The birth of a business has many of the same emotional & psychological triggers as becoming a parent.
When you start up a new business venture, you are full of fresh & innovative ideas. You know where you want your business brand to be seen, what your target audience is & how you plan on getting your name out there. But what about the emotional attachment to your brand? Have you every considered how you will feel about watching your first initial ideas, grow & thrive into something greater than the original idea?
The birth of a business has many of the same emotional & psychological triggers as becoming a parent. You plan & nurture the idea through it’s incubation. Once it is born & out in the public domain, you will want to nurture & protect your business & as it grows you will encounter the highs & lows of it’s life, as if it were your own flesh & blood.
Scientists have been undertaking research to explore how entrepreneurs brain responses, can exhibit the same functions as a parent does about a child.
This study was performed at the Aalto University.
“Here we tested the hypothesis that entrepreneurs’ emotional experience and brain responses toward their own firm resemble those of parents toward their own children. Using fMRI, we measured the brain activity while male entrepreneurs viewed pictures of their own and of a familiar firm, and while fathers viewed pictures of their own and of a familiar child. The entrepreneurs who self‐rated as being very closely attached with their venture showed a similar suppression of activity in the posterior cingulate cortex, temporoparietal junction, and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex as fathers during viewing pictures of their own children versus familiar children.” First published: 13 March 2017
With the evidence corroborating the hypothesis that entrepreneurs experience the same brain responses as parents do towards their children, we then have to consider the following. In what ways does a business become a figurative representation of a child & how do you ensure you create the right nature, nuture & education for your business model?
Nature, Nurture & Education.
Nature.
All great business ideas are formed with passion. The love you feel for your infant business is just like that of a parent towards a child. You love the idea of running your own business, nurturing it, guiding it, protecting it. But you are also aware that just like a child, there must be an element of organic growth involved. Therein lies the rub.
Running a business is a personal extension of yourself: just like a child. Therefore, if things go well, you will celebrate, commend & applaud the successes. However, if outside forces look to harm or act in a defamatory nature towards your business; just like a parent protecting a child, you could be quick to defend. This level of passionate response can be damaging, as it is human nature to be reactive when a loved one is harmed. Jumping to the defence of a child, in this case the ‘business’, engages the frontal lobe & rational thinking is bypassed.
“For underconfident fathers, a picture of one’s own child was associated with stronger activation and for overconfident fathers with weaker activation in the amygdala and in caudate nucleus, a brain structure associated with processing of rewards. Similar association with activation, yet more widespread in the emotional processing network, was observed in entrepreneurs suggesting a similar neural basis for increased sensitivity to threats and potential risks concerning one’s venture and child.” Hum Brain Mapp 38:2923–2938, 2017. © 2017 The Authors Human Brain Mapping Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
However, to allow a business to grow & develop, you must allow an element of ‘nature’ to become part of it’s development. You can over protect your business, be too guarded & in doing so, isolate potential clients/customers. Allowing your business to grow organically & be moulded by it’s own natural progression, is a very effective business model. Dictating your businesses every move, leaves no space for organic growth & is very restrictive. Let your business fall down in the mud occasionally & brush itself off. It will only make your business stronger.
‘Startup founders may know their ”brain children” better than anyone. But the more they consider their business an extension of their “self” (as a parent considers their child), the more they should seek outside advice. Emotional attachment is key to long-term startup success, but may also veil a venture’s weakness.’
Nurture.
Nurturing your business is natural. Spending days, weeks & months ensuring all policies are in place, products are sustainably sourced, client avatars are recognised & your media machine projects the correct image, can be exhausting. However, all true entrepreneurs will sacrifice whatever it takes to ensure their business benefits from their nurturing care.
This nurturing process will always involve time frames, as with a new born baby. When the business is born & in it’s early infancy, you will naturally protect it with your very being. Remember, being too over protective at the beginning, can lead to issues later on. Don’t be afraid to let others offer their advice, just as parents do to each other. No one can tell you how to raise your business, however, the human race has survived by learning from our peers & there is no harm in that. In fact, with the knowledge passed down from generation to generation, business models have learnt & adapted to suit the ever-changing needs of the end consumer, whatever format this may take.
As your business grows & develops beyond it’s infancy, so too will your confidence. You will commend & congratulate the success & you will in time, learn from the mistakes & grow from them; just like a parent. With this new found confidence, you will notice all too soon, that your business has started to become self-sustaining.
“Every parent knows children don’t stay small forever, and eventually your business will reach it’s “teenage years,” as Smith puts it. “You’ll want to be everywhere and do everything at once, but that can get out of control,” he warns, referring to the temptation to expand too rapidly.
But if you can keep things running smoothly through this notoriously difficult period, you’re on track to transition into “adulthood,” where you might run into obstacles, but the company will generally be self-sustaining. “
Education.
Just like a child, a business needs not just to be loved, but to be educated too. Learning from your mistakes, is how you make a business stronger & more productive. Teaching your business to grow & develop through keeping up to date with current trends & being mindful of regulations & policies; ensures your business will continue to mature & thrive. Listening to your peers & mentors, is another way of ensuring your business learns.
Education & learning in business never ends. If you feel you have learnt all you need to ensure your business will thrive, then you are sorely mistaken. Just like a parent, you must always keep an eye on how business is changing around you, enveloping those changes & supporting your business through them. Complacency is so often the death of a young business.
Although this is merely a peek in to the idea of how running a business is like nurturing a child, it is most certainly food for thought. With scientific research to corroborate the hypothesis of the entrepreneurial brain responding similarly to businesses as a parent does to their children; we can start to understand why the love & passion we have for our own businesses, can be experienced on such a deeply personal level.
Written by Katy Jane on behalf of Virtually Smart Ltd
