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What factors inspire and grow a creative business? A bright idea? A gap in the market? Hard work? Money? Yes, to all of these things. I bet you’ve seen similar lists. You can write your own. But does the word “family” ever feature in it?
I’ve come to think of family as a seldom-talked-about but ever-present and powerful influence on entrepreneurship. When I interviewed creative industry entrepreneurs for my PhD research, I didn’t specifically ask about family and how it played into starting and running a business, but it kept coming up anyway.
It did so because it was important to people’s entrepreneurial narratives. Take this particular entrepreneur (let’s call her Susi), who interrupted her story of founding a visual arts training business to insist that I include something about the pressure of family life in my research. She said, “It’s important to acknowledge how fucking hard it is and that juggle is real.”
Then she told a story I think many of us can relate to.
Yesterday’s a perfect example. I had school holidays, so I haven’t been able to get work done for two weeks and I had [one child] going to daycare and I had my eldest going to school and then I realised that it was a pupil-free day because I’m one of those hopeless mums that don’t look at calendars. So, get my Mum involved, get ready, to, you know, package [one child] off to Mum’s house. And then he vomits as he gets in the car. I’m like shit, shit, shit, you know. So, then I’m managing that, and then I don’t work for the day, or I do a little bit of emailing, but that’s it. And then I pick [one child] up early from daycare because I think, well, why not? I’m with [the other child] anyway. […] I’m like, in between this wiping bums and cleaning up vomit and answering emails and people wanting a piece of you like, it’s, it’s really hard […] I just think part of the research needs to acknowledge that you know we’re not machines, and to be able to do something and think entrepreneurially and be creative in amongst all the shit and vomit is a real challenge.
Say it quietly, but parenting is a responsibility that often conflicts with running a creative enterprise, for-profit or not-for-profit. Neither entrepreneurship nor parenting runs to a convenient timetable. So, like squabbling children, they both start competing for your time, attention and resources.
Susi wasn’t the only one to point out that family and business need separate but deliberate focus. One interviewee, a graphic design business owner, talked about the challenges of balancing his work and family lives: “You have to really focus on being able to be present and away from work […] especially in family situations, in your own time. You know, especially with your devices now, […] you can be permanently on, and that’s a big downside.” Another, who runs a creative agency, was similarly challenged by having to be “on” all the time. He said, “I definitely struggle with switching off, and I know that’s hard, particularly on my wife […] You know, my brain will always be thinking about that next chess move and how to, you know, move up to that next step.”
There’s plenty of research on how creative entrepreneurs struggle to balance their different conceptions of self. The result can be a conflict of identities between a creator and a businessperson. Add being a parent on top of that, and you have an added set of responsibilities. Like Susi said, the juggle is real.
But others found inspiration for their businesses in parenting. One eco-fashion entrepreneur I spoke to started his business due to his children’s concerns about pollution. Another started a range of toys for Muslim families based on his own children’s experiences. Another started a publishing house to bring much-loved folk stories from her own family to a new generation of children. These examples don’t change the balance of parenting and business management, but they show how children have a daily impact on running a business, either, as Susi suggests, a distraction from being able to “think entrepreneurially and be creative” or as catalytic agents that enable entrepreneurship.
What about other family members? We know from an extensive body of research that if your parents were entrepreneurs, you’re more likely to be an entrepreneur. This aligns with what one communications agency owner told me about the example her father set:
What he did for me, even though he probably hasn’t done that well in business, necessarily. But […] three out of four of us kids all run our own businesses. Now, and the fourth one works in the family business, like works for Dad still. So […] he sort of normalised the fact […] you can run a business and that’s how you survive and that’s how you live.
Note that phrase: “He probably hasn’t done that well in business”. When creative industries entrepreneurs told me about their parents’ experiences as business founders, they generally had mixed feelings about them. Often, they positioned their own entrepreneurial experience as a reaction against what their parents had done. This quote from a games developer is a good example:
My dad owned a small shop. He had unlucky timing. He… was doing sushi before it was cool […] and then he decided that he needed to spend more time with his family about a year before sushi got cool! But he ran that business for years, you know, like it ran along. It just wasn’t, wasn’t making gangbusters’ money.
None of the participants in this sample carried on a business that was the same as one of their parents. Instead, they positioned their parents as figures of partial inspiration. In some cases, they are shown as important supporters and, often, providers of capital. One music entrepreneur explained to me how he raised the money to get his business out of operating from his living room:
I had this very funny conversation with my parents one day when I wanted, when I was asking very kindly if I could borrow $100,000. [Laughs] […] And they went, they went “That’s a lot of money!” […] You know, I gave them a rough idea of [how the business worked]. This is the painful bit. I had to explain “sale or return” to my parents and that’s when we all cried!
The amount of money families invest in small businesses is another intersection of business and family life, which isn’t discussed very much. Often, it’s parents stumping up the cash, but it can often mean spouses providing ongoing financial support by holding down steady jobs while their partner is in business. In more extreme cases it can mean risking joint assets, as one filmmaker vividly illustrated when discussing raising finance during the GFC:
No one in Australia [was offering] funding. The global economic crisis just meant, you know, the bank […] ceased all loans. And they were like, “Well, it’s tough being a producer, isn’t it?” That was their attitude! So, I went (laughs nervously), oh great! And I went to, my husband and said, “Sweetheart? The mortgage!” […] I’ve been fortunate that I had a husband that […] understands the business and has a passion for the business. So, you know, has been there every step of the way.
Of course, lots of spouses run businesses together and have to negotiate risk and opportunity throughout. However, when talking to entrepreneurs whose spouses work outside the business, they are figures of support and emotional touchstones. Even if they are not active participants in a business, spouses are also people engaging in the ups and downs of a business, and who, in some cases, entrepreneurs feel ultimately responsible to. As one said to me:
I’ve cried 5 times: once out of joy, four out of exasperation, sheer exhaustion and the feeling that I’ve conned my wife and two little kids into spending every cent we’ve got, right?
It’s weird that the discourse around entrepreneurship doesn’t intersect much with the discourse around family when they are so strongly linked. MBA courses will include subjects on finance, strategy and so on… but where’s the subject on managing family dynamics? When we assess the health of businesses, how much attention do we pay to the health of the families supporting those businesses? It’s no surprise that family events like death, ill-health or divorce can disrupt or even destroy small businesses. Should we not invest in looking after families as a way of looking after businesses?
These are big questions for a festive season. For now, let’s acknowledge the family unit as a powerful influence on entrepreneurship by being, at various times, a distractor, an inspiration, an obligation, a source of capital, a source of emotional support and a raison d’etre. I hope we all see time spent with family as, most importantly, good for ourselves, next, good for our families and, running a respectable third, good for business.
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