Don’t Wait Until It’s Convenient | Sean Ellis (Dad of 2, Author, Advisor, Founder, Growth Phenom)

Startup Dad Sean Ellis Final Transcript

Sean: I think a lot of parents get really busy with their lives. And like they compartmentalize. From this time to this time, I'm all about my kids, but maybe your kids aren’t all about you at those times.

And so I had this when it was possible to drop everything, if they wanted to talk to me and my older daughter in particular she would decide the time she wanted to talk to me was starting at 10 o'clock at night and she's, you know, 14, 15, 16. And I just assumed every one of those conversations was the last conversation we were going to have before dad was not the guy she wanted to talk to anymore.

And so I never wanted to be the one to say like, let's wrap this up.

Adam: Welcome to Startup Dad, the podcast where we dive deep in 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 growth legend, Sean Ellis. Sean coined the term growth hacker, built a legendary framework for determining product market fit, literally wrote the original book on growth, and has founded several companies.

And worked at or advised companies like LogMeIn, Dropbox, Eventbrite, Bounce, and more. In addition to his role as the godfather of growth, he's also a husband and the father of two adult daughters. In our conversation today, we spoke about how to maintain a strong relationship with your daughters during the tumultuous teenage years and continuing into their 20s.

Sean's philosophy on not waiting until it's convenient and navigating big challenges with kids from autoimmune disorders to depression. We discussed how to balance the approach between letting kids figure out the stuff on their own versus jumping in to help them when to push and when to back off.

And Sean's meteoric rise as both the CEO and the head coach of his daughter's youth soccer team. I hope you enjoy today's conversation with Sean Ellis.

Adam: I would like to welcome Sean Ellis to the Startup Dad podcast. Sean, thank you for joining me today. It has been far too long since we connected. I'm stoked to have you here.

Sean: Yeah, thanks, Adam. This is definitely a different type of podcast for me, but I'm excited to do it. It's actually, I would say a bigger passion for me than what the normal topics on podcasts are.

Adam: Yeah. And I can't wait to get into it. We will talk a ton about your family and your philosophies and parenting, but first for those folks. And it's probably a rare few who listen to this show and don't actually know who you are. Can you give me a little bit about your professional background? You've got so many decades under your belt.

So like, what have you been up to lately ? I would describe you as like the godfather of growth.

Sean: That's better than the grandfather of growth. Sometimes I get that one. I don't like that one very much.

Adam: No, no, you're still young.You’re still young.

Sean: Not ready. Not ready to be that guy. But actually started in marketing roles, just kind of as the internet was going in the mid nineties. And, at that point there wasn't really a playbook to follow.

And so just figure it out and yeah, hopefully figure it out faster than everyone else. So then you get a competitive advantage and realized pretty quickly that data and experimentation was super important to learning what works and what doesn't work. And so first company I worked on was a game company that ended up becoming a top 10 website in the world in terms of total usage time.

The company was founded in Eastern Europe, which was where I was living at the time. And then I moved to New York to run marketing. And yeah, that company was called Uproar.com. And. Yeah. After that same group of guys, after we sold that company founded another company called Logmein.

And then yeah, Logmein also started. So I had moved back to Eastern Europe, started Logmein. And it's kind of interesting. Cause I remember after I left the first company, it being in games, a lot of recruiters were like, yeah, we don't have anything like game stuff. I'm not like a game guy. I don't even care about games.

It's just, and so, yeah, it turned out that the second one being more of a SAS business which was good because it turns out that a lot of people who are pretty good at this growth and marketing stuff have a gaming background because with games, like you, you have to sort of make it easy in the beginning and then make it a little harder over time to really drive that engagement and retention.

And so. Strangely developed some skills that translated pretty well into SAS. And so Logmein, stayed there for five years and logged me in, sold a few years ago for about 4 billion. And so successful outcome realized after that, that between those two companies, a lot of the work we did in the early days was important to the long term success. So I kind of take it full circle back to parenting. You know, you can't fix it when they're teenagers, that’s the work that you put into those early days. And so I also realized that I liked the early days a lot more.

And so I started to just focus on kind of go to market once the product was somewhat validated in the market, but really before the growth was happening, going in and taking a short term interim head of growth role. And so six months after I left Logmein, Dropbox is one of the first ones that I did that way.

And, Eventbrite and some other ones where, you know, the benefit is doing multiple cycles of those first six months of go to market, you start to realize what's important and what's not important. And so, really developed a playbook of, you know, these are the things we need to figure out, you know, the order in which we should figure them out. And then took my hand at being a founder and, you know, running a couple of startups, realized that achieving product market fit is super hard. And I was not getting any younger. And if I yeah, continued to be a founder of startups, it might be another, you know, 10 or 20 years before I nailed something where it was meaningful product market fit and just thought, I don't have the energy for that. I don't have the time for that. And so, in more recent years, I've gone back to really focusing on my strength, which is growing companies that have already gotten to product market fit. So the most recently I did an interim VP growth role with Bounce, which super successful company.

Andrew Chen actually made the introduction. He led the Horvitz investment in them and great team, really fun business. It's a luggage storage app. And from a revenue perspective, my last month there was the, I think fastest revenue growing company I've ever been a part of.

So, you know, lots of unicorns under my belt, but that one, was beating all of them in terms of revenue growth while I was there anyway. So, up to this point I'm starting to look at what will be my next interim growth role. A lot of this year I've been doing a ton of traveling.

I spent the first four months of the year doing around the world trip and partnering with growth leaders in different countries to do workshops and keynotes and super fun. My wife joined me in, you know, a couple of stops along the way. but yeah, taking advantage of being at a stage where my kids are older now and I can do something like that and not have the guilt of missing out on important years.

Adam: Yeah. I mean, wow. What a run and I mean, not done yet. So, um.

Sean: No, no, I'm having a great time now. It's really, it's super fun now.

Adam: That’s awesome.I bet you used Bounce a ton on your four months of traveling around needing to store luggage.

Sean: I did. Yeah, I ended up having kind of like a hub and spoke model. like when I was in South America, I started to hit a home base of South America and then I would, travel around to some other. So it was in Brazil. I travel around to some of the other countries and just, you know, check my big bag, And then take a little small carry on bag for those trips. And ended up saving a lot of money because a carry on only is a lot cheaper, but it's way more convenient as well.

Adam: Yeah, I'm a big fan of Bounce. Talk to a lot of people that have used them work with them. You Casey Winters, like a bunch of folks been spending time with them. So,

Sean: Fun company.

Adam: Let's talk about life. Sean's life professional life. Where did you grow up? What were you like as a kid?

What was life like for you as a kid?

Sean: Yeah, I was a big dork. No, I'm just kidding. No, I I grew up in Southern California, but I was actually born in Australia, so yeah, kind of. Yeah, the international theme is carried through a lot of my life. And moved to Southern California when I was five, but my parents were American. So, kind of grew up American, even though I was born in Australia and played football in high school was always earning money as a kid, you know, kind of paper routes. And we moved back to the city, I'm in Southern California now with my kids they used to roll their eyes when I would say, yeah, I had a job there, I had a job there. Like I definitely, I was always like, hustling to make a buck got in trouble sometimes sold like candy at school and had a Christmas tree delivery business in high school where my buddy and I rented a huge truck and delivered one Christmas tree at a time in them. And, by the time we kind of process all our costs, we had enough for kind of like a soup, but the best soup that we ever had.

And so, um, yeah, so, I mean, just, yeah for me, it was less about kind of needing to grind for a buck and more it was just fun for me.

Adam: Yeah. Sounds like a curiosity of like, well, what could we do next? What else could we try? Yeah. Very cool. So you alluded to this, but you have two grown children now and you have a partner, you have a wife, how'd you meet your wife and tell me a little bit about your kids.

Sean: Yeah. So I met my wife in Budapest. In college, I did a year abroad in Eastern Europe. I started university in 1989, so you could do the math there. I've got, I'm going to be 54 next month or no. Next week time flies. So, basically I was an international relations major with kind of a world trade focus.

And in 1989, the most interesting place in the world was Eastern Europe. And so, you know, the wall coming down and all my classes were about it. And then one day I discovered that there's actually a study abroad program in Budapest, Hungary. And I had been planning to study in Spain or Italy or one of the kind of normal study abroad places.

And I'd actually gone, I mentioned my parents are pretty adventurous travelers. So we had gone behind the iron curtain in 1987. So we went to Budapest and Yugoslavia wasn't really a iron curtain, but we went to Yugoslavia and then we tried to go to Czechoslovakia, got turned away at the border.

But I really loved Budapest. From that trip and then it being in the news afterwards and my field of study, it just made sense for me to go back there and study. And then when I graduated from college first thing I did was move back. And I said I'll figure things out from here.

I was dreading the mundane life of, you know, get a normal job.

Adam: Yeah.

Sean:  And two and a half garages and kids and the rest of it, like all of that seem just really boring to me. So I would rather take the risk and picked up a move to Eastern Europe. And yeah, my first job there was in ad sales.

And I had been doing that for probably six months when I met my wife at a mutual friend's birthday party. And we hit it off right away. In fact, I even jokingly said what are you doing this weekend? She said, I don't have any plans. So let's go get married. And so I had never made that joke before, but the fact we were joking about getting married the night we met this is kind of crazy.

Adam: Little foreshadowing there.

Sean: Yeah.

Adam: You've two kids, right? You've two kids in their twenties. Now question for you. So, you know, when I think of 20 something year olds, I think like, okay, you're an adult now you always probably see them as your kids though, or are you like, now these are, these are adults,

Sean: I wish I didn't see them as my kids. I wish I didn't feel this like need to be super protective of them and try to jump in and help. Whenever I see him hurting. But that's me. So like I I had two long calls with my younger daughter yesterday. She's 22 years old.

She you know, going through some romantic challenges. But I love that. I have that relationship where, you know, I'm the one she wants to call about those things.

Adam: That's really awesome. I usually don't think like, you know, 22 year old daughters, like wants to talk to dad about that sort of stuff, but we'll get into how you built that relationship with them. So tell me about the decision with you and your wife start a family. Like, how did you know it was, you know, time to settle down and…?

Sean: I was chomping at the bit to do it. Like I just, I've always probably connected with like kids better than with adults. Cause you know, there's just like no pretense. It's just like, kids are like pure. It's just, it's kind of fun for me to have conversations with kids.

Where I think yeah, a lot of people, it's kind of work, it's kind of like scary but for me it wasn't. And so the idea of having kids was, I wanted to jump right into it. After we got married, we actually, it took a couple of years of trying, you know, you spent all this time worrying about accidentally having kids and you realize that it can actually be pretty hard.

So it took a couple of years of trying. And my wife got pregnant with the first one. And so, it was something that I was anxious and she seemed pretty enthusiastic to get going with it as well.

Adam: I think if I'm doing the math correctly, I think you were about the same age as I was when I had my first kid. So…

Sean: I think it was about like 27 when, when, we had the first one.

Adam: If you can the memory file here, what's the earliest memory that you have after becoming a dad? Do you remember what that was like?

Sean: So two things, my daughter was born in the summer of 1999. And three quick things come to my mind. One, my wife is Russian. So, her parents came over soon after we had our first kid and her mom's going to be helpful. I remember just. Can't wait to get home and see my new baby when I'm coming home from work, and I remember when my mother in law, when I was like, oh, where's my baby? And she like kind of turned like, she's not going to hand me the baby. And I'm like, that may be how they do it in Russia, but that's not how they do it here. And like that was one of my earliest memories. Cause I was, that would have been just like a couple of weeks after my wife gave birth, and then another like pretty early memory was I was in a pretty intensive startup situation at that point.

That's where I mentioned that first company Uproar. And I was loving it. Like it was dot com boom times growing super fast you know, the valuations like multiplying quickly, I'm figuring out all this stuff. And so I was like obsessive about it. I couldn't like turn my mind off about it, but it wasn't in a negative way.

It was like in a, like, I didn't want to turn my mind off. I loved it. but I also loved that I would come home and I could be with my daughter as a little tiny baby. And just look in her eyes and like, forget everything else. I guess the only, only thing that mattered to me. And, definitely like, kind of, took me out of my obsessive mindset on work stuff.

Adam: Yeah. Amazing how like holding a little kid just kind of cuts through all that stuff and everything else so it's like melts away and you're just like in that little bubble with your kids.

Sean: And then the one last memory was you grow up, as a kid born in 1970, like, what are you going to do at new year's on, the year 2000, like you just, yeah, all these thoughts of what's going to happen. And we were having a little kind of celebration, but just like a stay at home.

So we got a little baby at home. We're not going to go out and give her to a babysitter yet at that point. And so, I remember going to tuck her in to help her go to sleep and she wouldn't go to sleep. So I took her to the bed and just laying there and then next thing you know, I wake up and it's the next day.

Like I totally missed it and I just, I spent that like change of millennia with, yeah just holding my, little daughter's hand.

Adam: Yeah. You missed out on all that Y2K excitement.

Sean: Exactly.

Adam: Those are great. Those are great stories. So you have two fairly successful daughters that you described their careers to me. I won't make you embarrass them with your proud dad moments on the pod just yet, like that's coming. And it sounds like, you know, they still check in with you and you know, you're giving them advice and things like that.

How is it that you've been able to maintain a really great relationship with them through, you know, all the tumultuous years of being a teenager and then into adulthood and you're still one of the earliest people they want to pick up the phone and call. How'd you do that? How'd you build that relationship?

Sean: I would say the hardest time to be able to do that is, is in their early teens into mid teens. And during those years I just never took anything for granted with them. I think a lot of parents get really busy with their lives. And like they compartmentalize. I'm like, okay, from this time to this time, I'm all about my kids, but maybe your kids aren’t all about you at those times.

And so I had this kind of like when it was possible to drop everything, if they wanted to talk to me and my older daughter in particular she would decide the time she wanted to talk to me was like starting at 10 o'clock at night and she's, you know, 14, 15, 16. And I just assumed every one of those conversations was the last conversation we were going to have before dad was like, not the guy she wanted to talk to anymore.

And so I never wanted to be the one to say like, let's wrap this up. I'm tired. I got an early morning meeting. I got, I just, I want to chill out and watch the TV. So it'd just talk and she would like talk for one hour, two hours, three hours. And I'd be like, I'm getting really tired.

She'd be like, please dad, just a few more minutes. And I'm like, all right, just again with that mentality that like this could be the last time she ever wants to talk to me and not just could be but probably is like, it's just the reality of the situation. But my older daughter's a pretty big personality. And so my younger daughter kind of got squeezed out at that point. You know, she just sorta like a little more wallflowery. But when the older one went off to college I'm in a group called YPO uh, young presence organization group, but you think it would be all business conversations, but more than half the time is probably talking about family challenges and how to be a good dad. And we had this exercise at one of our retreats where you actually have to think about, okay, you find out you're dying tomorrow and you have one person you can write a note to. And I got to be careful. I'm gonna start to cry.

But you have one person you can write a note to, write that note to that person. And they give us like 30 minutes. We all go into a corner and I'm like, I got tears down. And so I, I write to my younger daughter and she had been through like some really like kind of challenging years of depression and you know, like we have a lot of it in my family and so, it's, you know, like, at least I was kind of used to depression, would say between my wife and me and my two kids, we all have like, parts of it at different times.

And so, but yeah she'd just been through a really rough patch. Like She had like social anxiety. And so I found a one on one teaching program for her that cost a ton, but like, it's like whatever it takes for her to be okay. And so she was just kind of like coming out of her darker times and starting show happiness and promise. Both my kids in rowing. And so she was just starting to get going with rowing. And you could see that she had a lot of potential and passion and joy for it. And so I wrote this note just saying, like, you know, you remind me of myself so much in those years and I, I just know you're about to blossom and all of these things.

And it really says, like, focus on feelings. And then afterwards they say, you know, do you want to give that note to your loved one? And so I ended up, you know, I think I ended up having it like six or seven pages and I gave the note to her and it was just really kind of saying, like, I was so looking forward to connecting with you on the same level that I had connected with your sister now that she's gone, like, it was going to be our opportunity to connect.

I'm so sad. I have to miss that. And so it was. It was a really touching moment. But of course, like then laid the groundwork for her and I to connect on a super deep level as well. And it wasn't like, I didn't try to connect a lot through that. I had coached her soccer when she was yeah, I was CEO of a company, no time to coach soccer and I'm like, talked into it and ended up loving it, but it gave me an opportunity to spend a lot more time with her.

And so, she was just kind of like really in a shell hard to connect with. But yeah, over the next few years, I think that letter really helped us to open up and connecting and build a solid foundation to where even on my trip around the world she came and joined me.

Kids would graduate from college. They could go on trips with their friends. They could go do anything. She spent the first three weeks after she graduated traveling with me around Europe. And so, yeah we're super close. But yeah, those would be some of the key things.

It's just like, yeah, not taking for granted a minute of your kids wanting to open up to you.

Adam: Yeah. I love that message. And thanks for sharing that story. I'm sure it's hard to reflect on some of those things. Get me a little teary eyed here thinking about this. But yeah, what a powerful message too. And what you said about your older daughter too, which is just treat every one of those conversations.

Like, I don't know if this is the last one we're going to have together

Sean: Yeah. I can't wait till it's convenient for me. And yeah, like when it's convenient for me, she's going to give me the one word answers that teenagers give. Like I have to do it on her schedule.

Adam: Yeah. Oh, I love that. It's so, so powerful. What a great lesson. I wanted to ask you to like, you're raising, two daughters and you've got, you know, now 22 and 25 years of experience with this, but is there something that was like very surprising to you as a dad that you discovered throughout this, two plus decade long journey?

Sean: Probably one of the surprises is you don't realize that raising kids comes much more natural to some people than other people. And, with my wife, I know it was just a lot more work for her. And it's, not to say she's not a fantastic mom, but like, for me, it was a break and it was easy.

And when I spent the time, like it was like such natural, I could go into cruise control with that time where for her every minute you know, she had to put a lot more effort into it and she's super close with the kids now. And so she did a great job despite that.

But just recognizing that, it doesn't come natural for everybody. And, I'm really grateful that it did come natural for me. I even remember in Budapest one day when I had both my kids at the mall and like this old lady came up to me and she's like, I've never seen a dad look at their kids at the way that you're looking at your kids. Like there's just so much love that you have for them. And it was just, yeah, it was just like, it was just very natural for me.

Adam: Yeah. Oh, I love that. And I've had other dads come on the show and talk about how it wasn't natural for them. You know, they felt like there was something wrong with them or something.

Sean: It's not their fault. It's not that like I did something great for it to be natural. It's just like, unfortunately, like some of us are wired different ways. And this is one of those times where I was wired in a way that made it easy for me.

Adam: Yeah. If you could hit the time machine and go back to just before your first daughter was born or just before your second daughter was born. And you know, you're getting, you know, tons of advice from people who are talking to you about, you got to do this when you're a dad, you got to do this when you're a parent, you know, advice is flying everywhere.

Is there a piece of advice that you would hold on to and pass forward to that younger version of yourself and say, this one was really important for me?

Sean: Interestingly I had kind of before any of my friends did, and I was living on the other side of the country from most of my family who would kind of give that advice. So we really had to figure it out on our own. I had marriage advice that someone had given me that was really good, which was never talk about money after 9 PM, which I have, I've found to be super good advice that when I accidentally slip into a money conversation after nine, the chances of it turning into not a pleasant conversation is always pretty high. So yeah, but unfortunately not anything on the kid's side. Like, yeah, I think a lot of the stuff on the kid's side would be much more of like things I shared with my friends who were kind of a little later than I was to get started.

Adam: Do you have a favorite piece of advice that you've shared with a friend? I mean, I think I really like and resonate with you described just a second ago about what's been most surprising to you. That different people are wired differently and take to it naturally or unnaturally.

But when you think about like something that you tell, you know, when your friends were having kids and you were talking to dads and sort of giving them advice. Is there something that you kind of repeated?

Sean: Probably yeah. It's kind of similar, touching back to where I ended up focusing on a company formation is that, you know, a lot of people want to start building a relationship with their kids on their teens. And it's just kind of like, it's kind of like too late at that point.

They sense some issues and they've been so focused on their own stuff that like, has to be from day one. And it has to be a priority kind of through all of their upbringing. So that would be the biggest thing.

It's just like, don't delay on it because you may never have the opportunity to build that relationship if you don't have like a good foundation on it. One that I, you know, we, we had kind of an interesting sort of dynamic between my wife being European and me where, you know, Europeans are kind of almost like the tiger moms of Asia that you hear about where they just like, you know, If you're not studying 24 hours a day, you're doing something wrong as a kid, you know, just kind of like, and you stretching them in way too much stuff.

And for me from like a school perspective, I was not a great student until I got college. So like, I didn't feel like you need to push them that hard in the early days and they can still figure things out. So my main thing I was optimizing for was I wanted them to love learning and I wanted them to be confident.

And so, I think sometimes when you ride them too hard, you can kind of like shatter their confidence and make them not love learning. And then, it becomes pretty hard to be successful as students. So yeah both of my kids ended up doing really well in school. And I just think they did it for themselves.

They never felt pressure from me and maybe a little bit from my wife, but she was pretty good too. Like, I think we balanced each other out pretty well there.

Adam: And your daughters are really successful. How did you find your ability to balance that like very hard driving approach with also pumping the brakes and giving your kids the space to like figure some stuff out on their own?

It's gotta be very tempting to kind of want to get in there and in founder mode, you know, and take care of stuff.

Sean: Yeah, I mean, I think I I had like a, just a couple of things that just put everything in perspective for me. I mentioned, you know, depression in the early days and like, like suicidal depression, like scary depression. And, when you have a kid go through that, it's like, ah, I just want my kid to be happy.

Like it, it just doesn't that the desire to to essentially turn them into like a trophy I can show of the accomplishments that have, like just sort of flies out the window. And then, the other thing is my older daughter, when she was about 18 was diagnosed with lupus.

And so, super scary for parents when you have a kid who's got a chronic condition and, you don't know, it's going to get more serious. It's going to get less serious. Like, there's different levels of lupus. And at that point, you know, we're reading the prognosis and, yeah.

It could be, yeah she could die from it or she might not, she might be able to function pretty well, but when you kind of look at life and death, like to me, even to this day, like recently, my younger daughter got her first job out of college and she's like, I just want you to be proud of me.

And I'm like, I'm going to be proud of you no matter what you don't, what you're doing. You don't need to, yeah, like I, if I have happy well functioning kids that's, you know, good for me. You know, one of the things that I wouldn't mind going back and touching on, I think with both the depression and lupus that was like a major, I'll sort of show like even to a fault, like some things that are bad on my side is that during the pandemic, both my kids were in college, one of them, you know, immune compromised with lupus. The other one has gone in and out of depression. She's far from home at college, having her challenges and I'm terrified for both of them and they know they can lean on me.

So they're calling me hours per day, each one of them. And, to get off the call with one, it's because I have a call from the other one. I gotta, balance both. And I'm trying to do my own stuff. And I hit a wall where I went just to a normal doctor's appointment and I'd never had blood pressure issues.

And they're like, I don't remember what the heck my blood pressure was, but it was like 170 over 130, like just crazy high blood pressure. And they're like, where's this coming from? And like, oh my God, I'm definitely going to need medication. Maybe you need to go to the hospital right now.

And like, you know, they took it like five times just to check. And I said let me try to fix it myself. If I can't fix it in 30 days then I'll go on to medication. And this comes back to kind of like the growth wired person where I made the spreadsheet. I did all the research.

What are all the things I can do to bring my blood pressure down? After each one, you know, some of them like, like weight loss, you can't like kind of test it after doing it, but you know, rigorous exercise, meditation, yoga, but a bunch of like different things. And I’m like, after the ones that I could measure it afterwards, I'm doing that thing, I'm measuring my blood pressure.

So multiple times a day checklists and a doctor told me, you're crazy. You're not going to be able to maintain that. And it's like, it's for 30 days, I can do anything. And, so I, I got it back to normal within 30 days and was able to figure out what got it down and then based on that, I was able to figure out what was causing the blood pressure to go up.

And so what got it down was meditation. I would see a massive drop, but it wasn't just any meditation It was gratitude meditation. And so where I was starting to feel resentment to my kids for just unloading so much of their stress on me and obviously being stressed about them was just this enormous weight on me.

But the gratitude meditation actually just flipped it. And it said, How lucky am I that I have two daughters that are in college that want to speak to me hours every day. I'm the luckiest guy in the world. And just like, as soon as I flipped it, I felt the weight of everything go off and my blood pressure dropped to normal.

So yeah, since then I've been to like therapy Where they told me I had like hypervigilance and some other things that kind of maybe explain that level. But yeah, it's just stressful but again, putting both of those things into perspective, I don't care how successful my kids are.

If they're healthy, if they're happy but it turns out that they're both really successful without me pushing. But what's cool is that then they own that as well. Like, I'm not the one that has to like push them into it.

Adam: Oh, wow. That's great. And I think did they both come back home to live with you while they're, while they're working?

Sean: They both wanted to, so older one you know, works in consulting. She graduated from UC Berkeley and she moved back from San Francisco back home about seven or eight months ago. And Yeah. I remember when she left, like a funny story I could go back to, but like, yeah that I never expected to come back home.

And it was very difficult for me when she left for college. And so it's awesome that she's back home now. And then the younger one was planning to also move back home after she graduated from UCLA. But turned out that the job that she got was up in Los Angeles. And she just didn't want to do a huge commute every day, which I totally understand.

But the thinking being that, you know, if they don't pay rent for a few years, they can put away, yeah. 60, 70, $80,000 in savings by living at home. And we're fortunate enough to have a beach house on the main house we live in. And so my wife and I can have enough space to get away where it's, like we're not on top of each other. So.

Adam: Yeah. That's amazing. I always said to my, so I'm not from California originally. I live here now, but I always said, man, if I was from California, I would have certainly lived at home for a while afterwards. Like, instead I was like, I got to get away from the winter. I'd like to come to where it's warm.

Sean: That's funny. I use it as an example where people go like, oh, that's just so great that you move your kids back home to be near the grandparents. And like, it's Newport beach is a pretty nice place to move back to. I'm like, I'm not sure I'd be. such a family guy if I was from Minnesota or some really cold climate location.

So I use that example a lot.

Adam: I want to come back to one of the things you briefly mentioned, which is that you coached one of your daughter's soccer teams. And you did it when you were the CEO of a company which doesn't seem very possible. And also you said you got talked into it, but I'm curious, you also said that you loved it and it was great.

And so tell me a little bit about that experience of Sean, the soccer coach.

Sean: Yeah. So a couple of things, like how I ended up getting into it. My wife kept missing the deadline for AYSO. And I had played a little bit of soccer growing up and it's kind of the normal thing that, you know, so I was like, just like really bummed that she was missing the deadline. And so once again, she missed the deadline, but she was like, she filled out the stuff and she checked the box that like, yeah, my husband will coach the team.

And so then she didn't tell me that. And then they call me and they're like, see you volunteered to coach the team. That's great. Cause we really needed somebody. And I was like, I can't do this. I'm a, I'm the CEO of a company. Like, I just, I don't have time to do this. And they're, they were like please, you know, you only have to do practice one day a week, you know, they kind of me a little bit on what the commitment would be. And, so I was like, ah, I guess, you know, one, one season, it's fine. I'll do it. But it literally meant like leaving work at four o'clock in the afternoon to be out there with the kids a couple of days a week. And yeah, I could go finish my work afterwards, but we lost the first three games and, you know, all the parents were starting to get a little bit like, This guy doesn't know what the hell he's doing.

And I didn't, I, you know, I hadn't played very much soccer. And I remember my mom sitting on the sideline. I overheard her saying, you just watch, he'll figure this out. They're going to be really good. So that season we ended up winning the champion of three regions.

And part of it was you know, I kind of took the approach that I do to growth. To, you know, a little bit of money ball, which the funny thing is I've talked to professional soccer kind of organization, like a guy from Barsa you know, just a month ago.

And he's like, some of the teams are just now starting to do what you were doing at that point. And so what I was doing was essentially data and experimentation. So regardless of the kids said that they had you know, they've always been a defender or goalie or the, yeah, I just would like scramble the lineups all the time and then take the data, but scores, there's not enough scoring in soccer to be able to use that as your signal metric.

So I would take shots on goal as my optimization metric. And then I would, mark where the shots came from and where the weaknesses were and just constantly tweaking and fixing and fixing, but that's kind of on the data experimentation side. The other side was, I was not a very good athlete growing up.

I'm surprisingly a good athlete now in my fifties. Compared to what I was in my teens and it was all mental. I just, I had zero confidence as a kid. particularly around sports. And so I spent a lot of time just helping the kids with their confidence. So like every kid was going to be good at something.

I remember it's like some of the other kids kind of making fun of one girl cause she just wasn't very good and then discovering that she could, on a throw in, throw the ball further than any other kid. And like, once we figured that just seeing her like light up that she discovered this great thing about her.

And they put you through a lot of training in AYSO where it's like all positive and not all the coaches follow that, but you're supposed to follow it. And so you're never supposed to criticize. You only praise and so anyway, so all of these things together ended up, creating these, championship teams.

And I ended up coaching for six seasons and loved it. But the interesting thing was that it actually helped me at work, which is really weird, but I started to use the phrase management by AYSO like essentially just, you know, keep it all positive all the time.

And yeah, I used to get frustrated as a CEO, you know, things don't work out the way you were, you know, and you just feel like you got to call people out when they're not putting in the effort and other things, and I just tried it to like, just praise effort. Praise the good things kind of ignore the bad things.

And then I started to see the team perform a lot better. And so it was kind of cool to see how they both work together.

Adam: That's amazing. And I mean, throughout this whole conversation, the parallels that you've been able to draw between what it takes to be like a successful growth practitioner and the things that you've applied in your personal life and like either getting your blood pressure down or like coaching soccer or, you know, keep teaching a growth mindset in your kids.

Like, it's pretty amazing how there's so much overlap

Sean: It definitely makes me laugh when I hear people say like, oh, well, I mean, you've done that in B to C, but how do you do this in B to B? Like come on, I did it with my blood pressure. Let me, you know, like it just takes a little creativity.

Adam: Yeah. You're like, man, B2B, B2C, my kids, my blood pressure. I can do it all. No problem. Yeah. The model works.

Sean: Yet there's a better way to do everything and you just need to be focused on improving and data and experimentation. How you do it.

Adam: And optimizing for learning. I mean, you kind of mentioned that that was a priority for you with your daughters, that they just had a love of learning. And so like, if you develop that, you could do all these things because you're like, well, I'm going to treat, you know, blood pressure or soccer. Like it's just a learning challenge.

Like, what else can I learn about this to get better? You mentioned a little bit about this, but as your kids got older, did you find that your parenting style evolved or changed maybe even between older and younger kid, just love to hear your perspective on that.

Sean: I'll give you one thing that's kind of unconventional that I did that talks about like kind of a, something you do with age. So, I used to breathalyze my kids. Yeah. And I partied in high school, you know, I haven't got kicked out of high school, my senior year. So like I was no angel myself, but my wife has had some alcoholism in her family and, so she was really worried about the kids drinking.

And so I started breathalyzing them from like, you know, in maybe eighth grade or freshman year, but what my wife thought I was always checking for was a 0%, but every year I actually gave them A higher amount that they could come home and be at with the idea that they're going to drink anyway, I might as well teach them how to be responsible and so that when they get to college, they don't fly off the handle. And especially it's dangerous for women in particular, who, you know, in a college environment with no supervision, if they've never drank before, like they can really get themselves into trouble.

So I, wanted to kind of teach responsible drinking instead of just like, no, being unrealistic. And again some parents may not feel that way. I've told my wife now that I did that, but like some, you know, for religious reasons or whatever, somebody might say, no that's completely not okay.

But I was pretty deliberate about what I was trying to do at that point.

Adam: Yeah, that's really interesting. It wasn't like a punitive thing for you. It was more of a teaching opportunity you know,

Sean: You realize that's kind of dangerous. You're at a level that's dangerous here. And, if they came in on a level too high. And, again my, kids were not angels it was definitely like, you know, marijuana at a school dance freshman year for one of them, police calling me for shoplifting with one of them.

And again, I'm not throwing judgment on them because I mentioned I got kicked out of school and I did some stupid things, but it's really easy to kind of fly off the handle with those things. I remember with the marijuana at the school dance, the school wanted to suspend my daughter for a week.

And it would have meant that she would have missed the rowing national championships where she had an opportunity to actually win in the rowing national championships. And I remember sitting down with the principal and saying, you know, if that happened, even though it's a club sport. If she's suspended from school, she can't do it.

So if that happens, it could send her life in a very different direction. She really messed up here. I don't like that she did that. I think the suspension is in order. I think, you know, education about substance abuse is in order, but here's the risk we take, rowing is something that can be really shaping in her life.

And so he agreed with me and said, okay we're not going to do that. She did go on to win a national championship in rowing a couple of years later year she was supposed to, but something happened where it was a lightweight boat where one of the guys didn't make weight. So the team that they had beat in the regionals went on to win it because they got disqualified. But that was an amazing learning experience for her as well and built resiliency in her. And so, you know, sometimes you can be a little overprotective and try to protect your kids from being in trouble.

But for me I'm definitely a lot more of like how can this affect them longterm? Same thing with my other daughter, you know, we had to go and, spend time with the courts when it, you know, it's just like, for shoplifting, it was like a pretty hard, and it's not like, I never shoplifted as a kid or, you know, like, but it's one of those things that the courts can, so just because someone wants to make an example of someone can end up putting them on a really bad path.

And so being there for my kids, making sure that they had, you know, the appropriate consequences, but also knowing that they're delicate and that coming down too hard on them and not supporting them is pretty dangerous as well.

Adam: Yeah. Well, kids are going to make mistakes. They're going to test the fences, their, you know, frontal cortex or whatever, not fully developed for a long time.

Sean: Yeah. As I said not always going to be there. And, And you learn those things through experience

Adam: yeah, yeah, it's like experimentation. Oop, that didn't go so well. Probably shouldn't do that next time.

Sean: Right. Right. And hopefully the experiments you run as a kid don't kill you, which is always a possibility, but

Adam: Right, right.

So I wanted to ask cause you hit on this a little bit earlier.

One of the things I talk a lot about on this show is partnership. So with your wife, with your spouse and you mentioned that your wife's European and has this maybe different style than you parenting style. So, I'm curious how you kind of balance those two styles. And then maybe, is there an area where you and your wife don't or didn't agree on or had to have extensive discussions on when it came to parenting?

Sean: I think we've, we found pretty good kind of compromises with each other. It was not like. My style or your style and that's what we're going to do that. Definitely like, talk through it and kind of wait out the positives and negatives of different approaches.

Probably the biggest disconnect was on the drinking thing. And so I did go a little bit rogue with my approach there. like she actually had a sibling die from alcoholism. So like is of course going to be super scarred by that. And so, it was something that I you know, I understood, but at the same time, I just don't think, given that I have a couple of daughters that are pretty social in the environment that they're growing up, the same high school that I went to, I just don't think it's realistic to expect them not to drink anything. And so you can basically shut down all communication and they compartmentalize a bunch of things.

But at the same time, I was not buying alcohol for kids. I was not hosting kids like doing any of those things that some parents on the other end of the spectrum can do, but I was trying to be somewhat realistic about it. But at the same time, protect my wife from the fears that she would naturally have.

Adam: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It's a really interesting balance there.

Sean: And I don't think there's any right answer there. It's just, you know, you kind of, you pick a lane and you hope it's the right one. And in my case, it tended to work out ok.

Adam: And then you, maybe you get some feedback on that, you know, decades down the road or something. So, yeah. So I wanted to ask it just a couple more questions of you. So you've built an entire career in technology and, you know, your daughters were kind of coming of age, probably in high school or middle school ish, when cell phones and social media were really like becoming kind of an ingrained part of society.

Sean: Yeah. By middle school, they definitely had, you know, some of the social media temptations, but they, you know, phones even in, in grade school, but yeah, kind of, early smartphones that you couldn't do a whole lot with.

Adam: How did you think about that? and obviously like, I'm sure technology is a huge part of their lives now in their twenties. Like you can't escape it. How did you think about the relationship? Like you were kind of probably going through this. Now there's a lot of people who have kids who are that age, you know, younger.

Like people like me who are like steeped in this because it's a huge topic of conversation, but it wasn't maybe

Sean: There wasn't like research that sort of talked about, you know, that it contributed depression and other things, so.

Adam: Yeah. So, so did you think about it at the time? And maybe, I don't know if your thoughts have changed or evolved or you've learned?

Sean: Today I'd probably be a lot more nervous about the impact of social media. I think I recognize that you know, that there's a lot of social pressures. I mentioned like, you know, social anxiety that my, my younger daughter had which is crazy because now she's like really great at sales and so outgoing, but like, you know, to think that she went through that phase, but that anxiety level goes way up when you have zero time to disconnect where, you know, when I was growing up, like you had your time at school, then you had your time with a couple of friends maybe, and then all this time with your family or by yourself where social pressures with social media 24 hours a day, kids can wake up in the middle of the night be bullied on social media. And it's just it's hard for them. So I think I probably contributed to some of the depression that I talked about both of my kids experienced at times but I didn't really make the connection very much. So, yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately, like I would probably be a lot more aware of it now and at least have the conversations and try to teach them to moderate their usage as opposed to putting restrictions on it. But yeah, at the same time, you know, particularly the world that you and I live in, we know that there's a lot of people that are working really hard to make this stuff addictive.

And so even if they're trying to have that self discipline they're up against sometimes, you know, professionals that make it really hard to have that discipline.

Adam: Yeah. Last couple of questions for you. Is there something that you've had to give up to become a father or something that maybe has found its way back into your life since your kids are older now and out of the house, ish.

Sean: So interestingly you know, when my wife and I started dating, you know, we were probably only like, like, a month into dating and I could feel it going down a path of potentially being pretty serious. And I said to her, I knew myself at that level. I have ADD.

I know the way that I'm wired. I just said to her hey, I see this going down a path of being potentially pretty serious. I want you to know that I'm going to have a really hard time living in one place for a very long time. I will likely move around every couple of years. And if that's not something that you could see yourself doing. Let's not let this go down that path because that's just how I'm wired. but I knew it was challenging for my kids to do that. So we did move every couple of years until the kids got to be maybe like 8 and 10 and then we stayed in one place.

So the moving around actually, I think helped my daughters get close to each other because each time they would drift apart for being a couple of years apart, we'd move to a new place. Then they have to be each other's best friend until they find new friends. So I think in some senses it kind of helped them, but I know it's hard to settle in when you get more on a junior high high school level.

And so I think I sacrificed that desire that I had to move around a lot through those years. And that, kind of explains me going on an around the world trip.

Adam: Yeah,I was just gonna say, you just scratched that itch in a big way.

Sean: Yeah, but I've probably averaged about a hundred thousand miles a year of travel since they both went off to university. And I get burned out on it sometimes too.

And so it's nice to, so I don't move around as much, but I use the travel to scratch that itch.

Adam: Yeah. Last question for you. What would you say is a mistake that you've made as a dad?

Sean: Nothing, man. I'm perfect. No, I'm just kidding.

Adam: That's it. That's the quote.

Sean: Yeah, I just, I think it's so hard to say that something's a mistake because it's like, did you make a mistake with your startup? You know, it's just like, you don't know the path not taken. And if I had done something different, I really like where everything ended up. And so I'm not sure.

I mean, I would say that there's definitely been times where I've lost my temper less, with my kids more with my wife when, you know, too many buttons are pushed and I raised my voice. And like, always regret that afterwards. Like I like to be a lot more level headed but even like that's pretty infrequent, but yeah that's still, anytime you have a regret, that probably means you made a mistake.

 Adam: I like kind of what you said where you're like, well, I don't know, what would the alternative have looked like? You can't really AB test things with your kids the way that we, that's one of the things that isn't a parallel or an overlap with growth. So,

Sean: One more thing that I think actually did really well, as we're talking here, it came back to me is that anytime my kids were like, dad, can you help me with this? Dad, can you figure this out? I really coached them to figure it out themselves and they got really good at finding their answers, whether it meant going on the internet to find the answers, you know, taking a little bit more, it's so tempting sometimes to jump in and quickly help them achieve what they're trying to achieve. But I think part of their success today, I would track to and that was something my wife did too. Like both of us really encourage them to figure out their own challenges. And that's an important skill set where I think too many parents just jump in and try to help the kid through every single challenge they have.

And they're doing a disservice in the longterm.

Adam: That's great. parting advice there. How can people follow along or be helpful to you in this empty nester chapter of your life or almost pseudo empty nester, I guess.

Sean: I hope to never have an empty nest. Yeah, it'd be great to have them back a lot. Yeah, I mean, I don't really, you know, talk too much on the family side, like it gets boring as they become adults themselves. but yeah, I am starting to blog on. Yeah, that back again. So that but most of it's going to be business stuff. So,

Adam: I, well, I noticed that, but we do have a lot of, you know, business minded folks who listened to this. Cause they're kind of threading that needle. So I'll make sure we link to your sub stack. I was excited to see you writing again. And I noticed because I started getting referrals.

From your sub stack, both for this pod and for my own. What sort of sparked you by the way to get back into writing again, after taking a bit of break?

Sean: Yeah, I actually wrote a post on this. My first post was kind of what was sparking me to get back into it. And I, you know, it's really hard to write when you don't have any inspiration of what to write and so much of what I want to write about. It's hard for me to know, am I just writing that water is wet and the sky is blue and just like stuff that's so obvious.

And particularly when I became a founder and I'm just doing my own thing, it's really hard to know, like do I see differently than other people? And so to write about those things was tough. But now that I'm back engaging with people, I actually was just did my first intro.

co call today. I have another one directly on the back end of this. And I love it. Like that one call, the questions that I'm getting are clearly the things people are struggling with. So just that one call probably gave me inspiration for five blog posts. And I'll have another one this afternoon, like I said, and it'll give me more inspiration.

So when I, yeah even like a, when I first moved to Silicon Valley, I remember a lot of venture capitalists introducing me to founders and basically saying you know, when I talked to the founder, they're like, we need help building awareness. Like. Not once have I ever focused on building awareness in the companies I was in.

Like you gotta focus on reaching the right people and getting them to actually use your product. Like the average person sees thousands of advertisements every day. You're not going to be able to afford to build any kind of meaningful awareness. And so a lot of my early writing was just like passive aggressive, like, okay, if I took the filter off and was just like and so, yeah, so, so these conversations really give me that opportunity again, to to get back to that, back to that level.

Adam: That is awesome. And I will make sure to point some people there. And I'm super excited that you found your inspiration again because we need your writing out there. So thank you, thank you for doing that.

Sean: Yeah. It's fun to be doing it again. And thank you, Adam for having me on and such a fun topic. Like I said, I'm more passionate about this than I am about business, but fun to be able to talk about something that matters even more to me for a change.

Adam: Before, thank you. And before we go, I wanted to ask you have a couple minutes for our rapid fire around. All right. Okay, though. Here's how rapid fire works. You probably just did this with Lenny. I ask you a question. And you say the first thing that comes to mind and then we move on.

Sean: That could be dangerous.

Adam: Yeah, it could be, but they're all parenting topics. So it's very fun. So, all right, what is the most indispensable parenting product that you have ever purchased?

Sean: Breathalyzer

Adam: What is the most useless parenting product that you've ever purchased?

Sean: Parenting books

Adam: Finish this sentence. The ideal day with one or both of my daughters involves this one activity.

Sean: Traveling

Adam: What is the most frustrating thing that has ever happened to you as a dad?

Sean: Seeing my daughters deep in depression and not feeling like I knew how to help them.

Adam: What is your go to dad wardrobe?

Sean: It's updated a lot as my kids got older. They're like dad, cargo shorts are out. That was 10 years ago. So they've definitely caught me more up to date.

Adam: You're getting fashion advice from your daughters.

Sean: Yeah, but a bunch of Vuori type stuff.

Adam: Also my favorite, so.

Sean: Athleisure stuff.

Adam: Do you have a favorite age for your kids?

Sean: Oh, probably when they were one.

Adam: Okay, what about your least favorite age?

Sean: No, I don't have a least favorite age.

Adam: How many dad jokes do you tell on average in a given day?

Sean: Too many. Probably. Yeah. Every other word of out of my mouth is a piece of a dad joke. So yeah, according to my kids.

Adam: Do you recall what your kids would describe as one of the most embarrassing things that you've ever done in front of them?

Sean: They would remember the most embarrassing things they did in front of me.

Adam: Okay, we'll pass. we'll pass. We don't have to answer that one. What is the most absurd thing that one of your children has ever asked you to buy for them?

Sean: They don't ask me, they ask their mom. I say, no, I'm not a pushover at all.

Adam: Love that. That's a good, that's a good one. Do you recall the most difficult kids TV show that you've ever had to sit through?

Sean: I loved kids TV shows. I knew all the characters with the kids.

Adam: Awesome. What is your favorite kids movie?

Sean: Probably Anastasia

Adam: Oh, nice. Okay. What is the worst experience that you've ever had assembling a children's toy or a piece of furniture?

Sean: Probably a crib when Oh, really little, they’re very hard.

Adam: Crib takes the cake.They're very hard. Lots of tiny pieces. They also go missing from time to time. So.

Sean: And you're also worried like, I'm gonna do this wrong. This thing's going to collapse and kill them.

Adam: Right. Have you ever mixed up your daughter's names?

Sean: Yeah, just the first few letters and then I switch it over

Adam: Do you recall what the first nostalgic movie of yours that you forced your kids to watch?

Sean: probably like European vacation or something.

Adam: Oh, lovely. How often do you tell your daughters back in my day stories?

Sean: A lot. Yeah. Particularly when we first moved back here, all the, when I worked here, when I worked there.

Adam: Oh, yes, yes, I remember that. And then finally You only have two kids, but you do live in Southern California. What is your take on minivans?

Sean: We went through our phase in New Hampshire. I think it was one of those things that the auto doors were very very attractive for my wife. I never drove it, but the ability to just push a button to have the door close itself once a kid strapped themselves in.

Adam: Pretty amazing, technology ahead of its time.

Sean: Yeah, absolutely.

Adam: All right. Well, Sean, that concludes our rapid fire round. Thank you so much for your participation. That was great. Loved it. And thank you so much for joining me on the show today. I had a really good time with this conversation. Appreciate it.

Sean: Yeah. Thanks Adam. I'm excited to hear this one and listen to some of the other episodes as well and compare and contrast.

Adam: Awesome. This was great.

Adam: Thank you for listening to today's conversation with Sean Ellis. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, share, and leave me a review on Apple or Spotify.

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Thanks for listening, and see you next week.