ParentSounds 06: Miganoush Magarian
The CEO and co-founder of TeachSurfing.org talks about what it's like to run a social impact business before and after parenthood.
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For this edition of ParentSounds, we connected with Miganoush Magarian, a social entrepreneur based in Hamburg, Germany. Migan (as she is known to many) co-founded TeachSurfing.org back in 2015, and currently serves as the CEO. Migan is also the mother of two young boys, ages 5 and 1, and she shared her unique perspective on running a social enterprise both before and after the shift in energy, time and focus that goes along with having a young family.
Since the launch of ParentSounds we’ve been eager to cover the topic of parent entrepreneurship. Although it might have a different output, starting a business is as much a form of creative expression as any of the more traditional arts. Like all artistic masterpieces, all businesses begin with a creative idea - and then become similarly intertwined with the identity of their owners.
Having left a comfortable corporate job to start TeachSurfing back in the before time prior to having kids, Migan can speak to this topic better than most. It was a lot of fun listening to her perspective on project management, getting things done with a baby in the house, and how she makes the most of those precious hours when the kids are in day care. It was particularly interesting to hear how her approach to being a parent entrepreneur changed between her first and second child.
We’ll leave the intro right there for this week and jump straight into our interview with Migan. You can listen to the full interview here (on the new ParentSounds podcast!), or scroll down and read a lightly edited text version of our conversation as per usual.
Editor’s note - we’re in the process of investing in some better call recording technology here at ParentSounds, and unfortunately Migan’s and my conversation could only be recorded this time over Zoom. The process of learning to record and edit podcasts continues to be a fun creative process of its own, but sometimes it also means long hours in Audacity trying to marginally improve sound quality that just isn’t going to not sound like it’s from a recorded video meeting.
My hope is that being transparent about this topic is better than waiting to be perfect; that creating and releasing interesting and continuously improving content is better than hiding everything from the world until ParentSounds has its own professional production studio. So enjoy that underground podcast sound for now - and please know that we’re working all the time over here to keep improving what we put out into the world. It’s a lot more fulfilling this way, and a lot more fun.
Keep scrolling to read this week’s interview with Miganoush Magarian!
ParentSounds: Tell us a bit more about who you are and what kind of creative work you do.
Miganoush Magarian: Sure - I'm Migan, and I’m co-founder and CEO of TeachSurfing.org. It's a platform that enables you to share your knowledge with communities worldwide. We also recently launched our new software business line called goodmatch.cloud, which is a matching platform enabling organizations to create and scale knowledge sharing among their employees or members. So, um, that's who I am! Oh and my background is also in software engineering. I worked with big software companies before starting TeachSurfing.
PS: You’ve been a social entrepreneur for a long time - both before and after having kids. Can you talk about what this was like for you before and then after becoming a parent? How has your approach to your work changed or not changed?
MM: Very good question. The time that I got pregnant with my first son, who is now five years old, the first thing I did was look for role models. People like me, women like me who want to have a career and have success in their career, and they also want to have a family life. It also depends on your personality, you know, what kind of personality you are, and you should find the role models matching to your personality. So I try to find people like me, role models, and I read, uh, Sheryl Sandberg's book Lean In. And she kind of encouraged me that it is possible to be a parent and also have a huge career achievement, like she did. So it was a great motivation for me. I said, okay, that is possible. So how we are going to implement this.
Before the children, with business and work I was the owner of my time. I could work and stop work whenever I wanted, and I could rest completely over the weekend and again be a workaholic during the week. But being a parent I needed to be more efficient with planning my energy and work. It was important to know like, I have six hours in a day that I'm dedicating for TeachSurfing and I should make the best out of it. So it was a change of style, change of working style that I try to be more efficient, try to be more focused and plan that six hours very carefully. Where am I investing my energy? That was a big change.
There is also another big part, where I could test to different approaches to working and being a parent, because I have two sons. Levon as I mentioned is now five, and Minas the small one is one-and-a-half years old. The first time after having a child, when I was in maternity leave I still was quite involved in work. I wanted to be involved in the strategic part, not completely in execution, but at least being involved. I believe that the parents should not hide their children if they're doing business. So I would stay involved and from early on I would go to the office, go to business meetings with him in the baby wrap.
So it was another round of training for me to try to find a pattern, when is my son sleeping? I would plan my important meetings in that time. And of course, I have to say it was not a hundred percent success because I had business meetings that my poor baby son wasn't collaborating. He was bored, he was a little bit loud. So that approach was not really easy.
My second approach with my second son was I wanted to have a clear separation between being a parent and doing business or work. So I did it differently the second time. And I have never taken Minas to business meetings, unless it was an online call and he was sleeping. I try to make a separation between times I'm working or being available for my team, and times that I'm being a parent. It is easy to say to yourself that when your child is sleeping, your mind should be on business. But you have to be aware about what you do when he isn't.
PS: Has having kids changed the way you think about TeachSurfing, your original “business baby”?
MM: I'm so happy you say business baby, because if I would call TeachSuring and Good Match business babies, I think people would say like “oh my God, you just think the baby is another project.” But let me tell you, it is like that! For me, everything in life is a project. TeachSurfing was my first big project, then having my first son, I need to look at my project plan and see how it's matching. How can I have the second project running in parallel? So I'm relieved that you said the same word. It's a baby or first project. It is like that.
And how do kids change the way I think about it? Well, I think there are two aspects. One is that it's important to know if you're running a business that you have business partners who are supportive during that time. And you only can experience that when it really gets to action. I was happy to have Greta Hohl, who you know also very well, as a business partner who jumped in during the time when I was in maternity to not only deliver you know, her work, but basically double work to fill in also my shoes and what I had to deliver.
The other aspect maybe I think I already indicated was that before, TeachSurfing was my whole life. Enjoying other things of course on the weekends, in the evenings, but the rest was TeachSurfing. But what changed with kids is that I realized I need to balance not only my time but also my energy. It's important. We say it's maybe six hours of time to work during the day if you’re lucky, but actually kids suck a lot of energy from parents! So it's not just the time, but also to make sure you have energy for your business and also energy for your kids, and you don't waste in any of these areas. So a lot of it comes back to planning, as we discussed before.
But we should also be careful! Children have the highest priority. But our interests and what we like to do, personal development and stuff, it's also something that we should not think we have to abandon. I see many parents, they sacrifice a lot of things because they say, that's my life priority now. Now it’s the kids and I cannot do anything else. But that's also an extreme.
PS: Tell us more about what it's like for you from a practical perspective to run a business while also having two young kids at home.
MM: Once again it's about balancing your energy and time. This privilege of even having six hours a day is maybe for some parents not so easy to have, especially in the first year. For the last year after Minas was born for example, I didn't have that six hours. So you basically plan your individual or your professional life around the baby's schedule for that first year.
Now during the second year thanks to Kindergarten here in Germany, it’s like whew, I can work during the day! That's an amazing privilege. You have some routine, which makes you more of a normal working human again. But I think you have to always find a source of motivation because you get tired and you get lack of sleep, and there should be something that keeps you on the track so that you know, you don't freak out in one way or another. For me it’s always important to have role models where I can say well, I'm not the first person and it happens, and you know, next year will be better.
But I think there’s also the very simple needs of being a human. Because when you become a parent, it's even more important that you have enough sleep. From my practical experience, lack of sleep makes me like, an insane person. And I have to always remind myself like “okay, Migan, you have lack of sleep, so behave, be careful what you're doing now.” So I think that’s the most important rule. Make sure to get enough sleep!
PS: How do you think about the importance of developing yourself personally while also living your double mama life?
MM: I don't want to say there is one “right” way to do it, because people have different perspectives, different lifestyles, different experiences also as a child, which they also reflect when they become a parent. Like they look at their parents and how they were, and, you know, so I don't wanna say what’s the best way.
But I would just say, you know, there are people who fully want to concentrate on kids, and that's totally fine and respectful and that's great, but there are people like you and me who cannot shut down the other part, which is about personal interest and personal or career development. I cannot quite shut that down. So I really need this balance that I'm creating impact or I'm learning something. I need to be happy on a personal development level in order to project that happiness and motivation to my children.
Another important aspect as I said is that it depends how you grow up. I grew up with two working parents and you know, they were just inspiring me. Continuing to learn, travel, do this and that. So they played that role for me. And that's why I myself was motivated to do what I’ve done – born in Iran, being Armenian, traveled to Sweden to continue my education, and traveled now to Germany and I’m here.
That all came from the encouragement of my family. Not only with words, but also being the role models and doing the same kinds of things. So I want to be also that role model for my sons that they look up and say, yeah, we had a great mom that loved us, did a lot of things for us, but she also did great things for the world. And I want them to see the role of women in that picture when they have a future partner, so that they will hopefully enable their partner to also do the same kinds of things.
PS: Last question - in what ways do you think becoming a parent has contributed to your entrepreneurial interests over the past few years?
MM: Well I think usually people say that when you want to become a parent or build a family, then the safer choice is to be an employee, a normal employee of a company. And let me be honest, it's hard work to be a parent and start a new business or own a business. But if being an employee does not make you happy, then you have no other choice.
I didn't want to be employed. I have been in big software companies, a very comfortable employment and payment. I didn't want that. So I decided that I am not going back to that setup just because I'm a parent, you know?
One thing that can speak for a safe job is if you have a financial need and then you say, “ok I do this just because I need the money.” If that's the case then I would say, yeah, you know, you have to cut your personal interest. Luckily I have not been in that situation since I started TeachSurfing. But other than that, I didn’t give it a second thought. For me, that's how I am and how I want to be. Life can be tough. You cannot just have everything with no work. Sometimes you have to accept it's challenging and you go for it.
To hear our full conversation with Migan, listen to the podcast episode here:
If you want to support Migan, you can do so via by following TeachSurfing on Instagram - or better yet, by becoming a member or host organization of TeachSurfing! You can find TeachSurfing on Instagram here, and you can find membership details on the TeachSurfing website.
Before we close, I wanted to highlight one other interesting, thought-provoking link which I enjoyed recently. We’re back to the Substack community this week:
Sunday Feature: Retracing Anthony Bourdain’s Ukraine Visit With No Reservations (The Counteroffensive with Tim Mak). American journalist Tim Mak’s newsletter describes itself as “a Kyiv-based publication that uses human interest stories to relay the news of the war in Ukraine”, and this article definitely fits that description. The basic hook is a visit that Anthony Bourdain made to Kyiv 12 years ago as part of his hit show ‘No Reservations’, and how the city and country portrayed in Bourdain’s culinary snapshot have changed since then. As someone who always appreciated Anthony Bourdain’s unique ability to tell broader stories through the common experience of mealtime, this was a really interesting look at the evolution of Ukrainian identity and cultural independence over the last decade - an evolution accelerated by a shameful and unnecessary invasion that Bourdain did not live to see. Mak’s newsletter is one of the best sources of reporting around about the war and the everyday humans caught up in it. Stories like this are one of the reasons why.
That's all for this time. We’ll wrap it up again with some more parent zen:
Thanks for reading and see you again next time!