Frustrating Fatherly Feedback

I had brunch with my dad last Sunday in a lovely gastro pub in Walton Street. Very nice sausages & mash, washed down with some Rioja.


As I've previously indicated in my blog, my dad is a big emotional driver in my life. He represents my hero and my antithesis in many forms.


He was born just before the start of the Second World War in Scotland in a working class family. He was brought up during the war in Ireland, and got into an equivalent of a grammar school in Glasgow upon his return. Although he never went to University he became a Civil Engineer (though some would say he is rarely civil!!), and after a stint working in a large multinational construction company building large capital projects like oil refineries, motorways and power stations. After that he set up his own construction company which he sold 13 years later and has been effectively retired since he was in his 40's. He has a lifestyle that many are deeply jealous of and that frankly I aspire to in some ways, but in others I want to completely avoid. I aspire to the success he has been able to drive in his business life but not necessarily the lifestyle that he leads or some of the types of personal relationships he has.


My dreams of being like him started when I was a kid - he still owned the company and I dreamt of working with him at some stage, taking over the company, and building it further. And straight after school my first ever job was working for the old company (although he had sold it 7 years before I started work) and it was too emotional for me as everybody treated me as some kind of prodigal son. At that point I knew I had to find my own stride...


And that stride doesn't necessarily fit with his own sense of what my stride should be... He didn't understand why I wanted to work for the old company and I think he thought I might embarrass him, so he went a bit ballastic. And his "ballistic" nature didn't stop there... When I went to Uni he thought I should be studying PPE or Finance or something like that. I wasn't interested in that kind of thing (can you imagine me as an accountant!!!!!) and my subject choice at University infuriated him and I recall endless rows on the phone about my choice of subjects. But low and behold on graduation day, and subsequently, he's never questioned my degree ever again. I think he was just proud I got a degree. It was exactly the same when I started playing American football... "why don't you play rugby and get a blue". But he has been proud to introduce me to people as an American footballer, especially if they are American. It lends some credibility to his time living in America. So it seems the choices I make are not alwyas the choices he himself would make, and he struggles to understand why I would make those choices. That's my perception of the past, and also my way of rationalising his views onto me.


Its not just in the past - throughout my new business adventures, he has at times shown that classical negativity. Before I told him my business plans, I asked him how he knew it was the right time to start his own business. From memory he just saw the opportunity to make money. It sounded very matter of fact and simplistic, nothing like my roller coaster of emotions behind why I want to start my own business. Perhaps we have a very different gait to our strides...


When I told him my business plans his first thought was about intellectual property and that anybody could copy it the minute after I launched it -it took me several months to change that record. Then it was him joking that I needed x millions to get it started. Now its about giving up a settled and secure job to start something risky at the riskiest time of the economic cycle. He also asks me why I don't do something similar to what I do now in my corporate job but out on my own...



And I don't know what he really thinks of the idea. But it is the thing he asks me about first. I think he is genuinely intrigued by the idea, just conveying all his worries on to me.


And despite all the "negativity" I still very much value his opinion. He has made me think about things in different ways, sometimes leading me to change my thoughts and sometimes entrenching my thoughts. My desire would be for a little more positivity, a little more support, a little more "yes, and...". That's something I need to make sure I offer to others who are trying to start out too...