Saying YES without losing your sanity

Tetyana Denford - 6 May 16

A few months after the recession happened, I fell pregnant with our first baby.

Four months after that, my husband came up to me and said “I’ve left my job. I’m starting my own business.”

We had no savings. I was about to go on maternity leave. If you’re imagining how deadpan and stoney my face looked like, you’re probably right.

He had been talking about doing “his own thing” for a couple years, but seriously? He picks now? I looked at him for about 10 minutes. Silently. Then I squinted my eyes, and stared out the window into the middle distance.

“You ok?”, he asked, tentatively.

More silence.

I sighed. “Okay, I’m going to need some time to process this. But… yes. If that’s what you think is right, then I’m on board. You may want to draw up the divorce papers just in case, though”, and I left the room to pour myself a small whiskey.

He smiled. Relieved that I found something to joke about (I always try, it’s my way of coping with stuff), and that I didn’t set fire to his shirts (I was really tempted).

When my husband left his fancy-pants six-figure job in London, I panicked. We had our first baby on the way, the economy tanked, and I was supposed to trust that he can get a business off the ground whilst I’m about to drown in mountains of overpriced organic nappies (I was a first time mum, I was trying to be cool), hormones and sleep-deprivation? No way. NO. WAY. I was very close to saying to him “have you lost your mind?!” But I trusted his instincts. I had to. I trusted that he would put us (he and I) first. I trusted that he would make the family a priority. I was trusting that he would make sure I would survive maternity leave feeling safe, semi-sane and on the “same page” as him. We would communicate. We would get through. I had no idea how, exactly.

For the next 6 months, I barely saw him as he set up his business. He worked late, he worked on the weekends. He was swallowed up by it all. I went back to work after that, and it felt like the Life Blender shot up to warp speed. We barely saw each other, and barely saw Lilijana.

I started getting back into my writing, looking for some kind of solace. I was looking for answers that I knew were hiding in the recesses of my brain, and they would pull me through. At one bleak point, I sent an email to a close friend of mine saying “I don’t think I can do this. It’s scary. It’s too hard. I don’t understand any of it.” She wrote back: “Yes, you can. You signed up for this. You’re stronger than you think.”

And that’s how I became an entrepreneur. Or at least, that’s how I started thinking like an entrepreneur.

Holy christ, I won’t lie, there were a lot of really bleak patches. There was one year where I only saw him once a week in between his various transatlantic trips. There were a lot of frustrating moments wondering why he decided to start a business when we should be focusing on our baby. We had typical arguments about finances, explosive sobbing (always me), and me feeling lonely without any close friends to talk to and no family to help with the baby. And this was just 2 years in. We had put the wheels in motion and I read somewhere that it takes a solid 5 years to lay the foundation of a successful business. Arrrgh I would remember that quote and it would make me want to break things. I had no choice but to just get on with it. Beans on toast for a lot of nights. No holidays for the first 4 years. Bargain-ninja buying clothes off eBay for myself and for the kids for a long time. I felt like my body would break. I constantly had this fear that it would all collapse. Seth Godin calls this centre-of-your-body-fear The Lizard Brain. It’s a slippery, all-encompassing fear that sabotages success and thinking positively. It’s not productive, and it stops you in your tracks. We both worked very hard to silence it.

7 years on, and not only is my husband’s media business is doing exceedingly well, but 3 years ago we decided to start another business (online retail), I’ve written a little (unpublished yet!) children’s book, I’m currently writing a non-fiction piece, and added another baby to the mix. It’s up to me to manage the house, the kids, the online business and my own sanity (that’s the trickiest one). He’s still travelling all over the world but I’ve learned how to manage on my own (albeit not without wine and a girlfriend to complain to). It’s frustrating at times, and complicated and lonely. Yet, I can’t imagine life any other way. Had I said “NO way” to his plan to run his own gig that many years ago, life may have been very secure and glossy, but we wouldn’t have learned anything about ourselves. And mostly, I wouldn’t have learned anything about myself, and what I’m made of. Through him, I was trained how to think outwardly, and towards challenges, rather than fear them.

The tricks that I’ve learned along the way? They may not be revolutionary, but they would make sense to anyone who’s partner is saying “I want to strike out on my own and give it a shot”:

1. If your partner starts talking about “out of the box” stuff, listen. Indulge them. Ask them to tell you about what they’re thinking, how it can be achieved, and what all the ideas are and where they’ve come from. Listening is one of the best things you can do, because it teaches both of you something new.
2. Be comfortable swearing a lot. It’ll come in handy, and it fucking feels great.
3. Don’t expect anything “fancy” for a while: food, clothes, travel. You’ll have to live on a strict budget of Aldi, yellow-stickered budget food, meal-planning, and doing road-trips to county parks instead of plane trips to exotic locations.
4. You won’t like your life sometimes. You’ll question it, you’ll question WHY ON EARTH you’re with some crazy person that doesn’t want a consistent paychecque, you’ll be confused and frustrated. It’s normal. Embrace it, feel it, and keep moving ahead. Worst case scenario? There’s always a job out there, but creating one for yourself is something that you will never regret trying.
5. Remind yourself of the end-game. What’s the plan farther down the road? It helps to use that for incentive and helps you focus.
6. Wine. Gin. Tequila. Any alcohol that will take the edge off.
7. Loud arguments are underrated. And they help blow off steam.
8. Sex. Especially after number 7.

In a perverse way, I was dragged slightly unwillingly into a life that totally scared me, but he knew instinctively that I could do it. And I did. And I am. And I will. And it has been the most empowering feeling that I’ve ever had. I feel capable. I’m not the woman behind the man, I’m the woman making it all happen right alongside him.

Tetyana Denford

Tetyana is a Ukrainian-American mum of three, married to an Englishman, living in NY. She's written for Elle and Vogue magazines, and her first novel 'Motherland' is available at Amazon. She hosts a YouTube show called The Craft and Business of Books, translates for Frontline PBS news, and writes freelance.

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