Competition in Business and Parenting + Robert Reich, CEO at R2AI

[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 Rob Burnett. [00:00:40] Speaker B: And as always, I'm Brad Bickerton. [00:00:42] Speaker A: Welcome to season two, episode nine. On today's podcast, we're going to share anecdotes of our fatherhood journey so far with both being dads and in business. Today in the b block, we've got our interview with Robert Rich. Robert's our first interview with the father of, quote, adult children. He has some wonderful things to say. Share about, uh, the 20 years he spent being a father and what he's learned on that journey, uh, including what it's like to have small kids when running a large vc backed and scaling company. So this is definitely a conversation you're going to want to hear. It's a great perspective, one that we haven't had so far. And then all, as always, we're going to finish up with our dad wins and fails for the week. So definitely going to want to stay tuned. We've been getting a ton of awesome feedback about the show. A couple people have called us, emailed us, let us know what they think. We really appreciate it. If you're a listener, please, like, subscribe and please share this with other dads or other people in your life who you think would find it valuable, because it's incredibly valuable to us. We want to share all of this good stuff, and we hope you enjoy it. But with that, Brad, how are you? How's Theo? Let's talk updates. [00:01:47] Speaker B: Thank you very much. Yeah, it's amazing how much feedback we're getting, especially since we've tightened this up a little bit, moving to the two week cadence. So that's just something that I am incredibly thankful for, that our hobby podcast is gaining traction. And so whoever's out there listening, you're not alone. We can actually prove that to you. We have maths on the updates and anecdotes. So Theo is a micron away from first steps. He's done maybe like an accidental three or four step move and I tell you, it's incredible. The second thing about this I just love to share is when I'm changing his diaper, I can feel how strong his legs are getting. Like, he's got these meaty runner's legs. I was trying to figure out why that was happening. He does, like, 60 squats a day. Did you know how strong I would be if I did 60 squats a day? I mean, sure, he's still rocking back and forth trying to figure out how do squats translate into movement? But, man, like, what a great thing to learn from your kids. So while I can't do squats and talking to this microphone, I'm now thinking about, how do I get 60 squats a day? Be as strong as my son. The second thing is, with that, we've got one of those little push walkers, and we took it out, out into the sidewalk, and he can almost walk for 30 or 40 yards. You kind of have to keep it in line for him. But the giggle and smile on his face as he is tromping along and the shoes that don't fit and his body doesn't quite work, but he is having the best time with his pseudo walking time. So, uh, the, the little dad joy in my heart is overwhelmed. [00:03:15] Speaker A: That is so awesome. And we're kind of actually in a similar, we are more months behind you, but, like, Arthur is, he is waking up to the world. We're in this awesome phase where he's giggling and smiling, interacting and pulling and reaching and grabbing, and he wants to get up, he wants to be up, he wants to look out. We've even got him now. Like, if you do it just right, you can have him, like, hang onto the side of a couch or a stool, and he'll hold himself up. He'll flop over. You have to kind of spot him. But he's there, and we got him a little bouncer, which I'll talk about later. And he wants to bounce, and he wants to run around, and he's only four months old, so he is, like, way out ahead of it. And it's really fun to watch because it's fun to watch him want to take in the world and the movement. [00:04:03] Speaker B: Piece, just the agency that the child gets with movement. I can choose things. I can have perspective. I can have desires and wants. We're saying a lot more now that Theo has opinions and some of it growing up bebe stuff, some of his food opinions, we discount. Like, you shall try this 30 times before you can have an opinion about it. But other stuff like when does he want to eat or what does he want to play with or what's going on that's changing. He's starting to have formed opinions and I think part of that has to do with mobility. I would choose to go over here, go over there, which means, well, what do I want to do? Instead of kind of living in this smaller bubble of understanding that when you can't move, you know, it's only what's literally, you know, touchable. So those are the, those are the Theo updates. Great kid and super, of course, being great father, like, not making great fathers, just like normal fathers. I love him. I think he's great on the business side. A couple things to do and then there's a topic you and I were touching on that we'll get to in a second that I've been really chewing on for a couple of weeks. But the first thing I'd like to say is Boulder startup week was a couple weeks ago and it was back and that was cool. Boulder startup week's really where I got my bones in 2014, 1516 I ran the founder track, I think 1718 and 19 before I moved to Denver. And then something happened in 2020, I don't recall. And the energy of having the different groups who are around the concept of going from an idea to a company that's doing something, whether it's the capital side, venture capital, whether it's the technology side, technologists and white papers, whether it's just the founder side, the people who build things and they start from nowhere. That energy was back in the rooms this year and there's a lot of nostalgia, a lot of fun with that. Of course, the big topics were AI, and then the second big topic was material science is what I'd call it. Anything that's physical and big, that stuff starting to come back into play, which doesn't fit within a venture capital scalable model. [00:06:08] Speaker A: This is very cool. [00:06:09] Speaker B: It is very cool. And I've always been drawn to physical things that do physical things. It's not a need, it's a preference. That was just really amazing and good. And I've already signed up to lead the founder track next year and my founder community, DFA communities have already, six or seven people have said that they'd help out and a couple of them are saying, I'll let her fly in to help you do it. So that's just something to look forward to. But then, yeah, the topic that we were chewing on, one of my founders who works in a bigger industry, he was saying to me that every time he meets with other industry people, they always have this sense or this feeling that you can't win without also pointing out how someone else has lost, and even more so, and how you caused them to lose. It gets that Schottenfreude, that word in German which means pleasure in another's agony, disruption, pain. And I brought this up to you, Rob. We're talking about something else a couple weeks ago, so that would be a good topic to get into, because is business hostile, collaborative? When is it this? When is that? And then what happens when we start getting into the competitive side, the sports side, the fatherhood side? Do I have to look out for other fathers as first friends or enemies of my child's experience or capacity or growth? And so we just thought that'd be an interesting topic to chew on. [00:07:36] Speaker A: Yeah, and I think it's really fascinating. You know, I've always wanted to think of business as being more collaborative, but I think there's absolutely a competitive element to it at a certain point. Some things are zero sum. You can grow markets, you can grow market share, all those things. You can expand into new places. But ultimately, there are typically winners and losers. I tend to think that people spend too much time worrying about their competitors and not enough time worrying about themselves. [00:08:06] Speaker B: And I don't know why that is. Maybe it's just easier, because I found in my life that if I wake up in the morning, I do my best, I tend to succeed. And maybe that's luck, maybe that's skill and capacity. But really, yeah, truly putting a blind eye. And I haven't worked in too many. I've worked in some pretty hostile environments, but not competitively aggressive. I win, you lose. And there's only this amount of the pie. And the real one that got to me the other day, like, the space company, and they have somebody who is shitposting and badmouthing them all day in a completely unrelated field. I mean, they both are in space, I guess, but think of it like, the difference between, I don't know, having a satellite and having a rocket company or having a rocket fuel company and a satellite solar panel company. Like, maybe they're both in energy and maybe they're both in space, but they're so far away from each other that, like, why would you spend any time trying to neg on this person? It was really. It's wild to me because that person is putting so many units of energy into a non effective competitive combat that it doesn't produce anything for anybody. It's at best neutral and most likely harmful. And so that was. [00:09:28] Speaker A: Yeah, I think there's two things to think about here that are slightly separate. One is the thing that has surprised me a little bit about my company and growing something and then seeing other companies I work with grow is that its almost impossible to do something loud and big without people getting mad about it, whether thats a customer service email or someone shitposting on a discussion board, I have seen a lot of companies grow, sell a lot of products, get loud, do equity to crowdfunding through our site, and be very outspoken about the benefits of investing in their business. And I cannot think of a company that has had any sense of scale or any amount of scale, but either in their product or in their fundraise and not received some backlash, received some doubters, have people yell out from the rafters about how theyre going to fail and how bad they are. And weve seen it even in our own customer service. Even if you dont do something wrong, sometimes things get screwed up. Just when you do things that sale things get screwed up and people will send the meanest emails around little things and even if theres nothing you could do about it. And so I think that thats an important thing to recognize as an entrepreneurs. If youre going to have any amount of success, if we have any modicum of success with this podcast, some people will try and tear us down and say that we're bad or we're giving bad advice or that we're idiots. There's a separate thing, which is how much do you look at your competitors and how much do you need them to fail in order to succeed in your own business? And that's a little different. And I'm going to steal this almost whole hog from an Instagram post I saw earlier today because I think it encapsulates it well. And I apologize to the person who does it there on Instagram. I can't remember who they are. I don't know their name. I cannot properly credit this. [00:11:20] Speaker B: Show notes? [00:11:22] Speaker A: Yeah, show notes. I'll try and find it. They were talking about how this is a marketing expert, how often competitors, they used the example of Coca Cola. If you wanted to build a competitor to Coca Cola, most people would think basically Pepsi, a sweet tasting drink that tastes a little bit better than coke at a little bit better price, give or take. But he pointed out that what's actually been the most effective thing at taking market share, or one of the most effective drinks at taking market share from Coca Cola, it's Red Bull. Which is expensive. It doesn't taste very good, and it's in a very weird small can. So his point was that often you cannot try to beat your competitor by mimicking them and being a little bit better. It's often the quirky things that are way off in left field that end up winning a market that exists. I think another example of this might be Tesla cars. Now, they're having their problems right now, but in general, no one thought electric cars were good because they were dinky and small, short range, and they looked like little boxes on wheels, roller skates on wheels. Then Tesla came along and said, no, no, we're going to build a car that is more expensive and crazier and better and all these things. And I'm sure we could find other examples, but that's why when I work in our business, a lot of my people who work for me will go, well, our competitors are doing this, we need to copy, or our competitors doing that, we should do the same thing or undercut them. And my general sense, for all the years I've done this, maybe I'm wrong, but my general sense has been, no, ignore them. I don't want to compete with them on their playing field. I want to figure out where we can compete, how we can be better by not competing against them directly, but how we figure out a different product line, a different type of service, a different emphasis in our business that counteracts them, doesn't try to just undercut them. [00:13:20] Speaker B: Trey, remember to talk about a company one time, and they were just super red ocean strategy. Blue ocean. Red ocean strategy. Just quick aside, red ocean is red because it's bloody. So think of the Mediterranean. Lots of people live there. Lots of people have boats. They kill each other all the time. Very small area, blue ocean. No one's there, so it's not bloody, but there's no map, just says there be dragons. Like, which strategy are you going for if you're going for red ocean strategy? Yeah, this competitive nature, like, you know, like nature's. Nature's red with tooth and claw. Like, go after it. And I can kind of get that. But I was talking to this guy about it, and he was super competitive, former marine, you know, former pretty high end athlete, and he just was linear about destroying his competition. And then I went to his data person and I said, hey, can we take a look at the market and say who the competition is? He shows me the competition. And they've got about 2020, 5% of the market. I said, do they have 2020, 5% of the market or do they have 2020? 5% of the early adopters. We ended up doing the pie chart differently and it turns out 70% of the market wasn't using this. They were using nothing. The old habit, pen and paper, let's pretend. And I said, well, wait a second, why are you spending all of your energy trying to defeat the enemy that's in front of you when you can defeat them by ignoring them and going after the market? Who has never heard of you, has never heard of them, isn't doing a comparison shop to how fancy is your website? What little feature do you have? What's your discount rate? What's your price? All these things in our minds, their lower level, lower value cognitively and then also in the purchasing decision. And you should have seen this guy wake up to he was choosing to have a combative nature because he wanted to, because that's what he was designed to do. That's what he was taught to do in the marines. And thank you for your service. But it wasn't translating into like how do we actually achieve this? The last thing I'll say, just because you're kicking me off on this is very famous book from that I learned from, from Dennis McMahon, last host, the last interview. And it's called the twelve immutable laws of marketing, I believe. And in that one of them is if you can't win the category, create a subcategory. So that's what Red Bull did. Red Bull could not win the category. Pepsi's trying to win the category. Poke is Pepsi still has a shot, maybe go after it. Red Bull could never win that category. So what they do, they created a new category. And when you create a new category you tend to win over the long haul. You end up owning 60% to 70% of the market, Linux being an example. But you get 80% of the profits, everyone else is behind you and has weaker something or other. Something or other that's owning the category. But I think the larger thing I want to bring to this is the best business. People I know don't think in terms of short term casualties and competition. They think in long term strategies and winning strategies and they win slow. I can't tell you how many clients I have said these words to. I don't know shit about getting rich quick, I don't. But I know a lot about getting rich slow. I know a lot about it. And they say, oh, that's right, that's what we're trying to do. We've got a mission, we've got a product, we've got a team. We cannot attack this market at some crazy, frenetic pace. The only winners on that are lucky and always retrofit. And, you know, oh, why was Facebook the winner? Because they were so great and they got the best capital and they had the best teams. No, there's. There's a big element of luck as to why, you know, MySpace didn't make it and Facebook did, and Facebook sub two that we've never heard of failed. So that's the idea of just this longevity. Now, moving back to fatherhood, that's a big question that I have, because I am not yet the place as a father where I'm presenting my child to society and saying, how do you want to live and breathe in society as a person? Do you want to play nice? Do you want to play hard? Do you have a competitive spirit or artistic spirit? Is your artistic spirit competitive? Is your physical spirit artistic, whatever it is? And that's the questions I'm starting to ask myself while I'm talking through these business issues, like how much of this comes back and how much of this is. Brad, you are totally oil and water trying to make two thoughts in your head, glove onto each other. And I don't have answers, but I do have questions. [00:17:53] Speaker A: I think it actually fits well in the dad model, because one is, I don't think we need to be looking at other dads. Making another dad bad look bad be bad does not make you a better dad. I don't think there's a lot of that going on. But, you know, let's not be in competition with one another. That's not a zero sum game. Having more good dads is the rising tide that lifts all boats. Clearly. [00:18:19] Speaker B: Well said. Well said. [00:18:21] Speaker A: But I think there's. I think there's a thought that you've brought up around competition with your kids, and do you want your kid to be competitive? And I think I would pause it to say, strong opinion, loosely held. I posit that I do want Arthur. I want my son to be competitive, but I want him to be competitive, that he wants to win, not others should lose. You see the kind of toxic competitiveness in some athletes where they can't. You know, the example I can think of in my life was Lance Armstrong at his heyday. It wasn't enough for him to win. He needed to crush and embarrass everybody. And it came out, you know, when he was fighting off these charges on drugs, on the doping allegations, he would just be so mean and bury people and I think he'll admit to this day that caused his downfall because people came after him because they. He wasn't nice. [00:19:19] Speaker B: Eventually. [00:19:20] Speaker A: Eventually. Eventually, it caught up to him. [00:19:22] Speaker B: It's a short term winning strategy. Don't get me wrong. It totally worked for him short term. Right. And it's what allowed him to be on the podium seven times. But it's also what made it so that he no longer holds those two jerseys. And they're all, you know, all the classifications are muted. So short term winning strategy. [00:19:42] Speaker A: Short term winning strategy, not good in the long run. And I think that that's where I want. Where I want to be and where I want my son to be is I want you to be competitive. I want you to be driven. I want you to try to win things, whether it's in business or it's sports or in, you know, art. There's not less so much winning, but I want you to be driven to be competitive, to be good, to be the best, be the best you can be. And you should be upset if you don't live up to your own potential, but you shouldn't be mad if other people are great, and you shouldn't try to kick people while they're down or bury other people just so you can win. And I think that that's, you know, that's how probably how I would treat business as well as, hopefully, parenting. [00:20:24] Speaker B: I can't wait till we get Otis back on to hear. Hear this part. [00:20:29] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [00:20:30] Speaker B: Otis was an NFL player who used to hit people for a living before he became an entrepreneur dad. And he was one of our first interviews, and he'd asked me what I thought about competition at the time, and I kind of gave an answer. Now I'm thinking about it a little differently. Yeah. I don't know how to have that spirit of winning without the spirit of toxic. The toxicity of causing other people's downfall. I don't think that that's healthy. I don't think it brings you too much to your journey. And, I mean, I've seen this again and again in business and in sports. It's like the other person just really doesn't matter nearly as much as you think. If you put three different categories together, luck, internal and competition. Luck or forces out of your control, macroeconomic forces, demographic forces, whatever they are, they're massively important to what you have going on in your levels of success and failure, then there's things in your locus of control. Well, that's where we spend all our time, because that's all we have, but they're not equal. These not three legs of the stool that are equal legs that what happens in the outside force, what I can control and what my competition does. But I would say the competition is by far the most, the weakest and most minor part of those three things. Probably market forces are 60%, let's say, and your own ability to control things, 30%. And it comes just like maybe 10%. And if your competition beats you, it's often a combination of those other forces too. They had a better position on the market when luck came their way. Not to say we don't have agency, but yeah, it's something that all of my CEO's work on is being able to take appropriate reactions to what happens from the market forces side or the competition side and take the appropriate responses. Last anecdote here, and then I want to get to your side is a company that I know that is by definition losing right now on purpose because everyone else is firing people and they're saying, we spent three years hiring the best people we can and they're the most expensive. And right now we're going to hold on to them because when the market comes back, everyone else who fired all their employees, the market will come back, call this day zero sometime in the future, and it'll take them six months to notice the market came back. Six months to hire people and twelve months for those people to be effective. Which means right now, by sacrificing, we're actually two years ahead of the market and we're going to own the entire market. But if they focused on their competition, they would be firing people too. Laying people off, following suit. And they know it's a losing strategy, a winning strategy, short term for sure. Losing overall strategy. Whoa, that was a topic. [00:23:28] Speaker A: I love that mindset, by the way. I want to dig deeper at that at some point. That is a great mindset. Retaining people, thinking long term, hunkering down. I don't think enough businesses take that stance of we can't win right now. There is no winning. Right now. [00:23:44] Speaker B: There is no winning. [00:23:44] Speaker A: So there's no point in taking any kind of winning or short term, any strategy. Don't give up. But also, we can't win right now, so we just got to hang on. And I don't think enough entrepreneurs or employees understand the kind of hunker down mindset. It's too hard to think about. It's too scary, it's too weird. That's an interesting one, though. [00:24:05] Speaker B: I'll talk about that again some other time. All right. But thank you for letting me have this, this time to explore topic with you. Appreciate it. Let's flip to your side. Some updates on Arthur businessy things. What do you got going? [00:24:21] Speaker A: Yeah, the updates on Arthur are all fantastic. I spoke about it a little bit, but we're really having. It's a really good moment. Four months. Arthur's big. He's a little more advanced. You know, not. Not bragging about my son, but he is. He is just objectively, he's just huge compared to all the other four months old, four month olds we know. He's just big. And he is awake, and he is grabbing stuff and putting in his mouth, and he just wants to be out there. And you sometimes realize that he's not as advanced as the children his same size because he's still floppy and can't sit upright. But it's just awesome to see. So it's really fun. And we took him. Since we last recorded, we've been to Wales, which was amazing. We got to show him the beach and the water. We got to take him around. And we've also been down to, in the UK, Brighton. Went to a one year old's birthday party. Got him to show him another beach, got to show him another town. And the thing I'm just really happy about and really proud of is that he's taking in the world. He's been to the US. He's been to the UK. He's been to multiple different states. He's been to Wales. He's been to London. And all of that in four months is just. I mean, he's done more traveling in four months than many people do in a lifetime. Many, many people do in a lifetime. And I was thinking back to my own childhood, where when I was young, I did not know this. I don't know this from memory. I know this from story is my dad was working at an ad agency and worked all over South America. We were based in New York, or I lived in New Jersey. He was based in New York City. But I had been to something like 13 countries before I can remember. So all over South America, south and Central America, and that's nice. And I remember thinking, that was cool as a kid and having the passport and be able to look at the stamps and go, oh, I did this, but I didn't know it. And then I've lived this life where I've traveled all over the world. I live in a country that isn't the country of my birth. I'm married to someone who's not from the country of my birth, actually. The country of my birth is actually Canada. So I've both lived in both places. I'm all over the place, and I never quite made the connection of my comfort with travel and comfort in new places with. I have no way of knowing if any of the neural connections and travel that I did when I was six months old to two years old, how much that has affected my life. And if you look at the way my life's played out, I kind of have to believe it had some effect. I don't know if I will never know how much effect, but it had to have had some effect. And so now, as a father, I get to look back and I get to look at my life and the life I'm planning for my son and go, oh, man. Well, it certainly didn't hurt me, at least, you know, unless you think I'm massively off track, which you're right, you can believe if you so choose. But I don't think it's affected me in a bad way. I like the way my life has turned out. I'm pretty happy. And so I'm thinking about Arthur going, oh, man, do we have to worry about the travel? Is it going to screw up his time zones? Sleep, blah, blah, blah. No. I think this is going to be amazing. So the fact that he gets to take all this life and world in through his eyes and his hands and his mouth and he gets to take it all in has just been a real gift and a real exciting moment. And it's happening kind of earlier than I ever thought it would. And the last observation I have about all of this is we've been joking about the fact that many of Arthur's future classmates are not even born yet. Some of them, I think all of them have been conceived at this point, but it's close. Like, some of them might even not even be conceived at this point. And that's a pretty wild thing to think about, because you think, I look at how big Arthur is, how much he's. How far he's come in the last four months. [00:28:04] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:28:05] Speaker A: And you can think about, if you're older in your class group by six months. You know, when. When someone's five or six years old, you think six months isn't a big deal. But I'm looking at all of the experiences Arthur is having in these four months going. He's about to. Speaking of being competitive, he's going to beat the pants off of those other four year olds in kindergarten at five years old. [00:28:23] Speaker B: Six months. Six months is 5% of your life. [00:28:26] Speaker A: Yeah. It's wild. [00:28:27] Speaker B: Like, no, 10% of your life. [00:28:28] Speaker A: No, 10% of your life. [00:28:29] Speaker B: 10% of your life. I've watched this with what I call my nephews, Atticus and Isaac, and they're a couple years apart and they're great. But I just think about it. Atticus is in the early years between when the boys were five and ten. So they're two years apart. It's like Isaac was so far behind because he physically couldn't, like, move his arm that way. [00:28:50] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:28:50] Speaker B: Whereas Atticus has been moving his arm that way for 18 months. Right. So it's Isaac's got six months till he can even do it. And the other one's been doing it for a year and a half. [00:28:58] Speaker C: It's like, wow. [00:28:59] Speaker B: Just the differential in time and everything, which goes to a whole theory that I have on class structures are super stupid. Oh, you were born in January of 2024. Therefore, this is the class you go into. But I don't want to get into that now. And I'm not a professional educator and my wife is, so we'll let that one go. Um, thank you for that. [00:29:21] Speaker A: Uh, well, I think this is a good place to wrap up. Thanks for indulging me. For everyone listening. When we come back, we're going to have our interview with Robert Rich. It's an awesome interview. Make sure you hear from our first mature dad, who's got a 20 and a 22 year old, I believe. Stay tuned. We'll be back after this break. [00:29:43] Speaker B: Hello, everyone, and welcome back. Today we're so thankful to have Robert Rich, a friend of mine, a multi, multi, multi time founder. He's from New York, lives in Boulder. We get breakfast when we can, we will share projects when we can. And we're so thankful to have him on the show. Some notable notables is he's raised over eight figures in companies just from the VC. He's had exits, but also hes charitable and he gives back. And one of the things he started in the Boulder area was the new tech meetup, which he ran for many, many, many years, trying to get people to be able to have a safe place to come and talk about the starting of founding, of building, of being entrepreneurs. Roberts polymath. Hes a good guy. Well, let the story unfold as to why hes here, whats his fatherhood journey and how those things all blend together. Robert, thank you for being on the show. [00:30:32] Speaker C: Ah, thank you. I appreciate it. Excited to share all of my f ups throughout the last 20 years. 22 years of being a dad. [00:30:41] Speaker B: Whoa. [00:30:42] Speaker A: Can't wait to hear them. Well, Robert, let's start off with some rapid fire questions just to get to know you a little bit better. Okay. First and foremost, how many kids do you have and what are their ages? [00:30:52] Speaker C: 222 and 20. [00:30:56] Speaker A: Awesome. So you're our first interview with what I'll call adult children. I don't know if you consider them adults at this point, but to Brad and I, who have under one year olds, that feels like adult children to me. [00:31:08] Speaker C: They start to become adults, just so you know. [00:31:11] Speaker A: Oh, good. That's a good data point. What's your current title and role? [00:31:17] Speaker C: Founder and founder, I guess would kind of be where I'm currently at. I've got a new startup. [00:31:23] Speaker A: Oh, what is it? [00:31:25] Speaker C: The company is called Two Reals AI, and we are focused on financial compliance and how we can use AI to help change how that's currently being done. So you could say we're an AI first company trying to change the compliance world. [00:31:42] Speaker A: I know a little bit about compliance myself, so this will be interesting. We'll dive into that later. And then how many companies have you been involved with at a leadership level throughout your career? [00:31:54] Speaker C: So, meaning, like starting or does mentoring count or advising? [00:31:57] Speaker A: Mentoring can count more like CEO C suite or kind of working at a high level or board member. Maybe six. Six. Great. And then juice. That's good. And that was quick, too. Just on it. [00:32:14] Speaker C: I mean, I would say a fun fact there is. Whenever I start a company, I like to make a skateboard for the founding team and the investors. [00:32:23] Speaker A: Very cool. Do you build, like a literal skateboard? [00:32:28] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I don't. [00:32:29] Speaker A: I presume it's a literal. [00:32:30] Speaker C: Yeah, literal escape board. I don't go out and, like, laminate the wood, but I do. I go out and figure out whatever the branding is going to be. I usually in some way get that put onto the board. I pick the type of board based on probably where I am in my life. So they originally started out as a little shorter, a little more trick boards, and then they basically evolved into long boards with now big dips in them because my knees no longer operate the way they used to. [00:32:56] Speaker A: How'd you decide? How did that tradition get started? [00:33:00] Speaker C: I've always been a skateboard fan. Like, I've just since I was younger. I'm not like a skate punk. You can see I don't have much hair in my head, so that doesn't give me the visual of being a skate punk, but so I've always loved skateboarding. I've always loved motorcycles. Those two things have been kind of part of my upbringing. And then as I started a company, I was like, what can I do? That's kind of me that brings my art creative side, but also brings my love of kind of pushing to the boundaries. How far are you willing to go as just, like, an entryway to let's get this thing going? And skateboard seemed like a really nice way to kind of represent all of that in one push. And so I've custom painted them, I've had them laser cut, and, you know, I choose the wheels associately, try to get all the colors in there, get the branding in, and represent where it's currently at. [00:33:53] Speaker A: I have so many questions about this. I want to dig a little deeper for a second. Do you do that technical question. Do you do that kind of out of your own pocket, or do you make it a business expense? [00:34:03] Speaker C: Out of my own pocket is what I've done in the past. [00:34:06] Speaker A: And then for any of your founding team members or board members who don't skateboard any, like, cool stories about what they've done with it if they don't actually ride it, I would say most. [00:34:15] Speaker C: Of them don't ride it. And they usually end up at first, either on a wall because they're kind of art pieces, or they end up in the back of the garage. [00:34:26] Speaker A: Still seems pretty cool. Now my gears are turning because I love that as kind of, like, we've done a little bit of swag with my company, but I've always been adamant that I don't want a pen or a notebook. I don't want the boring stuff. I want something that actually is meaningful. That seems super cool. [00:34:41] Speaker C: Yeah, it's hard to have swag. I mean, this is easier because there's anywhere from one of these to ten of these. [00:34:49] Speaker A: Right? [00:34:49] Speaker C: Like, you're not doing a lot of them. [00:34:52] Speaker A: Yeah. You're not handing them out at a conference. [00:34:54] Speaker C: Right. And so from that standpoint, I totally get swag is hard to pick. That's interesting because literally, you're buying from a book, and it's like, well, what's interesting here? Look, I've got the interesting little box with our logo on it that nobody will ever use, and it'll go in the landfill. So at least trying to add some meaning to it is where I come from. [00:35:14] Speaker A: No, I think that's fantastic. All right, well, I know we got a little off track there, but I think that was interesting. No, no, no. Don't apologize. I think the last thing we just. If you want to just take a minute, kind of give us quick, what's the two minute elevator pitch on Robert? What's been your story? What's been your career trajectory? What's. Give us a little background. [00:35:37] Speaker C: That's an interesting one. I did this years ago. I spoke at a high school, and I created a baseball card. And I'm trying to think in my head, like, what was kind of the stats? [00:35:48] Speaker A: What are the stats on the baseball card? [00:35:50] Speaker C: Yeah, I didn't actually bring the baseball card. I thought about it, and then I ran out of time. What are the stats? Grew up in New York, parents were divorced. Grew up in an abusive household. So I learned the skill of how to read things very early because I was always having to avoid and duck whether I was going to get hit, yelled at. Like, I didn't understand what the next step was going to be. And that set forward maybe a little bit of a rebellious kind of view towards authority. So in school, I didn't do great. I always lean closer to the more creative side of how do I solve a problem from there? Finished high school, didn't go to college immediately, went to work when I was younger. Sorry, I'll backtrack for a second. My first company that I actually started, I didn't create a skateboard for, was a printing business, and I was 14. And we bumped into a Xerox salesman in the parking lot, and we were like, hey, how do we get one of those Xerox? He goes, I'll give you one for a month. And we said, great. So the guy gave us a Xerox. I was 14, and gave us one. We put it in a basement. We went on knocking on doors, and we're like, can we make prints for you? And we got an order for a Monday morning that, like, two days later. And we sat there and ran this copy machine until it completely died, but delivered the order on Monday morning and then had to have the guy come back. So I guess that was, like, my entryway to, you can do anything that you put your head to, and all you got to do is work hard. And I think that kind of drove it from there. My next kind of entrepreneurial activity was I started a magazine. That magazine was bought by another magazine, which brought me from. I originally was in New York. My parents were divorced. I went to college, went to Georgia, graduated high school. That magazine then got bought, moved back to New York, which spent the next 20 years of my career kind of in New York. I learned how to program there and, like, really figured out what was going on because we couldn't afford to do the unique things we wanted to do. For the magazine layout, I learned this creative little thing called Postscript, which nobody ever wanted to learn, but I needed to manipulate things in a way. And then from there, kind of evolved from my technological background to working down on Wall street at a financial firm called Moody's. Worked there for a few years, and then really, my tech software career kind of popped out from there because we saw some interesting problems. And that led through a series of companies. One of those companies, there was somebody based in Boulder, Colorado, and that we decided this would be a good place to start. I kind of came pushing and saying, I don't know if this is right. We were interviewing and talking to people in San Francisco, which is where I thought we were going to go, but we ended up coming to Boulder 17 years later. You and I are talking. I skipped a lot of detail in there. Sorry. [00:38:56] Speaker A: That's okay. This is the elevator pitch, right? We're going to get to the details. [00:38:59] Speaker C: I don't know if that's an elevator pitch, but that was some twists and. [00:39:03] Speaker A: Turns, and we appreciate you already being kind of vulnerable and open and help and helping set the scene. [00:39:09] Speaker C: Sure. [00:39:10] Speaker A: Brad, is there anywhere you want to start us out here? [00:39:13] Speaker B: I only have like 30 ideas from what Robert just taught me about my friend, who I already. Yeah, and. But I'm going to. I'll do one note and then a question, which the note is, having interviewed a lot of founders builders in my time, there's this question that I used to ask, which, what was your first entrepreneurial endeavor? And they always kind of hem and haw on this somewhere in college or after college. And when I poke and dig, it's always in their teens. It's always in their teens. And there's always a little bit of rebelliousness, like a free xerox that you broke within it. My very favorite one, Barry Weston. Weston snowboards. When I asked him about all this stuff, like I had to dig, and he kept going back. Every time I dug an earlier part of his life, he got to another thing that he started. And his best thing was that he would sell Ash from Mount St. Helens by going and just picking them up in a bag and saying, mount St. Helens, Ash and selling them. Right. And so no fixed costs, no variable costs. My mother has a similar no fixed cost, no variable cost story. But it's the anecdote, Robert, going back to the fatherhood and being a builder, because I know you're a founder, but I think you're also, or you're more of a builder, and the overlaps between those are very hard to parse. But you're also autodidactic. You learn on your own, and I've watched what you've done with AI since you started talking about it. I know that we share friends and colleagues and comment on that. You clearly are somebody who can find something interesting and go deep into it. Are your kids like that? Do you want them to be like that? How did that translate when you saw them struggling in middle school? B's math class? Because you're like this. They're not you. [00:41:04] Speaker C: It's an interesting question. I'm trying to think of what's the right way to describe that. I think aspects of that my kids have. One of the things I tried to do, and hopefully they saw through just me kind of doing things, is you can do anything that you put your mind to. You have no limits. So I have a daughter. Her name is sky, she's my oldest, and then my son is named Ethan. And I've always said to both of them, you can do anything. There's no blocker here. You have the control, you have the capabilities. And I think that was my way of trying to impose that upon them, but it doesn't always play out that way. I'll give kind of a short story. My daughter got a car from her grandfather, and she was super excited. She is really into saving the environment. She's really into community development. That's what she studied at school. And she wanted a hybrid. Like, she really wanted a hybrid. And she fell in love with the first hybrid from Subaru, which I believe was about 2016. Any ideas what it's all about to get a first version of anything? [00:42:22] Speaker B: Well, hopefully with a Subaru, it's better than an MVP, as you and I describe it, in entrepreneurship land. [00:42:27] Speaker C: But no, it's not. Not even close. [00:42:33] Speaker A: Not even good. [00:42:34] Speaker C: Yeah. So, yeah, within the first, I would say, six months, the battery transmission and the whole kind of electrical main piece to this thing just implodes. And we were like, what comes next? How do you deal with this? We decided we were going to fix it, and so we helped her and she fixed it, and we were then driving across country, and it went again. And the dealer initially didn't want to take responsibility, and we were now also on the other side of the country. So I'm like, how do we deal with this? Like, so my daughter and I talked about it. We went through the details of it. It's like, what can you do? And I'm like, I think you need to go to Subaru USA, right? Like, I think you need to go up and try to get authority to come back down. There's no way we can do that. No one's gonna, like, there's all the negative thoughts that come into that process. [00:43:39] Speaker B: Just real quick, she's 1617 ish. [00:43:42] Speaker C: She's probably 19 by this point. [00:43:46] Speaker B: But still, that hasn't. Hasn't had the experience of doing something like looking somebody's name, calling them and. And, you know, getting them to, like, you immediately. And then also understand that you have a need and a desire and it may not be in their best interest stuff that the three of us do all the time. This is first time through that particular, I don't know, gate. [00:44:07] Speaker C: I don't know, first time. But definitely, like, it's not a. It's not a muscle memory yet, right? Like, she learned this as part. So it's like, okay, how do we do it? Who do we reach out to? Who do we connect with? And of course, as a dad, you want to help, right? But you also. And this is probably what I've done that's both positive and negative. I look at a lot of these as teaching lessons, and how can we use this as a lesson for her to learn the process and to advocate for herself. Right? And I do that both with my son as well. How do you advocate for yourself? How do you figure out what you want to get done? And so we went through the process, and actually, Subaru America totally stood up and they did the right thing. They put the pressure on, they got the work done. My daughter did an amazing job. She actually named her Subaru. I can't believe I'm going to lose the name of it. It'll come back to me in a second, Lucille. The famous BB king song. And so she named her car and she shared her letter with Subaru USA. And we found the right person who was sympathetic, and they did the right thing and actually covered the cost and made sure that it got fixed and she was able to drive that car for a few more years. [00:45:19] Speaker B: That's great. [00:45:20] Speaker C: Yeah, it was really nice. But the more important piece, going back to a, Subaru did the right thing. B, she advocated for herself. Right. And she learned as part of that process that you could go outside of your comfort zone and really be able to advocate in a way that's truthful, that's honest, that's sincere. State your case and that people will, listen. [00:45:41] Speaker A: And were you coaching her through all of that? Were you kind of in the background with kind of your hand on her back, or did she just do this based on what she's seen you do? [00:45:50] Speaker C: Um, no, it was definitely coaching. There was definitely a combination and pushing as well. Right. You should really do this. This should really get done. I'll help. Where can I help? Uh, I'm, I'm a big believer in both in the startup world as well as with children. Like, context is the right way to lead versus directly. Let me tell you exactly what to do. Cause soon as you tell somebody exactly what to do, usually they're gonna rebel against you because they don't have, it's not in their bones yet to know. And so do they have the trust? Do they have the understanding? Do they have the confidence to kind of get there? And so by giving people context of where they can get to, a lot of times they can operate and figure it out themselves, and then you can step in when they get stuck. [00:46:38] Speaker A: Did you do that? So it's not, I mean, this is a really great anecdote, but did you? Because this is something I think a lot about in my both fatherhood and management journey is I try very hard to do that, but I don't think I always succeed. And I've got, on the fatherhood side, I got a four month old. Right. I don't do much with him. I'm not coaching him through anything yet other than some poops I push back there. [00:46:59] Speaker C: I think you're coaching on a lot that you're not paying attention to, but we could talk about that separately. [00:47:04] Speaker A: That's probably very true. Right. But do you, did you kind of know as a dad that you're like, did you think about it that way, or did it happen by accident? Are you just looking back saying, oh, I think I kind of got this right, but I didn't mean to. [00:47:21] Speaker C: I don't know if it's right or wrong, so I'll start there. [00:47:24] Speaker A: Fair enough. [00:47:26] Speaker C: I think so. Again, my view from a parental role, I kind of shared, like, I grew up in an abusive household. It was violent, I knew I didn't want that. And probably if I'm being ultra vulnerable, I had some moments earlier in my life where I had fear of anger kind of taking over. And so I've suppressed the anger side to a degree, and I think I've overcompensated with patience and tried to use patience as almost a tool to overcome kind of this. The background of, I don't want to explode in this environment. Like, and. And so to me, I've kind of put that as a shield or a. As a layer between some of that background as a way to protect, and I think from that. And then also my observation of, like, when issues are coming, I've kind of combined those two things as a tool to be able to say, okay, I'm going to slow this down in my head, watch what's actually happening, and then try to help the situation evolve in a way that it's more positive. [00:48:30] Speaker B: So to me, I think I get to. I get to ring. Ring the bell. We should have a bell every time, every interview where I get to talk about observation skills being the fundamental of leadership, and that I want that to be a fundamental of leadership as fathers as well. And literally, it's just been a universal and might be, I'm looking for it, or most of the interviews so far, friends of mine. So I probably have some. Some kismet there. But what? One thing that I love that you're bringing up, the shadow thing that you're bringing up right now is there's a fairness argument. It's fair that you're angry about stuff that happened a long time ago. It's fair that that's your trigger. And as fathers, we don't have to live within fair. You know, it may not be fair that I have to do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I have to do it because this is my duty as a father. And one thing that Rob says that I love about what he's learned in his four month journey is be a calming force. That's one of our jobs. And even if it's not fair, even if you are going between two warring factions and you know one of them's right, you step in and you become a calming force, which isn't, you know, the fairness argued is my judgment, and the calming force is my practicality. It's what can I give to the situation? And so, Robert, I know. I heard a lot of that. When you're saying, so. Thank you. [00:49:51] Speaker C: Well, the other thing I would add to that is you always know who's right. [00:49:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I do. I went to law school just to prove that I always knew who was right, and I still am. [00:50:01] Speaker C: No, it's not you. [00:50:02] Speaker B: No, that's right. [00:50:04] Speaker C: It's mom. [00:50:04] Speaker B: It's not me. [00:50:05] Speaker C: Thank you. [00:50:06] Speaker A: You went to law school to realize that your wife is always right. The mom is always right. [00:50:12] Speaker B: I got a win this morning. This is a big rabbit trail, but there is a tailless squirrel in our yard, who I've named Stubbs. She doesn't believe he exists. I have multiple photographs of him. But until she saw him today, she couldn't admit that I was. That was. She couldn't say the word. [00:50:33] Speaker A: Keep grasping for those wins, Brad. Keep grasping for those. You chalk those up. [00:50:38] Speaker C: Robert, one thing I just wanted. I have a question girl story. We children are young, we live in Boulder, and it is Easter. I'm jewish, so we treat Easter not from the religious side. So anybody who takes offense, I apologize. But we really love the aspect of the rabbit and what the rabbit brings and kind of the metaphor there, rather than the religious aspect or religious side to it. And so we cover the backyard in eggs, bake eggs, plastic with chocolate on the inside and other fun things. The squirrel got all of them, every single one. And my wife and I wake up earlier, we noticed, literally, they're just thrown across the back. And we're sitting there going, all right, let's go. Right. It's go time. So now it's like, how do we now put these things around the house really quick so that we can have extra eggs, but not nearly enough. Sorry. [00:51:38] Speaker A: No, it's okay. And there's just one thing I wanted to. [00:51:40] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:51:41] Speaker A: Make sure. I wanted to circle back to, because I think one thing you said was, like, I overcompensate with patients, and I think patience is one of those things that you can't possibly. I would submit that you cannot possibly overcompensate with patients. Having patience is in business and in life. Every time I've. I've doubled down on being patient, good things have come to me. Um, that doesn't mean you shouldn't be impatient with your own career or things like that, or you shouldn't push. But having patience with people in particular and when you're teaching is, I found to be an incredibly valuable skill. So I just wanted to honor you in that, like, you know, you can say all you want about, you know, oh, I should. I think trading anger for patients, no matter who you are and what your background is, can be a really. Is a good trade. [00:52:28] Speaker C: I will say it's definitely helped me work through my own issues. [00:52:32] Speaker B: When I'm doing coaching, what I say is not exactly like this, but we push what's in our control. We have patience for the rest. And, uh, and that's one of the big delineations we're always trying to. To find is, is this in your control or not? If it's not, observe. Watch. But if it's in your control or if you have the ability to influence, do you want to push? Is it worth it? How much do you push? What does push look like? [00:52:54] Speaker C: I could chime in on that a little bit. As I mentored over the years, I have a tendency, which is great. You were looking outward, right? In that description. I have a tendency to try to ask the person to look inward. And my advice when they're looking inward is if you're actually working in something, whatever it is that you are really comfortable, you probably need to pause and say, am I working on the right thing? [00:53:20] Speaker B: I'm always advocating for people to be 2% outside of their comfort zone, metaphorical. But if you're in your comfort zone, even if you're at 100% of your comfort zone, it's actually reinforcing the concept of being comfortable, right. Its harder to break out of that. But above 2% for most people, most of the time its too far. So youre either too scared or too likely to fail and then say getting out of my comfort zone is bad. And so this little concept of like always, always be pushing just a little bit out of your comfort zone. And when I translate this to management, this is where empathy comes in because you have to understand their comfort zone. Where you at? Where is this person living and do they want to grow? Do they have a desire to grow? Great. Can I help them find that one meaningful next step? Because if we can do one meaningful step, next step times 10,000, you know we're going to finish. But if I tell them, hey, you got to get 10,000 steps over here so that you can match with me, it's too much for most people. It's like I can't do that because my uncle Bucky told me I wasn't tall enough when I was 14. Right. The story in their head. But anyway, that's my Stubbs trailer. [00:54:25] Speaker C: I would just say I push a lot harder there. I almost view it like if, let's say I love going into design, right? And if I go into design phase, it could be days before I come out of it, right? I'm like no longer paying attention to anything else that I need to be paying attention to. And the hard part in both starting a company and also being a parent, what is the priority that I really need to be focused on? Whats that important one where I go is for me, if Im in the startup world and I start to go too heavy on design, im hosed because basically im ignoring everything else. And so now I try to do checks almost at like the hour to say, hey, have I gone too far into this rabbit hole? If I have, I need to back up and say, what are the other 2000 priorities that are really critical, that I should not, that I should actually be paying attention to because I'm avoiding them right now by going into where I am an expert and where I have domain expertise and where I feel really comfortable. And I think a lot of that happens in parenting as well, right? It's so easy to fall into a particular role as a dad based on your historical role and what you learned through your upbringing and what you're bringing to that equation. And I think just checking yourself kind of going, hey, you know, am I doing what's the comfort thing? Or am I actually stepping back and saying, hmm, let me bring empathy, let me bring sympathy. Let me actually bring all of the tools I have to the table versus just the one that I'm most comfortable in. [00:56:05] Speaker B: Awesome. [00:56:07] Speaker A: Couldn't agree more. So, Robert, I want to kind of pivot to your career for a second, so speak along these lines, right. You know, when you think about your comfort zone and what you get fixated on, how do you, how do you make the decision to start a company? You know, and I want to get into AI here in a second, but, you know, what does that process look like to you? When do you say, I've got to start a company? [00:56:28] Speaker C: I wish it was something magical or structured. I know a lot of people are great with lists and they, you know, they go through the list, they maintain the list, they test and validate. I'm less structured in that context. Um, and so to me, I'm constantly looking at the patterns of what I'm seeing and saying, you know, is there an opportunity? Is there something I can be passionate about? Uh, is there something that I can bring to this, that other people aren't going to bring? What's that combination? And so I'm constantly, always circling around those things and trying to find the one that aligns all of those. The hard part you have with a startup is its very easy to think about something that might be successful in three years, five years or ten years. Those are really hard to get funded. And I learned those mistakes early on. Its like if the idea is so big, thats great, it has big opportunity, but how does somebody fund something thats not going to really see the light of date for ten years? Thats a really hard thing to get behind, even to sell to a partner or somebody else. So youve got to balance those mixtures and the selling process starts. I should say the selling process is continuous for both yourself, your partner, your family, for everybody that's around you. And I have a tendency to have really technical type of solutions, which also makes it hard for me to talk about it because it's usually not something you just go, hey, I do this. It's way more. Do you really want to learn what I'm talking about to understand what financial compliance really means? Or do we just stop at those handful of buzzwords? Right. The unraveling of that's really what's funny. [00:58:14] Speaker B: For me is when I was doing angel investing, I can put my two angel investments into my 20 angel investments into three categories. Stuff I knew about, stuff that was boring and stuff that was cool, and stuff that I knew about, I did okay. Stuff that was boring, I did great, and stuff that was cool, I massively failed. And the boring stuff, because nobody else is looking at it, hard to fund, but somebody comes and says, this is a really boring hole, let's fill it. [00:58:41] Speaker C: Why? [00:58:42] Speaker B: Because people will pay us to fill this hole. And that's not to say that cool stuff isn't needed or necessary, but I just love that the idea of doing AI for compliance also gets its own skateboard. It's cool on its own, it's cool in its way, and it only needs to be cool to the players. You don't need to be cool outside of it. So also, just to kind of make fun of you here, Robert, a little bit, like, I don't have a list. I just do these three things and make sure they're aligned. [00:59:14] Speaker C: Well, I'm only listening. [00:59:15] Speaker B: Is there an opportunity? I'm passionate about it. Can I bring something to the table? And are they aligned? But you don't use lists. No, no, no. That's not at all what you, that's. [00:59:22] Speaker C: Because it's more concise. You don't actually need a list. [00:59:24] Speaker B: Ah, you just, I think it's more than also a list. It's the intertwining of them. So the mandola of in between the Venn diagram is what you're looking for, but it just make fun of you for the new language. [00:59:37] Speaker C: Yeah. The pattern matching to me is where you kind of asked a question earlier about going deep. Right. Like, that's where I think I try to understand is I'm very good at going wide and trying to connect n dots together in order to say, okay, there's a potential solution here. The problem with that is, I would say most of the things I've seen are correct. In many cases, I don't know, or it's hard to predict. Will it align with one year from now, with five years from now, with ten years from now? With 20 years from now? I like to tell people when we're talking about this in concept, when we're mentoring, the idea of high speed or broadband Internet came out decades before it actually got implemented abroad, where people adopted it. And it just takes times for things. The electric car came out in what, the seventies? We didn't really see them at scale until the 2010s, or should say the 2020s, even as we're now just seeing them really at scale. It just takes time. When you start talking about deeper tech that requires infrastructure in order to get there, it's sometimes easier to see those big things. It's very hard to figure out what's the path, the individual small steps through them to actually get there. And that's where most things actually fail when they're trying to tackle those bigger problems. It's also where dads go wrong and looking about how do I help raise a child? Right. [01:01:03] Speaker B: You totally are reading what's. [01:01:07] Speaker A: About college when you're just trying to get through the next meal. But there's a great book. [01:01:11] Speaker C: So hang on. There's a really good book, I should say. For me, it was a good book. It's called the drama of the Gifted Child. And it's mostly about pre adolescence, even in belly. And what it comes down to, my interpretation, is the things we do as parents. How do our children absorb them? And when they absorb them, you know, what happens? Does it become a scar? Does it become a wound that's internal, not. Not a physical? Right. But is it a wound of some way? And it's really simple things. You know, my child isn't sleeping, right? So I'm going to try different techniques. Those techniques are different. Each time you introduce something that's different to a child who does not understand, who does not have reasoning, right? It creates a scar. It creates some kind of internal wound that then shapes what happens in their life. Rob, this goes back to what you were kind of mentioning, is, you know, it's not just about pooping, right? There are each little subtle thing you're doing, and it's as simple as yesterday my child cried and I picked them up, but today they cried and I didn't pick them up. Well, your child doesn't understand that. And so the drama of the gifted child goes into what those scars mean in a way, and what they're about. And then it kind of plays them forward as to how that evolves into who we are and how we're then dealing with those emotional traumas that got set in place. And obviously, if you're way more abusive to your children, right. It's going to do way more damage, in a way, and it's going to cause some outcome in the end. But it's. They're very subtle things, and some are in your control, and some are not for sure. [01:02:52] Speaker B: Rob said to me that was kind of struggling with something since it's season one. So this is before he's returned back to work. But Arthur had already been born. And Rob says, brad, we just have to admit to ourselves that we will hurt our children and, like, we've got to do the best we can. But also a zero injury, whether it's emotional or physical. And that's not saying I am, you know, gung ho on, you know, neglect and abuse. Not that at all. It's just that the perfect parenting isn't a comfortable. Everything is fine, and it isn't. I don't have an opinion or I can't try stuff with Theo. But also understanding that there's always a cost and. And it's, you know, I guess it's a cost benefit analysis. And it's hard for me to hear what you're saying right now because you're basically saying, Brad, like, every day you're chalkboarding up other injuries, but also long term benefits are you're a better father. He's more equipped and capable, but they are chalking up these difficulties. And it's beautiful and it's sad, but maybe where I'm going with this is. That's the goal and the role of the leader. You gotta make the choices, and they're hard, and they're worth it. You're not gonna get them all right. But having nobody make a choice or, you know, fathers who are absentee, who are not making a choice either to participate. [01:04:12] Speaker A: Right. [01:04:12] Speaker B: They're out of the house. Or to participate. They're in the house. They're just bland. Right. It's. It's Cheetos and top ramen. Sorry, cheetos and. And Bud light. And it's better to make the choice and be the leader. But there's a. There's a consequence. [01:04:29] Speaker A: Wow. [01:04:30] Speaker B: Okay. Surface level stuff here at Daddy O podcast. Welcome to the show. [01:04:33] Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah. [01:04:36] Speaker C: Your presence matters. Right. You're not going to get, like, in most things in life, you're not going to get everything right. But showing up and caring, having that empathy and sympathy really can make a difference. It's really important in the process, but I think also realizing that there's another human on the other end. Right. And that human does not have the same capabilities that you do. And how do you bring, or I should say how do you empower that human to be able to mature, evolve, have the life that they want to live? Right. How do you help move that forward without having your own baggage get in the way is really effing hard and it really is. Well, Robert, how did you, Im staying the obvious. [01:05:22] Speaker A: Right, of course. But how did you, on a practical level, how did you do that? Being, I mean, being an entrepreneur feels like not just a full time job, but it feels like a life obsession for a lot of us. How, you know, over the last 20 years, how did you make room for your kids? What did you do? Did you bring them into the business? Did you just make sure you had good work life balance, did you not have that? How did that work for, for you? [01:05:44] Speaker C: A couple of things that I tried to do early on, I will say, like in all of these things that we're saying, I failed at a lot of them, right. So just begin there as the baseline. I always tried to do breakfast with the family, in a sense. Like, to me that was a time, help them get off to school, help them get ready, make them breakfast. Like I always viewed if I can get kind of a solid time with everybody, it's way more important to have quality than just quantity. Right. The thing you lose when you don't have lots of time is there's a lot of little moments that you miss out on, right. There's subtlety in having just slow things evolve, right. Even though there could be chaos, it's still slow. It's all throughout the day what's happening. All the little things. You miss out on that. But I tried to concentrate on that. And then I also tried to concentrate on just, again, being present and making sure that I could help in every way, that I could contribute to the process. So even if I was working from ten in the morning till midnight, right. It's like what can I do here to try to be, to be present, to make sure that I'm still helping my wife and making decisions or, you know, as soon as I come in, I'm taking the baby away. Right. There's no questions involved in that. Or as they get older, how can you be there? One thing I think we have that's going for us now is a change, is there's so many people that work from home or allowed to work from home. Right. So you can do things differently. In the last five years. Luckily, as a startup, you've always kind of had that capability. So I've always been able to manage and work my schedule a little bit better. So I think that's been an advantage. But it's just choosing when you make time and trying to really make that time positive and then showing up at the things that are going on. So if your kids play sports or if your wife needs to go out, like, whatever it is, just making sure you make that time throughout that process is really important. Jeff. [01:07:45] Speaker A: And did you find, did you bring your, like, what was your relationship, your children's relationship with your work? Did you try to bring them in and show them what you were doing? I always brought them out of interest to them. [01:07:55] Speaker C: No, I always brought them in, though I will say I don't think they know what I do. But, yeah, like, I think my wife says this to me. She's like, yeah, your kids don't know how to say what you do. [01:08:10] Speaker B: My dad can beat your dad up. Well, my dad's a guy in Boulder who builds things and people like him, and there's money around. [01:08:19] Speaker C: It's complicated, but, yeah, like, especially as they got older, like, I, Brad brought up, I ran an event. I used to always try to bring them to that event, and I taught at the university. I actually brought them to the class with me so they could see what was going on. Like, I had a job in a way that I was lucky that the majority of the time they could actually come and listen and see me kind of in that role of communicating out, working with others. I wasn't just sitting in my office all day, and if I had to do that, they were bored and wanted to do something else. [01:08:52] Speaker B: So one of the ways that we describe this podcast is about modern fatherhood and what are the differences between then and now? But for me, the staple on the work environment is for my father. He was a dentist, and so he was the boss, and he was a solo practitioner dentist. But he had like seven staff, and it was uncomfortable every single minute I was ever in my father's dental practice. It was an uncomfortable place for me, and for years I was, yeah, well, there's that, too, but there's another time. And while this isn't exactly business, it's a church story, but it fits. My brother Tim was getting up in front of the congregation to say, hey, we're supporting this school in Alaska, and there's a bunch of orphans there and their boiler went out, and so we need to buy him a new boiler. So my buddy Tim's getting up from the congregation just to give that simple message. And as he's getting up, his four year old son follows his daddy to the podium and mom's face goes white. Oh, no, what's happening? And this is pretty like easygoing type church rock and roll, you know, wear t shirts and flip flops. But still, I just remember that moment, that little social break that the kid isn't supposed to do this or go up there and Tim's there and he just looks at his son, looks at his wife, and he does this very gentle hand pause to his wife, just like that. I got this, like, you're good. And so she could just kind of calm down, they had another kid squirming on the chair. He lets the whole congregation watch his son walk up to him. He picks up his son and he gives a speech with his son in his arms. And his son got to see dad speak before a crowd at a very early age. I was like, that's modern fatherhood. Not be scared of your dad's dental office, which I guess maybe pulling teeth, but also, like, it was weird place. It was a weird society for me to be in and around my dad's work environment through to, well, what is it like if you just know what it's like to be on your dad's shoulders watching them do something awesome or for you teaching or new tech meetup or all this other stuff, they, they just know that their dad has capacity and that they're invited into it. That's, that's really cool. Yeah, I know. I rabbit trail and then I leave it, leave it with nothing else for someone to bounce the ball off. That's what I do. [01:11:05] Speaker A: Well, I can take us in a slightly different direction, which is, I think wed be remiss in this current environment. Robert, youre an AI expert. Can you talk to us just a little bit about what you see? We talked earlier about how its hard to fund things when its ten years out. Youve been in this space for a while. How did you identify it as a place that was interesting and can you talk us a little bit about that identifying of AI and what its like? [01:11:32] Speaker C: Yeah. And then I think I'll do that and then maybe you'll let me pivot it a little bit too, because I think, yeah. Both of you at a really interesting place for this. So I've been doing AI within applications for the last 1012 years. Not a new thing. What is new 2017, Google and the folks at Google released the Transformer papers. OpenAI then took that and pushed it really far with the release of chat. GPT. Right. There was like a light bulb that really went off in that transition where computers can now generate content versus computers are really good at statistically identifying things or doing very specific things like playing chess, right? Or they're better at identifying what's in the image rather than a human, right. Like there's been. Over the last decade, computers have been gradually getting better and better than humans at certain things. But when I saw for the first time what the transformers were doing and how they were doing that with large language models and now generative AI, my brain literally imploded and I was like, okay, this is a totally new way that we are going to have to deal with computing right now. Computers can actually do things that were in the domain only of humans or perceived only as humans at that moment. I went into my research mode and started to go deep in, okay, what's different here? How is this evolving? And what I've emerged with over the last three years is there is a brand new set of building blocks that we have in computing that will allow us to do things previously that only humans could do today. They may not be as good, but they're gradually getting better and better and better, just as over the last three decades, we've introduced databases to store information, which is like our mind, and we can now have the ability to have a memory or a persistent memory of thing. We've introduced software that has allowed us to do all types of interesting things as a user interface, and we've introduced voice, the ability to talk to our computers. Now, all of a sudden, the computers can actually talk back and can talk back in a way that it's not just repeating what I just said. They can actually recreate new things. That was literally mind blowing for me as to watching this evolve and then seeing this new stack of tools come together. And then really my new startup came out of what can we start to do here that pieces together this new stack of tools to solve problems that previously required heavy human labor in order to solve, really, that's where AI and compliance really came together. I worked on a previous project for a large bank. We worked in the compliance department. We learned what was going on, and I couldn't let go of what I saw, of where we spent money and where time was spent. And it's like, wow, we've got a whole new problem set here that we can do in a totally different way and dramatically change the way this organization runs and make them more efficient, higher quality, and allow people to do the things that they really want to do. But at the same time, there might be job loss in that. [01:14:54] Speaker B: Might. [01:14:55] Speaker C: I'm being nice. [01:14:56] Speaker B: I know you and I have chatted about that before, so I want to ask now, I would love to do a whole pod with you just on AI, but to make it relevant to the other side of the audience that we scratch the edge is, so your children are not AI natives, but they are digital natives. But Rob's and my children will be AI natives. [01:15:16] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:15:16] Speaker B: What's. What. What's the difference between. Because you. None of us are digital natives, Rob, almost. You're a younger millennial. I'm an older millennial. And, Robert, you're. You're. You're beyond millennial. [01:15:31] Speaker C: I like to say I'm on the cusp of Gen X. Yeah, right, right. Like baby boomers right there. [01:15:39] Speaker B: Gen X is right there, we'll call it. Because, you know, it's always good to be able to make fun of the boomers, but. So digital native. So I guess let's go through those three. Right. Non digital native, which is you, Robert. Digital native, which is your kids. And then. And then Arthur and Theo will be AI natives. [01:16:01] Speaker C: I think they're actually not. [01:16:02] Speaker B: Think about it. [01:16:03] Speaker C: Yeah, no, I think they're in the best position. My take here is the next two decades are going to be massively transformative to how society operates. And we have the opportunity to make things unbelievably amazing, where we're solving problems that we could never solve before. And we also have the opportunity to just totally screw it up in a way that we create a society that none of us really want to participate in. And I think both of your children are at an age now where they're going to get to experience that trajectory, and it's going to be part of who they are from a muscle memory standpoint. And so I'm on the positive side of this, which is why I say kind of two decades, by the time they are in their twenties, our world should have shaken up all of the crap and all of the bad things that will happen as part of this, and we should really be on the cusp of really reaping the benefits of how this technology is evolving. So I'm, like, amazingly optimistic for where they're going to be. But I do think the next two decades for you, as during this process, is going to introduce a lot of complexity and difficulty to rational through, because they're going to be going through it at the same time that you are. You will not have a learning curve in there. Right. To be able to say, oh, here's how we did with this when we were younger. [01:17:30] Speaker A: Right? [01:17:30] Speaker B: Sure. Oh, like, like my parents figuring out how much time I was allowed to spend playing video games was not a problem your parents had. And, and now it's kind of a little bit known on that. Of course, there's, there's, there's a lot of variability in problems. But then screen time for physical screens that you could carry around showed up and, and we're always going to be lagging. But Robert, I think you, you introduced today a concept, and this is why we're so thankful to have you on the podcast, because not only are you a futurist in your work, but your kids are way older than ours. So you are the future for us as fathers. Youve got 20 years experience. Weve got one year experience. And I think that part of what we want to do in the modern fatherhood concept is how do we prepare ourselves for whats next? Because we cannot be reactive anymore. And maybe you could have done that a generation or two ago, but thats not a viable strategy to be, to help influence our kids both protect and push forward. [01:18:28] Speaker C: I think Covid's a really good analogy. [01:18:31] Speaker B: Sure. [01:18:32] Speaker C: In this context. Right. If you think about, like for me, I've never gone through a global pandemic before. And we had a lack, right. We had a total lack of information as part of that process. And, you know, you crank down, at least for me, I cranked down. I'm washing every item that I get from the grocery store. I've got a tent outside of the house, right. Where food comes in, we wash it off and then it goes into the house. Right. Every morning I'm waking up, I was totally there. [01:19:04] Speaker A: That was us. [01:19:05] Speaker B: Oh, I wanted to get it so that I had it over with. But that, that's funny. [01:19:10] Speaker C: And get it, what does that mean? In the beginning? [01:19:13] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Right. And who do you give it to and all that. But anyway, I'm not trying to get into the philosophy of COVID but that. [01:19:22] Speaker C: When you think through, here's a totally new thing that could totally devastate our society, AI kind of is a similar kind of metaphor that you're dealing with. And the nice thing about both of these is we have such a global presence that are moving all at the same time and sharing that information. Right. Whether you liked what the administration was saying or not saying, right. There were people that were trying to share information and trying to educate. You can hold them and say they didn't share fast enough or they shared it too much and it became confusing or whatever. Right. But it's that ability, I think, as your audience will appreciate, it's to consume that information quickly and be able to make a decision quickly as to how you're going to operate, something every entrepreneur needs to do. How do I make a decision with not an enough information? But I have to do it with conviction. [01:20:16] Speaker B: Yeah. And now I think what you're saying, of course our audience are all going to be people who have a leadership capacity, and so that's nice. But then also just saying, one of the things we often hear from people is, you know, at work I can manage control and be in charge, and at home, I'm just like, just the guy who does the dishes. Nobody cares. Right. So it's from, I can manage chaos to I am a participant in helping make chaos less. And what you're giving us authority to do is also make decisions, be a little forward thinking and saying, hey, there's no good decision here on AI. In seven years, when Theo's learning to write, nobody's going to know the right way to go, and everyone's going to pretend that they have authority, but there's no authority more than 18 months old, because 18 months ago, this was a totally different thing. So you're both giving me a lot of heart, and I give my one thing, and then we're going to start getting the wrap up questions. But one thing that I'm bummed about is no one was ever able to, during my schooling, say, significantly gifted, iq, dyslexic. How do you participate in those two? It's called being double blessed. Double gifted, no one ever bothered. They just said one thing to me, which is, well, you've got this good thing over here. You must not be working hard enough. And that beat me up forever. [01:21:33] Speaker C: And as a parent. [01:21:35] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:21:36] Speaker C: Have you talked to your mom about this? [01:21:38] Speaker B: Yeah, a lot. I try to do it without anybody feeling any guilt, and a lot of this has to do with custody in court in two different countries and a sister, and there's a lot more context to share there. But I was just lost, because people want the gifted kid who's just good enough. They just want him to be better. And the only tool that they could apply then was, hey, bud, just work harder. And I couldn't work harder. And when I'd show my work and they said, well, this is sloppy work. I'd say it's not sloppy work. It's just me. Where I'm going with this is what I hope the promise of AI would be. Hey, here's the AI bot that works with a Brad type brain. [01:22:11] Speaker C: Yeah. And we're going to see a lot of those. Totally agree. [01:22:15] Speaker B: That's okay. But I want to get into this. So the opening up of the wrapping up is I asked this question, which is, and especially because you come from an abusive household just to prep you for that, but what are the things from when you were receiving fatherhoods when you were a child that you were going to carry forward and what are you going to leave behind? And I know that your kids are now out of the house, but you are also out of the house at one point in time, but what are the things? And you could say nothing. I'm caring for nothing or everything. But also, what is it? Like this is no longer relevant. And the metaphor I use on no longer relevant is my father has no concept of screen time, so I cannot bring forward whether he's a great guy or a terrible guy. I can't bring forward his concept of screen time because it's relevant. So, yeah, the past to the future, please. [01:23:00] Speaker C: Feel like I need to be on a couch and I need, like, to answer that question. I think the thing that I learned was what I didn't like. [01:23:12] Speaker A: Sure. [01:23:12] Speaker C: Right. That's really what, what I kind of came out of that with, of these are things that for me as a human really crushed me and really blocked me from doing things. So all the negative things. Right. All the physical abuse, the mental abuse, were all things that I really did not want to impose on my children. Yeah. I think when I came out of the house, I was really confused. I didn't understand. And I think as I got older, I got angry. I didn't understand. Just before I got married, I remember talking to my wife Karen, and saying, like, I felt like every conversation I ever had with my father, I was being poked in the eye. Like, it didn't matter what it was, just constantly being poked in the eye. And I didn't like that feeling. It didn't feel good, but it was also what I knew. Right. Like, it's actually what was ingrained in me as a human. And so I think I'm always constantly fighting against that. Right. It's the imposter syndrome, you know, on steroids. For me, it's like, you can't do this every time before I do an event, it's like it's gonna fail, right? It's the. There's no way anybody's ever gonna show up. Or if I do this startup, no one's gonna be interested in it. Like, those thoughts continuously run through my head, and that's all ingrained. And so I've had to always fight against that as I evolved. And I've really tried to not bring that upon my children. I think I've tried to overemphasize. You can do anything. You are capable, right? It's not just, you're beautiful, you're wonderful. It's you can do anything. Whatever you set your mind to, you have the capabilities. You can do it. [01:24:53] Speaker B: Generational trauma is a term that I didn't know to the last year and a half. And what I'm learning from you right now is, you know, breaking generational trauma, in part, is about healing it, or at least understanding it for us. But it's partially that constant decision to break the cycle. And. And that cycle, of course, doesn't stop in your head. You're just choosing to stop putting it forward. That's beautiful. And on that easy, light, gentle note, I'll hand to rob to start doing some wrap up. [01:25:27] Speaker C: I didn't get to go over any of the homework that I kind of put together. I was like, there's so many things I wanted to go through, but we. [01:25:33] Speaker A: Are still episode two. All right, we'll just do. [01:25:37] Speaker B: We're so lost and confused as to whether these should be 45 minutes or three hour interviews. We're pathfinding our way along like that. Sure. [01:25:45] Speaker C: There's a lot of ums and ahs. What I do want to say is, I did go and do some research just in thinking about this, and then I'll jump back to rob of anxiety around, like, being a parent, being a male, and part of a startup. Like, I started to kind of dive into that a little bit and just kind of saying, okay, what's here? What's interesting, I'd love to just run through, like, the top ten of those. I don't think we have to go into any detail about them, but maybe just share them, and maybe that becomes topic or fodder for another one. Would that be cool? [01:26:16] Speaker A: That'd be great. [01:26:19] Speaker C: So the top ten things that I did, and I tried to rank these based on stages of development of your children versus stages of development of your relationship with your partner and whether it affects you, your child, or your partner or some combination. So I'm kind of ranking in that way. So, number one was lack of time for family, like, that's the big anxiety. As a startup founder, will I have enough time? Right. Number two, work life balance. How do I find that work life balance? Number three, missing milestones. Number four, partner resentment, which I think is a really interesting one in there. Right. And you're probably feeling this if you go off to work or you go off and do things in their home. Child's behavior. Number five. Number six, educational success. Number seven, lack of patience. Number eight, financial stability. Number nine, health neglect. And number ten, lack of quality time. And so each of those you could kind of play out. You can obviously add descriptions. There are negative thoughts that go through our heads. There are ways of reframing them to make them positive. But to me, those were kind of the top ten things to me as a parent from an anxiety standpoint that I think I wrestled with all throughout their life. [01:27:45] Speaker B: Jeff. [01:27:45] Speaker A: I mean, I can personally say that I've definitely already, in four months, been nervous about every single one of those. Every single one. I have had that. Like, I'm worried about that. I'm worried about that. Yeah. [01:27:55] Speaker B: Just checking them all off the list. List. [01:27:56] Speaker A: We'll have to get that list, because I think that is. Thanks for putting that together. That is incredible. I think we need to work on that. And I think we should have a second follow up here to unpack each of those and just focus on that. [01:28:07] Speaker C: All right. Sorry I distracted everybody. [01:28:10] Speaker A: No, this is exactly what we're here for, because, honestly, that's the kind of insights that I think we're exactly looking for. And that's the kind of stuff, I think, even just labeling that. I know there are dads listening to this who are going, I'm worried. And I've got a friend who's, who's listening to this, and his baby's due in about a month, and he's trying to absorb all this stuff. And to understand, though, even just to label those anxieties, is those are the ten things you're going to feel. Okay. Then you can start to deal with them. I'm a big fan of labeling and saying, if I understand what my anxiety is, I can spend a lot of time working on it, but if I just feel it. Yeah. Well, let's. We'll do a hard pivot, though. So we kind of. We'd like to wrap up with three closing questions, and I think it is also useful. So you mentioned one earlier, but I'll ask it again. What's one resource that you love and that you wish you had earlier in your fatherhood? Journey. [01:29:10] Speaker C: AI. [01:29:14] Speaker A: That's a good one. That's a good one. [01:29:16] Speaker C: It's a. [01:29:17] Speaker A: What'd you use it for? [01:29:18] Speaker C: Oh, I mean, it's such a great place to go now as a first place to start. Right. My gut says both of you have googled stories, you've read books. Right? What to expect when expecting going back to somebody that's coming in a month, right. Your friend who has a baby coming in a month. Excuse me. Great. The ability to have a non judgmental source that summarizes content for you very quickly is unbelievable as to how it can help you make personal decisions. And just like mentoring, let me put this caveat there. In a mentoring session, I always say, probably way too often, take what I'm saying as like, this is my perspective and this is my two cent. Right. You have to interpret it. You have to be able to rationalize it into what you're doing. AI is not perfect, but to be in a moment of fear and then be able to say, what can I do? And to get a plan or to get something back instantaneously that's not judging you is unbelievable. As a starting point. And I say, as a starting point, don't finish. It's not the answer always. It might be right. Validate, make sure it's right for you, and so on. AI will be that tool going back to your children. Right. You know, if you look at today's society, they have all the music they want, they have all the videos they want. They have every tv show they could have every want ever wanted. What does that do to your underlying resilience? Well, now, if I can have all the world's questions answered for me at my fingertips in seconds, what does that do to me as a human? How do I evolve when I no longer have to fight through those things? So that's where AI can be unbelievably powerful and transformative, but also scary because we don't know how to really scare. [01:31:08] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I like, and you mentioned resilience. That's the thing that scares me because I think resilience is so important. And if things are easy, what does that do to us? Right. Speaking of easy and all good, I'll just say you could. [01:31:23] Speaker C: I'm not. [01:31:25] Speaker A: I think. I think this one might not be able to be answered by AI. So we have a segment on this show called dad Wins and dad fails. And it's Brad's and I's attempt to both congratulate ourselves when we think we're doing a good job and also to kind of own up to our failures as fathers. Sometimes it's funny, like, I got pooped on. Sometimes it's more serious. Like, I can't stop looking at my phone. We just want to give you the opportunity to kind of both shout yourself out. Where's the time you really felt like you crushed it being a dad. What was your dad when? And then talk to about us, you know, make us all feel better. Talk to us about a time that you feel like you really missed the mark and had a dad fail. [01:31:59] Speaker C: I'll take the same scenario, but in two different contexts and see if that gets there. So one was very recently, so I said earlier, I like to see if there are teaching moments in conversations. Within the last month, my daughter was telling me something, and I thought I had a teaching moment. In that moment, I totally got it wrong. She started to cry. Somebody that, like, didn't. We had just met that was there. So I didn't, you know, not that I didn't come across, but, like, my ability to be. To have empathy for what she was going through was missed because I was too focused on trying to teach her something. If I do the opposite, I could do the same thing where I was sitting down with my son and he was going through something really difficult. And I just basically said to him, I'm not leaving until we talk about this. Right. I'm just going to sit here. And 30 minutes went by, nothing happened. 45 minutes went by, nothing happened. I didn't pick up my phone. I just sat there and I'm like, okay, at some point, we're going to break this down and we're going to get to the important conversation in order to get there. And so in that case, my teaching moment. Right. I was able to get through and actually have a success of helping him see an alternative perspective. As we're in the case with my daughter, I just pissed her off really bad, and now I'm in recovery mode. [01:33:27] Speaker A: It feels like the classic trap of sometimes when someone has a problem, they want you to solve it, and sometimes they just want you to listen. [01:33:35] Speaker C: Well, what was harder here is she didn't have a problem. She didn't think she had a problem. She was trying to calculate what she was. What was going on. Right. And I saw it as, oh, I think I can be helpful. [01:33:47] Speaker A: So you created the problem. [01:33:48] Speaker B: Yes. [01:33:50] Speaker C: I pointed out the things she didn't want pointed out. And I missed the emotional issues that she was struggling with in the problem because I was too focused on trying to help on one part of it and I ignored the other. That that's really the important part of that. I'm so sorry, sky. [01:34:08] Speaker A: It's a good shout out and a good. A good thing to notice, right? We talked earlier in the episode about observational skills, and sometimes we see something and we get focused on it and we forget to keep observing. [01:34:21] Speaker C: Yeah. I think the one thing I would say, and you guys are probably already starting to experience, if not a lot, you will experience it more. Your children will release it much faster than you will. No, meaning you'll hold. You have the capacity to hold on to the thing you just effed up and you know that you should not have done because you will do it, right? [01:34:42] Speaker B: For sure. [01:34:43] Speaker C: And you're going to be beating yourself. Beating yourself up, and you're going to watch your child running away and having fun and, you know, on the playground and onto the next thing, and you're going to be like, how do they. You're like, oh, you're talking to your partner. And you're all struggled. And they're going to be like, oh, I'm so sorry. You probably shouldn't have done that. And you're like, yeah, I know I shouldn't have done that. How do I get. And you're looking at them and they're like, totally off and gone in a totally different world. And you're like, then you get more frustrated. It's like, how could they let go so quickly? [01:35:11] Speaker B: I just have to give my spilt milk an anecdote, which is a very good friend of mine, his mother and her sister will never talk and have not talked in 40 years. Because 40 years ago, there was a group family vacation. One of the kids spilled, literally the whole carton of milk. One of the women bought the milk and one of them didn't pay her half. And they won't talk anymore. [01:35:34] Speaker C: Right. Way deeper that we don't know. [01:35:37] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, I know there's some deep stuff in there. [01:35:41] Speaker B: Yeah, fair enough. But it's just like, it's such a good, like, oh, it's just spilt milk. And that we carry it because back to our sense, the wounds that we're going to, we will hurt our children and a whole nother story. Anyway, Rob's got an incredible question to ask. [01:35:59] Speaker A: Well, this is the one we like to wrap up on, which is, tell us your favorite dad joke. [01:36:05] Speaker C: I thought about this this morning and I asked my wife, I don't have a ton of dad jokes. Sadly, the one thing I would. No, it's not even a joke? Yeah, I don't have a good dad joke. I'm so sorry. I'm not the joke telling dad. I usually do more stories that have funny components to them rather than jokes. [01:36:31] Speaker B: All right, then I will give you mine, which I've never done before. I have used it for many years, well before I was a dad. And Robert, I fully believe you can pull this one off. Why didn't God make two yogi bears? Because the second time he made a boo boo. [01:36:49] Speaker C: Nice. [01:36:52] Speaker B: You now have got one in the bank. [01:36:54] Speaker C: What I can also do is I can go back to AI. [01:36:57] Speaker B: Oh, hey, do you want to do. [01:36:59] Speaker A: What does chat GPT say the best dad joke is? [01:37:02] Speaker C: I didn't ask for the best. I just said dad's joke and it said, sure. Here's a classic dad joke for you. Why don't skeletons, why don't skeletons fight each other? [01:37:11] Speaker A: Why? [01:37:12] Speaker C: They don't have the guts. [01:37:15] Speaker A: Oh, that's a good one. Well done, AI. [01:37:20] Speaker C: That's a dad joke for you. The last thing as a summary is at every stage there are difficult times and delicious times. Cherish them both. They're both really important and they're not just at the parent, excuse me, as a parenting or father stage, they're also the relationship stages with your partner. Literally. There are really difficult times and really delicious times and really sit back and embrace those because I believe that's what will make you a stronger dad, a stronger partner, and a better CEO or better founder or a better executive. Whatever you are, or whoever you are. [01:38:03] Speaker B: I guess you should say thanks, Robert. [01:38:07] Speaker A: I think that's a fantastic place to wrap up. Thanks so much for being with us. We really appreciate it. For everyone who's listening, we're going to take a quick break and when we come back, Brad and I will do our wins and fails for the week. Welcome back, everybody. We hope you enjoyed our interview with Robert Rich. [01:38:29] Speaker B: Yeah, I really enjoyed it. I've known him for a lot of years, but man, there's some things about this I didn't know. And two things that I picked up just so profoundly were he's autodidactic, which is a fun word to say, but it just means self taught. And he's never stopped being self taught. And he taught himself. He was incredibly vulnerable about generational trauma and what he grew up in and what's behind his eyeballs, but also what it's like to engage in a new, let's go deep on a new technology and fatherhood and just this blend of he's really intentionally going after it in life. And my. My friendship with him grew three times through that interview. So I'm very thankful for his time and appreciative it. But as always, we finish up talking about ourselves. Our wins and losses are very silly moments that other dads can remember and take pride in or take fails in. But let's start with you this week, Robin wins and fails. [01:39:27] Speaker A: Yeah. Thanks, Brad. I got kind of two wins. One is a win, honestly, for my wife. I want to shout her out small, but it's fun. So I mentioned earlier in the podcast, we got Arthur a bouncer. For anyone who doesn't know, it hangs from a doorframe, hangs down. They can bounce in it. They love it. When we ordered it about a week ago, I didn't think Arthur was quite ready for it. I didn't think he was gonna be able to bounce, blah, blah, blah. But my wife was like, we should get this. He's ready. He wants to be upright. Let's try it. Literally, like, the day after I ordered it, but the day before it arrived, he started making these kind of, like, bouncy, jerky movements that he, like, he couldn't wait to bounce. And so we put him at it since, and he's just bouncing like crazy, and he loves it, and it's, like, a huge. So it's a win for us as parents, because, one, he enjoys it, and two, it occupies him. But I want to shout out my wife, because I was like, he's not ready yet. I don't think so. I'm not going to call it a fail on my part, because that would take away from my wife's win, which is she saw it and knew it and was like, we should execute on this. And we did. [01:40:33] Speaker B: We're always behind. We're always behind the curve. [01:40:38] Speaker A: Yeah, totally behind the curve. And then the failure. He's also kind of a win, but it's both. And that is size four nappies or size four diapers. So Arthur is objectively kind of below the weight limit. He's not in the weight range for size four. We've gone size 1234, but he kept blowing out. He kept pooping up his back. And so finally, we're like, well, I guess we should just try a bigger diaper. [01:41:09] Speaker B: Sure. [01:41:10] Speaker A: And so we spent weeks, basically almost every day, having to change his clothes because his diaper blew out. And we went up to size four, and they're not completely gone, but they have been reduced dramatically, our bloods. So it is, like, one of these things. We're like, oh, my God, our son's butt is so prolific. And I'm sorry to him in the future, him who, if he listens to this, but it's just so prolific that we just, I don't know, we read the size range and we kept on number three, but they were the wrong size. We should have gone to number four. We went to number four. It's been way better. So the win is that we're dealing with significantly fewer blowouts, still getting them, but less than before. And the fail is that we just didn't think to move up. And the result has been lots of laundry and changing and changing in all kinds of crazy places. So that's been the fun learning, at least for our end. [01:42:04] Speaker B: Also behind the curve. Also behind the curve. [01:42:06] Speaker A: Also. Yeah. Very behind the curve on his bot. Very behind the curve. But we're, we're working to get. We know now we're not going to fall. We're not going to make that mistake again. [01:42:15] Speaker B: Oh, that's great. Yeah. A couple fails, similar stuff to before. But the first fail is that you and I. Yeah. We're struggling to keep up with daddy. Oh, we love this. We want to do it well. And this will be our first ever time where we record wins and fails on a Monday before a Tuesday release. And a lot of that's just my schedule has not been playing nice. I'm not going to make raw bone own his schedule, but that's just the life of the daddy. [01:42:40] Speaker A: You should absolutely do it. My schedule has been horrible and I, my other fail, just to put it out because I've been talking about this with you privately, Brad, is. It's not so much a fail. I am just coming to the deep realization that the amount of time I have in the day is so much less than it used to be. And I'm struggling deeply. As someone who considers themselves to be driven and pushing themselves, I'm struggling so hard to not have that time because there's things I think I should be capable of getting done that are simply not getting done. And it's driving me nuts. But I'm working on it. [01:43:14] Speaker B: It's why I reflect back to a couple weeks ago. I got back to my pre baby body weight and we joked because the moms have to actually do that, but I was like, yeah, but the amount of effort and time, like, I don't have an hour and a half, 2 hours every day to do whatever the heck I want, including perhaps exercise today. Um, so getting ahead of daddy o is something that's really big on my. On my agenda, because I love doing this. And frankly, our audience says, keep doing it, let's do it. So this thing you love and you want to do, and then you're not doing it, well, that, to me, feels like. Like a fail. Um, the fail on the theo, on the fatherhood side is just still trying to figure out how I can participate in his sleep cycles. And we tried the cry it out method a week, a week and a half ago. And mom slept downstairs. I was near him, I fed him at night. And it went okay for three days. Like, for three days, there's solid sleep, everyone all around. And then, like, everything, it's like an arms race with the kid. It's like he figures out the secret is to stand up in his pack and play and shake, because I'll always come get him, like, if he's tired enough to stand up and cry. And so he figured that one. And then everything went back to zero. And so, like, I had this little glimpse of, like, maybe, maybe we've done it, maybe, maybe. And then. Nope. So that feels like a fail on my part, but I guess it's. It's a group project. Still wish I could wins, though, so. So, rob, you brought up, um, the concept of one on one dad time, and I just. Ever since you brought up that concept, I have been living it as much as I can, and I love it. So, Beth, you want to go for a ride? She goes, yeah, can I go for an hour ride? And it's like, you could go for a two hour ride or a three hour ride. I'm fine. Like, I love it. I love hanging out with him. We have a great time together. It's a little easier, too, when there's no one watching. It's just theo and me and maybe the dumb, dumb puppy. Uh, so I've just been. I've learned a lot, uh, about one on one dad time, and that's been great. And then, um, my biggest win, and this is something that our original listener, Cody, uh, he knows what it is because I text him my wins and fails along the week as my recording. And we recorded this in the. In the techno. When. When the techno gods ate our one episode. My worst fail ever, which Sarah Beth doesn't know about, was recorded on that. But no one knows what it is. [01:45:40] Speaker A: But Cody, no one knows. [01:45:42] Speaker B: Well, you. Yeah, and the techno gods, they just said to Brad, brad, let that one go. So that's my. My big win is. Is Rob gave up on trying to get episode six back alive again, which means my biggest fail of all time. Just as gone. Movie nappy. [01:45:58] Speaker A: I haven't given up on getting it back. I just have been busy. So careful what you wish for. I might just be motivated now to go try and resurrect it. [01:46:07] Speaker B: No? [01:46:07] Speaker C: Fair enough. [01:46:07] Speaker B: Little, little. Back to schadenfreude. Well, everybody, that's our show. These are wins and fails. We're so thankful for you listening in. We're so thankful, especially to Robert rich for being a part of this and for all the other dads. As you all know, we're. We're looking for more dads to interview. We have our tight knit circle. We're meeting new people. Every single person who's been on the pod so far has just called us afterwards and said they loved it. They listened to their own, and a friend listened to them being on it and said, thank you for doing this. So we're happy with it. We're pleased with it. We would love it so much if you would share like subscribe these are 1 minute things. If you stayed with us through this 90 minutes, you could please give us back 1 minute of your time just to figure out how to rate like and subscribe it. But on that note, we'll have another episode for you in about two weeks. Hopefully exactly two weeks. And we just thank you so much for being a participant in this show. Rob, any final thoughts? [01:47:00] Speaker A: Couldn't say it better myself. Brad, thanks everyone for listening. We appreciate you so much. We'll see you in a couple of weeks. Bye.