Exploring the Spectrum of Discipline and Parenting Principles | Mike Smith (father of 1, Footwork, StitchFix, Walmart.com)

Mike: When we're disciplining, what is the end goal? What are we trying to get out of it? We're trying to think ahead. And we also wanted to, as best as possible, show the united front so that there wasn't sort of this good cop, bad cop, or she could play us off each other because dad was easy and mom was hard or vice versa.

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. And in today's episode, I had the privilege of having a candid conversation with Mike Smith. Mike is General Partner and Co_Founder at Footwork, an early stage venture capital firm.

Previously, Mike was President, COO, and Interim CFO at Stitch Fix, the online personal styling service where he oversaw operations, styling, client experience, merchandise, and finance. Prior to Stitch Fix, Mike was COO at Walmart.com, overseeing all operations for a $5 billion division of Walmart. Mike is a husband of 28 years and the father of one daughter.

In today's episode, Mike and I cover a wide range of topics, from the impact of childhood experiences on parenting, to the journey of raising an independent and opinionated daughter. We also explore the delicate balance between professional pursuits and family life. Shedding light on the lessons learned about the spectrum of discipline, the importance of presenting a united front in parenting, and the impact of geographic distance on family dynamics as your kids start to move away.

From discipline to aligning parenting principles, Mike offers a wealth of wisdom that will resonate with all the Startup Dads out there. I hope you enjoy today's conversation with Mike Smith.

Adam: I would like to welcome Mike Smith to the Startup Dad podcast. Mike, thank you for joining me. It's a pleasure having you here.

Mike: Hey, Adam, it's a pleasure being here and it's fun to have like this long time relationship that we've had with each other and to talk about topics that I'm not used to talking about, but I think are needed.

Adam: Yeah, cool. That's why I do this show. You and I have known each other for many years now from like a board member relationship, and we've never really talked about parenting. So that's what we're here to do. So before we get into parenting, I wanted to talk a little bit about your professional background.

You've had a long career as an operator and now as a VC. So just tell us a little bit more about that background.

Mike: Sure. Going a little bit further back. I grew up in Virginia. I went to the University of Virginia for undergrad. And then first job out of school was in consulting at Anderson Consulting now called Accenture. And then, you know, I always thought that I would go to grad school if I was lucky enough to get in.

So went to business school, moved out to California to go to Berkeley for business school. And then I would say, first six years post business school didn't really find my career lane. I did two years Morgan Stanley, managing money for wealthy families, two years at a startup that frankly was a bad choice.

And I didn't really understand like how to pick the right company. And my picking criterion wasn't great. And then two years doing corp dev corporate development, which is, you know, sort of an internal function at a company that helps to think about mergers and acquisitions. And we had a venture fund. And unfortunately that company as a publicly traded company started trading below cash.

And so it didn't make sense to have a venture fund anymore or to do m and a. And so I was in this kind of in between, like really hadn't found my lane. And I got lucky. I went to walmart.com in the early days. I'd gone to business school with a lot of the early Walmart.com folks. Joined there when we were just about a hundred people.

Were doing $150 million in sales and had an awesome nine year run. Eight years were great. The last year when I got passed over the CEO job, not that great. But learned a lot about that and the process and got to experience like hyper growth, but within a big company that was clearly, you know, been around for 40 years and was a very successful fortune one company. And then as a result of getting passed over the CEO job, like picked up my head and really thought about what I wanted to do next, got really lucky that it was an amazing market for call it number two jobs with amazing founders are working on super disruptive ideas and joined Stitch Fix as employee number five is chief operating officer. And with Katrina Lake, the founder and CEO and a great team built out from five people to 10,000 people. From no revenue to $2 billion in revenue and went public in 2017. But you just recognize, as you know, Adam, like company building is really hard, regardless of whether it's kind of up into the right and in the business performance, it's just hard to build a company.

And I learned a lot there, which I'm now translating, hopefully. Successfully as a venture investor. So I've been a venture investor for the last three years. We started a firm, my partner and I, Nikhil Basu Chavedi started a firm called Footwork. It's $175 million fund focused on seed and series a early stage investing generalist approach.

We like a lot of different things and and make, you know, four or five investments a year. So pretty selective and it's been a complete blast. So I feel like I've had this, you know, unique career arc, but really. Kind of foundationally sort of about learning and people and hopefully having an impact as an operator before.

And hopefully now as an investor.

Adam: What a great story and what a bunch of pretty awesome runs too. But not without some bumps in the road, as you mentioned, which is, pretty normal for a, long and illustrious career. So, Thanks for sharing that with me. I want to go all the way back in time.

So you mentioned you grew up in Virginia. Tell me what life was like growing up and what your family was like.

Mike: So my dad was a dentist in the coast guard. And so as a result of being in the military, we would move around a bunch as, kids and family. So I have three siblings two younger brothers and a younger sister. I was born in New York. After two years in New York, we moved to Southern California.

We were there for three years, and then we moved to Kodiak, Alaska of all places and lived in Kodiak for two years and then moved to Virginia and kind of settled there. And so, my mom stayed home with the kids. My dad worked. They were, somewhat traditional. I don't even like using that word because I feel like it puts people in boxes that, you know, boxes hopefully are starting to break down as we have gotten to different generations.

But my mom stayed home and sort of did most of the parenting except on discipline. Like my dad took lead on disciplining us and we were active kids. Like all four of us played sports. You know, we're all pretty social. And so I think there was parenting to be had and made made. And so I really respect my parents.

We're all really close as a family, so I feel fortunate my parents are still together. And so I think a lot of what I got to see in my parents certainly has sort of influenced how I am as a person and my character, but also as a parent.

Adam: Yeah. And then you didn't follow your dad into the dentistry profession, nor the military it would seem like. So was that something that he advised you for or against, or did anyone kind of follow those footsteps in the family?

Mike: No one followed the footsteps in the family. I think in the dentistry part, he was pretty clear that it's a very hard job. I mean, it's like you're looking at people's mouths all day. You know, you're generally, you know, dealing with hard situations except for kind of the regular checkup. So it's not an easy job.

And he made it known that it wasn't an easy job. And so I think we all walked away thinking dentistry is not the place that we wanted to spend our time. On the military, I actually did do Navy ROTC my first year of college. And I think that was some of the influence of, you know, sort of serving the armed forces might, you know, again, if you're a dentist, you're not out there on the lines, but like, I think you have respect for the military and respect for freedom and, some of the things that this country has afforded, you know, folks.

And so, that was an influence, but no, none of us did sort of follow the specific footsteps, but I think my parents were super supportive of all of our different paths and that felt like it gave us the freedom to really do what we wanted to do. I think in some cases, like families are lucky, you know, in that you can do what you want to do because you have sort of a financial safety net of your parents or like how you grew up.

We did not have that. And he made it very clear, but he also made it very clear that they weren't, you know, my parents weren't super judgmental about what we were going to do, just that we would get a job and hopefully find some joy in that job and be able to support families if we decided to have them.

Adam: Cool. And you settled in the Bay area after grad school, right?

Mike: Yes, that’s right.

Adam: Is that, and you've been kind of in the Berkeley area ever since. Is there anything about moving around as a kid that you were kind of like, I definitely don't want to do that. Like that's not the lifestyle that I want.

Mike: There was actually no negative influence on wanting to like grow roots and not move family around with the exception of, you know, my mother had some sort of central nervous disease, like they thought it was multiple sclerosis initially, we're not actually still sure what it is because she still has some health issues and having the stability of like kids in high school and middle school in particular, not changing schools, not having to have new friends when you're dealing with like health issues, it was helpful.

And so my dad got an opportunity to move to Connecticut and be at the Coast Guard Academy. And we very intentionally as a family said the ages of these kids are not the time to move them out of high school and middle school to New London, Connecticut. Because I have this job. And so he commuted which puts pressure, different kind of pressure on your family.

But the reality was it did that time and my mom's health influence. Like, hey, if, if we can keep together as a nuclear family while our daughter is in middle school and high school, then I think there's real benefits to that as they're really developing into their own skin.

Adam: All right. So you mentioned your daughter, so let's go all the way back in time. Tell me a little bit about your family. You have a partner, you have one daughter. How did you and your wife meet each other?

Mike: So it's a little bit sort of, white picket fences and the story, but I still love it. So my wife and I are high school sweethearts. We went to prom and homecoming together our senior year of high school. We met our junior year of high school. We were just friends junior year and then got to dating our senior year, and then we dated for a year and a half of college.

And then I had a lot of growing up to do. And so she decided that she would let me do that alone and sort of said time for you to grow up. And so she broke up with me my second year of college. And then we were just friends for four years. Really, really good friends. And what happened during that time is I think I grew up, I learned sort of what sort of good friendship and good partnership actually looks like.

And then strangely, I think it's strange. She called me in our early twenties after having hiked in Europe and said she had an epiphany that we were going to get married and I hadn't talked to her in like nine months and so she called and said, hey, I know this is a little out of the blue, but I had this epiphany and we're going to get married.

And I was like, whoa, I'm dating someone else. We haven't talked in like almost a year. She goes, that's fine. Just call me when you're ready to reconnect and we're gonna get married. And so

Adam: Wow.

Mike: Like, maybe a few months after that, we started dating again, and then a year and a half after that, we got married and we've been married for 28 years after knowing each other for 36.

So it's like. It's not as like high school sweethearts, no break in the motion, but it is still fun to be, you know, sort of, still really enjoy your partner having known each other for as long as you have. And it does influence, you know, parenting because she got to see me when I needed to be growing up in these like 16 to 23 year old years.

And so we can get into that too, because it does influence like, she knows what a good me look like and not a good me look like. And it has influenced like how we think about kind of parenting and, and living with our daughter.

Adam: That's amazing. And thank goodness she had that epiphany, right?

Because she willed it into existence.

Mike: She did. Yep. She manifested it. It was great.

Adam: So you do have a daughter. Tell me about your daughter because you're, kind of becoming an empty nester in the process. It's happened already. You're sort of there. So I'm very curious about this situation.

Mike: Sure. So our daughter is 21 years old. She turns 22 in March. She came out of the womb, I would say, saying, hey, parents, I know you're not paid for this, but I'm going to give you a run for your money and you're going to have to earn it every day, and she is, she has made us earn it every day. You know, she's just a very social person, a very opinionated person, a very thoughtful and intentional person, and all of these things sort of, come together in a, she was not the easiest to you know, parent as she's growing through her younger days and adolescence, but we believe strongly and she's already showing that she's going to be an amazing adult and going to help change the world. And so I think having kind of the vision or the hope that the vision was going to be while we have to work for and she's going to make us work for it, you know, up until she's an adult, like, you know, the core values and principles of hers that hopefully we can kind of imbue some of that into her. Hopefully will show up and what an amazing human she is already and she will continue to be. And so, yeah, she's 21. She started just as a symbol of like, you're going to get a run for your money. She started walking at seven and a half months.

Adam: Oh, wow!

Mike: She had. No hair and she kind of looked like a boy and like she was like running around our church and stuff at like seven and a half months and people were like, what is this? Like, it didn't look like anything human or normal and and so anyway, and she didn't talk till late because she was learning sign language and used sign language a lot to communicate.

So it was just fun to kind of see people process like this little kid running around. But she's finishing college this May, and we're really excited about kind of her future.

Adam: Cool. And does she go to college around you around here or she's somewhere else entirely?

Mike: She is somewhere else entirely. She declared pretty early in our journey, at probably age 11, that she wanted to be as far away from her parents in the contiguous U.S. as possible. So she went to school in Washington D.C. again, right outside where Kelly and I grew up. But she wanted to try a different experience.

We're really proud of her because she wanted to get out of the Berkeley bubble, experience people with different points of view, which is again, harder to find in the East Bay, I would say, and wanted to kind of experience a different part of the country. And she's done that. I think because she is a kid that her high school senior year was the beginning of covid and then freshman year was like shut down covid.

I think like being that far away and not having family support was really hard on all of us. So she grew, she developed a lot more grit and resilience. I think as a result of covid, hopefully as a result, like lots of us have. But I think for, you know, an 18, 19 year old kid to have to be that far away and have to go through that was definitely hard for, for all of us.

Adam: Interesting. Yeah. We'll come back to that. So given that she made you and your wife really work as parents, did that factor into the decision to only have one kid or was that always kind of in the plan or did she will you into, did she beat you into submission?

Mike: That’s a good, good point. We wanted more kids. We had a hard time with fertility and, and having a second kid. And so after trying, we felt like she was a miracle in our quest to have kids after trying and not being successful and having a second kid, we said, like, one is a real blessing and, and, and felt lucky to have her, there may have been sort of outside forces that were like, you guys can only handle one and this one, but but we feel grateful that we had the one, but yeah, we definitely wanted, my wife came from she had two siblings.

As I mentioned, I had three, so we came from bigger families and were hoping for that. But I think the reality was it wasn't in the cards for us, but we feel really lucky to have her.

Adam: Yeah. And as you mentioned, even having one kid is a, is a blessing.

So even if that kid makes you want to pull your hair out when you're younger. So you know, you mentioned your, your wife whose name I think is Kelly. Tell me about what Kelly does. She has a pretty interesting volunteer career now.

I think it's volunteer job and then tell me about what the decision was like for the two of you to start a family. How did you come to that decision together?

Mike: So Kelly went to college, like I said, about an hour and a half from where I went to school. Her first job was working on Capitol Hill for the Senate Budget Committee back in the day. And then when we got married sort of my job and movements in my job kind of led our decision making about where to live and then she would have, you know, generally would work hard to find a job in those areas.

So first job, you know, when we moved to New York, she worked in PR for a movie production company. And she loved that. Then we moved out to California and she worked in HR at a big six now, big four accounting firm. And then she worked in an early stage company as a marketing leader, and then she decided to stay home with Marley for like the first, you know, most first probably nine years of Marley's life, 10 years of Marley's life. And then she got inspired by the school Marley was at to go back and get a teaching credential and become a fourth grade teacher. So that second career move for her was amazing because she taught for 11 years at an independent school in the East Bay.

She was an amazing teacher. She loved her students. She loved the school. And then you know, later during COVID, because COVID was hard for everybody, it was like really hard on teachers and parents of kids at that age, she decided to retire, but in the last year, she has felt a calling to do this volunteer work.

So she teaches at San Quentin, the prison once a week. She teaches English there. About 10 percent of the population there is eligible to take college classes, like community college classes at the prison at the facility. You know, they have a community college curriculum and she's one of the volunteer teachers there.

And I think there's two things. One, I think she loves teaching and to miss that. And two, she just has a very strong bias towards social justice and giving back. And so it's been a nice combination to be able to work at San Quentin to do that work because it's aligned with kind of what gets her fired up and inspires her.

Adam: Yeah. What an amazing thing that she's doing too.

Mike: Yeah,  I am amazed. The school had a career fair maybe a couple months ago. And so it was the first time I've been to San Quentin and I got to meet some of her students that were doing like almost a science fair. And it's just it's just amazing. Like, you know, people make missteps in their life and, you know, forever they’re you know, stuck with that misstep at times.

But they, you know, the students that are in her classes are really inspired to learn. You know, they're eligible to get out at some point and to see kind of students that are engaged and really want to learn, it's definitely different than like fourth grade students that were at times like distracted, not as interested, but most of her students are really, really interested in learning. And it's fun to meet some of her students and kind of see all the amazing programs that San Quentin is providing to folks there.

Adam: Wow. Well, kudos to her for doing that work. It's super important. Tell me about the decision for the two of you to start a family. It sounds like it was a bit of a journey, but was that something you kind of always knew you wanted a family when the two of you got together in the, you know, decades before when you'd been friends or, you know, was that a conversation you had to have?

In the run up to getting married or afterwards?

Mike: Yeah. This is again back to the picket fence story. We were working on names of our kids in government class in senior year. We would sit in the back of the class. And pass, you know, notes back and forth to each other saying, hey, I'd like to see you after class or hey, what if we had a boy? What would the name be if we had a girl with the name be?

So Marley was named honestly, in senior high school. So we did think that we wanted a family. We were excited about having a family. We hoped we would be really great parents, even though there's like no book or kind of scorecard for that. And so, yeah, it was not, anything we discussed, we just kind of assumed that we would have a family and that, you know, we also assumed with like, you know, very little understanding of how fertility works, that we would just have as many kids as we wanted to have.

And so it was really interesting and hard to go through, you know, the level of difficulty of not being able to have kids at the rate and the decision that we wanted. But no, we were always kind of hoped that we would be lucky enough to have a kid or two.

Adam: Wow. And naming them back in high school. That's a, that's some incredible foresight.

So, you know, your daughter's born almost now, 22 years ago. What were you doing professionally when she was born? Where were you in your journey that you described to me at the beginning?

Mike: I was at the end of the last job before joining Walmart.com and then I joined Walmart.com in her first year. And so I was kind of a middle manager, you know, doing well in my career, but definitely not clear on kind of the functional competency that I would be really good at, wasn't clear on what my ceiling or floor was. So it was like in the middle of my career. And I was working a lot and I was also commuting down to the peninsula. The beginning I was commuting down to St. Carlos from the East Bay and then Walmart.com was in Brisbane and commuted down there.

So a bridge trip. So, it's an interesting time and a hard time to have a kid, you know, for my professional life because I was in a car somewhere between two and a half to three hours a day, and obviously not helping with any parenting during those two and a half or three hours, and then you come home and you recognize, like, how hard parenting is for, you know, a young kid.

And you have to immediately come into the house and, and be on because your partner has been on all day. And so it was, yeah, it's not, you know, parenting, as you know, is not easy. But that's where I was in my career, kind of middle manager, not much control of my calendar or schedule. And thus like, I had to sort of have work be close to first with 1A, 1B as it relates to kind of work and parenting.

Adam: Yeah. And when you're still sort of trying to prove yourself right in a somewhat new career and so kind of finding yourself professionally, finding yourself as a parent. Interesting and challenging time. That sounds like.

Mike: Indeed. Indeed.

Adam: What would you say is the earliest memory that you have of becoming a father?

Mike: I mean, I think it was in the delivery room. Partly because I had a friend ask me if before, you know, we went to have Marley…asked me whether I got nauseous or something with smells and, and he said, hey, if you do, just like stay upper body and cheerleader versus like going to see your kid's head when it's coming out.

And so as a result of that, I didn't listen to my friend and the nurse said, hey, do you want to see your Marley? She's coming out. And I said, yes. And the earliest memory of being a parent was almost passing out in the delivery room, which would have been more than a little bit embarrassing. It's still embarrassing telling the story now and embarrassing to our family as Kelly has told the story many times about how I almost didn't, you know, wasn't

Adam: Conscious.

Mike: Upright and conscious for the birth.

But that was the earliest memory of like being a parent because it was so, you know, amazing, like birth is amazing. And the professionals that help you get there, the power and just the strength that, you know, Kelly had during it, all of it's just like a surreal experience. And then I think probably the next memory is like literally because she walked so early.

Just like being at the playground, being on the monkey bars, running around with her. You know, she was just a very active kid and I, I have strong memories of like being out with her a lot, which were just wonderful. 

Adam: Yeah. And for those, by the way, who are listening to this, that don't know seven and a half months is a pretty young age to be a walking kid. Usually it's more like 11, 12, 13, something like that. But seven and a half is like, man, you've just got done sitting up and now you're running.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. I don't wish it on anyone and it is, it is early and can be painful. So.

Adam: So aside from you know, your daughter sprinting at the age of seven and a half months, what are some of the most surprising things that you've discovered as a dad or that you discovered after she was born?

Mike: I think the obvious things are you don't have control over this stuff. So like learning to be flexible learning to be open to changing your routines. I think that's been the most surprising thing is like how flexible you have to be. If your young kid is having a temper tantrum or whatever and that changes of like whether you're going to go out or not or where you're going to go like being flexible with that but then there's just like you might think your kid is going to be great at a certain subject and they're just not and learning to be flexible and loving and seeing where their gifts are is another part of I think being hopefully a good parent is not forcing or hoping for your agenda for them on them, because you know, they are their own, you know, being, and they're going to be who they are.

And I think, you know, you have some control over the core values and principles, but there's a lot you don't have control over. And so I think that's the thing has been my biggest learning and, understanding of parenting is try to be flexible and be open to kind of managing what you have and kind of where you are as a family.

Adam: Yeah. And then, would you say your daughter is more like you or more like your wife?

Mike: Yeah, this is, this is a hard, hard question, because there's a very clear answer. She is like 99 percent me. And that's where this like dating in high school where I can't hide from it because Kelly knew what I was like in high school as Marley was going through her 15, 16, 17 year old years, Marley knows our daughter knows she's a lot like me.

And so she in kind of our, you know, debates will say, but I'm just like you dad.

That's why this is hard. And so it's, yeah, it's, it's not even close. She's very much like me and I think there's a lot of, you know, amazing things about that and me. And obviously like we all have, you know, warts too.

There's a lot of things that I'm not proud of of who I am and what I, was like, that you know, have been harder to parent. So when she's acting like me on a challenging way, my wife will turn to me and be like, you got this because you, you know, cause you, that's you like, this is how you are.

So, and then, you know, sometimes those, this is like you, I didn't really worry about as a kid and don't worry about as an adult, but my wife does. And so that's where we have good conversations as a family of like, it might not have, you know, affected you negatively in your adult life, but it still needs to be parented, even though you weren't parented that way.

Adam: Right. Oh, that's a really good point.

Mike: Yeah, the way you were parented and the way you think it turned out great versus the way you need to parent your kid, especially if they have similar kind of characteristics and attributes that you do that.

Adam: It's nice that your wife turns to you and says, hey, you got this. As opposed to, hey, this is your fault.

Mike: There's a little bit to be clear. There's a little bit of like, you know, whether it's explicit or implicit, there's a little bit of, like, love there.

Adam: You made this thing.

Mike: You made this thing. Totally.

Adam: So on that note about recognizing and having to parent when maybe, you know, it felt like it didn't affect you as you were growing up. Do you have any particular frameworks or guardrails or anything that you've established…you or you and your wife together about how to be a successful parent?

Mike: I don't know what I elevated as much to like a rubric or framework, but more just like kind of a philosophy maybe, which is you know, you have to parent to where your kid is like, you know, you have to really understand where they are in their development, where they are in executive function development, where they are in life, where they are in happiness.

And so taking these macro things into account, you know, I think are really important in parenting, you know, asking a lot of questions, I think to try to understand like what's going through their head when they're able to articulate it as they get, you know, into their early teens and now early adult years. Building trust, I would say with them, I think there are parents and this is not meant to be judgmental, but like there are parents that want to be their kid's best friend. And then there's parents that want, you know, their kid to be kind of scared of them because they allows them to discipline in the way that they want to discipline.

And I think Kelly and I have tried to develop a philosophy of, like, building trust and listening and where you can come to us for almost any topic, if not all topics, but that there is still a line of respect and, you know, this, we are your parent, not your friend, and over time, I think we've gotten more friendly, but I think we tried to draw this line of respect but also while building trust so that we could parent. I think it's really hard to parent if you don't know like a lot of what's going on in their life And I think we also had a lot of good fortune that you know we had a house that her friends and she liked to kind of come back to and so you could see like how she interacted with her friends, you could build trust with her friends to sort of allow, like, or, you know, are you hanging around the right people.

And I think that was sort of a lucky good fortune gift that we had of having sort of our house be a place that people you know, her friends felt comfortable kind of hanging out at.

Adam: Yeah. One of the things that you mentioned, which is a little bit on this frameworky topic is you talk about the importance of communication and you talked about the importance. This is in our sort of prep for this show. You talked about the importance of aligning with your spouse on some of those really tough parenting conversations that you have to have. So tell me a little bit more about that.

Mike: Well, it goes back to what we, you know, talked about going all the way back. My dad was a hardcore disciplinarian. And while we would act up as a lot of kids do, you know, we would sort of be grounded or be in trouble. And we were kind of scared of my dad for sure. One story that leads to sort of how we aligned my dad, there were three boys and my sister wasn't born yet. We were coming back from I think a baseball game or something. And my dad, we were acting up in the car. My dad literally pulled off the freeway and left us at a rest stop, like told us to get out of the car and left us.

Adam: That's the tough love approach.

Mike: Yeah, exactly. Now he drove around the corner. He could see us, you know, it wasn't like he really left us, but. My parenting techniques and discipline tend to be a little bit tough love like my dad, which is like if she wants to leave the house, let her leave the house if she's all mad, or if she, you know, like, you know, get out of the car kind of thing.

And I, I think Kelly and I have learned that that parenting for our kid, the way my dad did, would not likely be as successful as it was, I think, for us. And wasn't our style either. And so we had to figure out, like, where are we on the discipline spectrum, hardcore or like laissez faire and we aligned on that we're, you know, somewhere in the middle.

It sounds kind of cheesy to say we're right down the fairway there, but we are, I think in a lot of ways. And as a result of that, you know, we approached any discipline kind of knowing that that was the foundation that we were at somewhere in between kind of tough love and nurture and teaching.

And we always just thought like, you know, when we're disciplining, what is the end goal? What are we trying to get out of it? We're trying to think ahead. And we also wanted to, as best as possible, show the united front so that there wasn't sort of this good cop, bad cop, or she could play us off each other because dad was easy and mom was hard or vice versa.

And so we felt like aligning on these principles and then making sure that times where we had to have a tough conversation or discipline conversation, that we were on the same page, at least in the theory of what we wanted out of that discipline. Now, what happens is, you know, is like sometimes your kid doesn't respond exactly the way you think they're going to respond to said discipline or said conversation.

And then you have to, like, you know, figure it out in real time. And, you know, those are the times where it, you know, stressed us more because sometimes we weren't on the same page with the real time kind of conversations that we were having. And that requires then some, you know, postmortem where me and Kelly talk about like what I did wrong in that conversation or what she could have done better in that conversation.

But I also think this is all part of like growing together in a partnership that we've been lucky enough to have for a long time.

Adam: Yeah. Oh, that's great. That's great advice. I wanted to ask if you, you know, you've, your daughter's kind of grown up and she's in her early twenties now and I'm sure as she was being born or expecting or whatever, that there was a ton of advice that you got people get peppered with this, like for some reason, parents, grandparents, everybody loves to dispense advice around the time that you're expecting a kid. And so if you, so I want you to think about like, if you were giving advice to your younger self, let's say wind the clock back and it's, Mike about to have a kid. What would Mike now tell Mike the younger about parenthood or what piece of advice would you give to him?

Mike: I think the piece of advice that was most beneficial to me, but no one told me it wasn't any of the advice that I got is if you're lucky enough to find a couple that is 2,3,4 years ahead of you in their journey, but with a similar enough kid type from a stylistic perspective and you guys, as, as two couples are aligned on core values and principles, it's super beneficial to have that person almost as a parent mentor.

And so I would tell my old Mike is like, look, as she gets older, try to find someone that's a little ahead of you in this journey that you trust their advice and their kid is similar enough. It can't just be that you trust their advice because kids are so different. It can't just be obviously kids are the same, but you have a different core values and principles as a family.

So it needs to be similar enough core values and principles as a family, plus similar enough stylistically as a kid. And then like latch onto that person that is like just a couple of years ahead of you. The biggest benefit for me was like all the things that I thought were kind of crazy in the development of your kid or our parenting or what we had to deal with were very normal to my friend that had gone through it.

So he would just be able to calm me down like now that's normal. Don't worry about it or nope. Actually, you should be checking on that and and like he can help calibrate like how much parenting I had to do or we had to do as a family versus how much like letting them just develop into who they are.

And that's the advice I would give is like if you can find that person and it's not easy obviously because it's both those elements like core values and principles alignment as well as stylistically your kids being similar.

Adam: I love that. Find your parenting mentor,that's going to be my new, mantra for people.

Mike: Nice.

Adam: What about on the other end of the spectrum, if you could go back in time and tell Mike, who's being bombarded with all kinds of advice, Some particular piece of advice that you should ignore.

What would you have told your younger self to just like, hey, don't sweat this thing or don't worry about this thing.

Mike: I mean, I think finding a perfect situation for school or for their academic career. I think kids these days are put under a lot of pressure to do, you know, really well, whatever, however you define that academically as early as like what elementary school or independent school you go to. And I think not really listening to the stress that other parents put on you about school choices and teacher choices and academics.

I think, Kelly and I care deeply about academics or Marley does as well. But I think there's just like, you know, too much pressure on what good looks like there or what normal looks like there. I think back to college as an example. And you know, I had an amazing four year college experience.

But to graduate in college now in four years is very, very challenging to get all the classes you need and to be ready for your college life. And so I think, you know, ignoring that there is like a typical path or a certain expectation for academics is what I would sort of tell parents to try to relax about.

And similarly in sports, like Marley was very involved in youth sports. And I think there's a lot of pressure that kids go through if they're playing a youth sport. And I think it's because parents, you know, in a lot of cases like to live through their kids and they think there's like a certain path or certain way to get them to be a division one athlete.

And obviously, the numbers show there's not that many kids that are able to get to that level of competition. Not sure for a lot of kids that's even the right path for them. And so I think trying to coach parents on like really understand your kid and don't live through your kid and try to, you know, be open to the path that they're going to outline for themselves and not like force it into some societal pressured path.

Adam: Yeah, that's a really good piece of advice. So you mentioned the very beginning when you were talking about starting Footwork, that you work with Nikhil and Nikhil is your partner at some point. Nikhil has offered to come on this show too. So, you know, we'll get him on here at some point, but I'm really curious because Nikhil has, I think one or two young kids.

Mike: He has one, one daughter.

Adam: One daughter.

Hey, kind of like you. And I'm wondering, do you ever give Nikhil parenting advice in between your investing conversations? Does that ever come up in conversation with him?

Mike: I do not give specific parenting advice, but he has heard so many stories about Marley over the years. I think I tried to, you know, help him understand that he doesn't have, and none of us do have full control over all these things. But, you know, so much of this is about learning it yourself.

And he is in the midst, he's in the midst of learning it himself with his daughter.

Adam: Well, I can't wait to have him on and ask him this question.

I'm going to ask him if he gives you any advice.

Mike: Yeah, yeah, no, he, he gives me some and it's always helpful. And it's good to have a partner that's in a different life stage than you that can honestly kind of extract himself out of your life stage and just give thoughtful advice. And no, I think he loves our family and knows Marley and cares about us.

So he gives his advice only in the spirit of love. But you know, he's, he's early in his parenting journey, so you can. He's down some of it because he's, he's learning too.

Adam: Yeah. I wanted to change directions and ask, and I think, you know, you may have mentioned that there really isn't anything here, but I'm kind of wondering if there's anything that you felt like you had to give up to become a father or anything that sort of, I mean, obviously  life changes a lot when you have a kid, but anything that you did a ton of, or really sort of change your perspective on the importance of, after you, after you had your daughter.

Mike: Yeah, I'm thinking about it now. It feels like the, the one thing which I think is sort of an example of broader things. So I regularly play golf before having a kid. And, you know, it was fun to be out with friends for four or five hours and then maybe go grab a drink with them or a meal with them afterwards.

And pretty much after we had Marley, I stopped playing golf. And I think what the stopping playing golf is sort of an example of is like. You do, if you want to be engaged in your kid's life, you do have to give up stuff that you really enjoyed doing before, perhaps. And to commit to getting to know your kid and learning to be a great parent and helping with the family chores that are different than pre kid.

It wasn't because I guess the phrase giving up, it didn't feel like something that was hard to do. And I haven't missed it one iota because there's so much joy and benefits of like being a parent that certainly outweigh, you know, a round of golf. But I do think the idea of, you know, in our opinion, being together and parenting together, and really communicating together about it means just like if you have a diverse team, diverse teams, like you have to spend more time talking about what the vision is and talking about where you want to go.

Versus homogeneous teams. And I think parenting has a similar analogy, which is like, look, if you guys want to be on the same page and you want sort of as close to equal kind of, you know, participation in the parenting, you have to spend time up front communicating about like what that even looks like.

Which then means you have to give up other things like golf as an example.

Adam: Yeah. Yeah.

Mike: I would say one of the amazing joys and benefits of like having an amazing partner in Kelly is I didn't really have to give up career goals in having a parent and hopefully still feel like I was a good parent.

I think in some ways my career goals and my choices have motivated Marley because she got to see, you know an amazing founder, CEO in Katrina Lake, the founder of Stitch Fix. And she's been really inspired by Katrina's journey and has her own desires to be an entrepreneur at some point. And that's been wonderful.

So benefits of actually showing her what my work looked like. You know, I was fortunate enough to be in a lot of different jobs that had, It was okay for me to leave at 5:30 so I could get home for dinner. And I sort of expressed that up front, even before I joined the company or worked with this manager and no one really had an issue with that.

It helped me structure the kinds of jobs that I actually wanted to do to make sure that I would have time to have kind of a good balance between family and work. So it never really felt like I was giving anything up. I just had to be super intentional and pick my spots of like where I wanted to work that would support those intentions.

Adam: I love that. And I also liked the way that you phrased it at the beginning where you said it wasn't so much giving up, like even with golf, you didn't feel this sense of loss because you were supplanting it with something else that brought you more joy than playing golf did even.

So, and I think that's a really pertinent piece of advice for people who even as they think about going into becoming a parent, like are worried about how their lives will change. You kind of don't care when your life changes. Cause you're like ready for this other amazing thing that's coming into it.

So, I wanted to ask you you know, as your daughter has kind of gotten older and as she's left the house and you mentioned she's in her last year in college, like how are you and, Kelly spending your time now that you don't have like another human being in your house?

And what's that transition been like to kind of suddenly look around and be like, well, it's just us. There's no one here in the room that's depending on me anymore. 

Mike: Yeah, I would say there’s some significant changes and then some other minor changes. So you know, the changes is, you know, she was, as I mentioned, a big soccer player. So most Saturdays and Sundays we were on the soccer field watching her play and that brought us a lot of joy. So freed up a lot of time on Saturday and Sundays to just be together.

And, you know, we really like watching her play. We like to hike, we like to get out. And so it just allows us to do more like consuming, you know, watching sports or watching a good movie or watching a good TV show or just being out of the house together, not watching soccer. So those are the biggest changes, because in covid she did not have an easy time. I wouldn't stay the first 2 years. We definitely didn't feel like empty nesters because we had to be there for kind of the challenge of her being as far away and kind of you know, having a grittier time, I'd say, in college.

I'd say now, as she is getting ready to graduate, our time with her, like, she really wants to use us for life skills. And so, I have like a weekly meeting that we pretty much do it monthly versus weekly, because they're either her schedule or my schedule, where we talk about, you know, her budget and like how she manages money.

We talked about sort of how is she doing on sleep and working out and eating the important things to sort of build a good foundation to being an adult and she really wants to kind of glean from us, kind of our best practices and advice on things like managing money and staying healthy. And that's been a wonderful thing to be able to talk to her about.

And it's still, you know, work in progress. Like she's still trying to figure out what it means to be an adult and figure out how to manage money and that kind of thing. but it's just a fun transition to kind of see her rate of learning and her desire to learn on these adult things just be so high.

And it's been lovely. But Kelly and my time has only changed with kind of weekend activities, not much during the week.

Adam: Yeah. I am in the thick of that myself as I think about the calendar for this weekend, multiple soccer games, lacrosse, et cetera. It's all children's sports all the time in our house.

Mike: Love it. Love it. I love it.

Adam: Yeah. how amazing too, that Marley's kind of reaching out to you and expressing interest in this in her early twenties, I mean, now you, can have some confidence that she won't be still building life skills, like in her forties, you know, which I feel like she'll have mastered the foundations at an earlier age, which just gives her a leg up.

Mike: I hope so. We hope so. We're grateful that she wants to do it. And I was that, you know, probably early thirties, still trying to figure some life skills out. So grateful that she's a little ahead of the game.

Adam: That's awesome. What would you say is a mistake that you've made as a as a father when you reflect on, you know, 20 plus years of parenting? 

Mike: I think the biggest one was, Kelly and I took some pride in like sort of, making really good decisions as, as young people and pride in sort of, you know, being relatively goody two shoes. And I think what it then translated to for us is if she made a mistake, her not feeling as comfortable talking to us about that mistake.

Because her parents didn't do that, are Kelly and I really open to hearing that mistake because, like, we were so great, you know, growing up? And thats, like, I think, one big mistake, because I think you don't want to present in a way that you're not, but you also don't, you know, as much as possible, you don't want to cut off communication, you don't, to my earlier point, don't want to cut off trust.

To have these conversations like be, you know, open and we can learn a lot and how to be helpful if you're going through a hard time. And, you know, I think that's something, as I look back on, I don't think I would have like talked about all the dumb things I did in high school, but I certainly wouldn't have been so full of pride for how great. I was, you know, in high school in the early days either, because I think it just gave the sense of like, can I really talk to my parents about X, Y, or Z if they didn't do X, Y, or Z, or they didn't make X mistake. And I would have definitely been less proud about my, you know, the, all the great things I did and try to leave more room for conversations about the hard things that were going on for her so that we could be, could help be good parents in those situations too.

Adam: Well, that's a really great example. Other thing I wanted to ask you about is that you mentioned a little bit in our prep about how to talk to and introduce the concept of privilege. You mentioned philanthropy and things like that. So how did you think about that with your daughter and, how'd that manifest?

Mike: Yeah, I think we're still a work in progress on it. I wouldn't give us high grades on it yet because I think, you know, there's all sorts of different to your earlier question about advice. There's all sorts of different advice that you get as you, you know, get wealthier or get more privilege. Some people say, hide it from your kids.

Don't show it to them. Some people say, show everything to them so that they can get more comfortable with it. Some people are very comfortable kind of doing really privileged things early in a kid's life and because they've earned it and as, as a family and they want to be able to enjoy life in that way.

And I would say, the way we tried to introduce it was understand kind of readiness to handle. And I would say, even like the way we flew to vacations, the places we stayed, we probably went earlier on that and showed some of that privilege earlier than she was ready. And I think then it just requires you to be like, you know, that is a gift.

Try not to over, you know, believe that you deserve that or something, or we deserve that. And so it created kind of challenges on, like, how do we talk about these things? Still enjoy them, but talk about these things in a global sense, like the rest of the world doesn't really, you know, is not able to do these things, and we should be really grateful for that.

So I think it helped with understanding gratitude. I think where it hurt was like expectations and like, is this the way we should always go? And then on the philanthropy one, and this is going back to, you know, question about mistake, you know, we tried to introduce our thoughts about philanthropy to Marley earlier than she was ready to handle it, meaning.

You know, we have been really fortunate with some, you know, amazing company performance that allowed us to sort of have financial flexibility beyond what we ever thought we would have. So we had decided as a family that we would be very aggressive and assertive in giving money away early in our life versus like generational transfer of money to Marley. And so we tried to have that conversation about how we're thinking about giving across our different planks. And as you might expect a 17 or 18 year old when they hear, wow, we have this much money and I'm not getting a lot of that money. That's kind of hard process, you know, and I think, you know, you can kind of say, oh, I respect my parents for like giving to social justice and education.

And that's really notable. But like, how am I going to live? You know, like I'm broke and it'd be great if I could have some of that money or have a leg up and especially she's a biracial kid. And especially if like most other families are doing wealth transfer, you know, am I setting my kid back by not providing some cushion or some early start on, on generational wealth giving?

And so I think we're still in this inquiry of like, what's the right way to have the conversation? When is she ready for the conversation? What are the right answers? For us as a family, but again, going back to the word privilege, these are privileged things that like, whoa, you know, who's going to feel sorry for us of like how hard it is to have a conversation about how to give money away or whether to give it to your kid.

Like, we're lucky that we have those choices. But I do think it requires some thoughtfulness, we have definitely made, I've made mistakes on readiness and how to do it. And so we're still kind of in, in the middle of it as we speak.

Adam: Yeah. And I mean, I think I agree with you that, you know, it is a privilege to be able to have a conversation about privilege with your kid. At the same time, it's okay, I think, to feel good about, you know, doing that. Because a lot of people in your position wouldn't have that conversation with the kid, with their kids, they wouldn't even be thinking that this is a thing that I need to talk about with, with my, with my son or daughter or children or whatever.

And so, you know, there is something to be said about all of the privileged folks that don't have that conversation and then, you know, who knows what their kids end up like.

Mike: And as you know, there's no right answer like…

Adam: Sure.

Mike: In some ways like the kids never ready for that conversation because they will make bad decisions when they understand it. Some kids are ready way earlier than they have it and it's like destructive to not be talking about this with them when they can do amazing things as a result of knowing some of the privilege and so I think I go back to what I said earlier, which is.

The more you understand kind of where your kid is and where they are kind of in their development and core values and principles, the easier it is to make these decisions of when to have the conversation, how to have the conversation. And even if you think you know your kid inside and out, it's not, you know, give yourself some grace when, cause you're going to make mistakes of the timing and how to have the conversation, even if you know a lot.

Adam: Yeah. You know, I often ask people in this podcast about how they feel about startup hustle culture and, and things like that. And you've worked at some fairly intense, demanding, demanding jobs, but actually in your position now where you're investing and counseling founders.

I'm curious how you have that conversation with them, or if that comes up about balance, even if it's not necessarily family balance, but just like not burning themselves out or the right amount of work to put in at different times, depending on their kind of life situation. Does that come up in conversation with, with founders?

Mike: It comes up all the time. And I think it's because Nikhil and I think it's an important thing to talk about with our founders. We think it's important for them to feel comfortable talking to us as the lead investor and the main person on their cap table to talk to us about it.

You know the worst thing you can do is not talk about it, have a founder burnout and be like, I'm done. Cause that's happened. I've seen it even before I was an investment, certainly seeing it as investor too. And so we talk about it a lot. I mean, the way it shows up tactically is we do say to all of our founders, like, you know, probably every board meeting, if not every other board meeting, like ask how you're doing, how are you recharging, where are you getting your energy from, what's your stress level, take a vacation, like encourage people to take some time off, take thinking time instead of doing times at the office, so like take once a month where you go off on a Friday and however you're best suited to like kind of recharge your thinking thing versus just tactically doing - try to do that. You know, Nikhil has a scorecard that we've introduced with a couple of our teams, which is rate yourself this quarter on sleep, working out, restfulness, stress, and then set a goal for the next board meeting or next quarter of where you want to be.

And actually write down in, like a note section, what you're going to do to get there. And then reviewing that the next board meeting, like it's almost like a mental health, physical health check that we ask for certain founders to do to make sure that we're holding them accountable almost as much as we're holding them accountable to financial and operating metrics.

And the reason we do that, it's not all selfless. It is like, you will burn out if you do not find ways to recharge the battery. And so whether it's like spending time with your family, whether it's running, whether it's travel, whether it's pickleball, whatever it is that kind of gets you out of the mode of like day to day grind of a startup and hustle to like thinking and doing and getting energy from outside. You will be better at work. You know this too. Like I am, I was way better at work when I had balance between family and work or when I got to see Marley or got to see some friends. Where I could just get like, okay, this is the meaning of it.

It's like having the joy of spending the time with folks I love and doing amazing things. That's what, you know, why I'm working so hard actually. And you can see the combination of those things. If you get just into your work and you don't even get to see the fruits of your labors, so to speak, like then I think you kind of lose yourself.

And so, I do think that it's really important in startup land. It's really important as you suggest, Adam, whether you're married or not married, kids, not kids, like whatever those kind of pick me up, recharge, like moments are for you to take the time and do it, or otherwise you're going to burn out. And it's amazing how many founders early in their career really think that they can not have to worry about that.

We have a founder earlier today. It's like every time we're like. You really need to find kind of times to recharge and right now he doesn't think he needs to, but I think he still needs to because I think it's hard to run these, you know, each company is like 8, 10 year life. If you're going to get to an exit, it's hard to run that hard, that fast for that long.

And so we try to encourage people to, like, take some time to, like, reflect, it helps them sort of make better strategic decisions, it helps them be better at work, like a super stressed person. You know, in their home life because they're not you know, spending the time, guess what? It shows up at work and that's not sort of life giving or inspirational if you're working for that person.

Adam: Awesome. Well, that is a wonderful piece of advice to end on and, something for everybody to think about. So last question for you before really quick rapid fire, how can people follow along or be helpful to you after they listened to this episode?

Mike: I think just sending great founders that are working on cool things that have early signs of product market fit. If you find a founder that you just think is special and working on a special, you know, technology, whether it's consumer or enterprise and Nikhil and I are always ears for that. You know, the best founders get referred to us.

And, and so that's how you can be helpful to me. And, and Footwork is just introducing us to amazing founders that you think we should get to know. Frankly, at any stage, it doesn't matter whether they're raising money or just starting their idea, just getting to meet them and, trying to earn their trust over time to potentially let us compete for investing is kind of what we're seeking to do.

Adam: All right. Awesome. Will do and we will link to Footwork in the show notes so people can know where to find you. All right. Rapid fire. Here are the rules of rapid fire. There are very few rules. I ask you a question, you respond with the first thing that comes to mind and then we move on to the next question.

Are you ready, Mike?

Mike: I am ready, Adam.

Adam: Okay. Okay. First question. What is the most indispensable parenting product that you can recall ever purchasing?

Mike: Wipes.

Adam: Oh, good one. What is the most useless parenting product that you can ever recall purchasing?

Mike: Car seat. I know you have to have a car seat, so it's illegal to say what I just said, but I'm not really sure like the seat belt versus the car seat was that big a deal at a certain age.

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

Mike: Understand your kid and parent to where your kid is.

Adam: Okay, most frustrating thing that has ever happened to you as a dad?

Mike: Having another parent come up to me and saying that my kid on my shoulders was dangerous to them even though I was holding on dearly and very focused on it.

Adam: Oh boy, as I mentioned in this show, no shortage of people dispensing advice on parenting styles. When your daughter was growing up, how many parenting books did you have in your house?

Mike: Zero. And it was kind of intentional. We just didn't, we kind of felt like we, we were best served by friends that had had experiences, parenting and our own, just kind of trusting our own judgment on it. So pretty sure zero.

Adam: Okay. What is the favorite age for your daughter been, so far?

Mike: 3, I would say, like, you know, sort of past, you know, where she can communicate with you, could, you know, it seems to just enjoy the little things in life. Things aren't very complicated with friends. I'd say. three years old, four years old were kind of the best years. But we also, I mean, it sounds like a cop out, but we've enjoyed, we've enjoyed it all.

You know, she's just like an amazing kid. So every year has its own kind of joys.

Adam: Okay. But still on that spectrum, what is your least favorite age?

Mike: I think middle school, 13, 14 was like the least, least favorite age.

Adam: Oh boy. I'm heading there. I'm heading there in a couple of years. I'm a watch out. What is the most absurd thing that your daughter has ever asked you to buy for her at any point in life?

Mike: I think some fancy Louis Vuitton purse or something. That has been an ask and uh, a no.

Adam: Okay. An ask, and a no. Is there a Disney or Pixar or other animated film that you are secretly or not so secretly a fan of?

Mike: I mean, I'm a fan of frozen. I'm probably not. I'm not obsessive about it. I have not seen it like 10 times. So, but I do think it's a, it's a very good movie.

Adam: Okay. Awesome. I don't know how handy you are, but what is the worst experience that you've ever had assembling a kid's toy or a piece of furniture?

Mike: I am not handy and the worst was the crib for sure. Like just the number of parts and like how important you thought it was and is to sort of have a very sturdy crib, super stressful. I still, yeah, nightmares about it.

Adam: I love that. And I agree with you. The crib is, that's a lot of parts.

What is a nostalgic movie that you have forced your daughter to sit down and watch with you?

Mike: Well, I don't. Nostalgic is a stretch given this movie, but I was a big fan of this movie called Time Bandits that I made Kelly and Marley watch finally after like I tried to get them to watch for many years and then I finally just like pulled the birthday present card and said, hey, for my birthday, we're going to watch this and I think that is a movie and  I think it doesn't translate that much to today, and it I'm not sure the age range really works so they weren't that fired up about that, but that's the one that comes to mind, Time Bandits.

Adam: I'm going to have to look up Time Bandits now. We'll definitely link to that in the show notes. How often do you tell Marley back in my day stories?

Mike: Oh I think not that frequently, but it comes up when she's being the carbon copy of what I was like in a not healthy way. So I will say back in my day, I did this that wasn't that smart and not that helpful to my parents. And I really wish you wouldn't do this.

Adam: Okay. All right. On an average week, how many times would you tell Marley, go ask your mother?

Mike: Oh, we weren’t the go ask your mother or go ask your father kind of thing. I would say it may have shown up once a year, maybe because it was more Kelly and I were very clear on certain topics like where I had had enough. And what wasn't effective as a parent and I'm like, okay, she's back at me and I'm not gonna be effective again.

You should probably just talk to Kelly about that, but only in cases where we were ineffective, not as a regular course of, you know, trying to shirk your responsibilities.

Adam: That's great. We all do reach our breaking point where we're like, I need to tap in my support on this one. So, um, and, and finally, even though you have, but one child, do you have a potential take on minivans and whether you should or should not own one?

Mike: I do have a take on it, even though we never had one growing up as a family and, and when I was a kid and don't have one now, but I am a fan. They drive like cars. They're super efficient with mileage. They work in terms of, you know, driving lots of kids around, you know, we, we rented one on a couple of soccer tournaments and got to know kids on Marley's soccer team better as a result of having a, a bigger car that could hold like lots of kids. So I'm a huge, huge fan of the minivan, but I know that's contrarian.

Adam: Awesome. Well, you know, I have to say the pro minivan people really lay it on thick on this show.

Mike: Oh, they do?

Adam: I'm Yeah,they're few and far between, but, but

Mike: But they bring all these facts and excitement and lay it on thick!

Adam: An effective selling strategy. So, with that minivan answer, Mike, thank you so much for joining me today on Startup Dad.

It's been a pleasure having you here. I will send any and all people to footwork and thanks for taking the time out of your day. I appreciate it.

Mike: Adam, it was a great pleasure and thanks for the great questions. And more importantly, thanks for the important work you do here, because I do think very few people talk about these topics. It's really hard to sort of parent, be a dad and also be kind of exceptional in your job. And I think having more examples of people that are giving best practices or good advice is important.

So I appreciate being on the show and appreciate all that you're doing around this.

Adam: Thank you for listening to today's conversation with Mike Smith. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, share, and leave me a review.

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