[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hello and welcome, everyone, to episode three of the Dadio podcast. I'm your host, Rob Burnett, and I got Brad Pickerton here with me. Brad, how you doing?
[00:00:12] Speaker B: I'm doing well. Now tell you more about it.
[00:00:15] Speaker A: Good. Well, on today's episode, we got a whole bunch of good stuff for you. We're going to give our dad updates, talk to you about what's going on in our lives currently.
Then we're going to talk a little bit about sickness. We're going to talk about telling work that you're pregnant or that your partner's pregnant. And then stay tuned to the end to hear our dad wins and fails. And also, a little bonus, what we're thankful for, because this week we are recording on the week of Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving's tomorrow. So happy Thanksgiving week. Brad, how you doing?
[00:00:47] Speaker B: I'm good. Lots to be thankful for. And when we get into the meat of this, it's going to be good. But, yeah, thanksgiving is my favorite. It's a time just to be with friends and family because you can be with friends and family, and yet there's also a lot of stress in that. When we get into the b block, I'll tell people about my traditions and my thoughts on that, too. But, yeah, really happy to be here. And I'm loving the fact that we're on episode three in three weeks.
[00:01:09] Speaker A: I love it. We're on track now. We got to get them out.
Yeah. So let's see where I'm at this week. We're at 31 weeks pregnant. 31 weeks and two days as of this recording. And things are going pretty well. My wife Laura is a champ, but I think we're starting to get into the meat of the third trimester. So she's starting to feel big. She's done a good job of keeping herself in shape, but she's just starting to feel heavy and she feels like there's pressure on her lungs. And so we're getting into that kind of, I think we're transitioning out of the kind of honeymoon second trimester into the real kind of grind of the third trimester. So that's definitely on our mind right now. Sleep is a little bit worse.
[00:01:52] Speaker B: When is this going to end? Or please don't tell me how many more days we haven't gotten to the.
[00:01:57] Speaker A: Please don't tell me how many more days yet. I think we're very cognizant of exactly how long. And I think there's still a lot of optimism, like, oh, it's only nine more weeks. I can do anything for nine more weeks. We still have that positivity, but I think last night we didn't sleep very well. There's a little like, tossing and turning is hard. So we're just starting to get into that grind of like, oh, this is going to be uncomfortable for a little while.
[00:02:22] Speaker B: Just remembering back to where we were, mid second trimester, we just looked at each other. We went up to my folks house for a weekend, brought the pregnancy pillow, and there's a king bed in the room. We sleep up there. We came home and we bought a king bed instantly. It was one of the few splurges for ourselves. It was just like, there's no way. There's no way. So just, that's my little two cent.
[00:02:44] Speaker A: Sleep is important, for sure. The only other anecdote I've got for this week is, so we got family in town and my cousin has a little baby, a little baby boy who's going to be almost exactly a year older than our child. And so we get kind of a full view. And that's been really fun. So there, he's like eight months old or something, and we got to hang out and play with him the other day. And that was super fun.
He's super cute. He's got a little bit of that kind of like stranger danger thing now where he gets put in our hands and starts to cry a little bit and wants his mom. But it's been really good to kind of get a little bit of a preview of what's coming. So that's fun.
How are things going on your end, Brad?
[00:03:27] Speaker B: Well, two updates. Let's give the theo update.
[00:03:29] Speaker A: First.
[00:03:30] Speaker B: He's starting to do stuff and it's the kind of thing that you hear other people talk about. Once it happens to you, you go, it's amazing. I'm going to video it and send it to all my friends who don't care. And so this weekend he had a major change, which is the ability to roll from tummy time left onto his back. And when he does it, he flops over, he hits his head and he giggles. And then he wants to do it again. And he can't quite do both ways because now that I know this, there's four ways. Right? Tummy to the left, tummy to the right. Back to the left, back to the right. So he's got one of the four down. But there was a day he couldn't do that Friday, and there was a day he could do that Saturday. And so that was just a really interesting thing.
[00:04:13] Speaker A: That's wild development. That's wild. To see the development in real time.
[00:04:19] Speaker B: Just day to day, it is amazing. And you're kind of trying to keep up with it because in our lives, especially as ceos, we create systems that once they work, they're supposed to work for a really long time. And it's an anecdote that I'll throw in from the business side. I often tell people when something's working, still, put an artificial, put a flag on it for when you think it'll break right three years from now. Three times the lines of code, three times the staff. But with a kid, of course, none of this is in control, none of this is systemized. It just happens and it's glorious and it's fun and it's new. But then you got to start saying, wait, the pattern that I had last week that I could understand, like last week we could put him on the changing table and you got to watch him because it's got a little lip, but you're kind of fine. This week. It's when you reach down for the diaper, you keep one hand on his chest because who knows, he might want to flop and then fall 4ft. And so that's just an adjustment. I didn't have to do that last week. I do have to do that this week. So it's really rapid fire. And when you consider that most of the CEO work that you and I have done, or myself as a coach, is with high growth hypergrowth, startups, kids faster than that.
The other update that I have is that I was sick this weekend. I woke up on Saturday and very frequently on Saturdays I take our puppy and I hike up a mountain sneetus and I got two thirds of the way up and I just said, I don't have it. And I turned around and by the time I got back to the car, I just. Massive lethargy. No real other symptoms, but massive lethargy. And so Sarah Beth and I talk and I just sequester myself into the guest bedroom and I sleep almost all day Saturday, Sunday and Monday. And that was really tough. The reason it was really tough is Sarah Beth went from being. She does most of the work because mom infant, most of the stuff only mom can do. But she went from most of the stuff to all of the stuff. The stuff that either of us could do, she now had to do, cook, clean. I call this the chop wood, carry water. The stuff that I really try and anticipate and be a part of in the family was gone. And I felt guilty about it. But when you're sick, you're sick, you don't want to get them sick. And the only way to heal is to rest. And especially with this type of illness, the only thing I could do was rest. I tried to take the dog for a walk at one point in time. I didn't get a block before I turned around and came back, took a nap. So that was a really tough thing in the family because it wasn't a vacation, it wasn't voluntary. And I really feel like Sarah Beth took the burden and that was really hard in my heart to put that on her.
And then the funny anecdote side of it, which is my win, but I'll preview it now, is that she looks at me at one point in time when I am microwaving rice. That was my meal for the day. And she can just see my shoulders are sunk and my eyes are dead. And she looks at me, she's not blaming me for anything. She just says, I appreciate you so much more now because just that chop wood, carry waterwork that isn't always seen and known because her job is bigger and more important than mine, but when mine is gone, it's a real effect. And there was actually a growth between us because of that. But yeah, I didn't realize as part of this podcast is to be a good dad and a good father. And part of that is healing and forgiving yourself for the fact that I'm human and I'm going to get sick and my partner is going to carry the burden of that and someday it's going to go back the other way. But it was a really challenging mental game this weekend for me.
[00:07:58] Speaker A: Yeah, thanks. Thanks for sharing that, Brad. There's actually a couple of different questions I've got for you. I want to dig into this a little bit for our listeners. So let's start with the emotions, like talk to me a little bit more about how did it feel to have to put more burden on your partner and not be there.
[00:08:21] Speaker B: Two things. Anxiety would be the feeling I had, anxiety about not being capable.
One of the things that has really grown in me, and I've heard this many times from other fathers and church stuff, is provide and protect. These are strong driving emotions for most men and for me, and I couldn't do either. And so I couldn't provide food, I couldn't provide chop wood, carry water stuff, and I couldn't protect them at all from. We live in Boulder. It's not like physical protection, but just be there and help.
I was lacking I was without of these things that I normally take self confidence in, or even my sense of self in, is being able to provide and protect from the family. And that was gone. Just gone, just depleted out. And then there's the other thing of Sarah Beth and I don't really do a bargaining relationship. We're not keeping tallies of who did this or who did that. But I started keeping tallies of how much I was failing.
I now owe her three days off. I now owe her right. And not that I would mind giving her three days off. I just started feeling in debt to my family. None of this is true, but this was my lived experience. This was what was going through my head as I'm rewatching lord of the Rings, Marvel movies. Dumb, dumb stuff. Because I didn't have any capacity. And that was a real burden.
The beautiful thing about it is once I started feeling better, which especially was yesterday, she and I got to go for a walk. And we got to walk all through that. And she helped me just say, brad, name your demons. Because they're mean. These demons you've had in your head for three days that you didn't check in with me on. And then she, of course, gets to have the opportunity to, you know, it really was a burden and I need some extra help. She didn't say that. She said, brad, these are fake demons. Let it go. I wasn't holding on to them in the beginning. I'm not holding on to them now. The amount of resentment I have for you being sick for three days is zero. I'm maybe a little bit frustrated about the fact the flu exists, but not that you got it.
[00:10:25] Speaker A: That's really nice of her. And I think that's a good thing for partners to realize, right? There's things that, like your partner might just decide they need a week off, but then your partner might also get the flu, and it's no one's fault. And it will go back and forth for sure.
On a slightly more practical note, because I think it's great to dig into that stuff, but talk to me a little bit. Do you and Sarah Beth do anything because you both work and now you're both parents, do you do anything to mitigate some of that chopped wood, carry water? Do you have any help? Do you have in laws come in? Do you have someone come clean the house once a week?
Are there any mitigating factors or things you've done to try to help kind of mitigate that stuff?
[00:11:08] Speaker B: So I guess the advice part of this would be get all the help you can afford. And there's two parts of afford, right time and hassle and money, and that just whomever you are, if it's grandma, if it's cleaning lady, you need the help, especially if you're both working, actually, even if you're not both working, because the burden is high regardless. So we have a nanny 6 hours, four days a week during the work week. And we're very, very fortunate that our nannies comes to our home. So we both work from home and have Theo and nanny. It's actually a pretty busy home. Two dogs, Nanny and Theo, Sarah Beth and I, and calls and things. But it's also beautiful and lovely that we get to check in on Theo. Between calls, I get to know, make a cup of coffee, and if he's awake, I get to say hi to him while the coffee is being made. It's beautiful.
Cleaning lady is, I've always believed, just one of those miracle things for a relationship, because it just, every once in a while for us, it's once a month resets the house instead of lets resentment come in. And one person's usually cleaner than the other, and so then they bear the burden of cleaning because jumping topics a little bit in power dynamics, the person who cares the least wins the negotiation. And so if you're the messy person, I'm the clean person, I care more, you win, and there's always a little bit of resentment in there. You can buy yourself out of that resentment for the cost of a cleaning lady. For us, right now, our cleaning lady situation is a little chaotic because she's not that reliable. She's great at her job, but she's not that reliable at showing up. But second, how do you bring in a cleaning lady when you have two people who work from home, a nanny, a baby, and two dogs? And so that's a little bit of in between parts.
I really wish that we did have closer in laws so that we could start doing that. But for us, my father's visiting in two weeks. My father and stepmother, they both act like Theo's a burden and that they're giving us this joy and this gift of we'll take Theo for 3 hours in the middle of the day and you two go know a lunch date as though he's this burden. Well, two factors. Number one, I don't think that would work too well because Theo likes being next to mom. And number two, we like being next to Theo. We don't carry him as a burden. And so maybe later, maybe when he's 18 months old, he's able to eat and he's running around and screaming and crying. Maybe then we're going to be looking to just, hey, here's a new person. Take the baby for an hour. I need him gone. But right now, at four months, we actually just want our family to visit with us, sit with us, chat with us, talk with, smile with us, be with us. We don't need them to do chop wood, carry water work. And that's our experience. Not everybody's.
[00:13:52] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I definitely want to do, like a whole episode on parents and in laws and their ability to help. That's like a whole thing, especially in Thanksgiving. You think a lot about that. And then I'll add my two cent on the help front. Right now, Laura and I are lucky enough to have someone come in and clean the house. We're able to do it once a week in the UK.
We're lucky. It's actually quite affordable.
But we're looking to up that because we think that letting someone take care of the things like whether it's cooking or cleaning or doing laundry allows us to spend more time with each other and with the baby versus having. So we're looking forward to trying to do that more. And is anyone here who's listening, who's a CEO or an executive or has a high power job?
If you're one of those people, you probably make a decent hourly wage, so to speak. And spending some of that money to get some time back in your home life can be very helpful. I recognize everybody.
[00:14:54] Speaker B: To double tap on that. A husband and wife CEO group that I knew had their first child and about the child was maybe 18 months old and they needed to build a shed out in their yard. And it was pre bought shed, whatever. And they were frustrated and I'm coaching them and they were frustrated because they knew they were going to have to spend all weekend building the shed because halftime is with baby and halftime is building the shed. So it's either there's only one person who can build the shed because the other person, and didn't matter which one, they're both engineers and smart and stuff, said, didn't you guys just raise a series a? Yeah. Didn't you guys both of your salaries just double? Yeah. Can't you task grab that, like, well, I don't know, that might be $700. Well, you get your shed, it's $700 and you get a full weekend so that you can show back up to work and be strong. But the other thing is, what do you do with that time, you work with baby, you work with each other, buy your time back whenever you can afford it. And the reason that they needed that lesson from me was because of the state shift of they had doubled their income after their a, but their brains and their wallets and their mindset hadn't caught up to I can actually afford to have someone else do this task. I am not shirking my duties. I am not frivolously spending money. I am not incapable of it. It's just smarter for me to do something else with my time.
[00:16:11] Speaker A: Yeah, there's another whole episode about how to save money and how to budget as a startup person in particular, because I know I've gotten some raises over the years, but I always live as if my paycheck is my last one because I'm just so cognizant that startups can fail. But I do think there's a mindset shift right between, oh, I got to lock it down because yeah, this might be my last paycheck, or I haven't raised my series a yet, and I'm really scrimping by, I'm trying to extend Runway in my company.
But then there's this thought of like, okay, I can never spend money. And it's like, no, you should take an investor's mindset to your time. And if your time is worth 1000 or $2,000 an hour, and you can buy 2 hours of your time for $500 to get someone to build a shed in your backyard or clean your toilet, that is such a win.
So yeah, don't go buy Rolls Royces and fancy watches and whatever frivolous things. I won't make judgments as to whether or not those things are frivolous or not. Whatever, do whatever you want. But I do think anyone can take a good investor's mindset to taking care of their kids and taking care of themselves by paying to offload some of the burdens that know you don't need to be the one who cleans your toilets or does your laundry.
[00:17:30] Speaker B: I can't wait to do this as a whole episode. I think this is a really meaty episode. And yeah, the budget of dad ceos is going to be interesting.
[00:17:40] Speaker A: So I got one more question for you, Brad, before we move on.
So you said you felt like when you got sick, your partner already has most of the burden because there's only certain things that mom can do. And as a dad, your job is to chop wood and carry water and to be a support role. And then when you got sick, you felt like all 100% of the work went on to your partner. And I wanted to get your impressions as a dad and as someone basically in, not only a CEO, but in the startup space and as someone who works now, you happen to work in the home, but a lot of I feel like as fathers and as providers, a lot of our contribution might come from, quote unquote, outside the home with the work we do. And do you feel like you undervalue your own contributions?
Because I know sometimes that happens to me where it's like I don't see myself contributing in the home because I'm out doing this really stressful thing over here, trying to build and provide for my family. And I'm wondering about that dynamic where I guess I'm going to ask you to be introspective and see if you sell yourself short on what the split is, 50 50. Not that it's a competition, but between you and your partner.
Yeah.
[00:18:49] Speaker B: So I love the 80 80 rule, and that's what we try and do. So Sarah Beth and I often use the framework of you, me, and we.
There's some things that are you, it's her, and some things that are me, and then there's some things that are the we of the relationship. But on the we of the relationship, the ownership of who is mostly responsible for it, I think 50 50 is, most of the time considered not good enough. Both partners try and put in 80 80. And so for me, my 80 is what I'm capable of contributing. And I'm capable of contributing, growing my company, bringing in new clients, and then having either more stability or more capital or more cash to pay for help, or she doesn't have to work as many hours. Those are ways I can contribute to the we. Her ways of contributing to the we are a little less choice because they're biological. Right. And two of the things that, first off, we're choosing not to use formula. So then that's all on Sarah Beth, and that's health, that's food, that's time, that's pumping, that's devices. Right. And that's consistent. And that's daily. And it's daily and it's three times daily, it's four times daily. It's at night. All that. And then the second thing is baby's attachment to mama. In these first times, there are times where our nanny can put him down pretty well, but she's still around. There are times she goes out and does stuff for an hour or two and he just will not accept me as the comforting, the soothing, the ability to go down. She just is a special part of his life outside of feeding and inside of feeding. So hers are a little less to use discretionary. But on that other side, because mine are more discretionary, I actually take it as a higher burden since I have choices on what I could do. I could go get a different job with different benefits. I could continue running my consulting practice. I can have more clients and less clients as the market allows, or I choose.
I look at that as a higher burden because I have discretion. And so, yeah, that's how I do it anyway. That's it.
[00:21:00] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great framework. I think that's good. And I want to keep digging in on this as we go along with this podcast, because I think that that's one of the great challenges. I think for a lot of men that isn't discussed is they don't know how to contribute or they feel like they're contributing outside the house.
Sometimes people just don't communicate well. So I'm excited to just kind of keep digging into that. And I agree that ultimately our job is to provide as much as we possibly can.
[00:21:27] Speaker B: Yeah. And income should be backwards. Bending curve. There's a specific time when you're making enough money that you should try and work less hours, because if you're making enough money to be whatever your survival is, and that's including putting money away for retirement and everything, but trying to get rich right. During this period of time, Sarah Beth and I kind of had this balancing act of it's okay to be a little bit boring in our careers or be more foundational in building, because this is a sacred time with the child, and we would rather be a little bit more at home than a little bit more ambitious. And that's on the margins, right? It's marginal ambition versus marginal at home. But if I was trying to make partner for a law firm right now, heaven forbid, and I was billing seven to seven every day and coming home, I would have nothing left, which means the entire burden of the house would have to be on her or people we pay. And that to me, isn't as strong of relational choice. It's a stronger financial choice and longevity of finances choice. But it's not the choice we made. We made the choice that we can do foundational stuff for a little while, because this is, for us, special and sacred time. Rob, I know that you are anticipating, baby, and you are a couple months away, and it'll be really interesting for me to hear where you go in this between pre baby, which is conceptual, and with baby, which is practical. I can't wait to hear over the months that we do this, what have your thoughts change, grow, alter and the fact that we are starting to peg what you feel right now.
We're not going to have cognitive bias about what you feel in November of 2023. We have a recording of it.
[00:23:08] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, I'm putting it on the record. And yeah, I think that this is a good place to wrap up here. I'm definitely thinking about.
It's a real tension with me where I'm very ambitious and I want to double down. But I also know and I'm slightly afraid that when I meet my baby, I'm going to really want to take my foot off the gas and just be much more happy at home. And I think that that's something I'm going to have to unpack a lot as we go forward.
[00:23:35] Speaker B: It's an interesting way that you can have both in a different way post baby, and we'll get into that another time. But, yeah, we've definitely spoken a bit here.
[00:23:44] Speaker A: Sounds good. Well, thanks for sharing all that stuff, Brad. Let's take a quick break and when we come back, we're going to talk about letting work know that you and your partner are pregnant. So we'll be back in a sec.
[00:23:59] Speaker B: All right, everybody, welcome back. And we now want to talk a little bit about some of the practical sides on the business. And I wanted to ask Rob. Rob, how long was it from when you knew you were pregnant till when you told people and how did you tell people and how did it go?
[00:24:15] Speaker A: That's a great question. So Brad has an insight here. He knows that this is a bit of a wild story, but I think it's worth sharing because nothing went to plan.
And so to set the scene, traditionally you can learn you are pregnant. For anyone who doesn't know, you can typically learn you're pregnant four to five weeks into the pregnancy at the earliest.
And you typically don't tell people until ten to twelve weeks. Really? Twelve weeks is when they say there's a very good chance the fetus is viable and you're kind of in the safe zone, which is kind of ironic because it turns out the first trimester is just a wild time where it's very hard to keep a secret. They don't tell you this in anything with popular culture. So Laura and I found out very early.
We found out that we were pregnant and was very excited. And the first person who wasn't us, who knew we were pregnant, was a waiter who we went to, I think it was Laura's birthday dinner, like a couple days after we found out we got pregnant. And he brought us, unprompted, a couple glasses of champagne, and we had to politely decline and say that we were pregnant. So the joke for us for a couple days was, it's us two, and that guy know we're was, which was a fun thing for a few days, but bringing it into know I know a dynamic of Laura and I's relationship is, uh, we live in the UK about half the time, live in the US about half the time.
We were living in the UK at that point. And my parents were going to come over and they were planning to arrive. It's a little fuzzy now, but around nine or ten weeks into the pregnancy, and we had scheduled a scan right before they were going to arrive, so we would have a pretty good understanding of the fetus being viable. And we had this great plan where my parents were going to come. They were visiting the UK, they were going to meet Laura's parents, or they've met before, but they were going to all hang out. And so it would be a chance for us to kind of tell both sets of parents in person, back to back that this was happening. And we're like, this is great. Perfect timing. It's going to be lovely. And in the meantime, that gave us like four weeks or five weeks to kind of have it to ourselves and kind of be a couple and kind of have this kind of fun secret.
So about six weeks into the pregnancy, so we'd maybe known for a week or two, I had to travel to Boston for work for a week.
And I had an 08:00 a.m. Flight out of London. So I had to be up at like 04:30 a.m. To get a car to the airport. And that night, everything had been going smoothly up to that point. Everything had been just very peachy. And then the night, it must have been a Sunday night into a Monday, I'm supposed to go to Boston. Laura wakes up in pretty extreme abdominal pain, not just a little stomach. Yeah.
[00:27:20] Speaker B: Six months ago.
Yeah, this must have been really tough. In the moment, honor that.
[00:27:27] Speaker A: Yeah, in the moment, it was really tough. And so she was in a lot of pain. She was starting to feel a little sick as well, with a little morning sickness, which, for anyone who doesn't know, morning sickness is all day sickness. The whole morning thing is a total misnomer.
So Laura wakes up and she's feeling sick and in pain.
But Laura's a primary care physician, and one thing she always tells me is it's almost always nothing.
It's very rarely.
So, you know, we basically have this kind of debate all night. We really don't sleep at all.
Like, should I go?
[00:28:03] Speaker B: Not go? Should she go? Go ahead.
[00:28:05] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Should I go? Should I not go? Should she go to the hospital? Should she not? And she's kind of, like, gritting it and going, no, I don't think I should go to the hospital, because even if I go, there's nothing they can do, and I don't want to stop you. You should go. This is an important week. You very rarely have to be in the office. This is important.
And so again, I basically don't sleep at 430. I get out of bed, take a shower, and get in the car with just this deep pit in my Stomach. I was like, I got to try. So go get on the flight. It happened to be jetblue, which has really good inflight wi fi. So I get in flight Wi Fi, and I'm texting with her the whole way across the Atlantic, like, an eight hour flight to Boston, and she's kind of feeling better. She's doing okay.
We're good. And so keep in mind, this is six weeks into the pregnancy, nobody knows.
My parents, her parents, anybody else.
So I land about 10:00 a.m. In Boston.
I've been up all day. I haven't slept all night.
And then I go straight to the office, because that's just how I do it when I go to Boston. So I show up in the office I'm meeting with. So I know I am the CEO, but I'm the CEO of a subsidiary. So I'm meeting with the CEO of the public company, who's our parent, and the founder of the company, who are basically my two bosses.
And so we're starting to do some really good strategic planning, and I got a call from Laura. So I step outside to take it, and she basically calls me crying, saying, I'm in really bad pain, I'm really scared. I don't know what's going on. And of had was kind of fearing that that was the case.
[00:29:38] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:29:40] Speaker A: Yeah. So I'm in a bit of shock, and I'm like, listen, okay, I can't leave until tonight anyway. There's nothing I can do, so let's hang tight. You're good.
And the confounding factor is she didn't want to call her mom. She didn't want to call her friends, because no one knew. So we had this kind of added layer of secrecy to all of it.
But event, basically, I go back into the other room, and I was basically like, hey, guys, I've got good news and bad news.
The good news is, surprise. Laura's pregnant. The bad news is, she's in a lot of pain right now, and she's in a bit of distress. And to the infinite credit of my bosses, they were like, well, dude, you got to go. You got to get out of here. Like, you can't stay here. If it's nothing, fine. And if it's something, you would never forgive yourself.
So I had a bunch of colleagues in the office.
Yeah, please.
[00:30:36] Speaker B: I want to pause on that. Because there's this. I think it's a cognitive bias or just a mind gremlin of if it's nothing, I've wasted my time, and they didn't give you that option. And there's a lot of things in this world of fatherhood and daddyhood and husbandyhood that fit in that category. And there are times when we can all whine and squeal and do too much that had no basis or bias, but taking that moment and saying, there's no harm in missing this meeting, in missing this project and missing this, even if it's including. I flew across the pond, right? I'm exhausted.
It's like, the relative values of these two things. And so I just really want to pause and honor. The second thing is, I often don't have that perspective for self. And that's why one of the reasons I want to do this podcast is so people can gain our perspectives. But the other is my very best friend, and the godfather of Theo is the person I can call to test if I'm crazy. And he is also a CEO, and I don't actually give myself permission to go or not go if he. Mel. If Mel says go, I stop thinking about it. We talked about this podcast. One, there are times when I just defer my decision making to somebody else because I know that I can't have perspective on self, and that's effectively what your two bosses did. Okay, rabbit trail over. Please continue the story.
[00:32:04] Speaker A: Yeah, but I think that's exactly right to take a slight pause. We've always tried to build our company with, like, a family comes first attitude, and they exemplified it there, and it was hard to.
They did take the decision essentially out of my hands because I was like, adrenaline. I try to honor myself and be very calm in these situations, but you're shaking a little bit. You got a pit in your stomach. You just don't know what to do. And so they really did take it out of my hands, but then I had to essentially. So I was doing some meetings with them, and then I was supposed to meet with all my kind of employees and do some planning with them and help them out. And I essentially just kind of like, left the office like 3 hours after I got there. I met one employee for the very first time, basically gave her like a hug in the hall, and then basically disappeared.
And so my bosses basically were very nice about not telling anybody. And I basically had to say, everyone, I need to go. I'll fill you in later. So I was in the office for all of five or 6 hours, went back to the airport, was able to talk my way onto essentially the same flight I had been on to fly over, flew back, and was back at home about 23 hours after I left.
And so that was a wild 24 hours. And I basically hadn't slept in about almost 48 hours at that point. And so on, kind of totally jet lagged and lack of sleep. I guess I didn't have time to even get jet lagged, but I was totally wrecked. But I got back home, and we basically took Laura directly to a scan, and she was in quite a bit of pain. So I don't know if it's never good news, but it was definitely the right decision to come back. The good news is we got a scan and everything was perfect. Everything was in great shape. So they weren't quite sure what the pain was from, but the embryo had implanted. Everything was good. There had been some worry that it was an ectopic pregnancy where the embryo implants outside of the flopping tombs or womb. Don't quote me on that entirely, but that's basically what it is. That could be very dangerous. And it wasn't that. So we were in really good shape.
So then we had basically two weeks of Laura very sick and in pain, but more we knew it was under control, so the anxiety level came way down. But then I had this conundrum.
Know, my parents and her parents both knew that I was supposed to be in Boston for a, you know, I can kind of ignore my parents only so much and trying to tell them that, yeah, I just went to Boston for a day and it was fine. And I decided to come home because I was done with work, just isn't going to fly.
So my work knew.
None of my employees or colleagues knew, other than my two bosses. They all knew that I had a family emergency and had to go home. And they all handled it beautifully. But then basically, my mom called me and is like, why are you back in the UK? And I was like, well. And she's like, is everything all right? I was like, yeah, everything's fine.
And then she's like, does this have something to do with a baby? And I was still kind of holding out hope that I could convince her not to ask any more questions and wait the two or three weeks before she would arrive. And I was like, well, do you want me to answer that question? And she's like, well, I think you just did. So I'm like, okay, fine. And so I walked into my room with Laura, and I was like, let's Facetime. So at least got to do that. And I was like, well, Laura and I are pregnant. And my parents were, of course, over the moon and excited. And so we ended up chatting with them for a bit and then calling Laura's parents and just letting them know so that they weren't left out of the loop.
But, yeah, I think the moral of that story is that you can make all the plans in the world about how you're going to tell people and make announcements, but the first trimester will throw curveballs at you.
Movies make it sound like you get sick once, and then you realize you're pregnant, and then you're huge, and then you have the baby and it's done. But the first trimester is a really kind of insidious, sticky time that threw us way more curveballs than we were ready for and we expected.
[00:36:42] Speaker B: One of the frameworks I use in life is short term expertise. You and I both made the life choice to go to law school. And when we were applying to law school, we had to become worldwide experts in applying to law school and then never needed that again.
There's other things like this. Getting married, buying your first home, but also having a kid.
You don't have any expertise because you've never done it before. You only have thoughts and maybe expectations, but you have no knowledge, no experience. And then it's dynamic, and there's two of you, and there's family. There's so much going on. So then what do you and I naturally do? We try and think of the end in mind, and we try and build a plan up to it that's going to be successful.
No, you have a plan that you hope might kind of work, and as soon as the universe, the baby, the wife, metaphysics, whatever you call it, tells you it's not going to work, you just got to roll with it. And that's what you did in a great way. So you lost this glorious moment of kind of having a, hey, this is how we want to announce, and this is whom we want to announce to first, second, and third in public, right? First, family second, maybe business and close friends third. It doesn't matter who knows.
And yet the plan and the holding to the plan is so much looser because we're not in control.
And that's just a part of this podcast, is what do we control and not control in our businesses? What do we control and not control in our fatherhoods? And anyway, that's a wild story, Rob, thank you so much for sharing.
[00:38:28] Speaker A: It's a real lesson in humility that you can't control these things.
Yeah. And I think the lesson, if I can extract, take whatever lessons you want from my story, but if I can extract a lesson from the business side of things, is I spent years cultivating a culture at work where we take care of each other. And not to call anybody out, but I've had people with mental health breakdowns who work for me, people with a parent getting a cancer diagnosis, people who've lost a grandparent, people who've lost a pet, people who've just gone through a hard time or lived through a hurricane. All of those things had all happened in my small little company over the last couple of years. And every time I tried to respond with, you, go handle you. We've got you, we'll be okay. At the company, your job is to handle yourself first. And I don't know kind of how I landed on that to start with, but the fact that basically every one of my employees in some form of fashion had either experienced me supporting them or seen me support someone else, because what I would always tell everyone in kind of an all hand or a stand up meeting, hey, this person is out. It's a family thing. Don't worry about it. We support them. They're going to take the time they need, and they'll be back.
And I'm so honored and flattered that when it was my turn, no one missed a beat. No one was know, why is Rob making me do all this hard work? But he's not even around. Everyone was like, oh, go, we got you. And so I think that planting those seeds early and often.
Yeah.
[00:40:06] Speaker B: So much tougher to receive that than to give it for me that any co founder, any employee I've ever had, every company that I've ever run except for. Whereas interim CEO of a company, but every company I've ever run, I started on the product line and then leadership and then CEO, including what we're doing here at Delta. Awesome. And so I knew how to do every job. And so if somebody had a family emergency, I always knew in the back of my head, I can put strategic planning or big, important, but not urgent things on hold, because this is the important, urgent thing. And if I need to step in back onto the line, or I need to move one person down to that person's level and then I'll take their job. I always knew I could do this, but at the top level, there's work that only I can do. And if I'm gone, that's just not happening.
And some of that work is managing the team and keeping the culture together and just doing all that stuff. And so when I had to go for a couple of things, we lost a dog this year and we also had pregnancy and now baby. I had to hand stuff off. And it was so radically harder for me to hand stuff off and receive that culture gift back in return than it is for me to ever have somebody who's got a sick parent and buy them a flight. I've already bought your flight.
I'm not letting you make a decision. You can let the flight go and stay at home for the week, or you can fly and go see your mom. I've made those decisions and they don't even know.
They're just dropping everything.
But man, it's so much harder the reverse way.
[00:41:40] Speaker A: Yeah, it's harder and much more humbling, but I'm sure as heck glad I did it right.
I suspect it's going to be like someday when my kids are older and they try to take care of me for something. I feel like my employees taking care of me is like the kids taking care of the parent, and it's a humbling experience, but it's what I'm really grateful for. I think letting.
I've always tried to empower the people who work for me and letting them give that gift to me of taking care of me and knowing that they've got my back is incredibly humbling because they don't owe me anything.
But it's a real gift in business that I wasn't expecting to get. It wasn't one of those things that I was expecting to get out of my work life. That's been a really very pleasant surprise.
With some ancillary benefits around making people feel empowered and making people feel like they're a part of the team. So I think it's really nice. Well, that might be a good place to end this block, Brad. And when we come back, we can talk about our dad wins and fails.
All right, welcome back. All right, Brad, let's wrap up with our wins and fails and then something we're thankful for for this week. You want to kick us off? What's your win? What's your fail? What are you thankful for?
[00:43:02] Speaker B: Sure. So two wins. One I said earlier, but Sarah Beth said to me while I was sick, she appreciates me more for the chop wood, carry water stuff.
So that's a backhanded compliment, I guess, that she wishes I wasn't sick but it helps her see some perspective. And then the second win is serpent and I were talking last night and she wants this podcast to continue. She's listened to our first two episodes and at first I was kind of we're busy and lots going on and rebuilding business and having baby and all this stuff. And she likes it for a couple of three reasons. Number one, it's a creative outlet for me. Number two, there was no thing like this for me. And number three, she really thinks that you and I jive well. So that was a real big dad win that I give her veto power on whether we can do this or not because I like it. But the family comes first and she didn't just say, yeah, go do it. Whatever she said, this is important. Keep doing it. So let's keep having fun. That's my wins, fails. I kind of feel like being sick was a failure and I don't think I should feel like that. But in the moment I just felt like I was failing to be the man I wanted to be. And I know it's not my fault, but that's my feeling. What about yourself? Wins and loss?
[00:44:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
The wind this week was certainly getting to kind of hold and play with my, what I'm going to call my nephew. He's my cousin's son, but I don't know if there's a word for what that is relation to me.
So my nephew, getting to play with him and hold him when he's crying and play with him just really good.
Laura got to see me kind of in that role as a dad, which I think she really enjoyed. And I got to kind of do a 1 hour test run, which I really enjoyed, which is great. And then I do have some fails this week. I got two. One, building on what you said, brad, I did not get sick this week, but I've been dealing with jet trying I've got some fitness goals I'm trying to hit, and it's just been a stressful week. Two weeks at work, and all of that has really drained me, and I'm really tired, and I haven't pushed myself into getting sick, but I know if I continue on this track, I will. And so this morning, maybe it's a half win, but I kind of really pulled back on my workout. I'm trying to take it easier. I slept a little bit more, but I think my fail is I've pushed myself a little too hard on this trip, and I need to back off a little bit.
My other fail this week was I was in charge of dinner, and I made chicken, and I didn't cook it all the way through, so I served my pregnant wife chicken that was raw in the middle.
Luckily, that was an easy fix, but just a real miss on that one.
Yeah, but I'll leave that one there. So, as a wrap up before we end, in honor of Thanksgiving, what's one thing you're thankful for? Brad?
[00:46:05] Speaker B: I was trying to think through this. I mean, theo, Sarah Beth, and Thanksgiving itself found friends. These are all true. But I remember for some reason, right now, I remember our first ultrasound, and because we're a little bit older, we had it a little earlier and a lot more often. And when we walked into the first ultrasound, the ultrasound lady said, all right, sarah Beth, sit there. Okay. And then sit there, partner. She didn't know who I was, and then about halfway through the ultrasound, she called me dad for the first time.
And it was right around Thanksgiving last year. But I just. Right now, I'm really thankful for that moment, that first feeling where I was given the name dad, which I had never had before. And for some reason, that's really becoming a strong thankfulness right now.
[00:46:54] Speaker A: That's beautiful. Appreciate you sharing that.
I've got a big family for people who have small families, and I've got a small family who have people who have truly big families. But we'll have 28 people around the Thanksgiving dinner table tomorrow, which is, I think, pretty good. Pretty darn good. I'm feeling really thankful for my grandfather, who's no longer with us. He was my mom's dad, and he really kept our family. He had four daughters.
They combined had ten children who were all cousins, and we're all very close, and I'm really thankful for them, and I'm thankful for. We're starting to have the next generation. My child will be the fifth of the next generation, and this will be one of the first thanksgivings where we get to meet some of them or have some of them together.
And I'm just thankful that I'm getting to bring a child into this family in particular. I've always been thankful for my family, but it's kind of taken on a new, deeper meaning, which is really lovely.
But on that note, why don't we wrap up for the day? So thanks for listening. If you made it this far, we really appreciate you.
Please like subscribe, follow, give a thumbs up, share with your friends, do all the fun social things you need to do because we really appreciate it and we want to help more people. We want to get this out there. And then if you have episode ideas, if you've got a dad win and fail of your own, if you've got something you want us to talk about or you want to share with us, email us at
[email protected] and we'll get to them. We'll read all the emails and we'll incorporate you into our lives and our show.
Well, thanks, everybody.
[00:48:42] Speaker B: Thank you, everybody. And happy Thanksgiving.
[00:48:44] Speaker A: Happy Thanksgiving. Even though it's going to be after Thanksgiving by the time you listen to this, we hope you had a good Thanksgiving. Goodbye, everybody.
