Hey there, solopreneur!

It’s 9:30 PM in my Cyprus home office. My 3-month-old son is finally asleep. For the first time in months, I have a little breathing room.

The birth was rough tbh. Long, complicated, and honestly scary.

Seeing my partner in that state shook me. She is finally getting better and a glimpse of routine is coming back into our life.

I’m a little drained.

But more fulfilled than I’ve felt in years.

I really didn’t expect being a new dad to make me this happy.

I took 3 months off to be fully present and it was the best choice I could have made.

But now I’m ready to get back to work.

And so today I want to share a few lessons from this new challenge of balancing entrepreneurship and fresh fatherhood.

how dreams really die (and what terrifies me)

I thought I knew what fatherhood would be like. I didn't.

It's more intense in every dimension - how beautiful it is, how time consuming, how 24/7 it actually is. You can't understand it until you live it.

And that intensity creates this fear about letting dreams die. You have this shift where your child and family feel more profound and important than anything else.

Which they are.

But I can see how easy it would be to let other dreams die slowly:

It’s a death by 1000 little cuts. Maybe you avoid risky projects "for the family." Maybe you don't start that side project that could turn into something big.

Maybe you chose a place to live that’s more ideal for family vs where you should be professionally.

All these little compromises add up. Before you know it, I’ll become the suburb guy I never wanted to be.

When someone depends on you, taking risks automatically gets harder. I'm used to taking big risks, but now there's this voice saying "you have a kid, play it safe."

I’m fine with adjusting my life, but I’m also very conscious about my plan to build a future as an entrepreneur as well.

The context switching between baby and work is brutal.

My partner needed all my attention after the difficult birth, and even now it's still hard to find prolonged focus time.

There's really only one way to handle this:

cut all the bullshit.

I have to stop lying to myself if I want to reach my goals because my time is so much more scarce now.

I have to become an efficiency assassin.

Now I've restructured everything, and made some practical changes to save time:

• Work blocks early before he gets up (usally 5-7am) and from 8-10 PM when he's sleeping

• House cleaner twice a week instead of once (I know it’s a luxury but its a HUGE help)

• Meal prep service: €300/week for healthy, organic meals for 2 meals a day

• Work from home so I can visit my son every hour

Those little moments - just taking him in my arms for a few minutes - go a long way.

I’m also brutally honest with myself:

If I'm not doing what I say I want to do, then I don't actually want it.

So each day I’m asking myself:

Am I true to what I want or am I just bullshitting myself? Am I taking actions on the things that really move the needle?

Time to stop the fucking bullshit.

Zooming out

Once I saw my child, I realized this is what life's about. It made me understand what all of this building is for.

It's not for me. It's for my family.

I really think humans create their best work when they create it with a higher purpose.

Even if it's just about making money to buy a house for your family or to create safety in the future, it really changes how you feel about it.

In a world where social media constantly pulls us into self-obsessed spirals, having a child completely shifted my focus outward.

That shift from self-focus to other-focus has been surprisingly good for my mental health.

But I also want to live as an example of agency for my son.

Someone who materializes their dreams.

The answer is becoming the highest agency, most biased-to-action version of myself.

To show him with my actions what it means to honor your word and to do everything you can possibly can to provide the best life for your family.

leverage to the max, baby

When you have more time constraints, leverage becomes everything.

For me, building audience through content is multiplying the time I spend working because the content works even when im sleeping or I’m present with my son.

Everything good that came to me in recent years came through this approach.

I had to deconstruct what it means for me to get into actual outputs I can generate each week:

• Create a YouTube video each week

• Create a newsletter each week

• Hire an editor (which I already did)

• Get back into writing more in-depth written content daily for X

• Create some kind of distributed product (like software) that sells at scale without me delivering it

• Spend at least 30min-1hour per day getting better at skills (AI, content etc)

I'm also hiring more people for pure execution tasks.

I realized excel at the meta level and planning level.

So I’m building a small team to take stuff off my plate.

I think a life worth living is a life of creation.

I want to maximize my output of shipping things - videos, setups, products, whatever.

The clock never stops ticking

Watching my son grow so fast reminds me how quickly time passes for everyone.

He's already changed so much in just 3 months. Having a child reminds me of my own mortality every single day. Seeing someone else grow up this fast really shows you how fast time goes by for everyone.

It really reminded me that if I want to create anything great in life, I cannot wait for anything or anyone.

I know that with a snap of a finger he will be walking, talking and suddenly he’s finishing school.

Zero time to waste!

success isn’t one dimensional

I know I don’t want to compete with 20-year-old guys working 80 hours a week with no obligations. That’s a game I can’t and won’t win.

I have to play into my strengths (which IMO are creating leverage for myself, building systems, making content work while I’m not working)

At the same time, I want to balance it with the stuff that makes life worth living:

• being present for my family

• daily workouts

• healthy food

• time in the sun

• real social connections

That balance only works if I choose the right opportunities in the first place. The right industry. The right kind of customer. The kind of competition I want to face.

It made me realize:

what you choose to do matters more than how hard you work at it.

When you’re time-scarce, like being a dad, you should spend an enormous amount of time finding the opportunities where you can compete and still live the life you want.

Success for me has to be multimodal.

If I build a business but lose my family, friends, and health, that’s not success.

Ole's Bookmarks

this is the right mindset. i love the (smiles - frowns) equation.

amazing youtube masterclass, colin and samir are the GOATs of this kind of content

did a small fun AMA today :)

Balancing work and family is hard.

It’s also the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. I wouldn’t trade this season of life for anything.

Thank you for supporting my work, it means the world to me.

See you next week 🫡 

Ole

P.S. let me know what you think, I read every single reply!