There isn’t really an average week when you’re building a company. Add a toddler and a five-month-old into the mix and predictability tends to go out of the window.
Setting up a business when my eldest was one-year old was daunting but I’ve come to realise that being a parent is something of a superpower as a founder. It forces you to be incredibly ruthless about your time.
What really needs to happen? Where do I personally add value? What can be delegated? And which are the moments, at work or at home, where being there matters most?
Monday
We start every week as a team looking at our priorities and where we really want to make progress. Lateral is building modern health insurance designed for people over 60, so my week involves a lot of context switching between insurance, regulation, healthcare, marketing, partnerships, legal, PR and tech.
This week included opening our broker channel and meeting some of our first pilot broker partners. I also spent time with our PR agency developing proprietary research and looking at upcoming podcasts and journalist opportunities. As founder and CEO, being a voice for the business is something I stay very close to.
Tuesday
I really believe in serendipity and the importance of networking to unlock opportunities. I went to an event with the Silver Marketing Association and Brave Starts, which brings experienced talent together with earlier-stage businesses.
I also recorded a radio interview for an advertising campaign we’re running later this year, immediately followed by conversations with our lawyers about data protection. Whilst the former is more glamorous, staying close to your key business risks matters when you’re building in a regulated space and processing sensitive information like health data.
Wednesday
We had our monthly data session where the entire team goes through our MI in detail. It’s an opportunity to spot trends early, see where we’re ahead or behind, and reset priorities if required. I’m proud that we’ve built much of our own tech stack, which gives us great insight into our customers and how they interact with our marketing, product and services.
In the evening I went to an industry event looking at AI adoption within the NHS, with Jeremy Hunt as one of the speakers. The NHS is the foundation of our healthcare system so understanding how it is evolving is incredibly important to us at Lateral.
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Thursday
I’m five months postpartum, so exercise currently means a morning session working with a specialist trainer to rebuild my core. I’m working towards doing much more strength work. We talk a lot at Lateral about healthy ageing and maintaining strength and independence and I am very conscious of making that long term investment in my health.
Sleep is less controllable. I’m generally in bed from 9pm and ideally asleep by 10.30. Two or three nights a week I can be up at 4.30 or 5am with the baby. This week my toddler also had a tummy bug. Those are the moments when flexibility really matters.
Friday
Friday morning is one of the bits I protect for my family. I take my eldest daughter out for an early breakfast, just the two of us, before nursery drop off. It’s a tradition I’d like to keep to make sure I get a proper chance to hear about her week.
At work, we finish the week with ‘Weekly Wins and Friday Fails’, alongside an AI spotlight where someone shares something they’ve experimented with, and our ‘Lateral Love’ where we recognise each other or someone who’s helped the business that week.
The weekend
Normally weekends are protected for family time and rest: it might involve swimming lessons, a trip to local park or seeing the grandparents.
However this weekend was different. Lateral was the proud sponsor of the Over-60s Padel County Cup, so I spent it activating our brand, meeting the competitors and hearing what they thought about Lateral, our product and what they’d like us to build next. There are some things as a founder that can’t really be delegated and time face-to-face with the people you’re building for is one of them.
Overall, my reflection is that I have far less conventional ‘me time’ than I did before the children and founding Lateral. But strangely I don’t feel particularly short of it because building Lateral involves an enormous amount of self-expression and I genuinely love what I do.
The thing I’m still learning is that when life is so full of interesting things, you shouldn’t try to squash more into finite hours. The focus needs to be about protecting enough rest to be properly present for the hours that really matter.