How Having Kids Forces You to Be a Better Founder

Sean Weisbrot: Welcome back to another episode of the We Live to Build podcast. Today I spoke with Julian Salinas, the founder, and CEO of NLP Cloud, about what it's like being an entrepreneur while being a parent. I love this topic even though I don't have kids, because both identities are important, but how does one reconcile in their mind, having both hats at the same time?

Sean Weisbrot: Does being a parent make you a better entrepreneur? Does being an entrepreneur make you a better parent? Did having a kid make you more ambitious? And does growing your business give you more or less time with your kids? How do you plan your day? What's the best time to start a business in the life cycle of your child?

Sean Weisbrot: Can kids understand what you're doing and can they give you the space that you need in order to do it? How do you handle managing your kids' lives when everybody is at home at the same time? What are the best things and worst things about having kids while being an entrepreneur? I really appreciate how honest Julian was about his situation, and I could feel from our conversation how much he loves his family and his business and that they absolutely affected the other, sometimes positively and sometimes negatively.

Sean Weisbrot: But I took away from this episode that while it's hard to be both. It's not impossible, and it might just make you a better human being, but I'll leave that up to you to decide.

Julien Salinas: Not necessarily so common to have feedbacks from entrepreneur talking about their family life.

Julien Salinas: So if I can give my 2 cents here, maybe it's gonna be useful to others. I hope so as well.

Sean Weisbrot: So before we go any further, why don't you tell everyone a little bit about what it is you do and a little about your family?

Julien Salinas: Yeah, sure. I started working on it one year ago, but I launched it officially four months ago in Jan in January.

Julien Salinas: It's a natural language processing cloud for inference in the cloud. So basically when companies were want to perform NLP easily, uh, in production without the, the hassle, they can do it on my cloud and uh, we are. Provisioning, uh, we are giving a lot of pre-trained models and also the possibility for data scientists or developers to upload their own natural language processing models.

Julien Salinas: So it's great. It's been working pretty well, uh, since the launch. So, yeah, that's pretty much it. Initially I was a developer and I, and I used to use NLP myself, uh, as a user in several projects. And I realized that using NLP in production was still pretty hard, which is why I, I decided to launch this, um, this startup.

Julien Salinas: So basically doing this with two kids, uh, it's kind of a challenge. I have two boys. Uh, one is four years old and a half, and the second one is two years old. I won't lie. I think it's. Much harder, uh, launching a project like this with kids, at least with young kids. I don't know. It is with older kids, but with two young kids like this, it's kind of hard because you, of course, you, you wanna spend your whole time on your project and, uh, every time you have to take care of the kids.

Julien Salinas: If you are not prepared to this mentally, it's a frustration. So you have to, to think about it and you have to find some tricks. And then in the end it can also becomes a, a, an opportunity. But at first when you are not prepared, it's frustrating. Maybe. Yeah, maybe it can be interesting if I talk about my, uh, hints about how I am managing it, uh, because I also think that it's definitely an opportunity for entrepreneurs to be able to balance family life.

Julien Salinas: Launch a business at the same time. It's totally possible. I think I am, I'm a good, uh, proof of this, but uh, it takes some tricks.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, we'll definitely get into that stuff in a little bit. The first thing that comes to my mind is some people feel like having kids changes them, gives them a sense of clarity and purpose and a larger mission.

Sean Weisbrot: Did you feel that way? And is that why you started your company? Because. Uh, your oldest son is four and a half, and this company you started a year-ish, year and a half ago. So your kid was already a few years old when you started the process.

Julien Salinas: Actually, it's interesting. It must be true. I think that having kids, uh, actually pushes me to developing a business because I think in the end I want to be.

Julien Salinas: More independent and not to worry about, uh, making money anymore because I want to spend most of my time with the kids and in the garden and, uh, stuff like this, you know, and doing other stuffs. And so I think that, yeah, momentarily I'm trying to work harder, uh, launch a business and try to make a kind of a, an automatic way of making money so that in the end, for the next five or 10 years, I have more time for my kids.

Sean Weisbrot: And how did you get the idea to do this kind of a business or I. What kind of a goal did you have that set you on the path to make this business? You said wanting to have something that was automated and wanting to have time with your kids, but obviously you're not gonna launch a business on day one and have it be automated, making money and you have time with your kids.

Sean Weisbrot: So, uh, what was that process like, and do you feel like you've gotten to a point where you now have some more time to spend with your kids? Or do you find that having this business and it's growing gives you less time with your kids?

Julien Salinas: Yeah, for the moment, it definitely gives me less time for my kids, but it's still a, a fairly new project, so, uh, I, I don't expect it to be like this forever.

Julien Salinas: The way I launched this business actually initially was a side project, so when I started working on this, I. I didn't think that I would, uh, launch it for, uh, 100% by myself and, uh, do this for the kids and so on. I started working on this and after a couple of months I realized that it could be maybe pretty serious because I started, uh, understanding the market better and when I realized that there was a market for this and that the solution could be really useful to many people and that there was money to make gradually.

Julien Salinas: It got more serious. And then that's when I started thinking about maybe doing it 100% and then, uh, thinking that in a couple of years, uh, it could be a good way to make a living without maybe working too much. But for the moment, I'm working more than I used to maybe one year or two years ago.

Sean Weisbrot: So how do you plan your day?

Sean Weisbrot: Is it around your work or around your kids?

Julien Salinas: Definitely around my kids because I'm taking them to school in the morning, taking them back in the evening. So I am constrained in the day. I cannot start working too early in the morning and cannot stop too late. I can then work again once they go to bed, but then there is another issue.

Julien Salinas: Personally, I need to sleep quite a lot and if I start working too much in, in the night, then my productivity is dropping. So it's not a good, so basically I have a limited timeframe during the. When I can work, I can do whatever I want, but I have to be very productive and very smart and efficient in the way I'm doing things.

Sean Weisbrot: So does your wife work too or does she take care of the kids at home while you're working on your company? How does, is she a positive? Influence or a negative influence or like how, what is her relationship in all this?

Julien Salinas: My wife is working too, and she's working quite a lot. Uh, and actually she's not working from home.

Julien Salinas: She, she has to commute to work. So actually, uh, it's not very convenient for her to take care of the kids. So the deal was that because we are living pretty far from the city, she's working in, that I'm working remotely. So I am taking care of the, you know, uh, school in the morning and in the evening, and then she takes care of the dinner.

Julien Salinas: Then if I need to work more, maybe in the weekend or stuff like this, I can take some time to work more and, uh, kind of compensate since the start. She's been very supportive, but she wants to sacrifice a career for me, understandably.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, I think that's something new in millennial. Women, I've found in the last few years that women in their, like early to late twenties and even some in their early thirties, have this opinion now that they can't rely on a man.

Sean Weisbrot: They have to be independent in every way. I. And they would even sacrifice having a family in order to maintain their career if they had to. And maybe this is a thing in Asia that's like a revolution almost that's going on culturally, but it's quite fascinating to see that. 'cause my, my ex was the same way.

Sean Weisbrot: She was like, I'm 24, I'm starting out my career. I don't want kids. At least not yet. Sure you've got your own thing going on and you're doing quite well, but like, I want my thing too. Her family gave her. Problems for that because they wanted her to, you know, like have kids and she's like, I want my own career.

Sean Weisbrot: No. So that was a huge problem.

Julien Salinas: The, in a way it's harder, but the flip side also is that when your wife is working and making money, you have less pressure on yourself to be, you know, profitable and make money. And in a way, okay, maybe you have less time for your project, but uh, you are more relaxed.

Julien Salinas: Because if you're not making money, uh, with your startup, startup for maybe one year, two years, three years, if. He's supportive and says, no problem. Then there is still money for the family, which is pretty good actually, I think so it depends.

Sean Weisbrot: Some people create a business to solve a problem or to have a different lifestyle.

Sean Weisbrot: Why did you start your business? It

Julien Salinas: was definitely to solve a problem that I experienced by myself as a developer. It's been a long time that I wanted to launch a business by myself. It's not the first one. I am, I'm launching. The first one was not very successful, so I knew I wanted to do it again. Uh, at some point it was not urgent.

Julien Salinas: I was not in a hurry, you know, I was just waiting, taking time to find something cool. And I thought this time it was the, the right moment. Uh, you know, I had energy time, a good topic.

Julien Salinas: With NLP, the trend, you know, in the market, everybody say, is saying that, uh, it's booming. And so I thought it was the right moment.

Julien Salinas: I think the, the main motivation at the time was, uh, showing myself that I, I'm able to launch something successful, you know, and then make money out of it.

Sean Weisbrot: At least you're honest about it. That was kind of one of the reasons why I started my business was I had done a lot of different things in different industries, and I wanted a challenge.

Sean Weisbrot: I wanted to challenge myself in a way I'd never been challenged before. And the only thing I hadn't done was started a startup. So I said, all right, I'm gonna start a startup. And Wow. It's a lot harder than I thought, so it's a good challenge so far. Do you think it would've been better to start before you had your first kid?

Sean Weisbrot: Or maybe now that you have kids and you're doing it, do you feel like it would've been better to wait until they were older to start? How do you feel in that regard?

Julien Salinas: No, I definitely think it's the best moment. Maybe not the best, but it's an amazing time to, to start the project two, one year or two years ago, it would've been too early when the kids are like six months or one years old.

Julien Salinas: I think it's, maybe it's a bit harder. I don't know. I have no regret. I think it's, uh, a perfect time for this, especially because also we recently moved to a new house. We have more room, so it's much more. You know, convenient to take care of the family and then work at the same time. Because if I need to work and can, I can go to my own desk.

Julien Salinas: I don't think it'll be easier five years from now. And I don't know, I, I had this, uh, this idea, you know, right now and, um, launching the same project in five years from now, I'm pretty sure that someone else would do the same. So it's now or never.

Sean Weisbrot: Do your kids ever ask you what you do? Do they know what you do?

Sean Weisbrot: Do you think they comprehend like the concept of what you're doing?

Julien Salinas: No, not really. Not really. They see me on my, on my computer every day. They see me typing, typing code. They try to do the same on the keyboard and uh, and then it's a mess. But, uh, no, they don't understand for the moment. The only thing they understand about the PC and internet is that we can download movies and cartoons and, uh, that's where the cartoons are coming from.

Julien Salinas: So they kind of like it. But, uh, that's pretty much it.

Sean Weisbrot: Do they understand that when you're working they need to leave you alone, or do they not care and they just run in and wanna see you and or how do you handle that if you do at all?

Julien Salinas: They understand, but it's. It's taking some time. And, uh, it took a lot of, uh, disputes because yeah, basically when the kids see you work, when they see you here, they don't really understand why you, you have to be isolated like this and why you can't just be with them.

Julien Salinas: So, yeah, now it, it's getting better, especially before your four years old boy. Uh, now understand that when I need to work, he needs to leave me alone. But the, the second one is still a bit too young. It's hard sometimes to, to get him to understand. So, yeah, it's kind of a, a tricky problem when you are working from home with the kids, but I think that a lot of people had this problem, uh, this last year with the lockdown working remotely from home with the kids around, kind of a challenge in that regard.

Sean Weisbrot: I kind of encountered that with my ex because, uh, she was working in an office and she wasn't fired, but she wasn't allowed to work from home. So there was like a month or two where she was just at home with nothing to do. And here I am trying to work, you know, like a kid almost, she would like come to the door and she'd open the door and she'd look inside at me and she'd be like, Hey, how's it going?

Sean Weisbrot: What are you doing? I'm like, well, I'm working. Like that's why the door's closed. And uh, you know, be like, you know, don't you have anything to fill your time with? And she would get annoyed when I would say that, but like, go figure out how to use your day. Like you've got all this time like. If I was 24 and I didn't have work that I could do, like I would be reading, I would be learning stuff, but she couldn't control herself.

Sean Weisbrot: But I know, I know it's different from children, but she's almost like a kid in that, in that specific regard.

Julien Salinas: Totally agree. Actually, uh, I've been working remotely for maybe six or seven years myself, 100% remote. It's always been a problem. People, I mean, around you, when they see you at home, they have a hard time understanding that you're working.

Julien Salinas: They don't take it seriously and, and so even for my wife, my, when my parents are visiting, when I. People are at home around, they know I am at home, uh, all the time. And, and, uh, it's hard for them to understand that I'm working and doing something serious. Just wanted to say something. Maybe, uh, Sean, also about the COVID, I realized that it was very hard, not only for me, but for many, many parents actually in, in the way.

Julien Salinas: It was very unfair because actually when you have kids with the lockdown, you need to. Take more time, uh, at home with the kids, and you are much less productive for your work. And on the contrary, your colleagues are also locked down at home without kids and they have nothing to do. So they're working much more.

Julien Salinas: And so the gap between yourself and your colleagues without kids is like, uh, widening a lot. And so after a month for the bus, uh, when they see that you are much less productive than your colleagues, the beginning is understanding. But then after weeks and months, uh, is less and less understanding, and in a way it's, uh, it, it's pretty hard for, for parents, you know, to be competitive in that way.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, I definitely can understand that. My COO has a six month old daughter and every time we're on the phone, she's pretty much just screaming at the top of her lungs, and so he can't really get much done when she's making noise. So he, sometimes he has to go to the balcony and talk on the front, you know, when he is at the balcony, but then he can't be at his computer so he can't do what he needs to do 'cause he is talking to me.

Sean Weisbrot: And so yeah, kids are, from what I can see, a, a huge distraction. Now I'm sure that they're great in their own ways, but, uh, I'm glad I don't have kids yet. So what's the best thing about having kids while being an entrepreneur?

Julien Salinas: I think the best thing. Is that kids force you to stop working and then look at the big picture?

Julien Salinas: Actually, I am. I'm a great fan of the Pomodoro method. Basically, it's a way of working. You work for 20 minutes and every 20 minutes you stop for five minutes. There is a timer. It forces yourself to stop for five minutes, and then you start again for 20 minutes and so on and so forth. It's kind of weird, but the idea is that, um, you, you need to sometimes force yourself to stop and do something else, so you rest a little.

Julien Salinas: You stop looking, you stop watching the screen. The great thing about this is that. In your mind, you keep working. Actually, even if you're not on the computer, you keep thinking about what you were doing, but, uh, while walking, you know, or, uh, drinking a coffee or, I don't know. And then when you go back to your pc, you sometimes you realize that you want, you were not doing things the right way.

Julien Salinas: It was not the right direction. You adapt and it's very powerful in that regard, at least for myself and with the kids, it's, it's the same. I mean, at the end of the day, I could definitely keep working and working on the screen on my PC again and again and for the whole night and for weeks. And I never want to stop.

Julien Salinas: You know, especially as a developer, it's very tricky. You never want to stop coding, but you have to stop because at some point your productivity is dropping, but you don't really realize it, and you need to stop. And when you stop, especially as an entrepreneur, and not only as a developer, you stop. Coding.

Julien Salinas: You stop working, you stop doing your promotion on the internet. You stop, you stop writing content and stuff like this. And then when you start again, you adapt and you, and that's when I'm taking the best decisions actually. And when the kids forced me to stop at night, uh, sometimes earlier than I want, I'm playing with them.

Julien Salinas: I'm taking care of them, I'm eating with them. But in my mind, I keep thinking about my startup when I start working again, I have great new ideas. Great new strategies. And so yeah, not being technically working and typing on your computer doesn't mean that you are not. Working. I'll play devil's advocate here.

Sean Weisbrot: Wouldn't your family, particularly your wife, hate to hear you say that knowing that you're not totally present, you're not totally with them, you're thinking about something else.

Julien Salinas: Yeah, you're right. You're right. Sometimes it's okay. I mean, when you, you finish your day, uh, you did great stuff. You feel that, uh, it's okay now you're free and, uh, you will start again the next day.

Julien Salinas: But you can totally, you are, you have a free mind, but sometimes, no, it's not the case. Sometimes you are in the middle of something. You have tough questions, complex questions in your mind. And then of course, uh, during the dinner, keep thinking about this. So, yeah, you, you, you talk to people, uh, you talk to your wife and your kids.

Julien Salinas: But, uh, your mind sometimes is not 100% present, but it's still better than not being here at, at all, you know? Uh, I don't know. I think it's a, it's a good trade off.

Sean Weisbrot: I find that sometimes I think I'm done with work for the night, but then I'll wake up at two or three in the morning and I've got all of these design things floating around my brain going, oh, but like, I need to change this and change that.

Sean Weisbrot: And it's like, in my head, I'm messing around with Figma, right? The design system. I just wanna sleep. I just wanna stop. But this happens to my COO as well. He'll, he'll call me like in the morning and he'll be like, oh my God, I didn't sleep last night. Because I was thinking about operational structuring and automations and, and like why Google Cloud isn't working last y you know, yesterday, maybe it's not something we do consciously, but it's just like our brain is stuck on this thing and it's not gonna change focus until you just deal with it.

Julien Salinas: Exactly, and same, same for me in the night. And, and, uh, yeah, it's hard. That's also why sometimes it's good to stop working pretty early before going to sleep. But still, if you have a, a tough problem in your mind, a great way to to deal with it is to write down things on a paper or on your phone or, I don't know, but write down things somewhere.

Julien Salinas: It really helps. Otherwise, if you don't write down things, it, it stays in your head and it's really hard to sleep.

Sean Weisbrot: I have a to-do list. I keep that I, I used to do on paper and, you know, years ago I started using a phone. So I totally understand, uh, that that's a beneficial thing. 'cause if you don't write it down, as you said, your brain like, keeps refreshing yourself.

Sean Weisbrot: Like it keeps reminding you of it so you don't forget because it's that important to you. But if you write it down, then. All you have to do is recall the, the overall concept the next day, and then you can just refresh. But anyways. What's the worst thing about having kids while being an entrepreneur?

Julien Salinas: The worst thing.

Julien Salinas: It's definitely you don't have enough time for yourself. That's pretty simple actually. So. You, you want to, to work more earlier in the morning, later at night. Uh, you want to work on weekends, you want to work all the time, and you don't have this time. So sometimes you are frustrated and you are worried that your competitors are doing things faster because they don't have kids.

Julien Salinas: But I don't think that that's always relevant in my career. I realized, uh, several times that the amount of time you are spending of your, on your work, especially on technical work, is absolutely not related to the quality and, uh, yeah, the quality of your, of the, of the job you deliver. In the end, if you are a good developer, you can and a good DevOps.

Julien Salinas: For example, you can spend like one hour on some, on something which is doing wisely and someone else. Maybe he would spend three days for the same thing because, you know, the guy won't start in the right direction. He doesn't have the skills. He didn't put too much thought into it. So yeah, not having enough time, I won't lie.

Julien Salinas: He is, he is kind of a frustration sometimes, but time is not the only key, uh, when you are an entrepreneur, you also have to do things right. When I launched my first startup with a friend, my main complaint about my associate was that it was working a lot. Always working, working, working, doing tons of things.

Julien Salinas: But Alf of what he was doing was useless. And, and there is this belief that sometimes as an entrepreneur you have to try tons of things. Do lots of things because, uh, maybe if you're lucky, maybe one of these things you're doing will work. Don't think it, it's right. I think you can do things right.

Julien Salinas: Sometimes, of course you are to try on an error. Error. Of course, you still. Do things properly and then you can save some time and energy.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, I've definitely been learning that recently. I've always believed in working smart, not hard, but I only found after having a team that I could tweak how I work to maximize their efficiency and minimize my effort.

Sean Weisbrot: And that's been the theme for me for this year. And it will, it will probably continue to be the theme for me in 2022 as well. Do you think. Having two kids makes it harder than having one when running a company.

Julien Salinas: I wouldn't say it's harder because the first kid, you know, there are many things you are learning.

Julien Salinas: Sometimes you are worried for nothing. So you're much less worried for your second kid, but taking a lot of time, especially while they're young, like now, I think when they are growing older it's easier, but, uh, maybe you are still worried. For other things when they're older, I don't know. But for the moment, the most important challenge is that they're taking a lot of time and, uh, every parents I'm talking to say the same thing when they switch from one kid to two kids.

Julien Salinas: It was much more time consuming than anticipated.

Sean Weisbrot: I had this discussion with another guest that I recently published. His name is Anthony Alzo, and we talked about time management. Actually, everyone talks about work-life balance, and I think that that's bullshit. Every time you say yes to something, you're saying no to something else.

Sean Weisbrot: It's an internal balance as to how many times you can say no to somebody or something before you eventually give in and do it, and do you feel bad about it when you finally do? I'm very fascinated about how people's brains work in regards to themselves and their place in their society or their. Their family.

Sean Weisbrot: Have you found a way to balance your needs, your wife's needs, your kids' needs, and your health, and not let your business flounder?

Julien Salinas: I think it's possible, you know, to do things properly, of course you have to make choices. And I think in that regard, I totally agree with you. When people talk about work life balance, they don't talk about the most important things because it implies.

Julien Salinas: That you will have to say no to things and it implies, uh, making decisions like in a business, you know, your life is kind of business. The same thing for me. The way I'm making decisions in my business is also the ways, uh, the way I'm making decisions for my personal life. There are tons of things I would like to do.

Julien Salinas: I am never bored. I cannot understand why people sometimes are getting bored. It's weird. There are tons of things I want to do. I'm only doing a fraction of it. So it's constantly about choosing to say no to things I'd love to do and maybe do it later, or never, I don't know. And the most important thing for me is making money, but not necessarily too much, but, uh, decent money.

Julien Salinas: A fun in my job. Launching a startup is very fun. Take care of the, of the family and, and be there for them. And also, uh, I like sports, for example. So I need practice sports and, uh, to go running to, I'm boxing, so I like to go boxing. I have a garden with chickens, rabbits, so I have to take care of this. So it's, uh, little things I, I absolutely wanted to do.

Julien Salinas: It's not taking too much time. But then of course I have tons of other tempations from people that are very interesting that I could, uh, add to my life. I don't have the time. So it's about making choices, as you said, and it seems easy. Say, say like this, but it's very, very hard to make, uh, the right choices and the right priorities for your personal life.

Sean Weisbrot: Is there anything I haven't asked you yet? That you would like me to ask or, uh, if I have asked you everything, something that you'd like to help kind of sum up the whole episode?

Julien Salinas: I would say that it's not necessarily related to kids, but I think it's, it's, it's still important. It's something I, uh, I realized when launching my project, it's not necessarily to quit your job.

Julien Salinas: While you are a developer and you launch a project, sometimes it is, but most of the time I think you can do great things as a side project and keep your job for a while. And this job is giving you money that you can use for your project once you're a product market fit. And when you feel it serious, then can think about maybe quitting your job.