How My Career Changed After Becoming a Father

Ever since the dawn of COVID, I’ve been recording quick conversations with someone I was connected with on LinkedIn by a mutual connection. His name is Carson Heady and he is an accomplished sales leader at Microsoft who has written several fascinating sales books. We have built a great relationship over the years and have even been able to hang out once in his hometown of Saint Louis and another time in my hometown of Boston (although the Red Sox/Cardinals game got rained out, which was a bummer). 

In any event, Carson and I recently recorded an episode about how your career changes after becoming a parent. He is the father to three children, and I recently became a dad at the end of 2023. When Josie was born, I was immediately in love, and I started writing letters to her that I hope someday she will be able to read. I decided I wanted to write more about this topic. 

Becoming a father has completely changed the lens through which I view my career. In my book “Authentic Selling: How to Use the Principles of Sales in Everyday Life,” I talk about the importance of the “Five Why’s”. Basically, this is when you ask yourself what your true motivation is and what you actually want yourself over and over again (ideally at least five times) until you get to a gripping answer.

In my case, this “gripping answer” had something to do with wanting to become a screenwriter or a business owner so that I could move the lives of others in a positive way, and all of this was because my greatest joy comes from helping others. I do not want to sound selfish, but having a daughter has made my “why” all about her. It’s not to say I no longer care about helping others, it’s just become a secondary priority to Josie.

From a career perspective, there is a shift when the thing you are working towards no longer has to do with yourself. Sure, my original why had to do with helping others, but it still came from some innate satisfaction I got from doing so. In the case of my daughter, I feel a responsibility to do right by her that is far different from any sort of pressure I might put on myself to do right by others.

Practically speaking, this means I now think about her needs first before my own when it comes to my career. This manifests itself in a couple ways. In a literal sense, I prioritize a work-from-home job over an in-office job, even if the in-office job pays a little bit more. The time I have at home to spend with her far outweighs any marginal financial benefits. More importantly, I also prioritize some semblance of stability. Even though I work in risky early-stage startups, I learned from my last job that it was very important to start indexing for a more experienced leadership team, specifically the CEO. I had required criteria and I was much more stringent around them than I had been in the past. This was in an effort to mitigate risk – my priorities are not the same.

The way I go about my work has also been different. Historically I have been the type of person whose happiness derives directly from how things are going at work. This means that I always worked around the clock. If I went on vacation, my coworkers would often tell me to put my computer down and actually go on vacation. I’m not saying this in some backhanded braggy way; if anything, it’s a symptom of the curse of ADHD that I have been dealing with for a long time, and I wish I was better at just staying present in the moment. It’s something I’m continuing to work on but it’s neither here nor there.

What has inevitably happened is that I need to budget time around the work day to take care of my daughter. In the past, it might be fairly common to take a call after 5pm. Now, I’ve blocked my calendar from 5-6pm every day because that is when I take over for our nanny. It does not mean I’ll never take a call then, it just means that I need to start trying to set some boundaries. The same is true in the morning for early calls. My wife and I need to plan ahead every day to ensure coverage before committing to anything. And there have also been times where I have had to fill in during a work day for childcare due to an issue with a nanny or a vacation or something to that effect. Again, as always, my home life takes priority over my work life.

While that last observation was probably an obvious one, the next one is much more subtle. It has to do with perspective. When my career was just about me and what I wanted for myself, everything right in front of me at work felt so important. And even though the stakes are much higher now that it is not just about me, ironically the day-to-day happenings at work feel a lot less important. Sometimes, after a stressful day, I remind myself that I still have a wife, a kid, and a nice home. That is perspective. The day-to-day challenges or conflicts are minimized through that lens. And when you have a sense of perspective, you can be a lot more calm and influential in times of turbulence or discord, which actually makes you a better player in the company. 

Lastly, my motivation has only increased since having a daughter. I want to be a good role model for her. I remember watching my father growing up and learning the idea of work ethic directly from him. He would wake up early to go to work and he would come home late, have dinner, and keep working. He is going to turn 75 years old this November and he is still working, simply because he enjoys it so much. And my mother was the first woman in a non-administrative role in her law firm. Suffice it to say, they both set examples and instilled in me the importance of working hard. I would like to do the same for my daughter, and I also want her to be proud of me. It is one thing to let myself down. It would be another thing to let her down.