Community in Fatherhood and Business with Micah Mador

[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hey, everyone. Welcome to the dad EO podcast. I'm your host, Rob Burnett, and along with my co host, Brad Bickerton, we're exploring modern fatherhood and how it blends with business leadership. Both Brad and I are new fathers and we both run businesses. On this podcast, you'll hear about our parenting journeys as well as from parenting experts, CEO's and other business leaders. We're going to dive deep on being dads, business lessons, and the balance of work and fatherhood. We hope you'll join us on this journey. Please enjoy the show. Hey, everyone, welcome to the show. I'm your host, Rob Burnett. And with me, as always, I'm Brad Bickerton. On today's episode, we've got our dad Diaries, our business issue of the day, and then our interview with Micah Mador. He's an expert on community and has run communities for the likes of Foundry Group and others. He's currently the head of partnerships and operations at Bolster, an entrepreneur focused firm rethinking executive search. So join us later in this episode to hear his thoughts on how to build community. And as always, stay tuned to the end as we finish up with our personal dad wins and fails from the week. We're proud of the success we've had so far. We really appreciate you all listening. So if you're listening now, please, like, subscribe and share with your friends. But, Brad, why don't you just kick us off? How are things going with you? [00:01:20] Speaker B: Well, I'd actually like to start on that, like, and subscribe thing again. It's amazing to me how many people come back to you and I just, in little ways, and say, thank you for doing this. And so we're going to keep doing it. And that's. That's beautiful and fun. Uh, yeah. Dad diary. Uh, I have a toddler. Toddle, toddle, toddle, toddle, toddle, toddle, toddle, toddle, toddle. And my mother, she hit the nail on the head. This kid wakes up and he goes to work. He is a worker and his work. [00:01:51] Speaker A: Busy boy. [00:01:52] Speaker B: Oh, he's a busy boy. He's a toddler. And one of the great perspectives that I get is he is trying to follow what we do. We've talked about this on pod before that he'll. He wants to touch phones because we touch phones. He wants to touch remotes because we touch remote. But this next level up, which is amazing to get this reflection back, is he picks things up and moves them to different places. This is what he sees us do all the time. He doesn't know that. I go into the fridge and I pick up a tomato, and then I move it over to this thing, and then I pick up a knife and I move it to this thing, and I pick up a cutting board, I move it to this thing, and then I cut a tomato and move it to this. Oh, no, I get a dish. And that's. He doesn't know the context. He just sees humans, adults that he's trying to emulate, pick things up and they move them. A, he's doing that. B, he's doing it. Hilarious. The amount of things to get moved to places where they don't belong is. Is legion. So that's. That's the life of a toddler. [00:02:58] Speaker A: And are you both staying sane during all this process? [00:03:02] Speaker B: Not even close, no. It's unclear if you were saying to start with. [00:03:08] Speaker A: So. Fair enough. [00:03:10] Speaker B: Fair enough. It's hard to maintain your sanity, but it's also. It's hard to stay ahead of the arms race of his brain and his ability to either move things or mess things up or go into dangerous situations. And our job is to be ahead of that and then also live our lives. So we kind of want to have this passive situation where he just kind of goes about his day, goes about his business, and he's safe, and there's none of that, because as soon as we have figured out how to make safe everything he can do, he levels up his arms race and he could do more. So, um, that's. Yeah, that's. That. That's the beauty of it. That's. That's the glory of it. But, yeah, total toddle. Toddle. Uh, nobody believes he's 13 months old. Um, he goes to the park and he does that stuff, and that's not proud papa. It's just. It's really interesting to see this kid, uh, go through his stuff. Um, dad diaries, other things. Just that I know a lot of the dads will also agree with is when you start having friends visit, and they either have kids, right? So we've had friends visit who have a seven and a half year old, or friends visit who have a 1412 and a nine year old. And when they come into your house and the different version of chaos that it is, having people enter into this sacred space that we're just barely holding on to. And it's beautiful having other people over, and it is chaos. And. And one thing I learned is I've talked about having a toddler or a baby. Everything you do is like the appetizer version of it, uh, by the way, everyone just, just rob yawned super hard while you're talking to me. Yeah. Cause he's just. [00:04:52] Speaker A: I'm keeping it together. It's cause I'm a dad. I'm tired. [00:04:56] Speaker B: Oh, dad tired. Yeah. [00:04:57] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:04:57] Speaker B: Not dad tired. It should be dad tired. It should be dad fatigue. It's like bone fit. [00:05:02] Speaker A: That's true. [00:05:04] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah. Having people over is that same thing is, oh, my gosh, my friends are here. Let's talk about whatever, you know, like, how gravity works or, you know, what's going on with politics or aging concerns and, like, de aging processes. And then you realize every single thing is the appetizer version of the conversation. You get the little taste. You get the little morsel. You get a little bit. And same thing with exercise. [00:05:33] Speaker A: Right. [00:05:33] Speaker B: I've always been in a dirt athlete. I now get why dads do 1 hour workouts, hit workout. [00:05:39] Speaker A: Why they get the dad bod. [00:05:41] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Oh, dad bod is real. Dad bot is real. So that's. Yeah, friends. [00:05:47] Speaker A: I'm fighting that hard. I'm trying. [00:05:50] Speaker B: Are you winning? Yeah. Yeah. [00:05:52] Speaker A: Uh, some could, some could say I, I. Not to toot my own horn, but I'm doing. It's actually what I'm going to talk about in my data. But you keep going. [00:06:00] Speaker B: And then last part. And this is the, this is the dad and the daddy o dad CEO part is. Right now, I have three complex problems in my business world. And by complex, I mean there is no way to state them. Simply by definition, that's what complexity means. You cannot state it. Simply doesn't mean you can't know things about it. You can't do things with it. You can't make decisions with it. But by definition, it's not linear. It's not as complicated as. Defined as lots of linear things together. It's not defined as. That's how I define it. Lots of, lots of by hand division. Great. But right now, I have three projects in front of me that are complex. And I know that I can help with them, and my clients know I can help with them. But that high order thinking, that's the hardest thing in this daddy o moment for me right now, is how do I jump into the complexity of the situation, the personalities, the incomes, the future state and the past state? How do I bring these different measures together to create some reasonable understanding for myself and others? And that's the hard thing to do in the dad place right now, is to reach that upper threshold of thinking, whereas complicated still is pretty easy for me, give me five or six pro formas different companies. Where are they going? How do I help them that I got but complex? Go ahead. [00:07:35] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I was going to say I think that you hit the nail on the head for me, which is something I didnt appreciate until I was in this and I actually didnt really appreciate until now. Im starting to come out of it. So Arthur is just about six months old in a couple of days. And I was struggling super hard, at least the last six months working on complex issues. And I wasnt really recognizing it. I was just feeling like I was in a funk. And then I realized, oh, im just tired and sleep deprived and I dont have a lot of time anymore to just think. And it's been, and I'm just now starting to feel like I'm kind of like coming out of my fog and coming out of my funk and getting back into the groove. And it's probably just because getting a little more used to it and a little more on top of things. But I think that that's an interesting piece of the puzzle as a new dad where some of these complex issues will come up. And whereas before we were super equipped to deal with them, I feel less equipped, not less equipped to deal with it, but less capable of dealing with it just cause the, all the other cognitive load that's on you as a new dad or as a new parent. [00:08:38] Speaker B: In general, and that's, that's, that's the struggle is, I'm kind of faltering to say it. How, how do you stay ahead of it? And, and one of the things in, in flying, which I don't fly, but my stepfather did, and I've many friends who did, is try and stay ahead of the airplane. [00:08:58] Speaker A: Yes. [00:08:59] Speaker B: Airplanes are pretty much scientific, right? We as mere mortals who live in a 2d world on the ground, we don't think of like flying 3d in the 4D with time. But pilots do. They think 4D, they think, okay, you know, pitch, yaw, roll and time, where will I be in a minute? And the best ones are two or three minutes ahead. And that high order thinking is what's so hard because maybe it's distraction, maybe it's fatigue, or maybe it's just so much chopwood carry water work. And I'm not going to sacrifice either one. I'm not going to sacrifice leadership or complex issues or getting to work. I honorably, I believe, and I love getting to work on hard, hard issues and being present with my son, I'm not going to sacrifice either one but I'm going to try and thread the needle where I can do both. But right now I've got three at once, three complex issues. And that's, that, that's, that's tough. And, and for audience sake, it's, one of the issues is a really high end executive's entire career is at place. Another one is literally could change the world by billions of dollars. And a notable single to two single two part percent of carbon being reduced. And the third one is a dude who's owed a very, very low seven figures, but he's owed it. And I'm dealing with all of them at once. And I don't, I don't have that upper end threshold. I'm not going to give him up. Maybe, maybe I have to, but I don't think so. And I'm also not going to give up that today from 08:00 a.m. till noon, I was on Theo duty and I loved it. And we got to explore a whole new world of walking yourself up steps, going down a slide by yourself. I'm not going to give up any of them. And that's a big part of this podcast, of course. But I tell you right now, in this moment, that's tough. Okay, Brad diary, over. [00:11:08] Speaker A: All right, Brad diary, over. I think that's, you bring us mentioning points that we'll have to dive into at some point. [00:11:13] Speaker B: I'd love to. [00:11:14] Speaker A: That means it's over to me. [00:11:15] Speaker B: Yeah, it's over to you. I'd love to hear what you've got going on. [00:11:18] Speaker A: Yeah, we're just living the dream here in Colorado. We're having a great time. I think the two, there's tons of things are happening so fast. Like I said, arthur's, you know, he's four days away from being six months old. He's doing great. The big updates in our life are weaning. So we started weaning him a little early. I think a lot of people start at six months. We were given the go ahead by our pediatrician to start at five because Arthur was big and looked like he was hungry. Yeah. So we've been doing it for about two weeks now. And it's really fun. It's pain, it's a messy, it's horrible. But like, the thing I've always. The thing that has maybe shocked me more than anything else as a dad, and I've mentioned this earlier in podcasts, is how quickly you see them learn. Like, I remember a couple months ago watching him learn how to like, reach out, grab something and like, pull it to him. I remember him, like, learning that in a morning. And then, you know, the first day we gave him some food, he, like, put it in his mouth and then kind of went, ah. And kind of. And didn't do much else. And now, like, within two weeks, like, every day, he, like, eats a little bit more. More's going in, he's getting it more, he's understanding what's going on. He's going back. And that's so cool that just the rapid progression, it's not months and months and months of trying to get him to eat. It's like a day or two, and he's like, okay, I got this. And now I'm learning more. And now I'm trying to sip on a cup, and I'm trying to do this and trying to do that. That's just been, like, crazy fun. Really, really enjoyable. More fun than I thought it would be. And then the other thing, that this is actually a parent thing, but it's been so much fun. I wanted to kind of get into it. So I don't. I get embarrassed, and I don't often talk about my own personal athletic endeavors. But one thing I did, which was admittedly dumb, but also smart, was I signed up for this crazy race called the Leadville 100, which is 100 miles mountain bike race on August 10, which is going to be, my son will be about six and a half months old. Um, I am lucky that I've been cycling for, like, almost 20 years. And so I've got a very deep base of fitness and knowledge, so I can kind of wing it sometimes. But this is one of those things where I got to kind of actually try hard. And I'm putting it out there because. [00:13:31] Speaker B: Could you tell me the elevation of Leadville, the town not the highest on the race? [00:13:36] Speaker A: I believe Leadville is around 10,000ft and 10,200ft. [00:13:41] Speaker B: Ten, 10,200, which would also be known as 2 miles high, is the low point on this hundred mile journey. Go on, my friend. [00:13:55] Speaker A: Yeah, it's dumb. It's a real dumb race, but it's really fun. I don't know. I'm looking forward to it. I equate it to the Boston marathon of cycling. Like, some people hate it, some people love to hate it. Some people think it's too easy. Too easy. From a mountain biker's perspective, it doesn't matter. I think it's cool. I'm looking forward to doing it. I'm looking forward to getting out there and giving myself something to try for. But this is not the. Me being dumb and signing up for a bike race was not the point of my, my dad diary. The point of my dad diary is this, which is, I signed up for this, and then my wife, Laura signed up for a half marathon. She's a very avid runner. And I talked a lot in pregnancy, and we haven't talked much into that, but during pregnancy, we really focused on our fitness, which is really nice. And both of us putting these events in our calendars before the baby was born has been really good for us. Now. We got lucky. I'm going to, like, preface it with all the caveats, like, we got lucky. Laura recovered really well from birth. We have resources. We are, you know, healthy people who have flexible jobs. Laura's got paternity, all of those things. Right. If you're not being a super ultra endurance athlete in the first year of your child's life, this is not meant to shame you. You're fine. [00:15:09] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:15:10] Speaker A: But again, the lesson I want to teach here is we both made the commitment to each other as a partners that I wanted to go do this Leadville thing. Laura wanted to go, she wants to go set a pr in this half marathon, and we committed to each other that that was going to be okay, that we were going to help support each other to do that. And then in the lead up to that, like, I've had to go on long bike rides, and she's been doing this series, there's a town series here where we are in Colorado of running races that are really hard and crazy, and Laura's been doing them. And the, the lesson, my, my point, finally, is we've learned so much about how to be parents by trying to say, okay, Laura has an 08:00 a.m. start for this run, and Laura does, and our son does not care that she has an 08:00 a.m. start. But we're going to figure, we're going to figure it out anyway. Does that mean I've got to get. When, you know, she's got a run? I'm going to get up an hour early and do all the prep and get the car ready and make the breakfast so that she can sleep in and feed our son before she gets up. You know, I've got two photos of her at start lines of races breastfeeding our son and then literally, like, getting him off the boob, handing him to me, and she's off to run. And I just think it's like, I just think it's the coolest thing I'm so proud. I'm so proud of her. So this is a huge shout out to my wife. Cause she's an absolute stud. She's like, staring it up with these women and, like, being competitive at altitude when she's not from here and she's six months postpartum, whereas most of these people are like, former professional athletes. That's what happens when you live in a mountain town in Colorado and, you know, my wife's being competitive, and that's cool. And it means we're getting out every day. And I think the compounding benefits of that are one is I am fighting the dad bod pretty hard. I'm doing good. I also stopped drinking, which has been really nice. And Laura's feeling good about herself because she's getting out a lot. We're both so we're both feeling fit. It's good for our mental health, even if we're not sleeping as well, because it's a really good stress release. And each of us are getting our own private time alone, which it feels like you don't often get when you're a parent, a new parent. And then logistics, when you commit to doing something that has hard logistics. Like a race. [00:17:26] Speaker B: Yep. [00:17:27] Speaker A: You just figure it out. The baby comes in the car, and if the baby's crying a little bit, he's just got to come along. And for the most part, we think that that's going to be good for him. So all of this is a long way of saying that, you know, it's. It's really not about bragging about how. Listen, I haven't even done the race yet. For all I know, I won't even finish it. But, but its been a really cool lesson for us in learning how to be parents and learning how to support each other. And its had all of these compounding benefits that have just been massive for us that I think we probably hoped would happen but couldnt have counted on and got a little lucky in all those things. But its been really nice that way. [00:18:03] Speaker B: Preston, something I respect about you and what you said in this story is youre being intentional. And you and I talked about the other day, you actually said this words to me, and I've heard them before, but when you said them to me, it's like, here's a strong opinion loosely held. And I knew instantly. Yeah. And where we were in this conversation between what you and I were doing in that moment, and the same thing with this idea of setting intentions as people. [00:18:35] Speaker A: Right. [00:18:35] Speaker B: You've got the you, me, we, and I guess now, USDA, right. I've got, I've got the, I've got the, the ways that I want Sarah Beth to be successful and then the US. Yeah. And, and that. Throwing out a very, very strong. Here's a big Harry audacious goal. It's not a big Harry audacious goal for you to Leadville 100 if you were a 26 year old bachelor, Rob. [00:19:04] Speaker A: I mean, it's. Well, here's the thing. It still is. [00:19:07] Speaker B: No, it's not. Because you then was like, how fast do you go? How far do you go? How well do you do? [00:19:12] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah. Fair for me. [00:19:13] Speaker B: Now it's do you do it? And then, and then, and then the Laura side of it and then what's Arthur doing? And then the uS piece of all of it. I love how that's all coming together. But the thing you're not sacrificing is because this is so big, the change in your life in the last six months. It's so big. I'm choosing to be defeatist. I'm going to shut down and just say, like, this is all I can do. And by the way, anybody who's out there, who this is all you can do, rock on. That is your capacity. Absolutely. You don't need to be like, hitting the high on the mountain here at all. Because in our life right now, the fact that we're up in my folks place and, and nobody else is here, we don't have a nanny and we're just, we're working and we're taking care of each other. We're taking care of ourselves. We're working on sleep. We do not have the capacity to do Leadville. One hundred s and half marathons. That's not even on our radar. It's not. And I don't think you're better or worse than me. [00:20:17] Speaker A: No. And I think the mistake would be to focus. If you're looking at me, the mistakes would be to focus on the magnitude of the challenge. [00:20:25] Speaker C: Yes. [00:20:25] Speaker A: Versus the fact that we picked a challenge that I want to do. And setting aside time to do that right for you, it could be a five k or it could be I'm going to take a cooking course or it could be. I don't know. I want to go. [00:20:40] Speaker B: I'll give you what mine is. I'll give you what, minus ten minutes of meditation a day. [00:20:45] Speaker A: Ten minutes of meditation a day. [00:20:47] Speaker B: And I think. And it's. I'm crushing my own cognitive health because of that. You can't compare ten minutes of meditation to a Leadville 100. They're non comparison. They're apples on Tuesday. [00:21:03] Speaker A: Yeah, but it's about the idea that if you're intentional with your partner, you pick something that you like and you don't give it up and you go for it, you're going to find that there's ancillary benefits to your relationship with the you, me and we. That's been really nice. And I think this might just be justification. Right? So I think about this a lot. Am I just justifying my own selfish habits by saying they'll be good for my son? Of course. But I think it's good for my son to see his parents, even at six months old, his parents accomplish hard things. And it's good for him to come along and be on top of the mountain when the race finishes because he gets to see it. And so I think that it's tempting to say I can't do those things because it was bad for the kid. But as long as you're intentional about it, I think that's good. So that's my. Those are my dad, Irish. We're doing well. We're feeling fit, we're trying our best, and Arthur's eaten, so it's a good. It's a good time in the Burnett household right now. [00:22:00] Speaker C: Beautiful. [00:22:02] Speaker A: Well, on that note, Brad, why don't we take a quick break? When we come back, as a reminder to everyone, we're going to have our interview with Michael Mador. He is an expert on community and community building. We talk about building community and business community and fatherhood. It's a conversation you're not going to want to miss. Hey, everyone, we're here with our interview with Micah Mador. He's a new dad, an all around awesome guy. Micah, we're going to jump into rapid fire questions with you right off the bat to introduce you to the audience, but you want to just give us a quick two second bio on you. What's your elevator pitch? [00:22:38] Speaker C: Here I am. No, it's great to be here with you guys. I've known Brad for a while, so, so fun to do this. And we've had our own recent new dad conversation, so now we're going on the record with it. It's exciting. New dad here, ten month old at home. Jonah. Live here in a suburb of Boulder, Colorado, Lafayette. Been here for 14 years. Been part of the startup community, VC community, accelerator community. Still find myself, I don't know, I say, weirdly energized by all of this. Even with ten month old and a little less sleep than usual. [00:23:18] Speaker A: Yeah, that's awesome. You already covered, so just real quick. One kid, ten months old. [00:23:25] Speaker C: One kid, ten months old. Ten months as of yesterday. So. That's right. [00:23:28] Speaker A: Nice. [00:23:29] Speaker C: I'm excited for. I don't know when we flipped two years versus 1.51.25, but now it's still, it's months, not weeks. At least we've graduated to. [00:23:39] Speaker A: Yeah, well I'm still not quite there. I got a five and a half month old, so I guess it's technically months, but we're getting there. [00:23:46] Speaker B: I got a 375 day old. It's kind of how I'm doing it. [00:23:51] Speaker C: However your brain works, Brad, I like it. [00:23:53] Speaker B: Nobody knows that. That's a mystery. [00:23:55] Speaker A: Michael, what's your title and role right now? [00:23:57] Speaker C: Yeah, so besides the new and exciting title of new dad. For my day job, I work at a startup called Bolster in the executive talent space. I run our VC partnerships and do a lot with operations as well. And then have a few other roles, mainly in the community that I run a community called Colorado startups as the volunteer director. And that's been new. Actually took that on like right before Jonah was born. That's the time to take on new and exciting responsibilities. We can dig in on that. [00:24:31] Speaker A: Yeah, Brad and I both learned that lesson where we took on a bunch of stuff. Right. I around that time and I'm not sure how well it's worked out. [00:24:38] Speaker C: Yeah, my therapist like I don't know, now's not the time to like quit your job, go do anything drastic. And I'm like, okay, it's not drastic. And talk to the wife about it. We feel good. [00:24:47] Speaker A: One of the great learnings I think I've had has been like, oh yeah, I don't have like all that time I used to spend just like doing all the little crazy projects just has evaporated entirely. [00:24:56] Speaker C: Well, I say like maybe I'm an anomaly for a lot of modern men here is I don't play video games and I don't really watch sports. So everyone chooses to invest. Waste isn't the right word. Invest their time in different places. And those are two areas I don't invest in. So you'd think I just have all this time to like, you know, do all these things, but the time evaporates. I don't know where it goes or you know, it goes to listening to podcasts and putzing around the house and the garage and cleaning bottles and all the fun stuff. That sounds like we're all dealing with in different stages for sure. [00:25:32] Speaker A: And then last rapid fire question for you is how many companies over your career have you been involved in? A kind of a leadership level leadership? [00:25:40] Speaker C: I mean, I'd say emerging leadership, haven't managed huge teams before, been more of an independent contributor in smaller companies community roles. So this is kind of the first time there stepping into that. This past company joined about four years ago. [00:26:00] Speaker B: Beck, I wanted you on for a couple reasons other than just a good guy. And it's actually kind of an excuse to hang out together and talk about something we would talk about on a hike. It's just now we get to do it this way. But one of the interesting perspectives you have on the business side that you're growing and the other side is you have worked around so many leaders integrally with them, whether you're bringing them into a community and then helping them deploy or whether you're working with the foundry group people, of course they're creating their portfolio of it. And really what I want to know is what have you seen or learned about leadership? And that that'll be the first question. The second question is what translates into the fatherhood side of leadership, but just leadership on the business side, what have you seen as an observer, as a smart person, as an individual contributor who's got a lot of at bats? [00:26:47] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I'd say, you know, we've been a little bit of history here of like, you know, I've kind of been at all the stages of early stage entrepreneurship. So first job out of college was at Techstars, associate in the Techstars Boulder program. Got to see 13 and then ten the second time around startup scale in a three month period. So call that 5000 foot view. I was doing projects, I saw them in different but really early stage forms and then from there went to the VC side. So spent five and a half years at a VC and got to see, you know, early stage seed series a portfolio companies all the way to the scaling pre IPO and even public companies and did a lot with community there. CEO's, executives, I think those are the three lines in my career. It's community, it's all about the people. And Techstars, they used to say what the six criteria that we evaluate are people people, product market people or team. Team, team, product market people. Like, it is so much about the team I remember also like vision without execution is hallucination from one of the companies. [00:28:03] Speaker B: That's good. [00:28:05] Speaker C: You have an amazing idea, but you're not the right team to do it. You're probably not going to go as far as the amazing team that is going to go figure something out. You know, we'll draw some parallels into fatherhood there. But, you know, kind of the through line in my career really has been the people, the community, and it's largely been the past almost decade with executives. So, you know, whether it's founders, CEO's, or other folks in the executive staff that I've spent a lot of time with and fostering community. And they're people too. Even if, you know, they have a lot of responsibility, they're at the top and they have to make hard decisions. Like when it boils down, we're all, we're all people who have thoughts, feelings and needs and nuances. [00:28:50] Speaker B: It's an interesting thing, too. What we've discovered with a lot of the dads that we've interviewed is, and we get to ask this question, it's like, well, how much control over the process have you had as a leader? And it's squishy, right? Sometimes you're the decision maker, but sometimes there's politics involved. How do we make this decision? Can I sell it? [00:29:06] Speaker C: Right? [00:29:06] Speaker B: Sometimes you're just the decider. And then we ask, well, what's that like at home? Like, oh, I make no decisions at home. I'm just individual contributor. Chop wood. Carry water is my role, which is fun. But I guess something that I don't, I've got a frame of reference in my mind that never explored. What does the word community mean or mean to you? It's not a group of people who happen to hang out in the same room, something bigger than that. And so, of course this is going to lead to fatherhood. But what does it mean to you, Micah? [00:29:39] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, again, I nerd out on community partnerships, you know, VC community called platform for those kind of familiar. And so, you know, literally, I'm listening to podcasts about that. I've read books about, you know, community and business and otherwise. And so there's a better definition maybe we'll link to in show notes if we do that. But I think I'm getting it generally correct. It's a group of people that come together around a shared mission, vision or values. So, you know, and it could be together in person again, Brad, we're going out to lunch. We're doing something. We have a small community thing, you know, in 2024. You know, it could be virtual, it could be hybrid, it could be a global community, it could be hyperlocal. But it's really, it's getting people together that share some common interests, backgrounds, values, curiosities. And when you do that and you give enough of a container, not overly structured, like really cool, things happen. So an example or two of what that looks like is in the startup community I've kind of, as we all do, as maybe newer or emerging parents, you do some soul searching. Like what do I want to be when I grow up? What is my hedgehog concept? For those familiar with Jim Collins and good to great, or I icky guy, which is kind of similar and expanded, but like why do I exist? What are my superpowers, what's my passion? And in our modern world and economic system, like how am I going to make money, how am I going to fuel what lifestyle I need from that? And so for me, for those that know me and you do, Brad, I really love the outdoors. I feel at my best recharging happiest when I am outdoors. Biking, hiking, skiing, all the cliches of a Colorado resident here. And in the work sense I'm passionate. I get really energized as an extrovert, but I get energized by being with people and getting people together. So almost two, two and a half years ago now, I bridged those gaps of, well, I'm doing work events and nothing wrong with a happy hour at dinner or whatever, but yeah, I'd love to get people out hiking or skiing, but with the container. These are people that are all sharing experiences in the startup world as founders, operators, VC's, service providers. And just that connection is enough that hey, we are in this world or have this identity and we love the outdoors. Let's get 30 people on a Friday up to the mountains or skiing or whatever. That's been kind of a fun way and especially weaving full circle into fatherhood. [00:32:25] Speaker B: Of like, yeah, that's where I wanted to go is because fatherhood, go ahead. [00:32:30] Speaker A: Sorry. Before we get to fatherhood, there's something I really want to ask Mike about, which is how especially over the last couple years, how have you thought about community virtually versus in person? [00:32:38] Speaker C: Yeah, I think there are places for both. You know, I think there's a lot of nuance and it can depend is the politicians answer there. I think both are needed and important. I think some of the best communities do both. So take this podcast and this emerging daddy o community. You are able to expand your listenership and audience by doing this virtually, by having this as a podcast that people can listen to. And we don't have to all sit in a circle at Brad's house and have lunch together. [00:33:19] Speaker A: And your Brad Rob story time scales. [00:33:21] Speaker C: Yeah, it scales much more. It allows you to go from one to many, one to few to one, to the world. Like, it scales infinitely. As many people as wants to listen. But connection is hard. Like, as an extrovert, I get energy from being with people. You know, when Brad and I get together, we riff, we get excited, or like, you know, voices get elevated, you know, but Zoom doesn't always do that. Sometimes it's neutral, if not draining. Staring at a Zoom community, being part of a slack community, that's kind of faceless. I don't know these people I'm interacting with. So I always found hybrid is really powerful. And if you do some in person events, I think you'll see a spike in the online virtual engagement, because you're not just rob that I know from slack or email. Like, oh, yeah, we had that connection. You're a little taller than I remember. You're a little shorter than I would have thought. Whatever. You have that human connection. [00:34:21] Speaker B: He's taller than you think he is. I meant that about both of you. [00:34:26] Speaker A: Yeah. And then as you think about virtual, because I'm thinking a lot about. Actually, I just finished reading a book about. For parenting about the virtual world and how it's disembodied and not an asynchronous. And that really is tough for kids. And I'm trying to think about that in my career, too. Like, have you seen anything in the virtual world that really sticks? Or, like, have you seen any tricks or someone do something where you're like, man, that actually made me feel connected, even though I'm sitting through Zoom or something like that. [00:34:56] Speaker C: I mean, I've actually been. This is like, a weird thing to say. Some, like, fairly engaging, like, zoom, like, long form Zoom, like, summit conferences. Like, you know, one actually, they sent me, I don't have it in my office here, but it was a partnership partner hacker now called Nearbound, did this summit. And part of it is when you RSVP, you put in your address and they sent you a booklet. And so even though I'm going to this virtual thing, they gave me a physical thing to kind of bridge that world of, like, yes, I'm engaging with the content for this half day, full day online summit. And they gave me a little, like, you know, a physical token to bridge kind of those gaps and worlds, you know, some things. And this is, again, hitting every boulder hippie stereotype of, like, mindfulness breathing exercises. Like, I've been on some things that are larger groups and they're like, hey, let's just take a minute to be present to center breakout room. Something of like, let's have a human connection. Even though we're 30 boxes on this big Zoom meeting that you're kind of just getting talked at for a while, there are some ideas. I'm sure I'll come up with more and I'll chime back in with them. Rob? [00:36:14] Speaker A: Yeah, of course. But that's just, that's been on my mind. So cool. But Brad, taking it away. [00:36:20] Speaker C: Going for it. [00:36:23] Speaker B: I remember hearing it's something like 30% of kids over ten have, like, a close friend or a best friend that they've never met in person. And it's interesting to me because my best two friends live far enough away that I see them twice a year, but I talk to them constantly. But I've known both of them for 20 years. One I went to middle school and high school with, the other one I went to college with and then worked with. It's like, I know their faces and their personalities, and whatever way we connect, we still know each other. But this new generation coming in, they're not just digital natives. And the next group will be Zoom natives, but our children, because all of our children were born in the last year, will be AI natives. And that's something I'm really chewing on, is what is community? When AI, as soon as they start being able to see what community is or means, AI is going to be four or five years older than it is now. [00:37:15] Speaker C: Yeah. Aren't all our kids alpha generation, right. That we started over again? So a scary AI alpha. There's going to be some new zoomer, Boomer, millennial name for them that they'll come up with. But I think about that, too. I mean, I grew up in the nineties and with dial up Internet that our kids will never even have a concept of and aim that virtual community. But it was bolstering or tacked onto in person relationships. I'd have relationships with friends at school, and then, yeah, we'd take the relationship online after we played or hung out or whatever that, like, oh, we exchange screen names again, things foreign to our next generation of natives there. But, like, I think of a lot of things that luckily I don't have to make a decision on yet. But, like, man, when we were kids, like, maybe we had a flip phone or something if we were out and about. I think I'm a little younger than you guys, so, you know, maybe I was a little earlier on that, but, like, hey, mom, I'm going to Jimmy's house and I'm riding my bike. Can you really go to, you know, Johnny's house? Like, you can't do that anymore. Like, you know, so one time, like, I want my kid to have that. Like, hey, you know, within reason. Like, yeah, you're adventuring. You're riding your bike around, you're going there. But then I'm also like, I want to know where they are. I'm, like, going to put an airtag and a tracker on them, like, at all times. But, like, how do you balance those things? I don't have the answer yet. These are things I've thought about and wrestle with a little bit of. [00:38:53] Speaker B: It's interesting, I would say. [00:38:56] Speaker A: It's certainly something I'm thinking about because. So I just read the book anxious generation. It's very popular. I highly recommend it. It might be a little controversial, too, but a big thing the author Jonathan Haight talks about is talks about all this stuff around the virtual world, but about this idea that kids learn, learn, and they're wired up to learn by going out on their own and kind of figuring stuff out. And even if you don't look at the airtag or even if you don't look at the find my phone, it still, like, alters the psyche of, like, well, I know I can always, like, I can always just like, call mom or mom's always going to come find me or dad. [00:39:40] Speaker C: Well, they don't know I have their, their tag. I'm just doing that on the back end, right? [00:39:45] Speaker A: You gotta do it secretly. [00:39:47] Speaker C: That's my failsafe. So, like, you know, hey, I know where my kid is. But no, it's really interesting. I made a note of that book. [00:39:55] Speaker B: To think about what I want to just super analog and age myself on. This one is when I was growing up in British Columbia and my stepmom, she was new to the house and I was new to her, and I just been kind of free roam, kid. I was maybe in first or second grade somewhere here. And the thing that actually harmonized us because she was nervous when I would get too far away. And I didn't understand her being nervous because I'd never received that pullback before. And so my dad did was buy an analog, the most analog thing ever. One of those triangles that you ding to say with the dinner bells ready. [00:40:25] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. [00:40:26] Speaker B: And, and as soon as she did that, I would be wherever I was. I could hear it. And sometimes it take me ten minutes as a little kid to get, get back. Um, but I could. I could do that. I could manage that. Um, and that's when she and I were able to find harmony in it. But the thing that I was going to get into the most was one time I was at a friend's house. I was trying to do this little, I don't know, gymnast move, and I fell on the stairs, and I knocked the wind out of myself for the first time. And I needed help from. From my stepmom. I needed support and security, and I had to cry my way home and find my way home because she never would have known any of those things. And the rest of the kids, you know, they didn't quite get it, and I kind of just left. And that's a very different world that we're emerging into. Um, but going back to community. Micah, I want to ask, what is your community of fathers right now? Because even a community manager. But there's some isolation that happens in today. You work from home, and, you know, first time fathers, it's not like you started off with a community. Other dudes that you. You liked and loved and were the same level as you. And right now, I'm just starting to meet the same guys. Taking Theo out to get to. To play. Same guys are there at the same time. We're starting to get each other's names a little bit. But where are you on. On that journey? [00:41:38] Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, I'm. I've always been a community instigator, so I think, you know, maybe. I don't know if I'm an anomaly. [00:41:46] Speaker A: Yeah, I feel like you. I feel like you have different problems than the rest of us on that front. [00:41:50] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:41:51] Speaker A: I mean, I at least speak for myself. [00:41:54] Speaker C: Say more about that, Rob. [00:41:55] Speaker A: Oh, just that, you know, I find it much harder. I'm. I'm not the extrovert. I'm not sure I am entirely introverted, but it is not easy for me to be, like, to new people. Like, let's go create new events or things or get out there and meet all the dads. And I find the dads hard to crack, whereas the moms are all looking for connection. [00:42:15] Speaker C: No, I mean, it's interesting. And historically, having two older sisters, I've almost always gotten along. Not that I don't have a bunch of close guy friends, but a lot of my closest friends have always been women. One of my best friends from childhood, she was the breast man at my wedding. You know that it's not unnatural for me to grab a group of guys and get together, but, like, that's my inclination is like, hey, we have this shared thing in our life. It's work, passion, it's a hobby. It's this new dad thing, or you're an emerging dad, because whatever. And it's like, hey, I want to be there. I want to be helpful. I either a just went through this. If you have questions, I was just telling you questions on your registry of, like, what you actually want. Like, I actually have a lot of opinions on, like, gear and things now that I didn't have, you know, in the before. So I pulled together. Like, I have a lot of, you know, friends that are dads that, you know, I've made, you know, more of a concerted effort to, like, stay in touch with, wrangle, ask how things are going, share some milestones. Haven't done anything really formal, which I think is fine. Like, you know, a friend of mine talked about a bagel group. Like, hey, once a month, the dads and kids, we're gonna go get bagels and talk about things and whatever, you know, there's plenty of communities out there. I don't think, you know, it could be something there. Not, not something. I want to create a third job for myself. Fourth job. [00:43:48] Speaker B: Don't do it. We'll do it. Rob will do it. [00:43:50] Speaker A: A small question there, because you said once a month, how often do you think community needs to interact for it to be? Is once a month enough? [00:43:59] Speaker C: Oh, there's a great book, I think, on the shelf, the business of belongings. This is really talking a little bit more of like B. Two B communities and communities as a growth, growth moat for companies. But this is a book I wish I had earlier on in my community building journey. It really talks about the cadence of a community, the daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual things that are the heartbeat and drum of a community. So not every community needs or would have daily actions. I'll give Colorado startups, for example, daily actions. People are posting on slack, people are sharing things on LinkedIn. People are dming each other every day. That's happening weekly. We're posting, we're doing announcements, we're sharing events. Monthly, I guess three events a monthly. We're hosting things we don't have quite the quarterly or annual. You build up, think of it like a song. You're building up to that crescendo at the top, and you're like, there's all this pent up demand from the weekly monthly actions, and then you come to a big culmination. So in our startup community, that's like Boulder startup week. And Denver startup week, those happen two times a year. The whole community comes together. There's a ton of energy around it for other communities. You might have quarterly geographic meetups in person, but every year you come together for your big annual summit where you get people together, do it virtually whatever, and that sustains for the rest of the year. So clearly, Rob, you can see me jump up and get animated. I have lots of thoughts here. And regurgitation. [00:45:43] Speaker A: I'm glad I asked you that question. That's amazing. No, that's really, it's really insightful. [00:45:47] Speaker C: Yeah. Community fathers. I think it's important everyone has people to talk with. Weaving back in. One other thing, Brad. Business, what sets businesses apart? And I really think it's the people and it's the partnerships. I think partnerships are everything in business. Not that you can't be an incredibly successful solo founder, but they have support. They have partnerships with their investors, their board members, their early employees, their executives, whatever, advisors, mentors, coaches. So that is such an easy transition and bring that along to life. I have an amazing partnership with my wife. I hope she listens to this and hears this, that it really helps to have a great foundation, a great partnership. I say that she makes it really easy to be a good dad because she's an amazing mom. She thinks about all the things that maybe I or other men don't quite think of, of nap scheduling, cadence and like all the things and, whoa, you're. [00:46:48] Speaker B: Not great at that. That's amazing. You're the first guy I've heard. [00:46:52] Speaker C: So, so, so I have. Siri remind me, like, hey, your kid should be eating and sleeping and whatever. Really, I can come in and like, you know, do a lot of the fun stuff and she just, she's just so on top of a lot of the other stuff. And so that that partnership in our marriage relationship is something, you know, that is such an easy transition or pull through from business world to personal world and beyond. [00:47:20] Speaker B: What I'd like to say, too, though, it is interesting to think about a community of fathers, and we've talked about maybe having a father board meetings as dads because we are kind of all solo in this, right? Even our relationship with our partner, thats a special relationship. And that relationship isnt necessarily equitable at getting better at my job, at dad love, my wife. Shes smart, shes my counsel, shes my best friend. Shes someone I go out of my way to spend time with. Shes all those things. But how do I sharpen this particular sword and what Rob and I are lucky that weve fallen into is the way we do it is by interviewing people like you. And then we just take the good stuff and learn the other stuff and it's fine. But this concept of getting better at being a dad is really something I haven't heard anywhere outside of what we're kind of doing here. It's being less worse at it, don't suck at it. That stuff that's out in the zeitgeist. But just what are the tactics and the tools of being better? And one of the concepts of anything to be better at is you got to take a step towards being better very consistently. And it's not a journey, it's not a destination, it's a journey. But im going to hand it over to Rob because I know, Rob, youve got some questions too. But yeah, the other dads concept, thats really what I wanted to take away and thats why I really wanted to have you on here. Because you think about community and its value and its benefits and what would a community of fathers look like. And the closest we got to it was just one time, like having a board where youve got to report in and youve got to talk about your decisions and you got to get acquiescence for them. And loosely designed, but that was the closest we ever got. But maybe in this conversation you're helping me think it needs to be a lower base than that. It's kind of more porous, less formal. But those are my thoughts. [00:49:04] Speaker C: No, it's accountability. It's insights from others. It's oh, like I've learned. Sometimes my wife tells me something or all of us over and over and over again and then someone else says it and I come home and I've now learned instead of saying, hey, guess what Brad just taught me today on this thing. I remember she had said in the past, guess who agrees with you. I heard you say that ten times and this other person agrees with you on this thing. But sometimes it really does take hearing it from another set of ears or eyes or person or perspective for something to click. And again, just riffing for a second, there's a lot of resources, I think, for new moms and by no means, oh, us poor dads, it's so tough for us. That's not what I'm, no, no. [00:49:52] Speaker B: Like we encounter this once an episode at least it's all blessings to the moms. They do the heavy lifting, they do the hard thing. But we, we need a spot to where a portion of it, even if it's not nearly the whole thing. [00:50:04] Speaker A: Well, it could be a little spot. Just a little spot for us. We just want to help. We want to get a little better. [00:50:11] Speaker C: Like, ideating on this community, like, you know, uh, my wife Hannah's part of, like, a mom group, and they. It was a structured thing. They, you know, did a class at the JCC. It was awesome. And they actually hit it off. Like, they came together around this shared experience of being new moms and then happened to have other connections that they had. And they've now been continuing. It's been eight months after this initial class that they've stayed together, and they meet, like, once a week, and they're on a text thread and all of this. And so I think looking towards some of those things, and I think whatever community we create, Brad, bring the kids along. Give. Give mom a break, like, you know, and give, like, yeah, learn from each other. I was with a friend for a happy hour, and he's like, you make it look so easy. Or like, this is what being a dad's like. Like, your kid is just so chill. And I'm like, I think I've planted that seed. And some of my friends have, like, oh, wow. Like, you can still go to a happy hour. You can still go hiking. You can do, like, having role models out there of, like, what is possible and talk through things, I think is. [00:51:15] Speaker B: That'S a beautiful, huge, huge motivation for why Rob forced me to do this podcast. [00:51:21] Speaker A: I twisted Brad's arms. Well, I think, too, if I'm like, this is, this is a half form theory, but it's something I'm working on where I know that, like, so one thing we know, because Brad and I've brought up this statistic a lot, is because it's from an author who I've met in the UK who writes about this stuff. And she says that one of the number one things you could do for your partnership, and there's something about, like, fewest rates of divorce, things like that, is having solo dad parenting time, not dads helping out and doing equal share solo dad parenting time, because you gain more confidence and you do all these things. And I do think that, like, as dads, at least in our partnership, my wife's doing amazing things and she's really out there and she's really getting out, and she takes Arthur out, and she's not afraid to get out of the house and all those things. And I know for some moms and some dads, it's super intimidating. But I know for us dads, my experience so far has been that a lot of dads are a little less worried about things like, oh, he bumped his head, it'll be fine. We're just a little less keen. We're probably a little dumb. We're probably a little dumber about it. Right. But if we can use it to our advantage, it means it is a little easier for us to just be chill and like, hey, let's just bring the baby out and like, yeah, let's take. And if we can take the lead on that and mirror to other men whether they'd be dads or not, that, yeah. Like my kids coming around, he's just here and he's doing good, and he's coming to the happy hour, he's coming on the hike. And if we can get out there and do those things, I think it makes it much more accessible to be a parent. And I think maybe, I know, Brad, we never kind of stated this out loud, but I think part of what we want to do here is make it easier to be a dad and more acceptable to be a dad and less intimidating to be a dad while also maintaining a high level career. Because I think that's something a lot of people are struggling with right now, Trey. [00:53:03] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:53:04] Speaker B: And I don't want to lose that high level career part of it. The one thing, Rob, that you did a couple times. I did really? Only once. But you really hit on the uncomfortability thing. Cause, Rob, when you met that, that author, that was your second or third time in that 1st, 2nd month where you were the only dad there. And there's. There was a discomfort you had to like, breathe through and be comfortable through. And by the kind of the third time, second, you're like, I knew I was probably gonna be the only dad there and. Okay, fine. Um, but yeah, that, that's one of the things I want to break and dispel and maybe an idea of a collection of fathers coming together and in a little more, but like also less, less formal way and. Okay, so I want to switch topics. So a little bit. Well, kind of just jump way off the side. So we're talking about a lot of the benefits of father. We're enjoying it. It's a really big, meaningful part of what this podcast is about. It's like, what are the good things and why? Why do we want to do it? Maybe not to encourage other people, definitely not scare them, but we gotta, like, scratch the other side of the edge, like, like Micah, what are some of the burdens or the costs or the difficulties. I don't care what word you use, but the stuff like for me, I'll give my example to let you formulate your thought. I do more cooking and cleaning in a day now than I used to do in a week. And while that's chopped wood, carry water, work, I can listen to a podcast, but I can't do anything else. So it's just a, it's worth it, it's nice, it's fine, but it's definitely a burden or a cost or a thing that I bear. Again, nothing compared to Sarah bathe. What are some of the things that coming into fatherhood ten months in, you're like, oh yeah, Brad, this is something that's here. [00:54:40] Speaker C: No, lots of good thoughts there. But before I jump in, and I will jump in there just the last thread, real quick. I think leading by example for your friends, for your peers, having role models that have shown you, I've had great parenting role models, and my sisters and nieces and nephews and brother in law, all of those. But you know, it's the people whose life becomes their baby or children and then the people who bring their children along to their life. Like, yeah, it's going to take more time, it's going to take more gear, it's going to take more patience. You're probably not going to do all the things, but that's really been a role model for me of people who I've seen. They go to bars, they go to dinner. Jonah went to a dozen restaurants in his first month or two and it was a almost easier then than it is now. So I just think role models, and that is great. It's not all sunshines and rainbows, Brad. It's hard. Oh my gosh, really bad. Or new parents. Oh, we're different worlds we're living in then. No, I think when people would say, hey, my wife and I were expecting a kid here, whatever, and you get kind of two camps of, oh my God, it's the best thing ever. All sunshines and rainbows. Or you get like the, I remember, are you ready for your life to change forever? Are you like, are you ready to never get a good night's sleep again? Are you ready for 18 years before you can take a deep breath and like, I'm like, as an optimist, I'm like, why are they scary? Like, why are they haters? Like, what are they doing? And then, as our CEO put it, like having a kid or ending fatherhood. It's like going through a one way revolving door. You can never get to the other side again. Hopefully you never do. It's that leap you take. So I'm realizing now the people I thought were haters or pessimists or realists or whatever, they were just trying to be real. They were trying to level, set some expectations that, hey, there are some trade offs ahead for you. You can't really say yes to probably everything you used to say as an extrovert that likes doing and going and being around people. And so, I mean, the tactical things, Brad, I echo for sure. Like, I've actually done more of the cooking and cleaning in our household, historically. Like, cooking is actually like my happy place. Like, I enter my flow state. I could have a really long day. I go chop things up. And by the way, sometimes my wife doesn't even want what I'm cooking. She's like, that's weird. Like, what do you make it? Like? That's a weird combination. Like, okay, well, I'm just going to do it and I do it for myself and I pop in an airpod and do that. So, you know, that that's a given. Like, I have less hand with less time with two hands to do anything because I'm cleaning, I'm picking up, I'm holding, baby, I'm rocking, baby. I'm doing whatever great for my podcast and should get back on the audible train of, like, I have really crushed some podcasts in the past year just in the. In the background, but yeah, some other stuff, like, you know, managing a few different inboxes. You know, I said I have a day job. I have a community job. I have a personal inbox. I have. So, you know, you kind of need two hands to type. Sure, I could dictate things, whatever. Like, I just, like, do some of that, you know, communication, you know, virtual communication, rob or community point than I used to. And so I either have to be more efficient with my time during the day from like my 09:00 to 05:00 I'm here in my shed office in my backyard. Or it's when Jonah gets to bed and everyone's sleeping and things are clean and I feel good about it. And the other night, I was up to 1230, just hacking away, getting a little bit caught up because I had just felt perpetually behind in three or four different areas. And I'm like, sure, I might be a little more tired tomorrow, but, like, I need to do this on a maybe Sunday night or something to just, like, feel good about, you know, hey, I've cleared out some. Some communication debt or whatever else. So, yeah, I mean, the opportunity cost of your time, I think, is the, like a bigger umbrella term that I'm really thinking of. Like, saying yes to somebody else isn't just saying no to that time with my wife or whatever. It's like, you know, hey, there's a real opportunity cost. You're away from your family or away from your kid who you want to be with, and you're putting a burden, in some cases, on your partner. You can't go three to four events in an evening in a week unless you're bringing your kid to two or three, which Rob, I brought Joe no into his first happy hour at like four or five months. He's gone on hikes. Like, you know, it's been fun to do that and feel out the, like, social normities around bringing your kid. [00:59:34] Speaker B: So I something I've noticed in, like, a lot of strategic planning and executive coaching over seven years, one of the fallacies that each of us have, we pick one camp, we do a cost benefit analysis, and some people only look at the benefit. Some people only look at the cost, and some people only look at the ratio. And I would say most people only look at the ratio. They make a decision instantly. Ah, this wins the cost benefit analysis. But then it comes to bearing the cost. You still got to bear that cost, even if its totally worth it. And thats kind of what im glad that you just got to state is you think fatherhoods worth it. You think bringing Jonah to stuff is worth it. You think its for you, its worth it. For your partner, its worth it. Im kind of making some assumptions, but youre nodding, but that doesnt mean the cost doesnt also exist. Thats where people really get in trouble. And then when the bill comes due, in some ways, in some cases in life, literally, they don't want to pay it. And I don't mind it at all. Even though I can talk about the cost of fathership, I don't mind it. It's totally fine. But it is a very different world. Yeah, but anyway, that's just my exposition. Rob, I think you had a question. [01:00:37] Speaker A: No, did go for it. Micah. [01:00:40] Speaker C: Yeah. If you have a question, I'll come back to mine. [01:00:44] Speaker A: No, I think I was going to make a comment, but I want to keep the thread going here. [01:00:49] Speaker C: So there's a quote that senior year college, a critical leadership professor at CU Boulder, like over a decade later, you still think about something teacher said, like they made an impact there, and that's not the only one. But said a weakness is usually an exaggeration of your strength. And so he talks about it like a bell curve. And maybe you have heard that before, that term. [01:01:13] Speaker B: I haven't heard it that way, but I've heard almost an identical concept to that. And in fact, we know this when we go into, we talk about superheroes. Um, you know, it follows the same patterning. Um, but then, yeah, also in executive coaching. Um, and I like what you said, too, because there's so many things that we do in life and we watch, and when they work, we just do more of them and we cross over this line past diminishing returns and then. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And cost. And I mean, great example of that, right? Food, eating too much or exercising too much, both of them can be harmful. Uh, even though exercising too much doesn't sound like a phrase. It will hurt your family relationship if you are training for an iron Mandev. It just will. It's 25, 30 hours a week of solo exercise time. Is it good for your body? Maybe we can argue about that. Is it bad for your relationships? 100%. [01:01:59] Speaker C: Yeah, we were talking about. Go ahead, Rob. [01:02:03] Speaker A: I was going to say I also, I put. Got myself in trouble. One of the things I took on in this time is I signed up for this race called the Leadville 100, which is a very, very hard mountain bike race. And I'm doing it and I'm training for it. I'm like so dumb. Why did I decide this is the year I was going to try and do this when I've got a six month old? [01:02:21] Speaker B: But anyway, you were talking about your strength becoming your weakness because it's the overvaluation. We grab a trail. [01:02:28] Speaker C: Yeah. And my thought on there is like, again, this thread of a community leader, as an extrovert who likes to do things is like, I think one of my greatest strengths is like, I'm a yes man. Like, I like saying yes. I like helping people. Like, for those familiar with the enneagram, which is one of the few personality tests I actually like, really resonated with and felt that to be strong. I am Brad, maybe. No surprise. You know me well enough. I'm an enthusiast, is my top level. I can get very excited about many different things and with people. And kind of the next two was a tie between the helper and the achiever. And the helper and enthusiast are two kind of really core. Like those speak to me when I read the definitions of those. So as a helper, I like to help people in business and personal, my neighbors, whatever. But I think that is such a strength up until this middle part of the bell curve that I'm saying yes to helping other people at the detriment of saying yes to myself, helping myself, which a lot of the time means being there, being present, helping my wife more, all of that. And so that's something I'm just acutely aware of as someone who has active fomo of, like, it's okay, you're gonna like, it's fine. And you don't want to tip over to that. That negative side. And so I'd love to develop a little more Joe Mo. Some joy of missing out. That's. That's an aspiration which it's similar to. [01:03:54] Speaker B: Like, joy of delegation. And it's because you get to do something else. You didn't have to be in the room, and you had trust of what was going on, and you didn't need to feel those emotional things. But you remind me so much of Adam Grant's book, give and take, givers and takers, which our co friend Julie Penner had me readdehe, and I listened to it on a long, hard trip, and it changed my life. And the way that givers to get taken advantage of is when they don't have a feedback loop to also receive. And then many years later, I was reading game theory about the prisoner's dilemma. And the theory that works the best is to be a giver until the other person fails. And then it's a tit for tat. Every time they're bad to you, next round, you're bad to them. But if they stop being bad, you're always good. You never take the first thing that is the most successful over hundreds or thousands of iterations, is the tit for tat. It's you. It's not that people run over you. It's that you're always kind until they give you a reason just to just throw a little elbow. And then never again. It's not the other way around, which is, you know, some people just roll over and always be nice, and then they get screwed. Or the other side is, as soon as you hit me, I hit you back for forever. Or five times bigger than you hit me. [01:05:00] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:05:00] Speaker B: So it's just. That's such an interesting way to go about it. [01:05:03] Speaker C: I resonate with that. And, like, you know, my wife and I are actually fairly opposite personality types, and it. It works really well for us. Like, I'm always assuming positive intent. I'm always giving someone my trust until they break it. And she's opposite people have to earn her trust. She assumes everyone until they prove themselves to her. And it works. And it's a good balance to have on the other side of one having. Like you said, brad, your best friend, your partner, all of that, man, I'm so glad she's on my side. You know, I have that person saying, why? That's the second time that person did that to you or whatever. It's like a light bulb of her. I mean, really pushing me to hold, you know, some of my connections, interactions to. To that higher standard, instead of just like, oh, they're not against me, they're just for themselves. They're just dealing with their own stuff. [01:05:56] Speaker B: I'm curious about to learn in my fatherhood journey, but before I got to sky came to father a little bit older, I had a bunch of female friends who were really not good at self advocacy as younger women, and they have graduate degrees and they're smart. Some of them have passed the bar and they're doing that stuff. And then they became moms. And when they learned advocacy for child, and mother and child are not even really that distinct, even if the child's 12ft away, they're kind of still the same entity that when mom learned to do that for child, then they learned to do it for themselves. And I'm interested to find for someone like you, which you would let yourself kind of be a little bit more rolled over. You know, I'm not saying it too harshly, but I wonder if you learning to advocate for Jonah will be difficult because you don't like to advocate at all or will teach you self advocacy. And so we'll interview in three years, and I will remember this question, but that's. That's an open ended question, is, when do we, as givers, as heartfelt helpers, when do we kind of throw an elbow? And I bet you anything if someone's treating your kid not so nice. [01:06:59] Speaker C: Absolutely. That's an easy one to stand out. [01:07:02] Speaker B: We'll see something new. Yeah. Yeah, Rob, I keep talking. You're paying attention. It's really great. He's nodding his head and smiling for the audience who's not watching, but I know he's also thinking, I told you. [01:07:14] Speaker A: The reason why we started this podcast is for me to learn. So the less I talk and the more I listen, the more I'm winning. Yeah. The thing that I keep thinking about, too, around all this is, and Mikey, you said this a little earlier, was there's people who kind of. I forget how we phrased it, but basically, their kid rules their lives and there's people who bring their kid into their own life. And I think that, that, I don't know if I've got a point other than I think that's really powerful. That's something that we've tried to do. You know, we try to make sure that we're, you know, creating a good environment for Arthur, my son. But also we're like, you know what? We hike and we bike and we live between two places, the UK and the US. And we have to travel on flights and we got to deal with jet lag and we got to just deal with that stuff. And there's some cons. You know, it's not great for a baby to go through jet lag and all those things, but there's also a lot of pros. Like, gets to live in two different countries and see all these different things even when he's 54345 months old. Like, I think going to restaurants is really helpful. I think that being out there in the world is going to really help him so that when he's two and three and four, he's going to be like, yeah, I know what a restaurant is. I know what an airplane is. I'm not going to freak out and go running up and down the aisle. Hopefully, probably will. [01:08:18] Speaker C: Now that I said that before I could articulate that. [01:08:20] Speaker A: Yeah, I know what's going on. [01:08:22] Speaker C: Weird. Like, I totally agree. [01:08:27] Speaker A: So that was my comment, but I do have a kind of, not a final line of questioning, but a place I want to go with this. Right, so your career is around community. So when you think about fatherhood, how are you not just about dad community, but also, like, for your son? [01:08:42] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:08:45] Speaker A: How are you think, how are you going to use that power of community for his benefit? [01:08:51] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, like, you can only, I think, lead by example, you know, give them a bunch of different experiences. Like, he might be a total introvert. Who knows? Like, you know, seems. Seems statistically unlikely given his at least strong side of one parent. But, like, I want to give him exposure to a bunch of different things, see what he likes and gravitates towards and just like, you know, explore that with him, get really curious about it. You know, he has no choice. Like, he's going to have to, you know, come to things and be around people and, you know, some of, like, you know, great kids, they're not like teenagers. I know, like, they just hang out with adults and they talk really well and it's not like, hey, go to your kid table and go do that thing, like, come be part of the conversation. Like, you know, this isn't something to just zone out when parents are doing adult talk. Like, I think that's a really good skill to learn. I'll weave in something that I just think you can learn so much from all generations of people. So for Brad, you might know this quote. We're both here in Boulder. The Norland library. The library on CU Boulder's campus. Beautiful library, beautiful campus. Good views in the mountains right there. But on the front it says a quote by George Norlin, who knows only his generation remains always a child. So I remember, I'll say that he who knows only his generation remains always a child. And so seeing that as a 1819 year old coming onto the CU Boulder campus, wide eyed, energetic, full of, ready to experience all the things of college has to offer, I took that. And really, it's so easy in college to only spend time with 18 to 22 year olds. Those are all the people around you other than your professors that are going to be older. You could just surround yourself with only like aged people. Probably some like minded people too, and some group think. But I was lucky. My wife grew up in Boulder. She had a niece and nephew that were one year old right when we meth. And so I remember being in college, having them over at the fraternity house when they were one year old, walking on the beer pong table, seeing the world through their eyes as a 19 or 20 year old, that most of my friends just didn't have, like that experience. They weren't hanging out with younger kids, babies, babysitting, whatever. And then on the other end, like older people, like grandparents, seniors, even your professors, like, going to office hours, engaging, like, that's a tangent of sorts. But when we talk about community, Rob, which I'm coming back to, your actual question is, like, you just, like, I learned so much from all my interactions with people, I get really curious about what they're doing. Obviously, I get very excited. That's part of how I'm coded. [01:11:44] Speaker B: The enthusiast. [01:11:46] Speaker C: Yeah. So I really. I hope that is a takeaway for Jonah of, you know, you don't have to be running all the communities, you know, probably shouldn't do that, maybe for all of them. But, like, man, there's just so much power in getting together, sharing an experience, meeting different people from different backgrounds, traveling, I think, is huge. Like, so to me, that's all wrapped into community. [01:12:12] Speaker B: Thanks for that. I'm going to kind of start the wrap up with a question that I ask everybody. It's nothing. The official wrap up question, but the world's changing real fast. And I don't know your relationship with your father, but I know that some of what we do is we pattern off of them, and some of the stuff we let go, whether it's letting go because you're active or, like, one thing I'm not taking from my father is what does screen time look for? Theo, right. Wasn't a part of his experience as a child being, being a child, then being a father. Um, so what, what is something that, from your father, um, or an elder generation you are bringing forward? You're like, yeah, that's good. That's smart's coming with. And then what's something you're either leaving behind or you need to create something new? [01:12:49] Speaker C: Hmm. One, this actually came from my mom rather than my dad, but she was a career CPA, certified public accountant. So two times a year, tax deadlines, deadline in April, extensions in October. She was working like crazy. And so we joked, I think we're past the statute of limitations on this, that negligence breeds independence. The fact that I had to come home from school and there wasn't someone there, and I had to, like, make myself a snack, like, maybe that's part of the thread where I love to learn, you know, cooking and exploring in the kitchen is because, like, I had that longitude in, you know, starting probably late elementary school that I was just home and could cook stuff and figure it out. And so, again, going back to that, you know, kids are just, you know, can be hard to get away with anything as a kid. When you're tracked and you have your air tag and youre gpsed and whatever, that, like, I do think this, this bit of rob, you said this, like, maybe men are a little bit less, more go with the flow of, oh, the kid bumped his head, whatever. Like, I think that is so healthy to the development is like, they have, you know, enough leeway to go experience, go, you know, bruise their knee or do whatever, because those are all the things I think all of us did and, you know, helped us shape who we are, those experiences. I don't want my kid to only have those experience when he goes to college and he's had a helicopter parent, which we actively, like. That's one thing. I didn't have helicopter parents. I was a latchkey kid. Are either of you familiar? I didn't know that until my wife was like, yeah, you're a latch key kid. They, like, left the door open, the garage code, you let yourself in, you took your bike you went whenever. [01:14:35] Speaker B: Yep. [01:14:36] Speaker C: That is so core to who I am is because I had those experiences. [01:14:41] Speaker B: So what's something different or something to leave behind? [01:14:44] Speaker C: Yeah, Rob, you had. You had something or. No. [01:14:46] Speaker A: All I was going to say is I think that. That becoming a latchkey kid is going to be harder and harder and something I want to. I want to think about is, how do you. How do we keep that alive in a society that's becoming more and more protective? There's no. There's no answer there other than I'm thinking about it. [01:15:00] Speaker C: Yeah. Different or something to leave behind. I think we all want to make it better for our next generation. Set them up. Better financial position is what I think jumps to mind for a lot of us, but better self confidence, better positioning skills, whatever. I think we've seen that from generation to generation. We wanted to make it better for our kids and all of that. That's a hard one. I'm still developing this hypothesis of fatherhood. Ten months in, I'll either. [01:15:36] Speaker B: We'll have you back in 30 months. [01:15:39] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. Going back to rob and what we were riffing on of, like, bringing Jonah along for our life, I think that's how I grew up, and so it's not so different, but, like, grew up going camping and, like, that was awesome and fun. We took Jonah camping two weeks ago for his first time. Tons more geared, tons harder, but, like, so important to, you know, keep doing those things and just giving him all these sets of experiences. Maybe he's going to hate camping because he was cold and got bit by a bunch of mosquitoes when he was ten months old and is now going to have some trauma there. But I hope he really loves it and maybe that's something we can do together and go on a backpacking trip, go mountain biking together. Like, those are some. Some dad aspirations over here. [01:16:22] Speaker A: So those sound like great aspirations to me. I'm definitely looking forward to that. I'm looking forward to that part of fatherhood where we get to be a little more interactive. [01:16:31] Speaker C: Yeah. But while staying present, I'll say, like, I'm always like, oh, I can't wait till he's crawling or more interesting or walking. And then I have other parents who are like, watch what you say. Like, that's all game. And so, yeah, I do balance that of, like, I'm so excited for the future and I really want to be present and soak up all of the goodness. Now, that's hard for someone who has a yiddish word for you both. Spilkes can't sit still kind of has to be moving around mentally and physically. It's hard for me to just sit there, be present playing and saying, this is amazing right now. I don't have to think about what's coming up next month, next year, next decade, being good with what's there. Landing the plane, Brad, that's a some. [01:17:20] Speaker B: I'm actually just getting from the, from the nanny. Am I on theo duty right now or not? So we don't have to land the plane for those, for, for the interview reasons. But just to let the people know why I'm a little distracted. [01:17:32] Speaker A: No worries. We'll hear. Why don't, why don't we work on landing the plan anyway? Because that was awesome. But we usually like to wrap up here with kind of three closing questions. I think this will be a good place to wrap it up. So what's one resource that you love and you wish you had earlier in your fatherhood journey? I know you're already still pretty early, like us, but what's a resource you love. [01:17:53] Speaker B: Again? [01:17:54] Speaker C: Like, I'll stay on brand with community, like other people. Like, you know, you could read all the books, you could listen to all the amazing podcasts like this one, which everyone should, but there's something about firsthand experience. Someone who's been there, think someone who's been there a little more recently too. Like all the tried and true things from our parents or in laws of, well, when you were a baby, we did this. I'm like, well, times have changed in 30 to 40 years since I was a baby. Like modern science and technology, who knew? But hearing it from others that are recently going through it just on the other corner, it's like business, right? You have an advisor. That was where you were in the promised land and they're going to help you navigate it better. So good resource everyone should find. [01:18:40] Speaker A: If you don't have that, that's great. So this is the most intricate one, but we like this one. So Brad and I have this section on the show called what dad wins and dad fails. And it's our attempt to kind of be humble and talk about what's going well and also where we're messing up. And so for you over the last ten months, what are, what's a highlight? What's a dad win? Where do you think you nailed it? And what's a dad fail? What's the time you feel like you missed the ball or kind of got off track? [01:19:11] Speaker C: Oh, this the dad fail. I'll start with that. That was an easy one. My wife and I were, like, six months in. Jonah's six months old. It's like. I don't think I said this verbatim, but I was thinking online. I can't believe neither of us have dropped him yet. I'm surprised it's not me. I probably knocked on some wood or something. And this, again, this was maybe a month ago. Had him in the high chair. You have the removable thing that you wipe down because they make a mess and have fun eating. And there are straps, and usually you strap the kid, put him in, and he's good to go. I had not done the straps, and I had taken the top off to go do my cleaning duties and wash it. And I hear a thump, and kiddo had a three foot fall and, you know, landed three ish about my waist. So, yeah, I landed within a second of picking, like, cries, explosion, whatever. Pick him up. He's fine. But that was a big fail. And, you know, again, if my wife's listening, she had told me not any less than a dozen times, hey, you have to strap him in. And, hey, don't take that out unless you, like, are picking him up. Whatever. So, like, you know, could have been so much worse if he was hurt or, you know, broken face or, you know, whatever. So huge fail. A dad win something. I'm like, I don't know how deliberate. I'm a little bit more of a morning person myself. Not a, like, 05:00 a.m. morning person, like, you know, whatever. But most days, I think 90. I'd say 90% plus closer to, like, 98% of the past ten months, I've done the morning bottle, so I wake up earlier with him whenever he wakes up. We do a morning bottle most nights that I don't have community things or obligations, whatever, which is not all the time. I try to do the nighttime bottle, too. So, like, you know. You know, I don't. I don't deserve a trophy or something that, like, okay, good for you, Micah. You feed your own kid. But, like, we're to track a streak for gamification purposes. Like, feeling really good about my. My morning nighttime feed and my, you know, try to let the wife sleep in as long as possible on weekends. So, um, yeah, to other dads out there that, like, if you're not getting sleep, you're a shell of a person. You're a zombie. Like, sleep makes everything better for. For me and us, at least. So try to. Try to get that. [01:21:48] Speaker A: Sleep is. I think that is one of the biggest things we learned because I do the same. Basically the same thing. I try to take him for an hour or two in the morning. We don't do bottle feeding, but I still try to take him and kind of because I'm the more morning person. So many of, like, the fights and arguments and upsetness that happens in the first six months is just because you're both sleep deprived and tired and just, like, has nothing to do with anything other than someone just needs a nap and it's either the child or most likely, you two. [01:22:16] Speaker B: Anything you do, it's always. It's always me. [01:22:18] Speaker A: It's always me. [01:22:19] Speaker B: Because even if it's everybody, it's still me. [01:22:22] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:22:23] Speaker B: Cause I can. I can handle adversity better. [01:22:25] Speaker C: Well, we don't do this, but this is a relationship tip or something I read or heard or something of, like, hey, you know, like, naming that, like, how low your gas tank is. Like, you know, I walk in after a long day of work here in my backyard shed and like. Like, hey, I'm, like, mentally exhausted or tired or whatever, and I come in and maybe I'm thinking, like, oh, now it's like, I'm going to go do that thing I wanted to do. I'm going to go take a bike ride and clear my mind, whatever. But if I walk in and my wife's been on mom duty all day, and she's like, oh, I cannot wait till 530, and my kid comes in, I can go do anything for 30 minutes by myself. And having that, like, again, we don't do this. But, like, hey, how low is your tank? And, hey, I'm on. [01:23:09] Speaker B: Like, we do it. Yeah, I'm straight up do it. What we've learned to do is do it more frequently, just to kind of note, hey, by the way, I'm at a six right now for no reason. And Sara Beth did that last night. She goes, by the way, I'm at about a five. And I said, oh, I'm higher than that. I didn't even say what number I was. I'm higher than that. And I took him up to bath. [01:23:28] Speaker C: Yeah, let me, let me. Let me help and give you. Let you get up to, you know. [01:23:33] Speaker B: And the place where you always get into arguments is when neither of us have admitted to ourselves, much less our partner, that we're both at three and we're actually asking for someone to help us out of this dual three situation. But it's, you know, it's the two beggars asking for money from each other. Like, there's just nothing to give. So, yeah, good. [01:23:54] Speaker C: I know Sarah Beth and I appreciate that, that you have a startup, framework minded partner. I do not. And my wife is always like, why can't you just talk to me like a normal person? Why do you need a framework? Why do you need icebreaker questions? Why do you need this, like, monthly, quarterly thing? And I'm like, that's just how. [01:24:14] Speaker B: I don't know that Sarah Beth appreciates it. She just has learned to translate. [01:24:18] Speaker A: She just knows what's going on. Yeah, I'll do that with my wife. I'll ask her, what's your goal? And she's like, I'm not your employee. Stop it. Emotions, like, just talk to me and feel your emotions. [01:24:32] Speaker C: That's it. Like, feel them all the way through. Like, don't keep those bottled in. I'm getting that. I think my favorite last one that I prepared a little bit for. [01:24:40] Speaker A: Oh, good. Well, the last one is. Sorry, go for it. All right, the last one is, tell us your favorite dad joke. [01:24:49] Speaker C: Oh, so I like, do not. I'm not like. People say, oh, yeah, like, you're funny, funny looking, you say funny things, whatever. But I'm not like a joke on demand sort of like person. So what do we do? We go to the Internet. We go to chat, GPT, whatever. And so this is a full circle wrapping in my father, me, my son, my dad and I have made homemade Pickles for the past 30 something years. Homemade kosher dill pickles. And every year he printed a different label on the top and it would be Some Honey Pickle something. And you can imagine a group of older JEwish men getting together, making pickles, and they're starting to make pickle jokes, and we keep them pg ish. So I'm gonna. Can I, can I do a rapid fire of a few? [01:25:36] Speaker A: Yeah, let's do it. [01:25:38] Speaker C: Edit out to your favorite one. [01:25:39] Speaker A: Yours. [01:25:40] Speaker C: So we're gonna do some Pickle Jokes. How do the pickles enjoy a day out? Ah, they relish it. How does a cucumber become a pickle? It goes through a Jarring Experience. What do you call a Pickle? You buy at a great price. Price? A Sweet Dill. What do you call a pickle? Who's a bad loser? Oh, that's a sour Pickle. No, that was all. I'll leave it there. And for any Pickle Weirdos out there, if you haven't seen the american pickle Movie with Seth Rogen, where his Grandfather is preserved in a VAT of pickles in the early 19 hundreds and comes back 100 years later to experience modern day Brooklyn. It's a fun one. [01:26:29] Speaker B: Well, great. [01:26:30] Speaker A: Well, that is an amazing way to end it. So, Michael, we really appreciate, appreciate you being here. If anyone wants to connect with you, if anyone wants to learn more, how can they find you? [01:26:41] Speaker C: Super easy to find, I think if you. I mean, LinkedIn. I'm the only Mica Mador. Google Micamador at Gmail, Twitter. Micah Mador. I got all of them early, actually got Jonah his own Gmail already, so he's already first, last name. Do, do those things early. Dad, I did that. [01:26:58] Speaker A: I did that too. I emailed him his birth certificate, my son, so that he has always have it on, on record. [01:27:05] Speaker C: Fellow nerdery, some. Yeah, things. Things a lot of people wouldn't, wouldn't think about. Awesome. Thanks, guys. This is awesome. [01:27:14] Speaker A: Yeah, thanks for being here. We so appreciate your insights and thanks everyone for listening. We'll be right back. [01:27:24] Speaker B: Hi, everybody. Thank you. Welcome back. And yeah, that was Micah Mador. And gosh, that guy knows a lot about a lot. He is an enthusiast and we love that about him. So thank you, Micah, so much and follow up with him if you can. But at the end of the episode, we always just kind of poke ourselves a little bit on our wins, our fails thing in between. Rob, I'm going to hand it over to you. Wins and fails as a daddy o recently. What do you got? [01:27:51] Speaker A: Yeah, so the wins are more just. I'm going to dive into what I think was the original thesis of this section of the podcast. Poops. So the wins are. Arthur's been weaning, it's been awesome. But it now takes him like, man, I hope he doesn't listen to this when he's older. It takes him like a week to poop now. And it is when it happens, it is epic. He's had two now that are like five to seven days in the making. He had one this morning and I get the win is just that he's like not losing his mind and he's not angry all the time. But it is hilarious. It's like, it happens at like five in the morning and it stinks out the whole room and it is wild. But it's, I don't know, it's oddly satisfying to have him accomplish that and help him clean up and be fine. So that's hilarious. So our wins are, he's doing great and his bowels are, are moving slowly but surely. The fail is the one that I feel like I've been waiting for this whole podcast time and so I'm going to, I'm going to admit to it, I kind of almost half dropped Arthur. [01:29:04] Speaker B: Did you do it? [01:29:06] Speaker A: I didn't, like, drop him from a height. We were sitting on the ground. It was after we were getting ready for his batheous, and he was kind of sitting up and I was kind of holding him by his hips and I must have taken one hand off of him, I don't quite know, but I took a hand off of him and he did kind of one of the lunge forward things. [01:29:24] Speaker B: Yep, yep, yep. [01:29:25] Speaker A: And I was able to grab his hips and kind of, like, pull him up, but not before his face had a nice impact with the, the ground and the bathroom floor. It wasn't the hardest impact. I don't think it'll cause any permanent damage. But, oh, man, he cried hard. And I was epically grateful to my lovely wife, who did handled it very well. Did not get mad at me, did not yell at me, did not blame me. These things happened. But I scooped him up and it took about ten minutes of bouncing him around to calm him down. And then we got him in the bath and he ended up being totally fine. But that was like, oh, okay, it happened. Yeah, I knew it was going to happen and it happened. So that's my dad fail for the week. But how about you, Brad? [01:30:12] Speaker B: Well, I'll start with my wins. Wins are good. So on one day, one exact day, I put theo to sleep three times, which is the amount of times he falls asleep in a day. And that's a win. And I know this because I text Sarah Beth when he falls asleep. And so I've got the 10:05 a.m. and I've got the then I've got the 08:40 p.m. and it was like, yep, yep, I did it. And everything's going on in between and, you know, mom's mom and dad's dad and everyone's in between, but I did it. I was responsible for those three. So that was good. Second win. You know, I was pushing the family to come together in this particular time and space in the world. It's easy to be a part. And getting my mother to take an Uber for 2 hours to come home to see us for a day was important. And then my uncle Howie, whos been sick for 50 years, literally, doctors have said, youve got two years left for 50 years. And he was up. And I said to my wife, I said, lets make sure that we see Uncle Howie. Let's double down on family. Why the timing doesn't make sense. The money doesn't make sense, the travel doesn't make sense. The fact that the kid's going to be off. Okay, I get that. But that was one of the dad wins is saying, hey, being with family is important, and let's just do it, even if it doesn't make sense. And then the last thing on the dad wins is we went to a book signing. A friend of ours had a book signing in Boulder, and her book is the big Freeze. And this is a journalist look. I'll read it. A reporter's personal journey into the world of egg freezing and the quest to control our fertility. And Natalie Lampert has crushed this whole topic, and she has done super well with it. But the point of it is that we were upstairs at a book reading. We know her a little bit. And it's my job to take a baby boy outside of this conversation because he's got a romp, he's got a yell, he's got a climb stairs, he's got to do stuff. This is a book signing. And I, as the dad, need to get to enjoy taking the little baby boy away from this group of people who are listening to somebody talk about women's fertility issues. As a man should, as a guy should. Like, I'm letting them have their space, as I. I don't know. That was my way to participate was by being with this beautiful baby boy, which is the whole conversation they're having, but he's a distraction in it, and that. And that's fine. So that's my dad wins, dad fails. I got no funny stuff right now. I am a regular failure. [01:33:26] Speaker A: I got no extreme, normal, everyday dad failures. [01:33:31] Speaker B: Normal, everyday dad failures. Yeah, I wake up too early or too late. The joke that I say to other people is, I know I'm going to be wrong, which gives me impunity to do whatever I want. But no, that's, uh. Sara Beth does not call me out. I'm being wrong just because. No, I think this on the dad side. I don't have any big fails right now. And my. [01:33:58] Speaker A: My. [01:33:58] Speaker B: My biggest win in all of this, as we conclude this, is the fact that my biggest failure was eaten up by the tech gods. And, Rob, someday you might get this. [01:34:11] Speaker A: We'll get it out of there. Some days, we'll restore it. [01:34:14] Speaker B: Two episodes that were chewed up. One of them is our first. That's forgivable. The second one was my biggest failure. And until you fix it, I get to just. Just to be shielded by that. That's perfect. [01:34:31] Speaker A: Well, Brad, I'm glad your life's going that way. Thanks everyone for making it to the end of the episode. We really appreciate you listening. If you made it this far, please, like subscribe, share, and if you've got comments for us, if you have what if you want to be on the podcast, if you have ideas for who should be on the podcast, shoot us a [email protected]. dot thanks everybody. [01:34:51] Speaker B: Thanks everybody.