Can a Child's Tantrum Teach Us to Be Better Entrepreneurs?
Entrepreneur Office Hours - Issue #269
This past week in my “Learning to Fail” class at Duke, I brought in a guest who — at first glance — might seem like an odd fit for an entrepreneurship course. Her name is Becky Kennedy, though many of you might know her as Dr. Becky, a brilliant child psychologist with a large, passionate following.
Why invite a child psychologist to speak to budding founders? Because the core of Dr. Becky’s work with children maps perfectly to a skill most entrepreneurs overlook: empathy. While many adults respond to a child’s tantrums or misbehavior with frustration — essentially saying, “You should know better!” — Dr. Becky tries to understand why the child is acting out in the first place. Maybe the child doesn’t have the vocabulary to describe what they’re feeling, or maybe they’re overwhelmed by a new environment. By pinpointing the root cause, Dr. Becky can address the issue productively instead of just treating the symptom.
Entrepreneurs should be applying the same principle to their customers, investors, and team members. When a product launch fails, or an investor reacts negatively, you’ll be tempted to say, “They just don’t get it!” But that’s a cop-out. Instead, you should ask, “Do I understand why they’re not getting it?” The real problem might be a communication gap — you’re using jargon your audience doesn’t grasp. Or maybe you haven’t listened closely enough to how the market perceives the problem you’re solving. The point is, a lack of empathy leads to frustration and missed opportunities, just like a parent scolding a child who’s merely struggling to process an unfamiliar situation.
In Dr. Becky’s framework, empathy doesn’t mean ignoring misbehavior. It means acknowledging the child’s current developmental stage, then guiding them toward a healthier response. For an entrepreneur, empathy doesn’t mean ignoring user complaints or negative feedback. It means understanding why people are responding the way they are, then making adjustments that speak to their actual needs.
Simply put, if you’re dismissing feedback because “They just don’t know what they’re talking about,” you’re as off-target as a parent screaming at a toddler for not expressing their emotions like an adult.
-Aaron
This week’s new articles…
The Real Key to Startup Success
Lots of successful founders say it, but are you mature enough to understand what it actually means?
The Unexpected Problem You’ll Face After Getting Your Startup’s First Customers
Getting your startup’s first customers is a huge accomplishment, but it’s also going to create some big problems.
Office Hours Q&A
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QUESTION:
Hey Aaron,
I’ve taken the advice you and other entrepreneurship gurus give about being good at tracking data. However, I’m at a point where I feel like I’m literally drowning in data. Plus, there are so many metrics I could track, and I’m not sure which ones actually matter for my early-stage startup.
How do I figure out which metrics will truly drive growth and avoid getting lost in vanity metrics? And how do I use all this data to make meaningful decisions for my company?
Thanks for your insights,
Miles
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First off, congrats on diving into the data pool — that, alone, sets you apart from entrepreneurs who ignore analytics altogether. But I also appreciate how having lots of data can leave you with a massive spreadsheet of numbers and no idea which ones should guide your decisions.
The key is to zero in on the metrics that directly connect to the health and growth of your business.
I like to think in terms of cause-and-effect. Which metrics, when they move, directly change your company’s revenue, engagement, or overall traction? For example, if you’re running a subscription-based SaaS, you’ll probably care most about things like monthly recurring revenue (MRR), churn rate, and lifetime value (LTV). If you’re an e-commerce startup, you might focus on conversion rates, average order value, and cart abandonment. Everything else is, at best, context and, at worst, noise.
This leads to the next step: figure out what’s “nice to know” versus what’s “need to know.” Vanity metrics like social media followers or website pageviews might make you feel good, but if they’re not translating to paying customers or deeper engagement, they’re not driving your core business.
Once you’ve decided which metrics matter, the real challenge is using them to inform decisions. That means setting targets or benchmarks. Let’s say you discover your user onboarding experience isn’t converting as well as you’d like. The data tells you where the drop-offs are happening and how severe they are. Use that knowledge to tweak your onboarding funnel — maybe simplifying the steps or adding more guidance — and then watch if the conversion rate improves. If it does, great! If not, you iterate again.
This “measure, act, measure again” cycle is what makes data valuable. If you’re just collecting numbers for the sake of it, then yeah, you’re going to drown. But if you’re methodically using data to ask questions, test hypotheses, and refine your approach, it becomes a powerful compass.
Got startup questions of your own? Reply to this email with whatever you want to know, and I’ll do my best to answer.