EP136: Passion vs. Career: How to Help Your Child Follow Both

Interview with Margot Machol Bisnow / Author of Raising an Entrepreneur

HOSTED BY PAUL SULLIVAN

We all want to see our child follow their passons and achieve their goals. But what if they are passionate about something we don’t understand? What if their goals don’t align with our goals for them? Margot Machol Bisnow - Author and mother of 2 entrepreneurs - has spoken with many families that let their kids follow passions that led to entrepreneurial success. She offers great points to consider.

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Transcript

00;00;00;02 - 00;00;21;17
Margot Machol Bisnow 
Every single one of these entrepreneurs had a passion outside of school, and in every case, their parents supported that passion. And in 90% of the cases, the parents knew nothing about the passion. And in 50% of the cases, the parents were like slightly freaked out about the passion.

00;00;21;20 - 00;00;23;20
Paul Sullivan
In the beginning.

00;00;23;22 - 00;00;40;20
Margot Machol Bisnow 
But in every case, when the parents realized how much their kids loved it and how much joy they got from it, they were like, great, you know, we're happy to see you doing something you love.

00;00;40;22 - 00;01;05;01
Paul Sullivan
Welcome to the Company of Dads podcast. After 120 plus episodes, we're doing something different this season. I'm still your host, Paul Sullivan, and we're still focused on Lee dads, working moms, and how small changes at home or at work can have a big impact on their lives. What's new is each episode now promises to deliver actionable advice on some area of concern at home or at work.

00;01;05;03 - 00;01;32;08
Paul Sullivan
Short. Direct. Again. Actionable. Five questions. Five answers. This week, our guest is Margot Machol Bisnow, author of Raising an Entrepreneur How to Help Your Children Achieve the Dream 99 stories from Families Who Did. But she's not here to talk about what they did right? You can read the book for that. But what some of these parents wished that they had done.

00;01;32;11 - 00;01;44;26
Paul Sullivan
Some of them, she found, had four regrets in raising their children. We'll get to that much later, because there's so much to talk about before that question to welcome Margot to the Company of Dads podcast.

00;01;44;28 - 00;01;46;11
Margot Machol Bisnow 
Thank you.

00;01;46;13 - 00;02;11;02
Paul Sullivan
All right. Question one. Your dad was a systems engineer. You spent 20 years working in government, rising to the highest levels at the Federal Trade Commission in the white House. You've been married for 40 years. To Mark bass, now an entrepreneur. You have two sons. One is an entrepreneur. The other is the frontman of a band which is surely as entrepreneurial as it is artistic.

00;02;11;04 - 00;02;20;27
Paul Sullivan
Did you set out to raise entrepreneurial children, or what was it that drove you and your husband when you were raising these these boys?

00;02;20;29 - 00;02;27;25
Margot Machol Bisnow 
So we barely knew what being an entrepreneur was.

00;02;27;28 - 00;02;29;19
Paul Sullivan
We had.

00;02;29;22 - 00;03;02;09
Margot Machol Bisnow 
We it wasn't on our radar. We had no intention of it. And my husband didn't start his company until the kids were, you know, out of school. So it's not something we grew up talking about. We were just super into politics. And, in fact, when my older son, Elliot started his organization summit, which is conferences of young entrepreneurs, he didn't want to start a conference series.

00;03;02;09 - 00;03;18;27
Margot Machol Bisnow 
That wasn't his idea. He just wanted to find out, like, how do you become an entrepreneur? And how did you do it? And so he called, called 18 Young entrepreneurs under the age of 30 and invited them for a ski weekend in Utah because he figured he wasn't cool enough for them to talk to him.

00;03;18;29 - 00;03;21;18
Paul Sullivan
And was he a really good skier?

00;03;21;20 - 00;03;22;05
Margot Machol Bisnow 
Yes.

00;03;22;09 - 00;03;23;09
Paul Sullivan
Okay. All right.

00;03;23;11 - 00;03;46;04
Margot Machol Bisnow 
Anyhow, it turned out, I mean, this was 2008, and, none of these people had ever met anyone like themselves before. And they all became best friends. And they all said, you have to do this again. And I want to bring five friends. But he did it because we didn't know entrepreneurs and we hadn't talked about entrepreneurship.

00;03;46;07 - 00;03;56;02
Paul Sullivan
So should I have asked the other, should the first question have been something more along the lines of how did your kids grow up in this very political household? And none of them became politicians or worked in politics.

00;03;56;04 - 00;04;21;01
Margot Machol Bisnow 
So this is something else that I didn't think about until I'd written the book. And started talking to parents. Both of our kids had these serious, intense passions from like age 13 on that they were both doing five hours a day, seven days a week. Elliot, our oldest son, was playing tennis. Austin, our younger son was writing music.

00;04;21;03 - 00;04;43;28
Margot Machol Bisnow 
Austin wrote 300 songs before he graduated from high school. Elliot fought his way up from, you know, not ever having played at 12 to 35 in the country. They were both, like, super intense about this. And we don't know anything about music, and we don't know anything about tennis.

00;04;44;00 - 00;05;05;01
Margot Machol Bisnow 
And I would go to these tennis tournaments for the top 100 kids in the country. I'd be the only parent there who didn't know the rules. And it's only thinking back about it, looking back, that I realize this was incredible because they had to figure it out for themselves. They both had to. You know, I'm such a helpful person.

00;05;05;02 - 00;05;22;28
Margot Machol Bisnow 
If it had been something I'd known anything about, I could open them with suggestions and ideas and helpful hints and let me introduce you to this person. Or this. I couldn't do that. They had to figure everything out for themselves. And doing that is how they became who they are. It's how they became entrepreneurial.

00;05;23;00 - 00;05;50;27
Paul Sullivan
It's so fascinating because, I mean, you worked in the Reagan and Bush administrations at some point. You know, certain parents might have said, hey, in this music thing, it's it's pretty good. And, hey, tennis, everybody likes tennis. Good exercise. Good for you. How about you come and meet, you know, President Bush and, we talk about what you did, what allowed you and your husband as parents to not interfere, as it were, and to let, these young boys just pursue their passions.

00;05;51;00 - 00;06;02;26
Paul Sullivan
They're both very successful today. But, you know, what's it? Okay, well, you know, what was it? Were you saying, well, politics is my passion, and I'm. And I'm glad I have it, but my my boys have have a different passion, and I'm going to let them run with it.

00;06;02;28 - 00;06;04;12
Margot Machol Bisnow 
Yeah.

00;06;04;15 - 00;06;22;06
Paul Sullivan
That's great. No, I mean, you say that as if it's the most normal thing in the world, but, you know, I'm. I'm calling you from, you know, Fairfield County, Connecticut, where it's the land of parents who want to over engineer the lives of their children. And it sounds like, you're quite the opposite, that you you were fortunate to have kids who are deeply passionate about something, and then you just facilitated that.

00;06;22;06 - 00;06;25;16
Paul Sullivan
You you gave them the opportunity to continue to run with it.

00;06;25;19 - 00;06;52;25
Margot Machol Bisnow 
But the cool thing, Paul, is that basically that was the story of everyone I interviewed. Every single one of these entrepreneurs had a passion outside of school, and in every case, their parents supported that passion. And in 90% of the cases, the parents knew nothing about the passion. And in 50% of the cases, the parents were like slightly freaked out about the passion.

00;06;52;28 - 00;06;54;29
Paul Sullivan
In the beginning, right?

00;06;55;01 - 00;07;15;20
Margot Machol Bisnow 
But in every case, when the parents realized how much their kids loved it and how much joy they got from it, they were like, great. You know, we're happy to see you doing something you love. And I think about a third of them. Their passion was sports. And none of them became professional athletes.

00;07;15;27 - 00;07;23;16
Paul Sullivan
Right. So they learned how to win and lose. They learned how to practice. They learned how to be intensely focused on something.

00;07;23;19 - 00;07;43;16
Margot Machol Bisnow 
Right. And my son, my oldest son was actually honored by the tennis center where he trained, the first of their, of their kids who was honored for what he did off the court. And he said, everything I am today is because of tennis. He said, I didn't really like school. I didn't work that hard at school.

00;07;43;18 - 00;08;07;28
Margot Machol Bisnow 
Tennis is where I learned grit and focus and determination and hard work and, you know, the trade off between failure and and results and learning how to lose and learning how to pivot and all the kinds of grit and all the things you need if you're going to be successful in life. And eventually, I mean, I can give you example after example in the book and some of these parents, it was like a big gulp.

00;08;08;00 - 00;08;14;19
Margot Machol Bisnow 
And, eventually they were just like, you know, we we love that you found something that gives you joy.

00;08;14;22 - 00;08;32;01
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. That's wonderful. You know, question to, you know, listening to this, I'm almost I love your response, but it almost scares me because I can, imagine some, you know, tiger parents being like, okay, well, it's time for you to find your passion. You're 30 now, and you don't have your passion, which, of course, is exactly how it doesn't work.

00;08;32;02 - 00;08;51;24
Paul Sullivan
You you find a passion because you're you're passionate about it when you, you know, think about passion. And as you said, you and your husband that didn't even have this sense of of the word entrepreneur back then, you're doing your own thing. Your kids are doing your thing. But that's not the case today. I mean, yeah, they're young entrepreneur camps, you know, certain parents, they go, I want my kid to be an entrepreneur.

00;08;51;24 - 00;09;04;03
Paul Sullivan
But when you look at, you know, sort of outcomes and successful outcomes, should parents, you know, focus more on kids being entrepreneurial or being entrepreneurs one day?

00;09;04;05 - 00;09;05;04
Margot Machol Bisnow 
Neither.

00;09;05;07 - 00;09;08;10
Paul Sullivan
Neither being better. Tell me this.

00;09;08;12 - 00;09;25;10
Margot Machol Bisnow 
You can't send an unserious kid to entrepreneur kid and think they'll going to become an entrepreneur. You can't say, I want you to become an entrepreneur. And so here's this project that I've decided we can do together, and we're going to build together, and we're going to I'm going to show you how to sell it.

00;09;25;13 - 00;09;36;04
Paul Sullivan
No, no, no. And all these, all these camp directors of, like, entrepreneur camps are like, oh, no, what is this woman thing, like, destroying a business model.

00;09;36;07 - 00;09;57;15
Margot Machol Bisnow 
And you can't, you know, I mean, I think you shouldn't worry if your kid is ten and 11 and hasn't found their passion and you shouldn't worry whatever their passion is, if it changes over time. So many of these people had one passion at ten and a different passion at 13, and a different passion at 15. That's okay too.

00;09;57;18 - 00;10;22;25
Margot Machol Bisnow 
And very few of these people ended up with their passion being what they do in life. I mean, for most of them, their passion was just how they learned, you know, grit and resilience and stuff. So I would say the important thing for parents is don't have your kids so over programed with things you think will help them get into the right school.

00;10;22;27 - 00;10;56;12
Margot Machol Bisnow 
Let your kids explore. Let your kids play. Let your kids try different things. Let your kids try something else. If they don't like what they tried, and see if there's anything that they are doing that that that seems to put a spark in their eyes. And if there is like, let them do it a little more and encourage it and tell them how proud you are for the success, and that even if they, you know, are getting a C in trigonometry, I mean, do you actually need trigonometry?

00;10;56;14 - 00;11;01;19
Paul Sullivan
No. I think the the simple no is the answer. There.

00;11;01;22 - 00;11;02;14
Paul Sullivan
Yeah.

00;11;02;16 - 00;11;21;02
Margot Machol Bisnow 
So I think it's really important. I mean, I think that and this is kind of what you're asking, the path that worked for us. It may work for some kids today. It doesn't work for everybody. And it's no longer necessary. You no longer I mean, I went to a great school and my husband went to a great school.

00;11;21;02 - 00;11;48;17
Margot Machol Bisnow 
We both got advanced degrees at great schools. That's great. It worked for us back then. It works for some kids. You know, you may have a kid who just wants to study all the time and and wants to go be a doctor, and that's great, but it doesn't work for everyone. It doesn't have to work. There's a different path, and parents have to recognize this, and they have to let their kids go and explore and find what gives them joy and do the thing they love, and see if they can make something out of that.

00;11;48;20 - 00;12;00;04
Paul Sullivan
So are you telling me that I should, save the $17,000 and not send my seven year old, to the entrepreneur camp in the, Everest mountain range? The some.

00;12;00;06 - 00;12;30;00
Paul Sullivan
Getting, getting, you know, we have this question three. That's an excellent question. You know, three, you know, there is sort of this stereotypical, image of, of an entrepreneur, as is, is totally focused, you know, locked in on what he or she is doing. Not really considering, you know, the consequences. You know, a couple entrepreneurs are out there today, you know, really fit this mold.

00;12;30;00 - 00;12;39;22
Paul Sullivan
But when you're trying to, you know, raise that that child to to have a passion, to be entrepreneur, to do what he or she wants to do. Does compassion come into this at all?

00;12;39;24 - 00;12;43;23
Margot Machol Bisnow 
Compassion is super important. I'm so happy you asked me that.

00;12;43;25 - 00;12;46;08
Paul Sullivan


00;12;46;11 - 00;13;14;22
Margot Machol Bisnow 
Most people who don't know entrepreneurs think people become entrepreneurs to make money. If you want to make money, you go to Wall Street. People who become entrepreneurs, in my experience, do this because they've been raised with compassion and they've been raised to say, how can I make the world a better place? What can I do to improve people's lives?

00;13;14;24 - 00;13;43;25
Margot Machol Bisnow 
And sometimes that's making more comfortable clothing, and sometimes it's making a healthier drink, and sometimes that's making something else. But it's always something that they think is going to improve people's lives or make things better. And I mean, I think you don't do that if you're raised only to look out for yourself and not to consider the effect of, of things on other people.

00;13;43;27 - 00;14;08;23
Paul Sullivan
I love that answer, because implicit in it is there needs to be that that curiosity, about others. Like if you want to be myopically focused on one thing, you could go, you know, work, read, fun, you go work in Wall Street. You still need to have great intellect. But as you're saying, like if you decide you're going to make more comfortable clothes for people, you have to have that innate curiosity that's, you know, that made you realize that perhaps the clothes that that person is wearing are uncomfortable.

00;14;08;26 - 00;14;13;13
Margot Machol Bisnow 
So, Paul, I would say that you're like listing all the things you need to become a good entrepreneur.

00;14;13;15 - 00;14;14;23
Paul Sullivan


00;14;14;25 - 00;14;41;06
Margot Machol Bisnow 
One would be compassion and, one would be curiosity. Yeah. And I would actually think of them as separate things that parents can encourage in their children. So I think you encourage curiosity by having dinner table conversations and say, you know, what happened to you today? Is that the best way you could have handled it? Do you think you could have done it differently?

00;14;41;08 - 00;15;00;15
Margot Machol Bisnow 
Why would you have done it differently? What would have happened if you had done it differently and start getting them to be curious and to think about things and compassion is like, you know, does it have to be that way? Could you help that person? Could you make it better for that person? I mean, they're they're related, but they're not identical.

00;15;00;18 - 00;15;06;17
Paul Sullivan
Yeah, I love that. At one of my daughter's schools, they talk about people not being bystanders, but being upstander.

00;15;06;19 - 00;15;08;00
Margot Machol Bisnow 
So I love that. Yeah.

00;15;08;01 - 00;15;21;22
Paul Sullivan
And they see something to help out. All right. Question for the for regrets. What are the four regrets that parents who have raised successful entrepreneurs have or many of them have.

00;15;21;24 - 00;15;28;26
Margot Machol Bisnow 
Right. So I wouldn't say every parent had all four regrets. I would say that these are some of the regrets I heard from, you know, from some.

00;15;28;26 - 00;15;32;10
Paul Sullivan
Top four, top, top four regrets then that fair.

00;15;32;12 - 00;15;37;07
Margot Machol Bisnow 
Okay, I'm trying to remember what I said.

00;15;37;09 - 00;15;47;18
Margot Machol Bisnow 
One of them was that they fixed things for their kids. This would be me.

00;15;47;20 - 00;16;17;19
Margot Machol Bisnow 
Looking back, that was. Yeah. I was always trying to fix things way more than I should have. And ease the path. I mean, I wasn't as bad as some parents. Some parents were a lot worse, but I wish I had done it even less. It's. I think it's really important. For kids to fix things for themselves, to get the confidence that they know they can fix things themselves, to get the confidence they know they can recover from failure.

00;16;17;21 - 00;16;21;23
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. This is, you know, they call it the, you know, so called snowplow parent who sort of.

00;16;21;23 - 00;16;50;09
Margot Machol Bisnow 
Yeah. We're always making things, pushing things out of the way. Another regret. Was it just too big an emphasis on grades and, getting into the right school? And, you know, a third of the entrepreneurs I interviewed were great students and breezed through Ivies and got advanced degrees. And, you know, a third of them dropped out of college and another big group didn't even go to college.

00;16;50;09 - 00;17;13;09
Margot Machol Bisnow 
And a lot of them who stayed in college were miserable. And I just think a lot of parents kind of look around now and they're like, you know, why am I forcing you to stay there when it's a expensive and B you're unhappy and c you're not learning anything? So I just think, you know, so many of us, that's how we grew up, right?

00;17;13;11 - 00;17;13;28
Paul Sullivan
Like.

00;17;14;01 - 00;17;29;24
Margot Machol Bisnow 
You have to go to a good college and you have to graduate because otherwise you won't be able to succeed in life. And you will. You won't be able to succeed if you want to go to Wall Street, but you'll definitely be able to succeed. If you want to go to a startup or even start your own.

00;17;29;26 - 00;18;02;27
Paul Sullivan
I think that's interesting that because you interviewed parents of of, you know, entrepreneurs who were successful and of course, there is a bit of confirmation bias in there. You know, you come from the world of economics and the confirmation bias being while you're talking to people who had success, I wonder what they would have said, had you, you know, the septet have been, you know, interviews with the with 99 families whose children thought they were going to be entrepreneurs, but failed miserably and are now living in, you know, some form of abject poverty.

00;18;02;27 - 00;18;21;14
Paul Sullivan
I mean, there is a there is a flip side to this. Like, you pick the ones that were successful and I wonder if there is a is a separate group who might have said, you know what, I might have had a happier life if I finish college and got a decent job. And just when, when I'm, when I'm on with it.

00;18;21;17 - 00;18;23;28
Margot Machol Bisnow 
I mean, then they can go back to college.

00;18;24;00 - 00;18;25;07
Paul Sullivan
Okay. Right.

00;18;25;09 - 00;18;27;21
Margot Machol Bisnow 
I mean, no decision is forever.

00;18;27;24 - 00;18;28;21
Paul Sullivan
Yeah.

00;18;28;23 - 00;18;54;24
Margot Machol Bisnow 
So, and I also, I would say like so suppose they, they try to start a company and it doesn't work out okay. Then they can try to join a startup and they can say, you know, I tried to start something in this area and it didn't work. And I feel like I really need to work with the company that succeeded in this area and learn more about it.

00;18;54;26 - 00;19;08;11
Margot Machol Bisnow 
And I think that startup might be just as intrigued by that person as if they stayed in college. And graduated with CS and not been excited about it.

00;19;08;13 - 00;19;22;20
Paul Sullivan
Yeah, okay. Yeah. Fair enough. I'm not going to hold it all for. But to any any others come to mind of, of sort of the regrets that these parents had around, you know, things that they, they did. But in retrospect, I realize I probably didn't need to do to raise these kids successfully.

00;19;22;23 - 00;19;33;24
Margot Machol Bisnow 
Well, or just that they could have done better at, you know, they could have done better at, you know, when their kids failed.

00;19;33;26 - 00;19;46;22
Paul Sullivan
And better. And what and what and what sense of not being sort of angry when they came home with that. See, or or, you know, better at understanding why they perhaps were disengaged in that class and got to see that. What does better mean?

00;19;46;24 - 00;20;07;22
Margot Machol Bisnow 
Yeah. Or just, I think they were probably better than almost every other parent in terms of not punishing their kids for failure, not scolding their kids if they screwed up, you know, asking them what they learned. But they all felt they could have been even better. You know, oh, you you know, you you didn't you didn't, you know, get on the team.

00;20;08;00 - 00;20;10;08
Margot Machol Bisnow 
What do you think you learn from that?

00;20;10;11 - 00;20;12;20
Paul Sullivan
What do you do differently?

00;20;12;23 - 00;20;20;07
Margot Machol Bisnow 
You know, not. Oh, God. You didn't get on the team. Do you know what I mean? It's.

00;20;20;09 - 00;20;46;21
Paul Sullivan
If you are not the number one squash player in America in the sixth grade, what's the point? Like, where are you going to go? Right. I love it. Question five. Margot. Question five. Ending on a positive note. What's the most important thing for a parent to do if he or she wants to raise someone who is creative, confident, happy, and successful?

00;20;46;24 - 00;21;20;18
Margot Machol Bisnow 
And it's basically what we've been talking about. What your child see, what gives them joy, encourage them to pursue it. Tell them how proud you are of their success and that, and tell them you're there for them. And tell them you know that there will be ups and downs and there will be setbacks, and that, you know, failure is how they will learn and grow, and your family will always be there for them, when things don't work out and that you love them and you know, you're, you know, that they'll get there eventually.

00;21;20;20 - 00;21;41;05
Margot Machol Bisnow 
And all the entrepreneurs told me, like, how much it meant to them when their parents said stuff like that to them. I mean, John two, who just directed wicked, said that his parents always told him, you know, if if things didn't work out, he could move home for a while. He said, that gave me the courage to take risks.

00;21;41;07 - 00;21;56;11
Margot Machol Bisnow 
I never had to move home. But knowing that enabled me to take risks when I was younger, and they all told me stories like this, that having their parents support and knowing that their their family was there for them, and had their back meant so much.

00;21;56;14 - 00;22;11;12
Paul Sullivan
I love it. This has been fantastic. Pick up the book Raising an Entrepreneur How to Help Your Children Achieve Their Dreams 99 stories from Families You Did. Margot, thank you so much for being my guest today on the Company Dads podcast.

00;22;11;14 - 00;22;14;23
Margot Machol Bisnow 
Thank you! I loved it.

00;22;14;25 - 00;22;35;02
Paul Sullivan
Thank you for listening to another episode of the Company Dad podcast. I really appreciate you tuning in week after week to really use this moment here to thank the people who make it possible. Number one, of course, Helder Mira, who is our podcast editor. We also have Skip Terry Home, so many of you know from Lead Diaries he's taken over our social media.

00;22;35;02 - 00;22;55;24
Paul Sullivan
Terry Brennan is helping us with our audience development. And Emily Servant is there, each and every day helping with the web development and can't do any of this without, an amazing board, of advisors. So I just want to say thank you to all of you who help. And I want to say thank you to everyone who listened.

00;22;55;24 - 00;22;59;07
Paul Sullivan
And, hopefully you'll tune in again next week. Thanks so much.