[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to the Daddy O podcast. I'm your host, Rob Burnett. And here's my co host, Brad Bickerton.
Good to have everyone back. It's been a couple weeks since our last recording. Lots going on in the world of dad and the world of ceos.
If you're back. Welcome back. If you're listening for the first time, welcome. We got a couple questions about our why is for doing this? So I'm going to dive right into that. Right. The idea behind this podcast is this is for dads who are also high level executives, ceos, people who aspire to be ceos.
And as hosts, Brad and I are going to talk through our own fatherhood journeys, learning along the way, and bringing in our own lessons from our times as ceos and running entrepreneurs and running our own companies. And so hopefully we can bring insights, some fun, and, I don't know, just learn as we go. So, Brad, I don't know if you want to add anything to that, but I wanted to make sure I included that to start us off today.
[00:01:01] Speaker B: Well, just to add to that, it's been an interesting year in the Bickerton family, and that's got some wins and losses within it, especially coming into fatherhood for me. But also on the coaching front and the ceos that I know, it's been a very difficult year. And just one anecdote to share is how many ceos I know are leaning more into it's time to be a leader instead of somebody who's following metrics. And that's been a really interesting thing to hear this December. So it's a little bit outside of father, but it's definitely in the CEO world that showing up as your genuine, true self and leading has been really important within my client mix recently. So that's positive.
[00:01:42] Speaker A: That's awesome. And actually, Brad, that's so interesting because I would never have put it that way, but I think that's exactly what I'm feeling right now, is it's less about being strategic and things. I just need to step up and be a leader right now and grab the bull by the horns and talk to people in my company. So this is super interesting. That's already got my brain worrying. We're already off on a tangent, but I love it.
[00:02:06] Speaker B: Well, let me just fire back at you. We can get to that tangent again if we want, but how are things going with pregnancy? What week are you in? Remind us what due date is, how many weeks away, and how are you accommodating and being a husband and a father in that.
[00:02:21] Speaker A: Great question. So let's see, we are at 35 weeks plus two, I think. So it's December 20 at the day we're recording, and our due date is January 22. So we're Just a little over a month away.
Technically five weeks, four weeks and a bit. But things are going pretty well.
We're kind of still in that end of second trimester. Well, I guess we're fully in the third trimester, but it still feels pretty good. Laura's been a total champ and is handling it all really well. And we've had some really good kind of learnings and wins. We're getting all the baby stuff over here in the UK, they've got this awesome program called NCT. I think they call it the national childhood trust. And it's these classes. It's kind of Like BaBY 101. So we went to four classes, three evening classes and one all DAy Saturday class. And it was everything you need to know about kind of birth and the birth process, early days of baby breastfeeding, how to let them sleep, what to dress them, how to change a diaper, all that stuff. And it was all with people. There were six couples in our class, and all of them had due dates kind of within a week or two of us. And that was my big learning for the week, was we've got a lot of friends who are pregnant or just had kids, but getting to kind of meet five other couples, strangers, who were at kind of our exact moment in the pregnancy journey was really awesome. They were all super cool. It was fun to hang out. It felt super social, and we got to connect over this very intense shared experience in a really Fun Way. So not only do I feel like I learned a lot, but from a kind of, like, just kind of a social perspective, it was really nice to kind of feel connected with these people and to be able to chat about something and swap war stories of pregnancy and all that stuff. I think it was really fun. It was a little bit about what I'm getting out of this podcast, the kind of ability to chat and learn, but yeah, with a really good, cool group. So that's kind of our update right now. It was really fun.
[00:04:41] Speaker B: Reminds me of when we did prenatal classes as well, and a little bit different experience than yours. But I just want to get back to we're meant to be part of a tribe, a group of people who are going through similar things. It's interesting how we've become individuals in this era of humanity right now that we kind of isolate. Hey, you're doing your thing, you're doing babies and you're doing career and you're doing kids out of the house instead of. You're hanging out mostly with people who are doing similar things. And that was a really lovely thing. When we first went to our prenatal classes is there were eleven couples and now all of a sudden there were eleven mostly first time fathers there that I could speak to. The problem we had was two set. Number one, Sarabeth was really not feeling very good and it was in the evenings and they were long classes for her. I think they're three and a half hour classes and it just was not happening.
The second was the ladies in charge of this particular one seemed to think that western medical doctors may be not the best people on earth. Like literally a little too much spin on the ball of their ideology. Their facts were good, but they were really pushing should you not choose a natural birth instead of. There are a lot of different options on the table.
They had a bit of an agenda, a bit of a push, and doesn't matter if it fits with me or not. From my legal degree background, whenever I hear somebody really pushing too hard in one direction, I instantly start questioning it and asking, is this the right way to go? Or is this what we want?
Fast forward a whole bunch and then I'll get back to some. I want to know what you learned, something you didn't know that you now know. But the interesting thing for us is delivering in hospital for us was absolutely the right choice medically. Pain, comfort with the situation that ended up being 100% the right choice. And we're glad that we kind of rejected that prenatal center's way of saying they were pretty bullish on we don't like hospitals.
Anywho, that's really interesting you learned.
[00:06:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, hey, I tell you what. So NCT does have this reputation, a somewhat similar reputation here in the UK where they're very pro breastfeeding. They're very pro kind of quote unquote natural birth. The good news is I thought our instructor was great. I don't think it was too heavy handed. I thought it was really nice. I thought they did a great job, actually. So I thought it was fantastic.
They're not pushing kind of home birth or anything like that. They're definitely like pro hospital. But I think in the UK we have an option that we're planning to take advantage of is basically there's two delivery floors in the hospital. One they call it the spires and it's a midwife led unit, so there aren't pediatricians or obstetricians on that floor. You can't get an epidural there, but you can get other forms of pain relief. But it's very mobile. There's pools, there's balls. You can walk around. It's very homey, and it's a place to start your labor if you want to try for a quote unquote natural birth or just kind of an unmedically assisted birth.
And what's nice about that is it's very relaxed environment. You don't feel like you're in a hospital. So that's really nice. But then you can just kind of raise your hand and go, no, moss, I want an epidural now. And they'll pop you down to the labor delivery ward, and you can have the doctors available and get the epidural in and all that stuff. So we feel like that's a great choice because it gives us the flexibility without having to be at home, which I am hard against.
It scares the crap out of me. The idea of a home birth or anything like that. That's just too much step too far for me.
[00:08:27] Speaker B: So we really like that about the UK. And that's kind of my thing is if you separated those two floors and made them two different entities and had them 5 miles apart and they didn't like each other, is how the birth center versus the hospital felt, kind of back and forth. And they're always trying to be magnanimous because they're all heartfelt people. They all care about birth and labor and women and women's health and babies and fathers, too. But they just seemed that they kind of wanted to say, our ideology is right, theirs is wrong, but I accept it exists in the world, whereas yours was integrated. It's start where you want to start and end where you need to end. And that's great.
[00:09:05] Speaker A: I'm really grateful for.
[00:09:08] Speaker B: I hope that people in the US listen to this because that's marvelous. But back to my question is, what is something you learned from the NCT as coming into first time fatherhood? You are not carrying the baby. We don't have the biological burden, but we also have brains and bodies and mouths and hands, and we have lots of ways we can be of help or not of help.
What did you learn?
[00:09:34] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a good question. And I think one other thing to kind of wrap up on the kind of quote unquote natural birth. Right. I want to get away from it, but I don't know quite how. But the thing that kind of Laura, my partner and I have discussed is like, yeah, you know what? There's some wisdom to kind of like, delaying medical intervention if everything's going well. Like, the body knows how to do this. You can know it's good to kind of thing these things. But, like, Laura's very pro epidural. She wants to get one. And I'm standing there going, thumbs up, whatever you want to do, baby.
But I think the one thing we kind of come back to is whenever anyone's a little too heavy handed on the natural birth is better, is like, and I should preface this. I'll do it. I'm not a doctor. This is just two guys talking through their experience. You all should talk to your own doctors and take serious medical advice. This is not medical advice.
But one thing we do know is.
[00:10:33] Speaker B: That do not take medical advice from podcasters who have law degrees, who don't practice like we are.
[00:10:40] Speaker A: We are the wrong people to take medical advice from. But we'll point you in a direction. Right. So where I think what we come back to as a couple, Laura and I and my partner, for anyone who doesn't know, is a doctor.
Birth, for most of human history, has been super dangerous.
Like, super dangerous. It's only recently that infant mortality rates are relatively down, and even some places in the US, it's not going down. I don't have the statistics in front of me, and it was incredibly dangerous for the mother as well. So anyone who wants to tell you that the body knows exactly what it's doing, and it's all fine.
I'm all for being natural and stuff, but, I mean, childbirth was dangerous for a long time, and modern medical intervention has made it much safer to the place where we can actually kind of try to enjoy or at least not worry too much about the process. So we like things to be kind of as simple as possible. But I like the hospitals. I'll take the medicine. I think it's good stuff, but that's just my opinion.
[00:11:42] Speaker B: I'm going to pause this one here, but I'd like to. This is episode five, and you're coming up on a month till baby, maybe two episodes from now. Let's just focus on the run up to labor and then maybe another episode on the day after baby, because I often talk about the day after the raise with ceos, but there's so many little tips that I'd like to share with you, like buy a handheld wagon, be a champion, carry everything in, all these things. But I think for today's podcast.
I love that we've opened the topic. I love that we can think about it a little bit more. I also like that we're both hedging because we're not bearing these costs, the burden, and there's a lot of complexity here. And why I want to delay is, I think it's a disservice to anyone listening to this if we try to riff and make it sound simple, the decision of natural birth, or where to have birth, or even having an opinion ourselves as fathers, whether we defer all opinion or our opinion counts for 10%, or we can do the whole thing. I don't like distilling complex things down to simplicity because they showed up. I think let's let this be complex and let's really get into it on a full episode.
[00:12:53] Speaker A: I couldn't agree more. So let's leave this bit in so everyone can hear that, that we're going to contemplate this and we're going to come back with a full episode that digs into this stuff in a more nuanced and more complete way. But in the meantime, Brad, you asked me what I learned.
Let me think about that. So we learned a lot about the labor process. And one thing I'm not sure I knew was that there's kind of multiple stages of labor, and the first stage is really about kind of just dilation. And so those contractions aren't about the baby coming. They're just about kind of getting everything ready. And those can take a long time, and they can be painful, but they come and go. And then the second stage is really the pushing, which is kind of at the end. So getting to be able to kind of see that all laid out for me gave me a much better sense of where I'm going to be and what I need to do, which is keep Laura happy.
And I think that one thing they emphasize here that I've kind of realized, as my job is how relaxed the woman is, the mother is, the person giving birth is, plays a huge role in one, how painful it is and how well it goes, because the pain releases adrenaline, but the body wants to release oxytocin to dull the pain and to make everything flow. And so, especially if you have a long know, making know more relaxed, making things really kind of flow and fun, and trying to dance or trying to have some podcasts downloaded or have something queued up. So that's the things that Laura and I are thinking about, is how do we keep things light, even though it's going to be painful, and it's going to be long, and it's going to be exhausting. How do we keep Laura relaxed and kind of in a good headspace during that big buildup and that painful period before it's actually time to push where it's even more painful, but when we got to keep her relaxed. So that's been a big thinking of mine.
On a more fun note, learned to change a diaper. That's great. Learned about layering clothes, learned a lot about breastfeeding, and that's been really good.
And learned a ton about that, which is really helpful.
[00:15:24] Speaker B: Breastfeeding, lactation consultants, colostrum, all these things, didn't really know what they were going in, and I didn't understand the importance of them to mothers'sense of well being and accomplishment.
And the reason that most hospitals in the states, and I know in Canada, too, have a lactation consultant that you will see before discharge is because it is such an emotionally vital thing. While feeding a baby, modern medicine can solve for mom feeding the baby, that social bond, that connection, it is primal, it is necessary, it is powerful. That I didn't get from the class that I got from living it and watching it. What I got from the class was, it's a big deal.
So that's interesting.
[00:16:15] Speaker A: Yeah. And I also got from the class that the mechanics are tough.
And I think anyone who's done breastfeeding would probably say, yeah, duh. But for me, as a guy, it's like, oh, okay, how they latch is important, and here's how it works, and here's some positions that work, and here's why. Here's what the boob does in the baby's mouth, and here's what looks good, and here's what doesn't look good. And now we actually have to go, and Laura has to go execute on that. But for me, as a know, you just don't know these things. And getting someone to really walk you through it and talk you through it and so I can have a better sense of what it's going to look like when Laura has a good attachment and what works well, having a sense of that is really valuable. So my own personal advice to dads is learn about this stuff, because if you know what's supposed to go on, it just makes you better able to be a good partner in all of this.
[00:17:15] Speaker B: Vitally. So, again, that's why we do these recordings, is so we can get some of that information out so that hopefully other new dads, especially with the burden of leadership in whatever capacity they are at work, they can start listening and maybe listening again to this so that they know what's going on.
What I was going to say before the technical difficulties, while I knew that this was happening to Sarah Beth and myself and Theo, unborn Theo as a family unit, and that was special and sacred. From the medical perspective, this happens 3.6 million times a year in the United States and has happened a couple billion times, 1020 billion times in human history.
And so some parts of this are absolutely unique to our experience, some parts of this unique because they're all a little different, but from the medical profession they got us and I kind of had to learn to rest in. They know way more about this and what's going on than we do. And that was a little bit uncomfortable to give up that control as I'm seeing this for the first time, relying on people who see this all the time, and so just keeping that mentality clear.
[00:18:19] Speaker A: Yeah, I find that really useful. This idea that there are, in fact, experts out there who know how to do this stuff, and we're going to become a parent, we'll become an expert in our own baby. But taking on it goes back to our last episode, taking on a coach, taking on people who see this every day, who can come at it from a much more kind of objective view. They're not freaking out because their whole life's about to change. It's good perspective. It's really helpful. Same thing with, as a CEO, having people, God, the number of people I've chatted with recently who just like, oh, I know what you're experiencing, you should do this or you should do that. And it doesn't mean they're right or wrong, but just having people be able to look at your situation objectively, because there's nothing new under the sun, right. People have been through these experiences before in some way, shape or form. Getting those outside perspectives are so useful.
[00:19:06] Speaker B: We often talk about blind spots in the coaching industry, and literally, you don't know what the back of your head looks like. You can kind of pretend that you might have a mirror and see it. You can't. You need perspective and someone else to help you see that. And that was one of the gifts that we did during labor, is Sarah Beth would send me just for a walk to listen to a podcast or call my father or something, just to be out of the space and out of the room so that I could come back in with the right headspace. But again, we'll do a lot more episodes leading up to Rob's and Laura's wonderful day.
I think I'll switch it over to my side a little bit.
[00:19:45] Speaker A: Yeah, let's do it. I want to give us your update.
[00:19:49] Speaker B: So let's give Theo's update first. Cool kid. And lots of stuff. Changing the rolling over from one side to the other. And then we have this little popsicle device where you can freeze anything and then put it inside a little piece of plastic that looks like, kind of like a ring pop. So we actually put breast milk in there and freeze it. And he can now hold it and put it to his mouth himself, which is excellent. Also, he has tried now avocado and broccoli. So he's got this pseudo food thing going on. He's five months now.
[00:20:22] Speaker A: How does he like him?
[00:20:25] Speaker B: So everything goes in his mouth right now. Doesn't matter what you give him. You give your finger, you give him a pen. His very favorite toy on earth is a thick plastic straw that we actually use. It's reusable and can be used in coffee. He loves it because he can hold onto it, and it's bendy, and he can put in his mouth in 100 ways, but food is different than inanimate objects. And he puts it in his mouth, and every time he has this strange face, because there's flavor and feelings, and it's interesting. So puts everything in his mouth, but when it's food, his body knows it's different, but he doesn't know what it is, whether he likes it or not, it's a very interesting facial expression.
Second to that first tooth came in a week and a half ago, coincidentally, while my father, a retired dentist, was visiting. So that was a lovely moment. And just, we didn't quite know why he was so fussy. We didn't quite know why he was drooling so much. And then Sarah Beth found the little pseudo bit of a tooth and would talk to dad and some other people about, there's some things you can do to help soothe them, and you put a cloth in the freezer. But now, all of a sudden, Theo went from all breast milk to tooth, and he's not eating for nutrition, but he's practicing eating now mostly on a daily basis. And that's a big change.
[00:21:59] Speaker A: I like that perspective of not eating for nutrition, but kind of practicing eating. That's one I know. Laura and I are really excited for the weeding stage, and that's kind of a cool way to think about it as they're prepping forward.
How are things going in your life?
[00:22:14] Speaker B: Well, my life 2023 is thankfully coming to a close.
The way I've been joking with friends is I started with COVID and a dying dog and I ended with gout. And I need to find a new home.
And this year has kind of been a bunch of external forces just whittling away at the ability to be ahead of the game, whether it's in business or in fatherhood or anything. And so a couple of weeks ago, I was recording having just come off being sick for the first time since baby and how much of a guilt trip I was giving myself for not being able to support the house, chop wood, carry water. Well, then I got sick a second time. Then I got gout. And I've never had it before, and it's pretty miserable.
But the worst part about gout is the solution to it is to be on something called prednisone, very, very strong steroidal anti inflammatory. But it's also an upper. So I'm not sleeping, I'm exhausted, but I am wired.
And all of those things coming together, really, that same burden and frustration of I want to help and support my family. The chop would carry water and I just can't do it right now.
And that's what we're going to do in the b block. And one of the reasons I want to talk about this so carefully is your health as a father matters more than you could know. Because when you're unhealthy, you can't do the things you want to do.
And I really have had a mind frame shift in the last month and a half of doubling down on my health is not a luxury. I'm getting out of the house to do that. Or when I make my own food because it's healthier for gluten free and the diet that I'm going for. And no longer are those whimsical thoughts for Brad, it's I cannot afford to be sick and be the man I want to be. And we'll get to that more in the back.
[00:24:13] Speaker A: Yeah, that's great.
[00:24:16] Speaker B: Thank you. And then the other piece is Sara Beth and I own properties and we rent them out and we use those proceeds to rent a place in Boulder. The housing wise don't matter. But last Friday, just as I'm getting through my last bout of gout and I'm able to walk and help around the house again, I'm doing a strategic planning session with a couple companies. And in the middle of that, I get a text from Sarah Beth to our landlord, obviously replying to something. And Sarah Beth writes, wow, that is big news. We might want to make an offer. Let me talk to Brad. So in the middle of this strategic planning session where we're taking a company from the first six employees and just breaking profitability up through the plan is by the end of next year to be at about 30 employees and still be profitable. And I'm in the middle of helping them design their organization structure and their comp structure. But we're also talking about, are we raising capital or not? Which key clients are going to come in? What's the order of operations for the CEO? How does she perceive herself as a CEO coming at the end of all this? And then boom, here's a little piece of life thing. The house we'renting I won't be living in was a that was a straight whoa.
And so this week we have spent the entire week looking for a new home in Boulder and then considering what it is like to move with baby. And we are fortunate enough to be able to afford to hire movers and we're going to really lean into use cash to save ourselves on the move front.
But the thing that I like about this the most is we have this illusion of control in our lives and we try and control everything we do control. And we tend to ignore the stuff we can't control and try and minimize it in our mind.
We didn't control this at all. Our landlord is selling this place for his own reasons out of our purview. And Sarah Beth and I spent almost no time at all in victim mentality. Oh, woe is us. Oh, we have to move. We didn't want to. Here are the problems. Here are the cost we just went instantly to. This decision has been made. Not by us, but this decision has been made moving on. What are we going to do about it? And that's something that I love about hers and my relationship is we don't really sit with the water that's already gone downstream. We say, what are we going to do with it right now? And hopefully, possibly by the time we do our next recording, maybe two, I will be in a new office, in.
[00:26:50] Speaker A: A new home, new studio. Crazy, exciting, hard work.
[00:26:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
This is life.
[00:27:03] Speaker A: This is life. Life doesn't stop. We talked in an earlier podcast about how sometimes you need to put life on pause for children and family and stuff. And sometimes life just isn't. And sometimes work is not possible to put on pause. So these things just come up and there's nothing you can do but get through them. And I like that, right.
Especially if you're a CEO or a decision maker.
Kind of wallowing in the victim mentality isn't useful.
Doesn't mean life is in fact quite unfair. But you got to just pick it up and move and figure out what the next thing is to do.
[00:27:38] Speaker B: Sometimes I delineate problem sets between RP and NUBC. And RP is a real problem RP. And when I'm talking to a CEO or a founding team or anybody in leadership and I'm really distilling down their questions and I do Socratic method a lot to get to the heart of the matter. When we find it, when we find what's actually happening, because they're not calling me know we're not going to be talking about basic operations of the company. They've got that done. There's always a complexity. When it's a real problem, it's known, and we put activity towards a real problem. The other side of it is sometimes you distill all of it down and then you realize it's nubc, which is nut up buttercup. And some things in life as fathers, as leaders, as coaches, as men, as whatever we are, sometimes you just got to look at something and say, I wish this wasn't happening. I wish I wasn't a part of it. And I wish it was easier. Who hid the easy button? You can go through all that, I wishes and then you nut up Buttercup and you do it. And sometimes it's just helpful to know that that's the situation you're in. And for us, having a new place will be a benefit. The needing to move is the nut up buttercup piece for me that I just have to do more work.
[00:29:04] Speaker A: Yeah, let's leave it there and let's go to. For anyone listening, if this episode feels a little different, we've had a lot of technical problems, but we're working through it. So let's take a break here. Let's come back on the backside and you stick around to listen to us talk about kind of dad health and what that means for us.
All right, welcome back. So, Brad, you know we were talking about how kind of dad health, and you recovered from illness recently and you got some stuff going on. So what does health mean to you? And let's talk about taking care of ourselves as dads and as ceos.
[00:29:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
You're never going to do your best if you're not spending some time working on doing your best.
I know that sounds funny, but it's true.
And a line that I love a lot, I think. The book is called Men of Rubber. And it's about the people who, the man who started Firestone, the tire company. And in the book, he has this quote that I just remember all the time. Never underestimate how much time it takes to think.
And I constantly am telling senior leadership, don't underestimate. You need that space and time to think. I think health goes the same. Never underestimate how much time it takes to be healthy. And on the flip side, but all of that time is always worth it.
And there are people who are health nuts and maybe spend do ultramarathons. Maybe we can start to say that that's causing problems for me. Health.
There's this interesting hierarchy, sleep, diet, exercise, alcohol, stress. And I put them. There's five attributes there. And I say that when I'm in a good space, my sleep is good. When my sleep is good, I will exercise. When I exercise, I feel like eating healthy. When I feel like eating healthy, I don't drink very much. And when those things are in line, whatever stress comes in my day, I kind of have a shield or antibodies to it.
But the interesting thing is, it's not like the order changes, it just flips. If I get overstressed out, alcohol will start coming back into the picture. And then along with that, bad food, when those things are happening, exercises out the window, and then sleep doesn't occur at all. And I find myself in this pattern in the last 20 years of my life, that as soon as I notice it, I can reset the pattern. But it's the flip into the bad pattern that's a little harder to see, a little harder to notice that it's coming in. And what I'm trying to do intentionally and with Sarah Beth, and I've told her about this as well, is find mechanisms to call myself out to have those resets faster, because the result is when I'm not healthy, I am not showing up. And if I'm not showing up because baby has requirements, Sarah Beth has to take those on. And that's not the man I want to be. So I will be making an effort to not be lazy about my health, mental, physical, not be lazy about my health, so that I don't become a lazy father. That is my intention. Setting for 2024.
[00:32:21] Speaker A: I think that's awesome. And I came out of a. In high school, college, and for a couple of years after college, I was quite an intense cyclist and bike racer, and I really built my life around it. And I wasn't a pro or anything, but I got to a pretty high level and I was probably more dedicated than I needed to be. But the lessons I learned from that were really how to listen to my body and how to optimize. And if I wasn't sleeping and I wasn't eating right, and if I was drinking too much, I wasn't going to perform on the bike. And I cared about that and I learned how to fine tune myself. And I feel really lucky as a.
Sounds ridiculous today, but as a somewhat retired athlete, I've maintained my passion for cycling and skiing and just being fit. And so I've made it a daily part of my routine. And I think that entrepreneurs, and we get to dads in a second, but I'll talk from the entrepreneur or the executive level. People who aren't taking care of their bodies are missing a trick. Because when you're healthy and you're eating healthy and you're sleeping well and you're exercising, your brain works better, you are clearer. Like, again, I'm not a scientist, I'm a doctor. I don't have the studies in front of me, but I know that the studies are out there, that good fitness translates to clearer thinking, higher function, all of that stuff. And what I'm working on now is, how do I translate that? It's easy to say, I'm going to get up earlier. I'm even going to push my day around to get a workout in for work. That's a relatively well accepted thing. It's a whole different thing to say. I'm going to sacrifice time with my child or put more burden on my wife to get a workout in. All of a sudden, that kind of transaction is a little different. So, Brad, how do you handle that kind of thing?
[00:34:17] Speaker B: So, in so many things in life, I find it really hard to self advocate. And I see this a lot in leadership as well. And so I've got this framework that I call Brad prime, and it's a person who is in every way, in every attribute the same as me, but isn't me. And what would I say to this person about it? And the way that I do it specifically for exercise is Sarah Beth likes to go to Mecca, which is kind of pilates or yoga. And she's often asking permission of me to go to a class, which means I'm going to take Theo. And this has always got to be in the morning. Sometimes I have to wake up early, sometimes I don't get to do my morning routine. I never once give any blame or shame to her about going to a class like go. I'm thankful you're going, you are going to be stronger. You're going to have new insights. You're going to feel better throughout the day. Blessings upon you. What burden can I take to give this ease to you, my love?
And I need to remember that that's the way she'll think about me going on a ride, hitting the peloton, hiking with the dog, that she feels the same way about me doing it as I do for her. And that it's not a luxury, it's really an opportunity.
And that's the hard part for me, is to get out of my own way, to give myself permission to do what I know is smart and right. And the way to do that is treat me the way that I treat her. Let her treat me the way I treat her.
[00:35:53] Speaker A: Sorry. I think that's great. And one thing I know I've always done, I've been lucky that my partner, she's an athlete, she's a marathon runner, she's faster at running than I'll ever be, no matter how hard I try. And we have similar values on that front, which I feel really lucky about. For, to me, that was really important in a partner. And so I don't think we find any kind of tension between workouts. Now, let's see what happens when we have our child. But right now, we work out together, we advocate for each other. She'll send me out on a ride if she knows I've had a big week, things like that.
And if I've learned anything in this pregnancy about kind of what I would do differently or, I don't even know how to put it right, if there's one piece of advice I would give people, and this is hard as a man trying to give, especially advice to women, but I would treat pregnancy like a boxing match, and you should train for it because, God, I see how hard it is. And Laura, thankfully, is very fit, very strong, but lugging around an extra 20 or 30 pounds on your front is really hard. It's difficult. And I can imagine how hard it is for people who aren't already training. So I tell my friends, you got to train for this thing. And I think that as a partner, I've always actually tried to advocate for myself and be like, listen, we're a partnership, but I know that I need to exercise. So I need you to help me build some time in our relationship for me to do that. And I've been lucky to have a willing partner, and I think you're doing it kind of the other way, Brad, which is you're trying to be supportive of her and hoping and letting her give you permission to take care of yourself.
I would say for any of the guys listening, I think it's really worth taking time to advocate for your partner and say, hey, I want you to take time to take care of yourself. What do you like to do? Is it this class? Is it going for a run? Is it going for a swim? Is it going for a hike? Do you have a group? Do you like to do it solo? Whatever you like to do, advocate for it and make sure you're taking up the slack in the relationship so that they can go have their hour or their 2 hours or their one day a week or their every morning so they can take care of themselves. Because trust me, over the long run, letting them invest in themselves and then investing in yourself, this is a long game.
Oh man, I got a whole lot of things to say about a long game and I almost want to get to it. But Brad, what are your thoughts here on this?
[00:38:24] Speaker B: Yeah, so a different framework that I use, but it's pretty well been proven that multitasking doesn't work very well. You're just doing multiple things poorly. And if you and I are busy texting somebody while trying to pay attention to what we're listening to as we're listening on this, we will fail at this podcast if we are not intentionally with each other. Multitasking Bs. Don't do it. It complete cognitive bias. However, there is something that I've noted within high functioning people, HFIs, high functioning individuals is how they're in the literature, often referred to. And they do something that I call dual tasking, where you're accomplishing two things at once.
For instance, there's these new walking treadmills that go underneath a standing desk. So you're both getting a little bit of exercise and you can be fully present with a Zoom call that you're on.
And I think that's part of how we as men can build time for us to be healthy as well as taking care of things. Walk to the grocery store, take baby on backpack when you walk the dog. And that's something that, because there's just not enough hours in the day and I would have to give up too many things to both be a supportive husband to a post pregnancy wife, to be a supportive father to a toddler, to be a businessman, and to be Brad. There's not enough hours in the day to do all of those discreetly and so what do we do? We do them poorly, we multitask them, we do them half, or we just sacrifice sleep, which is the key component of all these things. So what I try to do is dual tasking. I'm accomplishing two goals at the same time. My good friend, he needs a phone call to talk about some big life problem. Great. I'm going to walk the dog on that call for sure. Getting the dog walked, getting myself walked, fully present with my friend. So that's how. Just riffing off of what you were saying, that's a real piece that I hold on to, the long game bit that you just tapped on. I want to save this.
This would be a great thing for us to talk about. Year two is what is the long game of fatherhood in our hearts now that we have what will then be a one and six month old that I love?
[00:40:44] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm into that. And one thing I would say is, on this more immediate front, one thing that Laura and I dual task on all the time is we spend time together working out.
So if anyone's watching this on a video, we've got our two bikes right here. And Laura's bars are turned up because she's very pregnant at the moment and she can reach better that way. So we'll get on the bike and we'll chat and we'll do admin. Hey, what do we need to order for the baby? What do we need to do? We joined a gym and we go and we'll do at least some of our workout together so that we can chat and just have together time. And I just know that there's some people who are going to just totally roll their eyes at me and be know, Rob, you're the athlete. You think gym is like, the gym or the idea of a run is just absolute torture to me. And we will talk in a later episode about kind of the long game, but I'll preview it with this.
Presumably, if you're a dad and your partner, you're either married or in a long term committed relationship of some kind. Because even if you're not with, in this case, mother of your child, you have a child with someone, so you're going to have to interact with them for a long time, presumably at least 18 years if you want to be quick about it. And then if you want to be around for your kid, you've got the rest of your life. And then if you want to, I think, Brad, you and I, at least compared to previous generations, we're coming to fatherhood. A lot later than a lot of people. Not crazy late, but compared to our parents generation, a lot later.
So if you want to be around for things like grandkids and stuff, you got to start thinking about it now. And Brad, you and I have had conversations about this, about kind of longevity and taking care of ourselves. And again, if you're a CEO, if you're listening to this podcast, you probably have at least a little bit of an investor's mindset where you might be an investor, you might be a startup that's trying to build wealth for people or yourself.
Your health is an investment. And trying to find something with your partner that you like to do that's physical, that could be hiking, it could be swimming, it could be running, it could be going to the gym. You could treat yourself to a little sauna after the gym if you joined the right one. But finding something where you can be social and enjoy it, and it's not just a burden.
That is an investment that will pay off over the long run for you, your partner, and your child.
And then the last thing I'll say on this front is, this might just be a bit of Instagram wisdom that I've picked up over time, but a mother's fitness level has a direct impact on the fitness level and the health of the child more than the dad.
And so if mom's sitting around not working out because she's taking care of the house or taking care of the baby, or has her own job or is a CEO and not giving herself the time, and you are, you're doing yourself and your child a disservice. Our jobs as dads is, yes, to take care of ourselves and then do everything we can to make sure our partner can take care of themselves, too. It's not an either or. And I think in previous generations, it might have been a little bit, you know, the guy gets out and the mom stays at home. That's very stereotypical, but I saw that a lot in my grandparents generation, for sure. And I think I know at least Laura and I are really trying to change that paradigm where we want our child to see dad and mom lifting weights and dad and mom going for bike packing trips and dad and mom skiing and jumping off the latest black diamond. We want to both be there. So that's the kind of thing we've committed to for each other about staying fit and building our life around that kind of shared goal.
[00:44:33] Speaker B: Well, what's lovely is six months from now, I will ask you, how did your aspirations from pre baby through now having a four, five, six month old baby. How did this change? Because it will. Up, down, left, right, doesn't matter. You know that a substantial change is coming, but setting this intention makes it way more likely that what it changes into is something you'll be proud of. Being able to forecast what that is probably by definition impossible, but being to be intentional into that probably means that what you end up with is something you're proud of. And I'm looking forward to being with you through that journey.
[00:45:12] Speaker A: Yeah. And I know one way we're trying to mitigate it. And again, an investor's mindset. I'm a big personal finance guy, and sometimes it can feel like I'm going to save $100 a month for retirement or whatever, or $10 a month for retirement.
And it can feel like those little investments are silly. Right?
And you can sometimes feel like, well, if I can't put at least x towards it, why am I even bothering?
But little things compound over time. And so, yeah, when we have a newborn, I might not be able to go for an hour long bike ride. And to me, a ten minute bike ride is like such a joke that it seems silly to even do it. But you know what? I might have to just do a ten minute bike ride between naps and cries just because keeping the routine is good. And so I think one thing I'm trying to do, let's see, you can ask me in six months whether I did it, is I'm trying to give myself permission to keep up the routine of it without worrying about the quality of it. So even if my workout is a ten minute walk around the block, let's do that. Versus, oh, I only have time for ten minutes, I might as well not do it. And I'm hoping that that intention helps set us up for success and building back as we grow as a family.
[00:46:31] Speaker B: I love that. I think that's a smart approach, and it leaves a lot of variability. And you know that baby mom, in the universe, things that you can't necessarily control will hijack your agenda frequently post baby. But that doesn't mean that you can't have one or that you can't work towards it. It's just looser goals. So I really, like, keep the structure, ignore the quality, and it will come back. And over time, I'm certain that you and Laura will find systems that work. And then also over time, baby will change what they need and how they go about life. And maybe you can get some back or maybe you want to change it. It is quite a big difference. But I can't wait to talk to you about that. But maybe let's move on to the back part of the show.
[00:47:18] Speaker A: You read my mind.
[00:47:19] Speaker B: Dad's wins and losses. Does that work for you?
[00:47:22] Speaker A: Let's do it.
We can wrap up here. So you want to go first this time?
[00:47:28] Speaker B: I do.
I actually have quite a big list of wins, and so I'm going to just put them out there but ratle them off. So the first thing is we went to the local rec center with baby Theo in his first swim diaper and brought him into the kid pool. And that was just a ton of fun. Kids love pools. If you go on Instagram, you can look up little babies being thrown into pools, and they actually do it pretty naturally. And so he really enjoyed his time there. And then Sarah Beth gave me permission to pop over to the lap pool, and since my foot was still sore, I was still able to swim laps. So that was kind of a little bit of a dual tasking thing as we got to bring Theo to the pool for the first time. But I also got to get 15 minutes of swimming, in which swimming 15 minutes is not bad.
Second thing is, the reason we brought him to the pool is Sarah Beth and I looked at each other really hard the other day and realized we'd forgotten to do something we had promised to always do, which is take time away and go on vacation. And it's so easy to forget. And the time, you know, you need to go on a vacation is whenever you think of it, you think, I just don't even have the energy for the logistics of figuring out how. That means you're already too late. You should have already booked it. So we are going to Miami in a couple of weeks just to go rent an Airbnb and look at the beach. While we're living life and unwinding, we just want to make sure that the pool. Theodore already knows what a pool is, and we've already practiced all the things. So that's the second win and then the third win, and this is the big one. I took Theo yesterday morning, and I took him with the dog to the dog park, and we did the things, and Theo really hasn't been falling asleep with me, which leaves the burden to Sarah Beth. And I got Theo to fall asleep. It's called a lily in the front pouch. And the secret to it was that I knew he was going to need to go to sleep in about 20 minutes. And instead of waiting for him to start crying and meets to start getting him to go to sleep and failing, I decided instead to go for the bottle. And that was the key. That was the unlock. He took almost no food, but just because he knew he was safe on the front pouch and he didn't have food scarcity because I tried to feed him and he got a little bit. He knew it was there instantly. Kid falls asleep. Mom comes from home from her mecca class, super worried about his baby away because he's been screaming, what's going on? And she just comes into the kitchen and just sees me literally there with baby just full head down, bobbing, just asleep. I tell you, the look on Sarah Beth's face, that's my dad.
[00:50:13] Speaker A: Don't even after that, I don't even want to ask you about any dad fails, but got me for the week.
[00:50:17] Speaker B: Yeah, I got to remember, fails. Fail is, it's not my fault, but gout is a real thing and it's really painful. And the prednisone is pretty rough on me. And while it's not the blame of I did something wrong and failed, it's been a real challenging couple weeks getting through that story.
Yeah, that feels like a failure to me, though. And maybe not be a blamable failure. Rob, what about you? Wins? Fails?
[00:50:50] Speaker A: Yeah, I'll start with my fail for the week. So I went into in, we're in nesting mode right now.
We got through the baby shower, we got the first round of things, and now we're kind of trying to fill in, get all the other extra little things we need for the baby. And while trying not to buy everything new and trying not to spend all the money in the world and all these things, but I went on a tear earlier today and I was buying. I'm just going to buy everything we need. I'm just going to go on Amazon, I'm going to go nuts. And in an attempt to take stuff off of Laura's hands, I just bought stuff. And of course I bought the wrong mat.
And so Laura had to go in and cancel the order and send it back. And I'm like, come on, it's fine. But I tried to plow ahead and be the decisive dad and do all these things and got that one wrong. And so it's getting sent back and she'll figure it out later. But that's what I get for trying to just speedily just make some decisions.
Good news is nothing too bad on the win front. I think I'll have two. One is kind of purely a dad win for me, is I was having just kind of a tired week. I was really struggling to kind of get in the swing of things.
And yesterday I had a 09:00 a.m. Meeting, which for me is 02:00 p.m. But I had my first hour long call of the day. And Laura had a coffee meeting about a 1015 minutes walk away from our house. And my brain wasn't getting going, so I canceled that meeting and I just walked her to her coffee meeting. I walked with her for 15 minutes, kind of in some light rain, and then grabbed a coffee at this local coffee shop, which I really like. It was hot. I got tea, actually, but I'm in New England, so went in Rome, and then I hung out for five minutes with Laura until her meeting showed up. And then I walked home and it was 20 to 30 minutes outside. It was a hot, caffeinated beverage, and it was just some walking. And I tell you what, it just energized me for the whole rest of the day in a way that was really quite profound. And that was really nice. It was just a super win. It totally reset my week.
It was a good lesson to, like, sometimes that one meeting just, it may or may not be important. Get it off the calendar, take care of yourself for a second, because that compounds. So that was really nice.
On the baby front, my win for the week is this, as I mentioned, this NCT class we went to. I was really kind of proud of myself because I wanted to set out to be, I think, in a lot of those settings, this is going to sound like I'm bemoaning the plight of men. And it's just not that at all. It's just in a setting in a class around pregnancy and what can happen. I think, rightly, kind of the ladies are in charge, right? They ask the questions, they're the one going through it.
But I tried to be a really active participant in the class. I tried to ask questions when they occurred to me. I tried to kind of share our stories and let Laura as well, but I really just tried to lean in and kind of not be afraid to just ask things that occurred to me because I knew that there know five other dads in the class, and it's always awkward to kind of ask some questions. So I tried to just kind of let go of any fear and just kind of ask my questions as they came. And it was really nice. I think I really enjoyed the class. I learned a, you know, I think Laura really, maybe the biggest thing is Laura loved seeing me being proactive. She liked it she felt loved that her husband was and the father of a child was digging in and asking questions and thinking critically about different aspects of birth and parenting and babying and asking introspective questions about if she's having a c section, where should I sit and how should I make sure that I don't see the wrong thing and become a patient myself. And I think that really made her feel like I was a real partner in this. And so that was my win for the week. I was really kind of proud and happy about how that went because I got to really learn a lot and I got to be a real participant. And it was just fun, social. It was great. I felt really good about it.
[00:55:13] Speaker B: Love that you found a role for yourself in that. That worked for you and Laura. I just wrote down a little note that sometimes my role is to be an observer, sometimes to be a participant, and sometimes to be in control. And definitely with pregnancy and labor, the control side isn't too much of the storyline there. But just because I'm not in control doesn't mean I'm not participating.
And yet, there's also sometimes my job take a backseat to observe. But an observer's position is not inactive.
An observer is the person who is noticing what's happening, has the ability to distill it down, take the notes, ask questions.
Being just an observer is one of the most powerful leadership tools in your toolkit. But it's not always. And I know that in some of the things I did in pregnancy, I felt like I wasn't even an observer. I was just kind of barely allowed to be there. And that was my mind frame problem. But I don't want to get into all that now. We've had a nice long recording and less technical issues in the back half than the first. And also, in about three minutes, I officially take over theo duty, and I shall not be late for that event.
[00:56:20] Speaker A: All right, and that's Brad out.
So for everyone who's still here, thanks for listening to this episode of the Daddy O podcast. If you have any comments, suggestions, a dad win or a dad fail for the week, please email us at
[email protected]. And ah, please subscribe. Like share with your friends. It really helps us out and we'll see you all next week.
