AB #001: Entrepreneurship & life balance, minimizing regrets, JuJu CPH
This first edition reflects what I want to share with you on a regular basis. Learnings from my own experience, helpful tools/frameworks, worthy eateries and more.
In today’s bento…
🍿 My take on living the entrepreneur life for the past 3 years + lessons learned.
🧁 Can Jeff Bezos help me live a life with no regrets?
🍜 K-Culture is eating the world. I’m eating K-Culture.
🙌🏽 My unexpected online encounter
🎁 More surprises, I promise. Read on and find out!
🍿 Work-life balance is a lie
A retrospective on the past 3 years of building and running a business in product management, the stories less told, mental health and lessons learned.
3 years ago, I was moving from London to Rennes (France) after a sad lockdown and scars COVID left on our lives.
We had spent 5 amazing years in London and the prospect of starting a family meant that moving closer to family, in a country with excellent health care, was the right choice.
I called my French network ahead of moving to get a sense of how mature the product management market was and the kind of professional prospects I could entertain after a summer break.
Everyone said “it’s booming” and it was.
I started working with my good friend and business partner Clement, who is a brilliant Product Designer, and pretty soon what started as a product+design duo became Panash - a product studio helping some of the biggest names in tech to raise their product game.
The success also came packaged with a series of challenges I had to overcome.
These challenges have really changed how I analyse situations at work and personally.
There was a flipping moment during my Easter break where newly found headspace and open discussions with my wife pointed me in a direction other than this form of entrepreneurship.
A new path forward where I could find better balance.
I get into all that below…
I was born and raised in Mauritius, and come from a modest family.
My dad went to school barefoot (back then it wasn’t a brand of shoes for privileged people) and spent his life working multiple jobs, building enough wealth to send my 2 older brothers and me to study abroad.
He succeeded by all standards.
You could say entrepreneurship, work ethics and resilience are part of my DNA.
But that doesn’t mean I’m invincible.
Entrepreneurship is rewarding, but man…it is hard!
Being an entrepreneur meant I had the flexibility and autonomy to set my own working schedule, choose who I work with, etc.
More importantly, it meant working for myself.
It was all very empowering.
The part nobody talks about…
There’s another side to it tho, one you rarely hear about on the polished feeds of LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram.
Someone once told me: “You make this [entrepreneurship] look easy.”
Truth is, there’s nothing “easy” about it.
My experience of building a company was many things I wasn’t looking forward to when I took the leap.
I got sucked into the entrepreneur-influencer vortex
Having my own business, getting feedback was not always easy, regular and reliable.
Peer feedback helps, but public feedback is better.
Social media posts provided my daily dose of ego boost.
Social selling is real. It generated over half of our revenue in FY2022.
But it also meant I had to comply with whatever content discovery algorithm laws were in effect.
So I thought, “to win the game, I have to play the rules”.
Even if at times it’s gimmicky and depressing.
It’s very much like the fantasy of perfect parenting you see on Instagram, when we all know how parenting is the toughest, most non-instagrammable job on the planet.
The line between your business and your personal life is very faint.
It’s my company, my work, my life. I can’t turn off my life.
And just like that, something else had taken over.
My wife Lucie composed with this new life for 3 years, fully supporting me, but that also meant she didn’t feel she could tell me when things were a bit harder to bear, as she didn’t want to be an additional weight on me.
Mental health is critical
I find the topic of mental health is much more openly discussed in the UK, so I was very aware of how work and stress can affect mental health.
But you know how it is, we’re too smart for our own good (or not).
My mind always drifted back to work regardless of which situation I was in, whether with my family, friends, indoors or outside.
Work was the centre of my world.
Every decision has a cost
There are a bunch of Fantasy TV shows that talk about the “cost of magic” or “the law of equivalent exchange” i.e. to cast a spell, you need to give something away. I find it’s also valid in real life.
I made a lot of decisions, most of them basically meant prioritising work over family life, and now I get it.
There’s only so much you can sacrifice before it takes its toll on the other facets of your life.
Discovering my limits
As I grow and move forward in life, I can see that people in the same age bracket as me have similar indicators for when things are going well or not.
The #1 indicator for me is the quality of sleep. When everything is fine, I sleep like a baby, except these days with a 1-month-old 😅. But that’s to be expected.
The #2 indicator is my relationship with and availability for my wife and kids.
If I find myself saying “no” or “later” over a period of time, it generally means something’s not right.
I’ve learned to listen to these and many more signals, analyse and inform my personal decisions, so they align with my priorities.
Lessons learned
One of my key takeaways from these past 3 years is that there is no work-life balance, there’s just life-balance.
❇️ Work is part of life.
For it to work - at least for me - these 2 dimensions have to co-exist.
🌈 I have no regrets.
These past 3 years have taught me so much about myself, my limits, my relationships, what matters most to me…
👷🏽♂️ Now it’s about applied knowledge.
How do I leverage what I’ve learned to be better in the future.
Stay tuned!
🧁 Regret Minimization Framework (Jeff Bezos)
Jeff admits: “only a nerd would call it that”.
Here’s how this works:
Project yourself forward to age 80
Look back at your life (→ this takes you away from short-term confusion)
Ask yourself how you would feel at 80 if you didn’t take this opportunity in the present
For your older self
if feeling of regret > trying and failing
Then you’re ready to try
otherwise, move on.
You now know what to do. Regrets minimized! 🥳
🍜 Worthy Eateries
In each bento, I share something I found and experienced on the food scene.
Korean cuisine is one of my favourite and in today’s dispatch, we’re heading to JuJu in Copenhagen, where I had the chance to eat last February during a 4-day trip to the Danish capital.
The Banchan was amazing, and they had very tasty Bulgogi, and we even enjoyed Bingsu for dessert. This place is a gem, you should check it out!
🍦Humans of Product
Each bento features a human I came to know.
I want to build a community where product people can really connect and help each other. ✨
Meet Manon Hanquart, Director of Product at Uberall.
Manon and I met as we both share an interest in Product Excellence.
Hi I’m Manon 👋🏻
I'm an eternal optimist and an unwavering rescuer. The case in point is my canine companion's journey. Twice abandoned due to nipping tendencies, I couldn’t think he was a lost cause. He's not totally there, but progress rocks! So that’s a great opportunity to remind you #adoptdontshop. The journey with an abandoned animal is so much more rewarding.
Compassion is my North Star.
I firmly believe that no one is inherently unkind, but merely navigating their own struggles (even dogs).
As I burned out twice, I joined a personal development school that helped me grow my empathy toward myself and others and be confident that difficulties are actually a gift, a life lesson, an opportunity toward a brighter future.
Since then, I have created safe, judgment-free zones in my relationships.
I am fascinated about how talking emotions builds authentic and stronger connections.
One last word, “build the life you want”. I left Berlin, a vibrant capital that I loved, as I needed a more natural environment. But twice a year, I escape winter at La Réunion for a month and do home swapping in Berlin with my colleagues in summer. Change doesn’t need to be “giving up” but can be “enriching” what you already have.
How can you help me ⭐️
I’m keen to learn from peers.
How do you unify sales, success, marketing, and product?
Your strategies for product vision, strategy, roadmap communication, and soliciting feedback?
Scaling the team and bringing new skill sets?
I’m up for new challenges
Need guidance on Product Ops, scaling teams, product expansion and alignment? Get in touch!
➕ Connect with Manon on LinkedIn
If you want to be showcased here, drop me a note on LinkedIn or reply to this post via email.
🩺 Product Clinic
I’m opening weekly 30-minute slots for people who need help with a specific situation they’re faced with.
Fill in this short form and I’ll get back to you.
Depending on how this goes, I might not have time for everyone straight away, but will get back to you in any case.
That’s how I grow, too. 💫
📢 Message to Product Leaders and Execs
I’m available for fractional product leadership roles.
Reach out if you need help.
If I can’t help, it’s very likely I can connect you to someone who can. 🙌🏽
Want more food for thought? Consider sharing this edition with a friend and subscribe if you haven’t already. 🙏🏽
P.S.:Am I the only one here waiting for the new season of The Bear 👨🏽🍳 to kick off?