{"id":152638,"date":"2025-11-25T09:11:35","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T09:11:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/152638\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T09:11:35","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T09:11:35","slug":"they-didnt-sign-up-to-be-entrepreneurs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/152638\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018They didn\u2019t sign up to be entrepreneurs\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Founders can find it hard to step away from work when their company rests on their shoulders. The concept of having \u201cwork-life balance\u201d has sparked fierce debate among entrepreneurs, who question if it\u2019s even possible to have the best of both worlds: scaling a multimillion-dollar business, with enough downtime to recharge. Two-time founder Nicole Bernard Dawes<\/a> is a strong advocate of unplugging from the job\u2014but only for her employees.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I probably am a little bit of a hypocrite, because I don\u2019t unplug. I never do,\u201d Dawes tells Fortune. \u201cI never want to be the person that\u2019s holding up a member of our team.\u201d<\/p>\n

The serial entrepreneur encourages her staffers to totally disconnect from work once they\u2019re off the clock, but doesn\u2019t give herself the same breathing room. Having scaled two companies to success, she\u2019s assumed the responsibility of always being on for decades. Dawes first founded organic, non-GMO tortilla chip brand Late July in 2003, which currently lines the aisles of Targets, Whole Foods, Krogers, and Walmarts across the country. Campbell\u2019s acquired a majority stake of the business in 2014, eventually buying the rest of the $100 million company in 2017. In 2018, Dawes broke into another consumer packaged goods (CPG) market again, this time with sparking water line Nixie. In the years since, it\u2019s also expanded to zero-sugar, sustainably packaged sodas. The brand raised $27 million in new funding earlier this year, with its products being sold in over 11,000 major grocery stores.<\/p>\n

With more than two decades of entrepreneurship under her belt at Late July, Dawes had pushed through economic downturns and many sleepless nights. But the hardships didn\u2019t stop her from returning to the startup scene as Nixie\u2019s founder\u2014having grown up in the business world, Dawes is not so easily deterred. However, she doesn\u2019t want work to overtake her staffers\u2019 lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cI signed up for this. I am the entrepreneur, I did this to myself\u2014a self-inflicted situation. [My employees] didn\u2019t sign up to be entrepreneurs,\u201d Dawes says. \u201cI am very comfortable taking downtime, but also making sure I\u2019m available.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many leaders out there, like Google cofounder Sergey Brin<\/a>, expect their staffers<\/a> to clock in more than the typical nine-to-five job. But Dawes doesn\u2019t hold her her employees to have the relentless work-ethic of entrepreneurs who pride themselves on having no personal lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that where a lot of [leaders] differ, is extending that to their team. I feel very strongly that it should not extend to the team,\u201d Dawes explains. \u201cBut I also feel like that is how I grew up. My father missed a lot of stuff because he felt like that was what you had to do. So I was determined I wasn\u2019t gonna do that. I wanted to be present at things for my kids, and I wanted [it] to be okay for our team to be that way, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dawes witnessed the pitfalls of entrepreneurship as a kid growing up in her parents\u2019 food businesses. She spent her childhood years working the front counter of her mother\u2019s health-food store, and roaming the floors of her late father\u2019s $4.87 billion snack empire: Cape Cod Chips<\/a>. As a kid in a family running two businesses, Dawes says it could be difficult for her parents to step away from the job. So when she decided to follow in their footsteps as a two-time founder of successful CPG brands, she knew exactly what to expect.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you decide to become an entrepreneur, there\u2019s a lot of people [saying], \u2018It\u2019s stressful, it\u2019s lonely, it\u2019s all these things.\u2019 And that\u2019s true, but this is where I was really fortunate: I grew up in this business, so I entered eyes wide open,\u201d Dawes says. \u201cThat\u2019s why it\u2019s really important to be passionate about your mission, passionate about your products. Because you do have to sacrifice a lot on the other side.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Dawes admits she has difficulty stepping away from the grind, she still makes time for the things that keep her sane.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to choose what\u2019s the most important thing in that moment. I don\u2019t think as an entrepreneur\u2014at least for me\u2014I\u2019ve never really, truly, been able to shut off completely,\u201d Dawes says. \u201cBut I also make time to have family dinner almost every night. There were things that were priorities to me, and I still make them priorities, like going out for a walk every day or exercising.\u201d<\/p>\n

The entrepreneur also loves hitting the beach, reading, and cooking\u2014and despite it feeling like a chore to many, Dawes really enjoys going to the grocery store. She calls it her \u201chobby\u201d: observing what new products are stocked on shelves, and what items shoppers are gravitating towards. It\u2019s gratifying to witness people pick up a bag of Late July or a case of Nixie drinks to bring home to their families, something she feels immensely grateful for. While getting her brands into those grocery aisles has been no easy feat, it\u2019s all been worth it in the end. Dawes says passion is what eases the weight of her work-life balance.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes when I wake up in the morning like, \u2018I can\u2019t even believe I\u2019m this lucky that I get to do this job,\u2019\u201d Dawes says. \u201cAnd because I feel that way, it doesn\u2019t feel like working. I\u2019m getting to do something fun all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Founders can find it hard to step away from work when their company rests on their shoulders. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152639,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[138,627,336,111,139,101150,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-152638","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entrepreneurship","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-entrepreneurs","10":"tag-entrepreneurship","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nicole-bernard-dawes","14":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}