What Becoming a Dad Taught Me About Care

I never expected becoming a dad would lead me to starting a skincare company.

Before Zoe was born, I knew very little about children's skin. If you'd told me a few years ago that I'd be reading about skin barriers, microbiomes and formulation ingredients, I probably wouldn't have believed you.

But that's what happens when you become a parent.

You start paying attention to things you never thought you'd need to know about.

And when something doesn't seem right, you start looking for answers.

It started with Zoe

Like a lot of parents, we noticed that Zoe's skin could be sensitive and dry.

We tried different products. Some worked better than others. Some didn't seem to make much difference at all.

And the more we looked into it, the more questions we had.

What actually makes a product suitable for sensitive skin?

Why do some products leave skin feeling dry after you've used them?

What's the role of the skin barrier?

And what exactly is the skin microbiome?

Alicia probably went further down that rabbit hole than I did initially. Her background and experience meant she naturally approached it from a formulation and product perspective.

I approached it more from the other side.

Does this actually make sense? Would I use it on Zoe? And would I use it on the rest of our family?

Those questions became pretty important.

Alicia has written more about her side of that journey in Being a Mum, Building Zojee, and Everything In Between, and it's probably the best explanation of how our experience with Zoe eventually led us to Zojee.

So we decided to build it

At some point, we stopped asking whether we could find something that worked and started asking whether we could make something ourselves.

That turned out to be a much bigger undertaking than we expected.

There was the formulation.

Then testing.

Then packaging.

Then manufacturing.

Then figuring out how to actually get the products into people's hands.

And that's before you get into everything else that comes with starting a business.

There were plenty of moments where I wondered why we'd decided to do this.

But we kept coming back to the same thing.

We wanted to make skincare that we were comfortable using on our own family.

We wanted it to be simple.

We wanted it to be suitable for the whole family.

And we wanted to take a more thoughtful approach to sensitive skin.

The more we learned about the skin barrier and the skin microbiome, the more those principles shaped the products we were developing.

What we ended up making

Today, Zojee really comes down to two everyday products.

Our Head-to-Toe Wash is a gentle cleanser designed for the whole family. It cleans without unnecessarily stripping the skin's natural moisture.

Our I-Got-You Cream is designed to replenish moisture and support the skin barrier, with ingredients including ceramides, niacinamide and postbiotic Lactobacillus ferment filtrate.

They're not complicated products.

That was intentional.

We've never wanted Zojee to be about having a ten-step skincare routine.

For us, it's about having a couple of products you can reach for every day and know why you're using them.

Building a business while being a Dad

This has probably been one of the more unexpected parts of the whole experience.

Building Zojee while raising Zoe isn't something you can neatly separate into "work" and "family".

Sometimes work has to wait.

Sometimes family has to wait.

And sometimes you're trying to do both at once, which generally means neither gets done particularly well.

There have been plenty of late nights and plenty of things that haven't gone according to plan.

Launching a physical product business is hard enough without doing it around family life.

But there have also been some pretty good moments.

Seeing the first finished products.

Getting our first orders.

Seeing people outside our family actually choose to buy something we created.

And hearing from parents who have tried Zojee and come back to tell us what they think.

Those are the moments that remind you why you started.

We've shared a little more about what those first days were actually like in Launch Week: The Truth Behind Launching Zojee.

What being a Dad has taught me

I don't think becoming a dad has made me suddenly understand everything about parenting.

Quite the opposite.

If anything, it's made me realise how little I know.

But I have become much better at paying attention.

You notice the things that matter to your child.

You learn what works and what doesn't.

You ask more questions.

You change your mind when you find better information.

And you realise that sometimes the best thing you can do is simply make things a little easier.

That's probably what I like most about what we've created with Zojee.

It's something practical that came from our experience as a family.

We didn't set out to create a skincare brand because we thought the market needed another one.

We created it because we wanted something we were comfortable using on our own family.

And we're still learning.

Father's Day

Father's Day isn't something I've ever been particularly fussed about.

I don't need much in the way of presents, and I'm not particularly good at making a big deal out of things.

But having Zoe has definitely changed the way I think about it.

I'm proud to be her Dad.

And I'm proud of what Alicia and I have built together.

Not just Zojee, but our family.

The business is still a work in progress. Parenting definitely is too.

But I think that's probably the point.

You keep learning.

You keep adjusting.

You keep trying to do things a little better than you did yesterday.

And hopefully, somewhere along the way, you're doing a few things right.

Happy Father's Day to all the dads, stepdads, grandads and father figures out there.

Jon