[00:00:03] Speaker A: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Daddy o podcast. I'm your host, Rob Burnett. And I'm here with my co host.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: I'm Brad Bickerton.
[00:00:10] Speaker A: And today on the pod, we're going to be talking about life updates, baby college, some first eye tracking, learning the updates from Arthur and Theo, our babies. Then after the break, we're going to come back and talk about returning to work after parental leave. I've just done this now, and Brad had that experience a couple of months ago. And then stay tuned to the end of the pod to hear our dad wins and fails for the week. So, Brad, how's your week going? How's Theo? How's life as a dad? How's life as a CEO?
[00:00:40] Speaker B: Yeah, I think the phrase that we were starting to use this week was survive the day. And some of it's just the cumulative fatigue. And the other phrase that I just really like to implant on this pod from Sarah Beth. And I never underestimate how much your conversations will be dominated by the topic of sleep. And so we had really great sleep for about five straight days, and we didn't trust it, we didn't get used to it. But we were hopeful those days are gone.
Theo has found new patterns, found new ways, and so that's kind of what's going on around here. I am trying my best to chop wood, carry water, but also dealing with some stomach issues myself. So it's all this back and forth on the CEO front, things are pretty good. The market's coming back, and it's really interesting just to see how people are looking for help and advice. And it just really feels like we're back into a moment of momentum. And because I've been around and a good citizen for a while, I'm kind of the first on people's call list. So that feels really encouraging and good, not just from finances, but also from the. I know what I'm doing, and I'm worth it. So, mixed bag over here at the Bickerton household, and we're super happy about all of it, and not all of it's easy. But I want to put it back to you, Rob, because I think a lot of this podcast is going to be about you and what it is like. Week two, back to work. But please give us an update. What's going on?
[00:02:10] Speaker A: Yeah, so it's Monday on my second week back to work. It's been an exciting and hard week and a half on the parenting front. So I think I've always tried to say on this podcast that we have as you say it, a regular hard baby. Regular hard.
He's relatively agreeable. Things are going relatively well. And I think that that's been a blessing, and it's been amazing.
But as much as I tried to stay grounded about it, I think I was starting to get cocky. And I'm getting into the grind. It's getting harder, and I want to fully admit that it's now fully in grind mode. It's like nothing in particular is any harder. He's getting a little fussier, a little harder here and there. He's getting heavier. All these things. Nothing too bad. But it's been now five weeks coming on, six weeks in a row where we have not had a single full night of sleep. And I know for most parents, we've got it better than most parents. But still, for me, it's getting into that grind. It's getting tiring. It's like, oh, my God, can someone just come hold him for two?
Um. I'd like to think I didn't get too cocky, but I'm definitely in the tough moments now where, especially when you add work back into it, we're tired, and that's tough.
[00:03:41] Speaker B: It's this beautiful thing. When Theo was home and everything. He's not going anywhere. We've got him for life. Oh, goodness. What's he going to be like when he's 20? And then when you hit for us, it was a couple more months past where you're at now, it's like this job chore. I don't want to call it chore, but sometimes it feels like a chore. It's not going anywhere, and you're not used to it. The metaphor that I made, I remember my very first job was at Baskin Robbins. Doesn't matter what it is. It was my first time ever on my feet all day. I just never had done that before outside of hiking, whatever, 15. But I just remember it was like, you got to get used to being on your feet all day, and that takes a little bit of time, and it takes a little bit of time to get used to. All right, the dishes are cooking, and what we're eating, and the dishes is now officially chaos because it's happening around the chaos of mom and baby. And I always am in charge of the dishes every single night. Bachelor Brad was in charge of the dishes once a week, and now it's every day, every day, every day. And it's not going to become beautiful in its way, but also in the transition of getting used to being on your feet all it's. It's a grind.
[00:04:56] Speaker A: Yeah. So I'm feeling that grind. But on the fun stuff, Arthur's just starting to talk about milestones, just starting to kind of track, like, very jerkily. But if I put my head over to the left, his head, he'll make his way over there, and then I can move it to the right, and his head will make its way over there. So we're starting to just get the first inklings of him following us and recognizing us and being bright eyed, which is awesome.
[00:05:21] Speaker B: And he smiles, yet smiles. When he sees your face.
[00:05:24] Speaker A: There's like, smile adjacent movements on his face. I love that. It's hard to tell if they're like a smile or an accidental twitch of the muscles. So we're not quite there yet, but he's, like, practicing for it.
The only other anecdote, and I'm going to place it here in the podcast, because I just think it's interesting, is so there's all kinds of baby groups here in Oxford, and there's one called baby college, which I think is so appropriate for university town of Oxford. Oh, yes, very. And it's 45 minutes class. It's a cute little class where about ten parents are there, a little bit of interaction with the baby. So we went for the first time this morning, and a couple of things. One is, Arthur was too young for it. I'm glad we went anyway. But he's five weeks old. Most of the other babies were three or four months old. So it was really funny seeing the change and the difference.
And then relevant to this podcast, I think there were probably about ten kids there. I was the only dad.
Now, this was at noon on a Monday, and most dads have probably gone back to work by the time their kids are three months old. And Arthur is only five weeks old. And I work in the UK, so I work later hours, blah, blah, blah. But I tell you what, I felt really.
[00:06:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:43] Speaker A: Like, I turned to Laura, my wife, and I was like, am I allowed to be here? Is this a women's only group? And she's like, no, no, you can be here, it's fine. And then I decided to embrace it and just have a good time.
But I tell you what, I felt really out of place.
And that was an interesting experience as.
[00:07:02] Speaker B: A dad, because, you know, it's not fake. You are being watched differently, right? Nine moms there, ten moms with Laura there are all looking at each other the same, and they're all looking at you different and not necessarily bad.
[00:07:17] Speaker A: No, they were very nice to me, but I felt bad. I was like, oh, am I invading on a space that I shouldn't be in? Should I let? They did a little thing, kind of like our dad wins and fails. They did a little check in at the beginning of class, like how mom's doing. What? Tell us something good and bad. And the instructor skipped over me and went right to Laura. They didn't have both of us do it, they just had Laura do it. I thought that was interesting. And the only reason I bring it up is that it just so clearly showed me the trap that everyone is setting for us, which is Laura gets a year off. I took a month.
All of the programming is geared towards mom because society gives, especially here, gives mom more leave. Moms tend to be more involved, men tend to make more money, and therefore they tend to be the ones who go back to work. All of these structures are in place to make mom the primary caregiver. Even if you take away breastfeeding, mom is still the primary caregiver.
[00:08:16] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:08:17] Speaker A: And it sets us up. Like two of those moms in that group said, oh, yeah, we're in this phase where dad won't do. Mom has to put baby to bed. Dad just can't get it done. And I was sitting there kind of like, oh, man, I don't know if I'm going to be able to avoid that fate. And maybe that's just a part of a child growing up as they get attached to their mom. But it really made me sit there and go, man, I'm endeavoring to do something that is very difficult, which is be as engaged with my child as I can be and be a full time, high performing worker. And I'm looking at these groups and no one else is doing it. And so I guess, again, to try to wrap up some long winded thoughts, one is, it felt good to kind of take the space and be involved and not be embarrassed and play with my kid and sing the little sing alongs and things like that, because you know what? That's what I should be doing. And I'm sure all of those moms would love to have their partners there if their partners could, had the time, were able to get off work, things like that. But it also put into kind of starkest contrast for me so far in my fatherhood journey that the structures of life are going to make Laura the primary caregiver. So it's going to put strain on our relationship, and it's going to affect how I can best be a dad. And I think that's going to be something I'm going to have to grapple with going forward.
[00:09:44] Speaker B: And I love that, what you're talking about, because so many times, even you and I have touched on this in the pod, but other people talk about it, too, that we want the structures to be different, and maybe you and I can be agents of change to that in our individual capacities. But also, there's a lot coming at us, too, that's hard for us to fight. And I remember I got some shame from a founder CEO the other day because I said, I'm not going to go do this because I'm busy and I'm a young dad. And he goes, I started blah, blah, blah, big boulder thing when my kids were in diapers. And I just looked at him and I said, and that's great. I'm proud of you. That was your journey. I can't.
But just the key already. And he's a nice guy. He's a great guy. He'll be on this pod someday. He just had that knee jerk reaction. Well, get over it, man. We've all had kids. We all have to do business stuff. And I said, no, I can't do both. And that's a good, heartfelt, nice guy still pushing me into a different version.
Kind of losing the thread there, because I didn't expect you to say this, and I'm so thankful that you are. And for me, it's something that Sarah Beth and I are working on, is his preference for mom, for everything, including I can be doing everything. Everything's good. She just walks in the room. He instantly goes towards her and cries when he doesn't get her. It's just now wired for him, and we would love to unwire it, but he's eight months old. How much wiring are we doing, and how much do you want to just kind of terrorize him to not get what he wants? But when she's not around, I'm capable.
And so that's kind of something we're dancing on with this, is that the mom preference is really material and strong, and that's lovely, but I don't want to say gets in the way of my time with him, but it's not a mutual overlap. It's not a 50 50, it's a 100% or other.
And the only other place that I have reference to that is we do do this music class, and the only time I can go to this music class is if a client cancels.
But I make a real effort that when clients can, and my clients ceos, they move around stuff 60% of the time. Whenever they do, I make every effort to be there and I have never seen another dad there. And it's 11:00 on Wednesdays.
I guess maybe the difference for me is I don't feel different, uncomfortable being there because I feel uncomfortable most places in my life, which is a normal feeling for me.
[00:12:14] Speaker A: And I usually pride myself on being pretty good at just walking in any room. It was less about me feeling uncomfortable and more just. It felt like a different space that wasn't for me and it really isn't designed for me. And that's fine. Other where to wrap this up a little bit. I'm fine if Arthur grows up and decides to have a preference for mom, kind of, because that's just a natural part of growing up as a child. That's just. It just pains me to think that it's going to happen by default because the whole world is geared towards mom having more time with him and therefore mom having to be the primary caregiver and knowing all the little tips and tricks and then ending up in this place where it's a self fulfilling prophecy where she has to be the primary caregiver. Caregiver. Because everything set her up to. And because I know Laura's got a great career and she doesn't want to only be the primary caregiver. She's a great mom, but she wants to be able to pass them off to me. So it's going to be something that'll be interesting to keep an eye on as we go forward.
[00:13:14] Speaker B: I'd love to see how much this storyline, and this is something I like about doing this podcast with you is from baby to now. You've noticed that you went know we've got this to euphoria, to ego, to breaking of the ego, to maybe I had too much ego. We got to see that story arc in the last five episodes for sure. We'll get to see this story arc in the next five years that maybe this Primary Caregiving, it will for sure morph and change. And also five years from now, probably not breastfeeding.
And do you have more kids? Is Arthur Solo? Are you in AmErica? Have you had a big exit and you decided to work on skiing for the next 35 years? Whatever.
And so it's interesting that you're analyzing this as though it's a pattern that is not destined but it's likely to go one direction, but we have yet to influence it, which is something you can do. And yet to see how the things we don't control, influence it. And that's, I guess, when we check in, in a year, we'll see.
[00:14:14] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think the big part of doing this pod is being able to identify it so that we can influence it. Right. I'm saying it now because it's not inevitable. I know it now. I'm seeing it and I'm putting it out into the world. Why don't we take a quick break, and when we come back, we're going to talk about coming back to work after parental leave.
[00:14:30] Speaker B: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the pod. And today we are wrapping up season one. We decided when we started this to record six episodes and see if we liked it and send it to friends and family. And then along the way, we've been doing a lot of stuff behind the scenes because we enjoy doing this. This is a passion project for both of us and something that we find ourselves gravitating towards every week. Season two is going to have a lot of changes, and we'll have a little intro about season two at another time. But I want to just tell you what the arc of season one is going to become. And today is the end. The arc is from us starting this when Theo is about six months and Rob and Laura were six months into pregnancy, through now, Rob's first week back at work, we think that's a nice story arc as he's getting ready to go away from work, ready to come into fatherhood, having fatherhood and then returning to work. So this block is going to be all about, what is it like now? Rob is a week and a half into work. What's changed? What's the same? How things are going. And we really thought it would be a good meat of the podcast for the end of season one. And here we are. Rob, I am going to ask you your first question, which was, what was week 1 hour one like at work?
[00:15:39] Speaker A: Week 1 hour one was opening my inbox and seeing the 500 and some OD emails that I had to sift through. So that was fun. Good news is about 400 of them were things I could easily archive.
And so I ended up with about 100 to 120, basically tasks on my plate, and I've been slowly but surely getting through them. I would say I'm a week in now, and I'd say I'm over halfway done with all those tasks.
[00:16:13] Speaker B: Wow. Okay. And does it kind of feel like, hey, I haven't exercised in a little while, took a break, and then now I'm going back and my legs are feeling good and back into the swing of things? Or do you kind of feel like, whoa, this feels different because I'm tired and I've got baby at home. And, hey, if this company fails because I mess up as a CEO, Arthur's life is off the rails. What does it feel like being in the chair after a week?
[00:16:40] Speaker A: Yeah. So luckily, I don't feel.
We talked about it in one of our upcoming interviews. Sneak peek. I don't feel massive kind of financial family pressure because of a combination of. Laura, while off on leave, has a very stable job as a doctor in the UK, which is not the same as being a doctor in the US monetarily, but it's a very steady income.
We live a very lean life and we save a lot of money. So I don't feel where a lot of entrepreneurs would of constant fear of Gus going out of business. It'd be very bad, but it would not be my son's on the street, so I'm good on that front.
The biggest, I think surprise or the biggest change is that I felt very good coming back into it. I can't spend those small hours.
I'd often spend some time in the morning just thinking about stuff, working on stuff, some time in the evening, thinking about stuff, working on stuff, and that's all gone. I haven't had any chance to think about that. And I need to see if I can get that back or figure out a way to do that, because so much know and, Brad, you and I talk about this. So much of my work is sitting and thinking and just trying, taking some time away from everybody. And I haven't had that in a week. It's only been a week, but I haven't had that. And then the thing I think is nice is that it's a little bit of a break. I often find a lot of my work is a combo of deep thinking, day to day work, and then things I call, like, medium projects, like projects that could take anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of months. Nothing huge, but things that take up time and energy and are marginally important, but not crazy. I basically have none of those on my plate right now, and that's awesome. I'm starting to put them on, but it gave me a week to kind of not have those on my plate. And now I'm starting to think about coming back to work after a month with a fresh perspective. There's a couple of initiatives I want to take that I've been able to somewhat think about. I wish I had more time to think about them. But I've got some fresh perspective, having stepped away, that I now know kind of some directions I want to take with the team as I go forward.
[00:18:53] Speaker B: So the framework I use for that one is run, build, grow. And there's things you do as a CEO where you're running the business, and some of them should be on your task, some of them shouldn't. On your task list, some of them shouldn't.
[00:19:04] Speaker A: Right.
[00:19:04] Speaker B: Some of them, if you're bigger, whatever, the CFO starts doing the co. Okay. But you just got to run this company. Sometimes you got to show up and kiss the ring to the board or for you, you've got to file reports and your name has to be signed on them.
[00:19:17] Speaker A: Great.
[00:19:18] Speaker B: The build part is this medium thing, and it's the hardest because you know that you can't hit the next growth if you don't build the foundations and build the structures. And they're kind of, not always everyone's up these medium term projects, just kind of tightening the screws or building the next version of the platform. And I love that you didn't have them for a week, but I'm just getting through the framework here, and then the last thing is grow. And that's sometimes I also call pathfinding, and that's the real deep think.
What is the positioning of the market compared to the competitors? What is the pricing or legal landscape? Or what is the untapped blue ocean strategy that it's time to tap? That stuff, I'm sure is a long way off for you. Week one.
[00:20:05] Speaker A: Yeah. And a lot of what I've been thinking about, too, is internal stuff, like things I want to get better at. I want to get better at running meetings. I run a virtual team, and being away for a bit makes me kind of understand even better the gaps in communication. So I've been spending a lot of time thinking about that, and how do I get the team communicating better? How do I get us more engaged with each other while working remotely? So that's been an interesting one to kind of noodle on. And I'm hoping I get some free time or not free time, but I'm hoping I get some kind of breathing room to think about some of that stuff.
[00:20:39] Speaker B: Yeah. And so that leads to my next question, because I talk often about taking think weeks or longer vacations for ceos of growing companies. And one of the reasons to do that is to stress test the team, see what they did when you were gone and what they did at maybe not as good of a level as you would have done, but good enough that it's now a delegatable task to get better at versus what did they fail at doing, which is also an experiment to say, hey, they were incapable of achieving this. Either I need to hold it for forever or they need to level up before I can hand it off. So from a stress test, the team so after your inbox is out and you looked at how your team performed while you were gone, did you learn anything big?
What happened there?
[00:21:23] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a really good question and I'll try to keep it as anonymous enough. I'm not sure if my team will ever listen, but I'll try to keep it vague enough that no one can pick themselves out. I think overall very happy. I think the team did really well.
It wasn't rock star, it wasn't knock it out of the park. I didn't come back with 50 new clients and they set a new sales record.
But steady as she goes, which is great, right? I think where I was pleasantly surprised is I delegated, basically, not to get too deep into our corporate structure, but I'm the CEO of a subsidiary and I delegated my managers to work on their quarterly metrics, have them talk to the CEO of our parent company. So they skipped me and worked with him on that. And I think that went really well. They created some good metrics. The CEO of our parent company got some insight into the people kind of below me, which is great, how the sausage is made. Got to hear those people think, got to walk them through. And that was an initiative that only really started in the last couple of days before I went out and I was hoping to get it done basically the day Laura went into labor. So I didn't get a chance to kind of set an email and set expectations. And I think that went really well. I still needed to dig into all the metrics they put together and all their goals, but I was pleasantly surprised that that went better than I expected. There's real goals, there's stuff set out for the whole team. I think where I a little disappointed and where I'm seeing my own failures is there were a couple of initiatives where I was hoping people would really just take up the reins and kind of get shit done. And that didn't really happen. And I think that's a combo of on me and it's first and foremost, it starts with me. I think I too often as a CEO, just fix the big things and I don't make people go fix it. And I think I do. My team a disservice by basically holding their hand too much. And I think I'm going to learn that for fatherhood as well. By the way, I want to help Arthur learn how to fix his own problems as opposed to taking up the big stuff and doing it myself. And most of that's on me. But also, I need to have a conversation with some members of my team because they're managers. I need them to kind of take up the slack and get shit done and make some decisions. And if I send an email to three people about this needs to get done, and nothing gets done, I need to talk to all three of them and say, okay, I didn't leave any one of you in charge, but I expected someone here to pick up the reins and get it done, and it didn't get done. And that's post mortem there.
[00:24:00] Speaker B: That's the beautiful thing about the stress testing, is you wouldn't have measured that before because you would have just done it. And you do it so quickly that you overwrite how hard it is for someone else to do it or how hard it is for you to delegate it because it's so easy for you to accomplish. So then what ends up happening, and this happens with a lot of my ceos, is they end up having 30, 40, 50% of their time in these because it's too hard to delegate and they're not willing to try, and it's easy for them to do, but then they're missing 30, 40, 50% of their time pathfinding, which is the most valuable thing they can do for the company. And the only way to do this is to test it like you did. And very frequently, the thing that they test that doesn't work is something that requires executive function or critical thinking. It wasn't really my job. And I can definitely hide. I, as the employee who stayed, I can definitely hide because CEO was gone. I was busy because when CEO is gone, I'm more busy.
But the point was, yeah, but if you want this organization to go forward, you want to get promotions, you want to get more stock options, showing when the CEO is gone that you take something on and you did your best with it.
And even if you fail is way better than, well, I was busy, you were gone. And this wasn't really my job. It was kind of in between my job and Shannon and Frank's job.
Incredibly common stress test result.
And you can be disappointed if you want. I am very excited for you because you have the data. You now know where they fail the stress test. That's great. Now let's say, well, what's the difference between failure and success?
[00:25:36] Speaker A: Yeah, you're right. Now I get to take it and run with it, and I get to talk people through it. And it's something I knew, but it's something that now it's been shown to me, and I do try to treat my employees. I say, listen, I want all of you to learn enough here that you can go on and run your own show someday if you want to, or go get the biggest job you could ever want. I try to try to give them that mindset, and some of them take it on, and some of them don't as much. And that's where it can be frustrating, because you're like, I'm trying so hard to empower you, and I just want you to take the reins and run with it. But it shows me, too, that I need to spend more time training and I need to figure out better ways to train.
[00:26:18] Speaker B: So I had the CEO one time, we were working on the metaphor together, and it was about 300 person company, and he'd been in charge. He took over maybe four years before. And he's saying, it's like I'm trying to get people just to take one step forward with me because then we have a little momentum, we're on the path. We can start walking miles together.
And I helped him kind of figure out, but it's like they think their neck is chained to 1000 foot stone, the 1000 pound stone, and that one step out of their comfort zone, that one step into momentum of growth. And some people are incapable. It's the same as I often say. My basketball players don't race horses, my jockeys don't play basketball. It's a capacity issue. Not that everyone doesn't have capacity for growth, but some people don't have capacity to grow into someone like what you're describing. But when I'm coaching, if I was coaching you right now, I'd say find the smallest 2% out of one person's comfort zone, measurable change in this, because what you actually discovered was having them take this on was so far beyond their comfort zone, they didn't try.
Now, you might have said, well, this isn't that hard. It's like outside of my comfort zone.
Walk a mile. Like for you, you can bike for 4 hours, that's not outside. But for someone who has never walked a mile, it was too far for them. So you try and have empathy for what is their comfort zone. What is 2% more than that? Now the beautiful thing, about 2% more than a comfort zone is usually you can get people to try it. And when they get used to being uncomfortable, they can try it frequently. If somebody's frequently outside of their comfort zone, which of course requires a lot more coaching and mentorship, but if they're frequently outside of their comfort zone, watch how quickly their comfort zone expands. So I didn't think we'd get into a framework today, but you just happen to hit one that's awesome.
[00:28:07] Speaker A: And I think that's right. And I'm trying to push, that's a good way to put it, pushing comfort zones. Because you're right. I actually just read something on that where basically, the more your time you spend out of your comfort zone, the wider expands and the more comfortable you get being uncomfortable. And that's the next step for my team, is it's hard. The last thing I'll say on this note is as a founder, not a founder. I am not a founder. I'm not going to take that mantle, at least not in this context. I've been a founder Past, founded this podcast. Yeah, I've been a founder in the past, just not in my current CEO role.
I always want to be careful not to take undue credit.
I've. One of the challenges I've always had is that when you work at a small company, for a long, long time now we're not so much anymore, but for a long time, we paid people under market because it's, hey, come join for stock, come on the mission with us, come grow something. And whenever that was happening, I always treated people a little bit more like volunteers.
They were believers, they were in it with us. And it's much more of a partnership. And I was always nicer to them. And that doesn't mean not pushing them out of their comfort zone, but I was always more letting them dictate how they wanted to work and do these things, make sure they're really passionate and really excited about what they're doing. Now I need to switch that mindset into, hey, you work, this is your job. I need you to get it done, and I need you to grow with me as part of this. So that's a transition and a framework change that I'm working on and I've been working on for a while now.
[00:29:42] Speaker B: It's a super hard one. And the stats from somebody who's there during seed funding versus somebody who's there in b funding, it's like 90% attrition rate. Now, you also have to remember that your seed funding is ten people, and your series b is 300. Right. So those ten people shrunk to just ones left.
And so some of its personality type. And you also sense, right, somebody who's willing to start with an early stage founding team, mostly for equity, doesn't like to be pushed and managed and told. Here's your job description, and I'm going to hold you to it. That's not their personality either.
So there's a lot of issues going on there.
Okay, so let's get back to final thoughts on return to work. Do you wish you'd taken more time? Other lessons in week one, because this is our last chance in season one to talk about this journey from it's coming, baby's coming, work is still going to be here. Now they're both here for the first time ever. Final thoughts?
[00:30:42] Speaker A: Great question. So one thing I'll say anecdote. So one thing I have been trying to do. So we do a stand up meeting every day. I brought Arthur to two of the four of them I was at last week, and I thought that was nice.
Even he was a little squawky and things like that, because I wanted to set the tone that I'm going to work really hard, but Arthur's part of my life, and I'm not going to hide him from everybody. And one of our other employees, who has a daughter, brought her on camera for, like, the second or third time ever that I can remember after I had done that. So I think part of it was that I had set the precedent that as the guy in charge, I was okay having my kid on camera. And I'm proud of that. And I'm hoping that that sets the tone, and I'm hoping that it sets an example for there's a lot of young people on our team, people in their 20s who aren't married, they're not in the realm of kids yet. And if it takes them ten years to have kids and there's two jobs from now, I want them to remember what this looked like. And hopefully, I want them to demand more from whoever they're working for or whatever they're doing or if they're running their own shop. I want them to offer more to their people because I want them to see this. And so I'm hoping that this little piece of the world I can affect and do a good job with.
But to answer your more specific questions, do I wish I'd taken more time?
Of course, the answer is yes. I wish I had a decade. Everyone asks, is it nice to be back. And I'm like, well, yeah, but you're taking me away from my son. No, but I love it, so it's fine. But what I will say is that this was a really good amount of time. I feel very lucky to have had it.
It's probably the appropriate so far, one week in, it feels like an appropriate amount of time. And my biggest worry and issue is I'd really like, and I've stated my intention to take more time over the course of this year.
And I'm worried that won't happen as well as I want it to, or I'm worried that I won't be able to. I'm worried I'll be able to take vacation and take a little bit more time than I would have otherwise. But it's harder a year from now to go. I am completely off the grid. Don't talk to me.
I'm not looking at my email at all for a month. So I'm sad that I can't do that. It would be nice to be at a. I've got a friend who's at a law firm where they get six months, and it's a law firm. Everything will go on as it was. There's no worry about the firm failing. This is the one moment in my life where it's like, it'd be nice to have a stable employment where no one really cares if I'm there or not because I could take more time and be more present. But that's a small price to pay for living the life that I thoroughly enjoy. So I wouldn't say I needed more time, but I'm hopeful that the time coming ahead is still as fruitful as this month has been.
[00:33:41] Speaker B: It's interesting is when we reflect back on the couple of interviews we've already gotten, the bank that people are designed for different things, and the phrase that I used, I guess I'll kind of steal it for this one. But entrepreneurship is a disease from which there's no cure. Only management techniques.
[00:33:59] Speaker A: Only management.
[00:34:00] Speaker B: Yeah. And you and I were not really well designed. It has nothing to do with the grind or the amount of work. It's just to be in a large firm that has those opportunities. And I feel it pretty strongly as well right now. I would love to have that stability in my dad's side of life and my husband's side of life and coming to grips with.
It's my preference to be out and about doing cool things, growing, maturing, and maybe someday landing in a firm. But in a very different way. Not a law firm, probably, but in any kind of firm. But accepting that about me, that this is my capacity, and my capacity is to be great at entrepreneurship and to be great at coaching and CEO, and to be great at deal structure and creativity and negotiation strategy, and not be great at driving to the same place and sitting in the same chair every day and being in a place that has great benefits. Amazing.
But they kind of crush me.
And I don't know that you feel it the same way that I do, but I do know a lot of entrepreneurs feel it that same way, that they have no choice, even though it would be nice.
Well, great.
[00:35:12] Speaker A: Rob?
Yeah, I definitely feel similar. And I think. I think to wrap up this portion, I'm really glad we did this podcast. I think this really helped me in this journey. It's been a couple of months now since we started, and what I'll say is that this journey has kind of exceeded all of my hopes.
I set out with this podcast and just with the intention in general, of being a good dad, of navigating this pretty crazy time in life between end of pregnancy and beginning of child. I wanted to navigate it as best I could for me, for my child, and for my partner. And I think we've done a pretty good job. Knock on wood. I don't want to get cocky, but it's been a good last couple of months. I think having this kind of growth mindset around being a dad has been really helpful to me. I've taken in a lot. I've learned a lot. I've been reading books, I've gone to classes. I've been doing this. That's been really helpful. So I think my overarching kind of message to anyone who's listening and looking for any kind of advice is that be a sponge right now and treat this, be intentional with this time. Because at least for me, that's been really great. And I think I can come to the end of this moment and say I'm pretty darn happy with how things went. There's not much I would change. Things have been good. Now I'm in the grind. It's only going to get harder from here. But this is the kind of acute moment in my life I wanted to get through, and I feel very good about how we've navigated both myself and our family together.
[00:36:43] Speaker B: That was beautiful and well said. I feel the same. And what's interesting being just a couple of months ahead of you in the journey is I'm so thankful for this because this is where I have time to think about what it is to be a father, both listening to you and absorbing what you have to say and then responding. And I listen to these as well. I grow out of listening to these when I'm on walks with Theo. So I'm actually a listener as well, to grow. And then as we're starting to get into the interviews that this will be a different place for me than anywhere else I could go. Whether it's I joined a dad group or was reading different books, I didn't really have a resource like this that was accessible and worked for me. So I'm super thankful that you texted me one day with this great idea and that I can't believe it. But after dad wins and fails, we're going to be wrapping up a season, and that's pretty amazing. It's wild and we have done so much. And our YouTube channel is now live. And when I first saw the YouTube channel live, it was our first episode, episode two, but it was our first episode. I said, that was so long ago.
Wow, how much have we learned and grown? And oh, my God, I have a really dead plant in the background at my old.
This is, we're in a different world. And that's a fun thing as well, is that there's already, for me, some longevity in what we've done. And that also helps me project to the future of what this is going to look like in seasons two through.
[00:38:14] Speaker A: 18, or maybe just season two will go on forever.
[00:38:18] Speaker B: Fair enough.
[00:38:18] Speaker A: But either way, well, Brad, I appreciate you. It's been awesome doing this with you. So why don't we have some fun as we wrap up the episode? So stay tuned. We're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to do our dad wins and fails for the week. We're going to keep that going. So stay tuned for that. We'll see you soon.
All right. Welcome back, Brad. Let's wrap up today with our dad wins and fails for this week. You want to kick us off?
[00:38:42] Speaker B: Love to, Robin. Nothing too amazing. But for the other dads know, there's always little things. So number one is yesterday.
We've been watching Theo work on the stairs and he's able to do one stair and then he cannot get down. And the second stair is pretty tough for him. So that's pretty dangerous spot because he's now up a foot and in a little bit and a fall could be actually harmful. So we're all kind of eyes open for that. Anyway, he was playing with me downstairs yesterday, and he heard mom, literally, I think she sneezed upstairs. She was doing something in the kitchen. And he just. All of a sudden, I want mom. And he went, and he just dominated eight stairs. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Then turned the landing, and then dominated six stairs. And the only thing that prevented him from finishing the whole job was he kind of moved his head, and he hit the wooden part of the top of the stair, and it kind of hit his head, and he went, and then he cried. But just from a dad win perspective, all I was doing was behind him. I didn't touch him once, and I let him go for it. And that was really a great win.
The second win was that mom was spending some time doing something else in the house, and I was holding him, and I'm watching Formula one, which I like to do, and I wasn't feeling that great. It was my theo time. And he just sat there with me on my lap, kind of. He had a little toy, and he was chewing on it, and he kept looking up at me, and then he was watching the Formula one and looking up at me and watching the Formula one. And I didn't really watch sports with my dad, and Formula one is kind of the only sport I watch. And just having that first moment at eight months old, like, dad and kid are watching sports together. Go team. We don't have a team. We just like the cars.
And then on the fail side, nothing spectacular or fun, just you make a mistake, but the repercussions are there. And I swear to God, I thought it was Thursday on Friday, and the way that I planned my day and what I was going to accomplish and what I could do was all about today is Thursday, which means I didn't have to do anything with Theo till 330. And so I'd scheduled meetings and I made plans, and I did all this stuff together. And then it turns out it was Friday, and I take Theo at noon, and I had to just jump through all the hoops of, well, okay, I got to cancel this person, and I got to move this around, and this person's going to be on the call and know frustrating the family and everybody. So that was just a straight. I didn't think through it right. And I don't know that I'll get better at this, because I've never been good at days of the week. So those are my wins and fails. Use them as you will. Audience. However, Rob wins and fails, please tell us what's going on.
[00:41:22] Speaker A: Sure. So, good win for this week. So we've had some tougher nights, and Laura has been a total champ about kind of doing most of the waking up at night because I'm back at work now, so she's been tired. And last night I let her go and ride her indoor bike and get a shower and just take some time. And it was getting later in the afternoon, and I was able to give her, like, 2 hours to herself. And one of the things we knew we had to do that night was give Arthur a bath. And I was going to wait for mom because we've only done, like, three baths, so, no, we've done like three. And they've gone like, okay, he thinks they're all right. He's not super into it. But I was like, you know what?
I can do this. I can do this by myself. So I gave him the whole bath all by himself, successfully, no tears, did great, no peeing on anything. And so that was a huge win because mom came back and she's like, wait, you did it all already?
That's a huge relief off of my plate. And I was able to kind of give that to her, and it was fun to be able to do it on my own.
So that was a huge dad win. Really happy about that. And it's just good to kind of knock one of those things out. It's like, okay, I know I can do it on my own now. I can just do it whenever I need to.
And then dad failed. This is someone a little more serious, but I'm grappling with it, and it's probably going to be something I'm going to have to grapple with a lot over the coming months or years. I'm struggling with my screen time.
It is too damn easy when I'm holding Arthur to also be, like, scrolling through Instagram or reading the New York Times on my phone or checking my email or pulling up anything. And it's killing me because I love my son to death, and I need to cherish this time. But also when he's just sitting on me, it's boring. And my brain has been addled by social media over the last decade, and I can't, for the life of me, just sit in bed and stare at my son. I need to pick up my phone, and it is driving me completely insane. So I'm trying really hard, and I'm not sure I'm making any really good progress, but I'm trying to put the phone down. I'm trying to put the screens down. I don't want him looking at screens, even though he's too young to really look at them yet. So my fail is that I keep kind of reaching for my phone when I'm holding my son and that's annoying me and that doesn't make me feel good. And I don't know how to kind of detox from that, especially now that I'm back at work where screens are much more part of my life.
If I come up with anything or have any techniques, I will be sure to share it on this pod because right now I got nothing. But that's the fail for the week is that I keep trying to leave my phone down and I'm not doing a great job of doing that.
[00:44:03] Speaker B: I am 100% certain you are not alone in this.
[00:44:06] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, I'm sure.
[00:44:08] Speaker B: I can't wait till you work on it and we get to share your wins and losses on this part of the journey.
[00:44:15] Speaker A: Sounds good, but yeah. Thanks everyone for being here. This is going to be the end of season one. If you've been listening along the way, we appreciate you. There's like three of you. Thanks so much for being here. If you're catching up with us because you found us at a later date, welcome. We hope you've enjoyed. We hope you keep joining us for everything that's going to come next. If you've got a dad winner, dad fail. If you've got suggestions for the show, if you want to be on the show, if you've got a question for us, email us at
[email protected] and then we're on YouTube now. Please subscribe and otherwise like and subscribe. Follow. Do all the things you need to do on your favorite podcast app.
[00:44:58] Speaker B: Takes a second. Matters a lot to us. We know that there's a couple loyal listeners, there's a little more than three, and we're really excited to see that this thing is actually starting to grow. But we're nothing without you and without you telling us what you're up to. So a like and a subscribe means everything to us as well as a comment, question, query, criticism. It truly, truly is worth 45 seconds of your time for us to be more helpful to you.
[00:45:26] Speaker A: Thanks, everybody.
[00:45:27] Speaker B: Thanks, everybody.
