The Ecommerce Influence Podcast · Austin Brawner

383: Austin has a NEW role: Dad! Parenting, Running a Business & Staying Sane without Sleep

November 18, 2022·27 min·1 clip

Austin and his wife use weekly 'relationship board meetings' to renegotiate every responsibility after having a baby.

Austin starts from the middle of it. He has a four and a half month old, almost five months, and already the earliest stretch is starting to blur. Lily keeps the conversation grounded by asking what work looks like now that the business has to share the day with full-time first-time parenting. Austin says he was spoiled before having a kid. He had more open time than he realized, even while running a business, and he did not fully see it until that time disappeared. The sports comparison works because it is simple. When school had to fit around sports in high school or college, less time made the available block sharper. Fatherhood is doing a version of that now. Austin thought he was a morning worker, then his son needed him until at least 9 AM, and for the first couple of months until 10 AM. The work still got done. It just had to move into the afternoon, with less room for wandering around tasks that only feel productive. Childcare is where the episode gets more honest. More help would buy Austin more work time, but it would also mean giving up time with his son that he does not seem eager to hand away. Lily brings it back to planning: his role in the business has to be designed with the family role in view, not treated like a side note. The episode never turns into a polished founder lesson. It stays in the real stuff: bad sleep, morning coverage, childcare tradeoffs, and the slow realization that some old routines were preferences, not laws. Austin ends by asking to hear from other people with little kids, because a 4:30 wakeup can make the whole thing feel lonely fast. That is the useful part here. Capacity stops being an abstract productivity word when a baby is deciding the schedule.

As heard by us

A grounded business-owner check-in on parenthood, compressed workdays, childcare tradeoffs, and staying productive on less sleep.

Austin Bronner's new role as a dad turns into a practical conversation about what happens when work time gets compressed. Lily Ackerley keeps the questions close to the operating reality: mornings that now belong to a baby, a shorter work window, and the surprise that old…

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Why you'd press play

You want a first-time dad's snapshot of the first few months while running a business.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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