Autism, The Fallacy Of Control And Putting In The Reps | Stew Bradley (father of 2, NFL, El Cap Holdings)

Stew: Losing is a gift, right? It is feedback. It is how you grow. And it's not about winning. It's probably a drum beat here, but it's about the process, right? Like you need rep and the only way you're going to get better is if you spend more time doing the thing.

Adam: Welcome to Startup Dad, the podcast where we dive deep into the lives of dads who are also leaders in the world of startups and business. I'm your host, Adam Fishman. In today's conversation, I sat down with Stew Bradley. Stew was a professional football player in the NFL for seven years as a linebacker with the Philadelphia Eagles, Arizona Cardinals, and the Denver Broncos. He then left the NFL and joined Goldman Sachs, of all places, and eventually became an early stage investor, co-founding the seed stage firm El Cap Holdings. He's a husband and the father of two kids. In our conversation today, we spoke a lot about raising an autistic child.

His oldest daughter was diagnosed at a very young age, and also how to support the other child in the household. We talked about the fallacy of control as a parent and how to let go of that, as well as the stark differences and similarities between being a successful football player, investor, and parent.

Stew's philosophy on putting in the reps and controlling the inputs, which he learned as a football player, has become equally valuable as a dad. I really enjoyed this conversation with Stew, and I hope you do as well. Speaking of putting in the reps, have you put in the reps at the Startup Dad merch store?

Visit StartupDadShop, that's S H O P, dot com, to outfit your whole family. And get a giant mug for all that coffee you consume as a parent.

Adam: I would like to welcome Stew Bradley to the Startup Dad podcast. Stew, it is a pleasure to have you here. Thank you for joining me today.

Stew: Adam, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be on.

Adam: All right. Well, first I want to just give a shout out to Behzod who introduced the two of us. I would be remiss if I didn't call him out. He has been very helpful as both a contributor to my newsletter and also a longtime friend of yours.

Stew: Behzod's amazing. Strong double down on that, shout out to Behzod.

Adam: All right. So let's go back in the timeline here. And I want to hear a little bit about what life was like growing up for you. What were you like as a kid? What was your family situation like?

Stew: I grew up in Salt Lake, one brother. My extended family is all pretty big. Meaning I have, my dad has 13 siblings. There's 14 total. My mom gave her kidney before we were born to her brother. And they couldn't have more kids after us. There was, ample attention, I think, in the two parent, two child household, but super engaged parents was blessed.

They very supportive me and my of other four years apart. So didn't have maybe the typical sibling rivalry. We have a great relationship, have always been really close. I think not being in high school together, not being in middle school together, just like you have space to kind of develop your own personality and not have to, you don't have the constant reference point of a sibling who's kind of journeying with you.

And that can be fun. I think I have, I definitely have friends who enjoyed that dynamic, but it's, it worked for us. So grew up here until I was 18 and then left It's going to do the school professional journey, and then we move back in COVID.

Adam: Now, speaking of the school and professional journey, you have a pretty fascinating, and I would say atypical background for a now venture capitalist, you were a football player in college, a football player professionally for seven years. Then you went to wall street, which I don't know very many professional football players that follow that path.

And now you're in venture. So like the wall street to venture pipeline, that's a pretty well trodden path, but the NFL to wall street path, I think is a little bit different. I feel like you've got the NFL to like motivational speaker path. That's well trodden, but how did this career path come about? Tell me about this.

Stew: Maybe it was counter positioning to not feeling like being a motivational speaker was the right setup for me. There's a lot of inertia when you retire from professional sports to get into jobs that leverage a personal narrative. That just didn't feel like a good fit for me personally. So a lot of the initial post retirement from football was like, how do I carve out a different path?

And one that I think leverages stuff that I'm more naturally aligned with. And, you know, for better or worse, my, strategy was like, I need to get into something that's quantitative, right? Success metrics are not leveraged to my ability to sell or ingratiate people or my personal narrative being interesting.

And finance is a good way to do that. So went to Goldman in New York, like three days after I retired, which…

Adam: Wow. No, no rest for the weary.

Stew: I was on injured reserve, so I had a little bit of time to think about it, but I don't do well in that, like ambiguity, it feels like time slows down and like you're like 24 hours where you're not sure what your next thing is.

Like, oh, I don't know how I'm going to, like, I'm aimless. And in hindsight, it's almost like when the path forward is unclear, the anxiety builds. So you're trying to take the next step and then once you find a new path, you look back and you're like, man, I really probably should have taken some time because once you're in the new seat, like things are running and it's. It's intense. You maybe look back and wish you had a little bit more of a breather, but…

Adam: Yeah.

Stew: Went to Goldman, did a year there. It's a great mechanism for someone who doesn't have like as a career shift or career pivot. I think the banks are really well set up. They ingest a bunch of kids from liberal arts schools like Harvard who are smart, but don't have technical training.

So I could kind of just jump in the flow. Like, yeah, like,we all have a shared level of ignorance about the nuances of this job maybe much older than most people I'm doing it with, but like…

Adam: Yep. And possibly larger in stature.

Stew: I’m not, you know, five years behind the curve. So did a year there and then jumped to a hedge fund called Steadfast in New York, which is great for me. Uh, part of being an investor is just being comfortable with risk, right? You need to earn your risk. And you put your neck out there when you first put your name on a pitch and buy a stock and it's trading every day. And like, it's very visceral and real time feedback and the first three years, there was a great ramp, I think, as I was in that seat longer and understood more of the texture of the job, it became evident that the things I was gravitating towards were, you know, it's closer to the bare metal. It was. Diving maybe too deep into the problems or so much of public market investing is, you know, the basic attitudes of expectations.

It's like, it's not the absolute value created by this business was X. And that's what matters. It's what was the expectation and how did it differ? And you end up just managing a lot of short shelf life information. The setup for the quarter matters a lot for the quarter, you know, what people expect, what's going to get announced, you know, what's breaking, what's not breaking.

It may be completely detached from the long term trend of the business, but you have to deal with that information. And so the longer and more comfortable I got, maybe the less floundering I was in the seat, the more I realized that a lot of these elements in the job, like we're just eating my volition meter, right?

Like with a hundred every day. And it was like, man, I'm at 10 by noon, like I'm using, this is not the natural frequency of how I want to operate. It doesn't map really closely with this job. And so they had a private book inside Steadfast and all my interactions with that team were just energizing.

Oh, man, that's like my meter is filling up when I'm talking to founders and dealing with problems. And the feedback loop is not businesses trying something that are established. They do some experiments and they polish it up and then IR gets it and they do a press release. And then you can ask them roundabout questions.

You can just attack the thing, or you can reg FD, which is, you know, a mechanism to protect investors and make sure everyone has equal information. Just make it very cumbersome to dig into what's actually happening in the business. In venture. when you first come away from public markets is so refreshing on that note.

There's so much time you go into positioning a set of questions to try and get like one negative detail and triangulate it with like, well, they can't really answer it, but their feedback, we asked the same question last quarter was a little different. It seems skittish and reading tea leaves.

So I ended up launching a venture fund with Kunal Tandon who had a lot more venture experience than me and really enjoying the job. I think this will maybe segue nicely into parenting, but it's how would you like the process of your day to day work? Right? The texture you do on a Monday and a Tuesday and Wednesday, you know, not necessarily the milestones and the wins, but, like, you know, the small pieces that make the sum and on that, this job is a great fit for me.

Adam: And like you said, filling up your bucket and as opposed to depleting it So that's good. That's good. Speaking of filling up your bucket. You are a dad. That is why you are here on the show. And so tell me a little bit about your partner and your kids. You've got a couple of kids and you have a wife.

Stew: My wife, Haley, total rock star, we've been together 13 years, married 11 as of a few weeks ago.

Adam: Congratulations.

Stew: Thank you. It's getting pretty serious with us now. We have two little girls, Bo and Reese. They're eight and six. They're amazing. They're a handful but they're the joy of my life.

Adam: And how did you and Haley meet 13 or so years ago, or maybe longer?

Stew: So we got set up on a group date and I was actually getting lined up with her sister. She had a boyfriend at the time. I didn't date her sister. But that was when we first met and then we're kind of friends via proxy for a few years and then bumped into each other again when I was on a date with somebody else and I was like, oh yeah, Haley, she's amazing.

And then just, you know, fanboy’d did everything I could to try and get a date and groveled and try to make myself seem cooler than I am.

Adam: And it worked.

Stew: Was fortunate enough to convince her

Adam: And you know, because you didn't date her sister, there was still an opening.

Stew: Downstream effects. You gotta watch out for those downstream effects.

Adam: You're playing the long game, just like investing. So you mentioned to me in our prep for this, that Haley was an interior designer and is now full time mom. What was that decision making process like for the two of you together? How did you come to that conclusion that made the most sense for your family?

Stew: We knew we wanted to have kids and I think… we were married when I was still playing football and it's the DNA around just the ambiguity and unknown elements of where you're going to live, where you're going to work have been ingrained. And so I don't think we have like this hard plan of this is how the strategy is going to roll.

It's just, we're going to assess the current circumstances and, you know, pick the best option. So if you'd asked her when she was pregnant with Bo, she's probably going to go back to work. And then we had Bo and about 18 months, two years in she was diagnosed with autism. And it just is a, that's a full time gig.

I think the, you look at kind of the normal curve of a typically developing child where you know they're out of diapers and they're sleeping, and like a lot of those things are timelines with someone on the spectrum are just totally different, right? Like Bo’s, you know, potty training is a challenge, not because she doesn't understand it, but just sensory needs.

And so I think there was the first inkling of like maybe I'm going to reassess the uh, real roles and responsibilities from an income perspective. And then when we have Reese I think it was pretty obvious that she felt like this was the highest values for time. And I agreed. And it almost wasn't like we had some sit down, like, this is the plan.

It was like, well, this is clearly the plan because this is, you know, what we have to do to manage our current situation.

Adam: I wanted to ask you about the earliest memory that you have after becoming father. So what is the first thing that you remember when Beau was born?

Stew: Well, both our girls came early 36 weeks. So they were both in the NICU. They were healthy and it was fine, but the earliest memories with both the girls are, you know, you're just not taking the child home, right? It's like you're being, you're coming into the, it's like checking in, going through the stuff and spending 10 hours, 10 hours, which is like the full, a lot of time at the NICU.

Great memories of the staff there. Like what a heavy role they play. I think I think emotionally out now. They become attached, right? You see it and very grateful for the, you know, the staff at NYU, where both our girls from the same NICU, same nurses. So that was but certainly the first memory was the whole NICU experience.

Adam: Yeah. Yeah. And it is quite a process. There's like, you know, defined visiting hours and no guests and like the whole thing. Well, we had one of our two kids was in the NICU very temporarily. But yeah, it's very different than if your kid does not have to be in the NICU. So, you know, dads don't often talk about the feelings that come along with becoming a father for the first or second time in your case, what are some of the, you know, immediate emotions that you notice that arose for you as you transition from, I'm not a dad.

And then now I am, and maybe even on the earlier side, right? You mentioned both your daughters were a little early, so

Stew: The first emotion I remember having was finding out that I was a girl and then being like, oh, shit, I’m sorry to swear on this. But like, I

Adam: It's okay. It's an explicit lyrics podcast, so we're good.

Stew: I grew up, you know, with a brother. My first job was a very male dominated atmosphere. I mean, my wife is a strong woman. And it was definitely leaning on her. I mean, she has a sister. She clearly is a woman. And it was like I'm gonna try my damnedest to succeed here, but I don't have a lot of tacit knowledge of the situation.

Adam: Yup.

Stew: So I'm just layering that on top of like, I already don't know how to be a parent. So maybe come in with like, I am a newb and I need to ramp as quickly as I can because I don't have really have any idea what I'm doing. But half the battle is recognizing where you don't know.

Adam: Yeah, they don't give you a handbook when your kid is born and I'm not sure that it would be very helpful if they did. So I wanted to get into one of the first topics that you mentioned in our prep, which is this idea as a parent of the fallacy of control. And kind of letting go of this idea of control.

And I think this is also really interesting probably for you professionally as well, because as I understand it, when you're a professional football player, when you're, uh, on wall street, when you work for Goldman, like things are fairly regimented and structured and like, there is a lot of control, sometimes foisted on you. And so parenting is not that and so, yeah, I just kind of wanted to understand what you meant by letting go of the fallacy of control and what that means to you.

Stew: Yeah. I mean, I think some of us managing your own psychology, right? And managing your own expectations. And we had peers who were having babies the same time we were. And you can see the nefarious aspects of something going awry from a plan, even if everything's, you know, from the external perspective, everything works out, right?

Like the doesn't work out or there's a condition with your child. And some of it is just the responsibility as a parent to, you know, raise and protect and foster these children's and kind of shepherd them to adulthood. I think you, you make it harder if you're also having to grapple with your own, you know, disappointment and there's like a really weird cycle, or I think a dangerous cycle of dangerous feedback loop grief and disappointment that can sound trivial from the outside, but it can be very real if you live it. And maybe some of this is just informed from the sports days where like, I think I would almost characterize like sports and investing, at least in the investing we do now is like very much a lack of control,

Adam: Hmm.

Stew: like you need to focus on the process, right?

All you can control is the inputs. I mean, good reps, and if you keep adding good reps and, you know, making good decisions on a daily minute by minute basis, hopefully the big stuff will take care of itself. Like that's very much how a football team is structured. I think it's like even the military, I don't have experience with that, but you know, people who have, if you overly anchor on the big thing, like every day I wake up and I'm like, I need to raise a great child, right? It's so detached from the daily inputs that it's not even useful,

Adam: Yeah.

Stew: Right? If I'm thinking this is my first Monday night football game, like everyone's watching. It's my first start. If I flounder my careers in the toilet and I can get in this like negative cycle of thinking about the ramifications and it makes the moment too big.

Adam: Yeah.

Stew: So how do I focus on the things like the small inputs that matter. And if I do that, then the big thing is going to take care of itself because it's all just a sum of these small actions.

Adam: Yeah.

Stew: That ethos and my wife is very much aligned. And a lot of this, as I'm sure we'll get into is refined and improved and even just from her, but taking that approach, I think, is totally different than like, I have a plan, we're going to execute this plan and, you know, we were pretty much off whatever I thought parenting was going to be, you know, before I had Bo was different as soon as we found out that she had autism. It's like, this is the thing we need to navigate. We need to ramp up the blurb or there's a whole new path that we're on that would never have been in our plan.

You know what I mean?

Adam: Yeah. So if you could rewind the clock back to the time, even setting Bo and autism, and that aside before you had your first kid, what advice would you give to younger Stew? Or if you were talking to somebody who's about to become a new dad what would you tell them is important to, to anchor on?

And then what would you tell them to ignore in probably the myriad of advice that you got from other people?

Stew: I would've said, it's all about the reps. Right? I would've reiterated that point. Like it, like most things, it's about the process. I would say get comfortable being uncomfortable. Right? And maybe the most important one would be like, the kids are not going to do what you say, but they're going to do what you do.

Adam: Yeah.

Stew: Right? The only way kids learn empathy is example, right? The way you, the tone that you speak to your kids is going to become their inner dialogue, like the voice that narrates. As their inner dialogue develops. So it's much more about the actions you take as an example, at least from my perspective, right?

Like if I want my kids to be a reader, I'm not going to tell them, here's your summer reading program. You need to read. It's me reading, right? So I think I maybe underestimated that, right? that isn't necessarily how I was raised. Like, yes, I think a lot of that permeates. Like it certainly resonates with me as I think back on my childhood, the things that I struggled to do and things that I wanted to do was kind of a function of what I want to do what my parents are doing versus what he's telling me to do seeing it play out. I would have harped on it more. Certainly.

Adam: I often fail myself at modeling the behavior that I would like my kids to adopt. So, wise words to remind myself of. I wanted to talk a little bit about Autism. We've talked a bit about that on this podcast before with a couple of guests and your daughter Bo is autistic and you already mentioned, you know, you kind of noticed that earlier or figured that out relatively early, and it kind of changes everything. And so I'm just curious to hear a little bit more about what life has been like raising an autistic child. And then I'd also love to hear. I have some friends who have autistic kids and. All of their kids have some sort of superpower.

And I kind of would love to hear a little bit about what her super powers are in your family.

Stew: Yeah, I mean, I don't have a counterfactual of what it's like only having typically developing children. So like my whole experience is just rooted in, it's what I know. Yeah, Bo is hyper intelligent, very self driven, stubborn, willed. Yeah, she's amazing. I think, you know, there was a book called The Reason I jumped, that came out probably a decade or so ago that was written by nonverbal autistic man in Japan who from the outside has would look like it's severe, you know, autism and struggle to, you know, understand most things.

And it's a very articulate book. And I think it kind of shattered this preconception that autism and aptitude and IQ are all kind of bundled with one thing. So I hope you understand that. I think the approach of interacting with Bo, it's more like they're, she's understanding and feeling, you know, the same way that our typical development child is.

But how she communicates that, it's almost like that filter is jumbled and so treating her as much as you can with the same kind of respect and approach that you want someone who is high aptitude, I think is really important, at least in our approach, but does have a added tax of that communication challenge manifest both and just more time and becoming dysregulated.

And there's, you know, a whole bunch of downstream effects like getting to sleep, like dealing with potty training, eating all those things just have their own kind of special approach, which to my point, I don't know what it's like to not have to do those things because that's from the beginning. I mean, early on, we were fortunate enough to be in New York, where I think there are more advanced ways that some states and forward leaning on early indicators and markers. So I think by her one year appointment, there was some flags of like, like, let's keep tracking this. And then by the time she was two, we were pretty confident that this was the situation. And so we're able to adjust early. We have family members that live in different states that have had maybe less.

It feels like more of a out of nowhere thing because pediatrician in the early visits, yeah. They're like, it's probably fine. It's probably fine. And then the diagnosis comes down and it's like, wow, this feels like it was a total pivot where…

Adam: Yeah.

Stew: We maybe got there a little more gradually just from care providers giving us, you know, warning and conversations about how, what we should be looking out for, how we can start reading, getting smarter about, you know, what she might need.

And ultimately like, this is all, you're just reacting to the situation at hand and trying to provide the, you know, the best. Sounds weird to say parenting experience or like, you know, childhood experience, but

Adam: Yeah.

Stew: You get what I'm saying.

Adam: And I think our listeners will too. So you mentioned about kind of preparation and reading and you mentioned this book that we'll definitely link to the show notes, cause it sounds fascinating. I'd like to read this now. What did you do to kind of better understand autism when you learned about Bo's diagnosis?

Because I imagine you weren't studying this topic beforehand. Maybe that's naive of me. I don't want to assume, but I'm putting myself in those shoes and I don't think I would have been studying this topic. So what sort of resources or community support or kind of community groups or things did you fall back on as a way of learning about not only how to be a good parent here, but also like, you know, what it is that Bo needs?

Stew: Reading certainly played a role. Books like Neuro Tribes, The reason I jumped, is a great one. And like, I can pull out a ton of them. I would say the community element, talking to other parents who have been through it and getting advice, most persistent advice early is like, okay, advocacy is going to be super important. The amount of care and services you're going to receive are going to be the function of how noisy and loud and persistent you are to advocate because if you let the default like it is a tax on the underlying system, right? The schools. The care providers, right? There's things called individual education plans, which get set up by the state.

And like, it's basically a negotiation with the state, right? And I think there's a lot of people in those roles who are trying to do their best. But at the end of the day, like, they have a finite amount of resources. And so it ends up being, I usually try and be lower the scope and less than the scope. And so you get comfortable with conflict around this kind of stuff.

And I don't mean conflict in like an aggressive way, right? Like they're doing their job and we're doing ours. And our job is to advocate for your child and try and get them in the best position they can be with the most support so they can, you know, you know, resilient, fruitful, you know, regulated life. And, the people, the parents that we knew had kids on the spectrum or who are going through it, you know, concurrently with us was maybe the most important support and learning source we're trying to wrap. So we still keep in touch with a lot of those people. And, you know, as we are now farther on this journey, it's, there's often parents who are going through this for the first time.

So Haley's sister, my nephew has autism, and I think it's been helpful just from a family perspective that everyone has insight they better understand how to navigate and be around Bo. And it means everyone just a little farther along. And so as Coop, this child, you know, is raised, hopefully there is some benefit from just having another family member had gone through it and people in his life having ramped maybe on how best to approach things.

Adam: One of the things that I haven't asked some of the other guests who've talked about autism is, you know, you also have more neurotypical kids in the household, in your case, another daughter, and you have a special and neurodivergent daughter who has differentiated needs, but it can be kind of easy to forget about like you mentioned this sort of advocacy and the squeaky wheel, like, that's happening all the time with your older daughter.

She's sort of drawing your attention to her and her needs. How do you make sure that you don't forget about the needs of your other daughter? More neurotypical child and how do you and your wife negotiate that?

Stew: I mean, that's definitely was a factor when we're deciding on more kids, right? It's like, right now we can do man to man, right? We can, but if we have a third, we're going to zone.

Adam: Yep.

Stew: And I think it would be harder for us to, I mean, it's already challenging just, you know, both having autistic burnout and like a really tough day that it can be a full time gig for both of us navigated, I mean, Reese is amazing. But it's just, I think, being intentional around, all right, Haley's with Bo, then I got to spend time with Reese, right? And I feel the simplest version of it where it gets harder is, you know, Reese is a sharp kid. And it's just like, this doesn't seem fair,

Adam: Mmm. Mm hmm.

Stew: Explaining the nuances of like accommodation and she needs to be regulated. Like it's hard. You're talking to a four year old. For her to these concepts. But she's ramped really quickly. You know, Haley has the saying in the house, which often says it's like you don't always give you want, but you get what you need.

Adam: Yeah.

Stew: And, you know, this is, I'm always falling back on her idioms, right? She's like, do you understand what accomodation is? Accommodation is if you were in a wheelchair and you know, went to a restaurant and there was only stairs, right? And they built a ramp. Like that's accommodating your needs. Now for Bo to be regulated, like she has different needs than you.

And so like we're matching those needs and maybe that manifests in like she gets more screen time than you or doesn't have to do her math homework, and you do.

Adam: Yep.

Stew: It comes back to, you know, what each of you need, which I think wasn't smashing success the first time it was framed that way.

By any means, I don't know what you're talking about, dad. Like whatever this, but over time, I think she really has rocked it you know, better than I probably would have at her age, but it's a constant struggle. Right?

Adam: I imagine it is and, you know, she's six now and like you mentioned, how do you explain that to a four year old, right? Like, I think I was just trying to get my kids like put a spoon in their mouth appropriately when they were four, right? Let alone understanding something that's more complex and nuanced, like the concept of accommodations or something like that. So, but it sounds like you've done a really good job.

Stew: I mean, listen, man, I don't think we have the answers and we're just trying to take it one bite at a time, but it didn't resonate initially. Right. But it's maybe one of the other parenting talents is like, treat your children as much as you can, like an adult and not that like we kind of back to this control, like it's not, you know, you're not going to just do it my way because I'm saying, you know, and like, that's the full stop.

Obviously, safety issues and that kind of thing. Like, you're coming in top down heavy,

Adam: Sure.

Stew: it's a less efficient way to deal with the problem to, you know, treat them like an adult and talk through it and maybe, you know, lay it out in concepts that feel opaque at first, but I think it's a faster way over the long term.

Right? And so some of it is just repetition, like she's heard it enough. Some of these concepts she starts to understand. She understands what autism is. She understands, you know, being dysregulated or being regulated. She knows what stemming is. And so as she becomes more comfortable and more exposed.

It's not like we're using fluff terms and trying to make it opaque or try to focus or elsewhere. It's like, we're just gonna talk about the thing, right? Maybe it's gonna be uncomfortable, but like, that's part of being a parent. You gotta be, you comfortable being uncomfortable and it's okay if she has big feelings and if she's really upset and like, that's back to the man versus zone thing is like, she'll need attention to like, maybe she's just super upset because she can't play Nintendo Switch, and Bo gets to play with the Amazon tablet, and it sucks, I get it, if it was like for like, like, this wouldn't be happening, but she understands now, and so it's definitely gotten easier as we've gone down the road, but it doesn't mean there's not flare ups.

Adam: Yeah. I mean, and your kids are still so young, right? Eight and six is very young to deal with some of these adult concepts. But, you know, like we've kind of come back to this idea of repetitions, right? It's all about reps. The more practice you have, the more you see it modeled you know, the better off you get.

So, okay. On a lighter topic, just going to pivot for a second.

What is your favorite book to read to each of your daughters?

Stew: We did Harry Potter, the first Harry Potter, and

Adam: With, with both of them?

Stew: With both of them. We do reading every night. Sometimes it's like funny, like, you know, potty books or something. It's, you know, longer stuff like Harry Potter, but Harry Potter was fun because Bo is really engaged too.

And, you know, it's a long story. And one of my favorite parts about it is hearing Reese, like, recap it.

Adam: Yeah.

Stew: Or like the things that are important to her. It's like, definitely the flying on the brooms and Quidditch was like the main interest in the story. You know, like there's some other things that happened, but like when they got their rooms and then they also, she got it, he got an owl.

So I think an owl too, like, it's just funny how. The parts of the story that resonate are so different than we read it as a 12 year old.

Adam: Yep.

Stew: We haven't watched the shows yet, and they're probably a little too intense,

Adam: They get even more intense pretty quickly. The initial strategy in my household was a bribery strategy. If we read the book, we can watch the movie. And then very quickly, they didn't care about the movies anymore. They just wanted to read the books.

So I think that's pretty good. Okay, cool. Love that. Have you developed, and we kind of touch on this a little bit, but have you developed any particular frameworks or guardrails for parenting or maybe even stolen them from your wife? You did mention that she's the strategist in the household.

So I'm curious if you have anything that you've identified, obviously you talked about modeling behavior, but anything else that comes to mind that you would say is an important framework or a principle around parenting?

Stew: I mean, modeling is definitely the North Star. Maybe the other one would be the goal isn't to raise happy kids. It's to raise resilient kids. Resilience is so much more important than trying to carve out the more messy feelings, you know, like letting the kids being comfortable with whatever they're feeling and not like that's maybe a no fly zone.

It's your feelings are valid. I may not be changing the outcome. That's okay. But focusing on resiliency over anything else and, you know, it's hard to see your kid lose and struggle. And like, if these are very controlled situations, right? Like you lost all your soccer games or like you lost a race, but not trying to shy away from that and trying to orient at least for Reese losing is a gift, right?

It is feedback. It is how you grow. And it's not about winning. It's probably a drum beat here, but it's about the process, right? Like you need rep and the only way you're going to get better is if you spend more time doing the thing and if you won every time, like it probably wouldn't be something that was that interesting for that long.

And so it's okay, right? Like demystifying this, I need to win. And she's by nature competitive. So I think some of it is like, what are their defaults, right? If Reese was not default competitive and was fine losing then like, you're probably trying to push in different dimensions. Right.

But because. She's inherently very competitive and like, it's like car to the front door race, put your seatbelt on, you know what I mean? It's race all the time. It's just like, how is she? And it's like, just ingrained in her. And so because she's like that, it's like, okay, no, that's the state of play.

Let's focus on getting more comfortable losing and demystify that and not making it be this big, scary, bad thing. Because. The worst case scenario is where she's so afraid to lose a thing that she doesn't want to try.

Adam: Yeah.

Stew: And then this is the, I guess, the framework question. The last thing I'd say is really letting the kids steer on what they're interested in.

Right? And this is maybe a hard one because there's some things that you like, they may like, and when they're six they may not have perspective to know that, like, oh, I don't really want to ski ever. It's like, maybe you don't like, but maybe we should. So it's like, it's finding that balance of exposure, but, you know, not force feeding them with something that they're not interested in.

And like, that's, tension, right? Because they're not adults and they don't have a ton of life experience and their frame of reference is super narrow. And so you can't let that, like, if Reese was picking what you wanted to do, like, I want to go to the playground and I want to play with my friends and like, that's my life's calling, right? It's more introducing, then showing

Adam: Yeah.

Stew: what we're passionate about and then giving her the platform opportunity to take a bite.

Adam: Yeah.

Stew: And if whenever I fail at that, which is probably too frequently I get a reminder from my wife, it usually doesn't end well, like it, like me and be like, let's just try this thing.

Like you just do it once you'll like it. Like, that's just not it's just not the way, but just like, you do like let go control a little bit and let them breathe. If the circumstances are right, like she often will go in with zeal and her ability to take setbacks if she wants to do a thing is infinitely higher than if she's getting pushed to do a thing.

Adam: Right, right. It's a sort of like intrinsic versus the need for extrinsic motivation. 

Stew: Yeah. And you're not in like the tricky part is you don't even accept your child, you know how to play this game. So I'm going to manipulate and do the thing that I want to do. It's not that right. It's like, can you take a genuine openness to it, which I'm still learning. They're often as times where you're like I'm a grown ass man.

Like I know what's best. And it's like, there's a movie called the Dao of Steve, which is, it's about dating, but mantra of the movie is. You know, the girl you're trying to date, like if she knows how much you care and how like eager and desperate you are, like it's going to show.

So don't be desperate. And like, it's kind of this funny tongue in cheek where it's like, you can't fake it. Like you actually have to be okay with her not liking you. And if you can fully let go, then maybe it'll work. I think it's, I mean, it's kind of a cringe movie. I don't want to be anchored to that, but I think the concept is, it holds water where it's like, you can't really just say like, I'm going to let go of control, but secretly it's your strategy to really control, you're just relating it differently to the child.

You actually have to say, you know, whatever they want to do, if that's what they're passionate about, I want to support that and foster it. I may wish that she wanted to go surfing and fly fishing and golfing, but like that may not be the thing she's interested in.

Adam: May not be in the cards.

Stew: Totally.

Adam: Although that sounds like a pretty fun day for me. Maybe I'll come over and we can go do that

Stew: Let's, let's lead by example. 

Adam: So you mentioned your wife a bunch throughout this, and I know being married myself, that partnership is super important when you have kids. It's probably even more important when you have kids that have differentiated needs. It's also really hard to agree all the time with your spouse. And so I'm curious, where's an area, it sounds like you do have a lot of agreement with each other and you help each other out quite a bit.

Where's an area where you don't always see eye to eye? 

Stew: I mean, this one, this one is like talking about pushing in areas and like, you know, how heavy handed is maybe it's where correction often manifests.

Adam: Ha.

Stew: It's a euphemism, but you know what I'm saying? My view on like partnership is that our natural frequencies are pretty well aligned, there's not a lot of, you know, stretching and bending that we have to do to work together solo, which I think it's just been a great baseline.

As things are getting harder, right? It's like, that's what parenthood is. It's just like, let's do a relationship on hard mode. Okay, let's have kids. And I think it feels like there's a good balance of like really hearing your partner.

And if there's disagreement, then it's like, let's lay out the cards, right?

And work through it. And maybe you kind of let conviction lead, right? Not a 10 on this and you're a two, like, let's go with the vice versa. Right. And oversharing, right? Like not letting things fester,

Adam: Mm hmm.

Stew: Right? If I'm feeling some kind of way or she's feeling some kind of way, like it's voicing it and like, and it's voicing it right away and making that not be like, why are you attacking me, some blow up thing. It's like, this is how I feel. This is what happened and just. You know, it's like knocking it out, it's a process, right? And if you do your relationship hygiene, then like things feel much easier and times where it gets really hectic and we don't have a chance to do that, then like, you know, you still got to work through it and maybe there's more to work through. So being intentional, I think with all aspects of our relationship has been vital to make it work. And that's like spans the gamut, right? It's like from intimacy to. You know, alone time to, you know, just having some of that open unstructured. That's maybe the hardest part is like, how do we have those just hey, relax moments. And then we do is like, we're just gonna go on a date, but it's going to be like, I don't plan. We're just driving around. We're going to buy it. Like, it doesn't feel so planned, but I think it's you guys finding stuff that works for you, right? Maybe the simplest way to say it is view your relationship as a living thing.

And as a craft is the thing you get better at together. And if you care about the relationship and you care about improving it, then like you'll put the work in but it hasn't all been sunshine and rainbows. Right. And like, so this is really like, okay, I need to get my ship in order. I need to make a change. But I'm willing to do that because I care about the relationship and I think that sense of mutual respect and mutual desire to make it work, like that foundation, everything else is built off of. So it's like, if you're oriented that way, and then you feel like you're both putting in the effort that I think. It's still working. Knock on wood.

Adam: You're talking about relationship with your spouse and parenting. I feels like this is also advice that you could give founders that you're investing in around how to be good founder partners to one another.

Stew: Who has a simple and widespread mantra of life, which is it's all about process? Probably right.

Adam: Yeah. Yeah, no, I love it. So you, you had a successful career as a football player, then on wall street and with a hedge fund now as an investor. But there are very stark differences between professional success in football, success in, on wall street and investing and being successful as a parent.

And so like, how do you think about those differences? Because you measure success so much differently, I think in those areas, but maybe not, I don't know.

Stew: I mean, man, I'm going to come back to this trope again. But do think it is the outputs, you can get lucky with good outputs, right? But the quality of inputs I think is much harder to fake, much harder to get lucky. So when I think about parenting, it's like, it's very much a near term look back. Like, how am I doing today or how did I do last night when there was this blow up?

Maybe the approach is, can you have metacognition about parenting, right? Are you ever taking a beat and being like, how am I doing? Do I have, you know, and it's not like you need to give yourself an A or B, whatever, but some self assessment I think is vital to just making improvement. Like you have to know where you are if you want to like get anywhere, right? Like it's orienting like what's the current state of play and you have to be comfortable like with that there are mistakes like every day you could do stuff better. And so metacognition self awareness, right? Or at least like the idea of self awareness is a thing.

And then, you know, some open dialogue with your spouse or partner to kind of give feedback, right. And how that manifests is not like I'm sitting in a whiteboard and like, here's my, you know, this is my OKRs for parenting but it's a bunch of small self corrections. Right.

Adam: So last couple of questions for you. I think you were done with football by the time your daughter arrived, right? Your oldest daughter arrived. So it's not fair to say that you kind of gave up football to be a dad, because I think there were probably other reasons that you gave up football.

But what is something that you had to give up to become a father or how has, I mean, life changes in drastic ways, but what's something that you knowingly do less of now that you are a, that you're a dad.

Stew: Golf, golf any sort of like hobby fly fishing that requires like, hey, I'm going to be gone. And I'll be gone for six hours. Like that's off the table.

Those have gone by the way side. Right. And I didn't pick, I didn't know that immediately. The feedback and I was like, ah, I see that it's not it's no longer in the cards and I don't do well, like half assing hobbies. Like I kind of have my own where I was like, I'm going to do it. Like I don't want to suck at it or I want to suck less. So it's more, I really liked the progression, right. So that can be a very nefarious thing if you're trying to allocate a lot of your time parenting or you're like, pick up this habit or this, you know, this new hobby.

Adam: Right.

Stew: It’s going to be a time suck.

Like, I've just had to really manage any of those, you know, wormholes before I fall down them.

Adam: It's more like a temporary hiatus, right? Like you will probably at some point be able to come back to these things.

Stew: But if I don't, it's okay.

Adam: Yeah. Make sense. I've heard a lot of golf, sometimes cycling, you know, the fly fishing is a new one. I haven't talked to a lot of fly fishers on the show, but you're right. It's anything where you're like, you know, I'm going to be gone for the entire day. Good luck. It just isn't compatible with parenting for most people, I think. So.

Stew: I’ve been working all week and, you know, but hey, like the snow is really good. So I'm going to hit it. It's just like.

Adam: Nope. Nope.

Stew: I'd like to be divorced.

Adam: Yes. Yes. All right. What's a mistake that you've made as a father? 

Stew: We don't have enough time. Maybe through your kid as an adult, like a little too literally, right? And addressing concepts for like, dude, like you're trying to answer a question, but this is going to manifest like 25 new questions. Yeah, I mean, it's like, but this is important context on it.

It's like that I struggle with that balance often. And sometimes it's, it can have real, it can be real attacks. I'm like, you know, death is a good example, right? Or his grandpa does. And like, you're talking about it and you're like, I don't want to have guardrails, but you also don't want to make it worse.

And so it's like those types of slippery situations, I often just fat finger my way through it and it's like just butchered and then it's well, if I’d only let my wife and help coach me up a little bit like we wouldn't have to, you know, deal with this for 3 more weeks because I've. Have all these other existential questions and anxiety because I mean, I'm just thinking about this funeral and how I could have better, better handled it.

Some of those are just hard though. It's like, I don't, if I could go back and run that a rep 100 times and I probably butchered all of them maybe they get a little better,

Adam: Yeah.

Stew: But yeah, try not to make it too complex. Then also like the whole, I'm going to be honest with my child, but like, we're going to do Santa and like the tooth fairy. Those are always delicate, you know what I'm saying? But I don't know.

Adam: That makes sense. That's good. So, so

Stew: I know it's not, I'm curious yours. Give me one of yours.So I just see how off the mark I am. 

Adam: As a father. Oh, I mean. Today ever, like, you know, one all the time, right? Like, I don't want to pretend for a second that because I host this show that I am some sort of like, on a pedestal dad figure. I run this show to ask for other people's advice, is basically why I do this.

I've learned many things that I can reincorporate into my own life. I think for me, it's probably. Modeling behavior and frustration, right? And especially after a really long day, if your tank is at 10 percent like it's hard to grin and bear it and kind of dig deep and be your best self for your kids.

And you want them to see your, that you're not a perfect person, but also like they really know how to push your buttons, you know? And so that is probably the biggest one for me is I just hit walls. Where I'm like I cannot function in this situation right now. I need to take a minute.

Stew: Need a break. You got to give me a second.

Adam: That's actually a really good segue to one of my last questions, which is like, you know, when it's all going to shit, you know, when you're overstimulated, when things are intense, right, when you don't have anything left in the tank, what are some of the ways that you, you personally restore your batteries or center yourself. Like, what do you try to do in those moments to get back to your better self?

Stew: Like, the real answer is sleep, hydration, exercise.

Adam: Yeah.

Stew: I think the sleep one is just like, you're just right through the day. If you're relying on sleep But, yeah, it's like I'll tell myself again. Maybe I'm dehydrated and I haven't worked out. Like, I just got to get my wiggles out. Right. And that could be going for a walk bringing the girls have been great, but it often is grounding. It’s literally just a change of scene

Adam: Yeah.

Stew: That if it's a transition, the girls are down with, it's like, we're gonna go skateboarding or scooting for them. We're going to go to the playground. It's just, it's like, we're moving, we're doing something, we're moving. You have a new objective, like we're worrying around something like just like marinating in the suck where it's like everything is crazy right now.

Like, I mean, we just moved houses and I mean, we've had to paint the whole house because so much, I mean, the ceilings, like the whole thing is painted. There's like that where you're like, ooh that Sharpie is not coming out. And that is like yelling about something. You're like, all right, guys, we'll go to the playground.

Like we need a change of scene, cause I'm about to completely blow a gasket.

Adam: Yep.

Stew: And like, you know, reps is ability to recognize, like, this is a time where I'm like, we need to do something because if we do 40 more minutes of what's happening now, it's not going to go well, to get ahead of it.

Adam: Yep. That's good. I like that idea of like, sometimes you just need everyone to have a quick change of scenery. We're going here. We're going to pivot. We're going over here instead. And that kind of like shakes everyone loose, right? From the funk.

Stew: You always have like, like the go getters like, we're gonna get candy and ice cream. Like, let's do it. Like. All those restrictions, like out the window, like, let's get excited about this new thing.

Adam: Yep.

Stew: Forget about whatever drama is happening and just go on an adventure.

Adam: I love that. We're going on an adventure like the guy from Lord of the Rings.

Stew: It was like, dad, this is like, not really an adventure. Do you know what that means? It's like, well, that's relevant term, Reese. And relative to what we were 30 minutes ago, this feels like an adventure to me.

Adam: Yeah. Dad, all we did was go from the living room to the front lawn. That's not an adventure.

Stew: Absolutely. Absolutely. And the thing is, you got to be careful about adventure inflation because you're like, went to the zoo and the aquarium. It's like, well, that's like a super adventure. It's not a regular adventure.

Adam: You don’t want to set the bar too high on what an adventure is like the adventure inflation. This is a new term that we've coined here on the pod is the adventure inflation. So.

Stew: You got it. Got to manage expectations.

Adam: All right. In our waning moments I wanted to ask you one final thing, which is how can people follow along or be helpful to you on your journey if they are so motivated to do so.

Stew: Yeah, you can reach out to me on Twitter. I'll be sporadic on the DM check, but I'll see it. Email is always easy. It's Stew, stew@lcap.xyz. Yeah, we're open. I'm always open to the chat and riff. So if you want to reach out as long as we're not in an adventure, I'll be there.

Adam: As long as you're not on the front lawn.

Stew: The call with the person who reaches out will be the adventure that I need.

Adam: That's the change of scenery. You put one of your daughters on the call. That'll be great. All right. Do you have a few more minutes for rapid fire,

Stew: do it.

Adam: All right. What is the most indispensable parenting product that you have ever purchased?

Stew: Magic erasers.

Adam: Ooh, love that one. What is the most useless parenting product that you have ever purchased?

Stew: Those little toilet seats that sit on top of the toilet

Adam: Also agree with that. Finish this sentence. The ideal day with my kids involves this one activity.

Stew: Beach.

Adam: What is the best piece of parenting advice that you've ever received?

Stew: It's a process.

Adam: Which one of your kids is your favorite

Stew: Neither.

Adam: Most? It's clearly the dogs, right? It's clearly the dogs. What is the most frustrating thing that has ever happened to you as a dad?

Stew: Running out of extra diapers and wipes at Disneyland.

Adam: Oh, that is the thing of nightmares. What is your go-to dad wardrobe?

Stew: Sweatpants & t-shirt.

Adam: Awesome. Favorite age for your kids so far?

Stew: Don't have one. I like, I think you gotta marinate in the age that they're in cause they're constantly evolving.

And it's too fast to, you know, be anchored to one edge.

Adam: Do you have a least favorite age for your kids that they've gone through?

Stew: When they first started walking it's like, it's the peak of like, can they kill themselves because they're like very uncoordinated, but now highly mobile. It's like weak stress.

Adam: Danger is at an all time high in the household in that moment. How many dad jokes do you tell on average in a given day?

Stew: Every joke I tell.

Adam: I don't know if your kids are old enough yet to be embarrassed by you, but what is the most embarrassing thing that you've ever done in front of your kids?

Stew: Dance parties, we regularly have dance parties. And I think even though I'm a great dancer, my kids think I suck.

Adam: Have you ever pretended to be asleep to avoid a middle of the night wake up?

Stew: Absolutely.

Adam: Have you ever secretly thrown away a piece of your kid's artwork?

Stew: Every day.

Adam: Every day. What is the most absurd thing that one of your kids has ever asked you to buy for them?

Stew: Baby pandas.

Adam: All right, that's a new one. What was the most difficult kids TV show that you have ever had to sit through?

Stew: The whole baby shark phase.

Adam: Oh!

Stew: Or is it, it's baby? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s baby shark.

Adam: Yes. Oh yes. Have you ever used your kids as an excuse to get out of a social event?

Stew: Every week.

Adam: What is your favorite kids movie?

Stew: How To Train Your Dragon.

Adam: Ooh, that's a good one. What is the worst experience that you have ever had assembling a children's toy or a piece of furniture?

Stew: Ikea bookshelves for my girls.

Adam: Oh. Do you ever accidentally mix up your kid's names?

Stew: Oh, yeah. Kids and dogs. The more intense situation, the higher the likelihood of a mistake.

Adam: That's awesome. I have some friends who basically just use kind of a mashup of both of their kids' names when they're referring to each one. That way, they're never quite right. And they're never quite wrong. So that's pretty, pretty handy. In your household, now this may be different because you're in a new household, how long can a piece of food sit on the floor and you will still eat it?

Stew: Depends on the food. If it's like any sort of like a moist piece of bacon or like none, can’t. Zero second.

Adam: That's a zero. That's a zero second one right there. Okay, good. Its ability to like absorb things from the floor is what determines that.

Stew: Like if the likelihood that it has like dog hair and like pieces of crayon on it are high, I'm just not doing it. 

Adam: What nostalgic movie can you just not wait to force your kids to watch?

Stew: Goonies.

Adam: Ooh, that is a great one. We made our kids watch that. They loved it. How often do you tell your kids back in my day stories?

Stew: Probably once a week.

Adam: How many times have you said go ask your mother this week?

Stew: 15.

Adam: Okay. And last question. I know you only have two kids, but you do also have two dogs. What is your take on minivans?

Stew: They're not aesthetically pleasing, but I understand the utility. We don't have one. I don't think my wife will make the move, but I wouldn't be opposed to it.

Adam: Okay. All right. So we're on the, we're on the fence. We're open to it. We're open to the minivan. Okay. I like that take. That's a good one. Practical. All right. Well, Stew, that does it for rapid fire. This was a lovely conversation. Thank you so much for joining me and taking some extra time to chat. I really appreciate your candor and having you on the show.

Stew: Appreciate it, Adam. Thanks for having me.

Adam: Thank you for listening to today's conversation with Stew Bradley. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, share, and leave me a review. It'll help other people find this podcast.

Startup Dad is a Fishman AF production, with editing support from Tommy Heron. You can join a community of 10,000 subscribers and stay up to date on my thoughts on growth, product, and parenting by subscribing to the Fishman AF newsletter at www.fishmanafnewsletter.com. Thanks for listening. See you next week.