important.

Okay. Question to follow up on that. Is that like, like scheduling logistics or is that like expectation setting, all of the above, everything like.

All of the above.

Yep. Okay.

Yeah, all of the above. I mean, and this is where again, like, it's very integrated because it's like, okay, who's doing bath time? Who's doing middle of the night, like, rock the baby back to sleep? Because who actually has the 7:30 AM meeting and needs to be as well-rested as possible in all of this? Like, there's a lot of— there's just a lot to think through, I think, when you— especially, I guess I'm speaking from the perspective of we are both entrepreneurs, so that's again, a whole nother layer. Um, but it was just very much always communicating, like, this is what I have going on, this is where I am physically, emotionally, mentally, this is what I need help with. Like, always trying to be on the same page there. Again, we didn't do it perfect, you won't do it perfect, but being mindful of that, I think, is the first thing that comes to my mind. But what's your— I mean, what's your answer to your own question?

Well, um, so this is actually— I feel like I could answer this one pretty well because, um, Peggy started a company 3 months before Kit's due date. So we were definitely juggling things around, um, and played to each other's strengths. So like, my— I, I'm pretty good at operating without sleep. She is not. So basically I would watch Kit mostly. I can't exactly remember. I think it was like Monday night through Monday night, Tuesday night. She would give me a break on Wednesday night, and then I would do Thursday night and Friday night. And, um, and she did Sunday nights because I had a lot of meetings on Mondays. So we, we just set a schedule and then worked in that and then would make tweaks to it, um, as we needed.

That's awesome. You are a saint. I mean, my husband's a saint too, but that's fantastic. Um, I think one of the things too, maybe that just to— I don't know that I would— is this— if this is a— well, if this is like a recommendation, but it's certainly an insight. I have found that I have like an ideal world, right? I'm a perfectionist. I'm a Type A. There— I like things to go a certain way. And I've had to just accept that there are going to be things that do not go the way I anticipated because I have to prioritize other things just to make it all work. Best example is I never thought I would co-sleep with Wyatt, and it was very clear by like night 3 probably that it was going to be the path of least resistance for both myself and Alex to get the most sleep we possibly could. And it's, it like, I mean, there are parts of it I really liked, parts of it that were frustrating, but it was, I had to let that be the way it was going to be because it was the only way I was going to be able to function. It was the only way that we both were going to be able to continue to be good spouses to each other, to get all of our stuff done, to run our businesses. Like, it was just— I had to like let that go. And I think that there's probably a lot of instances where people just have to be like, okay, well, this is just not gonna happen, or this is not my reality, and I'm gonna have to be like water and let this roll over me and just deal with it. Um, I don't know if you had anything like that, but I had just found that like I've had to let expectations go of certain things.

I think, yeah, when you have a young kid and you have a small business, there are going to be a lot of things that hit the fan and all of a sudden the priority is different. And, um, like this has been one of the first times in my life where I have not actually showed up fully prepared in that Type A model, or like I've canceled me— like I never cancel a meeting. Like I will not do it. I will be there. And I've done it. I've been like, oh, sorry, my kid's sick, uh, I can't take her to daycare, I'm on dad duty today, like, this meeting's not happening.

It's a new level of flexibility, I think.

So I think there's like, one, you could be really stressed about that or like try and force some way to work in it, or you could be like, this is just what it is and this is what I got to do and I'm going to accept that now, and that's fine. And so I think that's a little bit more of the approach I've taken now. Like, if I were running a small business and it was a critical customer meeting and I was going to lose a huge customer and I was going to put my PG in jeopardy, like, okay, that'd probably be a little different calculus and that'd be the conversation with Peggy or your spouse and try to figure out how to make that work. Um, but you know, the meetings I've canceled were not that kind of calculus.

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I think too, like, it's interesting to see where you and your partner like step into new roles or different roles too to balance the load. Like Alex, Alex has always been, let's be clear, Alex has always been the better cook in this relationship, but he stepped up after Wyatt was born. And I mean, I seriously think I've made like 10 meals since in the last 14 months. Like he just has taken over all of the cooking and like, and again, that's just where it's it's the balancing act to say, okay, how do we keep our family afloat when we're both working a bajillion million hours? What has to, what has to go on one person? What has to go on another? Like, how, what does this new reality look like?

I feel like this could be a conversation for anyone introducing, not just also having small businesses or startups, uh, in the mix too. But I think it's, yeah, the important part is it's something people need to think about, recognize, have open discussions with their partners about. And if you're headed down this path and you are planning on having a family, just being aware that, you know, it's going to be a little bit crazy. And is it manageable? Of course. I think also, like pretty much everything in life, a lot of it is about the attitude you take towards it too.

Yeah, for sure.

All right. Anything else to add in here? It's a wild ride, but it's a good one.

It's a great one. And I wouldn't change it. I really wouldn't. I'm adding to it.

In fact, good luck. We'll come back in a year and, uh, and get a debrief on what it's like now.

We'll just re-ask the same questions and see how Everything's changed.

Perfect.