The Founder-Parent Reset
For founders with kids at home who are tired of being half there for both.
You built the company so your family would have freedom and security. What they have is a parent who snaps at a six-year-old for interrupting a call, then watches that six-year-old snap at her little brother the same way.
You read the bedtime story with the board deck running in your head. Your child asks what happened to the fox and you have no idea. You check Slack at dinner. Again. Your partner sees it and says nothing, which is worse than saying something.
The kids are learning from this. That work comes first. That being present is optional. That love means a body in the chair and a mind somewhere else. At some point they stop trying to get your attention, because they have worked out you are not listening.
This is not the parent you planned to be. You know that. The question is what you do about it in the next thirty days, not the next five years.
They have done three things. They know exactly which hours belong to the company and which do not, and their team knows it too. They have a way of switching off the founder between the front door and the kitchen. And they have stopped treating energy as infinite. The same things that make you good at running a company, clear priorities, honest communication, thinking past this quarter, are what your kids need from you. You already have the skills. You have been spending them all in one place.
Six companies over fifteen years. My son Theo was born in 2012, in the middle of it. In 2019 I stopped listening to my body, and in February 2020 it stopped for me: six weeks in bed, the board letting me go while I was still down. My ex-wife carried more of my absence than Theo did, and I carry that.
Since then I have coached 67 founders, CEOs, and corporate leaders across 13 countries. A lot of that work turns out to be about the hours between six and nine in the evening, whatever the first call was about. The Reset is the version of that work built for founders with children.
The Founder-Parent Reset
Thirty days, in a small group of founder-parents. Not work-life balance, which is a spreadsheet nobody keeps. Clear roles, energy that lasts the day, and being fully present wherever you are standing.
Ninety minutes each, with six to eight other founder-parents:
A WhatsApp group for the cohort. Short voice-note check-ins. Someone to message on Thursday night when the plan met your actual week.
Family calendar templates built for startup chaos, scripts for telling your team and your family where the lines are, an energy audit, and a protocol for the weeks when a company fire threatens family time.
Six to eight people in the same position. Not a network. A small group where "I missed the school play again" gets a useful answer, and the group tends to outlast the thirty days.
You know what deserves your energy and what has been stealing it.
You walk in the door and arrive. Board meeting or Lego floor, you are in one place.
Simple breathing and grounding practices. Calm instead of frantic at seven in the evening.
A weekly system that grows with the company and the kids.
Every founder asks. What the ones who did it report:
Your company does not need a martyr. It needs someone who can still do this in ten years.
Real, and settled openly before you commit. We talk it through on the first call.
Weigh it against what the current version costs: a partner who has stopped asking, kids who have stopped trying, and a company run by someone on fumes.
Attend the four sessions and do the work between them. If your energy and your evenings have not measurably changed by day thirty, I keep working with you until they have.
If your children do not notice a difference in how present you are within thirty days, you get your money back. One email, no case to make.
I barely have time now. How do I add this?
Week one is about removing things from your week, not adding them. Almost everyone has more hours, not fewer, before the second session.
What if I miss a group call?
Calls are recorded. The WhatsApp group and the tools carry you through the week you miss.
What if my partner is not on board?
One session is open to partners, so they hear the plan from me and not only from you. Most resistance is fear that you will become less successful. It fades when they see you home at six and still hitting the numbers. If the relationship itself is what needs the work, that is a different program: relationship coaching for founders, alone or with both of you.
What if the company hits a crisis during the thirty days?
Then you will be glad you started. The crisis protocol is built for exactly that week: what to protect at home when everything at work is on fire.
I do not want to change everything.
You will not. You keep the company and the family. You change the handful of hours where you were failing both, and how you walk between them.
Eight seats per cohort, so I can pay attention to each of you. We start with a thirty-minute conversation, one founder-parent to another. If it fits, you will have a proposal within a day.
Not a pitch. A working conversation about where you are, and whether this is the right place for it.
I'd love to hear from you. Tell me where you are, or book time straight into my calendar. If we speak, it's a working session, not a pitch. You'll answer three short questions when you book, so we start from something real.
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