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We tend to romanticize families, as if everything will somehow work itself out. But it doesn’t. A year ago, I made an unconventional decision: I began running my family like a business unit, applying the same entrepreneurial mindset I use to grow my company, ProSense. Unromantic? Totally. But the results? Extraordinary.
Even though my daughter’s diagnosis predicted she’d never speak, she does now.
In 2023, my daughter Teia was diagnosed with PURA syndrome, a rare genetic disorder. At first, I didn’t just feel fear – I felt like everything had collapsed. I had no idea what to do or where to start. And then it hit me: this wasn’t so different from running a startup. All the skills I’d honed managing projects and leading teams were now tools I could use to face the hardest challenge of my life.
Related: How to Build a Business and a Family at the Same Time
Nobody has expertise — and that’s okay
PURA syndrome is a devastating, lifelong diagnosis. Almost no one knows anything about it. Only 750 people have been diagnosed globally, and there are fewer than 50 scientific papers on this condition. In this sea of uncertainty, everyone told me to “accept it” and focus on finding happiness despite limitations.
But I thought: I’m an entrepreneur. I deal with unknown, unsolvable problems all the time. This is just another challenge. Entrepreneurship is about rejecting the status quo and building something new.
I remembered 2019, when I landed my first enterprise client. I ran a tiny dev agency and had no idea how to serve such a big company. I was handed a nine-page onboarding form asking for bank letters and certificates I didn’t have. I didn’t panic – I broke the process into small, solvable tasks, hired people who knew what to do, and got through it.
With PURA, the stakes were much higher, and it was far more emotional, but the approach still worked. Since no one knew much about the syndrome, I broke it down into known symptoms: the ones we had already seen and the ones likely to appear. Then I started addressing symptoms that weren’t exclusive to PURA. The most urgent? Teia was completely non-verbal.
At first, I had no idea how to find the right professionals — none had worked with PURA before. So I turned to pediatricians and geneticists. “Give it two months. If you don’t see progress with a therapist, move on”, they said. Surprisingly, that turned out to be fantastic hiring advice.
There’s no shame in delegating (or getting back with your ex)
Eventually, I found a speech therapist who could help. She told me, “You have to work with Teia for eight hours a day if you want her to speak.”
Eight hours a day? I was already stretched thin, managing clients across North America and Europe. My first instinct was to pause my business and devote myself entirely to Teia. Early intervention is critical—research shows that therapy after age five could be much less effective.
Delegating is encouraged in business, but when a woman tries to delegate within her family, it’s often judged. My entrepreneurial instincts kicked in: Challenge the status quo – again.
At the time of Teia’s diagnosis, my husband and I were separated. Statistically, couples with medically complex children are more likely to end up divorcing. I thought, “We’re already apart, but now the situation has changed. I need all the resources I can get to help her speak. Maybe we should try again — for her.” And we did.
It wasn’t that romantic emotional relationship we had at the beginning, now we had a shared goal: to help our daughter. We became a team again.
But the two of us weren’t enough. After weeks of searching, we found our Unicorn Nanny. She had a medical background, infinite patience, and – crucially – spoke my native language (even though we were living 6,000 miles away from home), which was essential for therapy. We had our strategy lead (the therapist), our day-to-day operations manager (the nanny) and extracurricular coordinator (my husband). I handled budgeting and system oversight.
Suddenly, our family ran like a startup. We implemented SOPs, scheduled one-on-ones and worked together like a high-functioning team.
What I learned as a Mom made me a better leader
The lessons went both ways. Motherhood taught me invaluable skills for business: empathy, patience and adaptability. Managing Teia’s nanny – my unicorn employee – taught me the importance of emotional leadership.
I knew I couldn’t afford to lose her. I knew her role would be emotionally intense and filled with ups and downs. I knew I’d sometimes doubt our progress (and that was okay).
I learned that assigning clear tasks wasn’t enough. I had to build trust, offer emotional support, and monitor both her and my daughter’s well-being closely. Long-term projects – especially the kind with slow results – can drain motivation. To fight this, I introduced weekly check-ins and started a diary to track Teia’s achievements. Reviewing it regularly helped everyone stay grounded and hopeful.
I brought those methods back to my business. We now have emotional check-ins alongside weekly retrospectives. We even started “five-minute venting meetings,” where the team can complain freely. It’s a hit. It’s healthy. It helps.
Related: Changing the World, One Story at a Time
Build systems to get results
There’s no playbook for raising a child with a rare condition. But there isn’t one for building a startup either. You learn by doing. You adapt. You keep going.
Running my family like a business didn’t make it colder. It made it stronger. It gave us a system, a strategy, and — most importantly — results that doctors once told us were impossible.
