This is an installment of the ongoing “Fatherpreneurship Series”, which is defined here.

When my son was about 2 years old, I repeated an experiment that my grad-school economics teacher told me about. I offered my 2 year old some candy. Then I gave him a choice. If he chose not to have candy that day, I would give him two candies the next day. He went with getting the candy right away. I upped the offer: three candies. This went on to about 6 candies when he started to think about it seriously. I quickly cut off the experiment then (Mom would have killed me) and we had a nice candy break.

As a father, a real scenario of choice is the act of disciplining a child and suffering short-term grief and trauma with the hope that this is a good long-term life lesson. This can be a very grueling experience and the easy path (giving the kid what they want) is sooooo tempting.

Business is the same way; startups especially so. The pressure to move quickly and keep moving “up and to the right” is very strong. Getting momentum and KEEPING momentum feels paramount above everything. So when a decision to take a short-term hit for a long-term gain comes up, the decision is always harder than it should be. What looks so sensible on paper feels so counterintuitive to an entrepreneur.

But take that deep breath and be like a responsible dad: live with the temporary trauma and headache of a sobbing, pouting, screaming kid so you can have a well-balanced child in the long run.

So what’s the chart? That’s our monthly unique visitors: one of the key currencies for consumer Internet startups. The pressure to grow “uniques” is very strong. Recently at Boxxet, we decided to make some big changes to our site (improved algorithms, new page link styles, moving out certain types of content) to make it stronger and healthier for the long term. But there would be a big short-term hit.

One of the benefits of being experienced entrepreneurs was that we knew we had to do it. So we took a deep breath and took the hit. And so far, we are seeing the gains. Whew.