Join me in an insightful conversation with Aaron Shelly in this episode. We all know the power of the "Flywheel" in the startup world, but have you ever considered building a startup business plan that revolves around your family - a "Family Flywheel," if you will?Discover what this unique concept entails and how it can transform your life. If you're a startup enthusiast and a parent, or even considering parenthood in the future, this episode is a must-listen! Tune in now for valuable insights and inspiration.

We've created an autonomic intimacy checklist for couples, which gives you a framework to understand the nervous system to nervous system safety with your partner. You can download and use it here:  https://www.sangparth.com/intimacy-checklist-pod

Thanks to Sound Creed for the music, you can visit them here ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@SoundCreedLLP ⁠

Curious about the work? Visit ⁠www.sangparth.com⁠ and book a call ⁠https://www.sangparth.com/15min-call⁠

To know more about Aaron Shelley Visit: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronshelley/

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome to the Nerve to Lead podcast. Here we explore power, pleasure, leadership, identity, belonging, parenting, and couplehood, and explore stories of navigating through life, finding both authenticity and attachment through the common lens of the nervous system. I am your host Sangheetha Parthasarathy and I'm so glad you're here.

Sangheetha Parthasarathy: Today I have Aaron Shelley with me. Aaron is a dad of four, worked in SaaS just like me, and now is an entrepreneur. He runs Family Flywheel. Welcome Aaron.

Aaron Shelley: Hey, great to be here. Thanks for having me on the podcast, Sangheetha thank you.

Sangheetha Parthasarathy: So Aaron, maybe you could start off by sharing a little bit about kind of your background, your story, and then we could go from there.

Aaron Shelley: All right. So my story, if we start, I was an athlete when I was very young. I mean, I played a lot of sports, virtually all of 'em. I really liked competing. As I got through high school, I kind of was playing American football and got injured a few times and then decided I'm not gonna make my money this way. And I was also very good in school. So then I went into a university program to get an engineering degree, mechanical engineering. And when I was going through mechanical engineering, I realized that the best mechanical engineers, partnered with bad business people would make bad decisions. And so I couldn't really control my destiny so then I was like, and I was trying to build some products, even in my engineering program. I had a job with a diamond company that was making 'em for like oil drill bits. And I was making 'em for this other part, and they just gave it no attention. So it frustrated me a lot. So then I was like, I gotta get an MBA. I gotta understand these decisions. And so I went and got an MBA and looking back, the decisions they were making were good business decisions, just frustrating for an engineer. But I've kind of went on this MBA route... And by the way, my wife and I were married before I graduate with my MBA. And then we started an Irish dance business behind our house. So we kind of have taught that for 20 years now. But that's kind of been this ongoing business while I've done these other businesses. So after I finished my MBA, we started my wife's business. I worked at some startups and then I got a job at ancestry.com. I don't know if you're familiar with them. They do genealogy.

Sangheetha Parthasarathy: Yep.

Aaron Shelley: Yep. So they do genealogy. I worked in their operations. I was working in their keying department, so I traveled around India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, China, Philippines, which was great. It gives you a very global perspective and a different cultural perspective I lived in Russia before I went to school for two years as well. So I kind of have this broad cultural perspective of just seeing how different cultures work. So then I went to ancestry, then I worked at a startup. Again, in this, just a genealogy startup didn't work out. And then I was actually researching, my mom connected me with this research guy at the university about business and family, because there's different rates of starting businesses depending on certain factors in the US and he was examining those. So as part of that, I was researching families and how those families structure affects business startups. In the course of that I was like, Hey, I think I have a better model for you to use, because I'm in this business world. I was doing consulting. Sounds like you've done some of that as well. You know, strategic consultancy, seeing the business, seeing the family... And then I said, here's a better model. And the guy said, Nope, that's your book, not mine. And I said, I didn't really wanna write a book though. So it wasn't my goal, I just love knowledge and I love learning. So I kind of wrote the book, had it mostly done in about 2018. But then a friend of mine called me up and said, Hey, can you come work at our, the SaaS company for me as a development manager? There was about 20 people. Over the next three and a half years, we grew it to about 180 people. And at the end we raised 54 million in private equity. And then I worked there for a year, and then I had the opportunity to step back. And now I'm like, I gotta get back to this family stuff because, that was important to me. And part of the reason it was so important was when I was researching the book, my mom had sent me an article about one of my friends. We had grown up in the same neighborhood, gone to the same church, gone to the same high school, everything. We were very close. I mean, his parents had been divorced and he was with his stepdad, but everything else was very similar. So socioeconomics were the same. Well, she had sent me an article about 10 years after I'd graduated, hadn't seen him. And it said he was going to prison for life, for rape and attempted murder of this 18 year old woman. And I was like, wait, what? What happened here? How did we go from this guy I played football with and went to church with to now he's going to prison? And I I'm a father and I have four kids and I have a happy marriage. And so that's where I kind of obsessed in the book. And that's kind of, I was honestly obsessing about the book through all this time growing the company. And that's where I saw more of the principles of family and business together. And that's where I saw this huge overlap. I don't know if you've noticed the same thing, but a lot of times, you see the overlaps are huge, right? Mm-hmm.

Sangheetha Parthasarathy: Oh my god, yes. I think this is so important, because there's almost this dichotomy, right? So when you are building and you're an entrepreneur, there is also a bias towards running the VC, the private equity, the tech, rat race and becoming a unicorn. And, it's not cool or sexy to run a solopreneur business or what you call a small business or, even like a services business.

Aaron Shelley: Yeah. The lifestyle business, right? that's what they often call 'em.

Sangheetha Parthasarathy: Yeah. And, and that's, reductive at best. But also it's not sexy, because when we're very deliberate about family sort of values and we design a lifestyle around it, it also involves critically questioning a lot of these systems at work. You know, for us, for me and, you know, our family, that's an ongoing discussion as to how you... Well, we can't live live off the grid. We just can't. Nobody can. You know... And therefore, Yes, capitalism is messy and all of that. And there is a reality of engaging in this world. And then also creating this buffer for my children, et cetera. So it's like how do we engage with it on our own, on terms, you know, like, how do we do this? So it does involve critically analyzing everything that you grew up with. But also, you have to question the status quo. Otherwise you're never going to get off that hamster wheel. And this is from somebody who was unquestioningly, pledging allegiance to this, American dream. Then you add this gender layer to it. So yeah, I mean, I absolutely, see what you're saying about building a business and family and nobody talks about this. So when you're building, you are a monolith. You are like a startup co-founder, you are a CEO and you are building as if you don't have a life. And then in family, you still have to do these, you are doing these roles as if you don't have anything else to do. I think that's the expectation on both sides, and I think that's why it's fascinating the work you do.

Aaron Shelley: Yeah. I think it's like you say, it's interesting too. I think a little bit, when you're first married, you're always, you're kind of in that same startup phase of just like, how do we make this work? And you have to have so much energy put into the marriage because you're sitting there trying to go, well, who's gonna do what work? I mean like my wife was teaching Irish dance classes and I was doing all the technical stuff, but then there were points after we had a baby and she'd say, okay, you gotta take care of the baby. So I'm changing diapers, making meals, going shopping, whatever the family needs, right? And that's where I think sometimes people get caught up where they're like, no, I'm gonna just do my one role. And you're going in a family just as in a small business, it doesn't matter if it's your role or not, someone has to do it. And it just becomes a negotiation between the founders in the business sense or the parents in the family sense about how to best accomplish that. So there's always these trade-offs you're playing with like, well, do I want more money but less time to develop, to invest in the relationships with my wife and with my kid? Or do I want more money, or less money, but then I have more time to develop those things. So that, I think it's always a trade-off. And I think for women it's often much trickier because when they're having a baby, just that whole process is so energy intensive. So then they're like, well, I'm trying to work and I, my wife would teach Irish dance classes when she's eight months pregnant, you know.. So there's those things and I'm like, well, I can't grow the baby, so you've gotta do that part. Then I've gotta pick up a little more on other areas. Especially right when the baby comes, then the wife needs to recover. And so then you need to pick up more slack. But then as the baby gets older and the wife recovers, things can change back. But it's a very dynamic, it needs to be a dynamic relationship. And often I think this is kind of in the business sense, this is where you'd get help from other entrepreneurs or mentors or that type of thing. And in the family, if you're smart, then you can get it from your parents, right. Or his parents. You know, my mom came and lived with us for a while when we were, you know, that first week. And my mother-in-law came for another week during that first exchange. Because there's just so much that you don't know as a new parent.

Sangheetha Parthasarathy: Oh, yes, yes. And I think culturally, birth was never meant to be done alone, and birth was held in the village and everything was held in community. And it's still very common for South Asian parents to come and live with children, in the early years and we had both our children in the UK and, my parents were there for three or four months for each baby. And then after we've moved here, it's one of the reasons we moved here as well. We've got in-laws on tap, they live about 30 minutes away and it's that buffer, in knowing that, they're just to call away and, now I have my sister that's moved in like 5 - 10 minutes away from where I am. And, yeah, I don't think we were ever meant to do this alone. Child raising and all of that the similarities are so striking. The more I grow my business, and the skills, the way we run our household has changed. The way we run our relationship and parenting has also changed in parallel. And I don't mean it in like, you're running your marriage like a business and you're taking all the passion and spontaneity out of it. It's not that. But I think, when you bring the same sort of that co-founder energy, you get things done. But also I think there's a lot to be said for zooming out and looking at marriage as a very long term thing. You know, I think that's the fascinating piece. And, I personally have gotten caught up, you know, this has been my evolution of looking at it like a quid pro quo and gender roles and all of that, which is there, you know, there's obviously patriarchy and gender roles and culture and trauma. But within that, I think what's my work is that yes, you do have all of these collective systems at play, which make it hard, extra hard for one person in the partnership, whether it's your business or the family. But then also how do you build that cushion and then stay in that interpersonal oxytocin filled sort of that love bubble where you can actually look at it as here's what needs to be done and who's gonna do it without really letting all of those other things hijack the functioning of.. And again, this is, I'm talking about relationships where there's trust and love, and I'm not talking about, abuse, right? Or whatever. Sure. Even in that, for the growth has been to not look at it as a short term quit pro quo, but zoom out and look at it over a period of time. And I think, coming back to India has kind of helped that process because now I'm very close to elderly people... like my parents are old, my in-laws are old. And you know, when you live in these communities, like when my parents live, and then you see like bedridden older women and men who just completely do everything for years. And you're like, okay. So like if you really zoomed out... And again, I'm talking about marriages where there's not abuse, right? Where I think it, it also like evens out. And for you to be able to zoom out and see the big picture, I think is big.

Aaron Shelley: Well, yeah. You worked pretty hard in the SaaS world, right? So this is where an interesting place where you say quid pro quo. A lot of times our society seems recently has been like, well you need to do half of all this work and I'll do half of all this. Exactly. Yeah. It's a very bizarre thing. But if you went to a company and you said, I will give you 50%, they would say, we're not hiring you. Right. Because we want a hundred percent. And that's where I think what we have, and I think we actually have an increase in passion if we treat it in some ways, like a business. If I say, I'm in the sales department, you did some sales stuff, right? Sales is the sexy, they make all the money and everyone goes where it's so awesome and it's phenomenal. You need that sales team. But then you also need the product team who's building the product and helping the customer. And so if you have that specialization, and it's a healthy company, to your point about abuse, I think we see this in companies. The salespeople are like, we love the product people because you do something I'm not doing and it helps our customers and I can't do it without you. And the product people are saying, I don't want to talk to the customers, I wanna build products. So I'm so grateful you're doing this. And so, if done right, there's this mutual gratitude in the business and it's super, energetic and synergetic and it's super fun to work at those places. And I think the same happens in a family as if you look at the husband and the wife and however you decide to divvy it up, who's going to work and taking care of kids, then if you are looking at these roles, then you appreciate the other person, right? You're like, oh, thank you so much for making the meal. I appreciate it. I've made meals and I've had my wife make them, right? I live in Utah, so it's very snowy and I have to clear the snow and it's my job. I accept it, but every time I come in from doing it, my wife says thank you so much for doing that, right? She doesn't have to, it's my job, but she appreciates it. And so that to me is this side in the business. If you take that principle from the marriage and you move it to a business, like you wanna appreciate all the other people in the business because they help make you successful, and then you appreciate everyone in the family because they help make you successful. And that's where I think there's this, in the family, we often are trying.. Like you say, the quid pro quo stuff, instead of saying, let's specialize and then we're doing different things, then we can appreciate it more, versus trying to keep score in the relationship. Well, I've had one baby, what have you done? Nothing. Okay. You know, like there's always these weird Trump cards that people can do. And that's where it can just be super unhealthy. So I think if we, love the the specialization and we lean into it and say, that's why it's beautiful. My wife teaches dance. I have no idea how to do Irish dance. I've never done it except for a stupid little basic stuff. My wife does not do technology well, right? So when it comes to that business, it's phenomenal. She appreciates what I bring and I appreciate what she brings. And even in the family, I do all the Science and Math and Technology stuff with the kids. She teaches a lot of the Arts and the English to them, right? So this is, there's a great synergy. And that's, I think, intensifies the passion, right? That's why it brings it, cuz you're like, wow, it's so good to have that energy rather than it being this competition like, well you need to help the child with their Math. Why? Why? Just because, you know, like you get into these weird things if you don't have these synergies. So that's kind of where I think if we really look at the synergies and say, I'm gonna bring a hundred percent to the table and you're gonna bring a hundred percent. And if it's gonna be crappy sometimes, the cars are gonna break and then we have to do different things, but we'll just make it work because we're partners, right? We're not competitors. And that's where it feels like a lot of people are trying to compete for the same jobs with their partners in nowadays.

Sangheetha Parthasarathy: Yeah. And I think that's, again, this is a huge part of the work that I do when I see clients in therapy is.. You talk about this thing called like.. In a marriage has to be a two person psychological system, right? Where there is an us that is being prioritized versus, and then when there is not enough of, and we, it's not psychological safety, it's more like a body-based nervous system to nervous system neuroception of safety. But when we don't have that, then it's a you versus me, right? It's competition, not collaboration. Whether it's the business or the family, if there isn't that inherent sense of safety, then the whole thing gets hijacked. And I also think, one of the big reasons that it has happened is that there are bigger forces at play, right? So you have systems of patriarchy and capitalism where we've consistently devalued caregiving roles in the way we pay them. Like, to take an example, and we were just talking about the doctor versus the nurse thing earlier. when you think about it as a family, and that's different, but when you think about it, for example, if you worked for a for-profit organization, say you were supporting women at birth, then the midwives and the nurses are the ones that actually spend a lot of time with the couple, not the doctors. And yet they get paid, I don't know, one 10th of what the doctors make because we're prioritizing emergency obstetric technical skills over the very real psychological skill of making the mother feel competent, less scared, so her body can actually produce oxytocin, not adrenaline. And that's what makes labor happen, and yet that extraordinary skill is devalued in a monetary sense in terms of how we treat, incent, and respect different caregiving professions in the workplace. And I think that devaluing outside the home kind of sometimes also translates to inside the home. And that's where the resentment and all of that comes. But also I think home is, is the place where we can make that change. I think we're not going to dismantle capitalism in the outside, this structure. However, I think the biggest power that we have is to actually exactly what you said, appreciate and acknowledge and set right, that difference in how things are valued at home. And I think that creates a really powerful sort of structure.

And now a small break. To talk about more resources, we've created an autonomic intimacy checklist for couples, which gives you a framework to understand nervous system to nervous system safety with your partner. It's free to download and use. It is available as a link on the episode show notes, and now back to our conversation.

Sangheetha Parthasarathy: Tell us about racing kids and, you're a dad of four and tell us about that.

Aaron Shelley: Well, yeah, I mean this has been interesting because I've had a lot of flexibility with my, I mean my, because I had a business, my Irish dance business, I always was, that was kind of the priority. And then I'd have these other businesses on top of it. And so it was always a little tricky in weighing them, but I always had more flexibility and I would always prioritize it. And also, you know, like I would go to work and then my wife would then be teaching classes at night. So I would come home from work and then I would have to take care of the children. There wasn't this, oh hey, we both went to a work, right? So we kind of, my wife would take care of 'em during the day. I would take care of 'em during the night. She would make meals, I would make meals depending on what we needed. And so it was a very dynamic system. And I look at it and I'm like, well, I was doing a lot of the caregiving at some points, but then so is she, but there's a few books that I've come across, like there's a book called The Boy Crisis by Warren Farrell and John Gray, where they talk about.. Have you seen that one? They talk about boys and there's like 50 bad outcomes that happen if the dad isn't involved and doesn't get a play with them. The biggest was that I thought was a 15 point IQ lowering if they don't have a dad around. Yeah. And so I didn't, choose that necessarily, but because of how my wife and I had it going in our family. I had a lot of time to spend with my kids to train them, to play with them, to, you know, make meals with them. So I prioritized, probably cuz of my mom's teaching, I prioritized how to teach my kids. So all my kids, I taught 'em how to cook and they would cook with me and they would learn and they would work and they'd have, have to clean the house, right? So there were all these factors where, because I had this time of caregiving, but I almost look at it more like it's my, opportunity. And I look at this in the onboarding, I look at it through the business lens of onboarding, right? That's what my job as a parent is. Society is super complicated. We don't really realize it, but there's so many rules and skills and we have Math and English and all the Sciences. So it's like, how do we onboard children into this complex society? That's my job as a parent. And so that's, that was really the focus for us was how do we spend time with our family? Some families, I mean you've probably seen it where they do so many activities with all their kids that they, the wife is essentially just running a limousine, you know, like shuttling kids from one to another. Oh my god, yes.

Sangheetha Parthasarathy: Mm-hmm.

Aaron Shelley: So, in our family, I said, all of our kids are gonna Irish dance because with the studios behind my house, right. Where my wife teaches. Again so we chose that so that she wouldn't have to travel.

Sangheetha Parthasarathy: Yes.

Aaron Shelley: Right. Because it was, we wanted to do that. And then they all took Irish dance and then we let them play a few different things, but nothing big. And then we did a lot of stuff as a family, right? I mean, my daughter, they wanted her to play soccer and I was like, that, we're not gonna do that because you want it competitively because it's gonna take too much time, right? So it was very much a prioritizing of our family and our family values and keeping us together, versus, Hey let's see if we can be, make you successful and be a amazing athlete, right? All my kids, we all ski, snow ski, we all, play volleyball, but we've done those things together, hiking, biking, those type of things. But it's because of that intentional restriction on the number of things we're doing because, Oh, that's is huge.

Sangheetha Parthasarathy: I mean, you're saying it as if like it's an actual thing. But I think if you, the instinct is to be competitive, high achievement, focused on, like when if you come with that kind of performance and achievement based either families or messages that you hear from the outside world that can be really hard to do is to actually intentionally slow down and prioritize what's important for the family because it's not sexy. It's not, when you have your kids like, hey, this one won this competition and this one did that, and, all of those things. And then also prioritizing and being very intentional about what makes sense. So you, you're saying it like, it was easy, but I'm sure it, there's that. Yeah.

Aaron Shelley: There was definitely some struggles about with my wife because she was like, I want my daughter to dance. And I'm like, this isn't gonna be enough time if she does all these forms of dance that you did. So there was a little bit of struggle there. The thing that I also think that's interesting in the book, the Flywheel I talk about every family has a business model, which is how they make money and survive just like a business, right? And if we run out of money, we're just as screwed up as a business is, right? We gotta go take loans. So it's, there's this very similarity and I break the business model into the strategy, which is your mission and purpose. Your structure, which is, you know, are you gonna be an extended family? Are you gonna live just two parents? Are you gonna be a single parent? Those are kind of the structures. And then you have meetings and processes. And then the last piece is culture. Like what are your values in your family? And what are your rituals? What are your beliefs? Those things, if you look at a business model, and it sounds like based on your, you know, where you were living and all the work you were doing with a lot of these companies, you were very successful, right? And, in financial terms, you've made, so you've moved to India, done some other choices, which we're probably balancing, as I say it, like your other asset, your other resources, right? You're making probably good money, but then you're like, but my social resources, my connections to my family, my connections to my culture, those are all getting lost. Right? And that's where I think a lot of people are undervaluing those social connections because I mean, there were, I've had some pretty hard things in my own life. I made a, we had a 2007, 2008 financial crisis in the US. Yes, Yes. I lost a lot of money in real estate at that point, and I was very down on myself, very had a lot of.. I was in a depression, you could say, right? And who helped me? My wife, she did some stuff. And then my dad who was nearby and my mom, right? Those are the people, those social resources who help you get through those mentally tough times. And so that's where I think those social resources have been severely undervalued. And the things I would classify as a social resources, those are your relationships with people directly or your relationships with the group or your reputation. And that's what's so funny, if you look in a business, those relationships are marketing and sales, and you would say who in the world would ever neglect sales and marketing right? That's so dumb. It's so obvious. But in our families, we're neglecting that same exact thing. And so it's like, you know, who is investing for those social relationships and are we as a family investing in those? And so that's where I think that we've kinda lost pieces. Like we have our business model, but because of what society's doing, it's pushing us just to maximize financial resources.

Sangheetha Parthasarathy: Exactly. Oh my God. And that's coming at a huge cost to the nervous system. The stress, the high achievement, the singular, running behind money. And that's the thing, right? When you get off that ladder, and I come from this whole, everybody, a lot of my friends are doing that, vC and PE and, I say along with it, but it's just a different pace. But also as a family, being very intentional about what you're prioritizing. If, if it's, and there is also a lot to be said for where you put your heart, your breath and soul. That's what you see later on, right? So if there was an almost singular focus on wealth creation, and then you like a business, right? That runs, takes a lot of VC money and tries to go really quickly and it's all about the, and then, the fundamentals of the operation and the health, mental health, nervous system health. All of that, then you are going to see the effects of it further down the line, you know? So, putting it in business terms I think is so valuable, so, so valuable to look at, to look at the family like a business even metaphorically. I think that really is a game changer in terms of understanding the importance of that. So, thank you so very much for that.

Aaron Shelley: The other piece I also wanna talk about, and you talked about this, there's the financial resources, there's the social resources and the last one, like you say, that's the human resources, that's our abilities, our time and our health, our physical, our mental and spiritual health. We need to invest in all three categories to have a successful family and a successful life. Right? That's what I think people are often, like I say, they're just going for financial and then they're going, oh, I have all this money and my wife hates me, I'm divorced, my kids hate me, and I'm sick. And so it's like, Really? Yeah, yeah, I'm sick. Or You'll see people who are just like, you know, sometimes focus so hard on their career and then they're 35 or 40, and then they're like, well now I have no children, I have no spouse, and now I have, was it worth it? And I'm not saying there's a right, that's why I like the business model is there so many different business models, there's not a correct one. Google, apple, Facebook, they all have different business models, but if you don't get an aligned business model, you won't be successful. So that's where I think it's more like, what business model are you using and do you understand the consequences, right? Like, that's where you look at the Facebook model with ads and you're like, well, I don't know that's the best thing for people, but we're gonna do that. So, that's where I think having people say, here's the tools and just like, I'm sure you're great with strategic consulting in a business. You're like, oh, you're underinvesting in marketing or your cash flow's out of whack. There's all these things that are so good in business, but if you look at the family, it's the same thing if you understand. There's only those three resources you invest in as a business or family, and there's a business model and there's the three core components there. If you understand that you can make sense of every family in the entire world why they're successful or not, right? Yes. That's, that's how I've seen it.

Sangheetha Parthasarathy: thank you. I think that was very useful. Tell us how people can reach you and tell us how things can work with you.

Aaron Shelley: Yeah, so I have the book, you've seen it, Family Flywheel. It has this circular nature on it because it's a system, it feeds back, right? The idea is you get richer and richer or in wealth, in relationships and health. So the book is on Amazon. I have a website called thefamilyflywheel.com. If you'd like to email me, you can email me at aaron@thefamilyflywheel.com or you can find me on Facebook at Aaron Shelley, or in LinkedIn as Aaron Shelley as well.

Sangheetha Parthasarathy: Thank you so much, Aaron. It was a pleasure.

Aaron Shelley: Yep, it was. It's been fun. Thanks.

Sangheetha Parthasarathy: Thank you.

Thank you for joining me today on Nerve to Lead Podcast. The music you hear in this podcast was created by Sound Creed. You can find the link in the description. Thank you to Vaishnavi in team Sangparth for producing and editing this podcast. Did this episode resonate with you? If it did, please share it with your friends, family, coworkers, or clients. We would also love to hear from you. Drop us a note on www.sangparth.com