[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hey, everyone. Welcome to the dad EO podcast. I'm your host, Rob Burnett, and along with my co host, Brad Bickerton, we're exploring modern fatherhood and how it blends with business leadership. Both Brad and I are new fathers and we both run businesses. On this podcast, you'll hear about our parenting journeys as well as from parenting experts, CEO's and other business leaders. We're going to dive deep on being dads, business lessons, and the balance of work and fatherhood. We hope you'll join us on this journey. Please enjoy the show.
Hey, everyone, welcome to the show. I'm your host, Rob Burnett.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: And with me, as always, I'm Brad Bickerton.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: On today's episode, we're going to go through our dad diaries. We're going to talk about some business issues of the day, including investing in people like kids and employees, and also frameworks for life, including understanding things like a j curve. And as always, we're going to finish up with our dad wins and fails for the week. So don't stay tuned. You're not going to want to miss it.
And so far, we've been really proud of our success. We really appreciate everyone who's been listening. Please like and subscribe. Share this with your friends. So with that, Brad, why don't you start us off? How are things going?
[00:01:10] Speaker B: Well, thank you very much. Yeah, we are. It's excited to have some success and to have people calling and texting and saying things like, hey, I finally listened to an episode while driving and the first thing I did was, number one, I realized my daughter was the most important thing in the world to me. And number two, I called her to let her know that. And so it's pretty remarkable that we're having that impact. And then on the flip side of it, you and I have had trouble finding time to record. We've been busy being dads, being CEO's, and it's actually helping us reflect, helping me reflect on how busy I am when, how hard it is to find time with an interviewee or you to do this work. So that's all part of the grind and part of the deal and part of the love on the dad diaries and the things going on. Well, Theo will turn one this coming Saturday, seven, six. And so, yeah, it's pretty great. We got to give him the, evidently, there's a traditional first thing on your first birthday, the party, which is your first taste of cake. And it did not go well. He didn't know what it was. It was this thing in front of him, he was confused. We had to actually prime him with a blueberry so he understood this is eating time. Um, so that was, that was funny, I think also having, I think there was eight, eight other adultish type people, my nephews being tall enough to be called adults. Now I say he's a little scared. And that was something else we learned is you don't sing happy birthday. It's intimidating. Uh, so that's all these things we're learning about first birthdays. Uh, what else is going on? So he is officially a toddler. In the last month, he's gone from kind of trying to take steps to he full on toddles all over the place and giggles while doing it. And he can almost go all the way around our block. We live in a circle and it's amazing to see the agency and the growth and the joy and the exploration that happens with walking. So that's been absolutely stunning and amazing.
Some other stuff on the dad diary. I coach every single CEO I've talked to for over ten years about making sure you have scheduled vacations, because by the time you realize you need a vacation, it's already too late. And oftentimes you feel like just the idea of going on a vacation is too much. Well, I can now officially say it's the same thing in dad life. And we are so unbelievably lucky that we had a scheduled work trip, that the work got unscheduled. And so we had a scheduled trip and so we went to, instead of going to San Jose for a conference, we went to Santa Cruz for a vacation. And along the way, since it was supposed to be a working period of time, our nanny came with us and what a pro move if you can pull it off.
[00:03:44] Speaker A: Sounds awesome.
[00:03:46] Speaker B: Amazing. And I know a couple other specifically a family with two that husband and wife worked together at a space company and they've done this as well. That's where we got the idea. And what a wild world. On one day we got to go on three two hour dates. It was phenomenal. And of course, the lesson of all this is that you need to schedule your next vacation right when you get home and you still have that vacation glow and you know you need it. You know, the first two or three days are unwind, unpack, figure things out, realize it's all going to be okay. So that was the vacation time.
[00:04:22] Speaker A: And that, if I can add, I think that reminds me of our interview with Trevor Paul. Youre investing in memory dividends. Its super important for dads and for anyone working at a high level to take those breaks because itll pay off in the long run.
[00:04:39] Speaker B: Clay, for sure it will. Were also investing his microgut biome because he has now eaten sand in Miami, in Colorado and California. So thats really got to be just.
[00:04:51] Speaker A: Like three different time zones.
[00:04:52] Speaker B: Thats perfect.
That's good. Yeah. East coast, west coast, and up high. I mean, his, his micro gut has got to be great.
No, that was, it was, it was tons of fun and good, but something that we've heard from other dads and that we read in the book, the expectant father, but is really true, is, is he's more interactive with things that I can do with him every day. And that just feels really, really good because in the first year, so much of it is, is mom and breastfeeding and nurturing and nestling. And every day there are new things that he and I can do together. And that dad one on one time, which we learned about here, has just, or you brought up from that you met the author. That is really revolutionary.
[00:05:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. The author, Nell Frizzle, pulled a statistic from I don't know where, but it's in her book about how one of the most successful things you can do for a partnership long term is having the dads being involved and having one on one parenting time.
[00:05:55] Speaker B: And ever since that mind Gremlin got in my mind, I enjoy it more. It's not a chore. But then as he's growing and maturing and he's pointing and saying, what's that? What's that? And we're going and interacting with things, it's really become something I cherish. And one of the reasons you and I started this podcast is so that we could show the world what, like, if we love being a dad, that we can say that out loud. And I love being a dad to Theo, and I know that. And I get to experience that with the one on one time, and that's really good. And then the last thing I just want to update on is what's been fun for me is as I meet more dads, I kind of do these pseudo interviews. Because you and I are doing these interviews, I am now gaining some skills on asking dad questions. And what's interesting is how often I can say, oh, on the daddy o podcast, I heard a similar topic by a smart person, and this is what they said. So one of our goals on this is to mature and grow ourselves by talking to other high functioning dads in business and in life. And I can tell you that it is affecting me in a really positive, good way. I'm really happy that we're coming back from our unofficial, unplanned summer break from Daddy o.
So, those are my updates. But Rob, haven't heard from you in about a month. Updates, diary things, concepts, what do you got?
[00:07:07] Speaker A: I mean, as you know, Brad, the amount of things that can happen in a single month going from four months old to five months old is wild. Yeah. And so, yeah, there is more update than I could possibly have time for in this podcast. People would stop listening. But I'll try to hit the highlights because as we try to remind ourselves and our listeners, ultimately, this is supposed to be a diary for us that we can go back to and listen to and remember.
So, since our last episode, we've come back to the US from the UK. So we had our second international flight, and this time Arthur was four and a half ish months old.
And it was much harder than when we flew at seven weeks old. Not, not necessarily in a bad way. There was no big freakouts, nothing crazy. But he, instead of basically sleeping almost the entire flight with a small wake ups, he was up almost the entire flight with some small naps.
And when you're sitting in, we were lucky to have just two seats next to each other. The configuration of the plane was like two, four two or something. So we got the two seats to the side, but we didn't have a bassinet or anything. And so it was basically just holding him between us the whole time and taking turns walking up and down the aisle and spending time back in the galley and all that stuff. But it was really fun. And we got through it again without any major breakdowns or anything else. I wish I had some wise words of wisdom to help other people achieve this. I don't know what I can say other than we got a good baby who likes to fly.
And we relented only slightly on our no screens policy by letting him watch the inflight map in the screen behind because we wanted to see how far it was to go. So thats been good. We had a quick weekend in New York City, which was awesome. We got to show him the big Apple, which was awesome. We went to the Central park zoo. He got to see a red panda, which was very cool, and some bears, which is his nickname. So thats awesome. Then we spent a little time at home. He got to spend time with his 96 year old great grandmother, which was amazing. And now were in Colorado, which is where we consider our us home. And it's been a little bit rocky and again, a growth way, but he's about five months old now.
He's getting back into his better sleep. He's not up all night, but when we came up to altitude in this dry climate, we definitely had two nights where he was up more than he had ever been in his whole life. It was worse than the infant stage. It was worse than anything else. He was up like every hour feeding and wouldn't leave bed. It was cluster feeding and all these things. And we think it was just a combo of altitude and dryness of the air. If anyone's been to Colorado in the mountains, they know how dry it is. I wake up a couple times a night and need to drink water. So we think that was just what it was like for him. So that's a quick update on what we've done. And then from a development perspective, it's really incredible. He's right on the verge of being able to eat. We actually think he's hungry. We might start weaning him, which is really exciting. And hes gotten really interactive. I can make him giggle now. I can tickle him a little bit. I can kind of play peek a boo and he reacts. And so thats really fun.
He really understands his mom and dad and hes starting to know his grandparents and thats whats really exciting. So the final thing ill say in this update is huge shout out to the grandparents. We did a week with Lauras parents before we left the UK, and then we essentially did two weeks with my parents these last two weeks, and they just left a couple of days ago. But oh, my God, the extra pair of hands has been so good for us. Laura and I got on some bike rides together and things like that. We're feeling great. And it's been awesome to see my parents develop a relationship with Arthur, having Arthur recognize them, all that good stuff. So, I mean, there's a million details I could try to go through, but that's just like one I know, actually, they listen, so shout out. Shout out.
[00:11:08] Speaker B: Your mom, for sure. Yeah, your mom. Your mom grilled where I got to. I got, I got to meet her and she didn't grill me. She had this list just from her mind of all these topics we talked about. We didn't have to deal with that. And it's great how you guys are dealing with this. And that's interesting. And that's, and I really liked that one episode with the guy who went around the world. Then there was the guy who was talking about football and so your mom is an avid listener. She doesn't get the place of our first listener who will listen to this while driving his four kids cross country. Cody. But your mom is definitely an advocate and she doesn't need to be. Right. It's. There's something about what we're doing here where your mom and I happen to know my mother as well. So, yeah, shout out to the grandmas and the love and care they gave us from then through now.
[00:11:51] Speaker A: Of course. Yeah. So that's. And shout out for helping us get a little extra sleep.
So we're gearing up now for a summer of adventure in Colorado. Really excited about it. Hopefully we can take him outside a lot more and show him the world. So we're really. We got a fun couple of months ahead of us. But then, Brad, I know I wanted to shift gears a little bit in the business because we talk a lot. And one bit of feedback I've gotten from multiple people who listen, and this might be just our very niche audience, is their dads who are working and they're like, I love it when you mix the two. I really like hearing both of those things at the same time. I want you to go back to business. And so for you all listening out there who want to hear it, the one topic that's been on my mind a lot is this idea of investing in people. And you do this a lot because Instagram rots my brain and I see a lot of these reels and I get a lot of dad content, and there's a lot of it out there. But again, I saw something. It flashed in front of me for 2 seconds. I don't know who it was from, or I can't attribute it properly, but essentially someone just said, listen, it's a decision whether or not to have kids. I'm not here to tell you whether or not you should make that decision. That's up to you. But if you do have kids, you should invest in them. And it was a two second clip. And I thought, it's something that's just been stuck in my brain. It's an obvious thought. It's not something that's revolutionary, but it's something that's really been on my mind because I think a lot about when I spend time with Arthur in the moment, I might be bored or it's hard, but when I think about, oh, no, I decided to have this child. I want them. I want them to be successful in life. I need to invest in them. And I was thinking a lot about that and how my fatherhood journey has combined with my manager's journey. And I thought it was kind of obvious and interesting to think if you have employees, you should invest in them.
And if you have people who work for you should invest in them. Because it's obvious that you'd invest in your kids. But I'm not sure it's obvious that you would invest in your employees. Now the balance is different. Your children should be with you the rest of your life. Employees come and go. But I thought that that mindset has been something that's been kind of rattling around my brain for the last couple of weeks because I think it's something I've done unintentionally. But something I really feel strongly about is that you should invest in the people around you. So Brad, I don't know if you have thoughts here, but we can certainly dive into this as a topic for today.
[00:14:17] Speaker B: Brad? Oh no, I don't have any tops on culture investment or people.
It lets me round about to every episode I shall, I shall talk about observation skills. And for anyone first listening whenever I'm teaching leadership or first engaging with somebody, we start by testing observation skills. That's actually really. I'm not just testing whether somebody sitting can sit quietly and watch other people. I'm testing whether they have the ability for empathy. And so let's just quickly do definitions. Sympathy is feeling what somebody is feeling. So think about the synchrony, synchronicity going together in some, in something. Two balls bouncing at once is synchronous. Whereas empathy is understanding. You can't understand somebody else unless you can observe them. And once you understand someone else, then you can start saying, okay, who are they? What are their needs, what are their desires? And you can start forming opinions on where those could go and where do they meet with where you want them to go. So lets say investing in our children. I want my child to be able to stand on his own 2ft, be able to think, be able to observe and be able to choose his destiny to the points and degree that he can.
I have to learn who he is. I have to observe who he is and have empathy with his problem set in order to do that. But once I have that, then I can start investing in smart plans and processes. And the best I ever heard about this. And man, I tried to find this guy so hard. A couple of weeks ago I was flying home from Alabama where my friend is and the guy I sat next to had the greatest invest in his kids theories I'd ever heard anywhere. So before you and I were doing the pod, and I got his phone number and I texted him once and I couldn't find it. But one of the things he said, the way he invested in his children was he helped them realize when they had a decision to make or including join the team or keep my eyes open when the ball is going by me, and helped him understand that and then said, if you try it once on your own, I will be right behind you, but I will not help you until youve tried it once on your own.
And it was that empathy of knowing that if they know they have support in two sides, youre right behind me and you can help me solve it if I cant do it, two sides of help, that level of empathy and understanding, they knew that it was in them. Their father reinforced it. He did what he said he would do. He was impeccable with his word on it. And they learned to go out swinging to keep their eyes open, to do things. And now they're healthy, productive members of society. And I very much coach managers and sometimes leaders in this exact same way, which is have the empathy to let somebody know, are you ready? Are you okay? I am right here behind you, but you're doing it. And if you screw up, I will help you fix the screw up, and I will make it right. Oh, my God. What a powerful message.
[00:17:07] Speaker A: And I think, too, one thing you said at the very beginning of this, Brad, which I don't want to let fly by, is that I think with our kids, we say, okay, the joke in our family is Arthur's going to olympics 2044. It's the Olympic year. It's 2044, baby. 20 years from now, we're going to do it. And of course it's a joke, but it's also, I remember my dad saying, and I don't know if he would even remember this, but I remember a constant refrain, when I was young, single digit ages, you could be the first man on Mars. And it wasn't because he actually wanted me to be an astronaut, but it was a mindset that, like, you could do whatever you want. And I think we have this mindset for our children, at least I think a lot of us do, who are high functioning or even not. A lot of us have this mindset for our children that they can and should be whatever they want to be, and they should go on and be successful. And we want them to get great education. We want them to be really social and have great friends, and we want them to have good skills and be good at sports and piano and the play and all those other things. And we want them to go and be their own person. And I often don't think we go into that, into an employer employee or a manager manageee relationship in the same way.
Like, I know one thing I tell my people fairly frequently is when you're a CEO, someday you'll have to do this, that or the other thing. And it's not because I necessarily think every single one of them will be a CEO someday. But I want them to think that, oh yeah, someday I will be a CEO, or maybe I'll be a GM of a product, or maybe I'll run a team.
And I think that setting that mindset has been good for them because it really gives them this framework of like, oh no, I really, no one's ever told me I could be a CEO before. I think a lot of people, no one's ever told them they could be a CEO before. That's some mythical job that smart people.
[00:18:57] Speaker B: You'Re tapping onto one of the most. For me, a fascinating topic, and the way I present it is I'm never going to go back to school. I've had plenty and wasn't that great at it. And while I made it to 20th grade and have some things on the.
[00:19:10] Speaker A: Wall, but if you are very educated, Brad, you are very educated.
[00:19:14] Speaker B: As am I, as are you. But if I did, if I went back, I know what I would do. I would get a PhD. And the subject matter of my PhD would be permission.
Who needs permission? When, where and why? And I'll give you, we all have different categories of it, but one that I love, it's just so wild and crazy and people don't believe me until I show them. A startup founder needs no permission to attack a billion dollar competitor industry and disrupt it. They don't need permission at all. They go gung ho, they tinker together, they get their business person, they get their product person, they get some capital and they just full on with no chances, go out swinging or hit the moon. No permission needed. Whereas regular people would need permission to do something like that. But you know what? Entrepreneurial CEO's need permission for increasing their salary.
You know, over the course of a business, all of a sudden you go from making $85,000 a year, no benefits, no stability, no anything, to oh, you're making buck 85, 250 fully loaded. It's more than that. And they'll never give it to themselves. The board has to do it. I have to give them permission. Same person. And literally I can give you names of people that I've gone through this with. And so again, back to this permission is no one ever gave somebody permission to think that they could be a CEO before.
Maybe they could, but until you gave them that with Theo, no one ever gave him permission and a lot of times would stop him from doing stuff, whereas I tend not to stop him from doing something, especially if he's going to, in this case, as a toddler, literally fall. I try to be behind him so that a fall isn't harmful.
And again, I'd practice the pause. And if he falls and it's not harmful but he's shocked, I give him a solid pause. Whereas I'll say grandma won't, grandma will see that this might turn out badly, not allow the fall, or if the fall happens by accident, pick up immediately. And that's not what I choose to do as a father. And again, protection, making sure there's boundaries and things, but also not preventing the fall.
[00:21:20] Speaker A: In business terms, I would say you're not a micromanager.
[00:21:25] Speaker B: No, I am not.
[00:21:27] Speaker A: And I think thats a good thing. And I think that thats something this podcast has given me perspective on, is I do not think im a micromanager, but I do think im a safety blanket for a lot of people who work for me. Because to give myself a little bit of credit, I think I can think about complex issues. And ive been in our business six and a half years in a way that most people, most of my employees who work for me right now are on my team have been in half that long, if, if that, if that long. So I can just think so quickly and make decisions and judgment calls on things around regulatory requirements and things like that. But I, I've been trying to flex the muscle of, hey, this is your team. Go figure it out. You tell me what you want the answer to be and then I'll tell you if you're right or wrong, or I'll help you dig out of it like you said, or I'll, I'll be there to support you. But I do. When it comes to, like, making some decisions or especially around compliance and when it comes to, like, having the toughest conversations with clients, I'm still the fallback. And I'm, I'm trying very hard to invest in my team and teach them how to get going and do it themselves. Cause that'll help me in the long run.
[00:22:38] Speaker B: So there's a lot of topics you're touching on right now, but I'll give you two, two pieces of coaching advice on delegation. First off, never give somebody a task to be delegated to if it's more than 2% out of their comfort zone. Remember this metaphor of 2%?
[00:22:51] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:22:52] Speaker B: If it's under 2% of their comfort zone, you're reinforcing their comfort zone. But most people in any individual at bat can. It's too far for them to think about something that's 10% or double. Even if it's easy for you, you'd say the difference between these two tasks, doing this and not doing it, is so simple for me that I don't even know where it grades in my comfort zone, but low. But for somebody else, novel new, never pass 2%. Otherwise, they just kind of wilt. They either fail at it objectively because they didn't have the strength or the ability or the capacity, the skills, or they failed at it conceptually. Emotionally, they couldn't understand the concept, or they couldn't feel comfortable enough with the adrenaline rush while they tried to do something new, like a tough conversation, like firing a client. And that one's really tough. People don't walk into firing a client day one, so you can practice that. Actually, I often recommend practicing that. But the second thing is delegation, which is the bigger topic here. And I think this fits a lot with daddiness. I didnt know this before, but. So the person that I delegate the most to in my entire life is a guy named Mark Wiernowski, and hes a law friend of mine. He will be on this podcast someday. Hes a great man, and ive given him a lot of business over the years. And one time he just, he asked me, Brad, what can I do to honor you for giving me the business? And I said, mark, the way you honor me is you only ever, whenever I give you law on any client of mine, I only ever get one of three topics back from you. So I've delegated all law thinking to Mark, and here's the three things he responds with. He never responds outside of these three. Number one, it's done.
That's pretty, pretty easy. It's reinforcing. It's kind of nice. It's usually, it's done better than you thought, which is also kind of cool. But the second thing that he'll come back with is, here's something we didn't know when we started out.
That's awesome. Thank you for telling me that. Because whatever decision, yeah, whatever decisions we made, giving it to you, well, they were broken because of the thing we didn't know. So now we know the thing and then reevaluate decision making. And the third thing is, I need help.
I personally am completely agnostic to which answer he gives. And this is the mistake people make in delegating or with their kids. I'm assuming it's like, what? They want it to win. They want it to work. Those three answers, when you really think about it, if you didn't have to do them, Rob, somebody just comes back to you, some part of your team, and they said, it's done. Here's something we didn't know. I need help. Like, fantastic. I didn't have to get involved at all until the true nature of that came up. Boom.
[00:25:16] Speaker A: And until you are actually needed. Because, listen, as a dad, I think we do a lot of things that are only unique to us because we are dad. And an example of that is like, anyone can pick up my child, anyone can change a diaper, but it's important that I do it because I'm his dad. Yep. But it's not a unique skill to me.
I'm only unique because I'm a dad. But as I think as a manager or as a CEO, you really only want to do things that only you can do.
[00:25:48] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:25:49] Speaker A: And that framework right there means that by the time something gets to you and you're helping, it actually needs you.
And I think that's really, that's really valuable because otherwise, and I don't know if this exactly fits in, but I want to shout them out anyway. There's a couple members on my team where we've been doing a lot of work on, around fundraising and helping our clients fundraise. And I wanted them to put together a series of classes around how to do this to make it to really improve our client education.
And I was worried that I would have to do a lot of editing.
I kept being like, guys, I need you to send me a draft. I asked for, like, two weeks. I need you to send you a draft. I need to see a draft before this date because we're going to launch these in two weeks. And I really need to see a draft because I'm going to need to tear it apart. And I was fully expecting to tear it apart. Yep, got it. No notes. It was awesome. I couldn't believe it.
And not because these people aren't great people who are great at their jobs. I actually really, really trust them. But I just figure, listen, I got. I got a decade on most of them. I got a lot more experience.
I should be able to correct some of their stuff I should have that in me because I should have that much more experience. But I got the stuff and it was great. And I'm just like including a lot of work done by a Yde, a sophomore in college intern. And he's awesome. So I don't know what the lesson is there other than like, if you trust your people and you give them the tools, it it'll help the business in the long run.
And there's a lot of dad things you can't delegate because you're dad, but you can certainly let your kid keep going without holding them back. You can let them get out there, right?
[00:27:23] Speaker B: It's something I like. Some people know me know that I like Formula One and how many of the Formula One drivers their daddy is, their coach is their manager, their money manager, and their negotiating person is right behind them. But by the time you get to Formula One, there's only 20 of you in the world who are doing this. You're watched by tens, hundreds of millions of people 2030 times a year. You are your own man by that point in time, no matter what you got going. And yet the dads are still there in the background taking things off of your plate that you don't need to be involved with. You don't need to be helped with because they're trustworthy and they're honest and they're supportive. And this is not helicopter parenting at all as I'm describing it. This is beyond that.
So I also love that you did highlight, because in business, it's a detriment to get too far down the chain back into your individual contributor status, which is the baseline status most people are. And you shouldn't be there. If you're at the leadership level, you shouldn't really even be getting involved in management decisions unless they're problematic or intractable or too close to the strategic decision. You should be staying at the leadership level. But in fatherhood, I think we break that. I think one of the most powerful things that I do is I do not mind and I'm learning to be better at vocalizing. I don't mind doing diapers and put down and bath duty. And Sarah Beth still sometimes comes at me like, would you be willing to do it? And that's my failure to not have it clear. I am always willing to do the diaper, the chop wood, carry water, work with Theo. She might be better at it, might be easier in some ways, but I'll never lose that individual contributor part of being a father. I will hold onto that. Whereas in leadership you got to let it go. Jeff.
[00:29:06] Speaker A: Yeah. I think this is a way to wrap this up. I think when you think about the Venn diagram of fathers versus managers, what overlaps is you want to support them, you want to invest in them, you want to make sure they have the education and the support and the self confidence to go and do things, because at least on the manager side, it's self interested. It probably is a little self interested on the fatherhood side, too, because you want our kids to grow up and be independent and leave the house and take care of us when we're old.
But then I think where I think where it doesn't overlap is I think you're right. You never lose, or hopefully, I hope I never lose the individual contributor or part of being a dad. The hey, I'm going to make you a sandwich. Hey, I'm going to do the thing. But as a manager, I think you definitely want to lose that. You want to be the slightly absent parent that makes the kid grow up on their own. Um, to use a bad metaphor, I.
[00:29:59] Speaker B: Can'T wait till we get to talk to some more dads with teenage kids and find out what, uh, what we think, what they think about that particular part is how much boundary and how much space and, you know, because how much more trouble can they get into. But that, that'll be, uh, something that we come along the way for sure.
[00:30:13] Speaker A: Well, why don't we take a quick break, Brad? And when we come back, I know you want to talk about some frameworks for life and business. We'll be right back.
All right, everyone. Welcome back. So, Brad, we know you're famous for frameworks, and I know you have a couple you want to talk us through today. So what do you got for us?
[00:30:35] Speaker B: Yeah, thank you. You and I were chatting about what do I do with companies and people that don't know? And one of the things I do is a free lunch and learn and do it every, at least every month. I thought I'd just bring in three of the easy frameworks. You could call them heuristics, which Julie Penner would say is, the difference is if theyre visual or not. But theres just really useful things to know about business, and I believe that well find the ways that this relates to life. And so this first one is, its called the I think matrix.
And so if youre in a leadership position, you dont get to say I think anymore before you start a sentence. I think we should go this way. I think we should go that way. I think we should raise money. I think we should fire this person. Verboten. Gone, I think, is out of the lexicon. The lowest level of assurity that you're allowed to speak is my experience informs me.
And even if your experience is, I've done, I've sold one beanie baby, and now we're selling two. Understanding that you have experience and it's informing your decision, but letting the listener know where you're coming from, I think is like an um or a like or a duh or whatever. I think gone lowest is my experience informs me. Next, next on the surety level, how sure you are of this decision. The next one is, we have anecdotal evidence. Now watch how we went from my experience to we have, but anecdotal evidence is not data, but it's not useless, especially in startups or a new project. You start getting anecdotally evidence in, usually pretty quickly. And if you've looked at that anecdotal evidence and you thought about, okay, how, how strong is this? It's maybe 30% fidelity. 50% fidelity. You can say that so that everyone in the room knows that as you're making this decision or you're starting this discussion of this brainstorm, they know where you're at.
Next one, the data suggests good, helpful, directional. We have a p value of 0.8, whatever it is, and then last one, the data proves, look, this is just the way it goes. Now, if you write this all out, you go, I think, cross it out. My experience informs me we have anecdotal evidence. The data suggests, the data proves, it also shows you the direction you should be going with a decision. We want to be pushing how much we have closer and closer to the data proofs, we may never get there. Maybe rapid, maybe, maybe social, maybe. We work with so many different people, we can never actually have a data set. It has to be all anecdotal, has to be. But at least you have given your audience where we're at and what the higher level is. So that just gets rid of miscommunication in so many ways. So that's the I think matrix. It's pretty easy. I think is gone.
[00:33:11] Speaker A: So let me think, let me ask you a question about that, Brad. So this, this is around making a decision. And when you say making a decision, do you mean the actual, like, moment of this is what we're doing? What do you think about, or how does this matrix play into, I've brought my team together. We need to figure out the strategic direction. Are you allowed to say I think then no.
[00:33:32] Speaker B: If you're the leader, my experience informs me, and if the answer is we have no experience at all, then we're just going with our gut.
So flip a coin because your gut is no better than a coin. Now, cognitive bias will convince you your gut is better than a coin. And that's one of the big reasons for having this language. So we're getting rid of cognitive bias. If everyone agrees that the smartest person in the room is Brad with some anecdotal evidence, or rob with his experience, or Michael with his data set, or all of us with this data set, we at least have all leveled into where's the decision being made? And so that's why we speak about it that way. Now that we know where the decision is being made from, we can appropriately create tests. If we're testing my experience, I don't mind testing my experience very cheaply, very quickly and seeing if it was even directionally correct. But I don't want to pretend like my experience is the same thing as a dataset where once I've made a decision, it's locked. Why? Because we have 3.7 million data points that all tell us the right way to go is left when we come across this. Well, no, we're just using my experience and I've got 20 years experience and I've been doing this stuff for a while. But if that's the highest order of information we have, great, that's where we're going to go with. And we'll design the experiment to test against that directionally at the level of surety.
[00:34:54] Speaker A: Very cool.
[00:34:55] Speaker B: So that's, I think matrix, the second one. And this is one of my favorite ones when you come to strategic planning and thinking. And I'm not sure how it goes with kids and so it'll be interesting. But there's a very well known graphic, it's called a J curve and it's basically graphically saying you got to spend money to make money. If you start, it's time on the bottom and effectiveness on the vertical. And if youre this effective at time zero and you want to get more effective, well, you got to get worse before you get better. That creates a graph that makes a j.
Same thing is lifting weights, making money. Ive got $10,000 in my account. Im going to invest $5,000 into this. My account went down by 5000. But over time we have this expectation that you come out of the J curve and correct makes a j and goes up. So thats generally the concept with most anything that I approach in life is, can we survive the J curve? And of course, the problem with the J curve is you don't know that you're going to get to the backside of the J curve. So things are just going down at first. And the metaphor I use for this one usually is, if you have two salespeople and you want to go to five, those two salespeople will instantly become worse at their job because they're training the new people and they're talking over each other and whatever. But then over time, they'll stop getting bad at their job and the other people will get better, and then you'll have five good salespeople on the other side of. So thats a J curve generally what ive added into that in so many things in life, and I believe this will touch base a lot on fatherhood for me as a father, as I grow, and me as Im helping and watching Theo grow is artificially stopping the upside of the J curve. We can all think about infinite growth. We like to talk about startups and venture capital, and we never think about, were going to say, this is good enough, and were going to pause the growth. So back to the sales guys. If I could get two sales guys to do this much work, lets say 10,000 each a month, a week, doesnt matter if I can get five to be at that same level, even if the team is bristling, theyre like, no, we can do more. Im going to pause them and say, no, no, you guys are doing good enough. I want you to take a break, and I want you to let this system stabilize, because that's the mistake so many of us make, is we hit a new plane and then we just feel good. It's euphoric, and we want to grow to the next level.
Instead, as a leader, you come in and say, that's good enough. Now let's see if we can sustain this good enough for a while. And watch as you grew, all these little ripples came into the thinking and the processes, and you all of a sudden wake up one day and you realize, oh, everyone's exhausted, no one's talking to each other, right. And we need to stabilize that first before we then create this third section, a planning period for the next j curve. So j curve stabilize plan j curve over and over and over. The last thing I'll say about this one is, and never have multiple departments going through their j curve at the same time.
[00:37:49] Speaker A: Okay, well, I think the one thing I'll add to the one thing I'll add to that is this is slightly tangential, but I think it's important is I've noticed as we've gone through a period of growth, a lot of the things that helped make that growth happen atrophy over time. Things like, for lack of a term, ritual things like daily stand up meetings or all hands meetings.
I'm mostly talking around communication. People get to know each other. Teams, if they're relatively stable, get comfortable with one another, and routines become routine. And so you find that the little things start to feel boring and feel like they're not useful. Like, I do this daily stand up every day. I say the same thing every day. Why are we doing this? This is stupid, but I think when you get to this point, when you talk about stabilization, refreshing those things, we just did that at our company. We totally refreshed. We didn't get rid of them. The communication channels still exist, but we refreshed how we do them so that people feel like they're new and interesting, so that the communication continues to flow so that we can be ready for the next period of growth.
[00:38:59] Speaker B: And so the mistake in air quotes that you made there is you kept the stabilization period too long and you didn't start planning for that system to need to be refreshed.
[00:39:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:09] Speaker B: And so the rule of thumb on that is anytime something triples, it's going to break. Doesn't matter if it's lines of code, number of employees, number of customers, everything except for the bank taking more money in. If it triples, it's going to break. And so you want to make sure that your next j curve is before that breaking, because that next growth, even if it's just the throughput of the ends of a cap on a pen, you triple that, your machinery is not going to work the same, and one little miscommunication is going to destroy an entire order.
I'm interested because I've obviously discussed this many times in many different companies and business models. I am interested to see how this will affect our community for fathers, because usually people like it a lot when they think strategically about a business. But we'll see how this comes back to fatherhood after this episode's out and the last kind of. Yeah. Little, uh, little framework just to, to share with the audience. This one's incredibly easy, but I know how it'll fit into fatherhood. So there's basically three, three stages of mastery, mastering of anything. And it begins with your noviciant being a novice. Then you become a practitioner and then the last one is master. Now, generally in life, you never want to get past participant practitioner. Sorry, mastery is too much for too little. It's that last 2%. It's that making the Olympics versus being the best in your state. Like, is it really worth it? Maybe for some of you, but most of the time it's not. But let me just describe the novitiant is the part that, of course, will happen in fatherhood, because I'm watching Theo as a novitian toddler toddling, and you make mistakes all the time. The key attribute to see if somebody's a novice, well, first off, most people are scared to enter into being a novice because they feel embarrassed. There's social grist because it's just hard to do. And it took me a long time to learn how to take one on one classes and random stuff and not feel embarrassed. But the number one principle of being a novice is you're still learning the rules and you're fascinated by them.
Oh, wow. That rules. Cool. Oh, that's the penoya versus neff back in, back in law school. Yeah. Making you laugh or how to mention, yeah, and that's fine, but just watch. People, especially employees, but also other people.
Baby VC's and angel investors still think that documentation of venture capital is the coolest thing. And then it's like, okay, that's fine. That's neat. And that's how you have to do it so many times that you memorize the rules beyond memorization into the place where you're practicing the rule set, and that's how you become a practitioner. And most of the time in life, that's where you want to stop.
The, the concept of being a practitioner is 95% of the time, you know the right answer and you do it. And that's pretty high level. That's the highest level of practitioner, and that's where you want to go with most things. And then there's mastery. And mastery is, you know, why the other 5% work, why the 95% works, and why the other 5% works, and you know why. And that's mastery. And it's usually not applicable or necessary in life. Usually being a practitioner is the right thing. But I am certain that watching Theo go from being a novice toddler to being a practitioner of toddlerhood, and he'll probably never be a master toddler. He'll probably move on to the next thing first, and that's fine, too. So, anyway, those are three frameworks that I give my lunch and learns and just thought I'd share them with our audience.
[00:42:28] Speaker A: Appreciate that, Brad. And one thing we'll have to do at some point is turn this into other material that people can come and find. But until then, just relisten.
[00:42:36] Speaker B: We'll get there. I've never heard anyone say that to me before.
[00:42:41] Speaker A: We'll get there. We're going to do it. We'll become maybe not masters of the podcasting game, but we will. We will get there.
[00:42:49] Speaker B: I hope by the end of the year, we leave novice. That's.
[00:42:52] Speaker A: We are toddling real hard right now in the podcasting game.
Well, speaking of toddling, why don't we take a quick break again and we come back? We'll do our dad wins and fails for the week.
[00:43:05] Speaker B: Sounds good.
[00:43:06] Speaker A: We'll be right back.
[00:43:12] Speaker B: All right, everybody, welcome back. Thank you for make it to the c block. The wins and fails, the place where we get to share a little bit open heartedly what we did right, what we did wrong, what you can laugh at us at, or what you can shake your head and say, me as well. And today, today and this week, we're going to start off with Rob. Rob, some wins and fails along your journey.
[00:43:32] Speaker A: Yeah. So there's been plenty over the last couple of weeks, but I've got a couple that I think are fun and will be relatable. So on the. I'm actually going to classify this as a win. It was this close to being a fail. So we were on a flight, and I. This shows how ridiculous our life is. I can't remember which one. At this point, I think my son has been on nine flights and he's five months old. I don't even want to think about what that means for his carbon footprint. But anyway, so we were on a flight, and Arthur poops as one does. So I take him back to the. Changing to the bathroom to change him. Uh, because being the great dad that I am, of course I'm gonna. I'm gonna volunteer to change him.
Um, but anyway, he, you know, with the plain heaves, gassy and all these things, but I have the nappy or the diaper. I. This is me code switching between UK and us. There's so baby things are like, have so many us UK code switching things. So his nappy slash diaper is open on the table, and he is kicking around, and all of a sudden he does a second massive poop in the, like, half angled towards me, like, diapers open.
And thank God, like some. By some magic, it all lands, like, in the open diaper and doesn't get on anything doesn't get on me, doesn't get on his like I think I still had to change his clothes but that was from the original blowouthenne but I was like, so I like with like one hand have him like half like up, get it all out and was able to, I did have to change him, I remember now. But I was able to kind of escape the bathroom in the airplane coming, having come this close to having to like walk down the aisle with like completely covered in baby poop, but instead totally clean. And I just went back to my wife and I was like, I want you to know that I'm happy to do my fair share, but you owe me for that one because that was, that was, that was like razor's edge. Adrenaline running like this close to total disaster, like, you know, 2 hours into a four hour flight or something. Uh, so that was, that was definitely a win. More luck than anything but that, that was a good one.
So I feel for any dads who, who had a similar situation but it ended up as a fail, um, the fail side of things, hopefully also a little bit relatable to everybody is around this kind of sleep regression.
Arthur, we did some travel.
Luckily the jet lag isn't too bad but he kind of wasn't sleeping well between four and four and a half, kind of four and five months.
Had a couple of really rough nights but we were just starting to get back into the swing of things. He's only up once or twice a night. Things are really starting to get more manageable. But then it's actually last night, so really recent. Um, we made the mistake of we have some friends here so usually we just go to bed when Arthur goes.
[00:46:26] Speaker B: Yeah, having friends is a mistake at this stage.
[00:46:28] Speaker A: It really is. Friends are really tough. Um, so we're usually going to bed at like 730 and we're cool with that. We are old and we are so cool with going to bed at 730. So we put Arthur to bed and usually he sleeps for like five or 6 hours in first. So once he's down he's usually really reliable. So like, okay, we're going to go upstairs and spend another hour kind of eating dinner. Normal.
But we, because we've really not done this. We don't have a baby monitor yet.
[00:46:53] Speaker B: Uh oh.
[00:46:55] Speaker A: And so we have our dinner and we come back to downstairs and he's crying and we're like, oh no, we are so dumb. This was such a bad mistake. So we don't quite know how long he was. Fine. Like as soon as we were there. He's like, oh, hi, guys. I, yeah, so it was very much like totally fine. He was very happy. I did not, I don't think, do lasting damage to my son, but it was definitely one of those moments where like, oh, this is so brutal that that's on our list for today. So, you know, if you ever feel like a bad parent because, you know, you didn't immediately meet your child's needs, I feel you. We were there.
And it's something that, you know, you're not alone on. Well, those are my wins and fails for the week, though. Bradley, what about you?
[00:47:39] Speaker B: Well, a little easier than yours, but. So the win, the big win, the huge win was Sarah Beth and I went to a concert on Saturday night. Nanny stayed and, yeah, we got back to the car at midnight and that was, that was long. Yeah, the audience should see Rob.
[00:47:58] Speaker A: I have not seen midnight.
[00:48:00] Speaker B: Oh, no.
[00:48:01] Speaker A: Except for being woken up by my son in a very long time, we.
[00:48:06] Speaker B: Didn'T have any expectation that we could make it. And it's just because it was loud and it was bright and you're with 50,000 other people and my very good friends were there with us and just the adrenaline rush and everything. But then, of course, you know, by the time I drove the nanny home and was back and everything, it was one. And then, you know, baby wakes up still at seven, but that's okay. It was so worth it. It was connection, it was excitement. It was good. So, yeah, totally doing a, doing the dad thing of going sober to a concert and making it past 10:00 at night. So that was the win win. Number two is happened to be up in your neck of the woods and came to see you and let you be Theo. And you immediately bailed to go do some good, important work. And I got to spend 25 minutes with your parents.
[00:48:54] Speaker A: And for the record, I was trying to get my son a passport. Uh, and they have to have both parents there. And of course it happened right at the wrong time. But anyway, carry on.
[00:49:02] Speaker B: Also, I showed up unannounced because I'd no longer announce that I do things anymore because I can't control or plan, you know, energy levels and desires and sleep and stuff. So that was just a win and a huge shout out to your parents. And as the first thing I said to your mom is, I'm a fan of your early work. And so that was good.
The, the fail is a little bit of a sad one. Uh, nothing bad happened. Everything works out in the end on this one very easily. And it was a lesson learned. But Theo, now, as a toddler, can reach into bedside tables, and I keep a little open, um, an open little container of Tylenol PM, because historically, my allergies are so bad this time of year that I need to take them because they have Benadryl in them. That's the same active ingredient in Benadryl, is the same as sleepy times. And, um, we had noticed Theo was starting to do that up in my folks house, but we didn't then I didn't think, I need to make safe these Tylenol PM pills, and I left them out. And then Sarah Beth called me upstairs and they were all over the floor, and one was in his mouth. And so we got to have the adventure of calling poison control, which was on the fridge. And that was an interesting, exciting, difficult time. And the. You call poison control rings too many times, probably three, but in your head, threes too many. And then the lady on the first ring. Absolutely. Especially for Mikey. And then the ladies, you know, the first lady's intake, how big of a thing is. And then she says, okay, you're going to go over to the nurse. And the nurse doesn't pick up till the fifth ring. Super pleasant, nice and kind. And then they did the weight tables and everything. And, um, it turns out four pills would have been possibly bad. And there's no way he had more than one, maybe two. So, um, if any. And, uh, that entire journey of I didn't make something safe, I had a little bit of forewarning, and then also just the managing of the little bit of a crisis. Um, yeah, that was, that was definitely. It felt like a personal fail. Um, but also just a shout out to poison control. They did an incredible job. And that whole, uh, while subjectively took a long time for me, the whole phone call took six and a half minutes. Just for the record, they are good at their job, and I am now thankful for them.
[00:51:12] Speaker A: Well, thanks for sharing that story. Yeah. So, for everyone out there, we hope. We hope these are relatable and we're not just making ourselves look bad. We hope it's not just us, you know, bumbling our way through this father journey.
But, Brad, as always, pleasure to be here with you. Thanks to all of our loyal listeners. We're sorry it's taken us a couple weeks to get back on track, but we will get more from us. We are not done. This is too much fun and we're learning too much. And we appreciate so much your feedback. So, as always, if you like this, please like subscribe, make a comment in your podcast directory of choice, share it with your friends. And if you have any suggestions for us, if you want to be a guest, if you know someone who should be a guest, shoot us a
[email protected]. dot well, thanks, everybody.
[00:51:58] Speaker B: Have a good day, everybody.
